The Face That Changed It All

by Beverly Johnson

  That same voice also kept whispering in my ear about the possibility of a future with a superfine guy I’d met on the basketball court the previous summer. I had been introduced to Billy Potter by my good friend Beverly Gamble, and our first date had been akin to something out of a romantic novel. We went to the movies to see Love Story, starring former model Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal. From there, Billy wined and dined me big-city style, after which he wooed me with a long kiss I thought would never end as we made our way to his friend’s penthouse apartment. On the ride up in the elevator, I felt like I was floating on air.

  Once we were alone, I learned that Billy had a tried-and-true system. There were candles, great music, and the ever-present blunt. All this led to a great night of laughs and lovemaking, Billy Potter style: I can still remember having to fight to see his gorgeous face through the haze of marijuana smoke that magical evening.

  They didn’t make guys like Billy Potter back in Buffalo. Billy was an authentic New Yorker. I think that was what stirred my attraction to him when I saw him on the basketball court the summer before. He had a swagger and a quiet confidence, and I got to know that he was suave, extremely clever, and worldly. But best of all, he wanted me in that world. This was the love I’d always wanted, the love I’d been looking for when I took my sister’s leftovers in high school.

  But I was still very young, and it would take a while for me to fully understand that all love isn’t necessarily good love. Even today, I struggle with the notion that there is both good and bad love. As far back as I can remember, I have passionately believed that love of any kind can be the most wonderful gift any human being can experience. Even if that love ultimately comes with a harsh or painful lesson once it’s over, the gift of love is always the reward. In the end, aren’t we the sum total of all the people we have loved in our lifetime? Even though I’ve loved and lost many times in my life, I still remain loyal to the same basic philosophy that all love teaches us, or all love leaves us with something valuable in the end. I have to believe that, or what’s the point?

  Relocating to New York for the winter was not just about Billy, or love, or even modeling. The move also reunited me with my younger sister, Joanne, who was now a college student in the city. We roomed with my mother’s aunt, Madeline, but sadly she was sinking deeper and deeper into dementia. Her illness made it clear that I would have to find somewhere else to lay my head sooner rather than later. Joanne was attending Fordham University and could return to the dorms there anytime. I was the one in dire need of a place to stay. Billy, the man I was crazy about, would soon become my man with a solid plan.

  In the meantime, Korby offered me a part-time job as a sales clerk at Jax’s Fifth Avenue. It was the perfect gig to put extra spending change in my pocket as I got my modeling career under way. She made it clear that I was free to head off to any “go-see” (a modeling audition) or photo shoot, as long as I gave the store management enough notice. As heavenly as the job appeared—and it was heavenly, given that I could sneak out and wear Jax’s amazing clothes to the go-sees—the money I made still wasn’t enough to pay the rent on a New York City apartment. Even in the early seventies, prices for apartment rentals were ridiculous. Rents ranged anywhere from $400 to $700 a month for a one-bedroom in the high-end neighborhoods in which I felt I belonged.

  The other heavenly part of the job at Jax’s was the opportunity to connect with a pretty large group of famous people who came in to shop. The most mesmerizing shopper for me was Jackie Kennedy. Whenever I served her, she would sweetly smile and say, “Hi, Beverly,” in her wispy, girlish voice.

  Around this time, the talk of the town was that her second marriage, to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Socrates Onassis, was in serious trouble and that the two were now separated. It was said that this was the reason she had recently moved back to New York from Greece. I could only imagine the strain she must have felt from such an intense breakup. Though we weren’t friends, Jackie was a personal hero of mine—as she was for many women in America. And she was a friend, at least in my head, so it really pained me to watch her struggle with yet another heartbreak.

  On one particular visit to the store, Jackie rushed in in tears, her Secret Service detail following a few steps behind. She was looking for Korby, who had become her trusted friend and confidante. As if on cue, the entire staff exited the back room, where Korby had been working, so as to give the two women their privacy. This happened two or three times while I was employed at Jax’s. To be a fly on the wall of the back room that day would have been something else, but we all respected Korby and the former first lady too much to eavesdrop.

