You Don't Know Me Read online

  My mother said, “Yeah, he called. The tests are okay.”

  Dad asked, “So when do the tests expire then?”

  Mother replied, “Tomorrow.”

  She heard him exclaim, “WHAT!” There was a short silence; then he said, “I’ll call you back.” She hadn’t thought to ask him where he was, but the next thing she knew, he was home. Somehow he had managed to catch a flight and come straight back to Dallas. Before she knew what was happening, they were on their way downtown to get a marriage license.

  When they got to the Hall of Records, my mother was in for another surprise. They asked her for her age, and she replied, “Twenty-six.”

  Then they asked my father for his age, and he replied, “Twenty-four.”

  Mother looked at him and said, “What are you doing? Stop playin’ and tell the people your right age.”

  My father replied, “That is my right age.” And then the truth came out. Cecil Shaw knew my mother never dated younger men, so he had advised Dad not to tell her his real age. As they stood there together, though, waiting for their marriage license, my mother didn’t have the heart to be angry with either of them.

  The clerk told them where they could go to get married. License in hand, my parents went looking for the building the clerk had directed them to. When they found it, the woman there told them that she was a minister. She said she could marry them immediately if they wanted. My parents were doubtful. They had never met this woman before. They weren’t even sure she had the legal right to perform the ceremony.

  My mother looked at my dad and said, “Ray? What do you think?”

  He thought a moment and said to the woman, “Are you really a minister?”

  The woman replied, “Well, you can come with me and find out for yourself. There’s an attorney right across the street. He lets me marry people in his office. He can tell you I’m a licensed minister.”

  When they went across the street, the attorney confirmed that the woman was a minister. The ceremony would be perfectly legal. He would serve as their witness. The attorney led them to the back room. His office was very nice, but the room he took them to looked like some sort of storage room, with broken-down furniture and used paint cans. My mother was afraid that at any minute a rat would come nosing its way out of the debris. She looked around at all the junk and said, “Ray?”

  My dad heard the anxiety in her voice and was quick to reassure her. “It’s all right, Bea. I got to get back so I can catch my flight out and make the job. It’ll be all right. Let’s just get married.”

  And they did. In a back room filled with junk, a woman they had never met read them their vows. On the way to the airport afterward, my mother told him, “Lord, Ray, I don’t think I’m married. A real minister would not marry people in the middle of that mess. I think those people involved us in some kind of scam. I won’t believe we’re married ’til I see something with some kind of legal stamp on it.” My father reassured her, and then he got on the plane. When the papers arrived a few days later, my mother saw the stamp. The marriage was legal, all right. It was only then that she allowed herself to believe it had really happened.

  Looking back now, she believes that the Lord stepped in. God had given her a man she really loved and who loved her back. God had given her a child after all the years of barrenness. That impromptu wedding in a room filled with junk didn’t look like much, but it was the real thing. My parents may not have lived happily ever after, but they loved each other.

  CHAPTER 3

  Hallelujah, I Love Her So

  When I’m in trouble and

  I have no friends,

  I know she’ll go with me

  until the end.

  —RAY CHARLES

  WITH A WIFE AND A CHILD ON THE WAY, MY FATHER FINALLY had a family of his own. The only problem was that he had no idea what a family was, for he had never been part of one. His own father had been absent from his life. When I was old enough to wonder why my dad never mentioned his father, my mother told me that my dad had barely known him. He had been sent away to school when he was seven, and he had lost his mother during his teens. He had been raised in large part by teachers and mentors in an institution. The education he received there enabled him to survive, but it deprived him of the emotional support most children find in their parents. He was afraid to get too close to anyone. As our family grew, it would get harder and harder for him to figure out what to do as a husband and father.

  From the time he was sent away to school, most of the people he had to depend on were paid to take care of him. Being blind in the music world meant he had to pay people to do things for him that most people could do for themselves. Many of the musicians he played with during the early years treated him badly. Lowell Fulson, T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, they all laughed at him. They thought he was some kind of joke. Charles Brown didn’t like him because my father tried to sing like him. Many people who claimed to be his friends when he became famous had never really been his friends at all. The way they treated my dad hurt my mother deeply. She used to pray that God would help my father rise above them. Their marriage brought my father new hope. With my mother by his side, he could finally do that.

  When he was home from the road, my parents would talk for hours about the future. My mother was convinced that my father could make a success of anything he wanted to do. When she saw how gifted he was with electronics, she asked him if he had ever thought of making a career in that field. When he told her he didn’t want to go into electronics, she said that was fine, they’d try something else. Like his mother had, she encouraged him to reach his full potential. When she realized he didn’t know how to write his name, she told him she would teach him. He became upset and told her, “I can’t write!”

  She insisted, “Yes, you can. You’re going to learn to write your name and initials.” And she took his hand and put a pencil in it and showed him how to print the letters in his name. She wanted him to be able to sign things for himself, so he wouldn’t have to rely on other people who might not be honest. My mother knew there would come a time when others might try to take advantage of my father.

  After that he would practice every chance he got. She would wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and hear him working. She thought he was working on a song with his braille writer, but instead he would be there with a pencil, carefully practicing his letters. When he thought he had done well, he would bring the paper to my mother to show her, like a proud child. It thrilled her to see his effort and his pride.

