Sometimes as she was drifting off to sleep or when she was really sad, she would talk to him. She would say, “Malcolm, Malcolm, why did you have to go?”
Once, when we were talking about men, I jokingly said, “Mommy, how could you know what it's like out here? You had the best man in the whole, wide world.”
“No, sweetheart,” she said. “I had DE best man.”
Sometimes she would just bask in the glory of the time she had with her husband; other times she couldn't talk about it because it became too painful. With my mother, it was almost as if her husband was assassinated yesterday.
Mommy also let me in on the astonishing extent of her activities. I found out about all the projects she was involved in, the dozens upon dozens of young women she was mentoring, the hundreds of people for whom she bought diapers or made strategic phone calls or dropped a check in the mail to help with tuition. I sat in my mother's office and heard the telephone ring over and over with requests. More than once I remember looking at her and she looked as though she was simply exhausted. Depleted in a way. But when she saw me looking she would smile and sit up straight and dive back into whatever that day held for her. Sometimes I would tell her, “Mommy, you're doing too much. Sometimes you have to say no.”
But Mommy rarely said no. “Yasah, charity is just one of the things you do in life. Just like you have to drink water, you have to give back.”
I'm not sure whether it was my mother's growing confidence in me or simply a by-product of growing up, getting older, and becoming more grounded, but during this time I began discovering who I was and what my purpose was in this life.
My new understanding of my place in the universe didn't happen in a flash. I did not have a revelation or wake up one morning with the nagging issue of my life suddenly resolved. But gradually, bit by bit, I began to understand that I didn't have to shoulder those expectations first foisted upon me in my teenage years.
I realized that I didn't have to re-create the amazing lives of my mother or my father; all I had to do was be my own best self. I came to understand that as long as I was a good person, as long as I lived by the values instilled in me by my parents and incorporated God's will into my life, I was just fine.
It may sound simplistic, but the simple truths are usually the most profound.
I learned one more thing during this time. I learned that Mommy, for all her amazing strength and perseverance, was not invincible.
C H A P T E R T H I R T E E N
Recovery
Sometime in the late fall and early winter of 1995–96, friends started calling me to ask about my mother's health. Mommy had recently returned from attending the International Women's Conference in Beijing, China, and several people who saw her going out or coming back said they were worried about how frazzled and drained she seemed.
Gamilah called, too. She was working at the radio station where Mommy hosted a weekly talk show and she saw her often enough to notice how run-down she looked. I had my own reasons for being concerned. We had recently attended a Links luncheon and I noticed how tired she seemed. But when I asked, she insisted she was fine. After that, when I spoke to her on the telephone, Mommy sometimes sounded strange—lucid, but not quite herself.
One day I called out-of-the-blue to say I was coming by to see her. I had been having dinner with a friend of hers, Larry Dais, a vice president at Columbia University and a good friend of my mother's. We thought Mommy might appreciate a quick visit from the two of us. Arriving at the hotel where Mommy was staying temporarily, we knocked several times but got no answer.
We knocked again and finally she answered, but she still did not open the door. I thought her behavior was a little odd, but I wasn't alarmed because Mommy was very particular about the way she presented herself. I thought she didn't want to open the door, especially with Larry there, because she wasn't dressed.
Larry called through the door that he had some important papers he needed her to sign, which angered me. You selfish so-and-so, I thought. Something could be wrong with my mother and all you care about is getting your papers signed. Later I realized that Larry did not, in fact, have any such papers. He was just concerned about Mommy, too, and was trying to get her to open the door.
But his little subterfuge didn't work. Instead Mommy finally called through the door that she was fine but that she didn't want to be disturbed. “Listen, not tonight. I'm trying to get some rest.”
We left, uneasy but not sure what else to do. Later that evening Mommy called to reassure me that she was fine. The following morning she asked me to come over and cook dinner for her. She asked for butternut squash, which I didn't know how to make. She told me and I followed her instructions and showed up at her door that night. It was January, clear but cold outside. I knocked on her door.
“Mommy? It's me.”
“Okay, just a minute,” she called, sounding like her regular self.
I waited, thinking she wanted to get herself dolled up before opening the door. A minute passed. Then two, then five, then fifteen, then I don't know how many. Every time I knocked, she called out, “Okay, sweetheart, just a minute.”
“Mommy? Are you okay? Come to the door.”
Finally, after what seemed like an hour or more, it dawned on me that something was not right. I ran to telephone the police. When they forced open the door, the first thing I saw was my mother's purse and her prized fur coat lying on the floor. My heart froze in my chest.
“Oh, my God,” I said.
“Miss, maybe you better wait here,” the police officer said.
But there was no way I was waiting outside when my mother needed me. She was lying on her bed, fully dressed, unable to move. Her eyes were open but she could not sit up or even speak. All she could do was look at me.
“Mommy, are you okay? Can you speak to me?” I called, but she could not respond.
It was the most frightening moment of my life. To see my mother, the woman who had guided my entire life and the lives of my sisters with her strong, steady hand, suddenly rendered helpless was like having the foundation on which I'd stood all my life knocked out from under me. We called an ambulance and rushed her to Westchester Medical Center.
