PROLOGUE Prelude to a Life Some women are lost in the fire; some women are built from it. --Michelle K. The first thing I want to tell you is that on September 27, 1967, I died. I was two years and one day old. Two days before my death, my mother, Vivan, and I flew from New York to Cleveland, Ohio, to visit James Forest and his wife, Julia. I was a little bald-headed toddler, and my mother was twenty-four years old with cover-girl good looks. When Vivan was a child, her mother, Thelma, had been romantically involved in a relationship with James Forest that was as passionate as it was violent. It was a vicious cycle, one that Vivian would relive in her own marriage.
However, by 1967, James and Thelma''s turbulent history was like water under the bridge. The former lovers were friendly now, telephoning each other on birthdays and holidays to share news about some person they''d both known who''d hit the number, got married, had a baby, gone to jail, or died. I suppose they stayed connected because they had history. History, if you don''t know, is a hard thing to shake because it''s as bonding as glue. They''d stayed connected because of their viscid history, but also because James had been like a father to Vivian, who had never had one. When James learned that Vivan had married and had had a child, he sent for the two of us to come to Cleveland so that he could wrap his arms around us both. "Bring that baby up here so I can smell her head!" That''s how I ended up celebrating my second birthday in Cleveland, Ohio, with Thelma''s old flame, his wife, and my mother. On the afternoon of the twenty-sixth, everyone gathered around the white Formica kitchen table.
I was seated in Vivan''s lap, dressed in a pink frilly dress and colorful party hat. After they sang "Happy Birthday," Vivan held me at a safe distance from the flame dancing atop the white candle shaped in the form of the number 2. "Blow, Bernice, blow!" The flame buckled and died, and then I plunged my hands into the cake and shoveled the creamy sweetness into my moth. There was a lot of joy in that room, but there was sadness too. We should have been celebrating at home with my father, Robert, as a family. I suspect that our trip to Cleveland was more than just a visit to catch up with old friends and family, I suspect this was one of my mother''s early prison breaks. * James and his wife lived just a few short hours away from Detroit, Michigan. Vivan hadn''t been back to that city since she and Thelma had moved to Brooklyn back in the fifties.
She had planned to take a bus from Cleveland to detroit to visit her great-uncle Richard, great-aunt Lula Mae, and their children. When James hear her plans, he scoffed. "I can''t let you take my grandbaby on no filthy goddamn bus." James''s concern was less about the cleanliness of the bus and more about whether Vivan and I would have an easy egress from the city should tempers erupt. * Two months earlier, on July 23, 1967, Detroit exploded in one of the deadliest and most destructive race rebellions the country had ever seen. Over five days and nights forty-three people were killed, thirty-three of whom were Black. More than 7,200 people were arrested--most of them were Black too. The last time Detroit tempers flared to that degree was in 1943, the year Vivan was born.
During that unrest, nine whites and twenty-five Blacks were killed. Of those twenty-five, seventeen were murdered by the police. America was and remains a powder keg, and often the match that lights the fuse is racism. In 1967, Detroit was just one of nearly 160 uprisings that erupted across the nation that summer. The terror disrupted whole families, including my own. On July 12, John W. Smith, my maternal first cousin, twice removed, was pulled over in his taxicab in Newark, New Jersey, by two white police officers. AFter some back-and-forth, the officers ripped John from the car, arrested him,a nd then beat him within an inch of his life.
Residents in the area saw the officers drag his limp body from the cruiser into the police station. The spectators assuemd he was dead, and the notion spread like fever. Soon, the police station was surrounded by a mass of angry people chanting, "Show us John Smith! Show us John Smith!" Police officers dressed in riot gear rushed the crowd with billy clubs. In retaliation, rocks and bottles were pelted, and melee ensued. Over five nights, businesses were looted, fires were set, twenty-six people were killed, and seven hundred people were injured, including a twelve-year-old boy named Joe Bass Jr., whom police shot down in the street for stealing a twelve-pack of beer. Life magazine put Bass''s image on the cover of their July 28 issue. In the photo, Joe lies crumpled on the blacktop, bleeding from his neck and leg wounds.
