“I tried to read it over to see what everybody was hollering about,” she said recently, “but then I said, ‘Ahhh, why go back there?”’
Because of her age and heart condition, she takes an array of pills each day, prescribed by a wonderful Jewish heart doctor in Philadelphia who treated her like a queen long before he knew who she was. He insists that she eat a particular high-fiber, low-fat diet. Personally, I don’t know if she follows it or not. Only thing I know is, when I’m short on potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, fried chicken, eggs, cheese, or vanilla wafers, I head to Mommy’s house.
She wakes up each morning with a smile, saying, “I’m blessed,” or “Thank you, Jesus,” or “I hold on to God’s unchanging hand.” She’s content with her life, has taken the bumps and bruises with as much grace as she can, including the July 2005 death of her courageous childhood friend Frances Moody Falcolne, of Suffolk, Virginia. This book has given Mommy her past back, embodied in the painting of her mother that now hangs on the wall in her living room, a woman who was a mystery to me until I wrote this book.
One afternoon, a few years ago, my African American daughter, who was about eight years old, asked me, “Daddy, if Grandma is your mother, how come she doesn’t look like me or you?”
I gave her the only answer I could. “I don’t know,” I said. “But she loves us, and that’s the most important thing.”
That seems to satisfy her, at least for the time being. There will be other issues, other questions she’ll have, I’m sure, as she grows older. There will be reams of books and newspapers and video footage and movies that will attempt to answer the unanswerable questions of racism, sexism, classism, and socioeconomics for her—hard-line intellectuals have already had a field day with this book, using it to promote every sort of sociopolitical ideology. But at the end of the day, there are some questions that have no answers, and then one answer that has no question: love rules the game. Every time. All the time. That’s what counts.
For me, this book has always been, and will forever be, a book about a mother and her children, and how that mother raised her children with love and respect and God. About a mother’s love, a father’s love, family love. In all the important ways, my family’s story is not unique. It plays out across the world, on every continent, in every nation, city, town, and village every day. Family love: It is firm footing, something to cling to in a frightened world that seems to spin out of control with war, turmoil, terrorism, and uncertainty. It is our highest calling and our greatest nobility.
So if you see a woman driving in Trenton with her blinkers on, look out. Back off. Give her some space. She could go left, she could go right. She could go up into Heaven clear out of sight! But no matter which way she goes, she’s not likely going your way. And if she is, don’t bother her with any questions about it, or you’ll get an earful of God.
James McBride
September 2005
New York City
Thanks and
Acknowledgments
My mother and I would like to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for His love and faithfulness to all generations. Thanks to my loving wife, Stephanie Payne, who stood me up when I could no longer stand, who would not let me back away from the dream, who made me a man. To my children, Jordan and Azure, that they might know where they came from.
To my eleven brothers and sisters: Dr. Andrew Dennis McBride, Rosetta McBride, Dr. William (Billy) McBride, Dr. David McBride, Helen McBride-Richter, Richard McBride, Dorothy McBride-Wesley, Kathy Jordan, Judy Jordan, Hunter Jordan, and Henry Jordan. Thank you for your help in putting this book together and keeping us strong over the years. To my special sister, Jacqueline Nelson of Louisville, Kentucky, who helped me turn my life around.
Thanks to my editor, Cindy Spiegel, at Riverhead, whose creativity, imagination, guidance, hard work, and foresight created the organization and magic of this book, and to my agent, Flip Brophy, of Sterling Lord Literistic, who stuck with me for ten years despite the fact that I never made her a dime.