  Most of Jackie’s shopping sprees to Jax’s were brief, but you could tell a lot from what she bought. One sunny morning she rushed into the store wearing the rumpled clothes I presumed she had worn the night before. She had a lunch date at noon and didn’t have time to return to her lavish Fifth Avenue apartment to change. So Jackie stopped by Jax’s to scoop up a new outfit for lunch, then hurried off with a quick wave and a smile from beneath her signature oversized black sunglasses.

  On a side note, for many years I would often see Caroline Kennedy and John Kennedy Jr. at a pay phone near an old apartment of mine at Eighty-Ninth and Madison Avenue. This was the eighties, pre–cell phones, so I imagine the then teenagers were making calls to friends away from mom Jackie’s prying ears. When John got older, I would often see him out at the clubs in New York and marvel at what a gorgeous young man he had turned out to be. In a way, I was relieved Jackie was already gone when his plane crashed that July weekend in 1999, killing him, his wife, and his sister-in-law. Losing her son, losing either of her children, would have been too much of a loss for Jackie to bear.

  Meanwhile, Billy and I were really clicking.

  Prior to Billy, I’d only slept with one other guy. I’d met Victor through my older sister, Sheilah. He had attended college with her at the University of Buffalo. But Billy and Victor were complete opposites. Billy wasn’t that much older than Victor—just a couple of years—but those years made all the difference. Billy had mastered the art of how to treat a lady exactly the way she wanted to be treated. He took particular pride in his craft, and completely understood what true romance was all about, and how the mind and body had to be joined together to cement any real intimate connection. In other words, he really got it. He got all of me, too, which in turn made for a very happy me, for a while at least.

  What complicated matters early on for us was the fact that Billy didn’t have his own place. He did, however, have friends in New York who would lend him their apartments whenever he wanted quality alone time with me. It wasn’t the perfect arrangement, but Billy would really go all out to make everything just right. Along with the candles, he always made sure that John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Nina Simone, and Thelonious Monk were in heavy rotation all night long. He knew those larger-than-life jazz greats had been unfamiliar to my ears before we met. My parents weren’t big jazz fans and preferred the soulful sounds of Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson. But now, because of Billy, I had a new love for jazz.

  Billy Potter turned my world upside down with his disarming wit and sly charm. But his intellectual gifts often distracted me from some unpleasant realities. Billy had attended some college here and there over the years, but he had never developed a trade he could use to support himself, or anyone else for that matter. Despite that, Billy was the first man I ever encountered who routinely wore custom-made suits, pants, and shirts. My own father, a man who held a real job his entire life, shopped off-the-rack because he couldn’t afford such luxuries. Billy, who balked at the notion of full-time employment, wore specialty clothes year-round.

  Billy also had a passion for smoking marijuana on a fairly regular basis, which in itself wasn’t a big deal for that era (just as it isn’t now). Unfortunately, I would soon learn that Billy enjoyed selling weed, too. That fact maybe explains why Billy had so many friends ready, willing, and able to loan him their
apartments. His drug connections opened the door for many free things, such as the custom-made clothing. Did all this make me flinch a bit? Yes, it did—a little—though, in hindsight, not nearly enough.

  Spotty employment was the primary reason Billy lived with his parents in their modest-sized brownstone in Brooklyn. William and Richardean Potter were two of the most adorable people I had ever met, and that only added to my blurred vision when it came to their eldest son. I mean how could you not love a woman named Richardean? His mother wore that name with all the style it required, and I loved her like she was my second mother. Their younger son, Jimmy, was even more dashing and debonair than Billy, and I really bonded with him, too. Jimmy had the most easygoing and loving spirit of anyone I ever met. But the big city got to Jimmy, and he fell victim to a deadly drug addiction as a young man. He would pass away from his struggle with drugs before he turned forty. But William and Richardean Potter were good, upstanding, hardworking folk trying to make an honest living in a world and a city where it can be pretty tough to do so.

