by Hana Ali
“Why, thank you, Muhammad,” she said. “How humble of you to take my plate to the kitchen for me.” He looked at her, confused for a moment, then his eyes lit up and he walked out of the room, to the kitchen, and did the dishes, probably for the first time in his life.
My aunt Michelle was another story. She was sweet but easily flustered. She was rather sensitive, complained a lot, and could be selfish at times. She also seemed to have a crush on my father and always behaved inappropriately around him: hovering, batting her eyes, telling him she needed to talk to him, and begging him to meet her at my grandmother’s, where she lived at the time.
“What do you want to talk about?” he asked on one of his recordings.
“I’ll tell you when you get here,” she said.
“Are you in trouble?”
“No, I just want to talk to you.”
“Why do I have to come there . . . why can’t we talk on the phone?”
“Because I want to talk in person.”
“Okay, let me tell Veronica . . .”
“What do you have to tell her for? You need her permission?” she snapped.
“Michelle, what’s the matter with you? She’s my wife . . . You sound crazy—you’re talking like you like me . . .”
Michelle was highly intelligent, overly sensitive—a perfectionist even. But she always seemed to be in her own world. Always lying in the bed in the guest room when she spent the night, talking on the telephone, or in the bathroom blowing cigarette smoke out of a cracked window.
“Go to your room, Hana,” she said, noticing me staring up at her.
“I’m hungry . . .”
“I’ll take you down in five minutes,” she said, waving away the remnants of another smoke ring. My parents didn’t want her smoking in the house or around us. But she always did as she pleased. I guess it was her own pleasure, rather than our health, that she was most concerned with. Luckily, Michelle was only a temporary babysitter, watching us only when we were in between governesses or during the governess’s time off.
When we were older, Michelle would drive us to school sometimes. I remember her fastening us into the back seat of her little Toyota and rolling down all four windows. She’d light a cigarette and pop her favorite tape into the player. We sang in unison to Prince’s “When Doves Cry” as she drove us up Larchmont Boulevard to Page Academy, formally a military school for boys. Michelle was the one who introduced me to my favorite album, Purple Rain. Naturally, when my parents got us VIP seats to Prince’s concert at The Forum in 1985, she volunteered to take us. Laila and I, together with our friends Kim and Karen, jumped for joy as we sang along to “Little Red Corvette” and “Raspberry Beret.” And when, in the middle of his act, Prince tossed purple lace underwear with peppermint candy tied on the sides into the crowd, I jumped up and caught them. For a split second the underwear was mine, then Michelle yanked them out my hands.
What I remember most about my aunt Michelle living at Fremont is her frantic reactions to my misbehavior when I was four years old. She used to pace her room anxiously, threatening to walk out and leave us in the house alone, calling Grandma for help in the middle of the night.
“Mom, can you please come over here!” she once moaned. “Hana won’t take a bath.”
“What happened?”
“She jumped out of the tub and is running naked all over the house. She’s getting soap and water all over the floor!”
“Where is she now?” asked Granny.
“I don’t know . . . She’s driving me nuts!”
“Calm down, Michelle . . . I’m on my way.”
Luckily, Grandma’s house was only a ten-minute drive from Fremont Place.
On one occasion, after Granny had given me a bath and put me to bed, she drove back home. It was late, just after midnight, when she pulled in her driveway. She didn’t see the man approaching her car as she reached over to the passenger seat for her purse, and before she knew it my grandmother was on the ground, clutching her purse as the man dragged her all the way down her driveway on Bonnie Brae Street. The flesh was scraped from her knees before the robber finally let go of her handbag.
“What were you thinking, Mom?” asked my mother. “Why didn’t you let go of the purse? He could have killed you!”
“Are you kidding me?” said Grandma. “All my credit cards and ID cards were in there.”
“Allah was looking after you,” said my father.
“It was our lord and savior, Jesus Christ,” said Grandma.
“I guess they were working together.” He smiled.
