A Song Flung Up to Heaven Read online

Lighting: a hundred Watts

  Detroit, Newark and New York

  Screeching nerves, exploding minds

  lives tied to

  a policeman’s whistle

  a welfare worker’s doorbell

  finger

  Spirit walked with me on my second visit to the exploding section of Watts. I became invisible in the black community. I had to stop and stand still when I realized that no one seemed to see me. When I had visited Watts on the first day of my new job, no one spoke to me or commented on my presence, but I was seen. This time I could have been in a white neighborhood. When a black person appears in a white part of town, there is a moment of alarm, but if the black doesn’t appear threatening, he is erased from the white mind immediately.

  In the black community, a black person is always given her humanity.

  On this visit to Watts, the responses were different. Neither the looters, the police, the spectators nor the National Guard took notice of me. A group of young men was bouncing a car filled with white passengers whose faces looked like Halloween masks through the car windows. Terror bulged from their eyes, and if the windows had been open, I would have heard the screams pouring out of their wide, gaping mouths.

  A phalanx of police slipped by me and were upon the rioters quickly and quietly. The officers began handcuffing the offenders, and I turned my attention to the now settled car. Its inhabitants were exchanging smiles that I didn’t read as smiles of relief, but rather of satisfaction. They had come to Watts to get a thrill, and hadn’t they done just that?

  The newly arrested men were marched close enough for me to touch them, but neither they nor the police regarded me.

  I came upon some people who were sauntering down the main street, casually taking in the sights. They were so at ease in that uneasy time and place that it was obvious they lived in the neighborhood. Their concentration was on the stores and the burned-out shells of buildings, so they didn’t see me.

  The havoc now had areas of calm, and either I brought serenity with me or it found me wherever I was. I watched as people sifted through debris. Each whole cup or unbroken plate was treated as a treasure. A woman smiled with pleasure when she found a matched pair of shoes. A man passed me carrying a pair of well-worn pants and grinning.

  On the first day of insurgency, people of all ages allowed their rage to drive them to the streets. But on the fourth day, the anger of the older citizens was spent. I read sadness and even futility on their faces. But I saw no one attempt to dissuade the younger rioters from their hurly- burly behavior.

  People in front of and behind me were taken to jail, and I was ignored. Admittedly, I didn’t curse or shout at the law enforcers, nor did I carry anything that even faintly resembled loot, but that had not influenced the police earlier. People on their way to or from work had been apprehended.

  The night before, I had remembered one of my mother’s statements: “Nothing’s wrong with going to jail for something you believe in. Remember, jail was made for people. Not horses.” That is when I had decided I would return to Watts ready to be arrested.

  Three police vans were filled and driven away as I stood on the corner of 125th and Vermont. I headed back to my car with an equal mixture of disappointment and relief.

  The upheaval continued in volume and drama for five days, and although the violence waned, the frustration was as pervasive as ever. Politicians and community representatives met and held press conferences. Viewers were told that a plan for Watts was being hammered out.

  The ash had not yet settled on every car and windowsill before the streets were filled with tourists who came to look at Watts. Journalists from France, England and the Soviet Union were shown on television interviewing people in Watts. They asked any question that came to mind: “Why did Watts burn?” “Why did you burn your own neighborhood?” “Isn’t America supposed to be the melting pot?” “Were you trying to get the heat up to melting temperature?”

  The people answered with anything that came to their minds.

  “It burned down before I noticed.”

  “I didn’t have a job, so I burned down Watts.”

  “I didn’t have anything else to do, so I burned a store.”

  The journalists were being treated with the old-as-slavery response: “If a white man asks where you’re going, you tell him where you’ve been.”

  A white man asks, “Where are you going, boy?” Your response should be, with much head scratching and some shuffling, “You know, boss, I was down that street over there by that big old tree, you know, and I saw something ’twas hard to look upon...”

  “I didn’t ask where you were, I asked where are you going.”

