The World According to Fannie Davis

by Bridgett M. Davis

  More helpful was Mama’s book Edgar Cayce on Dreams. She was a fan of Cayce, known as “America’s sleeping clairvoyant,” who gave “life readings” and taught followers how to understand their unconscious dream worlds in order to gain greater happiness. He was at the height of his popularity throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and so Mama grew up hearing and reading about him; interestingly, he was also a “mystic” healer with his own occult philosophy. Mama was among the millions who believed Cayce was truly gifted, using his abilities to diagnose and help tens of thousands of sick people; yet he never really profited from his gift, and that only enhanced my mother’s admiration for him. From her paperback copy of On Dreams, I quoted Cayce for my research paper: “In dreams, people experience for themselves every important kind of psychic phenomenon, and every level of helpful psychological and religious counsel.” I also used Mama’s Complete Works of William Shakespeare, with its gilt-edged pages and attached red-ribbon bookmark, to recount the famous dream scenes in Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  But the majority of my research came from a set of books on our den bookshelves’ top shelf: Man, Myth and Magic: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Supernatural. This twenty-four-volume collection, published in 1970, covered every possible topic, including the obscure: exorcism, Indian snake charmers, hypnosis, tarot, demonology, UFOs, zombies, paganism, telekinesis. These books captivated me in part because their dark subject matter also slightly frightened me. Each nine-by-twelve-inch black-bound hardcover volume had color illustrations throughout, and very provocative cover art. The cover that I clearly remember was a scary funhouse image of a girl’s face and breasts, eerily distorted as multiple dark eyes stared out at you. These books’ popularity is perhaps not surprising, given that fascination with the occult was a real craze in the seventies; yet, I admired my mother, and still do, for owning the Man, Myth and Magic collection. Her willingness to explore the occult flew in the face of her own and nearly all her friends’ Christian beliefs, and that seemed brave to me, that she apparently saw no contradiction between her own faith and the supernatural world. (Her livelihood, after all, was based on a game of hunches and premonitions.)

  In fact, Mama’s influence was all over my schoolwork. For my econ class, she let me bring in all her credit cards, which I taped to a poster board as part of an oral presentation on the “Pros and Cons of Revolving Credit.” Senior year, for my television production class, I recorded a “how-to” show on making a witch’s potion, complete with Mama’s lucky candles, a cauldron she’d found for me at an estate sale, and my on-air script material taken from her Man, Myth and Magic encyclopedia’s entry on witchcraft.

  Another defining experience of my teen years was the elaborate, fun Sweet Sixteen party Mama threw for me at the Radisson Cadillac Hotel downtown. She had given me an option: a new car, or a party. Daddy was incredulous at my choice, but I chose the party because, as I told him: “I can get a car anytime, but I’ll only be sixteen once.” I planned every aspect of the party myself and wore a sky-blue spaghetti-strapped silky Qiana gown with a ruffle across the V neckline. Nearly a hundred guests attended, and my cousin Curtis was the official photographer. I had four hostesses—including two cousins, my oldest friend, and my closest friend—a DJ and a sheet cake with blue roses that I cut to the tune of Average White Band’s hit song “Cut the Cake.”

  I begged my father to attend my party, but he claimed he had “nothing to wear.” Truth be told, he’d become something of a recluse over the years, restricting himself to the nearby party store, the check-cashing place, and a neighborhood grocer. I knew without it being said that he didn’t feel as though he fit in my mother’s world anymore, he who had long since moved from Broadstreet and now lived in a small flat, on a modest disability income. Besides, Daddy had no desire to be in the same room with Burt, Fannie’s new husband. (Even though she’d been married to my stepfather nine years by then, my father always considered himself her only real husband.) I was sad for him, sad that my wanting him there wasn’t enough to get him to come. But I didn’t fully understand just how usurped he felt until days later. I showed him the write-up about my party in the society pages of The Michigan Chronicle. He squinted at the small print and read out loud, “Bridgett Davis, the daughter of Mrs. Burtram Robinson and John Davis, was surrounded by all of her favorite people Saturday, May 22, at the Detroit Cadillac Hotel when she celebrated her Sweet Sixteenth birthday.” He looked genuinely surprised. “You had them put my name down?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “You’re my father, aren’t you?”

