Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) (10 page)

Mama moved on. She remarried, Tom Gaines, but I kept letting it all pull me back. I loved Daddy so much, and, since he could do no wrong, I convinced myself that I was somehow to blame. I’m sure it had something to do with what would happen to me within the next year.

I was twelve at the time, in sixth grade, and suddenly noticed that I was having a problem concentrating on my reading. There was a raw feeling in my chest. And with every heartbeat, I could feel the rawness intensify. I just started crying and asked the teacher if I could go home. After being excused, I walked to my house and knocked on the door. Nobody answered.
Mama had to be there. Mama was
always
there. But nobody answered and the door was locked. There was no key under the mat, and the pain in my chest was getting worse, probably because I was getting worried about finding Mama. I
had
to find her. She would know what to do. My stepfather had a daughter, three blocks away. That seemed to be my best bet. But I had already walked from school. Every step seemed like it caused my heart to go faster and faster and, oh, I was in such pain. I knew if I found Mama, she could fix it. Mama could fix anything.

Finally, I did find Mama, two doors down from where I thought she might be. I told her how sick I felt. She must have thought it was something routine because she told me to go and lie down on the couch, and she just kept talking. After waiting there forever, I begged Mama to take me home. She did, but told me to carry one of the three bags she had to take with her. I wasn’t able to carry it, but I made it. I wouldn’t complain. I just didn’t know how to make Mama understand. Every step seemed like it would be the last one. And when I finally got home, I just sat down on the steps. I didn’t think I could make it upstairs. Mama urged me on and insisted that I have dinner. Well, I knew what eating dinner would mean. That would mean doing the dishes after dinner. That was not negotiable. That was my job. But I knew I would not be able to do those dishes. Even so, I got up and I struggled up the steps, put the groceries away, and sat down again. It seemed like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. It was just beating terribly fast. And when I ate, it got worse. I told Mama I wanted to go to bed. She told me to wash the dishes first so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting up later to do them. I washed those dishes with my tears that night. I felt so sick, worse than I had ever felt in my life. Finally, I told Mama she had to call the doctor. That’s when she began to take it all very seriously.

Our family doctor examined me and told Mama that I had an enlarged heart. It seems that I had been exposed to rheumatic fever. A classmate of mine had developed it and died. I had shaken it off without incident, but apparently it had left me with a leaky valve, which would affect me all my life. So, I had an enlarged heart, which sounded like it should have been a good thing to a young girl. But it wasn’t a good thing. It wasn’t good at all.

The doctor ordered me to bed immediately. No lights. I could not read. No company. The shades had to be drawn. There could be nothing to excite me or stimulate my heart. My mother had to hook up a bell, and we developed a code so that she would know what I needed by the number of times I’d ring for her.

I was confined to bed for more than three months, and at some point during that time I was able to begin reading books again, to catch up on
my schoolwork, and finally to return to school, which made me very happy. It was a close call. Mama never really said any more about it, but it stayed with me and helped me to understand that anything out of the ordinary could be a big deal. A raw feeling in my chest wound up being something quite serious, a heart problem. My father had left my mother and me, and that had hurt me very deeply. The doctor had given us a logical explanation, said I suffered from an enlarged heart, a leaky valve, a byproduct of rheumatic fever. But I knew differently. I knew that what I really suffered was a broken heart.

By the time I started thinking about the Detroit move, Daddy and I had already reestablished some limited contact. I talked to my mother and told her what I had been thinking about doing and she encouraged me to call my father. As it turned out, I was happy that she and I talked. She let me know that what had happened between her and Daddy was between her and Daddy. It was not my problem. It was not my fault. And it should not be my burden to carry around for the rest of my life. She reminded me that Wiley Nash Carthan was my father and that I should treat him like my father. Her words meant a lot, but it was the message in between the words that was even more meaningful. For in that space was acceptance and absolution. And if Mama could take that position, then certainly I could. I was thankful for that talk, one that was long overdue. It was a transforming experience, and it would allow me to once again share with my father my life, and now my son.

