Death of Innocence : The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America (9781588363244) (11 page)

Pink also seemed to get along with Bo and he would do anything I asked him to do for Bo, running errands or taking him where he needed to go. But maybe I should have been paying closer attention. As I said, Pink did anything I asked him to do, but nothing he thought of on his own. He never took initiative with Emmett. Soon Emmett took himself out of the picture.

Despite the pleasant times I thought we were having, things were still unsettled and cramped. Bo just could not contain his restlessness, his boundless energy. He had not adjusted to his new life with me in Detroit. He was unhappy and, as a result, he wasn’t doing so well in school. Bo was aching to go back to Argo and he kept on me about letting him go live with Ma-Moo in Chicago. He knew his grandmother’s place would be the gateway to Argo. I couldn’t stand the thought of being apart from him. This was the first time I had been able to be around him without the whole family taking over. And things seemed to be moving in the right direction with my new job and all. But I didn’t think it would be fair to make him stay, especially as long as we still didn’t have a place of our own. When I talked to my mother about it, she agreed to have him come. But we had to figure out the rest of it. Her husband, Henry Spearman, would not go for it. Now, he liked Bo. He would stand up and fight for Bo, but he just didn’t want kids living in his house. So Mama worked it out with Aunt Marie and Uncle Kid—John Carthan—Daddy’s youngest brother. Perfect for Emmett. He’d have familiar relatives who would be responsible for his care and getting him back and forth to school. Best of all, Bo could be with all his friends in Argo and he would live right next door to where we used to live. He was happy to be with Aunt Marie and Uncle Kid, and I was content that he would be all right there until I could find a place for the two of us in Detroit.

Meanwhile, Pink was not letting up. He seemed so interested. I think I was at a stage in my life where I was vulnerable. I felt that I needed somebody I could depend on. It wasn’t easy trying to raise a boy and trying to work and trying to have a life. And I have to admit, I was so flattered by all the attention, and that somebody wanted me, that I was not over the hill. That meant a lot to me back then. Besides, I did want very much to be married. I thought I was supposed to have a husband, an anchor. We had only been seeing each other about three or four months when we married on May 5, 1951.

It had been an intense courtship and Pink had always been the nicest fellow. Until we got married.

Mama met Pink when she came to the wedding, and brought Emmett. She gave her blessing, and wasn’t critical of Pink. I think she told me one day that “If you love him and he loves you, that’s my only concern.” Now looking back, I think Mama could see through the marriage from the very beginning. She knew that we were not equally yoked. Bo stayed for a short while, then wanted to go back to Argo. I still believed I could make a place in Detroit that he would enjoy, especially now with two incomes.

Pink and I settled into a lovely new place in a nice area. The woman we were staying with was someone my family knew from Mississippi. So she was a stranger to me, but I wasn’t a stranger to her. The way her house was built, we could go up the stairs and into our living quarters and we had everything we needed,
except
the kitchen sink. We had to come downstairs to cook, but our new landlady was nice about the whole thing and I felt quite comfortable.

Then, almost as soon as we settled in, Pink got laid off. I thought he should be out looking for work, but all he did was wait for me to come home, where he’d greet me with “I’m hungry.” I wondered why “I’m” didn’t cook. I thought he should have had
my
food ready when I got home. We did have a—well, I guess you’d call it a
discussion
about that. He said he didn’t want to cook in somebody else’s kitchen. And all I ever heard was “I’m hungry.”

He was insistent. “If I tell you to get up at three o’clock in the morning and make me some biscuits, you should get that batter going.”

Really? I didn’t even make biscuits. Didn’t know the first thing about making a biscuit. I made yeast rolls. But that was beside the point. The point was that I did not have time for this foolishness and just kept brushing him off.

I had problems of my own. I was having a hard time getting back and forth to the Ft. Wayne Induction Center. I told my mother I needed a car. I had talked to her and she had sent me the down payment. I bought a gray
1947 Plymouth. That was the best car. They had reconditioned it and there was nothing wrong with it. It would go where you wanted it to go. Pink wasn’t accustomed to a car, so this was like instant riches for him. He was so excited about owning an automobile he just went berserk. When I told him that I was going to use the car to get back and forth to work, he had the nerve to get upset. He wanted to know what he was supposed to do all day. I couldn’t say. But I knew what I was going to do. I was going to drive that car. I was not about to wait on the corner for buses while he piled his friends into my car and drove out to that smelly Joe Louis’s Farm. I knew that much.

