Just as I Am: A Memoir Read online

  The Depression was just one of a series of devastations Black people endured during the thirties. In 1931, long before the innocent Central Park Five were deprived of justice, the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black teenagers, were falsely accused in Alabama of raping two white women on a train. In a case of blatant racial bias, an all-white jury convicted the boys and sentenced eight of them to death. The following year, the US government sanctioned the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, a forty-year-long health assault on our community. Biomedical research doctors recruited impoverished Black men with the promise of free medical care. These physicians claimed to be treating the men for so-called bad blood, but in fact, they were using Blacks as guinea pigs to study the long-term effects of syphilis. Scores of our men, knowingly left untreated with syphilis long after penicillin had been discovered as a cure, suffered blindness and death.

  The attack on our humanity continued in 1934. That year, the Federal Housing Administration established redlining, a set of racially discriminatory real estate and bank-lending practices that barred Blacks from purchasing homes in white neighborhoods—and thus set the stage for the wealth disparity between Black and white households that remains to this day. Home and land ownership are the primary means by which Americans have historically amassed wealth, and when Blacks were locked out of bank loans and segregated into slums, we were robbed of the potential to build fortunes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal brought a measure of relief for poor Blacks, but some of its policies, such as redlining, made the New Deal a raw one for us.

  It’s no wonder that many African Americans carry a lingering distrust of whites, even those we sincerely love and embrace. Given the horrors of our abuse in this nation, we are understandably wary. To ever heal these deep racial traumas—and seldom has it felt more urgent that we do—we must acknowledge that they indeed still exist, throbbing and tender beneath the surface, spilling over, like molten rage, into the streets. As difficult as it is to recall this country’s atrocities, it is essential that every American of every color does. It is critical that we connect that centuries-long ugly history with, in our times now, a cop’s knee on George Floyd’s neck and bullets riddling Breonna Taylor’s body. The line from our nation’s original sin to its present heartache is not faint and dotted; it is solid and direct. And even when the impulse arises to cringe and look away from a system predicated on Black oppression, a system that is still doing precisely what it was designed to do, we must stare into the face of our past and examine what happened here, on our soil, much of it less than a lifetime ago, a lot of it happening now. Turning a blind eye to our history has not saved us from its consequences.

  My early years played out during these two wildly different decades—the first a cultural resurrection and the next a painful reckoning. In 1939 during the last days of the Depression, Billie Holiday stepped bravely up to a microphone at Café Society in New York’s Greenwich Village and sang, for the first time, “Strange Fruit,” a lyrical protest anthem:

  Southern trees bear a strange fruit

  Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

  Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze

  Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees.

  A bitter crop, battered and dropping. The bruised and bloodstained carcass of the Other America.

  * * *

  The nation’s shifting times paralleled a spirit of change in our house. After my family fell apart, the basic rhythm of our existence returned, but it swayed to a more sorrowful tempo. Melancholy hung in the air, hovered over our soup bowls at dinner, settled into the cracks of our wood floor. When my mother and father weren’t arguing, they didn’t talk much. Dad was around a lot, often stopping by our apartment two or three afternoons a week. When he was there, he and Mom looked past one another, mostly remaining cordial and always maintaining an emotional distance. Much as I wished my family had remained intact, I was relieved to have the late-night battles in our rearview mirror. Alongside our gloom lived an uneasy peace for which we’d all paid dearly.

  Mom thought Dad would eventually move in with the Other Woman. He didn’t. The two continued their relationship for several months after my parents split, but they ultimately ended things. It perplexes me that, given the freedom to do as he pleased, my father chose not to be with that woman. I’ve often wondered whether she regretted her affair with my father given that, in the end, he did not stay with her. Perhaps Dad never truly wanted to build a new life with someone but rather craved pursuing the forbidden.

