by Till-Mobley, Mamie; Benson, Christopher; Jackson, Jesse Rev (FRW)
Finally, I did find Mama, two doors down from where I thought she might be. I told her how sick I felt. She must have thought it was something routine because she told me to go and lie down on the couch, and she just kept talking. After waiting there forever, I begged Mama to take me home. She did, but told me to carry one of the three bags she had to take with her. I wasn’t able to carry it, but I made it. I wouldn’t complain. I just didn’t know how to make Mama understand. Every step seemed like it would be the last one. And when I finally got home, I just sat down on the steps. I didn’t think I could make it upstairs. Mama urged me on and insisted that I have dinner. Well, I knew what eating dinner would mean. That would mean doing the dishes after dinner. That was not negotiable. That was my job. But I knew I would not be able to do those dishes. Even so, I got up and I struggled up the steps, put the groceries away, and sat down again. It seemed like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. It was just beating terribly fast. And when I ate, it got worse. I told Mama I wanted to go to bed. She told me to wash the dishes first so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting up later to do them. I washed those dishes with my tears that night. I felt so sick, worse than I had ever felt in my life. Finally, I told Mama she had to call the doctor. That’s when she began to take it all very seriously.
Our family doctor examined me and told Mama that I had an enlarged heart. It seems that I had been exposed to rheumatic fever. A classmate of mine had developed it and died. I had shaken it off without incident, but apparently it had left me with a leaky valve, which would affect me all my life. So, I had an enlarged heart, which sounded like it should have been a good thing to a young girl. But it wasn’t a good thing. It wasn’t good at all.
The doctor ordered me to bed immediately. No lights. I could not read. No company. The shades had to be drawn. There could be nothing to excite me or stimulate my heart. My mother had to hook up a bell, and we developed a code so that she would know what I needed by the number of times I’d ring for her.
I was confined to bed for more than three months, and at some point during that time I was able to begin reading books again, to catch up on my schoolwork, and finally to return to school, which made me very happy. It was a close call. Mama never really said any more about it, but it stayed with me and helped me to understand that anything out of the ordinary could be a big deal. A raw feeling in my chest wound up being something quite serious, a heart problem. My father had left my mother and me, and that had hurt me very deeply. The doctor had given us a logical explanation, said I suffered from an enlarged heart, a leaky valve, a byproduct of rheumatic fever. But I knew differently. I knew that what I really suffered was a broken heart.
By the time I started thinking about the Detroit move, Daddy and I had already reestablished some limited contact. I talked to my mother and told her what I had been thinking about doing and she encouraged me to call my father. As it turned out, I was happy that she and I talked. She let me know that what had happened between her and Daddy was between her and Daddy. It was not my problem. It was not my fault. And it should not be my burden to carry around for the rest of my life. She reminded me that Wiley Nash Carthan was my father and that I should treat him like my father. Her words meant a lot, but it was the message in between the words that was even more meaningful. For in that space was acceptance and absolution. And if Mama could take that position, then certainly I could. I was thankful for that talk, one that was long overdue. It was a transforming experience, and it would allow me to once again share with my father my life, and now my son.
I made the call. I made the arrangements. I made ready to leave Argo. This was a big deal for me. A very big deal. And I had mixed feelings about the move. On the one hand, I was apprehensive, but then I knew I would have family around to look out for me. On the other hand, I was eager to set out on a new trail, head for a new adventure. I was so eager for a new life that I convinced myself that Bo shared that excitement, never realizing what that kind of eagerness might cost a person.
Daddy had been all too happy to accommodate Bo and me. He would try to help me find a job and a permanent place to stay. Meanwhile, we were welcome to stay with him and his wife, A.D. While Daddy was eager to help, A.D. had a different attitude about the whole thing. They hadn’t been married long. She’d once been married to a preacher who passed, and she was a “first lady.” I mean she was as proud and snobby as she needed to be. Anyway, I settled into the small room Bo and I would call home for a short while. And that room was so tiny. It had a small bed and a vanity-style dresser with a little stool that went under the dresser. And that was it, that’s all that you could get into that room. If I wanted to make the bed, I had to crawl over it and reach and tuck it in on the other side. But I knew this was a temporary arrangement, and I was grateful for the accommodations.