One arm is folded beneath him, the other bent as if in an embrace. His fingers on both hands are touching. The scene is heartbreaking, hard to shake from my memory, but for some reason I cannot articulate, it''s his white Converse sneakers--gray with filth--that dog me. A week ahead of Joe Bass Jr., my cousin John Smith, called J. W., graced the cover of Time magazine. Unkempt Afro, cheeks covered in five-o''clock shadow, mustache and soul patch in need of a trim, he is looking away from the camera, eyes focused on something or someone just out of frame.
When he made the cover, phones jangled in houses and apartments of my family members all across the country. Hey. y''all know J. W. is on the cover of Time magazine? Mary Emma''s boy is on the cover of Time magazine! Rosie May''s grandson is on Time magazine! Thelma bought a copy from the newspaper stand outside the Manhattan office building where she worked as a cleaning woman. She made it a point to tell the white man behind the counter that the Black man on the cover was her cousin. In the building, she showed the magazine to her coworkers and the white hedge fund managers who were readying themselves to leave for the evening. "That there is my cousin," she said, smiling proudly as the magazine passed from one set of hands to the next.
"Really, Thelma?" "Yep." In the morning, when she returned home from emptying wastebaskets, scrubbing toilets, and polishing the chrome panel insets of the elevators, she tossed the magazine on the dining room table where her four stepchildren were eating cereal before heading off to school. "Look," she spat. " Time magazine done gone and put the devil on their cover." She had her reasons for calling him that, reasons I''ll get to soon. * The previous year, the city of Celeveland experienced its own bout of civil unrest when a Black customer walked into the Seventy-Niners Cafe on Hough Avenue, ordered a take-out meal, and, as he waited for his food, asked if he could have a glass of water. When the white waiter refused, hot words were exchanged, and then all hell broke loose. By September 1967, residents in both Celeveland and Detroit were still simmering with rage, even as icy autumn air swept down from neighboring Canada.
* So, with all of that in mind, James handed my mother the keys to his brand-new 1967 Cadillac. "Go ''head, take my car," he''d said, and then added with a wink and a chuckle, "Make sure you bring it back in one piece." Famous last words. On that chilly autumn evening, with his wife, Julia, in the passenger seat and me in the back, Vivan aimed that shiny black Cadillac toward Detroit, and we set off on a journey that would end in smoke and flames. Infant car seats did not exist in 1967. In 1967, you held your children in your lap, and if they were big enough, you just sat them in the seat like any other grown passenger. And maybe you used the seat belts, but you probably didn''t, because although they were provided, you weren''t required by law to wear them. On the dashboard under the glow of the radio was a metal ashtray hidden behind a door with a lip.
A light tug to the lip and the silver ashtray popped out like a Murphy bed from a wall. Alongside that ashtray was a cigarette lighter. All one had to do was press the cylinder-shaped lighter into the opening and wait a few seconds. Once it was heated, the lighter would pop up. The smoker could then pluck the lighter from the opening, bring the underside of red-hot coils to the tip of the cigarette, and voila! Most cars had ashtrays and lighters in the armrests too. The Cadillac was no exception. It was those ashtrays that got me haulted into the front seat, because I was opening and closing the lids, and the clacking sound was raking Vivian''s nerves. Keeping her eyes on the road and hands on the steering wheel, Vivan said to Julia, "Please bring that child up here.
" Julia reached back and pulled me into her lap, wehre I squirmed and squirmed until she finally set me down betwixt the two of them. Had the car not had ashtrays, I would ahve been left in that back seat, and I surely would have died on impact. It was late, the night sky was scattered with clouds, and Interstate 94 was dark. Vivian and Julia bounced their heads to aretha Franklin''s "Respect" flowing out of the speakers. When Vivan approached West Road, she squinted at the sign, unsure if that was the right exit. "Is this it?" she whispered, easing up on the gas. "Yeah,".