Scenes from Childhood

Once my mother went back to work, her face was not as sad. She worked at Fisher Body’s war plant for almost two years and then went back to teaching school, as she had before she married. She won an award for not missing class. She taught fifth-grade science. She was in a bridge club. At some point, she won an award for her bridge. She was always dressed perfectly in suits, and she had evening gowns. Making her own money at Fisher Body and through teaching made it possible for us to move to the Glenville section of Cleveland, which was very popular with Negroes during and after the war. Attractive houses the Germans had built in 1910.

But before Fisher Body, during the years 1937 to 1941, I was her friend. She told me her dreams, and she cried. We went to the movies on Tuesday nights at the Imperial. She was dutiful. Breakfast, Quaker oatmeal. Lunch, Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, peanut butter. She bought me a little rocking chair and a rolltop desk. I sat in this little chair when I read Jane Eyre. Apart from the grand beauty of Charlotte Brontë’s prose, it was clear to me that with her dead mother and her boarding school, my mother resembled this heroine. She might even be Jane Eyre. My mother was so like this little English girl. I would read the passages over and over.

My mother told me about her stepfather. He was very nice to her, she said, but he was killed crossing a train track. She refused to talk of her mother. Just once she said her name was Mary.

Drying the dishes while my mother washed them was very pleasant. I helped her make the kitchen spotless. The beginnings of the days had breakfast. And the ritual of my hair. Every morning, my mother combed and brushed it, divided it into three braids, and put the ribbons on. It was a chore for her. Her own hair was straight.

When we came home from school at 3:15 p.m., my mother was always in the kitchen. My brother and I had milk and graham crackers. I did not realize it, but my mother looked sad those afternoons. I think she had often been crying. Curly hair, pretty pale face, small, and always in a cotton apron. After milk and graham crackers, we were allowed to listen to the radio just long enough to hear The Lone Ranger.

I thought my little brother beautiful. Light brown hair, huge brown eyes, smaller than I was, and always looking up to me. My mother called him Cornie. My father and I called him Cornell. I always held his hand when we went places. He seemed to need my protection, but he could turn dangerous. He had a collection of silver cap guns and would suddenly shoot me, the red caps exploding. He once tried to shoot me in my eye. The teachers at school told my mother he was a problem. She was regularly called in about him. It seems he threw spitballs. My mother loved Cornie very much. He was two years and nine months younger. We shared a room until I was nine.

In those years, Mother looked extremely pale. Often, her hair seemed wet and stuck to her head. She probably weighed about ninety pounds. I think she was very tired. She seemed to do the laundry once a week—sheets, towels, pillowcases, our underwear, Daddy’s shirts, my dresses, Cornell’s shirts. And then, after that, the ironing of all. The ironing board was set up in the kitchen. Everything had to be perfect.

Mother didn’t have a job then. Sometimes she said Daddy spent all his money, and they didn’t have enough to last to the first of the next month. When she got her job at Fisher Body, my father would say, Your mother has that job now.

Even after she started at Fisher Body, she kept doing the same work at home. Mother was constantly working. Dinner was every single night at 6:00 p.m. Breakfast was at 7:30 a.m. Winter, Quaker oatmeal. Summer, Corn Flakes, sometimes with sliced bananas. My school dresses had to be perfect, every wrinkle ironed out. She always seemed sad and stern.

In 1937, she was thirty. She was born in 1907. I remember she once said that when she looked out the window, she would think, Is this all my life will be?

Your father was Jekyll and Hyde, she always said. She said Daddy was mean to her. Later she liked the war plant. She enjoyed teaching. She looked little in her brown slacks, blouse, and laced-up brown shoes coming home from Fisher Body. She seldom smiled. Sometimes she would ask me to help her peel potatoes. I had no idea how tired my mother must have been after working at that war plant.

Once, she asked me to iron Daddy’s shirt. I couldn’t get the wrinkles out. When he put it on, I was crying. That’s all right, she said.

I didn’t really understand why, but I didn’t like my hair. It was not hair like my mother’s. It had to be straightened with a comb. The comb had brown teeth and a black handle. It was kept in a drawer underneath the bathroom sink. Little curling irons were kept there too. They had green handles. When my hair was straightened, curls of smoke came from these machines, and Mother had to be careful not to burn me. Sometimes she burned my neck a little. This was an ordeal for her.

She washed my hair in the bathroom sink. Then it had to dry. It dried naturally. Next she had me sit in a chair while she sat on a kitchen stool and started to straighten. She had to heat the comb on the stove. She used curlers for only very special occasions. After straightening, Mother braided—or plaited, as they called it then—my hair into a top braid and two back braids. She did this dutifully every two weeks. She washed my hair every other week on Fridays. She was very methodical, almost like a doctor. I hated it. I hated my hair. She used the word kinky. When combing, she would say, Your hair is kinky. After braiding, she would tie pretty grosgrain ribbons around my braids and place me in front of the mirrors. I have the mirrors still.