  Mom did not file for divorce. In that era, West Indians weren’t too into the whole divorce business. Some would live separately for fifty years and still say “my husband” this and “my wife” that. For one thing, many couldn’t afford the legal fees. And in my mother’s case, all she’d wanted was to get her children out of the way of a man who’d suddenly gone berserk. But years later when I was in my teens, my Aunt Zora, Dad’s sister, said to me, “The day your mother opens her bank vault is the day she’ll get a big surprise.” Following their split, my parents continued to share a safe deposit box. My aunt had reason to believe that my father had assembled divorce papers, and rather than having them served on my mother, he put them there for her to find. Mom heard the same story from my aunt but didn’t believe it. I have no idea whether my mom ever saw those papers, or if they even existed. My dad did marry another woman around 1940, but perhaps he did so illegally, without ever officially severing his first marital ties.

  After my parents parted ways, Mom took Dad to court for striking her. I was with my father one afternoon when he went to city hall to review some papers Mom had submitted. Before we boarded the train, we stopped at a five-and-dime store. My eyes fell on a gorgeous cameo pin. Dad, noting my desire, said to me, “Do you want that pin?” I nodded yes. He purchased it, in part because he relished delighting me, and probably also because he wanted to show the judge what a wonderful father he was. He fastened the pin on my collar as I beamed. On the way out, he bought me a ring with three faux rubies, one so popular then that practically every little white girl had one. As we walked up the stairs to the train, he took my hand and escorted me, as if I were ascending the stairs to my castle. Later, in court, I glided in as the prima donna I felt like.

  Despite how much taller I’d grown, I was still my father’s little String Bean, his first girl. He constantly bought me small gifts—bracelets, trinkets, toys. When I’d return home and show Mom my bounty, she’d muster a half-smile. Then later if she got angry with me, she’d spew her resentment: “This man who thinks so much of you, when I was going to the hospital to give birth to you, he had something else to do. And you’re supposed to be his favorite.” She often threw that one in my face.

  I realize now that Mom’s rage had little to do with my dad’s tenderness toward me and everything to do with how deeply he’d hurt her. Still, my mother’s words blistered me as much as her beatings always had. Once Dad left, she didn’t whip us as frequently, mostly because she didn’t have the energy. After all of her many work shifts, she’d lumber through our door too exhausted to do much beyond prepare our dinner. My father contributed what money he could, but my mother bore the lion’s share of the financial responsibility. Dad would often complain about how gnarly his fingertips had become from painting WPA war posters around town, another job he took on. Never once did Mom breathe a complaint about her duties. With sealed lips and persevering hands, she just got up every day and did what she had to do.

  The year my parents separated is the year my brother, then eleven, began running away from home. Mom often said that Melrose, like me, was born restless, led by a spirit that called to him. He’d sometimes be gone for days at a time, long enough to frighten the hair off my mother’s head. She’d walk the streets searching for her firstborn, her Heart String. She’d find him sitting out on a bench, staring off as if something in the distance had captured his attention. “Where you been all this time?” my mother would ask him as she led him
home. He’d shrug and continue gazing. “And what did you eat?” she’d prod. He once mentioned that a kind man in our neighborhood would often spot him outdoors and then return to hand him a cup of milk. For years into his adulthood, Melrose wouldn’t touch milk, probably because he associated it with those distressing times. He was a troubled child, my brother. We each had our way of handling the misery of our situation, and Melrose drifted out into the streets even as he drew inward.

  Emily dealt with our new reality by blaming my mother. My sister, though seldom one to withhold her opinions, said little to me then about our family’s tearful transition. But years later when we were grown, she revealed that she’d mostly held our mother accountable. She and Melrose had slept through much of the conflict I’d witnessed. What Emily did see had been enough to unnerve her. And yet, however poisonous our family dynamic was, she still desperately wanted our father there with us, at the center of it. She faulted my mother for walking away, not understanding that my father had long since made an emotional departure. In retrospect, I understand Emily’s assessment not as an indictment of my mother, but as a way to cope with her own anguish. When your heart has been sliced wide open, you tend to haphazardly hurl rocks in every direction. You want someone, anyone, to ache and bleed as badly as you have. You cast stones and aspersions the way we children once did at the Other Woman.

