The Redemption of Bobby Love

by Bobby Love

My mother’s faith in the Lord was unshakeable. He was her solution to every problem—​personal, social, cultural, everything. Even when the adults in her church community weren’t acting like good Christians, she would judge the people, not God. Like when Deacon Johnson threw his shoe at our minister in a fit of rage in the middle of his Sunday service because Deacon Johnson found out the minister was getting frisky with the young girls in the congregation. Mama yanked us out of that church real fast and condemned the behavior of the minister. A month later, she’d found a new church for us to attend and expected us to continue on with our love for the Lord. I was just a kid, so I did as I was told, but the hypocrisy I witnessed from churchgoers made me an early skeptic of religion, even though it was so important to Mama and to our community.

  * * *

  We moved again, this time into an apartment building instead of a house. I missed having a yard, but this new place was in a nicer neighborhood. And in our new apartment we were down to six people: Mama, my sister Mildred and her son Bodie, Jean, Melvin, and me. Raymond was also around, although he was getting ready to join the military. I was eight years old then and had started to play Little League Baseball. My mother also signed me up for the Boy Scouts, plus I had church every Sunday. Mama believed that if she kept me busy and occupied with extracurricular activities, then I wouldn’t have any time to get into trouble.

  My father was still taking Melvin, Jean, and me out for breakfast on the weekends, but I never saw him at my ball games. He never took us out to play. To compensate, because my elementary school was close to his house, sometimes after school I’d stop by and see my father, just to say hi and check on him. Sometimes I’d even sleep over. My mother didn’t like it when I did that, but she didn’t try to stop me either. I could tell it was going to be up to me to maintain a relationship with my father, so I did what I could.

  One night in early November, right after I turned nine, the sound of my sister screaming and crying woke me up. I climbed out of my bed and found Jean and my mother sitting on the sofa in the living room bawling their eyes out.

  “What happened? Mama, what’s going on? What happened?” I asked, the panic rising in my voice.

  “Buddy, we just got a call and they said your father’s house is on fire. They think he’s inside.”

  I shook my head. “But you don’t know if he’s dead or not?” I asked. “Don’t say that if you don’t know for sure,” I insisted.

  My mother reached for me, but I moved out of her grasp.

  “Buddy,” my mother tried again. “Nobody can find your dad.”

  That’s when I started crying. “Shouldn’t we go over there and see for ourselves?”

  My mother reached for me again. This time I let her and I just sat there and cried. I cried myself to sleep and woke up the next morning still in my mother’s arms. That’s where Melvin found me. He’d slept through the whole night’s ordeal. As soon as he saw me, he asked what was the matter. Melvin was only six, but I didn’t think to spare his feelings. The words just tumbled out of my mouth.

  I told Melvin about the fire, but unlike my mother and Jean, I refused to say that my father was dead. “We need to go over there and find out for sure,” I told him.

  Mama got up to go to the bathroom. “Y’all don’t have to go to school today,” she said to us. Then she shuffled out of the room.

  I raced to get dressed. Melvin was on my heels. I just knew we were going to find out that my father was still alive. We had to hurry up and get over there. I told Melvin he’d better move faster if he wanted to come along, as I helped him pull his sweater over his head. In my mind, I considered all of the possibilities of what could have happened to my father. He could be any number of places other than in that house. But before I could share my ideas with my mother, the doorbell rang.

  It was the police. I heard Mama let them in and I snuck into the living room to hear what they had to say.

  “Are you Annie Miller?” one officer asked.

  My mother said yes.

  “We’re sorry to tell you that your husband, James Miller, died in a fire at his residence last night.”

  Even though Mama had shed so many tears the night before, hearing the words coming out of the police officers’ mouths set off another round of wailing.

  I slumped down right where I was, because now it was official. My father was dead.

  The next few hours passed by in a blur. People started coming over to our apartment, bringing food and sharing in our sorrow. At some point in the afternoon, my brother Millard came to drive us over to see what was left of my father’s home. When we got there, all we saw were smoldering ashes. Everything was gone.

  The funeral took place a few days later, but the undertaker told my mother that my father’s body was so badly burned, they had to have a closed casket. When we heard that, we all cried some more. No matter how mean my mother claimed my father was, and even taking into consideration all of his faults, nobody deserved to die like that.

  * * *

  The Christmas after my father died, my mother bought Melvin and me our very first bicycles with the money she received from my father’s pension. These were brand-new bicycles, not secondhand ones. My sister Jean got a stereo set, and her friends would come over and play records and dance. It was the best Christmas I ever had. That sounds terrible to say, considering how Mama came into the money, but that’s how I remember it. In addition to my new bike, Mama also splurged and bought me new clothes. She said she was tired of seeing me in my old overalls and T-shirts.

  “I’m going to buy you a suit for Christmas, Buddy,” Mama told me proudly. And she took me down to Vanstory. Vanstory was a high-end fashion store in Greensboro, and you didn’t go there unless you had some money. Mama bought me my first suit and a really nice trench coat. Having these new, fancy clothes made me feel important and like we were moving up in the world. And that’s kind of what happened after my father died. We had more money. We weren’t rich or anything, and nothing dramatic changed in our lives. My mother could simply afford to buy us the basic things we needed, like an extra pair of pants or new sneakers when the old ones pinched our toes.

