Defying the Verdict Page 4

  I did not hit her back. She terrified me. She had recently been released from a juvenile detention facility for girls. And truthfully, I felt I got what I deserved. In the eye-for-an-eye world, my action had been inexcusable. I called and apologized to the duplicitous Harvey after the attack. The next day at school, when people asked how my lip had gotten swollen, I lied, “I tripped in my house and hit my mouth on the corner of a dresser.”

  The following year, I had to decide whether or not I was ready to commit myself to the Catholic faith. I chose to be confirmed. Once the bishop anointed my head, I would be “sealed with the Holy Spirit.” When he asked if I was ready to serve the Lord with my whole being, I gave the prescribed answer, “I am ready and willing,” with vigor. I wanted to be a better person.

  That spring, one of the young adults at St. Ambrose decided our parish would participate in the Catholic Youth Organization one-act play competition for the Baltimore diocese. We would be the only non-Caucasian participants. Our director chose the work of a local playwright, Faith Walker, entitled, The Everlasting Arm. I auditioned, reading Beneatha’s monologue from A Raisin in the Sun.

  The play is about an elderly woman—my character—and her three children, the youngest of them having passed away. I was always thankful that Gregory was cast as the younger brother. One evening, Karen came to watch me rehearse. She pulled her lighter out of her purse and flicked it against the cigarette she had placed between her lips. The flame setting had become higher as the lighter was thrown in her bag, and it ignited the front of her perfectly shaped Afro. While I stood frozen, Gregory immediately used his script to extinguish the flames. That was how my father discovered Karen was a smoker. It was also one of the few times he held back his retribution against her. With second-degree burns on her forehead, she had suffered enough. She wore a realistic looking wig until her hair grew back. It took years for the scars on her forehead to heal. Thanks to Gregory, one of Harvey’s converts, I still had my sister.

  Our play moved from the semi-finals to the finals, where we placed second. My fourth grade teacher’s friend, Mr. Russell, still taught at Park and was one of the judges. On Monday, as part of the morning announcements, the assistant principal announced, “We’d like to congratulate Charita Cole. She was awarded the best actress trophy in the Catholic Youth Organization’s one-act play competition on Saturday.” Before that day, I intentionally separated my home life from my school life. The two intersected now.

  That summer, upon invitation, I participated in Park’s six-week Summer Arts Program, studying drama, at no cost. This would be the first of two summers in the program. The second summer, the director found a way for me to be a paid participant through a special grant opportunity for inner-city high school students.

  In September 1975, my eleventh grade year, Lloyd Stephenson arrived at St Ambrose Rectory. An African-American college senior at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, he elected to live at St. Ambrose throughout that year, to the betterment of our parish.

  Lloyd stood six feet, five inches tall and studied ballet. He introduced our congregation to liturgical dance, performing self-choreographed pieces in traditional attire. He produced and directed a Good Friday passion play in which he portrayed Jesus. I was surprised when the people my brother Kelvin called “the old heads” participated willingly. Our new seminarian challenged them to expand their religious borders.

  He launched a teen youth group for high school students—to expand our cultural borders. Some members of the group, including me, attended plays in theaters for the first time. At our weekly Sunday-evening meetings usually held in Lloyd’s separate parlor, we engaged in informal discussions of life and faith. One of our meetings centered on how each of us envisioned the Trinity. It’s about time someone actively encouraged us to think about and articulate what we believe, I thought, with Park School exuberance.

  I was drawn to Lloyd’s keen intellect, exceptional confidence and maturity. Although he saw the same Harvey I did, he treated him respectfully. Harvey resented the young people’s acceptance of a new spiritual mentor. Lloyd challenged the HNIC—Head Negro In Charge—status he had created in his own mind. To me, Harvey’s ego seemed a little deflated by the success this unwanted intruder was having with the parishioners. I was glad Harvey was unhappy. As Mama would say, there was no love lost between Harvey and me.

  Karen, Lloyd, and I sometimes went to movies or out to eat without the rest of the group. Spending time with us, he encouraged us to become our best selves. His internal confidence bolstered mine. Not caring what others thought of him, he would tell me, “I know I’m a wonderful person.” Winking at me, his close friend, he would add, “So are you.” I loved spending time with a person so sure of himself, and of me.

  Lloyd graduated in May 1976, returning to his hometown of Roanoke, Virginia for the summer before completing his studies for the priesthood in Rome. I still have postcards and a scarf he bought me while studying in Europe. Our communication became more sporadic as time passed.

  Lloyd and I reconnected in the mid 1990s. I was in Newport News, Virginia visiting a friend who lived near his assigned parish. She invited him to her home for home-baked lasagna. As we caught up on one another’s lives, I shared my bipolar diagnosis and thanked him for setting an example of unapologetic fearlessness for me. Shortly thereafter, Lloyd and I lost touch.

  When I started writing this memoir, I googled Lloyd’s name to find his address. I wanted to share my project with him, being certain he would offer inspiring words of encouragement. As a graduate of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, his information wouldn’t be hard to find. I found his obituary. Reverend Lloyd Franklin Stephenson had died in March 2004 at age forty-nine.

