A Mighty Long Way Read online

  Big Daddy often babysat me, and I loved spending time with him. He was quiet but attentive, much like my father. He lived just two doors down from his business, but I always wanted to be near him. My favorite place to hang out was the restaurant, where I had access to all of the cold drinks and candy I wanted. But the pool hall was off-limits to me. At night, it attracted some unsavory characters, who often carried half-pints in their pockets and quick-trigger attitudes ready to fire. When I got sleepy, I stepped outside, climbed into the backseat of Big Daddy’s car, and stretched out, feeling safe and protected. Every time I opened my eyes, it seemed, I could see through the car window the silhouette of Big Daddy, a cigar clenched between his teeth and a pool stick in hand, standing in the darkness, checking on his grandbaby.

  As I grew older, Big Daddy let me tag along when he went to the meatpacking houses along the riverfront downtown to buy discounted boxes of ribs and fish for the barbecue dinners and fried catfish plates that had helped to make the restaurant and pool hall a popular neighborhood gathering spot. As soon as Big Daddy opened the door of the meat house, I could smell the thick scent of raw meat. A round white man wearing a sleeveless shirt and dingy white apron stood behind the counter. His bare arms looked beefy and pale. I sauntered behind Big Daddy as he walked straight up to the counter. My grandfather seemed to stand taller there, placing his order just like the white customers coming in and out. I watched quietly as Big Daddy exchanged a few amicable words with the white man, who soon left to fill Big Daddy’s order without a hiss or word of disrespect. When it came time to pay, Big Daddy dug into his pocket and pulled out a huge wad of cash. He always carried his cash in his pocket that way, as if he didn’t quite trust anyone else with his hard-earned money. Big Daddy then unfurled a few bills into the hands of the white man, nodded a silent thank-you, and turned to walk away. I trailed behind him proudly, thinking to myself that Big Daddy must be a rich, important man to get such respect from white folks.

  Big Daddy’s personality and style were as different from those of Grandpa Cullins as was his appearance. But both men deeply respected each other, so much so that each addressed the other as “Mr. Walls” or “Mr. Cullins.” They shared a love of baseball—and, more specifically, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Their lifelong allegiance to the Dodgers began, of course, when the team signed Jackie Robinson in 1947 and became the first team since before the turn of the century to integrate professional baseball. Jackie was their hero, and he became mine, too. When the Dodgers played the Yankees in the 1955 World Series in New York, Big Daddy and Grandpa Cullins made the cross-country journey together to cheer for their team. They also made regular trips together to St. Louis to attend baseball games—a sign of economic freedom that few black men of their era enjoyed.

  Whenever the Dodgers played in St. Louis, six or seven of us—Mother, Daddy, Grandpa Cullins, and various other relatives—piled into the car for a road trip to the game. Big Daddy was usually working. We most often left late at night and traveled until morning without stopping because hotels and restaurants throughout the South didn’t admit black customers. Daddy meticulously mapped out the eight-hour trip so that we could stop along the way at relatives’ homes for bathroom breaks and rest. If we slept there, the children who lived in the home gave up their beds to the adults and joined the rest of us on blankets spread across the floor. Likewise, our home in Little Rock often felt like Grand Central Station because we had so many relatives stopping through on their cross-country road trips. I always gave up my bed and made pallets on the floor.

  On one of those trips to St. Louis with Grandpa Cullins, we stopped in Newport, Arkansas, at his cousin Gabe’s house. Cousin Gabe was a worm farmer and a gracious host. His wife spent much of the morning preparing a full breakfast spread for us to eat before we got back on the road. The smell of homemade biscuits, grits, bacon, and eggs filled every room and drew us all into the kitchen. But I took one look at the inch-thick dried mud caked on Uncle Gabe’s hands and under his fingernails, and suddenly, no matter how much my stomach growled, I was no longer hungry.

  In St. Louis, we had plenty of extended family and always stayed with them. If Grandpa Cullins or my father couldn’t make the trip, I traveled to St. Louis by train with Mother, who was also an avid baseball fan.