My father loved to get into debates about religion with his family and friends. He’d pull out his tape recorder and get the conversation stirring with his opening statement: “How can God have a son . . .” he’d ask, then let the comments roll.
He never got upset or took things personally, the way most people do when talking about religion. He simply enjoyed the discussion—the pulse and energy of the room. The fun and laughter. The back and forth of debate. The heated exchange of concepts and ideas. But he never took himself or the topic too seriously.
Then one day Grandma Ethel went too far.
One Sunday morning in the summer of 1980, my grandmother called Michelle and told her to get us dressed. “Put ribbons in their hair,” she said.
“Ribbons . . . why?”
“It’s a special occasion. I’ll pick them up in an hour.”
Dad was supposed to be out all afternoon. He would be leaving to train for the Larry Holmes fight soon. He walked through the front door as Michelle, Laila, and I came down the steps wearing our pretty ruffled dresses.
“Where are you guys going looking so pretty?” he asked.
“To church to get baptized!” I said.
My father stormed into his office and called my grandmother.
“I’m sorry, Muhammad,” she said. “I just want them to get into heaven.”
He didn’t know it at the time, but I had been to church before. Grandma took me when he and Mom were in Hong Kong. She smiled at me sitting beside her in the huge row of benches, trying to sing along to the songs, making up my own words. But she couldn’t understand why I lay on the floor during prayer.
“What are you doing, Hana?” Grandma asked as I got on my knees and bowed several times. “Get up,” she whispered as people stared out the corners of their eyes. “You’re going to get your dress dirty.”
It wasn’t until later that she realized what I was doing.
“That’s how Muslims pray at the mosque,” my mother explained.
My grandmother meant no harm. She believed she was saving our souls. My parents understood that. Although my father was upset, he apologized for yelling at her that day on the telephone and quickly forgave her.
Grandma never did get us baptized, but after my parents’ divorce, she was always saying the Lord’s Prayer over me when I spent the night, making me repeat the words as she said them: “Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven . . .”
In the morning, she’d have me recite the prayer from memory as she cleaned my soiled sheets. I had slipups from time to time at Fremont Place. One governess used to make me warm milk and honey, thinking it would help me hold it through the night. It worked occasionally, but when my mother remarried, I started wetting the bed excessively.
“You have to learn to hold it, Hana,” said Grandma. “What are you going to do when you get married? Pee-pee on your husband?”
I was about five years old when we met the new governess Meg. Laila was four. I fell in love with Meg the moment I laid eyes on her. According to my father, Laila was still attached to Janet, so it took time for her to warm up to Meg.
“Laila,” he said on one of his tape recordings, “you’re four years old now and you’re always asking for Janet . . .”
Ironically, it was Laila’s fascination with Meg that ultimately ended her employment. But the two and
a half years she worked at Fremont Place were heavenly. Meg was a sweet, stocky Englishwoman with bright blue eyes and long reddish-blonde hair. She spoke with a perfect English accent, which reminded us of our favorite television nanny, Mary Poppins. We met her over lunch one Saturday afternoon, and Laila and I giggled whenever she spoke.
“Would you kindly pass the sugar, please?” said Meg.
Afterward, we ran around the house trying to imitate her accent: “Pass the sugar, please . . .”
“No,” said Laila. “It’s kindly pass the sugar, please.”
Meg was gentle, kind, patient, and fun. We sang songs on the way to school in the morning and played Red Light, Green Light after dinner.
“Green light!” she’d say as we ran toward her down the hall.
“Red light!” she called as we froze in our tracks.
She let us comb her long straight hair and put makeup on her cheeks. She taught us how to say hello with an English accent and how to give butterfly kisses with our eyelashes. She played Ring Around the Rosie with us before bed and let us play dress-up and run down to show Daddy.
“Are we disturbing you, Muhammad?” she’d ask as we ran into his office.
“No, come in.”