  I printed out the obituary and wept, saddened by my loss as well as my inability to pay my final respects. Thankfully, Lloyd knew I appreciated the lessons he taught me about being emotionally honest with myself.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

  —ARISTOTLE

  SENIOR YEAR WAS filled with activity.

  The summer before senior year, I met Jerry. I had boyfriends before him, but this was my first relationship. We were introduced by a mutual friend. When we met, he told me he had first noticed me at St. Ambrose. He and his older sister usually sat on the side of the church where I served as an usher. I was impressed by this smart and attractive college sophomore who appreciated my intellect.

  We shared the classic first love where you stay on the phone at night until one or the other of you falls asleep. I was usually the sleepyhead. Jerry provided emotional support for me and encouraged my love of theater. He was my first thought and only love for many years. My father and Lloyd do not count.

  Loving performance, I was delighted to be cast in the school’s fall drama, Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle. The director, Rosemary Knower, a first-year faculty member, had held auditions for Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood Wedding. I noted the play had been changed when my friend, Bernice, and I saw the posted cast list. Bernice joined my class at Park in ninth grade, boosting the number of black girls in the class of 1977 to two. Having bonded over time, we rushed to the school library to find a copy of the play and see what size my part was.

  To my delight, my character, Grusha Vashnadze, a young Russian peasant woman, was the lead. During the rehearsal process, Mrs. Knower, the director would sometimes take me home for dinner with her family so I would have a ride back to school for evening rehearsals. One night at dinner, she shared how difficult she had thought Brecht’s plays would be for high school students to perform. She said to me, “Your audition changed my mind.” Coming from Mrs. Knower, an artistically insightful director, I was thrilled. Maybe with time, the acting thing could work out for me.

  The play was well received. My entire immediate family attended the Saturday night performance, including Aunt Nellie and Uncle Vernon, my sur
rogate grandparents on my mom’s side of the family. Jerry came to every performance. He and I skipped the cast party to celebrate my performance alone.

  I experienced something unusual, for me anyway, in mid-October of 1976. In my whirl of activity—rehearsals, applications, college visits, and home-life—I felt exhausted. Then came the crying.

  I had stopped crying in school in third grade after several instances in which Sister Frances Ann had sarcastically instructed one of my classmates to “get a bucket from the coatroom, and hold it near her to collect her tears.” The nuns never seemed to understand the negative effects of public shaming on children’s psyches.

  I was sitting alone in a classroom during my blue period when a fellow senior entered the room. Seeing tears on the face of one of her fellow upbeat classmates, she attempted to cheer me up. In tenth grade, one of our American history classmates had dubbed her, “the little bubble that never bursts.” She reminded me of my academic prowess, asserting with positivity, “Everything is going to be alright, and as smart as you are, you’ll definitely get into a great college.” As seniors, we were focused on finding and being admitted to the school that best fit. I regained emotional control.

  A few days later, I began to cry uncontrollably again, for no apparent reason. Bernice led me from the library to the classroom of my advisor, Kenneth Greif, during his free period. He agreed with her suggestion that she drive me home. I went to bed and slept so many hours I missed school the next day.

  I needed somewhere more quiet than my house to rest the nerves that seemed to be unraveling. At my request, I spent the following week with my Aunt Nellie and Uncle Vernon. They were like grandparents to the Cole siblings. Aunt Nellie, my grandmother’s sister, raised Mama when Granny Ruth became too ill to care for her. Their peaceful home was nearby, and I could get to school easily from their house.

  Within the next few weeks, I was back to my normally energetic self, reenergized, like a toy with a fresh battery. After that episode, one of the girls in the Caucasian Chalk Circle cast told me, based on my inertia, “I thought you might have been dying.”

  Though encountering my first bout of severe depression, I was still responsible for completing my college applications. One day, in order to make sure I completed my National Achievement Finalist application on time, Mr. Greif had me sequester myself in a classroom. I forced myself to focus and plod through the essay which resulted in my eligibility to receive scholarship money.

  Depression never frightened me. I saw it as something one could recover from.

  My mother had suffered a bout of depression when I was around twelve. I had accompanied her to the Phipps Clinic, the outpatient psychiatric clinic at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. I sat in the waiting room while she consulted with the doctor. The psychiatrist advised her to take a leave of absence from teaching to get some much-needed rest. She also took medication, as directed. Regaining normal functioning after a month or so, she returned to work without overemphasizing this blue period.

  Despite being a devout, rule-following Catholic, she gave birth to seven children of varying temperaments. I often wondered if having fewer of us would have better suited her Type A temperament. I wasn’t aware of how being raised by an actively bipolar mother may have scarred her emotionally. As it was, she loved us and trained each of us to know and love God.

  One year, when asked what she wanted for Christmas, she replied without hesitation, “peace of mind.” On December 25th, my youngest brother and sister presented our mother with a box wrapped in shiny paper, with a gift tag reading, “To Mommy. Love, Linda and Martin.” She opened her present and pulled back the tissue, revealing a piece of lined paper, on which they had written in bold, capital letters: PEACE OF MIND.