  They talked continually about his music. She encouraged him to get his own style, to stop trying to sound like other artists. He was reluctant, telling her, “I don’t like my voice.”

  She told him, “Well, you’re not going to make it singing like Charles Brown or Nat “King” Cole, or singing like anyone else, either. There can only be one somebody like that in a lifetime. Get your own style. You’re not ever going to be successful if you continue to pattern yourself after another singer, because you can’t walk in another man’s shoes. You have to walk on your own and make your own footprints in the sand. You can’t go down and say, ‘I’m goin’ to put my foot here, in this other man’s footprint.’ If the wind blows, you may miss, you know? ’Cause that footprint may have moved. You have to make your own. I’m willing to stay with you if we have to live in a tent. I’m willing to do that as long as you do something that makes you happy.”

  Those closest to my father say that was the reason he loved my mother so much. He had nothing when he married her. He was just a blind musician that no one except a few people on the chitlin’ circuit had ever heard of. She had fallen in love with him when he had nothing to offer but his name. He knew he could trust her and he loved her.

  That first year of marriage was one of the best of my parents’ lives. Financially, it was a struggle, but the time they spent together was wonderful. He worked on his music constantly at home, sitting up all night writing out songs and arrangement
s, punching holes on his braille writer with a stylus. It was slow work. The problem with a braille writer is that you can’t erase, so he would go through stacks of paper until the trash can was overflowing. It was time-consuming and expensive, so many times my mother would stay up all night taking notes for him. He would hum some lyrics and say, “Write that down, Bea.” It was exhausting for her, especially with me on the way, and she was relieved when he stopped for a while. Yet it remains one of her most precious memories. “There was a lot of enjoyment in that. Lord have mercy,” she says to me with that throaty chuckle of hers.

  Most of the time, though, my father had to be on the road. My mother still worked while they lived quietly in their small place in Dallas, waiting for my arrival, trying to keep working. They needed the money. My father wanted her to stay home and rest. Always very slim, she had become frighteningly thin. Eventually nature made the decision for them. She passed out at work, and her employer told her to go home and stay there. If she wanted to return to work after the baby came, they would talk about it then. My father said absolutely not. She would stay home and take care of me. He would take care of the family.

  Independent as he was, though, the fact remained that my father was blind. He could go only so far by himself, and he found this frustrating. He would always need help on the road. Fortunately, help came in the person of Jeff Brown. Jeff had been a taxi driver before he met my father, and by chance, a friend of a friend had called Jeff to help out when my father needed a driver. By the time my parents were married, Jeff had become my dad’s permanent driver, but more important, he had become my father’s friend. During their first years on the road together, Jeff watched the small, daily struggles of my father’s life and quietly stepped in to help. It was Jeff who made sure my father didn’t go onstage with a stain on his suit; it was Jeff who sorted my father’s money into ones, fives, tens, and twentys so my father could buy things himself without being cheated. It was Jeff who made sure that my father ate, slept, and made it to the next gig on time along the endless highways he traveled most of the year. Officially, Jeff was just a driver, but in reality, he was my father’s eyes on the road, and his vision was clear.

  One afternoon while my father was home in Dallas, he, Jeff, and my mother talked over what to do next to gain some momentum for my father’s career. My father had many ideas, but he needed help to make them a reality. Dad asked Jeff if he would consider becoming a full-time road manager. It would require a commitment from Jeff that would take him away from his wife and children most of the year, and it also required considerable faith, for there were no guarantees that my father would ever earn enough money to make Jeff’s sacrifice worthwhile. Jeff talked it over with his wife, and they agreed to give it a try. Tommy Brown stepped into Jeff’s old job as driver, and Jeff took responsibility for the rest. Jeff went on the road with my father full time, and as the old band members remember, if it needed doing, Jeff did it. When I asked my mother what Jeff did for my father in the early days, she replied, “Everything. Drove him, fed him, helped him get dressed, kept the guys in line. He was your father’s eyes and hands.” His presence enabled my father to survive the lean years, before the four-star hotels and the private planes. For the next ten years, Jeff became a member of our family—our confidant and friend. In all my early memories, Jeff is there in the background, a constant presence, as dependable as the changing of the seasons.

  My father was on the road when my mother went into labor with me. It had been a rough pregnancy, and when my mother checked in to the hospital, she still needed a trash can to throw up in. The nausea had never gone away. The small segregated hospital was a clapboard house that had been converted into a maternity hospital for black women. There were only four beds in the tiny nursery, but the medical personnel were well trained, and they took good care of my mother. The labor was long and hard, but I emerged into the world healthy and screaming, with a full head of reddish hair. Within hours, my dad was there. My mother was never sure how he managed it, but for each of us children, he somehow made it home within hours of her giving birth. As soon as he arrived, the nurse took him and Tommy, who had driven Dad from the airport, to the nursery to see me. The nurse had never heard of Ray Charles, and she apparently didn’t notice Tommy leading the way for my dad. When she went to tell my mother that my dad had arrived, the nurse was a little indignant.

