The Legs Are the Last to Go (5 page)

And she took my costume as seriously as any mother possibly could. I was only seven years old, and it was only made of crepe paper, but you'd have thought it was wardrobe for a queen the way she fussed over it. “How should I wear this, Mommy? What about the hat?” I played Jiminy Cricket, the little voice of conscience. It was a good role for me, since my parents had been vigilant in teaching me about propriety at every level. The girl who was Carol Diann was not allowed to chew gum or use rough language or hang around on the street after school with other girls on our Harlem block. I had to practice piano, not one hour, but two, every day. “All respectable young people know how to play the piano,” my mother would say as I'd sit down and tap the keys on the spinnet in our living room. “Does that make you
not
respectable?” I always wanted to ask her. Just outside the window, kids were playing, hanging around. I never cared about missing out on that. I had my music, a civilizing sound in a scrappy neighborhood.

I had to devote all my extra time to my studies and to rehearsals for the Tiny Tots choir at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. Our church was the most important institution in Harlem, overseen by Adam Clayton Powell Sr., and a place where you dressed to the nines every Sunday. My father was a deacon. I was always dressed better than any other child, and I
was a natural talent, never shy or apprehensive in front of the congregation. I loved being the soloist, and to this day I remember stepping out of the line of other little singers in our black-and-white robes, and looking way down beyond the pulpit to my audience, opening my mouth, and with only a little fear, opening it to sing “Balm in Gilead” and “No Hiding Place Down There.” The chorus behind me backed me up in a way that felt so empowering. The congregation was smiling in the brightly lit tabernacle, with friendly black faces all around and above me in the balconies, as they fanned themselves in the heat. Afterward, when I took off my robe to go home, or perhaps to a carefully prepared picnic at Edgecombe Park, I looked regal. My mother saw to that. It was always her goal to make me look as clean and pretty as possible.

For piano recitals, she would seize the chance to be my stylist and fixate on putting me in the loveliest dress—organza or cotton with crinolines underneath. Sometimes I'd go with her to buy fabrics at the open market under the bridge of the L train on Park Avenue. “Oh no, no, no, no,” she'd say as she tested how quickly a fabric would wrinkle in her hands. If it stayed wrinkled, no matter how pretty, and how much I wanted her to have it made into a dress for me, she'd put it down. Then she'd pick up another fabric and tug at it as the subway rumbled on the tracks above us. It was hot, and she still had to prepare dinner thirty blocks away. But there was no deterring her. “No, not this one, either,” she'd say as she'd put down the fabric and move on. It always took a long time to find just the right thing, but even when I was hungry or tired on our shopping expeditions, I was never impatient. I mar
veled at my mother's resolve, the fact that she knew so much about fabrics, and knew exactly what she'd have the seamstress do with it.

“Gathered here, and with a sash to tie in a bow in the back,” she'd say. “We need a Peter Pan collar and pleats down the front, but not too many.” Her voice was lusty, her accent more rural Southern than Harlem. At times, she seemed like Sophia Loren.

Sometimes she'd take me to Macy's, and it felt like I was seeing the world with her as my tour guide. When she'd put a yellow bow in my hair, she'd fuss with it until it was just so. “Here, not there,” she'd say as her strong fingers fluttered over my head like bees pollinating a flower. “Just off to the side so it doesn't distract too much from your eyes.”

