None of the Wootens, Kings, or Armsteads had ever trained in ballet. Whether Agatha had ever seen a professional ballet or had even a passing familiarity with the art form was doubtful. But not for a millisecond did she consider that she might not be qualified to teach me ballet, or at least to expose me to enough fundamentals to take advantage of the natural talent she believed I had shown her.
Just as Ma began so many of her undertakings, she went in search of magazines and books that might allow her not only to study up on the history and practice of ballet, but also provide her with visuals. Somewhere, possibly in a back issue of a magazine, Agatha located an article that showed the six rudimentary positions of the feet and arms, first documented by the court of Louis XIV and inspired by the courtier dances of Spain. In stark diagrams, stick figures illustrated the positions.
That was how we began together to have ballet class in the living room. Holding on to a heavy enameled doorknob substituting for a ballet barre, I attempted to mimic and re-create the positions. Agatha, with her knowledge of Latin, was able to decipher the pronunciation of the French words. After trying to contort my body back to the natural turnout every baby is born with, unsuccessfully holding the stick figures’ positions, I came to the conclusion that though Ma said I had natural talent, ballet was completely unnatural.
Then again, the moment that Ma began to play, giving me an encouraging nudge and the basics plucked from the article she found, I began creating movement that belonged to no school but Agatha Armstead’s School of Dance, and all that was soulful, elegant, beautiful, and had style.
The dream that had been Agatha’s dream for a performing career began to become my dream. When the Wooten aunts and other relatives visited from Boston, Ma herded everyone into the small living room and insisted that they all be my audience while she played something from “Jack The Bear” by Duke Ellington or a composition by Count Basie. Tentative at first, I came to love every moment, encouraged by that blur of faces as I twirled around the braided rug.
I began to understand, even at the age of eight, that physical struggle was a part of learning how to dance. I also realized something else that became much clearer later on—that my love affair with ballet was a double-edged sword, a dance/fight to channel pain, to stave off exhaustion, to defy gravity, and to make something extraordinarily difficult appear effortless.
To keep the necessary balance, my touchstone turned out to be a story that contained Ma’s secret method for channeling pain that she finally confided in me, after nearly two years of exploring ballet together.
Agatha’s annual mitten knitting enterprise was under way, another shared activity that made it possible for us to talk for hours about everything under the sun. That is, everything but anything remotely related to sex, gossip, or repetitions of anything said that had cussing in it or taking the Lord’s name in vain. Other than that, the sky was the limit. Ma rarely veered from plan or schedule to make the same three dozen or more pairs of mittens; our routine by now was well rehearsed. Using my forearms as spindles, I anchored a single strand of navy blue wool between my thumb and fist—the same grip for holding pencils that parochial school nuns could never get me to change; Ma wound the skein around and around and every so often I would get a whiff of the Chantilly fragrance she religiously applied to her wrists and neck every morning.
When I saw the small-gauge needles moving at lightning speed, clickety-click, click, clickety-click, in their own rhythm—knit two, purl one, knit two, purl one—I wondered how such thick fingers could manipulate such tiny stitches so expertly. The answer was Ma’s theme—that pure intention could make impossible things happen.
On that note, she began her story. It had happened in the early 1900s, in Alston, Massachusetts, where her family first owned property after migrating north from the Carolinas. As an adolescent, Agatha had already endured the agony of being in a body cast for a full year following surgery to correct scoliosis. Resilient though she was, fearless in many ways, she had a paralyzing terror of the horse-drawn fire engines that came speeding so recklessly around the corners by the Wootens’ house. She was sure that one day they would veer off course and careen into her and anyone who happened to be in their path. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, when the tower bells began to toll one afternoon that a fire was burning in the town square, she was on her porch as six white horses pulling the fire truck came fiercely galloping around the corner directly toward her. In blinding fear, Agatha ran into the house and flew up several steps, but just before the top landing, she lost her balance and fell backward, head over heels all the way down to the vestibule landing.
It was a miracle that she lived. Every physician who examined her was shocked that she walked again. Again, for months, she remained in a body cast. In miserable confinement, Agatha taught herself that through silent meditation, not wallowing in her own suffering, she could master the ability to self-modulate pain by offering it to the most deserving and vulnerable—children. Still in a body cast, she returned to school.
One morning in the classroom, upon realizing that she could no longer expand her rib cage, Agatha drew from her most vital resources and managed to run home. Her father, John Wooten, was working on a piece of furniture, and when he saw his daughter’s distresss, he grabbed a hammer and cracked open the plaster cast himself.
This was the secret she taught me, an effective technique, as well as a talisman to ward off physical pain or adversity. That story by itself revealed everything about Agatha Armstead that I ever needed to know—comforting and inspiring me beyond measure during rough rides ahead.
Another keepsake would travel with me, long after Agatha was gone—the enamel doorknob that was my first ballet barre from the farmhouse at Forest Edge, which I proudly display in my home today as a reminder that love is eternal.
