In 1963 Sandra Jean Betts showed up at our home on Hepburn with her lawyer before her suit went to trial. My father was out of town at the time. Miss Betts and her attorney made themselves at home in our living room and essentially offered my mother a deal. If she would give my father a divorce, they would drop the paternity suit and keep matters private. As Miss Betts explained, “We all know you’re married in name only. Your husband doesn’t love you. Why don’t you just give him a divorce and make it easy on everyone?”
My mother responded to Sandra, “If you both leave quietly, everything will be fine. Then you can try to convince my husband to divorce me and marry you, and if he does, it will be your turn to be married in name only.”
When my father returned home a few days later, he found all of his clothes on the front lawn. My mother had thrown them out of the upstairs window. She informed him that he would not be staying at Hepburn. She would let him know if and when he could return. She allowed him to gather a few things and then told him it was his job to explain his departure to me. I was eight years old, but I still remember it. When my father came into my room and sat down next to me on my bed, he was very nervous.
“Um, son,” he stuttered nervously. “Baby, Daddy has to go away for a while.”
I couldn’t understand why he was telling me this. He was always going away, but he had never done this before.
“Okay, Daddy,” I said. “When are you coming back?”
My father brushed nervously at his ear. He couldn’t look at me. “Well, son, I just don’t know. That will be up to your mother. You be good now, baby, and give your daddy a hug and a kiss.”
When I look back on it now, the wonder isn’t that my mother threw everything she could find of my father’s onto the front lawn; the wonder is that my mother didn’t shoot him.
With my father gone ten months of the year, the loneliness must have been crushing for her at times. I missed my father terribly when he was gone, but she must have missed him more. I used to watch my mother sometimes when she was in the den listening and singing to some music alone. She often played the Temptations, B. B. King, Marvin Gaye, and other gospel groups. She loved Marvin Gaye’s song “Ain’t That Peculiar”: “Honey, you do me wrong but still I’m crazy about you, stay away too long and I can’t do without you.” Today I find some irony in those lyrics. Like the rest of us, my mother found comfort and a sanctuary in music.
One form of entertainment in my father’s absence was card parties with her friends. They used to come over and play bid whist with her. Bernice, Birdie, Norman, and Herbert were her closest friends. They had come to California or followed from Texas with my parents and settled into homes of their own. My mother’s family came out to visit regularly, too, and some of her cousins stayed in California. Despite her recent wealth and celebrity, my mother remained very private, and she was always more comfortable with her old friends.
People who knew about my father’s womanizing sometimes wondered why my mother stayed with him. Some of them thought she was naïve about the other women; others thought she put up with it because of my father’s celebrity. Some people just thought she was a fool. She knew exactly what was going on, but she stayed with him anyway, and it had nothing to do with money or fame. My mother is deeply religious, and she grew up believing that God expects a woman to remain faithful to her husband through good times and bad. When she married my father, she married him for life. She also had three children to think about. We adored our father, and the last thing she wanted was to break up our family. She and my dad had both grown up without fathers in their lives, and she didn’t want us to grow up the same way. Most of all, she loved my father deeply, and she knew him well. Despite the pain and humiliation she endured, she never stopped loving him.
I began getting glimpses of what my mother was going through very young. When I started school, I heard rumors about my father’s philandering. Other kids would say nasty things about my dad. I remember her reading copies of Jet and Ebony at home; I would hear her talking about Margie Hendricks and Mae Mosely Lyles. My mother had no idea I knew. Sometimes at night, I would hear her crying. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t know how. Yet as much as I loved my mother, I didn’t fully understand how much she meant to us until we nearly lost her.
One of the most painful episodes of our lives began on New Year’s Eve 1961. I was six years old, David was three, and Bobby was just eight months old. Dad’s band and some friends had come to the house on New Year’s Eve for a party. My mother was cooking for everyone when her stomach began to hurt and she felt hot. She mentioned to my father that she wasn’t feeling well, but she kept going, so no one thought too much about it. The next day she continued to complain of stomach pain, but she did not contact Dr. Foster.
On January 2nd my father woke up at ten. He usually slept until the afternoon, but he woke up early that day, sensing that something was wrong. My mother was burning up in the bed next to him and barely seemed aware of her surroundings. Dad called Dr. Foster, who told him to call the paramedics, and said he would meet them at University Hospital. By then my mother was incoherent and unable to walk. My brothers and I huddled fearfully with Myrtle, our nanny, as four paramedics carried her down the stairs. They carried her out to the waiting ambulance. Myrtle stayed with us while my father went to the hospital with my mother.
Dr. Foster admitted her to the hospital, and they ran some tests. At first they thought she might have a virus that was causing the high fever and stomach pain, but she kept getting worse. The doctors reassured my father that she would be all right but that they needed to run some additional tests. Dad had a performance scheduled that week, and they told him he should go ahead with it.