  After the initial shock of my father’s death wore off, I told my mother that I didn’t really miss him. I felt guilty for those feelings and wondered if that made me a bad person.

  “I don’t feel anything,” I told Mama one Sunday while I was sitting in the kitchen watching her cook dinner. “How am I supposed to feel about Daddy dying?”

  My mother stopped stirring the pot of grits at the stove and came and sat by me. She put her arms around me and said, “It’s okay, Buddy. If you don’t feel it now, you’ll feel it later, when it’s the right time for you. Grief doesn’t have a schedule.”

  And then she went back to cooking. And I took that to mean that it was okay that I didn’t miss my daddy. And that it was okay that I loved my new bicycle and my new clothes. And even that it was okay that even though I loved my father, I had already promised myself at nine years old that I would never grow up to be like him.

  Later that summer, I started going out with my friend Ronny to mow lawns for money. White people would offer us two or three dollars to cut their grass. After doing it a few times, I realized we should have been charging five or six dollars for their big old lawns, but we didn’t know any better. Ronny had a push mower, and the two of us would take turns pushing that thing across those lawns, collecting our pay and then moving on to the next house. It was a lot of work, but I loved having my own money in my pocket so I could go to the movies and buy myself some popcorn and soda while I was there.

  One day my mother said to me, “I’m going to buy you a real lawn mower, Buddy.” She had seen me going out with Ronny and wanted to support me so I could keep earning money. I didn’t really believe it at first, because a gas-powered lawn mower was expensive. But Mama kept her promise. One day she told me to meet her downtown after she finished work so we could get the lawn mower. Mama knew exactly
where to go to buy a sturdy machine that I could handle. I was so impressed that she knew all this and that we could walk into this store and purchase not just the lawn mower but the gas as well. Once again I had to give thanks to my father’s pension.

  With my new machine, I said goodbye to Ronny and struck out on my own. Saturday mornings, starting at 9:00, I’d be knocking on my neighbors’ doors, offering to mow their lawns. I refused to take anything less than four dollars per lawn, not only because I knew my service was worth it, but also because I had to buy gas for my machine, and if I still wanted to go to the movies, I needed higher profits. I tried to work as fast as I could and earn at least twenty dollars a day. Then on Saturday nights, I’d take the bus to the movies and buy treats for me and my friends. I was only ten, but I had already figured out the art of the hustle. I knew what I wanted and I knew exactly how hard I’d have to work to get it.

  I learned that from my mother, that and my work ethic. Mama would work three jobs if she had to, to make sure we had food on the table. Whether it was taking on an extra job or picking up seasonal work so she could earn more cash, my mother did what she had to do to support our family. She gave me all the inspiration I needed for the job I was doing. I wasn’t afraid of hard work, and I wasn’t dissuaded when people closed their door in my face or told me they weren’t interested in my services, which I expanded to include leaf raking and, in the winter when North Carolina got a few inches, snow shoveling. I didn’t get upset when I heard “No.” I’d just go to the next house, whether it was across the street or down the block. I would try every house until I’d earned my twenty dollars for the day. I didn’t get rich from mowing lawns, but I learned some valuable lessons about doing business. Most importantly, I learned that someone shutting the door in my face wasn’t the end of the road. It was just an opportunity to try again.

  I knew my mother was proud of me. Even though I was earning my own money, she still would buy me things she thought I needed or asked for. She was just happy that I was staying busy doing honest work and not getting caught up in the troubles my older brothers had fallen into. By the time I was eleven, I had baseball, football, my yard business, and I played the trombone in my elementary school marching band. In the summertime, if we didn’t have an activity to attend, Mama would make Melvin and me sing on the street corner just so we wouldn’t be idle. That’s how desperate she was to keep me safe and away from harm.

  And for a while, it worked.

  CHERYL

  I was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 28, 1963. But my story really begins down south with my parents, George and Gertrude Williams.

  Mommy and Daddy were both born and raised in Henderson, North Carolina. They met down there, fell in love, and were high school sweethearts. But like a lot of other Black people at the time, they came north and started their lives in New York City. Brooklyn to be specific. Daddy found a job in a bottling factory, and Mommy did domestic work. Just a couple of years before I was born, they were lucky enough to get a three-bedroom apartment in a building that was right across the way from Daddy’s job. The building was part of a new affordable housing project called the Pink Houses that the city had erected in 1959. These new projects had 1,500 apartment units spread across twenty-two eight-story buildings. My parents were thrilled with their home because not only was their three-bedroom apartment clean and new and spacious, but also there were plenty of play areas and green space on the property for children.

  The only thing my parents were worried about was the fact that they would be one of only a handful of Black families in their building. When they moved in, four other Black families moved in at the same time—​the Thompsons, the Bradfords, the Johnsons, and the Conroys—​and the five families quickly became friends. As it turned out, the white people didn’t have any problems with the Black people moving into the building. And soon enough, my parents were happily absorbed into the Pink Houses community.