  She said, “Your husband is here, Mrs. Robinson.”

  And my mother replied, “He is? Oh, bring him in.”

  The nurse told her irritably, “Well, I don’t think he’s very happy about the baby.”

  My mother said, “What do you mean?”

  The nurse replied, “Because he hasn’t said a thing about the baby. His friend is looking in the nursery, but your husband didn’t even go up to the window. Didn’t even bother to look at him.”

  My mother told her calmly, “No, that’s because he can’t. My husband is blind.”

  The nurse stood there for a moment, looking like she wanted to go through the floor from embarrassment. Finally, she said, “Oh. I am so sorry. I am so sorry.”

  My mother reassured her. “You didn’t know. Nobody told you.” My dad never used a cane, and he didn’t carry himself the way most blind people do. With his dark glasses hiding his eyes, he could easily be mistaken for a sighted person.

  When my father came in to see my mother a few minutes later, the nurse brought him a chair and then went back to get me. She brought me into the room and then stood there, holding me, not certain what to do next. My father was sitting, his arms out, waiting to hold me. Finally, she said, “Well, uh,” and laid me in my mother’s arms.

  My mother told the nurse, “Give Ray the baby.”

  The nurse looked doubtfully at my mother. “Give your husband the baby?”

  My mother repeated, “Yes. Give him the baby.” The nurse took me from my mother and nervously laid me in my father’s waiting arms.

  My father was more than ready. He immediately began to “look” at me in the way that would become so familiar to me over the years. First he felt my face and then ran his hand over my hair. I had a lot of dark, soft, reddish brown hair, and my eyes were blue, probably from my Creole ancestors. My father pulled the blanket back and counted my fingers. Next he unwrapped me and began to “look” at me all over, down to my toes. When he came to my feet, he said, “Well, he got all his fingers and toes.” He felt my arms and legs, and then he said, “But where are the wrinkles?”

  “Wrinkles?” my mother said. His first child, Evelyn, had been tiny, and she was covered with wrinkles when she was born.

  “Yeah,” my dad said. “He’s supposed to have wrinkles. Babies have wrinkles when they’re born.”

  My mother replied, “Well, this one is eight pounds, three and a half ounces, and the nurse says there are no wrinkles when a baby’s that healthy.”

  Then she told him she had named me Cedric Durrell. My father was horrified. “No, no, no. My son shall have my name. Ray Charles Robinson Jr.”

  Thank heaven my father would get his way.

  They kept my mother and me in the hospital for three days, and my father had to go back on the road before we came home. But first, he went shopping. My mother didn’t feel they could afford real furniture for me, so she had gotten a wicker clothes basket with a pillow to put me in. When my father found out she was planning to have me sleep in a clothes basket, he asked my mother if she was out of her mind. Before they left, he and Tommy bought a crib and a high chair and all the trimmings. It took a couple of days for everything to be delivered. The pillow for the basket had been misplaced while my mother was in the hospital, so while she waited for the crib to arrive, I spent my first two days at home sleeping in a dresser drawer.

  For the first couple of months of my life, it was just the two of us in the little house my father had rented on Myrtle Street. My mother was thrilled to finally have the baby she had always dreamed of, but she was nervous, too. When the ambulance brough
t her home, she was convinced that the attendants were going to drop the gurney and injure us both. She insisted that they help her up the stairs and then carry me up to her. Once upstairs, we stayed inside. It was six weeks before she felt strong enough to go down the steps.

  My father had set up an account for us at the corner grocery, and my mother’s girlfriend Daisy would get what we needed. My mother wasn’t much of a cook in those days, so anything in a can would work for her. Always a finicky eater, I would spit out my mother’s breast milk and make a face when she tried to nurse me. After a while she gave up and put me on a bottle, and Daisy would bring milk for me. I was a good baby, I am told, and as long as I was dry and fed, I didn’t cause much of a fuss. That didn’t stop my mother from fussing over me. The first time I slept all night, she thought I was dead. She had fallen sound asleep herself, and when she woke up in the morning and found me motionless in the corner of the crib, she panicked. She jumped out of bed, screaming, “Oh, God! My baby is dead! My baby is dead!” When she pulled the blanket back, she saw me move a little farther into the corner. My mother would always worry about us. That never really went away.

  For most of those early weeks, my father was on the road, but when he did come home, he was determined to take care of me. My mother told me that “anything that was worthwhile and important he was goin’ to learn, he was goin’ to be at it. ‘Now, how you do this?’ he’d say. And when you’re gone, he’s still there at it. He couldn’t see, but he did not let that stop him.” He already knew how to turn the stove on. He’d listen for the gas, and when he heard the poof, he’d strike the match for the burner. He would heat my bottles and test the temperature, and then he would feed me. He even changed my diapers. Babies still wore cloth diapers in those days, so changing me meant he would have to clean me up, then fold the diaper and pin it on without pricking me. If my mother needed to run an errand and I was sleeping, my father would tell her to go ahead. He would babysit me. Just as his own mother had trusted him with chores that other people said a blind child shouldn’t do, my mother trusted him with me. She would come home to find me wearing a crooked diaper, but I would be fed and happy and safe.