put on each patientâs tray. I enjoyed working. It helped me to free myself, at least partially, from my parents. At the hospital my friend Mike Dean and I worked from 4 to 8 p.m. after school and 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends. During the summer we worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week.
On some paydays Mike and I would have saved enough to go downtown and buy sharkskin suits, Italian sweaters, and loafers. And at Mrs. Jacksonâs record shop up on 34th, weâd buy the latest from Motownâ Junior Walker, Ben E. King, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, and Smokey Robinson. No longer did I have to sit at a sewing machine under dim lighting, tapering the unfashionable baggy pants sent by Ma, as I had done on so many occasions. It felt so good to have this financial freedom from my parents. I didnât want to have to ask them for anything other than permission to go out.
At sixteen, I guess you could say I was âsmelling myself.â I felt like I knew a few thingsâand maybe I even knew enough to set Mommy and Poppy straight on a few occasions. A collision with reality was inevitable.
On one of the many evenings that Poppy chose to work overtime, Mommy and Joanne got into a little disagreement. Like many girls growing up in the â60s, Joanne was having a difficult time with her parentsâMommy and Poppy were no exception. It was two cultures clashingâthe old ways of long skirts and polite, pigtailed girls who played the piano and did their arithmetic, versus the new girls of the â60s, who wanted to wear short skirts and long hair, do the Watusi and the Hully Gully, and hang with greasy-headed boys at the dance, slow-grinding to some Smokey Robinson or Etta James. Mommyâs personal frustrations and battles with her own mother often surfaced in the verbal clashes between her and Joanne.
Poppy was usually the calming force, the voice of reason in these clashes, but on this particular evening he was gone. In the kitchen, Mommy verbally attacked Joanne, asserting something she assumed was true. Joanne did not argue back. Mommy was a small, slight woman, but with a fiery disposition. She even grabbed a belt.
I was standing in the hallway, watching and listening. Suddenly I rushed in and grabbed the belt from Mommy, looked down at her, and said, âStop. Leave her alone.â
My actions and words shocked everyone, including Elmer and Michael, who were also standing by, looking on in disbelief. I had wanted to say âstopâ for so long. The words had been held at bay long enough and they just came out.
Mommy looked at me with amazement and then burst into tears. âIâm going to tell your father.â
Afterward I could feel the sense of doom in the house. Everyone knew that Poppy would not be happy about this. Disrespecting Mommy and Poppyâs authority was not toleratedânot in this house.
The next morning, as I was quietly getting ready for school, I awaited my fate. Poppy came into the room, his fist up and anger on his face. I stood there, now almost six feet tall, looking down at a still muscular Poppy.
He blurted out, âIf you ever do that again, I will knock you out.â
I just stood there and listened. I had no doubt that he could knock me out with one blow, but that really didnât matter. He could knock me out a thousand times and I would still have done the same thing. I felt strongly that Mommy was wrong, and that since Joanne was eighteen it was time to treat her with respect.
The Tide of the Movement
Reading my poetry in a Links Arts contest, Seattle, 1967.
6
Slow Awakening
When you feel really low
Yeah, thereâs a great truth you should know
When youâre young, gifted and black
Your soulâs intact
âNina Simone, âTo Be Young, Gifted and Black,â 1970
My sophomore year as a voluntary integrator was a disaster. Seeing my dream of being a havoc-raising linebacker extinguished was difficult enough. But