THREE
THE WOOTEN SISTERS & THE ARMSTEAD DAUGHTERS
The excitement that filled the air all along Barley Road in the days and weeks leading up to August 14, when the annual cookout commemorating Robert Armstead’s birthday was held, seemed to grow exponentially with every passing year; 1967 was no different.
Eight years old, still a ways off from adolescence, I depended dearly on extended family gatherings for a glimpse into the world beyond the sheltered sphere of the farm. Somewhat cut off from the outside world, Ma faithfully stayed current with Walter Cronkite on the nightly news. She followed the work of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War, the Beatles, hippies, the Black Panthers, and the cultural revolution that was taking hold in most major urban areas. Watching the news was a tradition. A few years earlier, when the Boston Strangler was in the headlines and on the loose, I can remember staying up on Sunday nights with my sisters, watching the nightly news, brandishing Ma’s cast iron frying pans, Ma with Grandpa’s rifle at the ready, just in case the Boston Strangler came to Forest Edge.
With the exception of variety shows like Ed Sullivan, A Star for a Day, and Jackie Gleason, most of what we watched on television was white. With the exception of the character Rochester, played by actor Eddie Anderson, who starred on The Jack Benny Show, it wasn’t until 1966 that I witnessed black characters in a regular series, such as the breathtakingly beautiful Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek. Nichols sent shock waves around the nation as she was further catapulted into fame and history along with William Shatner, boldly going where no two people had gone before; they kissed! Right there on national television, right there in our living room, right there in front of Ma as I sat between her knees, playing with the donuts she made out of her stockings just above her shin! Oh, my goodness, none of us could believe it and I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen it. And instead of Ma saying, “I think you kids should go to bed,” she let me watch. She let me watch something she couldn’t talk about—kissing, sexual attraction, and, beyond that, interracial love. I can remember exactly how natural that moment felt. At last, I had witnessed a black person and a white person romantical
ly embracing. And prior to that in the ballet world were New York City Ballet dancers Arthur Mitchell, who was black, and Allegra Kent, who was white, intertwined in a passionate pas de deux. Sponsors were outraged, but the nation survived it and grew.
Next, in 1968, was Diahann Carroll, starring in Julia. Carroll was incandescent, and I wondered why she wasn’t Miss America.
For all that TV lacked by way of diversity, Agatha’s annual cookout, a show unto itself, gave me everything television was lacking and then some. I marveled at the various big-city hairdos and fashions, listening to the accents and the tonations of the Wootens and the Armsteads telling their stories. In the swirl of conversation once the cookout was in full swing, many more chapters of history, scandal, and success would unfold.
In addition to being part of the action, I also loved hanging back, just listening to the elders. Storytelling time. The Wooten sisters, sitting in green-and-white plastic woven chairs under the shade, talking about the world and history, their history. They talked about everything; how, in their day, a bottle of Pemberton’s Coca-Cola, for 5 cents, bought you more than syrup, the NAACP and Paul Robeson, music and education, heroic black leaders past and present, and how sweet Agatha’s corn was that year. They shared how proud they were of the successes of their immediate and extended families. They laughed like they were singing and cried like they were laughing.
Moving on from the elders and farther down the field were the younger aunts, sitting on the stone wall, smoking and spilling rich, juicy gossip and, yes, they were talking about sex. I was all ears. There was only so much about the birds and the bees that I could figure out on my own being raised on the farm or from playing kissin’ cousins in the barn, which would have made Ma apoplectic if she had figured it out. Her idea of sex education did not extend past the science of botany. But once the cookout got going, many more chapters of fooling around, shenanigans, and seductions were to be had.
There was trouble and tragedy. There were those who fell and those who got up again. As in most extended families, there were branches that thought they were superior to others. According to the cookout gossip, there were wives who didn’t deserve their men, and wives who wouldn’t leave their men no matter what. One wife took another wife’s husband while another woman didn’t need a husband at all. While some husbands were adored, others were henpecked. Some were princes, some cads, and some were low-down and just plain wrong.
I vividly experienced the stories told by my extended family. Part soap opera, part sitcom, both fiction and nonfiction, they were more than merely tantalizing. Somehow, paying attention to the oral history of this family, the process, of listening and allowing the stories to become mine, seemed to legitimize my place as a familial member. The cookout also gave me the luxury of bonding with the Wooten/Armstead inner circle of women—the fabulous, sensational, brilliant, powerful, inimitable aunts.
Agatha’s three sisters were not kin to me; however, out of respect and affection, I referred to them as aunts: Aunt Marion, Aunt T, and Aunt Ruthie. Agatha’s four daughters and five daughters-in-law were more accurately my foster sisters, although I referred to them as aunts as well. Marion, Theodora, and Ruthie shared certain traits and values with their sister Agatha, but each was gifted and distinct, each representing to me different facets of womanhood, so much so that they collectively helped to supplement my education in womanly ways in girlhood and later on.
