I was born on a sultry August afternoon in 1927, in a small red house built by Greek immigrants down by the clear blue waters of Summit Lake in Akron, Ohio.
M'Ma was very young - so was M'Da. Since I was the first child of either, it took them quite awhile to notice that though I was born healthy and lively, for some unknown reason nothing was going in and, worst of all, nothing was coming out. Pretty soon it became apparent that I was becoming very uncomfortable.
The family doctor was completely mystified and could suggest nothing to relieve my condition, so Hattie was called in.
Hattie was M'Ma's mama, a tiny copper-colored woman with blue-gray eyes. Mac, my grandpa, nicknamed her "Fing" because, he said, "Her waist was so small, you could slip a finger ring around it." The child of a six-foot-four-inch Blackfoot Indian woman and a five-foot-four-inch Irishman, Hattie became a Christian Scientist in the South in the 1920s, and, being of very independent mind and spirit, she was sought after by everyone for her wise input and sage medical advice. She ministered to both animals and humans.
Hattie came to my cradle and peered down at my still, little brown body. Then she said, "Looks like nothin's goin' in and nothin's comin' out!"
Everyone nodded in solemn agreement.
"Give me that child!" she said quietly. "We'll see if she really wants to stay here with us or not!"
She took me home with her to her farm out in Springfield Township. She owned sixty-two acres that she'd acquired by buying up land that was in foreclosure. She worked as a maid and did husbandry for an old white man who was a real estate salesman and developer. They had enjoyed a long and fruitful friendship.
The farm was a fairyland, filled with fields of corn both sweet and seed, green grassy fields surrounded by one-hundred-year-old oaks, tall pines, and wildflowers in every color of the rainbow. Singing birds, bobolinks, redbirds, robins, whip-poor-wills, cardinals, and, every once in a while, a chicken hawk would come freewheeling in the blue sky. Hattie would grab the old gun stashed behind the kitchen door and take a shot - Boom! Boom!
"That'll learn you," she'd shout. "Go get yo' own farm!"
Near the farmhouse nestled Blue Pond, full of eating fish. Grandpa Mac would help us catch them, but we had to throw most of them back. "There's plenty of food at the house--we won't need the fish," he would say. "If you catch more than you can eat, you'll surely starve someday. Everything balances out," he'd chuckle. "Now, let me touch the hem of your garment." He always referred to that portion of the Bible when he hung out with us.
Everything on Hattie's farm was white - the ducks, the geese, the chickens, the dog, the cats, the goat, the house - even the outhouse.
Hattie used to say, "I got power and dominion over all these white things. Only God got power over me!" (Which is why she and Grandpa Mac got divorced in a real court of law - none of that reverse broom-jumpin' stuff for her.)
When we arrived at the farm she carefully checked me out and administered hot mineral oil to my swollen belly and gently massaged my little brown body - and lo - pretty soon - a miracle! Stuff came out, making room for stuff to go in, and thus began my odyssey on the earth.
Hattie said, "Well, that's that. The way this child holds on to everything, she either gonna go to jail or she gonna be famous."
She was right - I did both.
The woman would walk up to our porch and sidle up to Jerry and say, "Hello there, little one. May I pick you up and hold you?"
He'd look up at her with his solemn little face and then look at us - Charlotte and me - then back to the woman and nod yes. She'd stoop over, pick him up, and hug him, all the time making little clucking noises. Then she'd kiss him on his round brown cheek, put him back down on the steps, say, "Goodbye, little sweet boy," and walk slowly back to her house.
M'Ma said, "Well, she doesn't have any children, and I guess her arms are hungry and empty for someone to love." M'Ma smiled at us and said, "You-all did the right thing, reporting her, though. Very good!" M'Da shifted his Red Man tobacco to the other side of his mouth and declared, "Yeah ... one of her arms is probably hungry all right, but the other arm realize that the cute little brown baby surely gonna grow up to be a six-foot Negro one of these days!"
