Just as I Am: A Memoir

by Cicely Tyson

  A couple of hours later, I got up to use the bathroom. When I lumbered back to bed and groaned, Mom awakened. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “Well I have to pee,” I told her, “but I can’t seem to go.”

  She sat up. “Put on your clothes right now,” she said. My sudden urge to clean and to nest, along with the inability to urinate, told her my labor could be imminent.

  “For what?” I asked.

  “I said put on your clothes,” she snapped.

  I did as she instructed, and moments later, we were out on a steep stretch of Lexington Avenue, trying to hail a taxi in snow that felt like it was up to our waists. On the icy uphill sidewalk, my mother slipped. There I was, with my pregnant belly and my freezing palms, struggling to pull her up off the ground. Once I did, we still could not find a cab. In the pitch black, we walked for the longest time before finally finding a ride to Metropolitan Hospital. We walked through the doors at 4 a.m.

  Thus began the wait. Hour after hour, nurses paraded in and out of my room, checking to see how much I’d dilated, as I lay there, wishing I’d stayed home a while longer. Finally, at 6:30 that evening when my water broke, doctors began debating the best method of delivery. My birth canal was so tiny, they feared I’d be ruptured when the baby came out. “Let’s cut her,” I heard one of them say. That was my cue to faint. I regained consciousness just in time to see them taking my daughter out of me. Even before I saw her face, I heard her, because boy, she was already sucking away on that thumb! As the nurses stitched me up, the doctor laid my six-pound, three-ounce angel on my chest, her body warm, her head as bald as mine once had been, her heart pattering in sync with my own.

  Upon hearing I was in labor, Kenneth scrambled from work to the hospital but didn’t make it in time for our daughter’s birth. When he did arrive, he came in holding a red tin can of celebratory chocolates, handing them to me with a kiss and then cradling our baby girl in the crease of his elbow. I stayed in the hospital for five days, with Kenneth at my side for much of it. Mom was there as well. “When you were born,” she fondly recounted, “those nurses waited on me hand and foot for an entire week. It was the best Christmas I’d ever had because I didn’t have to lift a finger to cook for anyone.” As I lay there in bed, nursing my sweet newborn, I likewise relished the sacredness of the pause, the stillness at the start of this thrilling yet terrifying passageway.

  Mom encouraged me to call my daughter Miriam, the name she’d wanted to give me. I instead gave her a name that I chose, and in these pages, I will call her Joan. Kenneth wanted us to take our daughter home by taxi, but I refused, knowing just how little money we had saved. He’d been working back-to-back shifts, socking away all he could for our family. Yet even with his diligence, we were barely making rent.

  Soon after Kenneth and I brought Joan home, I finally saw my father. He stopped by our apartment when my husband was at work. One look at my dad’s face told me that, without question, he’d known about the pregnancy for months. In his eyes, I noticed not a glimmer of judgment or reprimand, but one of recognition. His String Bean, his heartthrob, was no longer a baby girl but a mother herself. He never addressed my unwed pregnancy outright, abiding by the same rule of silence that had always governed our family. And surprisingly, he also never confronted Kenneth about getting me pregnant. I think my father was more sad than angry; the pain of the situation rendered him silent, not combative. On the evening of his visit, he just looked at me for a long moment, the unspoken truth permeating the air between us. “So what’s her name?” he said, smiling and reaching for his first grandchild. “Joan,” I said. Subject forever closed.

  Two weeks after I’d given birth, I returned to school, my breasts heavy with milk, my resolve to graduate undiminished. By day, I kept my head in a math textbook while Kenneth cared for Joan, until I could race home during my lunch break to nurse her. I’d then pump fresh milk to leave for her in the refrigerator. As soon as the last bell of the school day sounded, I was out the door again, eager to get home to my sweetheart as Kenneth prepared to leave for work. I continued that routine for weeks, until the afternoon in May when my principal cut short my momentum with her discovery.

  I hadn’t planned to christen my daughter right away. I wanted to wait until summer, after my schooling was complete. But of course, my mother replaced my desire with her mandate: Joan would be dedicated during a service at our church that May. My mother planned the whole ceremony and even mailed out the invitations, one of which landed in the hands of a woman my father had previously had an affair with. That woman’s son happened to be a fellow student in my science class. He’d been the one to disclose my secret to the principal.

