Defying the Verdict Page 2

  The Springfield visit spawned a taproot of fear within me. The roots spread as time passed. As an adult, I still wish my parents had spared me that seemingly benign visit to the psychiatric facility. But how could they have known they should have left me at home? In their minds we had simply visited a hospital. In mine, overly sensitive Charita Cole had just stared at her worst fear.

  This was the last time I would see my grandmother.

  After her release from Springfield, Granny chose to live in Baltimore city with a woman who had been her caregiver, rather than return to Finney Avenue. One afternoon, while at home alone, she attempted to light the gas oven with a match. Apparently, after turning the gas on, she waited too long to touch the match to the stove. Fire exploded from the oven, igniting her housecoat. In shock, she ran from the kitchen, through the living room and outside onto the sidewalk. A passing driver saw her. He pulled his car over quickly and smothered the flames with a blanket he had in his car. My grandmother was hospitalized with second and third degree burns over at least seventy-five percent of her body. She passed away the following day. Because her face wasn’t burned, her body rested in a half opened blue casket. She wore a flowy blue shroud and held rosary beads between her gloved fingers. Our family and many of our neighbors profoundly mourned the death of Ruth Hester Stanley Ross. She was sixty years old.

  AS I GREW older, I sometimes experienced disturbing and disjointed thoughts that increased in frequency with the passage of time. In eighth grade, fearing the worst, I decided to share my suspicion about myself with my oldest sister. Though she was only four years older, I trusted her wisdom. “Val,” I whispered, “I think I might be crazy.” She answered, matter-of-factly, “Charita, everybody’s crazy.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “There are children who are told they are too sensitive, and there are people who believe sensitivity is a problem that can be fixed in the way that crooked teeth can be fixed and made straight.”

  —LYNDA BARRY

  I DON’T REMEMBER specific incidents in my life before age four. I recall a general sense of happiness and security when in my parents’ presence. As a college student, I remember being saddened when I met people who felt unloved. I would declare, “As long as my mother’s living, I know somebody loves me.” Her love was a nearly tangible thread that connected the two of us. After all, I spent my pre-school years attached to her apron-strings.

  As for my father . . . he played prominently in my earliest memory. I was four years old the night I woke from sleep riding in the backseat of a station wagon. As I got my bearings, I saw my dad in the front passenger seat. His closest childhood friend, Willie, steered the car as we travelled from Baltimore, Maryland, where we lived, to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where they were raised. I was a little perturbed when I noticed my two year old brother, Kelvin, lying next to me in the very back of the wagon. This was in the early 1960s before seat belts or car seats were a legal requirement for children under five. I forgave my dad for bringing him. I decided to enjoy spending time with my dad without my sisters.

  As it turned out, Daddy and Uncle Willie were going to visit their respective mothers and, unbeknownst to me, my father was planning to leave me in Chapel Hill with his parents. I became suspicious when my dad pulled out a suitcase full of my clothes. My brother’s weekend wardrobe was in my dad’s suitcase. My grandparents wanted me to spend some time with them. Granny Lillian informed me that my older sisters would join us when they got out of school for the summer in two months.

  Honestly, I had too many attachment issues to stay by myself in North Carolina with grandparents I barely knew. My four-year-old self decided I was not going to be separated from Daddy, period. I had a tearful meltdown.

  When Uncle Willie drove back to Baltimore a couple of days later, my suitcase and I were in that car with Daddy and Kelvin. I returned to my grandparents’ house two months later to spend the summer, accompanied by my sisters, Valerie and Karen. I felt safe with them.

  My mother insists my childhood hysterics often disarmed my dad, even lessening the severity of consequences for my wrongdoings. When I became an adult, she insisted, “Nobody wanted to hear all that noise.”