  He looked over at me and nodded, and that was when I saw it in his eyes, the fear that I’d claim another man over him as my father. I want to believe I hugged Daddy in that moment, as we stood together in front of the party store where we bought extra copies of the Chronicle. I’d like to think we spent the rest of that day together.

  I often chose time with Mama over Daddy. Apart from our movie-watching and shopping and hair-scratching rituals, I looked forward to going out to eat with her, another of our favorite pastimes. In fact, vivid in my memory is one of our last mother-daughter outings before Rita returned home: visiting the brand-new Fairlane Town Center mall in Dearborn and dining at Olga’s Kitchen, a new kind of eatery where you could get a souvlaki-style sandwich filled with seasoned lamb or beef and wrapped in Olga Bread (a sweeter, chewier, and softer version of traditional pita). We added to that curly fries and a delicious Greek salad with feta, and Olga’s Kitchen quickly became our favorite place to eat. Olga was a friend of Mama’s friend Miss Lucille, who introduced the two women to each other. It was fun to dine and have the restaurant’s namesake come over to our table to personally greet us. I knew too that Mama admired Olga, felt a kindred spirit with this Greek-American woman who had, like Mama, launched her own successful business against the odds. But of course, Olga would never know that she and Mama shared a similar story as entrepreneurial women.

  My mother did not discuss sex with me. But she did give counsel indirectly. Just as she’d placed a complete set of books about puberty on my bed when I was eleven, as a way to prepare me for menstruation, she now had her way of making sure I got some sex advice. She’d use that well-worn phrase, “Why would a man buy the cow if he can get the milk for free?” and add that “gals gapping open their legs” are loose and “too easy” and never get a man’s respect. I took to heart a comment she made within my earshot around the time I entered high school: “The way I see it,” she said, “anyone who thinks she’s old enough to be doing it is old enough to figure out how to protect herself.” I took this as implicit permission to get birth control, which I did from the Planned Parenthood in Southfield.

  She also gave out some choice advice on men. Three things my mother said stayed with me throughout my own years of dating and relationships: (1) “Any time the King of England could give up his throne for a woman (Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson), don’t ever let a man tell you what he can’t do for you.” (2) “Pick a man up out of the gutter and clean him up, every time he looks at you, you’ll remind him of that gutter.” (3) “You don’t need to change for a man because if he loves you, he’ll love whatever you’re into.”

  During one of our times together, when I was seventeen, my mother talked to me about the business in a candid way she hadn’t before. She said that she’d been turning in most of her books to Mr. Taylor, the big Numbers man, and she was ready to once again take back the business in order to increase her profits; but now she wanted to employ all her children in the daily operation, give us each a salary, perhaps even open an actual office outside the home. My responsibilities would take no more than two hours a day, she promised. I responded with total support, despite my actual lack of interest in the Numbers. I knew that if my mother was asking for my help, she needed it. And I was anxious to do whatever I could to take some of the pressure off her.

  Funny, while my mother most likely did take b
ack her business, become “the house” again, she never did follow through on getting the outside office, nor did I start officially working for her. Instead, Rita decided to return to Detroit rather than stay in Nashville, which she’d done briefly after graduating from college. My sister took over helping out, from taking folks’ numbers over the phone to running tapes on the weekend to looking for hits. I was probably relieved, but what I remember is the jealousy I felt once Rita and Mama resumed their close relationship. Everyone always spoke about how tight they were, what a devoted daughter Rita was to our mother. They were seen as alike in so many ways, both born under the zodiac sign of Taurus, with similar tastes and similar points of view; and both of them could captivate listeners in the way they told a juicy story. Rita and Mama were engaging and funny and entertaining to be around. I was a moody Gemini, quiet, introspective, in my head a lot. I felt that the experiences I’d shared with Mama in Rita’s absence now seemed unimportant, as though that part of her personality wasn’t the real her. Even our ritual of watching old movies disappeared. The local Channel 7 TV station had shifted the time by thirty minutes and now aired The 4 O’Clock Movie, too early for me to get home from school. Even on the days I was free to share that ritual with Mama, she seemed not to be interested anyway.