On our side of Bina Avenue, at the very top of the hill, lived the China-Man and his invalid wife. He wasn't really Chinese; he was an Irishman who had a beet-red face and hair to match. His arms were red. His neck was red. We expected he was red all over, but we didn't dare tell M'Ma and M'Da about that. We called him the China-Man because we had never seen anybody else who looked that strange. We reasoned he had to be a China-Man.
He would get really drunk every week and beat his poor invalid wife. We'd hear her crying in a high weird whine, "Stop! Oh, Red, please stop!" So M'Ma and Uncle Sid would go up to his house and stop him from torturing that poor pale slip of a woman. Then he would start to cry and cling to them and plead, "Take me to the Reverend Uncle Frank. I want him to baptize me so I can be forgiven of me sins." Then he'd pass out. Everybody would return to their own homes and thank God it was finally quiet.
The next house belonged to Great-Aunt Ouida and the Reverend Uncle Frank. Named for a river in Africa, Ouida was Grandpa Mac's sister. She was the mother of my girl cousin, Edna, who was born twenty days after I came to earth. Edna was considered a miracle baby because Great-Aunt Ouida was fifty-four when Edna was born. Edna practically lived at our house since her brothers were so much older.
The house at the bottom of the hill was occupied by a Hungarian family - a big tall hairy father, a little plump pleasant mother, and two little girls, Minka and Evie. They practically lived at our house, also.
It turned out that the social life of the neighborhood swung between two focal points. During the daytime, all the kids hung out at our house: three boy cousins, two Hungarians, one girl cousin, two Eye-talyins, me, Charlotte, and Jerry. Now, we weren't allowed to let anybody into the house while M'Ma and M'Da worked: strict orders that were scrupulously obeyed. My aunts would check on us throughout the day, and we all had a wonderful time playing football, baseball, kick the can, and hide-and-seek. The field and our big old yard gave us plenty of room for plenty of fun.
After work, the grown people ate dinner, washed their dishes, and in the soft light of the evening, gradually gathered at Great-Aunt Catherine and Uncle Sid's house to listen to their big floor-length Philco radio. They'd talk politics - about the Rooshans and Mussolini and Roosyvelt - and listen to Amos \'n' Andy and Wings Over Jordan, filling up with pride when Joe Louis would wallop somebody.
That's also when we'd have dessert.
Someone, mostly M'Ma, would bake a 1-2-3-4 cake or some cookies, or my Aunt Bessie would bake a pie. Aunt Catherine supplied lemonade in summer on the porch, and coffee or hot chocolate in the parlor in winter. Fireflies flickered and streetlights came on. Then someone, usually the Reverend Uncle Frank, would stand up and stretch and say, "I guess we better call it a night and get a head start on tomorrow." One by one everybody said "Good night" and slowly walked to their homes.
"Wow! There's running boards!"
The men all looked solemn. The China-Man said, "This calls for a celebration." Of course, they all ignored him, since he was always looking for any excuse to celebrate.
Then at last, the Reverend Uncle Frank said, "Well, Sid, why don't you give her a spin?"
We all exclaimed, "Yes! Yes! Give her a spin, Uncle Sid."
That automobile was delivered right from the factory. The man brought it, parked it, and left in another car driven by his sales partner. Now, Uncle Sid was rather impulsive and barked a lot instead of talking. But he didn't fool us. We knew he was a kind and gentle soul who blustered and sputtered to cover it up.
"What's the hurry?" he said. "What's the hurry?" Crossing his arms over his chest, he added, "It took them a long time to make this car in Detroit City. It took a long time to deliver it here, right in front of my house. I guess I can do a few more minutes of admiration before I crank her up."
M'Ma said later that Uncle Sid was really trying to reestablish his credibility on Bina Avenue because the week before he had been caught red-handed down in Kenmore with another woman. We children heard the whispers and watched lips disappear into thin straight lines on the faces of Aunt Catherine, Aunt Bessie, Aunt Ouida, and M'Ma.
That fateful day, Uncle Sid told Aunt Catherine that he was going out. She said, "OUT? When will you be back?"
"When I get good and ready," he barked and out he went.