  “Yes sir, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. If you had seen what I’ve seen...I don’t...if they’re...couldn’t have been a half a mile away. I had to get out of there, or I don’t know what would have happened.”

  The white man would usually respond, “Oh, you’re a fool. I’m not going to waste any more time on you.” The white man walks away, and the black man is pleased that no secrets were revealed or any lies told.

  But talking drums of the black community carried the message loud and clear. The rebellion reached some important ears, and things were going to change. Community spokespersons said what was needed most was a medical clinic so that sick people didn’t have to travel two or three hours just to see a doctor.

  The unemployed wanted jobs, the underemployed wanted better jobs.

  Who would answer all the questions, fulfill all the requests? Would anyone? Could anyone? History had taught the citizens of Watts to hope for the best and expect nothing, but be prepared for the worst.

  A shaft of sunlight penetrated the gloom of cynicism when Budd Schulberg, an award-winning writer, went to Watts and founded the Watts Writers Workshop. People who didn’t know his name would bless him forevermore.

  “He’s a Hollywood writer, you say?”

  “And he’s coming to Watts?”

  “Here’s one white man who’s putting his body where his mouth is. I like that. I sure do.”

  Some women, mostly white, largely the wives of film moguls, banded together to form an organization, Neighbors of Watts. They went to the area to ask the women how they could be of help.

  Mrs. Violetta Robinson, often called the Mother of Watts, told them what the women of Watts needed—an accredited, well-funded child-care center so that they could leave their children and go to work with clear minds. Something of slavery lurked in the shadows of that request. Slave mothers, up before sunrise and sleeping after dark, went to the canebrakes and cotton fields with minds less clouded with concern because they knew a woman, Aunt Susie, Aunty Mae, Aunt Carrie, would be looking after all the children. They took satisfaction in the fact that “Aunt Susie loves children.” The children “just love Aunty Mae.” “Aunt Carrie won’t stand for no foolishness from the children, but she would feed them herself. She won’t let them eat from a trough like hogs as some did on other plantations.” Sometimes the children’s plates were corn husks or cabbage leaves; still, each child ate with clean fingers and from a clean surface.

  One hundred and fifty years later, black women still needed that same assurance.

  My landlady, who knew everything, said the Neighbors of Watts were going to provide a child-care center. She also said a medical institute was going to be built in Watts, and that it would be named for Charles Drew, a great African-American doctor who developed a technique to separate out plasma from whole blood.

  A French journalist telephoned me and said James Baldwin had given him my name and number. I agreed to an interview. He sat, contained, on my studio bed-cum-sofa.

  “We French, we have never, never, never had slavery, so we feel we don’t understand the American racism.”

  Maybe it was that third “never” that made me pick him up and dust him off.

  “What did you call Haiti? A resort?”

  Suddenly his English failed him. “Haiti?
Est-ce que tu a dit Haiti?”

  I said, “Oui.”

  He said, “I meant in France. Nous have jamais had esclavage on the land of France.”

  I said, “You were the rulers of Haiti and Martinique—and Guadeloupe. None of the Africans went there on the Ile de France. They were taken there on slave ships.”

  He said he was beginning to understand the rage a little. If people like me were so angry, how much angrier were those who had less than I?

  I looked at the man, his beret, his neat little dancing hands, and looked at my studio apartment with its furniture from Goodwill and its prints from Woolworth’s. I had less than many others I knew, but if he thought I was well-off, then nothing I could say would help him understand Watts. If he had visited the area one day before it exploded, if he had gone to the right bar or pool hall or community center, he could have met someone who heard his accent and, realizing he was a stranger, might have invited him home.

  He could have been sitting in a well-furnished house dining on great chicken and greens, receiving all the kindnesses. Then he really would have been befuddled if, on the following day, he heard of the conflagration and had seen his host of the day before struggling with the heavily armed police.

