mean some maniac won’t come at you from the wrong direction. A red light doesn’t mean some fool won’t run through it. Expect the unexpected. That last one turned out to be especially good advice.
One evening my Aunt Dean showed up at our house out of the blue. Dean, my grandfather’s sister, was normally a lot of fun, a cigarette-smoking, wisecracking, irreverent fixture of my childhood. That evening, though, she strode deliberately into the house, greeted my mother, and then spoke directly to me.
“I want to talk to you. I heard something about you at work and I don’t like it a bit.” I wondered how she could possibly have heard that I was having sex. Which of her hospital coworkers could have known? “A woman I work with told me that she saw you out on the street about five thirty in the morning, girl! What in the world is going on? You haven’t been raised like that.” When I told her that I had been on my way to a six o’clock class, she sat back in her chair, let out her usual raucous laugh, and immediately switched gears. “You just wait until I tell that woman you were on your way to school! I’m getting her told as soon as I get to work. Driver’s education. How ’bout that!”
I felt like I had dodged a bullet, but I felt guilty too. I hadn’t done what I was suspected of, but I was no longer the girl she thought I was, either. Soon enough, that would become clear.
Chapter 4
Teenage Motherhood: A Babysitter for the Prom
One sunny morning in July of 1965, I woke up and found myself in a nightmare. My period, which unfailingly arrived every twenty-eight days, had not shown up as expected. For the next few days, I hoped against hope, running to the bathroom so often that my mother asked if I felt ill, but somewhere inside my fifteen-year-old self, I knew that the end of the world had arrived. I was pregnant, and for a girl like me, that was the equivalent of an atomic explosion. The Michelle Obama of the Lakeside Homes projects, the great black hope, that girl was pregnant. Pregnant, and not by my first love, who had deflowered me but also proudly professed his love to my outraged mother. Instead, I might be pregnant from a single encounter with Bobby K., a popular guy who, because of his short stature, seemed to feel more comfortable with younger girls. Bobby was director of a summer recreation program that the kids I was babysitting attended. When I picked them up, Bobby would sometimes give us a ride home in his hot little Mustang convertible. He was looking for sex; I was vulnerable to anyone who might make up for Hat Man’s betrayal and soldier Ronnie’s indifference. On one fateful occasion, Bobby K.’s persistence was greater than my resistance. Now, my disgrace was complete. Not only was my pregnancy a cause of shame—my parents had been married, and their parents before them—it was a looming financial burden to my mother’s fragile new re-marriage, and a fall from grace that would require the whole family to explain how such a thing could have happened. That entire summer, I carried my terrible secret and wondered how the world could still look so normal. If Valerie Graves was pregnant, the world as we knew it was over. As it turned out, that assessment wasn’t far off.
When my mother learned I was pregnant, she cried for three days. I could feel her crushing disappointment. Her hopes for me were going down the drain. The disapproval of our relatives and church family would be a heavy cross to bear. I did not know it, but she and Daddy had decided to reconcile and buy a house. Just when things might be looking up, I had thrown a giant monkey wrench into the works. As I walked home from school the first day after Mama found out about my condition, I was once again amazed by how normal the world looked. Nothing was normal or would ever be again. The one saving grace was that the burden of keeping my secret was lifted. Daddy came over one day, took me for a drive, and simply asked, “What happened?” My answer: “I messed up.” I had forgotten who I had always been. I had violated the standards by which I had been raised. I had even sunk below the monogamous code of my girlfriends. Loneliness and rejection had turned me into someone I did not recognize. Daddy and I talked briefly about Ronnie, but not about Bobby K., whom shame would not allow me to mention. Like a child, I willed the pregnancy to be the result of Ronnie’s wayward condom. I acted like a kid, and left what would happen from there largely in the hands of my parents.
We moved to the other side of town at just the right time. Seward Street, on the East Side, consisted of four nondescript blocks of modest Cape Cod houses on a practically treeless street. Our house was neat, even cute, sitting atop a little rise with a small lawn and shrubs bordering the front windows. The house, though small, was a step up. Mama and Daddy bought a beautiful set of the ornate French provincial furniture that was all the rage, and a marble-topped coffee table. The new cherrywood console hi-fi that Daddy had bought for his apartment now graced our freshly carpeted living room. We even got our first new car, an impressive Buick Electra 225, or “deuce and a quarter” as it was known among black folks. We were the third black family to move to the street. Our neighbors were mostly white factory workers from Kentucky and Tennessee. They were simultaneously cordial and distant. For Sale signs soon sprouted on their lawns like dandelions. In those days of real estate block busting, our street turned black overnight—though our new black neighbors were mostly strangers to me. For the first time in memory, I was content to be anonymous.
Once we moved to the house, life was calmer. My stepbrother Mack had decided to live with his mother’s relatives rather than leave the West Side. Sharon, after a brief period of compliance, had been truant so many days from school that she was not allowed to complete the school year. Now seventeen, she officially quit and took a job as a live-in nanny. Spurgeon, having briefly resided in our biological father’s home, seemed ready to give Daddy’s rules another chance
Although I was nauseous from unrelenting morning sickness, I attended school regularly. I hid my condition from teachers under big shirts and loose clothing. I fainted once in the sulfurous chemistry lab, and drowsiness regularly rolled over me in fourth-period French class after lunch. The teacher once instructed me, “Mademoiselle Graves, dormez bien cette weekend!” Among my black peers, my pregnancy was common knowledge. I identified Ronnie as the father, and no one other than him doubted me.
At school, my guidance counselor was the only authority who seemed to tumble to the situation. Mr. Ayling was a thirty-something white man who related to students in a cool, nonjudgmental manner that made him easy to talk to. I had come to see him to find out what would happen to my chances of graduating with my class if I dropped out for one semester. It turned out that the extra-credit advanced courses I had taken would be my salvation. If I could complete the fall semester, I could miss the following one, return in September as a senior, and graduate with my class in June. Instead of reporting his suspicions, Mr. Ayling became an invaluable ally. Having studied my entire school record, he was determined that this bump in the road would not run my life into a ditch. Somehow, he talked most of my teachers into letting me take final exams in his office, since by January my pregnancy was apparent. The lone exception was the straitlaced French teacher, who insisted I make my required oral presentation before the class. When I entered the classroom, just shy of seven months pregnant in maternity clothing, her face reflected first shock, then something like sadness. Clearly, she had not been told of the situation. Mr. Ayling had gone out on a limb for me, but to admit knowledge of a student pregnancy could have cost him his job. I walked to the podium and faced the room.
“Est-ce que les cirques ont eté invade par les anges? C’est possible d’y croisir si on a lu l’article dans cette issue de Paris Match,” I smilingly intoned to my stunned classmates. I still remember those opening lines, which I delivered with all the poise my public speaking experience could afford. My presentation concerned an angel hiding out as a circus clown. I could identify with the situation. I was no angel, but I was determined not to let my situation make me a clown. “Merci, Mademoiselle Graves,” the teacher said when I had finished. “Tu t’a fait bien.” She nodded her respect for my effort to show grace under pressure. Head held high, I walked out of the classroom and went home to await the birth of my baby.
Staying at home with no transportation gave me lots of time to read and watch TV. The nesting phase of pregnancy had taken hold, and television game shows, drugstore novels, and old movies were my daytime companions. I cleaned, dusted, ironed clothes, and peeled the potatoes that Daddy required as a daily side dish no matter