A Kind of Grace (6 page)

Al didn't like school and was frequently suspended for fighting in elementary and junior high school. My father whipped him with an extension cord every time it happened, but Al's behavior didn't change. Those mornings before school were sometimes the only time my sisters and I saw Al until the evening, just before Momma got off work. We were all supposed to come directly home after school, but with no one at home to enforce the rule, Al never did.

Before long, my brother was skating on thin ice with Momma and Daddy. He was caught behind the wheel of a friend's car, driving without a license. The police officer who stopped him knew Daddy, so he let Al go without a ticket. But when Daddy found out, he grabbed the extension cord, stormed down to Al's room and closed the door. All we heard was the sound of repeated lashings.

Al was following a group of boys who were older and more streetwise than he was. They enjoyed throwing rocks at the windows of passing cars. One day while Al and my mother were at a relative's house, someone spotted his buddies breaking more car windows and called the cops. The police combed the neighborhood, rounding up them all. That close brush with an arrest and the thought of what Daddy would do to him scared Al. He never went near that gang again.

I, on the other hand, loved school and hated to miss a day. But in the fifth grade, I was having trouble with arithmetic. I just couldn't figure out long division. Unfortunately, the students who performed poorly on tests got whippings with a ruler, and I became Victim No. 1. It got so bad, I dreaded going to school.

I went to my mother in tears one morning and told her I didn't want to go. She knew something was wrong. When she saw the bruises on my leg, she walked to school with me. She met with the teacher and demanded that he stop the whippings. With the pressure off, I relaxed and was able to concentrate. I sweated over my math homework every night for several more days, reviewing the examples in the book over and over again, trying to decode the process. Finally one night, it all clicked. I had mastered long division. I called Momma at work to tell her. She was as excited as I was. My self-esteem soared.

Growing up, I could always count on Momma to be my champion. Her constant encouragement formed my deep well of inspiration. I wanted to prove to her and everyone else that I had the ability to excel. I have approached every endeavor since then—athletic and otherwise—with that same sense of purpose.

After school and on weekends, I spent hours playing in our front yard with my sisters, cousins Gerald and Sherrell, and the youngsters from the Cole family who lived next door: Kim, Felicia, Michelle, Phyllis, Renee, Keith and Craig. We made up games that reflected our yearning for the things we didn't have.

One of my favorites was called “first star.” At dusk, we stood in the yard and twirled around with our heads back and noses pointed at the sky, searching for the evening's first star. The person who spotted it got to make a wish and, we told each other with conviction, it was guaranteed to come true. I always wished for a big house and good food to eat.

During the day, after a round of tag or a race around the block, we rested on the porch, fantasizing that the passing cars were ours. By then, our family car was an old jalopy that didn't always run. The other kids knew a lot about cars and could spot the various makes and models from a distance. But, when it was my turn, it didn't matter to me what kind of vehicle came by, as long as it was new, shiny and running.

Every Fourth of July evening, Al, Debra, Angie, the Coles and I took turns climbing the oak tree in our front yard to stare west and watch the fireworks exploding above the St. Louis Arch. The edifice was called “the Gateway to the West.” Glimmering against the backdrop of those sparkling bursts of red, green, blue and silver, the Arch to me was a gateway to the whole world, a bright and shiny symbol of life beyond East St. Louis. As I watched the show, I yelled down to the others, “I can't wait for our field trip to the Arch next spring.”

“I went last year,” somebody said. “It's great up there. When you look out the windows, it's like you're in the sky, standing on the top of the whole world. You can see all over!”

The words made me tingle inside. Aside from a few family trips to my father's relatives in Toledo, Ohio, I hadn't traveled far away from home. Everything was so drearily familiar in East St. Louis. I wanted to know what the rest of the world looked like. I stared at the Arch. I just had to get up there and see things for myself.