  My mother’s daughter, peace was what I craved to bookend the unconditional love my family provided me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Appreciate your learning process, for it is of equal value to realize there is need for change as for the change itself.”

  —BETH JOHNSON

  IT WAS A Sunday night in mid-May, shortly after eleven. Jerry was bringing me home after spending time with Karen in her freshman dorm at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. As we rounded the corner at the top of my street, we saw a fire truck—parked in front of my house. Unable to get any closer, Jerry parked the car up the street from my house. Getting out of the car, we could smell the smoke. With my stomach knotted and my heart beating erratically, I raced toward the truck. I saw firefighters, but none of my family.

  Turning to Jerry, I shrieked, “Oh God, No! Where is my family?” the first thought that bombarded my mind.

  Before I could reach a firefighter, an elderly neighbor took me by the arm and informed me my family was okay. Mama and my siblings were at Mrs. Dixon’s house. My father was on his way home from work.

  Jerry and I went down the street to Mrs. Dixon’s. Seeing us coming, Mrs. Dixon opened the door, let us in the house and hugged me. After we were inside, my youngest, soot-covered sister, Linda, described what happened. Bernice and I awarded her the unofficial melodrama of the year prize for her description.

  “I woke up and everything was black. Everybody was asleep. I smelled smoke. I yelled for Mommy and woke up Teenie, I could barely see through the black smoke, but I felt my way into Kelvin and Martin’s room, screaming for them to wake up. Then we walked down the stairs quickly, like in a fire drill, and out onto the porch. It was terrible.” She concluded, “Mrs. Dixon had us come down here to her house while we waited for the firefighters to arrive.”

  That’s when I noticed all of my siblings were wearing night clothes. My mom had on a robe. Thank God everyone made it out. In hindsight, Linda’s description doesn’t seem so melodramatic at all.

  The fire department determined the blaze was caused by an electrical short in the kitchen. The next day we were able to enter the house and retrieve our clothes. The fire had been contained to the main floor of the house. We lost our childhood pictures and I lost my Best Actress trophy.

  Our family was split up into different living environments. My parents and brothers stayed with one of my dad’s friends who lived around the corner from us. Valerie remained in her apartment at University of Maryland, College Park. Linda lived with friends of the family. Teenie and I lived with Aunt Nellie, as did Karen during her school breaks. I remember feeling a little displaced, being separated from most of my family. However, I never felt homeless because I lived with Aunt Nellie, our family’s matriarch.

  During a round of college applications and campus visits in the fall of 1976, I visited Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut. I fell in love with the library. It housed an impressive number of books. Entering the stacks, I knew I could be quite at home here. In eleventh and twelfth grades, when inundated with work, I would go to the Central Branch of Enoch Pratt Free Library to study in its hallowed hush.

  I had applied at Mr. Greif’s suggestion. Knowing me well, he believed Wesleyan would provide an optimal learning environment for me. I added it to the list of colleges I had prepared with my college guidance counselor. Before acceptances arrived, I had considered matriculating at Williams College with Bernice, but I was wait-listed.

  Having accepted Wesleyan’s admissions offer and the National Achievement Scholarship awarded to me, I looked forward to the comfort of borrowing books from and studying in the Olin Library.

  AT SCHOOL, WE ended our senior year with a personally designed, self-directed senior project. I taught first grade reading at St. Ambrose and completed the course, Child Care and Development in the Kindergarten at Park. I also continued dance lessons.

  Each senior was required to orally synopsize his or her project for eleventh graders and members of the upper school faculty. I described my six-week program, tying it into lessons learned at Park. My presentation included a dance solo I choreographed, assisted by my beloved dance teacher, Martita Goshen. I began studying modern and jazz dance with her in tenth grade.
I discovered dance was the only activity that silenced the tickertape parade of thoughts that generally bombarded my brain. I selected the Negro spiritual, “Hush! Somebody’s Calling My Name” as featured in the Alex Haley drama, Roots, for my performance. I was honored when Mr. Lakin, my exacting American history instructor, called it, “the best presentation I’ve seen this year.”

  A rainy day had forced graduation inside. The people with whom I shared the closest bond were there. I had received extra tickets—enough for my large immediate family as well as Aunt Nellie, Uncle Vernon and Jerry.

  Sitting on the familiar theater stage as part of the Park School graduating class of 1977, I half-listened to the selected commencement speakers. Not attending to what they were saying, I thought about what lay behind me as well as what loomed ahead. When diplomas were presented, I accepted mine proudly.

  By the end of my senior year, after completing an extensive, reflective senior questionnaire about my Park School experience, I acknowledged to my mother, “You were right. In eighth grade, I didn’t understand or appreciate the quality of a Park School education. I doubt I would have developed the critical thinking skills at Western that I absorbed at Park.”

  My learned ability to reason, question assumptions, and think things through in order to formulate reasonable, appropriate plans of action would be essential for future decision making. It was the system I would need to help me override my abundant feelings and eventually manage my unpredictable moods. I was in great physical, mental, and emotional health. Graduating from Park was like bursting out of a womb—with very high Apgar scores.