I made the call. I made the arrangements. I made ready to leave Argo. This was a big deal for me. A very big deal. And I had mixed feelings about the move. On the one hand, I was apprehensive, but then I knew I would have family around to look out for me. On the other hand, I was eager to set out on a new trail, head for a new adventure. I was so eager for a new life that I convinced myself that Bo shared that excitement, never realizing what that kind of eagerness might cost a person.

Daddy had been all too happy to accommodate Bo and me. He would try to help me find a job and a permanent place to stay. Meanwhile, we were welcome to stay with him and his wife, A.D. While Daddy was eager to help, A.D. had a different attitude about the whole thing. They hadn’t been married long. She’d once been married to a preacher who passed, and she was a “first lady.” I mean she was as proud and snobby as she needed to be. Anyway, I settled into the small room Bo and I would call home for a short while. And that room was so tiny. It had a small bed and a vanity-style dresser with a little stool that went under the dresser. And that was it, that’s all that you could get into that room. If I wanted to make
the bed, I had to crawl over it and reach and tuck it in on the other side. But I knew this was a temporary arrangement, and I was grateful for the accommodations.

There also was perfume on that vanity, which, of course, I would never touch. But there was so much of it. The whole surface of the vanity was taken up by fragrance bottles, so I didn’t have anywhere that I could put a bottle or a jar for myself. I wound up using a little box that I would put under the bed, and all of my toiletries were in that little box. The interesting thing was that one of the fragrances A.D. had was White Shoulders. Somebody had given me some White Shoulders also. One morning, I put on my White Shoulders. I had never smelled it before, but I liked it. She must have recognized it because, while I was out that day, she came and cleared all her fragrances out of the room. Every last bottle.

Soon I got a job at the Ft. Wayne Induction Center. I was working very long days, but the good thing was that I was able to pay Daddy and his wife something for the room. I also had to cook on Sundays, come hell or high water, since A.D. had cooked all week. I would be so tired sometimes and I really wanted to clean my room. I mean, that house was immaculate. It was stressfully clean, no dust anywhere, and I was beginning to feel the pressure. But I never had time to do everything. I was working seven days a week sometimes, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. It was a pressure job and I was kind of in the lead of the group of clerk-typists. That meant that I had a lot of responsibility. I had to work and I had to make sure the other people were working as well.

One Sunday I baked chicken for dinner with dressing and gravy and vegetables and all that stuff. And when I got the kitchen all cleaned up, I went back and I pulled out the vanity and the little stool so that I could scrub the floor. As soon as I pulled that vanity and that stool into the living room, A.D. came out and sat on the couch. She crossed her legs and started swinging her foot. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Who would have thought it? Miracles do happen.” As if to say, “It’s about time you did some work around here.”

She sat there bobbing her leg, making comments like that for the next couple of hours as I cleaned my room and the living room. From then on, all of my spare time was filled with chores to give her a break. Since she was the stepmother, I guess I must have been Cinderella.

Daddy and I kind of bridged the gap during this time. He was so good to me. He was glad I was there and he was trying to be a buffer between his wife and me. He also was happy that he had a chance to bond with Bo. Dad worked for a drugstore and he’d bring a quart of ice cream home every night and share it with Bo. Vanilla, strawberry, banana, or, if Bo
asked for chocolate, Dad would pack it himself to bring home. Even though A.D. wasn’t necessarily looking after Bo during the day, apparently he was getting in her way. He had always been well cared for and was used to that. Not demanding, but not ignored. Bo was a kid. He might come in and want a sandwich. And she would have to fix it. He was nine at the time and he was used to so much more space. It was hard to contain all his energy. He would go out to play and come in sweating. He might plop down on the floor, get dirt on the rugs. The kind of things boys do. The kind of things he never had to worry about back in Argo, where he could do no wrong. Here, it seemed, he could do no right. A.D. just didn’t want to be bothered with children. It wasn’t long before Dad had to come in and give us the talk. I could see in his eyes that he didn’t want to do it. He said Bo was going to have to go back to Argo. When I stalled long enough, Daddy came back for a second talk. He had found another place for Emmett and me to live. I admit that it was a little more crowded there for his wife with Bo and me. I imagine it was something of an intrusion for her. I just wish we hadn’t been made to feel that way. Still, I am grateful for the time we were able to spend with my father. He and I had a chance to have many wonderful conversations, and that made me feel that I could call on him again if I ever needed him, the way a daughter might need to call upon her father. While we never talked about what had come between us, I appreciate all that we did have a chance to say, and, of course, the message in between all the words we spoke.