  On the day I was summoned to her office, it made no difference that I stood within shouting distance of my diploma. What mattered was the school’s strict policy: students were not permitted to indulge in what was considered adult behavior. I’m sure some of my classmates were sexually active, but the proof was in the pregnancy. And once it was revealed that I was a mother, that revelation immediately revoked my status as a student and made that year’s credits null and void. Devastating as this news was, I felt undeterred in my quest to earn my diploma.

  For me, those months were the most painful of my young motherhood. The night campus was all the way down on Eighteenth Street, an hour’s ride by train. As much as I yearned to move beyond my mother’s rule, I was also desperate for her help, especially since Kenneth worked nights. Together, he and I decided that Mom would watch Joan in the evenings while I attended classes.

  In the fall of 1943, when Joan was about seven months old, our grand rotation commenced. I took a job as a part-time clerk, working from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. while Kenneth cared for our daughter. I’d then hurry home to feed and change her before carrying her off to my mother’s apartment, where she’d stay until I returned in the late evening. The moment I walked through the door, Joan would begin wailing for me, her arms outstretched from the edge of her crib. How agonizing it was for me to be away from my baby, to hear her weeping when I returned, to see her little face flooded with tears. It is why I often now tell young people to slow down and think, to use protection, to consider what’s involved when you bring a human being into this world. It is a heartbreaking thing for children to have children. These kids, they just go off and have babies, and they have no idea of the commitment involved, how their paths will be as irrevocably altered as mine was. Until you are standing in the responsibility of parenting, you cannot truly understand how it shifts your life’s terrain.

  At the close of 1943, I earned my diploma. My precious Joan was nearly a year old, with a full head of thick hair and a laugh that melted me. I had a child I cherished in a life I never planned on. And by God—and by perseverance—I had completed high school.

  * * *

  As Kenneth and I settled into married life, a road of tedium and regret stretched before me. And when I peered ahead at that path, extending miles into the distance, I felt an enormous urge to retch. The ending to my life story, it seemed, had already been written, before I’d even had a chance to live it. I hadn’t ever been in love with Kenneth. Our union did nothing to change that. In fact, I had no desire to be married, period, and I’m sure he could feel that. My resentment pervaded our every exchange, spilled over into the long bouts of silence between us. I wanted to do right by our daughter, as well as to be respectful of my husband and our vows. And yet the thought of pretending, of living out my mother’s dream instead of discovering my own, felt utterly soul-destroying. When Joan was two years old, I left Kenneth. And following the afternoon I cleared out of the apartment, I never saw him again. He of course called over to my mother’s place, looking for me, desperate to know how he could mend whatever was broken between us. I’m sure she must’ve told him what my actions had made apparent: I was done.

  Ahead of my departure, I did not tell Kenneth I was leaving the marriage. I knew it would shatter him, and it did. Yet it was a choice I fel
t strongly I needed to make, and if I’d told him, he would’ve tried to dissuade me. We did speak by phone after I left, and he pleaded for me to reconsider, begged me to allow him to remain part of our daughter’s world. But I was firm in my decision that we separate entirely. Kenneth was a good man, but it wouldn’t have done either of us a favor for me to languish in a relationship my spirit could not take. Maya Angelou’s mother had it right: I would’ve ruined three lives.

  Even as I fled, I knew I was trading one metaphorical prison for another. With no place else to go, I had to return to my mother’s apartment. I could not yet stand on my own financial feet, and to Mom’s credit, she graciously welcomed me back. But once that short honeymoon wore off, we began clashing. She wanted to do things her way, to raise Joan as she saw best. And I, newly emboldened by my role as mother and head of my family, resisted her domination. Yet because I relied on Mom to look after Joan while I worked, there was only so much arguing I could do. That left me seething internally.

  Our family doctor recognized my rising blood pressure and mounting stress and mentioned it to my father. “Cicely is going to have a nervous breakdown if she stays in that house,” he told my dad. “You need to get her out of there.” After I’d been with Mom for two years, Dad heeded the doctor’s warning and moved me in with his sister, my Aunt Zora, in Mount Vernon. Between my aunt and other nearby family, my village rose up to help me care for Joan while I pieced together a living for us.