“Look at me, Daddy!” I’d shout, wearing my favorite white dress with pink ribbons and ruffled lace sleeves. “Do I look pretty?”
“You look as pretty as your mother,” he’d say.
After an hour or so, we’d head up to bed, and he’d tuck me in and tell me stories until I fell asleep, then he’d head to Laila’s room and do the same. “The Three Little Pigs” was my favorite. Sometimes he’d make up a spin-off about the Big Bad Wolf, howling and growling as I listened. It wasn’t the typical story a parent would tell a child at night, but he made it fun and exciting, which meant that instead of falling asleep I was wide awake, requesting more stories and late-night snacks from the kitchen. He always obliged.
Best of all, like my father, Meg saw no harm in letting me eat popsicles in the morning—after breakfast, of course.
It was a fun-filled time with Meg—two years of laughter and play, building playhouses, picnics on the lawn, swimming in the sun. We spent so much time with her and enjoyed her so much that we wanted to be just like her—we even wanted to look like her and her friends. Meg had a friend in her twenties who used to visit her at the house. She was a pretty lady, with long blonde hair, who’d had a nose job and went jogging in Beverly Hills in the hope of meeting a rich man. Meg’s brother was also handsome. She used to joke with Mom that he could make a living off his looks—like Richard Gere in the film American Gigolo. Then one day after school my father discovered a problem that would inevitably end Meg’s employment at Fremont Place.
“When I grow up,” said Laila, “I want blonde hair and blue eyes just like Meg.”
“Me too,” I added, coloring on the floor in my father’s den. Dad pulled out his tape recorder, documenting the conversation.
“This is what I was afraid of . . .” he said into the recorder as Laila started to cry because her skin wasn’t as white as Meg’s. “This is how it starts,” he explained. “It’s important for you all to love yourself—to have pride in yourself. To have people around you that you can identify with.”
He didn’t fire her right away. When she was let go, it wasn’t him—my mother handled that sort of thing. Dad would hire people all the time, finding odd jobs to get them off the streets or help someone out of a financial strain. But he never fired or reprimanded them—not a single disapproving word. He thought it would be too much coming from him—and if anyone begged for a second chance, claiming they needed the money to survive or pay bills, with my father in charge not only did they stay on as an employee but they were often given a raise.
“It would be too hard on them, coming from me,” he said to my mother. “It might destroy them, having Muhammad Ali fire them.”
“Please stop crying, Laila,” said Meg. “You have a beautiful skin color.”
“But I want to be white, like you.” She pouted.
“I’m sorry, Muhammad,” said Meg.
“You did nothing wrong,” he said. “This is just an example of what happens when children of color have all white dolls and no toys that represent their culture to identify with . . .”
A few months later, Mom had her talk with Meg.
“I understand,” she said. She knew it was coming. My father’s Muslim advisers had long since commented on and warned him about a white Christian woman helping raise his little black girls and the identity issues it might cause. He also had his concerns, but he liked Meg, and most important, we liked Meg, so he kept her. But as the years passed, his fears materialized.
“We’ll miss you, Meg. Please visit as much as you can,” said Mom.
“Of course,” she said. Mom told us Meg had to go home to take care of her mother and didn’t know when, if ever, she might return. But she visited regularly for a while.
“Be the good little girls I know you are,” she told us the last time we saw her. “Keep your rooms tidy, and always brush your teeth before bed.”
It was the last time we heard her accent. Meg said her goodbyes, packed her bags, and probably moved back to England for good.
Mom started interviewing for the governess position immediately. A handful of women of varying ages and skills met with her over tea in the dining room adjacent to the front entrance of Fremont Place. This was where we would have large holiday dinners every year. My father sat at the head of the table drinking Pepsi out of a champagne glass.
One woman stands out in my mother’s memory. “I’ll never forget her,” said Mom one day over breakfast. “She looked like a black Mary Poppins.”