  But I could not needle him. He was not going to comprehend the anger and disappointment in Watts, and further provoking him was not going to make me feel better. Like many of my ancestors, I settled back to tell him some of what he wanted to hear and some of what I wanted to say.

  Surely he returned to Paris with some truth and some fiction. Surely he wrote an account of the Watts riot allowing his readers to hold on to the stereotypes that made them comfortable while congratulating themselves on being in possession of some news.

  Ten

  Frank Silvera was exactly what is meant in South America by the word mestizo. His ancestors were African and Spanish, and he was a light-skinned black man who could play a Mexican father to Marlon Brando’s Zapata. A black man who could play an Italian father to Ben Gazzara in A Hatful of Rain on Broadway. A black man who could play the title role of Shakespeare’s King Lear.

  Silvera had a theater company in Los Angeles that he named the Theatre of Being or, as the member actors called it, Tee Oh Bee. Beah Richards, my next-door neighbor, was the star of the company, with Vantile Whitfield and Dick Anthony Jones as resident leading men.

  Beah, with her success on and off Broadway and particularly in James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner, was a legend in the African-American community. At the time I met her, she was often called our greatest stage actress, vying only with Ruby Dee for that honor.

  Frank decided to stage Medea at his Theatre of Being. Naturally, Beah would take the title role. And just as naturally, she would take it beyond all real or imagined limits. When Frank announced the project, Beah and I and a few friends celebrated. In the middle of that evening’s festivities, problems were mentioned. Beah didn’t drive. I offered to take her to the theater each day, and she said she would pay for the gas.

  The role of the nurse had not been filled. I joined the line of actors auditioning, and, using a Langston Hughes poem and a Shakespearean sonnet, I was given the role of the nurse.

  I knew I was adequate, but I was never sure if Frank hired me because of my talent or to ensure that Beah had a way to get to the theater.

  Frank and Beah shared a profound mutual admiration. She would speak, and he would either laugh uproariously or stroke his chin and pace the floor, lost in a deep brown study.

  Rehearsals further increased my insecurity. I would stand backstage as Frank consistently positioned Beah center stage under the bright beams. Of course she was the star, but the role of the nurse was not irrelevant, and he never called on me. I began to smart in the shadows. I went to a bookstore and bought Euripides’ version of Medea, as well as every book I could find about Medea, Jason, the Argo and the Golden Fleece.

  There was a neighborhood bar next to the theater. I informed the stage manager that I could be found in the bar whenever I was wanted. Each day I would drop Beah off, greet folks in the theater, then go to sit at a table in the dimly lit bar. I worked out who the nurse was and why she was so loyal to Medea.

  In my created version of the play’s history, Nurse had been the midwife at Medea’s birth. Nurse had a baby just after Medea was born, but Nurse’s baby died. Medea’s mother, not wanting the bother, persuaded Nurse to become a nurse cow and give to Medea the dead child’s milk.

  In the bar, I built my character, her whims and her whimsy. I decided early on that Nurse thought of Medea as her own daughter and doted on the girl. As Medea grew into womanhood, Nurse cherished her, idolized her and followed her everywhere, walking as precisely as possible in her footsteps. When Medea married Jason, Nurse attended the ceremony. When Medea stole the fleece of pure gold from her father, the king, because Jason asked her to do so, Nurse helped her. Nurse later escaped the king’s rage by joining Medea on the Argonauts’ ship, the Argo. Nurse was crippled by arthritis because she often slept on the ground. She didn’t mind the discomfort as long as she was near Medea. She had grown old and dotty in service to Medea, who took Nurse’s worship as her due. Maddened by rage at Jason’s growing coldness toward her, Medea killed their two sons. Nurse knew of the murders but gave Medea no rebuke, saying, “She did what any woman would have done if provoked.”