When the elevator doors opened that spring morning, I ran to a window and soaked up the view. All around me were pathways to the rest of the world, the Mississippi River, the highways and the bridges. Seeing it all stretched out before me made the possibility of finding that other world real. I remembered the words of a man who had spoken to our class earlier that year. Our teacher had invited him to tell us about his life and to offer some advice. He was successful, but he said his life had been difficult initially because he was lazy and didn't work hard. Once he turned his life around, he said he had vowed to give every task his very best effort because he didn't want to look back with any regrets.

Although I was just eleven, I took the advice to heart. Standing at the top of the Arch as a wide-eyed sixth-grader, I just knew that if I followed those roads leading out of East St. Louis, I wouldn't regret it. I knew they would lead me to better things.

4

One Kind of Grace

W
ith so few role models and symbols of success available as I grew up, I gathered tiny drops of incentive whenever they came my way. In time, the city of East St. Louis broke ground on a project that made the task a little bit easier.

The dump trucks, cement mixers and bulldozers carrying hard-hatted workmen rolled through our neighborhood early one summer morning in the late 1960s. They clustered at the corner of 15th and Piggott and began digging at the entrance to Lincoln Park.

As I watched them, I recalled how, after school, on weekends and during summers, that grassy tract across the street from my house had beckoned my friends and me. We romped across it while playing tag and turning backflips. When we were exhausted or just bored, we stretched out on it and studied the clouds in the sky. And we ran through it on our way to the swimming pool and the sandbox. Farther back, near 17th Street, was a baseball diamond and another grassy field, bordered by a round cinder track.

We were sorry to lose our playground. But when the construction crew began pouring the foundation and assembling the skeleton of a big building, our mourning ended and we began speculating on the project's purpose.

The structure became an obsession to me. I was six years old. As the building took shape over the months, I sat on my porch railing and gazed across the street, lost in my daydreams. I tried to guess what it was going to be. We were intrigued by the dome-shaped structure in the center of the two square ones. We'd never seen anything like it.

Occasionally, a group of us ventured over to the site and stood bright-eyed with our faces pressed to the fence, watching the construction crew's every move and jabbering away.

“You think it's a place to play?” I asked.

“I think it's a theater,” someone responded.

“Maybe a skating rink,” another voice suggested.

“Can you skate?” another asked.

Once the cinder block exterior was complete, the crew put the finishing touches on the interior. Before the complex opened in 1969, a security guard kept watch outside to deter the local vandals. Weary of our persistent questions about what was inside, he let us in one day for a sneak peek.

It was more fantastic than anything I imagined. It was big, beautiful, air-conditioned and, best of all, free of charge. It smelled of new wood, fresh paint and varnish. The windows, the glass, the walls and the rest rooms were shiny and clean. The guard said they were going to name it the Mary E. Brown Community Center, after a woman from our city who had made contributions to the community.

During our quick tour, we discovered to our delight that the domed part was the recreation area. It featured a basketball court and bleachers. A library and rooms for arts and crafts, dancing and meetings occupied one of the square-shaped buildings adjacent to the dome. Administrative offices would fill the other one. The three buildings were connected by big glass double doors.

All the kids from the neighborhood spent time at the Center, but I practically
lived
there. On summer and Saturday mornings, I woke up at first light and got my two sisters out of bed, anxious to be across the street. Because of my mother's rule about my sisters and me going and coming together, I had to bribe Debra to accompany me in the mornings and to stay at the Community Center until closing time. The price of her cooperation typically was either a candy bar or a dime, which I gladly paid. Angie was much more agreeable, doing whatever I asked.

We dressed and perched on the Center's front steps to await the arrival of Tyrone Cavitt and Percy Harris, the recreation directors. They unlocked the double doors and we followed them inside. I helped them erect the Ping-Pong tables and then laid out the balls and paddles. Initially, I did it for free, but eventually they paid me a few dollars to help them set up every morning and clean up every night.

The Community Center provided the closest thing to culture in East St. Louis. To see the ballet or a Broadway show, or to hear symphony orchestras and Jackson 5 concerts, we had to pay a lot of money for tickets and make the twenty-mile trek across the state line and the Poplar Street Bridge into St. Louis.