  Mr. Potter worked as a paramedic while Richardean worked for the telephone company as an operator. Ever dedicated to both of her children, Richardean regularly tried to get Billy to work at the phone company. Billy would go along with it for short periods, but the key word is “short.” Working as a phone company repairman was far too boring for someone with Billy’s high-minded ideas about himself. I also suspect Billy began offering customers “products” that had little to do with Ma Bell.

  My suspicions were confirmed whenever we met for lunch at the café near the phone company’s office. Every time we had lunch, a lot of the employees seemed to know Billy by name, regularly walking up to the table to say hello. The phone company in New York City had to employ hundreds of people, so how exactly could so many of them know one lowly repairman?

  Still, even with all that going on, I continued to turn a blind eye to Billy’s behavior, as my love for him kept growing. I was sure he felt the same, and I was happy that the deep affection I felt for his parents seemed mutual. When Billy told them about my aunt’s failing health and my housing woes, they suggested that I move into their two-and-a-half-bedroom apartment with them.

  I still laugh today about that arrangement. My parents would not have agreed to let a boyfriend of mine move into our home for any reason at all. It wouldn’t have mattered how dire his circumstances were or how much I loved him. But Billy’s parents were the best support system for a girl like me, because they were so accepting and loving.

  As for Billy himself, he really did love me, but he had periods where he really resented me, too. That resentment manifested itself in various ways, mostly through acerbic and condescending remarks toward me in which he suggested I was no match for him intellectually and so I would be wise to sit silently when certain topics were discussed. Sometimes he even criticized my intelligence in front of people. That was the toughest part for me, because it seemed as though he was trying to embarrass me. I just didn’t understand why.

  So many times I wanted to call his bluff and say out loud, “If you’re so clever and smart, why are you allowing your woman to pay for everything and do everything? Why are you allowing your woman to take care of you?” But I never did.

  Today’s men increasingly don’t give a second thought to allowing women to take care of them financially, but back then it was something men found embarrassing. I never challenged Billy about how he let me pay the bills. I tried to ignore his slights and insults, chalking them up to his own insecurities. Billy wasn’t a vicious man, nor was he mean-spirited, so I chose to let his attacks on me pass.

  Still, life only allows us so many opportunities to bury our heads in the sand. One circumstance came my way during our relationship that would demand my attention completely. There would be no avoiding reality, no looking the other way this time.

  After dating Billy for less than six months, I discovered that I was several months pregnant. How in the world did I allow this to happen? As my siblings and I had reached high school, my mother sat each one of us down, because she was all about equal opportunity, and regularly reminded both her sons and her daughters that she had already raised five children. She wanted us all to keep that in mind in case we should ever consider bringing a baby home before we got married or were still in school. What she was trying to make sure we understood was that her baby-raising days were over.

  Now here I was nineteen years old, unmarried, on the verge of a new career, and with a child on the way. What was I thinking? Clearly, I wasn’t doing much thinking at all. I was so in love with Billy, and we were young, free, and living in the moment. Who doesn’t want to live like that, right? But living in the moment has consequences, and I had to face mine.

  Even though I hadn’t shared the news yet with my family, some of my nearest and dearest were smart enough to figure it out. My younger sister, Joanne, was the observant one in the family—nothing slipped by her. She blew my cover when I flew home to Buffalo in the summer of 1971 to attend my older sister Sheilah’s wedding. We were all in the back of the church changing into our bridesmaid’s dresses when she loudly commented on my additional weight gain.

  “Are you pregnant?” she said to me point-blank.

  I wanted to smack her in the head for asking me that question in the church, and so I did.

  Honest to goodness, we started fighting right there in God’s house! Rolling around on the floor of the church in our terra-cotta–colored bridesmaid dresses until Gloria Johnson yelled for us to stop because the wedding was about to start. We suddenly came to our senses and began to fix each other up, patting each other’s hair down and straightening our dresses.