One is a hand mirror with a back made of imitation marble. The other is the mirror that hung over her dressing table. She would look at me in the mirror and say something like, You look nice. She was proud of the work she had done. She was proud of the braids that were about three inches long. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a girl who was never going to grow up to look like Hedy Lamarr. I thought I looked funny. If only I resembled my mother, who, when she had on Pond’s powder, lipstick, and rouge, was like a movie star to me. Mother kind of looked like Lena Horne and Ingrid Bergman. I couldn’t imagine how I would have a life. Once or twice, Daddy said I looked pretty.

In June of 1943, Cornell and I were sent to Georgia, and when we returned in August, my parents had moved from Signet to Parmelee Avenue. I was eleven, turning twelve on September 13. To me, the new house seemed quite grand. Mother had decorated my room. When you came up the stairs, my room was the first one. It had blue flowered wallpaper. Mother had given me the double mahogany bed from my parents’ bedroom, and there was a dresser with a mirror—a dresser precious to me because it was where my mother kept her gloves, earrings, and necklaces, and the drawers had a fragrance.

A blue bottle of Coty cologne always sat on the dresser. It had a mirror where Mother hung more necklaces and scarves. An embroidered design encircled the mirror, which I still have today. Mother kept a lace scarf on top of the dresser. There was a small bench to sit on. She had given this to me. And the dresser. It was all arranged. I felt cherished to have been given this room with a small porch that overlooked the backyard. I had a closet that smelled of furniture polish. Cornell’s room was next to mine, and my parents had a great room with a fireplace. This room with bay windows was the length of the house. I thought it magnificent. It was pale blue with cream woodwork. And Mother and Daddy had all new furniture and mahogany twin beds. The stairs made me happy. I loved going up the stairs.

I was often walking on the moon when I entered the dark living room. Wine-colored couch, chair, phone, radio, cream-colored wallpaper, mahogany dining-room table, four chairs, sideboard, window seat. The sideboard had a silver coffee set, beautiful to me.

My mother poured coffee into the silver coffeepot. It had a knob, and when my mother turned the knob, coffee came out. I loved it so. It was only for guests. Mother had guests for lunch. They ate at the mahogany table.

Her bridge club friends had salad. And coffee on card tables. Clara, Althea, Marge, Camille. They laughed, laughed all through the bridge game. I loved them. The cards and what was happening in the cards were my great enjoyment. To me, they all seemed to dress alike in print dresses. My mother seemed happiest when she was serving chicken salad and coffee to the “girls.” Etta, come on, they would say as she ran back to the kitchen to get ice-cream cake. My mother laughed. Being with the “girls” made her very happy. They would call to me, Adrienne, come here. Often, I hid on the steps.

But they always asked for me. They liked me. They liked me a lot, and I loved them. I would stand in front of the stairs. Adrienne, we just wanted to say hello. I always had to make an appearance. It was Sunday. How’s school? Clara and Althea were my favorites. They were elementary school teachers. They had straightened hair. Althea’s was in an upsweep. Clara’s was in little curls. She had pearl earrings. Althea often wore a hat. So kind to me, they were happy to see me. What grade are you in now? It was on these Sundays that I saw Mother at her happiest. The coffee in the silver coffeepot. She turned the knob and coffee poured into her china cups. I would run back up the stairs to the landing and listen to them. They were friends from the 1930s until they died. I never had friends like Clara, Althea, Marge, and Camille. I never had a bridge club. I never won a bridge prize like my mother.

I didn’t understand that Mother was a heroine to me, like Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver. First she was at the war plant and carried a metal lunch box, her fellow factory workers picking her up in the dark early morning. Then she started teaching, and again it was dark when she left the house for the bus, making breakfast for Cornell and me before she left at 7:25 a.m.

As I recall, before the war there were only a few Negro teachers in Cleveland’s public school system. In the fourth grade at Lafayette, I had one—Willa Shook. She and her sister, both teachers, lived in the brick house at the edge of East Boulevard. They were like celebrities. They were among the first Negro teachers. Unmarried, the sisters were impeccably dressed, soft-spoken, and stern. Miss Shook, the only Negro teacher at Lafayette, was a goddess.

Mother’s first teaching job was in a dangerous part of Cleveland where they sent Negro teachers after the war. Most of my mother’s fifth-grade students did not finish high school. She had to take two buses. Mother on two buses from September to mid-June from Glenville deep into the Woodland area, going to night school, doing her schoolwork at the dining-room table.