Thanks to my father’s help, Emmett and I moved into another house with another family, the Harrises, an older woman, her husband, and another relative. They rolled out the welcome mat, and they gave me the front room for a bedroom, the best room in the house. And they fell in love with my boy. They just went crazy over Emmett. There were no children in the house and Mr. Harris practically adopted my son. He just took him away from me. On Saturdays they always had somewhere to go: the circus, the movies, a ball game, from early in the morning until late in the afternoon. Of course, that meant that Bo couldn’t do much for me. Not that there was much that he could do anyway, but he was starting to channel his energy, make a contribution around the house. For one thing, he was learning how to cook and that was a big help to me when I’d come home from a long day, bone tired. But there would be more surprises from this industrious little boy.

One day I came home from work and both women were sitting in the kitchen. It was like they were watching a performance. In a way, they were. I wound up joining them.

Bo was in the pantry working. The first day, when we’d moved in, Bo and I noticed immediately that the Harrises had a roach problem. It was a big problem. Bigger still because Bo just couldn’t take roaches. So he’d taken it upon himself to go out and buy some D-Con, the liquid kind you mop with a brush. Now he went into the pantry and, starting at the top shelf, he pulled everything down, washed the shelf, mopped it with the D-Con, and put newspaper on the shelf. That shelf belonged to Mrs. Harris, because she was tall. The next lady was about five-two or -three, so she got the middle shelf. Emmett cleared that one. As he cleared the shelves, he washed and organized everything that he took down. He put everything back on the middle shelf, and then he got to mine. I had the bottom shelf, because he was little and I’m barely five feet tall myself. He went through the same process there. When he finished with the pantry shelves, he got down on his knees and painted the kitchen and pantry baseboards with D-Con.

Then he wanted to clean the refrigerator. I don’t know how he knew this, but he had told Mrs. Harris that roaches would live in the back of your refrigerator. She just let him go for it. He cleaned back there, and then he wanted to clean the inside of the refrigerator. I held my breath. He took everything out, but thank God he didn’t put any D-Con in there. I exhaled. He just washed it and put everybody’s stuff back in it. Finally, he scrubbed the kitchen floor. It was such a big kitchen. But he did the whole thing.

When he finished, I stepped in. “Now you have to take a bath,” I told him.

He looked so pretty after he got cleaned up, with his cheeks all rosy from the scrubbing. I just wanted to keep looking at him, this very special child of mine. And I wanted to hold on to that moment, to cherish it.

As busy as I was with work and caring for Emmett, I did find a little time to socialize with my cousins Ruby and Juanita. Juanita was engaged and took me once to visit her fiancé, Alfonso. That’s where I met Alfonso’s next-door neighbor, Pink Bradley. Since Juanita was going over there all the time, and since I seemed to be hanging out with her whenever I could, I wound up running into Pink quite often. He seemed like the nicest person. A sturdy five-foot-ten, he towered over me. He was very dark and appeared to be a strong man, which is what I needed. And he had a good job. I knew that because Juanita had started whispering in my ear. He worked for Chrysler Corporation, a company that apparently was generous with overtime. I mean, those boys were working, making money like nobody’s business. That’s what she was telling me, or words to that effect. Meanwhile,
Alfonso was whispering in Pink’s ear. Basically, he told Pink not to let me get away.

We started seeing each other. He would take me out to dinner, to the movies, and we went to dances and house parties, where I’d walk around all night with the same scotch and soda. No refills for me. I hated the taste, but I liked the sophisticated look. We seemed to fit in together nicely. We went to Joe Louis’s Farm once. Pink seemed impressed by it all, but I couldn’t even pretend to be. It was smelly. And I didn’t like trying to ride the horse. It was sort of an amusement park, a big attraction there in Detroit and I knew he wanted to show me a good time, but it must have been obvious to him that I wasn’t having one. Now, they had good food, but because of the smell, I couldn’t really enjoy it.