She was tall, thin, and elegant, and was dressed like a quintessential English nanny. She had on a long coat with a long black dress and old-fashioned boots. And she was wearing a black hat with her hair pinned in a bun.
John Young Brown, the governor of Kentucky (who purchased KFC from Colonel Sanders and turned it into a national company), was a friend of my father. His wife, Phyllis George, a former Miss America and commentator for NFL football, had told my mother about a New York governess agency. The following week my parents flew the woman to town for an interview.
“My job is to manage the household in all ways,” she said, sipping her tea. “Not just affairs concerning the children but the household budget and employees.” According to the governess, Mom would no longer need Marge, our household administrator.
“I do it all,” she said. “You can leave the rearing and raising of your children up to me. I’m stern but caring and will raise them as I see fit.”
She seemed to be the perfect example of an eighteenth-century governess.
“Thank you for your time,” said Mom. “We’ll be in touch.”
For days, we begged Mom to hire her. Mary Poppins was one of my favorite films when I was a little girl. Mom admitted it would have been interesting having her around the house, but she wasn’t what my parents were looking for.
My mother continued with the interviews for another couple of weeks. Grandma, Diane, and Michelle took turns babysitting Laila and me.
One weekend stands out in my memory. My parents had gone out to dinner, so Mom’s brother, Uncle Tony, was watching us and had brought my uncle Steven with him. Uncle Tony was fun, but I hated when Uncle Steven visited. He was sweet and playful, but he ate all the popsicles and hogged the large-screen television in the third-floor media room, watching his favorite show, Star Trek, for hours.
“I want to watch my cartoons!” I demanded, wrapped in a wet towel, fresh out of the tub.
“I was here first,” he said. “Watch TV downstairs.”
When he got up to use the bathroom, I quickly scanned the channels, looking for cartoons.
“Stop messing with the remote control, Hana,” said Steven as he walked back into the room and saw Bugs Bunny on-screen. “I told you to watch your cartoons downstairs!”
“It’s my house!” I shouted, then ran downstairs, dripping wet, straight out the front door and around the corner, where I complained to the guard on duty: “Uncle Steven won’t let me watch my cartoons! Come arrest him!”
The guard stared at me in stunned disbelief, probably wondering why Muhammad Ali’s six-year-old little girl was standing outside in the middle of the night, buck naked. I had dropped my towel somewhere along the way.
Just before my seventh birthday, we met our new governess—the lady I would come to refer to as Cruella De Vil.
Cruella had come via an agency in LA. She was a strict, rigid woman with a thick Jamaican accent. Her clothes were always ironed and her straight black hair, which she kept in a bun at all times, had a thick gray streak on the left side. She had a son in the army whom we never met, and she was always listening to Jamaican music; she would swish her hips, holding a wine bottle in her hand, when she thought we were asleep.
“What are you drinking? Can I have some?”
“No, child! Go back to bed. This drink is for adults.”
“What is it?”
“Lemonade,” she chuckled.
“Kids can drink lemonade,” I said.
“This is my special lemonade. It’s hot and spicy—it’ll burn your tongue, child.”
“I want some,” I insisted.
“I said no, child!” she barked back.
One thing my mother remembers about Cruella is that she once cut my and Laila’s hair without her permission. “That took a lot of nerve!” said Mom. But she had gotten the impression that Cruella’s son had joined the military to escape his mother’s controlling ways, so maybe it wasn’t that much of a surprise. I don’t know how Cruella hid her drinking from my parents for so long, or when it started, but after three years her luck ran out.
One night when Mom and Dad were out, Cruella was sprawled out on the bed in a drunken slumber. Mom called her bedroom the Southern Room, because it was adorned with antebellum furniture she’d purchased in the South while Dad was filming Freedom Road.
Laila and I were obsessed with the female anatomy, particularly boobies. Cruella, even when lying flat on her back, had a large chest. We were lifting the edge of her shirt as she snored, hoping to get a peek at her boobs, when my mother walked into the room—to check up on us—home sooner than expected.