She was of the generation that had just come North from the South. And they were obsessed with looking clean and attractively dressed because we lived in a country that promoted the idea that blacks were neither. If you talk about racism, it all began to gel for me when I realized why my mother was so obsessed with cleanliness. Well, she always knew what she wanted. I guess she was like her mother in that way. My grandmother Rebecca was quite sharp, a formidable person. She was also incredibly proper, a hardworking country woman who ran a cotton and tobacco farm. She saw to it that my mother was educated, the first girl in her North Carolina town to be sent off to high school the next town over—a very big deal in the early twentieth century. I don't think there were many women who would actually run their own businesses at
the time, and certainly not many black women. I still remember when I'd stay with her as an older child during my summer vacations, and going to town and observing how she conducted herself. The South was not like the North in the 1940s. When we went shopping, I remember hating the way white men did business with my grandmother, when she was selling them hogs or chickens. Instead of Rebecca, they called her Becky, and spoke to her as if she was a child. But she would not respond, she just stood her ground until her business was done. I learned something from her quiet dignity in the presence of racism. “Thank you, Mr. Smith,” she'd say, without any tone of annoyance in her voice. “I'll see you next week.” It was difficult to watch, in one way, but impressive in another. Studied composure helped her get along in her world. It wasn't easy being a woman running a farm. But my grandfather, who died when he stepped on an electrical wire, had left her his business and she had to run it with an iron hand, employing local blacks and treating them no better or worse than her white counterparts did. She would have them picked up for work each day in a mule-drawn wagon, rather than a truck. That's how long ago it was. And when her workers lined up to get their pay at the end of the day, they had their cotton bags full on their shoulders, and she weighed them very carefully to determine exactly what they were to be paid. Once she decided, there was no arguing with Miz Rebecca, as they called her. She was a fair boss, but tough. And she would not allow me in the fields to work, absolutely not.

I spent many happy summers on the porch of her big
house, listening to the crickets and honeybees, looking out at all the children who were working, and hearing the screen door slam as the family came and went from the kitchen. I had to dress every morning and, after breakfast, sit on that porch in an ironed cotton dress, ramrod straight, with hands folded politely. It was hot in all those clothes, but my mother and grandmother were far too formal to consider changing the way a child should dress merely for comfort.

There was only one day my grandmother let me pick cotton, and only because I asked.

I walked out into the field with the others, who were smiling at me, the special child finally on the ground among them. “Well, look who it is,” one boy said. “Gonna make a dollar today, Miss Johnson?” I nodded. I had my burlap bag, and for once, I wasn't in a stiff starched dress. It felt liberating in a way, but also completely alien to be in overalls. I bent down to pick my first boll. It made my fingers bleed. I knew cotton did that, but didn't think it would happen to me. You couldn't get blood on the cotton you put in your bag, and I didn't know when I would stop bleeding. So I quit after picking about fifteen cents' worth. I just wasn't meant for the fields, not at all.

“Oh, it's fun to be on the porch,” I'd say when asked how I was doing.

Just like in Harlem, I was aware of the fact that I was separated from other children. I was Miss Rebecca's granddaughter, privileged and special. Both she and my mother made that clear. I once rode on a bus “down South” that was full of children, and they all stopped speaking when they saw me. They stared at
me because I was the dressed-up girl from New York. It made me feel awkward, but good, too. My mother and grandmother wanted me to project a “better than” quality. And I did, but with that came a feeling of “separated from” that has stayed with me my whole life.

I always felt I was on display. At night my thick hair, after being curled, was wrapped in brown paper so I would have Shirley Temple curls in the morning. What was a black girl doing with Shirley Temple curls anyway? Well, Shirley Temple was the biggest star in the world when I was little, universally adored. So why shouldn't I look like her? It didn't occur to me that we were different because of race. My elementary school was integrated, with Jewish, Italian, Hispanic, and black children. It wasn't until junior high school that the kids took offense at my formal way of dressing. To some extent, I was a snob. That's what my parents wanted me to be. “Carol Diann,” my mother would croon as she fawned over me, “let's try to do better than that!” Across the street from our brownstone, people spilled out of an apartment building at all hours of the night. Children hung out on the corners and played loud games of tag, which my mother forbade me from joining. “Such a waste of time,” she'd say. Homework was to be done right away, piano lessons at Mrs. Carmen Shepherd's Music School on Convent Avenue were relentless for eight years. Learning music was valued among the strivers of our community, and even in the poorer homes, you'd find a piano among the furniture.