  On the weekends or anytime I could manage to get off work, I took my daughter everywhere with me, wheeling her around in the carriage I’d splurged on. In the newspapers, I’d seen images of well-to-do London mothers with their fancy buggies, complete with oversized hoods. Though such strollers became scarce during wartime, I would not rest until I hunted down a used one. My determination was not about necessity. It was about gifting my beloved princess with royal treatment—the same sense of nobility and worth my parents had bestowed upon me.

  When Joan was around four years old, I began work as a legal secretary at Sapinsley & Lucas, a law firm at 551 Fifth Avenue. The following year, when she was old enough for kindergarten, I enrolled her in the Little Brown Schoolhouse, a small private school in the Bronx founded by Helen Meade. I could not truly afford it, but I worked overtime and took on side jobs, emptying my financial cupboards in order to cover the cost. I wanted the comfort of knowing my daughter was in excellent hands, that she’d receive an education superior to my own. Nearly all parents I know can sum up their aspirations for their children in one word: better. That is what my mom and dad wanted for me, Emily, and Melrose when they eked out a life for us in the slums, and it is what I wanted for Joan. It is why I rose before sunup to prepare her for school and walked with her, our fingers intertwined, to the bus stop. It’s why I worked steadfastly to keep her in that school.

  The notion of better was the bedrock for my every choice during Joan’s earliest years. From the time she was a baby and into her toddlerhood, I treated her like a real-life doll, decking her out in frilly dresses, doting over her as my father had me. No item was too luxurious for my princess, no bedtime story spared. In the land of make-believe child rearing, that world of pretend parenting ever on display in the media landscape, dressing Joan up was my way of being the Good Mom, the ever-present and adoring nurturer. I realize now that it was also my attempt at atoning, of blotting out my past choices with the fresh ink of redemption, just as my own mother had sought to do.

  8

  Divinely Guided

  I AM a firm believer in divine guidance. Above all, I am God’s child, cradled in his unfailing arms, guided by his infinite wisdom. Everything that is happening in my life is unfolding exactly as God has intended. There are no coincidences. Rather, there is a loving Savior who holds my future as securely as he does my life, and at every juncture, he is whispering his will, showing me the way. In 1954, the year I turned thirty, I followed the Father’s voice down a path that both thrilled and unnerved me.

  Much on the planet had changed by then. The winter after I had Joan, the Second World War raged on overseas, with Allied forces eventually knocking the opposition to its knees during the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943. That same year, the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-Black group of pilots who defied Air Force leaders’ belief that Blacks were intellectually incapable of becoming aviators, bravely flew their first combat mission in Italy. Here in the United States during that era, the color line showed the slightest sign of fading: in 1944, Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr., then the pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church, became the first Black from New York elected to Congress, standing tall for his Harlem community in the House of Representatives. Then in 1947, Jackie Robinson scored a home run for history when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers as the first Black athlete to play in Major League Baseball. Full equality for our folks was still way off in the distance, but if you squinted real hard, you could see it taking shape.

  My family had likewise shifted. After Emily finished high school, she’d kept one toe under the roof of our mother and another out on the town with suitors. Her godmother, Miss Cole, eventually introduced her to Reginald, a young man whose family hailed from Nevis. One afternoon when Reggie stopped in to see Miss Cole’s niece, whom he had taken out a few times, he spotted Emily’s picture on the wall. “Who is this young lady?” he asked. “That’s my goddaughter, Emily Tyson,” she said proudly. Noting his salivation, Miss Cole arranged for the two to meet, and I was there on the evening of Reggie’s visit. Knock. Knock. Knock. “Who is it?” I called out, grinning across the living room at Mom and Emily, who already knew, courtesy of Miss Cole, that Reggie would come calling. “It is I, Reginald,” he announced in his most proper, put-on-a-show English. I opened the door and in he strode, shoulders square, beret cocked to the left. Lord, have mercy, it was the funniest sight. It took all my might to squelch a snicker.