  Surely my mother and sister Sheilah both noticed the weight gain in my face and body as well, but both simply chose to stay silent. Lord knows, Gloria Johnson was the master of avoiding unhappy topics at any cost. Discuss the unplanned pregnancy of her unmarried daughter? Not on your life!

  There was no discussion of any kind about my pregnancy once I returned to New York City. Billy knew someone willing to do the abortion, even though I was further along than was recommended. Of course he did—Billy knew people willing to do just about anything. Looking back, I realize that I was simply too young to understand what was really about to happen to me. Even though I could have died, I was too immature to worry about all the things that could go wrong medically. Had I told my mother or my older sister what I was about to do, things would have been different. They would have warned me about the dangers of doing that procedure at that stage of the pregnancy, and would have probably talked me out of going through with it. And that’s why I didn’t tell them.

  The day I chose to end my pregnancy, I knew I would have to become emotionally numb if I wanted to make it through, so I turned myself into a kind of zombie. I felt every bit of the physical pain from the procedure, but nothing more. Emotionally, I had to block out the idea of aborting my unborn child if I wanted to keep my sanity, and I didn’t want to start second-guessing myself. My heartbreaking decision to terminate my pregnancy was the right decision for me at the time, and I had to trust that. My future, and everything about my world, was much too uncertain at that point to bring another life into the confusion. Billy stood by me every step of the way, and I was thankful for that.

  Though I had some discomfort, and was a bit bloated, I went right back to work in the days afterward to keep my mind from wandering. I had to try not to think too much about what could have been. Love was grand and all that, but I had goals that I wanted to reach, and I couldn’t allow them to be derailed by anything or anyone. Not even my own poor choices or bad timing.

  I remember exactly the point when I decided I wanted a long career in the modeling industry. I had to take steps early on to avoid the now-you’re-here-and-now-you’re-not outcome. Shortly after the Fire Island trip, I began to ask the makeup artists, cameramen—and anyone else on my early shoots for Glamour, Vogue, and Essence—a host of questions about wha
t my next move should be if I wanted to stick around as a top model.

  A lot of the answers were the same: my next best move would be to get an agent. And not just any agent—I should reach out to the biggest agents out there if I wanted to truly make it in the long run. I did my research and I found there was no one bigger, bolder, or better than Eileen Ford.

  Eileen Ford started the Ford Modeling Agency with her husband, Gerard, in the mid-1940s, and by the 1960s she was at the helm of one of the top modeling agencies in the world. For a model, Ford had in her mind the ideal height, the proper spacing of the eyes, and the correct proportions of cheekbones, breasts, and hips, and in doing so she set the standards for models for much of the latter part of the twentieth century. In a business sense, Ford revolutionized the beauty industry and created the template for the modern, multimillion-dollar modeling agency. In 1971, she was indeed a uniquely powerful woman to behold.

  And while I wasn’t the usual girl on the roster—she tended to pick blondes with blue eyes as her ideal—I can testify that she certainly changed the life of this nineteen-year-old black girl.

  CHAPTER 6

  Friends and Foes

  “Too fat.”

  Those were the first two words ever uttered to me by the legendary Eileen Ford. I was attending an open call for models at her deluxe offices, which were located in Midtown Manhattan and featured two supersized red double doors as you entered. The waiting room where all young women were escorted resembled the huge floor of the New York Stock Exchange, with the same amount of frantic activity. Agents on their phones sat behind desks booking jobs for supermodels like Lauren Hutton, Christie Brinkley, and Cheryl Tiegs, among others. At the center of it all stood their fearless leader, Eileen Ford, a small, rather nondescript lady with the exception of the massive crop of brown frizzy curls on the top of her head. She often referenced that mass of hair as “nappy.” She would often say her hair was similar to black people’s hair.