There also was perfume on that vanity, which, of course, I would never touch. But there was so much of it. The whole surface of the vanity was taken up by fragrance bottles, so I didn’t have anywhere that I could put a bottle or a jar for myself. I wound up using a little box that I would put under the bed, and all of my toiletries were in that little box. The interesting thing was that one of the fragrances A.D. had was White Shoulders. Somebody had given me some White Shoulders also. One morning, I put on my White Shoulders. I had never smelled it before, but I liked it. She must have recognized it because, while I was out that day, she came and cleared all her fragrances out of the room. Every last bottle.
Soon I got a job at the Ft. Wayne Induction Center. I was working very long days, but the good thing was that I was able to pay Daddy and his wife something for the room. I also had to cook on Sundays, come hell or high water, since A.D. had cooked all week. I would be so tired sometimes and I really wanted to clean my room. I mean, that house was immaculate. It was stressfully clean, no dust anywhere, and I was beginning to feel the pressure. But I never had time to do everything. I was working seven days a week sometimes, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. It was a pressure job and I was kind of in the lead of the group of clerk-typists. That meant that I had a lot of responsibility. I had to work and I had to make sure the other people were working as well.
One Sunday I baked chicken for dinner with dressing and gravy and vegetables and all that stuff. And when I got the kitchen all cleaned up, I went back and I pulled out the vanity and the little stool so that I could scrub the floor. As soon as I pulled that vanity and that stool into the living room, A.D. came out and sat on the couch. She crossed her legs and started swinging her foot. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Who would have thought it? Miracles do happen.” As if to say, “It’s about time you did some work around here.”
She sat there bobbing her leg, making comments like that for the next couple of hours as I cleaned my room and the living room. From then on, all of my spare time was filled with chores to give her a break. Since she was the stepmother, I guess I must have been Cinderella.
Daddy and I kind of bridged the gap during this time. He was so good to me. He was glad I was there and he was trying to be a buffer between his wife and me. He also was happy that he had a chance to bond with Bo. Dad worked for a drugstore and he’d bring a quart of ice cream home every night and share it with Bo. Vanilla, strawberry, banana, or, if Bo asked for chocolate, Dad would pack it himself to bring home. Even though A.D. wasn’t necessarily looking after Bo during the day, apparently he was getting in her way. He had always been well cared for and was used to that. Not demanding, but not ignored. Bo was a kid. He might come in and want a sandwich. And she would have to fix it. He was nine at the time and he was used to so much more space. It was hard to contain all his energy. He would go out to play and come in sweating. He might plop down on the floor, get dirt on the rugs. The kind of things boys do. The kind of things he never had to worry about back in Argo, where he could do no wrong. Here, it seemed, he could do no right. A.D. just didn’t want to be bothered with children. It wasn’t long before Dad had to come in an
d give us the talk. I could see in his eyes that he didn’t want to do it. He said Bo was going to have to go back to Argo. When I stalled long enough, Daddy came back for a second talk. He had found another place for Emmett and me to live. I admit that it was a little more crowded there for his wife with Bo and me. I imagine it was something of an intrusion for her. I just wish we hadn’t been made to feel that way. Still, I am grateful for the time we were able to spend with my father. He and I had a chance to have many wonderful conversations, and that made me feel that I could call on him again if I ever needed him, the way a daughter might need to call upon her father. While we never talked about what had come between us, I appreciate all that we did have a chance to say, and, of course, the message in between all the words we spoke.