My mother and I would also like to thank our friends and family in Harlem, in the Red Hook Housing Projects in Brooklyn, in St. Albans, Queens, and in Philadelphia, who stuck with us over the years: in particular my godparents, Mother Rachel and Rev. Tom McNair and family; Mother Virginia Ingram and family; Rev. Edward Belton and family of Passaic, New Jersey; the late Irene Johnson, her daughters Deborah and Barbara, her sister Vera Leake, her brother Rev. Hunson Greene, and the rest of her family; Rev. Elvery Stannard, Rev. Arnet Clark and Tiberian Baptist Church; Pastor Joseph Roberts and Ebenezer Baptist Church; Dr. Gary Richter, Rose McBride, Rebecca Randolph; Gladys and Fred Cleveland, Alice and Neddie Sands, Dorothy and Thomas Jones. The Napper and Harris families, Sheila Warren and Evelyn Hobson; Trafinna “Ruth” Wilson and family of Wilmington, Delaware; our late beloved Aunt Sallie Candis Baldwin and Etta and Nash McBride; the Hinson, Leake, and Rush families of Mount Gilead, North Carolina; Aunt Mag Lomax, Cousin Edna Rucker and the Gripper family of High Point, North Carolina; the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn; Rev. Thomas Davis of Crossroads Baptist Church in Harlem; Cousin Maggie Harris and family of Richmond, Virginia; Thelma Carpenter, Uncle Walter Jordan, Flossie Jordan, and the Jordans of Brooklyn and Richmond; and the Payne and Hawkins families in Los Angeles.
Thanks to the folks in Suffolk, Virginia: Frank and Aubrey Sheffer, Helen Weintraub, the late Aubrey Rubenstein, Mrs. Frances Holland, Mary Howell-Read of the city clerk’s office, Curly Baker, and Eddie Thompson. A heartfelt embrace to Frances and Nick Falcone of Portsmouth, Virginia, for reentering our lives. Thanks to Dina Abramowicz of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York City and to all the brothers on the Corner at Vermont Liquors in Louisville, especially Mike Fowler, Big Richard Nelson, and the late Chicken Man. Thanks to tax accountant Milton Sherman, Janette Bolgiani, and Julian “Sharon” Jones. Thanks to Jim Naughton at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rhonda Goldfein, Holocaust survivors Halina Wind and George Preston and their son David Preston, who helped reveal the wonders of Judaism for me. Thanks to my friends at the Boston Globe: Dennis Lloyd, Al Larkin, Jack Driscoll, Ed Siegel, Cindy Smith, Steve Morse, and of course Ernie Santosuosso. Thanks to Mary Hadar, who was a guiding editor at The Washington Post, and bebop guitarist Jeff Frank, whose second career still awaits. Thanks to Jay Lovinger and Gay Daley, who read my manuscript and whose kindness has always been an inspiration to me and my family. Thanks to Bill Boyle, Mike Daley, Hank Klibanoff, Marguerite Del Giudice, Doran Twer, Gar Joseph, Gary Smith, and Sally Wilson; thanks to Isabel Spencer and Fred Hartman, who gave me my first journalism job, to Norman Isaacs, who taught me to be good enough to get one, to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone/Us magazines, who let me practice my soprano sax at work, no problem, and to Eric “Bud Powell” Levin, Jesse Birnbaum, Pat Ryan, Jim Gaines, and Mercedes Mitchell at People. Thanks to Jill Nelson, Richard Ben Kramer, Carolyn White, Gerri Hirshey, and living legend and author John A. Williams, whose life’s work is an inspiration to all writers. Thanks to Anita Baker and Walter Bridgeforth, whose generosity helped me survive the lean years, jazz legend Jimmy Scott, who taught me to swing, saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr., Gary Burton, Everett Harp, my homie Damon Due White, my homegirl Rachelle Ferrell, Gerard Harris, writing partner Ed Shockley, Larry Woody, Sy Friend, and Vinnie Carrissimi, who still can’t jump; to George Caldwell, musical partner Pura Fé, Dana Crowe, Lisa Hartfield Davé, Professor Wendell Logan, Fred Nelson III, Laurie “Colgate” Weisman, Roz Abrams, and the Rouet family of France. Finally, thanks to the Bien family of Concord, New Hampshire, and their sons Alec and Leander, who sat up for many nights listening to me recite my dreams, then stood by me in the reality of the hard days that followed.