  Back home in Little Rock, my entire family looked forward to watching baseball teams from the Negro Leagues square off in the city’s Triple-A stadium in Fair Park before an enthusiastic all-black crowd. Mother and I usually caught the bus about four blocks from home. As the bus rolled down 13th, past the Lee Theatre and Pine Street, where a big crowd was always waiting, it seemed every colored person from the West End was headed to the game. I was in elementary school then, and those trips to the park were like going to the circus, especially when the Indianapolis Clowns played. The team mascot was a clown that kept the crowd thoroughly entertained. Mother loved the Birmingham Black Barons. I’d hear her and Daddy talking about the team’s outstanding center fielder, Willie Mays, who later became a Hall of Famer in major league baseball and one of the greatest players of all time.

  It never occurred to me as I grew up to question, even in my mind, why colored folks could go to the park only on certain days, why we had to climb to the back of the bus, or why stopping at a gas station to use the bathroom in most areas of the South wasn’t even an option. Those were just the rules, and I learned to follow them like I learned to walk, by observing those closest to me and following their guidance until I knew the steps well enough to venture out on my own. The world I knew best—a black world full of protective family, neighbors, and my church community—felt safe. There, I knew I was loved and accepted, even when a few of my darker-skinned playmates took to calling me “high yella” because of my light complexion. The name-calling could get rough sometimes from my playmates, who assumed that I thought the white tint in my skin somehow made me better than them. That mystified me then. I would come to understand it later as one of the more destructive legacies of slavery. The lighter-skinned slaves (sometimes the master’s offspring) received slightly more favorable treatment, such as house jobs, while the darker-skinned slaves were relegated to the fields, fostering a divide that persists today. But in the mind of a child, the skin color separation just seemed silly. My family members were every hue, from pinkish white to the color of the rich brown earth, like Daddy and Big Daddy, whom I adored.

  Daddy and Big Daddy were my protectors. Mother was, too. When the ugliness of that other world—a white world as foreign to me as Russia—surfaced in my presence, my parents and grandfather tried to explain. They wanted to make sure I understood that I was not the problem.

  I must have been in elementary school the first time I felt the sting of a white woman’s words. Mother and I were headed downtown on one of our many bus trips when a white woman stepped onto the crowded bus and made her way to the back of the white section. She quickly scanned the bus and rolled her eyes.

  “These nigras are all over the place,” she blurted as she took a seat.

  The anger on her face and the huffiness in her voice told me her words were not nice, and somehow I knew they were directed at me, at those of us sitting in the back. I looked up at Mother, with a face that all my life has shown exactly what I’m thinking. In that moment, my eyes probably asked: What does she mean? What did we do wrong?

  At first, Mother said nothing, as if she didn’t even hear it. Then, ever so discreetly, she pulled me closer to her and whispered: “Carlotta, we must be patient with ignorance and never, ever bring ourselves down to their level.”

  I would hear those words many times, too, from Daddy, like when he didn’t respond or seem overly deferent to a white man who uttered something disrespectful: You are a Walls. You must never, ever stoop to the level of ignorance.

  I came to believe that they—mean and intolerant people—were the ones with the problem and that I must never, ever stoop to their level. That lesson would shield me in the years ahead when I came
face-to-face with the ugliest side of that foreign world.

  Until then, I played by rules I knew. I’d never seen the game played any other way.

  Then came New York.

  I could hardly believe my ears when my parents told me near the end of my third-grade year in 1951 that I’d be going to that great city for the summer. Daddy’s younger sister, Juanita, had invited me to spend my three-month break from school with her family. I realize now that she was likely offering much-needed relief to my parents, who by then had a second daughter—my sister, Loujuana, two years old at the time. But at age eight, I felt as if a fairy godmother had waved a magic wand and granted me a dream summer vacation. I had heard Mother brag about New York practically all of my life. Her eyes seemed to light up when she talked to her friends about the time she’d visited New York with her sister in 1944, stayed out too late one night, and almost got locked out of one of the gated apartment buildings in Sugar Hill, the ritzy section of Harlem that sits high, overlooking what is now Jackie Robinson Park. From the 1920s when wealthy black men and women began migrating there through the 1960s, Sugar Hill was home to some of the nation’s most well-known black scholars, writers, activists, sports figures, and entertainers: W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, Joe Louis, Thurgood Marshall. Aunt Juanita’s first apartment in New York was there, too. She managed to find a room with a kitchen in a building on Convent Avenue for $4 a week when she realized that the housing her government co-workers had recommended on 113th in Harlem wasn’t quite to her liking.