In one of our quieter times, I agreed to prepare a meal for Pink, some of his friends, my two cousins, and some more people I had met. Ten people altogether. Our landlady said it was okay. She was nice enough to leave the house so that I would feel relaxed about using her kitchen to cook for my guests. She suggested that I use the pressure cooker, which I did for my green beans. She gave me some quick instructions, but I was in such a hurry that I was only half paying attention. How hard could this be, anyway? I found out.

I’d never been exposed to a pressure cooker before in my life. I was getting this big dinner ready all by myself and I was angry because Pink was not there helping me. He was out somewhere wasting time again and expecting me to have everything ready. To tell the truth, I don’t even know why I was using a pressure cooker for green beans in the first place. But at one point, I took the little jiggler off the top of the pot. I think that’s what my landlady told me to do. Then I tried to lift the top off. But it wouldn’t move. That’s because it was still sealed by the steam, and since I had not been paying attention, I didn’t realize that until I started trying to pry the top off with a knife. I heard this hissing sound like a bomb about to explode. I didn’t know if air was going in or coming out, or what, but just at that moment, I remembered that I wasn’t supposed to lift the top until the steam went down. Too late. The top shot up and banged the ceiling so hard, it left a big dent. Beans flew all over the place, the ceiling, down my back, all over my arms. Oh, God, they were so hot. The place was a wreck, my dinner party was in ruins, and I was in pain. I just broke down in tears. And I felt so sick. I mean, I was so badly burned that even Pink realized he had to do something when he finally came in and looked at me.

He rushed me to the emergency room. I was in bad shape: bean burns on my back, on my arms, my face. I was “beaned” up. I have bean marks on my back to this day from that incident. At some point during the treatment, I told Pink that I didn’t know if I’d be able to make dinner. He
would not have that. We were there arguing in the emergency room about whether I should keep my obligation.

“Well, I don’t promise somebody something and don’t do it,” he said.

I just looked at him. What could I say to that? I mean, who did he care about, me or all those people? The hospital came up with the answer: I had to stay overnight. I don’t know whether Pink had that dinner or not. I don’t know whether people came or not. Maybe my cousin Ruby finished everything. Maybe they were able to pull it all together. The roast beef was done. The cornbread was in the oven. And the green beans, well, they were on the ceiling.

I ran back to Chicago every chance I got. Usually once a month, by train. Emmett never called. He was having a great time, so much fun with Wheeler, Uncle Emmett, Uncle Kid, all his friends. He was happy as a bug in a rug. I was eager to see him, and he seemed happy to see me when we’d visit. But his gang was waiting. He would spend some time, but he was always kind of eager to get out with his buddies. For me, it was such a precious time whenever I’d see him because I hadn’t seen him in a while. But it was becoming clear to me that he was drifting away. I had always thought he would rejoin me in Detroit once I got settled in, but it hadn’t worked out that way. And it didn’t seem to distress him that he was not with me. After all, he had his grandmother, his aunt and uncle, and his friends. All I had was a husband and a deep longing for my son. On top of that, I have to admit I was a little jealous. I talked it over with Mama, who urged me to take responsibility for Bo myself. With her telling me that, and when I saw Bo pulling away, I decided the quicker the better. Mama had sold the house in Argo, and used that money, along with some of my money, as a down payment on a two-flat building at 6427 South St. Lawrence in Chicago. Back in Detroit, I went in to my job and resigned right away. Didn’t hesitate. Didn’t waste any time. I had to pull up stakes.