At the emergency room they told me Mommy was severely dehydrated and physically exhausted. Her body, depleted to dangerous levels, had begun the process of shutting down and she needed urgent medical care. My voice trembling, I asked the doctor, “Will she be the same as she was before?”
“How was she before?” he asked. I could tell from his distracted attitude he didn't think much of this poor, crumbled African American woman he saw before him. He had no idea who she was or what she had done.
“She is strong and vibrant,” I told him. “She's an educator with a Ph.D.” But he just shrugged and said he could make no promises.
After a night in the intensive care unit, they moved my mother into a private room. I pulled two chairs near her bed and stretched myself out on them, wanting to be nearby when she woke up. By now I had been at the hospital for seventy-two hours and I was nearly delirious with fatigue. I wanted to go home, take a shower, change my clothes, and come back. But then Mommy opened her eyes and, semi-lucid, looked up at me. “Sweetheart, do you think you can stay with Mommy?”
“Of course, Mommy. You just rest.”
And so I stayed. Attallah was in California and Qubilah was in Texas, but eventually Gamilah, Malikah, and Malaak arrived to relieve me.
Exhaustion had brought Mommy to the brink of death. But in the thirty-three days she remained in the hospital, she slowly came back to herself. As soon as she was alert enough, she wanted a clock and she wanted the newspaper read to her. Whatever she wanted, my sisters and I and my mother's close friends made sure she got.
I said everything I could think of to encourage her to get better. In the early days, when she was still struggling, I even told her a fib. My mother had a deep desire to see her daughters married, and she had introduced me to a certain l
ocal politician with that desire in mind. So I told her, “Mommy, you have to get better, because soand-so and I are going to get married.”
After Mommy was released from the hospital, her friend Mary Redd drove her home to my apartment where, over the course of a few months, I nursed her back to health. I saw a tender and vulnerable side of my mother. Over the next year we became closer than ever, not just mother and daughter but friends and confidantes.
Somewhere during this time Mommy's friend Ruth Dungie told me something Mommy had said to her while she was in the hospital. Ms. Dungie said Mommy looked up from her hospital bed with a smile and said, “I saw Malcolm.”
Like all of us, Ms. Dungie was accustomed to my mother speaking of Daddy in the present tense. But this was different. Ms. Dungie told me Mommy said she saw my father and wanted to go with him, but Daddy said no.
“There is something more for you to do,” he said. “You must go back.”
You really get to see how God works in moments such as these. Had we lost Mommy at that time, in that way—helpless, broken, her beautiful mind fogged by dehydration—I don't think I could have handled it. I wasn't ready to let her go, and neither was the rest of her family, her daughters and her grandsons.
Daddy was right. We still needed her.
C H A P T E R F O U R T E E N
Reunited
Your mother has been in a fire.
I couldn't stop crying. The moment I heard those words on my answering machine, the tears began and refused to cease. I cried while I threw on my clothes, while I found my keys, and during the drive to Jacobi Hospital and the frantic dash to the emergency room. I was a river of tears that night, a wild, frightened, river of tears. It was as though my body was trying desperately to purge itself, to float away those words and the terrible truth they contained.
Your mother has been in a fire. “Are you ready?” Someone was speaking to me. I forced myself to focus. It was a serious but kindly man who had introduced himself to me as Dr. Shef. He had his hand on the curtain that separated me from the most important person in my life.
I wanted to say No! I'm not ready at all! I stood on the other side of that curtain for what seemed an eternity, frightened, unable to move or think clearly, able only to pray. Oh my God. Please help me. Please let Mommy be okay. I was terrified of seeing her burned and helpless. I was terrified of that forever being the impression of my mother embedded in my mind. Surely that would be too much to bear.
But there was a larger part of me, perhaps the part inherited from my mother, that knew if I was on the other side of that curtain, Mommy would not hesitate to throw it aside. She would be there as she had always been for anyone who came into her life, especially her six daughters. And so I fought to get hold of myself. I had to be strong for her. I couldn't let her see me frightened and hysterical. She needed me now. I had to be in control.
“Yes, I am ready,” I told Dr. Shef. I took a deep breath and we went in.
She was lying on a bed. She had been burned from the top of her beautiful head to the bottom of her feet, ninety-seven percent of her body. Eighty percent of the burns were third degree. Her flawless, honey brown skin was gone. I wanted to scream Oh, Mommy … what happened to you, Mommy?!! But I managed to strangle the sound in my throat.
“Hi, Mommy,” I said in the most upbeat tone I could manage. “Ilyasah's here. You'll be okay.”
I wanted to hold her in my arms and comfort her, but of course that was impossible. I couldn't even touch her or kiss her or look into her eyes, which were closed. The tears forced their way out and I felt myself falling apart. I had to get out of that room.
“I'll be right back, Mommy. We just need to take care of a few things, okay? I'll be right outside.”
Once past the curtain, I had to grab hold of a chair to keep myself from falling to the floor. The image of my mother fighting her way through a fire, frightened and delirious with pain, was like a tidal wave that kept threatening to knock me down.