  By the time I entered the world, my brother George Jr. was fifteen, my sister Cynthia was twelve, and my brother Bruce was ten. Three years after I was born, my mother gave birth to my brother Don. Three years later came Scott. So we were six kids in all. Even though I was technically a middle child, I was the youngest girl and I loved my role in the family. I was a daddy’s girl, but I also loved being a little mommy to my two little brothers. The whole family doted on me, so I had no complaints.

  The love started with my parents. It was obvious to me, even as a small child, that my parents truly loved each other. They were always happy around each other and affectionate, even after all those years of marriage. When Daddy came home from work, the first thing he’d do was go find my mom and say, “Hey, Gert,” and give her a big hug and kiss. Then he’d turn and hug on us kids. If it was a Friday night, we might get pizza for dinner and have ourselves our own little party right there in the apartment. Mommy would put the music on and we’d all just be singing and dancing and having a good time. Sometimes I’d make my little brothers put on a show with me, and Mommy and Daddy would be our audience and laugh at the songs and dances we made up.

  Our house was just always full of fun and laughter. And it all started with my mom. Mommy was the sweetest person. Once she started having kids, she stopped working and took care of us children full-time. She cooked us delicious food, kept a perfectly clean house, and made sure we learned our Bible verses. When it was hot out, she’d make us Kool-Aid popsicles we could eat outside. When it was cold, we’d come home from school and get mugs of hot chocolate. But most importantly, Mommy took us to the library every single week so we could get new books. She made sure we had our own library cards before we could even read. She loved reading. You would never find her without a book. We had a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in our apartment with books crammed into every single crevice. Mommy always told me that if I needed to learn something, I could find it in a book.

  Church was also really important to my parents. Growing up, we attended the First Baptist Church of Coney Island. And everybody, all of us kids, had to go. Daddy was a deacon, and both of my parents sang in the choir. Naturally it was expected that we children would participate in as many church activities as possible. As a result, we were always in church. If you sang in the choir, you had to go to rehearsal during the week, either Saturday or Thursday night. I was in the children’s choir and on the junior usher board, so that meant I was at church at least two times a week, in addition to Sundays. I liked going to church. I liked singing, and Mommy would sign me up to be in the church plays, and one time I even got to participate in a fashion show. I loved performing. It was all fun for me, even when old Mrs. Johnson would squeeze my cheeks too hard and tell my mother how cute I was.

  My father was just as sweet and kind as my mother, but of course, since he worked all day at the factory and then sometimes in the evenings and on the weekends selling seltzer and soda door-to-door as a side hustle, I didn’t spend as much time with him. But when my father was home, he loved to play with me and watch me and my brothers put on our shows. But the special thing my father and I shared was our love for comedy.

  My father would let me stay up late sometimes and watch The Carol Burnett Show with him. I knew I had to go to bed right after, but this was me and Daddy’s special time. Scott and Don had to go to bed earlier than me, but Daddy and I would eat our ice cream and be cracking up at Carol Burnett. Sometimes I’d try to stay up a little later and beg my father to let me watch one more show, but he’d always shake his head. “No, Cheryl, you know the rules. You gotta get in the bed now.” I never argued because I didn’t want Daddy to be mad at me. And I certainly didn’t want to lose our special time together.

  My childhood at the Pink Houses felt idyllic to me. Despite the fact that America was in the middle of a civil rights nightmare and tangled up in a war in Vietnam, everyone in my world got along. I had playmates in my building who were white, Jewish, Italian, Latino. Mommy let me go play in their apartments, and sometimes they’d come to our ap
artment to play. Never once did I doubt that I was a beautiful little Black girl. The only time I remember a white person being mean to me was when we were taking one of our annual trips down south to visit relatives. We were driving down the highway and I saw a little white girl in the car next to ours, so I waved, but the little white girl stuck her tongue out at me. For no reason! Mommy told me to ignore her. Daddy told me to ignore her too. But I stuck out my tongue back at her and felt much better.

  Going down south meant going to North Carolina and staying for a week or two. We’d visit Mommy’s mother and sisters and then go see Daddy’s sister, my Aunt Betsy, and her husband, Uncle Marvin. They had a farm, and I just loved being around all their animals. We also drove down south together when it was time to take my older sister, Cynthia, who I called Sis, to college. She went to college at Johnson C. Smith in North Carolina. The drive down there was familiar, but the excitement in the car felt different. I was only six years old when Sis left for school, but even I could tell this was a big deal. Mommy and Daddy hadn’t gone to college and George Jr. didn’t either, so Sis was something special in the family. I cried when we left her down there. Mommy told me not to cry because Sis would be back sooner rather than later.

  Mommy was telling the truth about Sis coming back home, but not for the reason she thought.

  I was nine years old and I remember I was sitting at the dining room table doing my homework. It was a Saturday in March. Too cold to go outside, but Mommy had told me earlier that if I finished my homework, I could watch cartoons when I was done. Bruce and George Jr. were both home that day and so were my little brothers. Daddy was out working and Sis was still in North Carolina, finishing up her last year of college. Nothing seemed unusual or amiss, except that Mommy was lying down in her bedroom. She said she wasn’t feeling well.