I moved back to Chicago in November 1951. Pink came, too. Mama got him a job at Corn Products. We took the second-floor apartment in my mother’s building. Oh, I was so glad to see my baby again. I wondered how in the world I had let him be away from me as long as I had. How had I avoided losing my mind? I couldn’t hug him hard enough. I couldn’t wait to make up for the lost time. Pink was another matter. Bo and Pink got along. They got along fine. But they weren’t buddy-buddy. Pink never had time to talk like a father or participate in any of Emmett’s games or take him out. That was my job, my reward.

Even though I thought Pink felt at home with Bo and me in Chicago, apparently, that is not the way he felt at all. He kept going to Detroit, his real home. Every weekend he would take
my
car and all
his
money and he would go to Detroit. To see his mother. During the week, he really didn’t spend much time with Bo, or even with me, for that matter. He went to work, he came home—“I’m hungry”—he slept, and on the weekends he’d disappear. It was a reminder of what I didn’t want to remember. After all, I had just rebuilt my relationship with Daddy, who used to disappear on weekends. So, finally, I decided that maybe I should just go with Pink. To see his mother. When we got to Detroit, Pink’s best buddy was waiting for him. They went somewhere. I stayed with his mother. We became very good friends, his mother and I, since we spent so much time together that weekend. Oh, I don’t know, that marriage was a miracle. Which is not to say it was a good thing. What I mean is that it just seemed to happen, just appeared out of thin air, and seemed to continue for reasons no human could possibly explain.

I kept letting Pink come in and out of our lives, but that next Christmas season marked the end of the year 1952 and the end of us, really. He came in and got dressed one night. He grabbed a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label I kept around for holiday guests. He put the bottle in his inside coat pocket. Then he picked up the telephone and made a call. I could tell he was making plans with somebody to go somewhere, a party or something. It sounded like they were making a date. On my phone? I flew into a rage, grabbed the phone out of his hand, and learned that the person on the other end was “Margaret.”

I introduced myself to her. It was the polite thing to do. “I’m Pink’s wife.”

By the time Pink made it back to our place after he went wherever he was going with Margaret, he found the locks had been changed. And he found his clothes. They were on the front lawn. I had flung them out the second-floor window, every last stitch. As far as I was concerned, he had made his move and might as well just keep on moving. Helping him out was the least I could do.

I had gone to Detroit looking for a new world of possibilities, and wound up finding it just where I had left it. Back home. I have always been strengthened by my values and I place a great value on marriage and family. But now I know that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing for me to be married at all costs, just to conform, just to live up to some local community standard, to do what people thought I should do, to be what people thought I should be. I talked with some friends after Pink and I separated.
“Why did you let me do that?” I asked. They told me he seemed like a nice guy and he had a good job. But life is about more than that, and maybe it took a trip to Detroit for me to see it. Living in Argo had been good for me as a child, but leaving Argo was good for me as an adult. It was time for me to burst out of my cocoon, to emerge and strike out on my own, discover the things about myself I might not have known had I stayed in that sheltered environment. I would always value marriage, but not at the expense of my values. Some things should never be sacrificed. Nothing is more important than being true to yourself. Besides, what good is a no-good man?

 F
or the first time, Emmett and I were on our own together. We were closer than we ever had been, looking out for each other, taking care of each other, having fun together. Unfortunately, we still were one emotional step away from ridding ourselves of Pink Bradley.

Not long after I had “evicted” Pink, he stopped by. Now, we were separated, and I can’t say what made me do it, but I let him in. Emmett was sick, some flu bug. When Pink found out, he said he wanted to see Bo. I don’t know why. He never really had been much of a father figure when he’d had the chance. As it turns out, before he even got to Bo’s room, he started talking some stupid talk about what he ought to do to me. I just remember he had a very threatening tone. It’s funny, and sad, how women nurture men, only to have them turn on us like that. Even so, I figured I could handle it. I mean, I had handled Pink before. So I told him I wanted him to go, and thought I could make him leave. But no sooner had I said this than I noticed Bo standing there in the doorway. He had gotten out of his sickbed in his long underwear and had come to see what the fuss was all about. That was my first concern, just seeing him standing there, knowing how sick he was. But that wasn’t the part that startled me. It seems that Emmett had taken time to stop in the kitchen on his way in. At his side, he was holding a knife, a butcher’s knife.