Thanks to my father’s help, Emmett and I moved into another house with another family, the Harrises, an older woman, her husband, and another relative. They rolled out the welcome mat, and they gave me the front room for a bedroom, the best room in the house. And they fell in love with my boy. They just went crazy over Emmett. There were no children in the house and Mr. Harris practically adopted my son. He just took him away from me. On Saturdays they always had somewhere to go: the circus, the movies, a ball game, from early in the morning until late in the afternoon. Of course, that meant that Bo couldn’t do much for me. Not that there was much that he could do anyway, but he was starting to channel his energy, make a contribution around the house. For one thing, he was learning how to cook and that was a big help to me when I’d come home from a long day, bone tired. But there would be more surprises from this industrious little boy.
One day I came home from work and both women were sitting in the kitchen. It was like they were watching a performance. In a way, they were. I wound up joining them.
Bo was in the pantry working. The first day, when we’d moved in, Bo and I noticed immediately that the Harrises had a roach problem. It was a big problem. Bigger still because Bo just couldn’t take roaches. So he’d taken it upon himself to go out and buy some D-Con, the liquid kind you mop with a brush. Now he went into the pantry and, starting at the top shelf, he pulled everything down, washed the shelf, mopped it with the D-Con, and put newspaper on the shelf. That shelf belonged to Mrs. Harris, because she was tall. The next lady was about five-two or -three, so she got the middle shelf. Emmett cleared that one. As he cleared the shelves, he washed and organized everything that he took down. He put everything back on the middle shelf, and then he got to mine. I had the bottom shelf, because he was little and I’m barely five feet tall myself. He went through the same process there. When he finished with the pantry shelves, he got down on his knees and painted the kitchen and pantry baseboards with D-Con.
Then he wanted to clean the refrigerator. I don’t know how he knew this, but he had told Mrs. Harris that roaches would live in the back of your refrigerator. She just let him go for it. He cleaned back there, and then he wanted to clean the inside of the refrigerator. I held my breath. He took everything out, but thank God he didn’t put any D-Con in there. I exhaled. He just washed it and put everybody’s stuff back in it. Finally, he scrubbed the kitchen floor. It was such a big kitchen. But he did the whole thing.
When he finished, I stepped in. “Now you have to take a bath,” I told him.
He looked so pretty after he got cleaned up, with his cheeks all rosy from the scrubbing. I just wanted to keep looking at him, this very special child of mine. And I wanted to hold on to that moment, to cherish it.
As busy as I was with work and caring for Emmett, I did find a little time to socialize with my cousins Ruby and Juanita. Juanita was engaged and took me once to visit her fiancé, Alfonso. That’s where I met Alfonso’s next-door neighbor, Pink Bradley. Since Juanita was going over there all the time, and since I seemed to be hanging out with her whenever I could, I wound up running into Pink quite often. He seemed like the nicest person. A sturdy five-foot-ten, he towered over me. He was very dark and appeared to be a strong man, which is what I needed. And he had a good job. I knew that because Juanita had started whispering in my ear. He worked for Chrysler Corporation, a company that apparently was generous with overtime. I mean, those boys were working, making money like nobody’s business. That’s what she was telling me, or words to that effect. Meanwhile, Alfonso was whispering in Pink’s ear. Basically, he told Pink not to let me get away.
We started seeing each other. He would take me out to dinner, to the movies, and we went to dances and house parties, where I’d walk around all night with the same scotch and soda. No refills for me. I hated the taste, but I liked the sophisticated look. We seemed to fit in together nicely. We went to Joe Louis’s Farm once. Pink seemed impressed by it all, but I couldn’t even pretend to be. It was smelly. And I didn’t like trying to ride the horse. It was sort of an amusement park, a big attraction there in Detroit and I knew he wanted to show me a good time, but it must have been obvious to him that I wasn’t having one. Now, they had good food, but because of the smell, I couldn’t really enjoy it.
Pink also seemed to get along with Bo and he would do anything I asked him to do for Bo, running errands or taking him where he needed to go. But maybe I should have been paying closer attention. As I said, Pink did anything I asked him to do, but nothing he thought of on his own. He never took initiative with Emmett. Soon Emmett took himself out of the picture.