The Center revealed a whole new world to me, teaching me things I wouldn't have learned otherwise. I was a human sponge, soaking up as much as I could. Every day at story time, I sat on the floor and listened to an adult read the story of Black Beauty or Rapunzel. I made black ashtrays and green planters in ceramics class and cotton-candy-colored Styrofoam waste baskets from egg cartons in crafts class. Much of my handiwork became Christmas and birthday presents for Momma.

I attended lectures on all kinds of subjects. One night an official from the Nation of Islam headquarters in Chicago spoke. He wore a dark suit, stiff white shirt and a bow tie and spoke forcefully about the evils of eating pork and the benefits of the Muslim faith. He taught us some Muslim expressions and passed around copies of the
Muhammad Speaks
newspaper. Afterward, he circulated a sheet of paper and asked everyone to list their name, address and phone number if they wanted more information. I was fascinated by what he said and wanted to know more. So, I signed the list.

The next day, as my mother mopped the floor and hummed the words to a Teddy Pendergrass song playing on the stereo, someone knocked on the front door. It was the same man who'd spoken the night before at the Community Center, dressed in the same suit and bow tie. He started telling Momma what a nice little girl I was and how happy they'd be to have me join the faith. As he talked, Momma became more and more agitated. He was the latest in a long line of people who'd called our house or appeared at the front door to follow up on some interest I'd expressed at the Center. She interrupted him when he started explaining the daily prayer schedule, politely explaining that I'd been baptized in the Baptist Church and wouldn't be joining the Muslims. After shutting the door, she told me if I didn't stop putting our address and phone number on every Center list that was passed around, she'd make me stay home.

She didn't object when I signed up for modern dance class, however. She and everyone else seemed to think I was clumsy and could use some grace. I was always tripping or stumbling over something. One winter morning I'd pranced out of the house, slipped on the ice-covered sidewalk and landed on my butt as the school bus approached our house. It wasn't really clumsiness—just a case of being too eager to show off. Someone had just given me a pair of black leather boots and I was so intent on modeling them for everyone, I forgot about the ice. The kids all had a good laugh while I died of embarrassment.

I thought dance lessons would improve my coordination. I loved to dance, but could never get the hang of the popular dance steps as fast as Al and Debra. Al was the best dancer in school and won every contest he entered. He could mimic Michael Jackson and James Brown. But Elvis Presley was his favorite and his specialty. After the dances, with the guitar he got for Christmas slung over his shoulder, he did his Elvis routine while people threw him money. The girls screamed and swooned as he strummed the strings, gyrated his hips and spun around the floor, singing the words, “You ain't nothin' but a hound dog.”

The dance classes turned out to be one of the most enriching experiences of my childhood. Our teacher, Mr. Wilson, was a devotee of the Katherine Dunham technique. Ms. Dunham is an internationally renowned dancer and choreographer whose style incorporates elements of African and Caribbean folk cultures. She was one of the first African-Americans to have a professional, touring dance company. Alvin Ailey and Debbie Allen studied her technique. On Saturdays, our class met at the Dunham Center, instead of the Community Center.

Ms. Dunham and Josephine Baker were famous, successful women whom girls in East St. Louis could relate to, because they were from our hometown. I read about how they performed all over the world and lived glamorously. Josephine Baker resided in Paris. But Ms. Dunham continued to live in East St. Louis, which gave me a sense of pride.

When she was in town, she came to our Saturday classes and talked to us about dancing and self-expression. She was an exotic, elegant woman. Her dresses were loose, long and flowing and made of colorful fabrics. She wore the most beautiful scarves tied around her head. Her voice was soft. Her diction was perfect. As she spoke, her expressive hands moved gently through the air, decorating each phrase. I sat cross-legged on the floor in my leotard, looking up at her, mesmerized and hanging on every breath she took. Those were thrilling moments.