“In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs, 3:6
James McBride
James McBride is an accomplished musician and author. His latest book is Song Yet Sung. His second book, Miracle at St. Anna, was optioned for film in 2007
and is soon to be a major motion picture with noted American filmmaker Spike Lee directing and coproducing. McBride has written for The Washington Post, People, The Boston Globe, Essence, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. A graduate of Oberlin College, he was awarded a master’s in journalism from Columbia University at the age of twenty-two. McBride holds several honorary doctorates and is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He lives in Pennsylvania and New York.
Ruth McBride Jordan
Ruth McBride Jordan was born Rachel Deborah Shilsky (Ruchel Dwajra Zylska) in Poland, in 1921. Her family immigrated to America when she was two, and eventually settled in Suffolk, Virginia. After high school she moved to New York City and married Andrew D. McBride, with whom she founded the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. After her husband’s death in 1957, she remarried, to Hunter Jordan, who died in 1972. She is a 1986 graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, where she received her degree in Social Work Administration at age 65. Today Ruth travels to Paris, London, New York, and Atlanta regularly; works as a volunteer with the Philadelphia Emergency Center, a shelter for homeless teenage mothers; runs a reading club in the Ewing, New Jersey, public library; and works at the Jerusalem Baptist church in Trenton, New Jersey, in their program to feed the homeless. She lives in Ewing township with her daughter Kathy Jordan and Kathy’s two children, Gyasi and Maya. She has twelve children and twenty grandchildren.
READERS GUIDE FOR
The Color of Water
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James McBride and The Color of Water
visit www.riverheadbooks.com.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Discuss Ruth McBride’s refusal to reveal her past and how that influenced her children’s sense of themselves and their place in the world. How has your knowledge—or lack thereof—about your family background shaped your own self-image?
The McBride children’s struggle with their identities led each to his or her own “revolution.” Is it also possible that that same struggle led them to define themselves through professional achievement?
Several of the McBride children became involved in the civil rights movement. Do you think that this was a result of the times in which they lived, their need to belong to a group that lent them a solid identity, or a combination of these factors?
“Our house was a combination three-ring circus and zoo, complete with ongoing action, daring feats, music, and animals.” Does Helen leave to escape her chaotic home life or to escape the mother whose very appearance confuses her about who she is?
“It was in her sense of education, more than any other, that Mommy conveyed her Jewishness to us.” Do you agree with this statement? Is it possible that Ruth McBride Jordan’s unshakable devotion to her faith, even though she converted to Christianity from Judaism, stems from her Orthodox Jewish upbringing?
“Mommy’s contradictions crashed and slammed against one another like bumper cars at Coney Island. White folks, she felt, were implicitly evil toward blacks, yet she forced us to go to white schools to get the best education. Blacks could be trusted more, but anything involving blacks was probably substandard.…She was against welfare and never applied for it despite our need, but championed those who availed themselves of it.” Do you think these contradictions served to confuse Ruth’s children further, or did they somehow contribute to the balanced view of humanity that James McBride possesses?
While reading the descriptions of the children’s hunger, did you wonder why Ruth did not seek out some kind of assistance?
Do you think it was naïve of Ruth McBride Jordan to think that her love for her family and her faith in God would overcome all potential obstacles, or did you find her faith in God’s love and guidance inspiring?
How do you feel about Ruth McBride Jordan’s use of a belt to discipline her children?
While reading the book, were you curious about how Ruth McBride Jordan’s remarkable faith had translated into the adult lives of her children? Do you think that faith is something that can be passed on from one generation to the next, or do you think that faith that is instilled too strongly in children eventually causes them to turn away from it?
Do you think it would be possible to achieve what Ruth McBride has achieved in today’s society?
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