During the days of preparation before everyone arrived, I found myself scouring our Spiegel catalog to see what new fashions the aunts would be wearing and what I could do to manipulate my country wardrobe in an attempt to emulate them. I couldn’t wait to see the face of pride on whichever woman made the dish or dessert that the men would fight over to get the last serving of. Of course, Agatha was the real star of the day, seconded only by the now slightly dinged-up green rotisserie that this particular year she decided to preset in a prominent place so that everyone could admire it anew.
Out-of-towners would stay at motels or in guest quarters in the attic. Little did our guests know that behind an attic wall, inadvertently sealed off by contractors years earlier, was a treasure trove of one-of-a-kind, antique, carefully packed and wrapped Christmas decorations: bulbs of all shapes, strings of bubble lights, old-fashioned red and silver tin garlands—holiday collectibles that Agatha had lovingly gathered for decades. I begged Ma to break open the wall the way her father broke off her plaster cast, but she refused me, saying, “It would cost too much.” Every time I passed that wall I would pause and remember all of that beauty, buried just beneath the surface.
Ma took the lovely presentation of our home very seriously. Before the cookout, her homemade curtains were starched and pressed, as were the good bedroom and bathroom linens. Forest Edge was a picture postcard everywhere you looked. The fields had been cut. Hay was baled. My sisters and I had helped with the extra chores, setting up the badminton net, bringing out the softball gear, and making sure the screened-in porch had new playing cards for tournament-style bid whist games.
Agatha began food preparations weeks in advance. With her masterful timing, as the big day approached, everything was ready—abundant, irresistible, perfect. Beers, wines, canned and jarred goods were carried up in numerous trips from the cellar and were ready to be savored. Breads, cakes, cookies, pies, and other desserts competed for room on tables and countertops.
The dreaded ancient hot comb made its appearance the day before the cookout. An event. The two-hour ordeal typically required Ma to wash a month’s worth of farm dirt out of my long fuzzy locks. I would emerge from our 1960s Sears Roebuck electric hair dryer with a colossal 1900s James VanDerZee–esque doo. Ma would rub a dab of Vaseline between her hands before applying it to my hair. As the comb rested against the red-hot coil, the scent of residual hair from a previous straightening session reminded me that I’d better not move. Ma would say, “You better sit still; I don’t want to burn you.” I held my breath as she pressed at the nape of my neck. Sizzle, sizzle I would hear as the hot comb skillfully glided through my tresses. Ma pressed hair as expertly as she pressed clothes. Agatha would let me run across the kitchen to feel the breeze, the freedom, before weaving my hair into two clean neat braids once again.
That next day, shortly after sunup, the first car would signal its arrival, beeping its horn at the start of Ma’s property. The excitement was palpable. Chevrolets, Impalas, Wagoneers, Cadillacs, and motorcycles all came sputtering, vrooming, chugging, bumping, kicking up dust as they barreled down the dirt stretch of Barley Road and pulled into our makeshift parking lot—the field.
My sisters and I were showered with compliments and comments. “What’s mother feeding y’all—you’re growin’ like weeds.”
Against the stone wall, old used doors sat on top of sawhorses and served as an epic long buffet table covered in pressed tablecloths. Quickly, the table became obscured as family and friends arrived and added their own mouthwatering recipes. Some of the perennial favorites were applesauce cake, corn on the cob, and, as much as I hate to say it, our homegrown fried chicken.
Agatha, the belle of the ball, red lipstick and eyebrows applied, always managed to somehow greet each and every guest upon arrival, with her gift of making everyone feel welcomed, special, and included. Vibrant, poised, loving and loved, she stood, this one-of-a-kind force of nature, receiving compliments about her beautiful farm, the incredible buffet, and, without fail, the intoxicating aroma of her flower bed.
Ma gave all of her guests the option of joining her for a special mass with her priest. Most of us kids stayed clear while a smattering of adults joined her underneath the sober overhang of a lone apple tree in the middle of the field. Jokes and stories were already revving up. We would talk about the time Ma told us a lightning bolt came clear through a window and out another, UFO sightings, found dinosaur fossils set in big rocks, but no one believed us kids. It was customary for Agatha’s children to spontaneously break into the song, a melody that their
father, Grandpa, used to sing to her, “If I could be with you one hour tonight….” I never heard the end of the song because of the contagious laughter that would erupt every time the song was sung.
Agatha and her sisters took their rightful place at the center stage of this gathering. They were stellar, the epitome of class, each in her own orbit, yet interconnected in a solar system that we were all so lucky to travel in. The Wooten sisters were, as anyone could tell you, something else.
In 1907, the Wooten family that migrated north from New Bern, North Carolina, consisted of four-year-old Agatha and five-year-old Marion. While John Wooten left behind numerous members of his family—with relatives whose lineages dated back to the 1700s when the King of England vacationed in coastal New Bern, the second town to be established in what became North Carolina—most of Mary Jane King Wooten’s family had by this time put down roots in the greater Boston area.
Of the twenty freeborn children of a slave owner’s son, Samuel King, and his wife, a former slave in Charleston, South Carolina, more than half of them elected to pass for white when they moved northward. Boston was their preferred destination, because they considered it the hub of the civilized world.
The Women Who Raised Me Page 9