In winter, it was often getting dark when she came around the corner in her brown coat and brown-laced oxfords. She put her books on the dining-room table and started dinner. We still ate dinner at six o’clock sharp, but now our house in Glenville was grander. When she came in, she had a cigarette, a Chesterfield. She only asked that I peel the potatoes and set the table. Often, she cooked pork chops, vegetable stew, always vegetables from a can, corn, green beans, and a salad, always the same, with lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise. Her meals were organized and served, I realized, with a style she had learned when she was at boarding school and then at Atlanta University. Our house was orderly.

We ate dinner at 6:00 p.m. Daddy ate without talking much. He seemed to smile more, and the phone was always ringing for him. He had many phone calls in the evening. There were emergency meetings. I thought it great to be called away from the dinner table. I thought it great when he often said, I am having dinner now. I will call you back in about fifteen minutes. These callers always called my father Mr. Hawkins.

My mother got a few calls from her girlfriends. Often, they talked about food and the next bridge club meeting. But she never got called to rush out to a fundraising event or a meeting at the church. And she had no calling card and did not drive the car. And I never heard her give a speech.

My father’s speeches had words like our race, opportunity, progress, Morehouse, Alpha Phi Alpha, Du Bois, Negroes. Progress, progress. People clapped and went up to Mr. Hawkins and talked to him. Sometimes they would say hello to me if I stood by his side. Hello, Adrienne. But it was only for a second. People talked to him about the next meeting. And the committee. People sought him out. I knew that when I grew up, I wanted to be sought out like that.

Our house on parmelee had a crystal chandelier in the dining room. We sat beneath it mostly on Sunday, when my mother served dinner on a white tablecloth and her china that she loved so much. The chandelier dominated the room, and when you entered the living room, it was those crystals that seemed to speak. I feel that they spoke to me, those lovely lights, and protected me. Because the fixture was so dominant, I felt it had a power over my life and imbued my spirit with a force that made me strong. It was always making me strong in ways I certainly did not understand. We were invited to the dining-room table when my mother rang a small crystal bell. I think the crystal bell was something she picked up at her boarding school, where the girls were called to meals by a bell.

Many of my mother’s habits came from her boarding school, Fort Valley High and Industrial School. Our furniture was like the furniture in her headmaster’s house. She felt loved by that family, and on holidays, when Mother had no home to go to, she spent holidays at that house. Her grandmother was often in Warm Springs. Mother was certainly trying to replicate her headmaster’s house.

Our furniture had a traditional yet Victorian look, formal and perfectly arranged. The mahogany dining-room set had a buffet, a china cabinet, and four chairs with maroon seats. The buffet held the silver coffee set. The china cabinet held glasses and plates to be used only on holidays. I was not allowed to touch the silver coffee set or the objects inside the china cabinet. But every Saturday morning, I had to dust the cabinet, the buffet, and the entire dining table. I loved these objects and the smell of the furniture polish in its glass bottle. Mother watched me to make sure I got the entire table. She was often in the kitchen cleaning up; later, upstairs with the dust mop. Daddy was at work and came home at noon. I don’t know where Cornell was, but I think he got to play out in the backyard. I loved these cleaning sessions and felt I was my mother’s helper, her friend. I liked her orders.

Her orders, I think, formed a discipline for me. Her orders meant that I had duties. And duties had to be performed perfectly. A bed had to be made up perfectly. Dishes had to be dried perfectly and put back into the cupboard in order. And a person who sat beneath the chandelier had to live up to certain expectations. I was happy living up to these expectations and loved being under my mother’s care.

I never seemed to get a chance to talk to my father. He told me about the war, and after dinner, he read the headlines in The Cleveland Press. I sat by his side on a little cushion, he in the armchair. My father seemed happy and secure when he told me everything in the news. Then we listened to Lowell Thomas. He explained to me the meaning of what Lowell Thomas said. My father seemed strong, knowledgeable. He seemed to glean hidden messages in The Cleveland Press as he interpreted headlines. The big black print on the front page held a code. Looking up at him from a stool by his armchair, I was extremely thankful that I had my father to decipher the headlines. I understood that there was an importance to my father’s interpretation of the war, of Roosevelt, of Eleanor, Marian Anderson, race in Cleveland, crime in Cleveland, how the Black (Negro) boys in the Quincy area ended up in prison, what W. E. B. Du Bois said. We had The Crisis, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pullman porters.