Hard as we worked, my mother (who helped my father manage his rental property when he was working as a subway
conductor) found time for the kind of fun she thought would enrich me. Sometimes, on weekends, we'd take a break to see a puppet show or circus, or even take in a Broadway play from balcony seats. A high point was seeing Ethel Merman in
Annie Get Your Gun
. Her voice and confidence onstage were just awe-inspiring. I reveled in the spectacle. The heavy burgundy curtains hung in an ornate and gilded theater full of well-dressed white people. The lights went down and a spotlight would hit the orchestra leader in the pit. My heart swelled with the music. And when the curtains rose on sets so elaborate they took my breath away, it was hard to believe that the performers were real. But they were. Even if they weren't in shows with elaborate costumes, I marveled at how an actress could just take the stage, open her mouth, and, without so much as a microphone, fill a theater with a song. I was lucky that my mother liked attending the theater so much. She made me feel at home there. Maybe too much at home. One time, she took me to see
The Voice of the Turtle,
which she assumed from the title would be a light, funny children's show. In actuality, John Van Druten's play was very adult, and included scenes of a black serviceman on leave employing prostitutes. Instead of pulling me out, Mother watched with me and, when it was over, told me, “Let's not mention this to your father.” I have to laugh at this memory today because the prudish views she maintained her whole life—sex was not to be discussed ever—were always an issue for me.

My father, meanwhile, was a man of such propriety that he even objected to the delicate amount of makeup that my mother wore to church.

“It doesn't look respectable, Mabel,” he'd say.

“Oh, John, what do you know?” My mother would laugh.

My own propriety made me a target in my young teenage years. “What is wrong with you, Johnson?” the kids in school asked. It wasn't just my curls: it was the whole package. I didn't smoke, wore oxfords and bobby socks (instead of heels with long socks stretched up to the knee and secured with rubber bands) and I never hung out on the street. I carried myself in the ladylike way my mother taught me, and I only associated with children she and my father deemed socially acceptable, such as Sylvia O'Gilvie, who lived nearby and came from a home (a brownstone) with two respectable parents and a car. Of course a mother like Sylvia's had her own heightened sense of social hierarchy that was even more finely developed than my mother's. One day when I came to visit, Sylvia's mother told me Sylvia was out playing with her “real friends.” Somehow it became clear that that meant children whose parents were from the West Indies, not the South, and who had lighter skin and straighter hair than mine. My mother encouraged me not to be hurt, but rather to pay no attention to such unkindness.

When Mom saw that a scholarship program was being offered through the Metropolitan Opera, she saw to it that I applied for it and enrolled at the age of ten. Each week she took me to lessons, where I learned to use my diaphragm to support my vocal cords. I learned about breathing, pulling down the tailbone, and all kinds of things about how the body works when it performs. It was overwhelming and all-consuming work, and I threw myself into it, delighted to know adults
cared enough about me to want me to perform at my best level.

Meanwhile, I prevailed as a little princess in public school. And it was enough to drive my classmates to some vicious acts of cruelty. One time, a gang of girls followed me all the way home, trying to beat me up and rip out my curls. My mother was shocked to find me arriving at our front steps out of breath and disheveled. “You girls go home now,” she called through our barred ground-floor window. “Leave us alone.” They thrust their hands through our window and tried to grab her and they didn't leave until my mother called the police. It had never occurred to her that thirteen-year-old girls could threaten us on our own property. The next day at school, the bullying started again as we were filing up the stairs. I made it to the landing before a wave of bodies knocked me down. When the girls pulled my curls, my head hit the floor. I fought back, kicking, punching, and scratching with all my strength, and when they stopped, I was bruised and large clumps of hair had been torn out of my head. Not long after that, a guidance counselor named Mrs. Humphreys, whom I will always revere for her wisdom, recommended I apply to the High School of Music and Art. It was located nearby. But it was an entirely new world.

I refused to go. Although I didn't have a lot of friends at school, I didn't want to leave behind the few I had. But my mother, like that wonderful guidance counselor, saw the opportunity. While my father had to be reassured that this would pave my way to acceptance at the revered Howard University, a place I'd heard about for years as the most prestigious black
university in the nation, my mother knew that a high school for the arts would improve me in all kinds of ways, just as she knew the right clothes would broadcast to the world the kind of person I was. I can't say her instincts did anything but serve me well and push me up the social ladder she and my father found so daunting.