  Always a crybaby, my parents labelled me ‘high strung’ for my sometimes extreme levels of excitability and nervousness. Several years ago, my dad revealed that his mother made sure he was aware of how high strung my mom was, before he married her. Granny Lillian did not want him to go into marriage unadvisedly, as the vows say. So my temperament was neither new nor surprising to him. As a child, one parent or the other sometimes instructed me to rest my nerves—to go someplace alone to read a book, to listen to music, or to simply sit and relax.

  I wish I could say I saved my emotionalism for my parents. But that wasn’t so. I was the little girl who cried every day in my morning Kindergarten class. I never felt comfortable with the other children nor with Mrs. Black, the stranger who I called teacher. I didn’t understand why I had to go to school. Why couldn’t I just stay at home with my mother?

  One day, tired of the crying, Mrs. Black exhaled sharply, and covered my mouth with her hand. I bit her palm. I waited nervously for my mom to pick me up at the end of the morning. I knew I was in for a spanking, but my teacher didn’t report what I had done in response to what she had done. However, that reaction to my continual weeping did shape me up a little. I stopped crying for about two weeks. It was a win-win for both of us. I never got punished for blatant disrespect and she got a brief reprieve from my emotionalism.

  In first grade, I cried all the way to school for months. The tears annoyed my sisters, the second and fourth graders who walked alongside me everyday, but what could they do? I was their sister. My mother always taught her children that we had to support one another. She frequently told us, “You are all you have.” Having been an only child, she demanded solidarity within our sibling group.

  When winter came, one neighbor, who greeted me from her porch most mornings, would smile and caution me that my tears might freeze on my face. I kept crying. My embarrassed older sisters wished they could let five-year-old Charita walk the five blocks to school alone.

  Once I got to school, I was basically fine until things didn’t go my way. My sister still talks about the day she was summoned from her second grade classroom to make me stop crying. My teacher would not give me an eraser to remove an errant mark from my paper. First graders used fat pencils without erasers. Karen found the whole scenario ridiculous. At seven years old, what was she supposed to do to quiet her younger sister? Of course, she couldn’t tell my teacher that. Children were never allowed to challenge a nun’s decisions.

  But everything about first grade wasn’t negative. That was the year I learned an important Biblical truth. Sister Robert Marie taught us that God is everywhere. Talk about an epiphany! When I got home from school that day, I ran into every room. I looked under beds and in closets, proclaiming, “God is here!” I always knew God lived in our beautiful Catholic Church with the stained glass windows and the pipe organ. That was on Sundays. But now I learned God was with me everywhere every day.

  Before this grand religious epiphany, my knowledge of God was based on my encounters with Him at Sunday Mass at St. Ambrose Roman Catholic Church. Although we prayed to God at home, I had always believed He lived in this stately stone building with its dark stained glass windows and a bell that chimed from the bellows of the church, welcoming me. Once inside, I dipped my hand in the holy water at the door of the sanctuary and genuflected, before entering the pew with my mom and my siblings. My dad only came to church for special occasions like baptisms or First Communions.

  The stations-of-the-cross adorned the walls to remind me of Christ’s crucifixion. As a child, I never really understood why we kept Jesus hanging up on the big cross at the front of the sanctuary. The nuns taught us Jesus was alive. I just accepted the crucifix as a necessary part of our ritual. When I was very young, the mass was conducted in Latin. This mysterious
language added to my sense of wonder. We sat, knelt and stood at the same predetermined segments of each service. Mass was almost magical for me, especially when the priest waved the incense and its heady odor filled the sanctuary. The musical strains from the pipe organ in the balcony seemed to descend directly from heaven.

  The most mystical occurrence took place near the end of the Mass. Each Sunday the priest performed a ritual that turned ordinary wafers into the body of Christ. Any person who had received First Holy Communion could come forth and receive Christ on the inside. I longed for the opportunity to participate in this sacred ritual. Many years later, as a third grader, I finally got my wish.