  Yet on an ordinary March day, as I was washing dishes, I looked out the kitchen window and saw Mama pull into our driveway behind the wheel of a brand-new canary-yellow Sunbird. As soon as I saw it, I knew that car was mine. I’d spotted it at Porterfield Wilson’s Pontiac dealership on Livernois (just a couple of blocks from our home) when Mama and I were together and made mention of how cute it was. When Lula noted to Fannie that she’d told me to choose between a party and a car, Mama said, “The other morning, I watched her stand at the bus stop across the street in the freezing cold for over an hour, trying to get to school; that fool didn’t even come back in the house; I figured somebody like that needs a car.” I loved my Sunbird, with its white leather interior and sunroof, and I tooled around in that car for many years.

  Two weeks after my seventeenth birthday, five years after the weekly lottery had been legalized, the rumors finally came true: on Monday, June 6, 1977, Michigan’s Bureau of State Lottery introduced a new game called the Daily, effectively a carbon copy of the Numbers, i.e., a complete and wholesale rip-off of the informal lottery that black men and women had created, developed and grown into a multimillion-dollar underground enterprise. Unlike with the weekly lottery game, now players could select their own three-digit number, play it straight or boxed, with drawings every day, six days a week, Monday through Saturday. And the payout odds were, just like with the Numbers, 500 to 1, so that a fifty-cent bet on a number played straight could get you $250, and $1 could get you $500. The state also allowed a winner to “play today and cash in tonight” for all winnings up to $550, at any Daily sales location. This made the state’s quick payout competitive with the Numbers’.

  There’d been warning signs that this day was coming. Michigan’s lottery commission had claimed when the lottery became legal that their weekly drawings weren’t trying to compete with the “daily, quick action numbers racket,” yet ticket agents surely hoped the state would be competition. In a photo from 1972, a smiling black woman holds her lottery tickets, standing in front of a party store sign that reads: THE LEGAL NUMBER MAN…LOTTERY TICKETS.

  As similar as the two games were, the biggest distinction was that the Daily winning number was broadcast live each evening at seven-thirty on WWJ-TV, Channel 4.

  On day one, the three-and-a-half-by-two-inch tickets for Michigan’s new Daily game went on sale at 300 computerized sales terminals, all within a ninety-mile radius of Detroit. Suddenly, everywhere you turned, you could buy a “Daily 3” ticket—at a party store, drugstore, gas station, bar, or liquor store, at the airport, and from vending machines. Lottery officials heavily promoted the state’s competition to the Numbers in the major newspapers with full-page ads, using rip-off slogans: “Got a Hunch? Play the Daily” and “Pick Your Own Number and Play.” One ad even offered suggestions: “Play your birthdate, telephone number, bowling score, or street address. It’s your choice.” The lottery’s hip new slogan was: “Every Day’s a Play Day.” And the state made sure it was easy to play: you could even buy tickets up to six days in advance.

  Turns out, black folks liked playing the lottery. It did take away the stigma and worry of gambling outside the law, since you could now play your numbers right out in the open. It also pulled in some religious people who rationalized that a game sanctioned by the state couldn’t be a sin, now could it? More importantly, it gave myriad players relief from the widely known fact that certain illegal numbers were fixed by the Dagos, i.e., the Mafia. It alleviated the fear that a winning number could be changed at the last minute, or “cut” (its payout reduced), or a hit left unpaid. As one man told a reporter: “You know when you win because you can watch it on TV with everyone else.”

  And the very first week of the Daily’s existence, Skippy’s Candle and Incense Company craftily published and distributed Skippy’s Lucky Lottery Dream Book (copyright 1977), which flew off the shelves of party and novelty stores all over the city. From the beginning, sales of Daily tickets averaged an astonishing $1.3 million a week.

  Now I wonder, did Mama see this coming? Because if she had, would she have bought, just months before, a brand-new car for me? Our phones rang a little less that summer—just as I’d set my sights on a private women’s college five hundred miles away.