Well, Aunt Catherine rounded up M'Ma, Aunt Bessie, and Aunt Ouida. Armed with a broom handle, mop handle, a flatiron, and a galvanized iron bucket, the four of them marched down Bina Avenue, turned right on Summit Lake Boulevard, tromped the six blocks into Kenmore, and knocked on the scarlet woman's front door.
When she answered the door and saw the Bible brigade, she flung the door wide open and stepped aside. They marched in, weapons at the ready, and cornered Uncle Sid. They gave him a "Mississippi Camp Beating" while he tried to retrieve his clothes. They gave the woman "what for" also, but had a little mercy on her because she wasn't married to Aunt Catherine - Uncle Sid was.
Then, full of righteousness and the sweet smell of victory, they marched my uncle back down Summit Lake Boulevard, back up Bina Avenue. After that, each marched to her own home to lie down and sleep the sleep of the just.
So, Uncle Sid was understandably a little cautious about everything after that episode - even the new car. He opened the door of the new Buick, looked around grandly, cranked her up, and took off.
We all cheered, "Hooray, Uncle Sid! Hooray!"
He drove down the hill, turned right, and continued around the block. When he came back into view again, he drove to where we were all cheering wildly, stopped the car, got out, and took a deep bow. The China-Man ran back to his house to start celebrating. The Hungarian picked Uncle Sid up in a giant bear hug and said something that nobody understood, but sounded complimentary.
My Uncle Sid felt good all over. He turned to Aunt Catherine and said, "You get in and I'm going to show you how to drive."
She threw out her hands. "No! No! I don't wanna drive."
"Just like a woman," he retorted. "When you want them to do something, they say no. When you don't want them to do something, they say yeah."
Aunt Catherine could not resist the challenge. With a toss of her head, she got behind the wheel of the shiny new Buick, cranked her up, and stepped on the gas. The Buick lurched forward and started speeding down the hill. Intending to make a right turn on Summit Lake Boulevard, she stepped on the gas instead of the brake and drove that new Buick straight into Summit Lake.
We all - grown folks and little children - stood stunned. Nobody spoke a word. Then my Uncle Sid exploded into a paroxysm of curses and blasphemies as he ran down to the lake. Fortunately, the Buick had stalled on a sandbar with lots of cattails growing on it, so that only the front of the car was partially submerged.
My aunt jumped out of the car on one side, and my uncle jumped in on the other. He cranked her up, and with the help of the men of Bina Avenue, he backed out of Summit Lake, all the time calling on all that was holy to strike all the women down dead. He backed all the way up the street as the whole neighborhood - men, women and children - watched. He stopped the Buick, leaped out the door, and ran up to Aunt Catherine, who was soaking wet from the knees down. "Fool!" he roared. "Fool woman!"
Now, he was a short man, and my Aunt Catherine was taller than he. She caught him in midair as he hurtled toward her, and began hammering on him as if he were a tenpenny nail.
"Don't you use that kind of language around here," she shouted. "We're ladies!" Then she began mopping up the sidewalk with his short body. It took Uncle James, M'Da, the Reverend Uncle Frank, and the Hungarian to pull her off him.
My aunt stomped haughtily up onto her porch, then turned, unable to resist one last aside. "I guess that'll teach you. When a lady says no, a lady means no!" With that, she strode into her house and slammed the door.
Well, nobody ever forgot that day, but nobody talked about it either. At least not in front of Great-Aunt Catherine or Uncle Sid.
I think Uncle Sid had had his belly full of fornication and blue phrases. He opted for running numbers instead. That's when you bet on three numbers - in this case, each number represented the number of a horse in three successive races in New York. You paid twenty-five cents, or some such, for your numbers, and if your horses won, you got paid one dollar for every penny you bet.
His territory grew quite wide, and since the odds of hitting the numbers straight were less than a rat's chance in a cat contest, he did quite well. He tried to convince Aunt Catherine of his fidelity and civility by buying her a new floor-length Philco radio and, wonder of wonders - the piano.