  First Communion was usually the highlight of second grade, but our class had to wait an additional year for the sacrament. Sister William Mary thought, as a group, we lacked the necessary maturity to take such an important doctrinal step. By that time, the Mass was conducted in English and I had a better understanding of what was going on during the service. My one sad discovery was that the organ music was not coming directly from heaven.

  Third grade was also the year Karen placed a lighted candle in the kitchen window. She turned to me and asked, “Wouldn’t this look pretty at Christmas?” Whoosh! The curtains caught fire. If not for Granny Ruth’s quick action, extinguishing the flame with a tea towel, the curtains might not have been the only thing destroyed in the kitchen.

  When my dad got home from work, Karen swore we were both responsible for the fire. I tearfully recounted what had really happened, but my dad spanked us both. “We could have been left with no place to live!” he shouted. Later that night, when we were alone, Karen admitted she lied about my involvement in the curtain incident. She was getting me back for the last whipping she had gotten. We had been scuffling on a bed in our room, when I heard my dad on the stairs. I immediately stopped punching, began screaming, and lay under her, helplessly. We were breaking a Cole family sibling rule—No physical fighting with one another. Although Granny insisted, “Karen and Charita were both fighting,” Daddy chose to believe his eyes instead of his ears. My dad only spanked Karen, erroneously believing I was her victim.

  By fourth grade, I stopped crying. Now I had a new problem: academic boredom. Noting this, my teacher, Ann Jacobs, created some stimulating activities for me. I remember creating a science bulletin board about mollusks. She also took me to the Baltimore Museum of Art, my first trip to a museum. That trip ignited my love for museums. In December, at Miss Jacob’s suggestion, I was chosen to narrate the school’s Christmas program.

  As if being a great teacher who provided enriching activities was not enough, Miss Jacobs found a new school for me to attend, The Park School of Baltimore, Inc., an independent school located in Brooklandville, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore City. One of her friends, Mr. Russell, taught high school English there. Certain the curriculum would challenge me, she walked my mother and me through the application process. I was accepted, but my mom was told that the scholarship money she would need to cover my tuition was only available to students entering seventh grade and above.

  The admissions letter stated I would be an asset to the class of 1977. My mother was encouraged to have me re-apply in sixth grade for seventh grade admission. Mama, Miss Jacobs and I were disappointed. Miss Jacobs took my mom and me out to lunch to celebrate anyway. The positive takeaway for me: at lunch they explained an asset was someone who adds value, not a female donkey.

  I almost didn’t make it to fifth grade. One late summer evening in 1969, Karen and I went outside to roll up the car windows before nightfall. We raced out our back door, ran across the lawn and scrambled over the fence to the car parked near the far corner of the house. A faster runner, she usually reached the car first and rolled up the driver’s side windows, leaving the passenger side for me.

  However, this evening Karen slipped on the grass, and I reached the driver’s side first. That meant I got to sit behind the steering wheel. As we cranked up the windows, I decided we needed some excitement. My sister would have been content to follow our normal routine of locking up the car and going back inside. Not me. Shutting the driver’s side door while seated in the driver’s seat, I turned to Karen and suggested, “Let’s play policemen.” Karen replied, “Charita, stop playing and get out of the car.” Then with her older sister authority, she added, “It’s time to go back in the house.”

  By this time, Karen’s feet were on the curb. I had no plans to get out with her. I was going to play policemen by myself, if necessary. Placing one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the gearshift, I put the car in neutral. When the car began to shift, I was surprised. I hadn’t considered the fact that the car was parked on a downward incline. As the car moved forward, so did my sister: from the car seat to the pavement. She got in the house quickly, having jumped over the fence in one leap, before running into the house for help. The passenger door slammed shut as it hit the tree alongside the house. I believed I was facing death as the car started to roll toward the stone wall at the foot of the hill.