I was the one who chose the condo where the fire occurred; it was to be my home. Months before, my mother, in her never-ending drive to make sure all her daughters were provided for, had sent me to check out a handful of condos and co-op apartments. She didn't like the idea of my renting a place to live. She knew the importance of owning one's home, so she was going to help me buy a place.
I chose that particular condo in a lovely remodeled prewar building in Yonkers, right on the border of the village of Bronxville. The condo had high ceilings, a sunken living room, a fireplace, a spacious dining room, three bathrooms, lots of hallways and closets, and a maid's quarters just off the large, eat-in kitchen. It was a New York dream home, but it needed work. So I moved into a condo my mother had purchased for my sister Malaak in Mount Vernon. Malaak had left the condo to move somewhere else, and I moved in so my mother would not lose the money she had invested. My mother still had her home in Mount Vernon, but as renovations on the Yonkers condo neared completion, she began spending time there. And it was to this place that she often brought her first grandson, Malcolm.
Mommy had become Malcolm's legal guardian in 1995, after Qubilah, his mother, was charged in Minneapolis with conspiracy to murder Louis Farrakhan.
What I believe about that time is this: My sister was struggling and vulnerable. Like the rest of us, she wanted love and peace. Her son wanted a mother and father. They both just wanted to be a family. Then along comes this old acquaintance from my sister's days at the United Nations International School. He initiates contact; they spend long hours on the telephone, and gradually my sister falls in love. She believes this man loves her, too, is going to marry her. And then, somehow, the subject of Louis Farrakhan is raised. My sister, who has never focused on Farrakhan, never been a “black radical” or anything close to it, is suddenly caught up in this supposed conspiracy. And this man turns out to be an informant for the FBI.
I changed my major to biology in college, but I can still do the math.
My sister faced ninety years in prison and a $2 million fine. But shortly before her trial was to begin, a deal was struck: All charges would be dropped if Qubilah sought psychological treatment and alcohol-abuse treatment. She also had to temporarily relinquish her rights to Malcolm.
We all stepped in to care for Malcolm. Mommy was his legal guardian, but Malikah and I also shared custody of him. He thrived during those years with us in New York. He idolized Mommy Betty, as he called her. When he knew she was coming to my house to take him for an excursion, he would take a long shower then dress himself meticulously, buttoning his shirt all the way to the neck and tucking in the bottom. He would excitedly gather his books and papers and magazines to take along with him to show off his grades or some article he'd read, prompting a stimulating conversation between the two of them. Mommy Betty treated Malcolm as if he were a responsible, mature, and well-rounded young man and he believed that he was.
Malcolm loved Mommy Betty and she loved him. We all did (and still do). During those years in New York he was our pride and joy: disciplined, respectful, compassionate. He had a heart as big as the sky. Once, in a report, he wrote, “If there was one thing in the whole wide world that I could do, I'd help the homeless people. I'd feed them and give them clothes because they are hungry and their clothes are ripped.”
He and I shared a special bond. I wanted him to feel that he could talk to me about anything. I tried to teach him the same important lessons my mother had taught me and some she had not because life was different in the 1990s. When Malcolm was about six years old I would say, “Okay, Malcolm, what do you say if someone tries to offer you drugs?”
“Beat it! Scram, you loser!” he'd respond, utterly serious. It made me smile inside.
But as much as we loved Malcolm, as hard as we tried, we could never be his mother. After Qubilah successfully completed counseling and substance-abuse treatment, Malcolm went to Texas to be with her. He was so happy. At his new school he made the honor roll and played on the basket
ball team. During one game, he told me, he made a great shot and the crowd went wild. They screamed Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm can … If he can't do it, nobody can.
“And you know what my mom did,” he asked me.
“No, Malcolm. What did she do?”
“Auntie, she came down on the court and said, ‘Come here, baby, and give Mommy a kiss!' ”
By now I couldn't stop laughing, but I managed to ask Malcolm what he did.
“I ignored her!” he said, sounding like a typical adolescent. But I knew he was thrilled to have his mother demonstrate her love and pride so publicly.
But then things began to change. About a month later, Malcolm told me on the telephone he understood why Mommy Betty didn't want him with his mom. He said he thought it would be best for him to come back to New York. Then, later, he felt his mom needed him and he wanted to stay. But Qubilah was struggling again. She and her new husband had separated. Malcolm was missing school and acting out. After about three months, Mommy told Qubilah to send Malcolm back to us.
When I saw Malcolm this time, I knew something was wrong. He had changed. Gone was the sweet, innocent, nerdy boy I had known. Some days were good, others weren't. About three weeks before the fire, my mother called me in Florida where I was vacationing. Malcolm had disappeared. Shortly after my mother's call, I was paged by security at my housing complex. They said a neighbor found a boy who claimed to be my nephew. It was Malcolm. I telephoned Malikah to ask her to go get him, then called Mommy to tell her everything was all right. But a few days later, he left again. My mother had taken him bowling and he just wandered off.
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