When a specialist was called in, the diagnosis was devastating. New tests revealed that my mother’s appendix had ruptured. The poison had already spread through most of her system, and she was suffering from severe peritonitis. Her abdominal cavity was flooded with toxic fluids. The situation was grave. Her only hope of survival was immediate surgery, but the specialist refused to perform the procedure. He told Dr. Foster that my mother was in such serious condition that if he attempted the surgery, she might die on the table. He did not want to be sued for killing Ray Charles’s wife. He knew that without the surgery, my mother would die, but he did not want to be responsible.
Dr. Foster was angry and disgusted with the specialist. Dr. Foster had never performed this particular surgery, but he had no intention of standing by while my mother died. He said that he would take the responsibility and then called Dr. Beck to assist him with the surgery. When he was warned about the potential legal consequences if my mother died during surgery, Dr. Foster said, “Fine, let them sue me.” He knew my father would never do that, but at that moment, his only concern was my mother.
As she was prepped for surgery, the hospital tried desperately to get in touch with my father. The doctors could not operate without consent, and my mother was unconscious and unable to give consent herself. They were told that my father was on stage, rehearsing his band, and the hospital managed to contact someone backstage, but no one would connect them with my father. The hospital was told that Mr. Charles was preparing to go onstage and could not be disturbed. Someone took a message and said they would let him know after the show. Finally someone at the hospital thought to contact my uncle James. He gave consent, and they were able to proceed with the operation. Together Dr. Beck and Dr. Foster performed the surgery that saved my mother’s life. They opened up her abdominal cavity and removed the liters of toxic waste, then inserted a tube in her abdomen that would continue to pump the toxic waste out of her system.
Once the performance ended, my father was given the message. He and Herbert Miller rushed to the hospital and waited there as the surgery was completed. Afterward Dr. Foster told my father that my mother had survived the surgery, but that she was gravely ill and still might die. It would be weeks before they would know if she was going to make it.
Despite having the toxins pumped out of her twenty-four hours a day and continual intravenous antibiotics, my mother’s fever continued to rage, and for weeks her body literally cooked. Her skin turned black. She remained unconscious, hovering between life and death. My father explained to us that Mommy was very sick and would have to stay at the hospital for a while so the doctors could make her better. He did not tell us that she might die, but we sensed his fear. I was terrified. My mom was going to die, and nobody would let me see her. In those days children weren’t allowed in hospital rooms.
For weeks we all lived in terror. My father was with her every day. He had Myrtle move in to take care of us and hired extra help on weekends to give her some rest. Our lives went into suspended animation as we waited.
Weeks after entering the hospital, my mother finally regained consciousness. She had no memory of entering the hospital and didn’t know where she was. Dr. Foster warned my father that she might have sustained permanent brain damage from the high fever. Children could survive a fever of that magnitude without permanent effects, but adults seldom did. Gradually, to everyone’s overwhelming relief, my mother began to return to herself. Reverend Durham and his wife had been coming to see her almost every day, holding her hand and praying for her recovery. Their excitement and relief when my mother was finally able to respond to them was palpable. As the days passed, the reactions of those around her helped her understand how near she had come to death. Doctors, nurses, staff members, even the people who did the cleaning, came by to say they had been praying for her. A long succession of kind strangers stopped by her room to smile at her and say, “Hi! It’s so good to see you doing better.” She was touched and encouraged by their concern.
The first thing she asked for when she woke up was us. The second thing she wanted was 7-UP, because she felt like she was burning up inside. She drank it eagerly, but a few moments later she could feel the cold liquid running through her body and out into the tube. Food was an even bigger problem. It was a long time before she could eat anything. First there was clear broth, then Jell-O, and eventually tiny bits of soft food. Everything tasted terrible, but Dr. Foster was happy that she felt well enough to complain. Meanwhile, he had figured out a way for us to visit her.
We were not allowed to go to her room, and she wasn’t allowed to go outside. She could not have direct contact with anyone besides the hospital staff because she was too vulnerable to infection. So Dr. Foster arranged for us to come to the patio downstairs where visitors could congregate. He then had my mother brought down in a wheelchair and rolled up to the patio entrance to the hospital. The glass door remained closed to guard my mother against infection. That way we could see each other through the glass and hear a little bit, but we couldn’t hug or kiss her. She was connected to a portable machine and IV pump. We stared at her through the glass, and we all cried. Then they wheeled her upstairs to her room. Once a week we could go back to visit her, always standing on the patio on the other side of the glass.
My mother desperately wanted to come home. She was worried sick about us and missed us terribly. My father had to leave for the road again any day, and she wanted to be with us. Against Dr. Foster’s better judgment, they brought her home. Nine weeks had passed since the paramedics carried her downstairs unconscious. Now she was carried upstairs to her room. We barely recognized the woman they carried in. When she went into the hospital, she weighed 125 pounds. When she came home to us, she weighed 106 pounds. At five foot nine, she was skin and bones. Her skin was black and shriveled. The toxins in her system were extremely damaging to her body.
