Yes I Can: The Story of Sammy Davis, Jr. (93 page)

I hadn’t heard the nurse come in. She was holding out a surgical gown for me to change into. Pinned to it was a big, pink button which said, “It’s a Girl.”

May was smiling as she slept, as though she knew how much someone loved her. The nurse gestured for me to follow her again.

A man is not complete until he sees a baby he has made, and by the grace of God I stood there looking at mine, seeing her tiny face and hands, her whole delicate self.

I watched the nurse taking Tracey away until she was out of sight. I wasn’t ready to go downstairs and talk to people. I went into the waiting room and sat down near a window. I was comfortable in the belief that we were ready to help our child grow up, ready to impart everything we had learned the hard way, able to give her all the love and strength she might need—but I prayed that by the time our baby is grown she would not need all that strength, that she would live in a world of people who would not notice or care about a layer of skin. There were cracks in the wall, and they were widening, but will it happen fast enough? Are people willing to change? Are they willing yet to understand a child’s innocence?

I gazed out the window, grateful for the time in which I live, for the hope it contained, grateful for the talent I had been given and because of it the thought that perhaps I could have something to do with affecting the world so that some day my children, or maybe only my grandchildren, but some day somebody of mine would be able, finally, to stop fighting.

I knew that in the years to come we would hold our children’s hands, walk at their sides, guiding them, protecting them, preparing
them for the day when we would have to let go of their hands and watch them step forward to win their own medals, to make their own mistakes, to experience and become all the things which combine to make a person his final, total self. I knew that whatever world tomorrow might contain our children would face it, ready, standing within it, saying words that I myself have said: “Good, bad, or indifferent, here I stand with my convictions, right or wrong, like me or don’t—I exist, I breathe, I live, I love, I make mistakes, I do some good; I have troubles and joys but here I am, my code is my code and it is responsible for the bad things I do as it is responsible for the good.”

I walked out into the hall and looked for a nurse. “Can I see my wife again?”

“But she’s sleeping.”

“That’s all right. Please, just for one minute.”

I stood beside May’s bed. Her face was turned toward me. She was asleep, still smiling. I knelt down beside her and put my hand on hers, “Darling, I know you can’t hear me and I’ll tell you this again but I wanted to say now how much I love you and thank you for everything you’ve given me. I’m going to build something good and strong and wonderful for us, and I’ll never let you down. I promise.” I stood up and kissed her beautiful face and vowed I’d never let anything take away that smile. Whatever problems and pain there had been for me in the past, they were only the measure of the serenity and happiness I experienced at that moment as I looked at my wife and thought of our daughter and the life that had so miraculously brought me to them. If this is what I have come to, then there is nothing I am or have done that I would change. Perhaps all the successes and the failures, all that I did, were necessary for me and for those I love so that now, after thirty-five years, this is really only the beginning.