  I was just two and Daddy was away at war in 1944 when Mother left me in the care of another aunt and took the trip to New York. She accompanied her sister Loualice, who didn’t want to travel alone to the big city to meet her husband, J.W., a navy man whose ship was heading back to the States and would dock there briefly. Aunt Juanita rented Mother and Aunt Loualice an apartment in another Sugar Hill building. By the time Uncle J.W. arrived, he had hatched a matchmaking plan: Aunt Loualice and Mother would bring along Mother’s single sister-in-law, Juanita, and he would bring along a single friend so that all of them could go out together. When Uncle J.W. stepped off the ship, he had with him a handsome young soldier named Alfredo Andrade, a Portuguese Creole whose parents were from Cape Verde, off the western coast of Africa. The two singles were introduced and quickly became a couple. They married a year or two later and stayed in New York.

  When the two of them invited me to New York to visit for the first time, the anticipation of seeing the high-rises and bright lights and getting anywhere near Mother’s Sugar Hill left me so excited about my trip that I couldn’t even bother being scared.

  My parents used their connections to get a free pass and summoned their friends to keep watch over me along the way. They included Herman Freeman—Uncle Herman to me—who worked as a redcap at the Little Rock station. He wasn’t my real uncle, but he was married to my mother’s close friend. My parents also were good friends with the head cook on the train, Aubrey Yancy. My classmate’s father, Mr. Murchison, a porter on the route to St. Louis, had agreed to be my guardian for most of the trip. As protective as my parents were, they trusted that I was in good hands. The connections among black rail workers throughout the country back then operated like a modern-day Underground Railroad, assuring the safe transport and comfort of one another’s family and friends.

  Shortly after Memorial Day that year, Mother and Daddy packed a huge suitcase and sack lunch, drove me to Union Station in downtown Little Rock, and put me on a train bound for a two-day journey to what seemed like the other side of the world. Just before I climbed on board, Daddy and Mother reminded me to mind my manners: Be polite. Don’t ask for anything. Just wait. Mr. Murchison would get me a pillow and take me to the whites-only dining car for a meal before it opened or after it closed. With that, I climbed on board and made my way to the last seat in the railcar for black passengers, next to my railroad guardian.

  For hours at a time, I sat with my face pressed against the passenger window and watched as the brilliant sunshine faded into night. Excitement churned on the inside. My head was so full of thoughts that I could hardly sleep. What would the city look like? Where would we go? What would I see? Would I meet any movie stars?

  Finally, the train pulled into New York’s Penn Station, and I followed the flow of the crowd up the stairs. There, just inside, Aunt Juanita and Uncle Freddie were waiting. I felt like a real-life Alice in Wonderland as I stepped off the train into that vast space. I had landed in a different world, and the thrill of it rushed through me like a current. Penn Station was at least twice as big as the Little Rock station. Throngs of people scurried about in all directions. There was a palpable sense of energy and purpose. My uncle and aunt greeted me warmly and ushered me through the station, which seemed like a city unto itself. My head snapped back and forth as my eyes and ears tried to take in all the faces, hues, and languages mingling in one place. In a blur, I saw crowds of people standing and staring up at a gigantic board that listed a seemingly endless number of trains going to places I’d never even heard of. We whizzed by a couple of water fountains and public restrooms, one for men and another for women. That’s when it struck me: There wasn’t a “Whites Only” sign anywhere in sight.

  Outside, we climbed onto a bus headed to my aunt and uncle’s apartment. It amazed me that we just plopped down wherever we pleased. Not once did the bus driver look back and order us to the back of the bus when white people needed a seat. This was the freedom up north I’d heard so much about. I could tell already that being colored seemed to mean something else up here—or maybe it meant nothing at all. Here, colored men and women seemed to walk with their backs a bit straighter, their heads higher, as though they had as much right as anybody else to occupy this time and space. Here, colored men and women also seemed about as likely as anyone else to be called “mister” or “ma’am.” My parents had ingrained in me all of my life that people of all races were equal in the eyes of God. Here, in New York, I was getting a glimpse of life through His divine lens.