She was home, but she was still far too sick to be our mom. We were afraid to touch her. Her skin was so fragile that she could barely touch the sheet without pain. Dr. Foster had released her on the understanding that she would remain on bed rest with full-time nursing care. She hated the loss of privacy and argued with the nurses. They explained that it wasn’t safe for her to do these things on her own yet. Apart from the weakness, pain from the adhesions and scar tissue could hit without warning. When the pain did start, she had a better understanding of her condition. The pain was so intense that it caused her to collapse. In the years that followed, she would undergo ten surgeries to relieve the pain from the adhesions and the intestinal blockage caused by the scar tissue. Almost fifty years later, the severity of that illness continues to affect her health. She copes with the painful complications by reminding herself that without the surgery and its consequences, she wouldn’t be alive to complain.
For our family, 1962 became a year lost to trauma. We lost the first half to my mother’s illness and near death. My mom missed nearly most of Bobby’s infancy, and she had to surrender the care to Myrtle. The only good thing to be said about that year is that when summer came, our mother was still with us. It was one of the roughest years of our lives. What we couldn’t know was that her illness was just the beginning of seemingly endless fear and loss.
IN THE MONTHS FOLLOWING my mother’s return, she needed a lot of rest. This was a challenge with two young sons and a baby boy crawling around the house. Bobby was eleven months old when my mother came home from the hospital. He had inherited my father’s curiosity, and he was fascinated with electrical cords like all babies. He would crawl around looking for something to get into, plugs and cords to play with. If we saw him in time, we would grab him before he got hold of a cord. If we didn’t get there fast enough, he would start chewing on the cord. He scared us to death more than once, but we had always been able to stop him before he got hurt.
One afternoon, a month or so after my mother came home from the hospital, David and I were running around the house while Bobby, who was only a year old, crawled after us. While we were playing in the next room, my mother called out to me to keep an eye on Bobby. Meanwhile, Bobby had crawled into Myrtle’s room and reached up to grab a lamp cord that was plugged into the wall behind her nightstand. I found him just in time to see him bite down on the cord. I screamed “Bobby!” but it was too late. This time he bit all the way through the cord. There were sparks and an explosion, the kind of loud popping sound it makes when two live wires touch, and Bobby convulsed. The side of his mouth was burned, and I could smell his flesh, like a steak too close to the broiler. Bobby’s whole body became rigid, and he fell flat on his back, his arms thrown out to the sides. I ran into the room screaming his name. His tiny body was completely still, and he was not breathing. The right side of his mouth was black where he had burned it. Myrtle jumped off the bed, and I heard her exclaim, “Oh my sweet Lord, the baby’s dead!”
I ran into the den where my mother was watching TV, screaming, “MOMMY! MOMMY!”
My mother moved slowly to where Bobby lay and picked him up in her arms. She shook him and shook him, then pounded him on the back, trying to force air back into him. The seconds went by. My mother was praying out loud as I screamed and sobbed. After an eternity, Bobby took a shuddering breath and began to whimper. My mother and Myrtle bundled him into the car immediately with the rest of us and we raced to the hospital.
In the waiting area, I sobbed. No one could comfort me. I was sure my brother was dead, and it was all my fault. My mother had asked me to keep an eye on Bobby, and I was responsible for his accident. Years later I realized that when Bobby was electrocuted, I had experienced some of the same trauma my father went through when his brother George drowned.
Thank God, the doctors were able to stabilize Bobby. He was legally dead for a brief period of time, but my mother’s efforts had revived him. Bobby was going to be all right. My mother was not going to lose her child, and I would not have to live with the same burden of guilt my father had carried all his life for George’s death. God had shown us mercy.
Bobby had suffered a severe burn on the side of his mouth. The doctors told my mother he would need plastic surgery when he was older. But eventually his mouth healed, and fortunately, the skin did not keloid. He was not left with the ugly raised tissue many burn victi
ms suffer. But the burn affected him. His mouth looked misshapen, and the burned side didn’t move, leaving him with a speech impediment. The other kids teased him about it. It always made me feel really bad. Even today, you can hear a slight slur when he pronounces certain words. My parents waited for him to get older before having plastic surgery, but when the time came, Bobby decided he didn’t want it. The small deformity was hardly noticeable anymore, and besides, it had become a part of his face. “This has become a part of me,” he told me. “It’s just part of who I am.”
I DON’T KNOW how we could have gotten through my mother’s illness without Myrtle. Next to my mother, I never loved any other woman so much when I was a child. She was more than our housekeeper or nanny. She was family who was there to nurture and love us as children.
The year before my mother went into the hospital, my dad had hired Myrtle to help my mother with the housework and to keep her company and help with us. Myrtle was an African American woman in her forties. She was a sweet, gentle, loving woman. Myrtle was a schoolteacher by training, and she would sing little songs and play games with us. She was wonderful with me and my brothers, attentive and protective. During the long months my mother was in the hospital, Myrtle kept us together mind, body, and soul.
I thought of Myrtle as a grandmother. She had a soft voice that was the perfect counterpoint to my mother’s voice. Myrtle was gentle, and we would listen to her without her ever having to raise her voice.
When she first came to work for us, Myrtle went home every night, but when my mother became so ill, Myrtle moved into our home to take care of us. While our mom was in the hospital, her absence was made bearable by having Myrtle in the house. None of us knew what we would have done during those frightening months without her. We loved her so. We wanted her to live with us forever.
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