  After my mother left my father, we moved to a different church. Mom wanted a fresh start away from the public disgrace. She couldn’t stand the idea of my father’s infidelity following her through the pews of St. John’s as her fellow parishioners traded whispers and knowing glances. My mother called Ms. Weeks, a dear friend she’d grown up with. “What church do you attend in Harlem?” she asked her. Ms. Weeks welcomed us to join her congregation, St. Andrew’s Episcopal. In practice, Reverend Byron would still serve as our spiritual shepherd, as the friend and reverend Mom could call upon if any of us so much as sneezed. But our new church became St. Andrew’s, then still a small parish, but now one that stands as a stunning neo-Gothic sanctuary near 127th Street and Fifth Avenue. Though the congregation was predominantly West Indian, the minister, whose name I cannot recall, was white. The Episcopal Diocese of New York had appointed him to that parish, and the church is now a city landmark.

  As we settled into our second church home, we were just as involved as we’d been at the first one. Mom attempted to groom Emily as a pianist, hoping she might one day play in church. She also wanted to imbue all of us with some culture, as well as keep our minds and hands productively occupied. After purchasing beds for us, the next thing Mom bought was a ramshackle upright piano, which we scooted against a wall in our living room. Mom bought it from a Black lady from the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson, who gave Emily lessons at twenty-five cents per session. But Emily didn’t take to the keyboard. “I want to play the violin,” she told my mother, backing up to evade the dotted eye she knew was coming. “When you get old enough to go to work and can buy a violin,” my mother retorted, “then you can get one yourself.” Since my brother had no interest in the piano (he would pick up any items he could find and turn them into drumsticks . . . I tell you, if my mother hadn’t steered him away from what she thought was too worldly of an artistic passion, Melrose might’ve been a great drummer), I was the last remaining potential pianist in the house. After Emily quit within weeks of her first lesson, I began my lessons with Mrs. Wilson when I was ten. At twelve, I could play every hymn in our church hymnal. At fifteen, I was accompanying both our congregation and the choir. I had such a knack for it that I also taught myself how to play the organ.

  The piano provided me with the consolation I needed to at last give up my thumb. One day when I was around twelve, I stuck it in my mouth, pulled it out again, and stared at it for the longest time. Wait a minute, I thought. What happened to you? . . . You don’t taste so good anymore. From then on, the piano served the purpose that my thumb always had: it became my solace. During long afternoons as the sun’s mango rays painted shadows on our walls, I’d sit hunched over those chipped keys, soothing myself with the message of the hymn that has become my daily meditation:

  Just as I am, without one plea

  But that Thy blood was shed for me

  And that Thou bid’st me come to Thee

  O Lamb of God, I come! I come.

  In a home and family uprooted, that song became my safe haven, my grace note. There, in the measures of that musical prayer, I find comfort still.

  6

  Unspoken

  PARENTS lie to their children. They misrepresent their painful truths and their personal histories. Concealing is the human way of pretending that we are who we imagine ourselves to be in the fairy tales we invent, that our lives have unfolded as we wish they would have rather than as they so wrenchingly did. My mother’s falsehoods were not outright fabrications but lies of omission. She spoke little and withheld much, a restraint every bit as damaging as a barefaced falsehood. Her silence cost us both.

  My first menstrual period arrived the same way most things did in the Tyson household—without much mention. It also arrived quite early—when I was just nine years old. In those years, Mom had her way of keeping us entertained when school and the sun were both out. On summer weekends, she’d often take us on the El from our place on the East Side all the way down to Battery Park. I lived for those rides. I’d poke my head out the train window to watch the world whiz by, savoring the breeze on my cheeks, gazing into the high-rise windows, and wondering about the families I spotted. Parks, museums, zoos: Mom shuttled us all over the city and the tri-state area. One Sunday afternoon, the four of us even enjoyed an annual boat excursion, organized by our church, out at Keansburg Beach in New Jersey.