  Next thing I knew, Miss Cole’s niece had gone the way of all flesh as Emily, the charmer that our father had been, swept in and took over Reggie’s heart. They courted for a year or so and married. I served as Emily’s maid of honor, as well as the resident hairdresser who styled the manes of the entire wedding party. I also designed the bridesmaids’ gowns. As Reggie and my sister spoke their promises before a congregation of more than a hundred, my mother’s countenance radiated joy: she had her fairy tale. At last, she had a daughter who’d done things the right way—her way.

  No one in our family would’ve predicted that Emily, with her fresh self, would turn out to be the Good Daughter, the wholesome one, the girl who married before bringing my mother her grandbabies in God’s time. There at the altar, by her side, I stood balancing my sister’s bouquet, forcing a smile for her sake while shoving down my sadness. However naive I’d been in becoming a teenage mother, however ill-equipped Mom’s silence had ensured I was, however enraptured I felt by the miracle of Joan, a part of me still mourned falling shy of my mother’s great hope for me. My spirit longed to give her the storybook ending she had craved, the fantasy Emily was now handing to her. We are our mothers’ children, every one of us. And that umbilical cord connection makes you and me, in ways unconscious and profound, their dream keepers. Though I’d done so unintentionally, I’d allowed my mother’s dream, delicate and treasured, to slip from my grasp and shatter at her feet. The fact that we never spoke forthrightly about her disappointment, never dragged that truth out onto the scaffold of our relationship and stood there with it, in no way diminished the pain of its existence for me.

  Emily’s husband, Reggie, was no minister’s son. But after the precedent I’d set, Mom had revised her expectations to include any respectable Christian gentleman, whether or not his father was a man of the cloth. Like my father, Reggie earned his living as a produce salesman, overseeing a thriving business selling watermelons door to door. In the summers, Reggie would load his truck with a crop and drive up and down the boulevards of Harlem and the Bronx, scouring for customers while yelling, “Fifteen cents a melon!”
So admirable was his ambition that it once drew the notice of a prominent businessman, who stopped by to make a purchase. After Reggie had talked his new customer into buying not one melon but three, the man offered Reggie his card. “Why don’t you give me a call sometime?” he said. As it turned out, the man was one of the owners of Filter Queen, a burgeoning vacuum-cleaner company. “You seem like quite a salesman,” he told Reggie. “How would you like to sell some vacuums?” “Sir,” Reggie said, straightening his posture, “I can sell anything.” Less than a year later, Reggie had become a top-earning salesman. He did so well that he and Emily traded their apartment in the city for a home in Mount Vernon. She lived close to our Aunt Zora, making herself and my brother-in-law part of my village in rearing Joan.

  By the early 1950s, my brother had also settled into a new season. During high school, Melrose had been expelled for fighting and sent to a campus for troubled boys. With the same clenched jaw that powered me through my studies, my brother earned his diploma. Soon after, he moved to Montclair, near our cousins there, and he eventually married a lovely woman by the name of Bernice. For years, Melrose earned a living as a clerk for the post office. If there’d been an award for penmanship, Melrose would have garnered the gold: he had the most gorgeous cursive I’ve ever set eyes on, with each loop and swirl gracefully rendered. Just as no one would’ve pegged Emily as the Tyson traditionalist, few would’ve foreseen that my brother, a restless soul of the streets, would grow into an impeccable scribe. For that matter, only God could’ve foretold that I, the gullible girl with no idea how periods and pregnancies were connected, would become an unwed mom. I tell you, this life doesn’t simply come with its share of unpredictability; surprise is its most conspicuous feature.

  Joan sprouted up fast. In those years, I marked time by how well my darling grew. Her care became my singular priority, my all-consuming point of reference. Blurry-eyed and breathless, I sprinted from one daybreak to the next, scrambling to keep the paychecks coming and Joan’s tuition covered. During back-to-back shifts at various clerical jobs, I kept my fingertips glued to a typewriter, click-clacking my way to solvency. Late every evening, I’d then crawl my way back to my aunt’s place and tip-toe into Joan’s bedroom, sitting at her side, witnessing her lost in her dream world, watching her chest rise and fall. Before turning in myself, I’d lay out Joan’s clothes and prepare her lunch for the next day. Such was my life’s tempo until the year Joan was nine—the year when my dear aunt craved a respite and I, reluctant yet clear that I needed consistent child care, returned to Mom’s place and purview.