  I began taking license with the simply told story of passion and horror. Since I was not directed, I had to create situations that would explain why the character I was playing could condone even the most base actions of Medea. I did not propose to comprehend Medea’s mind, or how love and idolatry could lead to theft and murder, but I did find that Nurse had a fair voice, and singing was the only pleasure she had that didn’t stem from Medea.

  I got some stage gray hair and ghoulish makeup, and a week before opening, when I was invited to join rehearsal, I brought the gray-haired, limping, singing nurse onto the stage. Beah and Frank were amazed, and neither was too pleased, but we were too close to opening for Frank to redirect me.

  The play opened to baffling reviews. Some critics loved it, while others loathed it. Some thought it modern and wonderfully acted, and some thought it stagey and mannered. All lauded Beah Richards, and a few had kind words for the elderly actress whom no one knew but who played the nurse so well.

  Eleven

  Sid’s Café and Bar was a popular hangout for people from New Orleans. The owner, Jase, and his wife, Marguerite, were highly respected cooks of Louisiana food, and the bar was always filled with bright laughter and loud talk. Jase and Marguarite liked and welcomed me, so Sid’s became my base.

  One evening a group of four in the red booth at the front of the café were particularly interesting. The two women were as loud and fierce as the men, yet no one used profanity. They saw me watching, and one man beckoned me over.

  “Hey, are you alone?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “Well, join us.”

  “Yes, come on.” I sat. “Are you from New Orleans?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we are. Where did you run away from?”

  “I came here from Hawaii, and before that, San Francisco, and before that, Ghana in West Africa.”

  “Hey, all right. You will fit right in with me. I am one crazy lying nigger, too. My name is Phil. What’s yours?”

  “My name is Maya, and I am neither a nigger nor a liar.”

  One woman said, “That’s right. Speak up for yourself. This fool calls himself a nigger, and he’d put his fist through the face of the first white man using that word.”

  “I can say it ’cause I am me. I don’t mean any harm.”

  I said, “But you’re calling yourself a despicable word, and surely you are not despicable.”

  Phil said, “I believe you were in Hawaii and Africa. You sound a little like a teacher I had in Baton Rouge.”

  I said, “I thought you were from New Orleans.”

  Phil said, “Told you I
was a lying nigger. I can be ornery, too.”

  I said, “Maybe I’d better go back to my table.”

  Everyone spoke at once.

  “No. Stay with us.”

  “Tell us about Africa.”

  “No, I want to hear about Hawaii.”

  “Don’t mind Phil. He really doesn’t mean any harm, and we do laugh a lot.”

  I enjoyed the group’s company, and after I had been around them a few weeks, Phil used the racial slur less. When he did slip, he would pop out his eyes and look straight at me.

  One morning they came to my house. I offered them Mogen David and Mateus wine. We sat around the kitchen table drinking and telling stories.

  Phil suggested that we go for a ride. We agreed, although we were all too old to be joyriding, since the youngest of us had to be at least thirty.

  There were no dissenters. We all piled into Phil’s run-down car and said things like:

  “Home, James, and don’t spare the horses.”

  “Driver, follow that cab.”

  “There’s a tenner in it for you if you keep him in sight.”

  We were in high spirits as we crossed railroad tracks and heard a train whistle blow. We began to imitate the sound. After a second, Phil backed up until our car sat on the tracks. He turned off the motor.

  I couldn’t see the train, but judging by the sound of the whistle, it was just around a curve in the tracks.

  I shouted, “Move the car. Move the damn car.” I was sitting in the backseat. Phil turned his head to look at me and grinned.

  I pushed on the back of the front passenger seat, but the woman in it had gone to sleep. Another voice joined mine as the train rounded into view. “Move, man, what the hell?” I had begun to scream. “You are going to get us killed.”

  The motor turned over, and the car slid off the tracks seconds before the train sped behind us.

  The two passengers in the backseat with me cursed Phil roundly, but I couldn’t speak. I had been frightened mute again, just like twenty-five years earlier, when I had been so terrorized that I had chosen to become mute.