Despite the pleasant times I thought we were having, things were still unsettled and cramped. Bo just could not contain his restlessness, his boundless energy. He had not adjusted to his new life with me in Detroit. He was unhappy and, as a result, he wasn’t doing so well in school. Bo was aching to go back to Argo and he kept on me about letting him go live with Ma-Moo in Chicago. He knew his grandmother’s place would be the gateway to Argo. I couldn’t stand the thought of being apart from him. This was the first time I had been able to be around him without the whole family taking over. And things seemed to be moving in the right direction with my new job and all. But I didn’t think it would be fair to make him stay, especially as long as we still didn’t have a place of our own. When I talked to my mother about it, she agreed to have him come. But we had to figure out the rest of it. Her husband, Henry Spearman, would not go for it. Now, he liked Bo. He would stand up and fight for Bo, but he just didn’t want kids living in his house. So Mama worked it out with Aunt Marie and Uncle Kid—John Carthan—Daddy’s youngest brother. Perfect for Emmett. He’d have familiar relatives who would be responsible for his care and getting him back and forth to school. Best of all, Bo could be with all his friends in Argo and he would live right next door to where we used to live. He was happy to be with Aunt Marie and Uncle Kid, and I was content that he would be all right there until I could find a place for the two of us in Detroit.
Meanwhile, Pink was not letting up. He seemed so interested. I think I was at a stage in my life where I was vulnerable. I felt that I needed somebody I could depend on. It wasn’t easy trying to raise a boy and trying to work and trying to have a life. And I have to admit, I was so flattered by all the attention, and that somebody wanted me, that I was not over the hill. That meant a lot to me back then. Besides, I did want very much to be married. I thought I was supposed to have a husband, an anchor. We had only been seeing each other about three or four months when we married on May 5, 1951.
It had been an intense courtship and Pink had always been the nicest fellow. Until we got married.
Mama met Pink when she came to the wedding, and brought Emmett. She gave her blessing, and wasn’t critical of Pink. I think she told me one day that “If you love him and he loves you, that’s my only concern.” Now looking back, I think Mama could see through the marriage from the very beginning. She knew that we were not equally yoked. Bo stayed for a short while, then wanted to go back to Argo. I still believed I could make a place in Detroit that he would enjoy, especially now with two incomes.
Pink and I settled into a lovely new place in a nice area. The woman we w
ere staying with was someone my family knew from Mississippi. So she was a stranger to me, but I wasn’t a stranger to her. The way her house was built, we could go up the stairs and into our living quarters and we had everything we needed, except the kitchen sink. We had to come downstairs to cook, but our new landlady was nice about the whole thing and I felt quite comfortable.
Then, almost as soon as we settled in, Pink got laid off. I thought he should be out looking for work, but all he did was wait for me to come home, where he’d greet me with “I’m hungry.” I wondered why “I’m” didn’t cook. I thought he should have had my food ready when I got home. We did have a—well, I guess you’d call it a discussion about that. He said he didn’t want to cook in somebody else’s kitchen. And all I ever heard was “I’m hungry.”
He was insistent. “If I tell you to get up at three o’clock in the morning and make me some biscuits, you should get that batter going.”
Really? I didn’t even make biscuits. Didn’t know the first thing about making a biscuit. I made yeast rolls. But that was beside the point. The point was that I did not have time for this foolishness and just kept brushing him off.
I had problems of my own. I was having a hard time getting back and forth to the Ft. Wayne Induction Center. I told my mother I needed a car. I had talked to her and she had sent me the down payment. I bought a gray 1947 Plymouth. That was the best car. They had reconditioned it and there was nothing wrong with it. It would go where you wanted it to go. Pink wasn’t accustomed to a car, so this was like instant riches for him. He was so excited about owning an automobile he just went berserk. When I told him that I was going to use the car to get back and forth to work, he had the nerve to get upset. He wanted to know what he was supposed to do all day. I couldn’t say. But I knew what I was going to do. I was going to drive that car. I was not about to wait on the corner for buses while he piled his friends into my car and drove out to that smelly Joe Louis’s Farm. I knew that much.