I somehow knew that only he knew all these facts. My mother knew about Stella Dallas. But it was my father who said, When you grow up, you should be a great woman like Marian Anderson. I pondered that endlessly because I could not sing. Sometimes he mentioned Eleanor Roosevelt. She was friends with Mary McLeod Bethune. He liked those three women. I pondered over and over how I could be great like those women. My father also liked A. Philip Randolph, who organized the railroad workers. I still have the Philco radio that Daddy and I listened to. His fingers touched those tuning knobs.

I kept with me one article about my father from The Cleveland Press in the 1930s. The text calling him a “young man with a vision” inspired me. “Young man with a vision transforms,” it said. I wanted to have a vision. I also carried lines from his 1937 diary. It was about his sense of direction.

My parents and their friends strived for virtues: Abundant Life, Citizenship, Cleanliness, Consecration, Contentment, Courage, Diligence, Duty, Endurance, Faith, Faithfulness, Infringers, Freedom, Fruitfulness, Godliness, Happiness, Holiness, Honesty, Honor, Honor to Parents, Hope, Humility, Joy, Kindness, Labor, Obedience, Overcoming Pestilence, Peacefulness, Perseverance, Prayer, Pure Thinking, Purity, Bible Study, Resolution, Penitence, Righteousness, Sincerity, Steadfastness, Stewardship, Temperance, Trust, Truth, Victory, Watchfulness, Worship, Zeal.

Both my parents talked to me. Those white teachers at that school don’t like teaching Negro children. But they have to. You have to show them. You have to show white people that you are as smart as they are. Racial slights my mother saw. There were no pretty Negro girls on billboards. Clerks at the May Company didn’t want to wait on you.

My husband is the head of the Cedar Branch YMCA, she would say again and again when a salesclerk ignored us as she went about trying on hats. We listened to the Wings Over Jordan Choir every Sunday morning. My father told me once that Christianity getting Negroes to believe there was a better world in the next was bad for Negroes. At Y camp, he led the Lord’s Prayer before breakfast. Before dinner in our house, we said, Gracious Master, thank you for what we are able to receive. Amen.

But Mother did her homework. Every night. She taught those children at Dike School. She was also still studying to get her BS degree at Fenn College. She rang the early school bell, wore fascinators, had a mink coat, and owned many suits. Every September, she bought me a school wardrobe of skirts and sweaters. And she was so beautiful. To me, she was as beautiful as Lena Horne or Hedy Lamarr.

Toby gutterman was her name. She had short, curly brown hair and always greeted me. When she came to her seat in front of me, she always said, Hello, Adrienne. She told me that she wrote to movie stars and had a big collection of pictures from Hollywood. I told her that I had a big collection of photographs, too, in my movie-star scrapbook from Photoplay and Modern Screen. But Toby said her pictures were from Hollywood and came directly from the stars. I couldn’t imagine anything so thrilling, and she promised to bring me the addresses of the movie studios so I could write to Hollywood. A day or so later, she brought me two pieces of notebook paper with addresses written down on them: Universal, MGM, Warner Brothers. She explained how she wrote to the movie stars on penny postcards. I told my mother this and begged for some penny postcards. And my life changed. After I finished my seventh-grade homework, my mother gave me postcards so I could write to two or three. Movie stars.

In seventh grade, I felt very ugly. I had long woolen skirts, mostly white blouses, and saddle shoes. I was responsible for my hair now—combing it, putting little curlers in it at night, and trying to comb it into a pageboy the next morning. I found this hard to do. Every two weeks, my mother still washed and straightened it. But the rest was up to me, since she was still at the war plant. I knew my pageboys looked funny. They always looked crooked. My skirts were too long. And now I often had to iron my own white cotton blouses. I was not a good ironer, and my blouses usually had wrinkles. I thought I looked funny. I was not pretty like Aldona Kelly or Patricia Dorsey. Aldona Kelly was white with cascading blond hair. Patricia Dorsey was Negro, like me, but she had long, thick hair and a small, exquisite face, and she was admired by the mothers in the birthday clubs. Patricia Dorsey is the prettiest little girl, my mother said.

At the birthday parties, she had on dresses unlike mine. Her dresses seemed made for her, and she did look like a dream, so soft-spoken and polite. My mother talked about Patricia constantly, and I knew she felt there was something lacking in how I looked. Very lacking. For the Saturday birthday parties, my mother always bought my dresses at the May Company, and I was often the last one to pin the tail on the donkey. At the birthday parties, I tried to sit next to my mother if I could. She wore black velveteen dresses and small hats. She tried to get me to join the games.

I was afraid. I clung to her arm. That had been in elementary school, but now I was in middle school at Empire, and it was clear I was doomed to a sad life. But now I could at least write to Hollywood. I was named after the movie star Adrienne Ames. There was a glimmer of hope for something.