  Aunt Juanita and Uncle Freddie had three children of their own—Camille, who was five; Renata, two; and Michael, an infant. My aunt didn’t seem the least bit overwhelmed by the prospect of adding another child to her brood for three whole months. She was a short, deep-brown-skinned woman with a happy disposition, always bubbly and sweet. She stayed home with us during the day while Uncle Freddie worked as a hospital lab technician. He was thinly built, with wavy black hair and skin on the light side of honey. He spoke Portuguese and Italian and patiently played my interpreter and tour guide as we cruised the streets of New York. The family lived in a three-bedroom apartment in a dark redbrick building at 62nd Street and West End Avenue. The complex was among the city’s first public housing units, built primarily for veterans returning from World War II. It was brand-new and wonderful, nothing like the crumbling urban tenements that still stand in most major cities today. Their apartment was on the fourth floor, so we frequently took the elevator, which was as exciting as an amusement park ride to me. I’d hop off and on and ride over and over again. From the bedroom window, I could look out and see across the Hudson River into New Jersey. Sometimes, on stifling nights, I’d get out of bed and stand in front of the raised window to try to catch a breeze and watch the boats cruising down the river. The lights looked like stars, dotting the landscape on the other side of the water.

  We walked about four blocks to Central Park to picnic, visit the zoo, play ball, or ride our bikes. I even lost a fingernail there, showing off on the bike. I wanted to show my family and the many spectators how well this southern girl could ride, but I momentarily took my eyes off the path and was pumping so fast that I missed a curve and slammed into a nearby water fountain. Fortunately, aside from the fingernail and a few scrapes, the only thing seriously hurt was my pride.

  I spent most of my time on a concrete playground in the courtyard of the apartment complex. Aunt Juanita
took the children outside to play there practically every day, but some mornings I couldn’t wait and went ahead of her. She joined the other mothers on a bench, and I continued playing, running from the sliding board to the swings and jungle gym. It was the strangest thing to see small patches of dirt and trees sprouting from all that concrete.

  There, in the courtyard, a group of us regularly encountered an old man, always alone, nodding on a bench. He was usually dressed in a black suit and a hat that fell slightly over his face as he slept. I thought he was a drunk, a wino, like some of the men who worked for Grandpa Cullins. For some strange reason, we kids thought it would be fun to hide and throw rocks at him. We did, and we giggled each time the man eventually stood and stumbled away. Nearly forty years later, I would learn the identity of that man when I brought my son and daughter to New York to visit Aunt Juanita. I walked with them to the courtyard and told them stories about the old drunk I used to see there. As I moved closer to the bench to point out the spot where he always sat, I noticed a plaque with a name engraved on it. My mouth dropped open, and a rush of shame flushed through me when I read the name inscribed there: jazz great Thelonious Monk. The plaque pointed us to a small house next to the apartment complex, where Aunt Juanita still lives today. Little did I know that for those three months when I was eight years old, Thelonious Monk was my neighbor.

  The summer of 1951 was full of firsts for me, grand and small. It was there that I first encountered the awful smell of lamb simmering on a Sunday afternoon, which left such a bad impression that a decade passed before I got the nerve to try even a lamb chop. I heard for the first time my new friends ask for “soda” or “soda pop” instead of a “cold drink,” which we said back home. I sat in a soda shop and watched a server make the drink before my eyes and serve it in a glass with a straw instead of a bottle. I saw firemen open a fire hydrant and neighborhood kids dash through the blast of water in their clothes again and again under the fiery sun. I also visited the amusement park at Indian Point with Uncle Freddie and his parents, who were Portuguese and Cape Verdean and spoke little English. They were visiting from their home in Rhode Island where Uncle Freddie had grown up. How we all managed to squeeze into that tiny three-bedroom apartment and communicate that summer, I don’t know. But the beauty of it is that somehow, we managed. And I’ll never forget that trip to Indian Point.