  As the car slowly gained momentum, I climbed from the front seat to the back seat then returned to the front seat in a continuous motion. Now immobilized by fear, I wasn’t sure what to do next. If my father’s car hit that wall my tail would be grass. As the car headed across the intersection at the far corner of my house, my neighbor, Mr. Cook, saw a child at the wheel of my dad’s car. Powered by adrenaline, he ran beside the car, shouting, “Roll the window down.” When the window was down far enough, he reached inside the car, grabbed the wheel and steered the car up the grassy hill midway between the corner and the wall. The car came to a complete stop. Mr. Cook helped me out of the car, placed his arm around me and asked, “Are you all right?” Before I could answer, I looked up and saw my mother rushing toward me. Scooping me into her arms, she thanked our neighbor for saving me. After examining me for possible physical injury, she said, “My husband was asleep. He’s on his way. If it’s okay with you, I’m going to take Charita back up the street.” Mr. Cook agreed to wait by the car for my dad while Mama took me home. She put her arm around me, supporting my weight as she led me back up the hill, up our front steps and into the house. By the time we reached the porch, my breathing pattern had almost become a wheeze. I had to prepare for my meeting with my father.

  After my mother assured him I would be okay, my father went down the street to thank Mr. Cook. He would also try to piece together exactly what happened. Less importantly, he would check the condition of the car. I was surprised as I figured out that Karen had not related exactly how the car slipped out of gear. Although my attention seeking behavior irked her, she kept my transgression a secret. I discovered we had an actual sister code. While my dad talked to Mr. Cook and returned the car to the side of our house in the same condition it had been earlier, my mother prepared a pallet for me on the living room floor with a blanket and a pillow. She thought lying still on the cool hardwood floor might improve my breathing. As I lay there, I clearly understood I had almost destroyed my father’s car and maybe myself along with it. By the time Daddy re-entered the house, I appeared very weak, wheezing more heartily than before. It was just enough to earn my dad’s compassion rather than corporal punishment.

  In sixth grade, I began taking what I now label mental health days. Every third week, my dad’s swing shift as a laborer at a local chemical company, required he work from seven in the morning to three in the afternoon. Sometimes, during these weeks, I would take one day off from school during which I would stay home and rest my nerves. Or I would stay home with a stiff neck, a somatic condition that was eased by lying down with a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel placed against my neck. No adult ever chided me about my absences. Maybe because my grades remained stellar . . . That year, my parents and I reapplied for admission to The Park School.

  I was accepted and awarded a six year full tuition scholarship.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Change, when it comes, cracks everythin
g open.”

  —DOROTHY ALLISON

  THE SEPTEMBER AFTER Granny Ruth died, I enrolled at the prestigious Park School on a full tuition scholarship. My St. Ambrose classmates and my fellow parishioners lauded my achievement, and I believe the timing of my school change unduly boosted my mother’s pride in me. She began to show me undeserved preferential treatment. I had siblings who were just as smart as me. Smarter even.

  My brother Kelvin, two years my junior, barely spoke before age three. Then, at age four, he taught himself to read . . . the newspaper. I learned to read in first grade, like most children of that time.

  I still remember sitting in the living room chair, studying my green vocabulary card. My brother would stand behind me as I read the words aloud. When I stumbled over a word, Kelvin would pronounce it correctly, audibly. “Mama,” I bellowed, “he’s doing it again. Makes him stop.” Then came my mother’s reply from the kitchen. “Kelvin, leave your sister alone.” He’d walk away, for five or ten minutes.

  And, as Karen dutifully reminded me through the years, I was “sucking up the family’s resources at that school.” I agreed. The money my mother spent for incidentals, like lunches purchased from the school cafeteria, gym uniforms and books, should have been spent on my siblings instead. My excitement over attending Park was tempered by guilt and a feeling that I would be beholden to my family forever, like an indentured servant whose debt would never be repaid.

  St. Ambrose School educated black and white working class, mostly Catholic students. My first day in seventh grade, I discovered I was the only black girl in the class. My new school educated an affluent, largely Jewish population. I felt like a foreign exchange oddity.