  Part III

  Living Takes Guts

  Eight

  Daddy (John T.) on Broadstreet, 1960s

  In the early weeks of the state’s bright and shiny new Daily game, most of my mother’s customers did remain loyal to her, as she’d predicted. The state required you to pay taxes on your winnings; Fannie did not. The state required you to bet at least fifty cents on a number; with Fannie, you could play for as little as a quarter. The state demanded cash on the spot for each number played; Fannie allowed her good customers to play on credit and pay at the end of the week, and even offered a discount. State lottery winnings above $550 required filling out a claim form and waiting for a check in the mail; Fannie paid off big hits in cash, the next day. Besides, she had genuine and often warm relationships with the people who turned their numbers in to her; Fannie asked about your health, your children, your latest dream. She trusted you, and you trusted her.

  Black folks had many, many reasons not to trust the government. Few believed that the state’s revenue from Daily ticket sales would make its way from Lansing back to Detroit. That certainly hadn’t happened so far with the weekly lottery or with the plethora of one-dollar Instant Games. The nearly $300 million in lottery revenue that already fattened the state’s coffers had gone into Michigan’s “General Fund,” and Detroiters assumed those resources had largely benefited the state’s suburban, Upper Peninsula, and rural citizens. Why would the new lottery game’s profits be any different?

  Better to play your numbers with Fannie. At least those dollars circulated throughout your own community.

  By the end of 1977, the Daily had reached $2 million a week in sales; clearly, my mother saw some of her customers siphoned off, saw others dividing their gambling budget between the legal and “street” numbers, as they were now known. Still, many folks were creatures of habit and loyalty and continued to play their numbers with Fannie.

  Besides, the state was no match for the social component of the street numbers. My mother had a circle of friends and acquaintances that had grown wide and deep over the years, thanks to her life in the Numbers. A range of folks from, as they say, all walks of life came through our home to play with Mama. A few of her customers were my favorites. I had intellectual discussions with Carlos, a schoolteacher who quoted philosophers; I learned French phrases from Peter Gunn, a mechanic who’d become fluent while stationed in France as a soldier; and I discussed vintage designer fashions with Beverly, who’
d been a well-dressed, high-class “lady of the evening” in her youth.

  My mother entered the new year—her twentieth anniversary as a number runner—with her core customer base intact. I now suspect she was nervous, but she didn’t show it, at least not to me. At the time, my sole choice for college was Spelman, the premier black women’s college in Atlanta, and I’d already been accepted through early admission. Spelman’s tuition was twice that of in-state schools such as the University of Michigan and Michigan State, yet it didn’t even occur to me to ask Mama whether my choice was affordable. I’d never had to ask such questions, and Mama didn’t bring up the costs, so I assumed I’d be going to Spelman. She even suggested I consider other private schools. “You’re getting letters from all these top-notch colleges,” she noted. “You could at least apply to some of them.”

  But I’d made up my mind, and I entered the new year anxious to leave home and get to Atlanta. It didn’t matter that I’d never set foot in that particular Southern city. Detroit was dubbed Murder Capital USA in the 1970s for a reason: In 1977, there’d been 853 murders, a rate that had quadrupled in a decade. Added to that were over 3,500 reported “forcible” rapes and a staggering 23,900 robberies. On the one hand, I felt somewhat inured from the city’s violence, caught up in my sheltered teenage life, which largely revolved around listening to the great seventies music spilling out from everyone’s cassette players and radios. (I distinctly remember my cousin Jewell playing Steely Dan’s Aja album on the record player in her small bedroom, hipping me to this astonishingly groovy white band.) I hadn’t even known, for instance, about the “Livernois Incident,” a near-riot narrowly averted just two blocks from my home the summer before tenth grade, when a white bar owner shot a teenage black boy in the back of the head for tampering with a car in the bar’s parking lot; the bar owner was taken into custody for the murder and released on a $500 bond, which prompted hundreds of protesting blacks to pour into the streets, some setting the bar on fire before Mayor Young stood atop the hood of a car and calmed down the crowd.