  Early the next morning, Mom awakened me. “Go to the bathroom and wipe yourself,” she said. I sleepily rubbed my eyes as she held up a square cotton rag and two long strings, each with a large safety pin attached to its end. “Put this on,” she said. “Where?” I asked. She motioned for me to tie the strings around my waist and pin them onto the rag. Moments later in the bathroom, when I stared down at my scarlet-soaked underpants, I was sure I was dying. I don’t know how Mom even knew I’d started my period; she’d probably dreamed about it or sensed it. I’d once overheard my sister mention something about menstruation and bleeding, and though I was older than Emily and should have known more than she, I wasn’t at all clear what was involved. Nowadays, I cringe and shake my head in disbelief when I recall just how ill-informed I was. Maybe this is it, I thought as I wrestled with the strings and positioned the rag between my thighs. When I emerged from the bathroom, walking like a zombie, Mom was standing there with her uniform on and her pocketbook in hand, ready for work. “Stay away from the boys,” she told me. “I will talk to you when I come back.” She hasn’t gotten back to me yet. In the following months, when my flow kept returning for a curtain call, I eventually figured out the whole period business on my own.

  A few years later, my breasts joined the puberty party. The budding chest I’d had at nine was in full bloom by my twelfth birthday. That year, Mom had moved us from our place on Ninety-Eighth to 178 East 101st Street, into a two-bedroom railroad apartment near my school, Margaret Knox Junior High. One afternoon when I was playing in front of our building, procrastinating on practicing the piano, I saw my father approaching from down the street. I sprinted up a hill to meet him, and as I ran, my boobs bounced downward and upward, jiggling and screaming for support. After Dad and I embraced, he turned to me with a serious expression and said, “Go upstairs and tell your mom to put a bra on you.”

  I stared at him and then down at my sandals, mortified that Dad had noticed that my boobs needed harnessing. I didn’t mention his observation to Mom, but he must have said something to her, because soon after, she arrived home from Alexander’s holding an acknowledgment of my adolescence. “Put this on” is all she said as she handed me a white B-cup corset. I don’t know why my mother hadn’t purchased a bra for
me before then, or whether she’d planned to talk to me about this mysterious corridor I’d entered. My guess is she was too embarrassed to speak about it. Also, discussing my changing body would’ve meant reckoning with the inevitable: her firstborn girl, the once-sickly child she’d for so long kept close, had grown out of her arms and into a new season.

  We did not talk about periods or breasts. We did not talk about sex. We did not, in fact, talk about much of anything regarding adolescence. The little I knew I learned from Emily or from my friends. That left me struggling to cobble together the truth, the whole time running for the hills whenever a boy came near me. What will happen if he touches me? Why did Mom tell me to steer clear? I got one clue from Fannie Lou, a neighbor a few years older than me. One afternoon when a pregnant woman walked past us, Fannie Lou nodded toward her and then looked back at me. “You know where babies come from, don’t you?” she asked. I nodded, not prepared to admit my ignorance. “Well a baby is going to come out of that woman’s stomach, from where you go pee-pee,” she said. I gazed at her in horror, trying to make sense of what she’d revealed. A baby is coming out from between that lady’s legs, I said to myself, but how did the baby get in there? No clue. And no mother willing to sit me down and explain.

  Dating came late in our house, and it’s a miracle it arrived at all. My mother was wary of strangers. Only family could be trusted, she reasoned. “If anything ever happens to me,” she’d often say in the years after she and my father split, “I know I can rely on those two men to look after my children.” The men she referenced were a couple of my father’s cousins whom he’d grown up with in Nevis. I was around fourteen when my mother discovered her faith had been grievously misplaced.

  One evening when brimstone spilled over between Mom and me about God knows what, I blurted out a secret I’d been too fearful up to then to expose: one of those men had put his hands on me when I was eleven. During a moment when Mom had turned her attention toward supper, he’d brushed his palm along the backside of my dress, robbing me of a sense of safety just as that white man on the street once had. Upon hearing my revelation, Mom hadn’t yet picked up her jaw before Emily exclaimed, “And me too!” Until then, I hadn’t known my sister had been touched. As outgoing as Emily was, she and I shared remarkably little about our interior worlds in those years, adopting the same code of silence our mother lived by. Mom’s eyes filled with horror and she disappeared into her bedroom. She never mentioned our disclosure. I’ve often wondered whether she privately confronted that cousin, because after that day, we rarely saw him. From then on, she became so adamant about protecting us that she wouldn’t even entertain male friends. She couldn’t take the chance that another man would mess with her girls.