Growing Up X Read online

  My heart racing, I scrambled to prepare my defense. I didn't do anything wrong. Aunt Pat said I could go to the store and I went to the store and I am fifteen anyway, not a child, what is the problem?

  But my grandfather did not give me a chance to excuse myself. He walked straight up to me and slapped me in the face.

  The rest of the afternoon is a blur of pain and shock and tears and angry shouts. Somehow I got back in the house, where my grandparents and uncles all berated me for running off with some boy and disappearing like that. Didn't I know how dangerous that was? Didn't I know what terrible crimes could have befallen me? Didn't I know how worried my mother would have been had she known? Didn't I think about anyone but myself ?

  I was hurt and flabbergasted and angry myself. It was the first time in my life any man had ever hit me, and I was staggered by the injustice of it all. Why were they in such an uproar? What could I have possibly done to excuse my grandfather striking me like that? “What's the big deal? What's the big deal?” I kept asking, but no one answered me, at least not in a way that I could understand. I felt completely wronged. I locked myself in one of the bedrooms and wrote my mother a letter, begging her to let me come home. I couldn't understand how my grandmother could be so nice in some ways, taking us on picnics, letting us have potato chips and other goodies we weren't allowed at home, and in other ways be so incredibly mean.

  “I don't know what's wrong with Grandma,” I wrote. “She doesn't let us go out. She doesn't let us mingle with other people. She acts like we're too good for them. She just doesn't want young people to have any fun.”

  A week later, when my mother wrote back, it was to say something diplomatic like “When you're at your grandmother's house, you have to live by her rules.” This, of course, was completely unsatisfactory to me. I could not understand how my mother could expect me to tolerate such behavior. I thought my grandparents and my uncles were paranoid and overprotective and crazy. I thought they were all very, very mean.

  Looking back on it now, I understand how terrified my grandparents and uncles must have been that day. They knew the ways of the world, and they knew how unsuspecting and even innocent I still was. Against all odds my mother had raised us to believe the world was good, people were basically kind, African American brothers and sisters especially could be trusted to do no harm. So deeply embedded were these beliefs that even when one of the things my grandparents probably feared did happen to me, my brain would not fully comprehend it. I would subconsciously submerge the event and its effect upon me, rather than allow it to change the person I was.

  I could probably count on one hand the number of times in my life I heard my mother speak the name Louis Farrakhan. And I wouldn't need even that hand to count the number of times she mentioned him when we were children because that number is zero. She never mentioned him. Not at all.

  As I got older and the facts of my father's death trickled into my consciousness, I became aware of Mr. Farrakhan. I knew that whatever the truth about my father's death, there was something about Mr. Farrakhan I did not want to associate with. But I also knew that people aren't the final judges of other human beings, God is. So I never entertained negative thoughts about him, never wished him ill. And I never had any fear that whoever was responsible for my father's death would try to hurt me. I believe our lives on this earth are in greater hands than our own. However you're going to go, that's up to God.

  What did upset me about Minister Farrakhan was his refusal to acknowledge all that Malcolm X did for the Nation. I once saw the minister on the “Arsenio Hall Show.” When Arsenio asked him about Malcolm X, he said we were the only group of people who honor the dead; yet he kept referring to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. He spoke eloquently of the Nation's efforts to help African Americans, but made no mention of the fact that it was Daddy who most successfully organized those efforts, Daddy who organized temple after temple and brought thousands of new members to the fold. It was my father who incorporated Garveyism into the Nation's philosophy and my father who encouraged the Nation to cease essentially withdrawing from the black struggle and to become a force in America's political and social life. It was my father who created Muhammad Speaks, the Nation's newspaper. It was my father who mentored other young leaders of the Nation, including Minister Farrakhan.

  When I see Minister Farrakhan talking about Marcus Garvey, teaching about the international brotherhood shared by people of African descent worldwide, informing people of international views on ancient cultures, I know he is following in the footsteps of my father. In a way, I enjoy hearing him speak because I know he is the only person addressing and informing us of those topics today. Obviously he admired my father, because he studied him. But for him not to acknowledge that debt bothers me the most.

  In 1995 my mother attended the Million Man March in Washington. She went not because of Minister Farrakhan but because of the stated goal of the march—men uniting in pride and commitment to their families, their communities, and their self-respect.

  At the Million Man March, Mommy was embraced by dozens upon dozens of sisters of the Nation of Islam, some of whom had once been like true sisters to her but to whom she had not spoken in many years. Watching all those sisters hover around my mother made me both happy and sad. I saw the sense of comfort, the ease that existed among these women when history and pain and torn allegiances were finally pushed aside. Being back among the members of the Nation must have been difficult for my mother, and putting myself in her place, I was nearly overwhelmed. It broke my heart to look at all those beautiful African American sisters (and, for the first time in my life, Minister Farrakhan) and realize how our people were simply not strong enough back then to look at the bigger picture of what my father was about. Here you have someone who took on our entire struggle as a people, who sacrificed himself to liberate all Africans, in America and beyond. Yet African Americans allowed themselves to be part of his death, whether they helped to conspire against him or actually pulled the trigger. African Americans turned their backs on him and his wife, whether they denied the danger or refused to allow the use of a church for his funeral service. And African Americans allowed themselves to be part of the attempted murder of his crusade to free us all.

  If you ask me, we, as a people, allowed ourselves to be played.

  C H A P T E R S E V E N

  Hustle Queen

  As a child, I often dreamt of my father. Sometimes these were flickering images: his face, his smile, his hand passing me an oatmeal cookie. Other times the dreams were long and complex, whole movies of my father in my mind. When I was ten I dreamt I walked out the back door of our house, down the stairs, past the grapevines, into the yard, and saw him sitting on the patio with the awning overhead and trees on the side. He sat in a huge chair, one that gleamed and glistened like a throne. I was so excited to see him, so happy I could not contain myself. “Daddy! Daddy!” I yelled, running toward him. He grinned that beautiful, full-face grin the world seldom saw but which those who knew my father basked in. Suddenly, he opened his arms wide. “Daddy!” I ran and ran and ran, but I could never get close enough to touch him. As soon as I did, something would happen and I would find myself back on those stairs again.

  Months later I told my best friends Lisa Anthony and Kim Brown about the dream. We were having a sleepover at Lisa's house, a very special occasion because my mother did not allow us to spend the night at the home of anyone but relatives. But this time Mommy was in Africa and Aunt Ruth was in charge; for all her old-world disciplinary habits, Aunt Ruth was a pushover in certain areas. She bought the three little ones and me our first, unauthorized pairs of platform shoes from Abraham & Straus. And she let me sleep over at Lisa's house.

  Lisa and I became fast friends on the first day of school at St. Joseph Montessori. She was beautiful, a golden, sun-kissed girl with big, doll eyes and thick black eyelashes. Her gorgeous black hair was so long and so thick she could pull it into a bun on top of her head and leave i
t that way for a week, brushing only the outside before going out each day. She lived in a huge house in New Rochelle with her father, who was from St. Kitts and owned his own business; her mother, who taught school; and her three sisters. I thought they were the perfect family, and they treated me like another daughter.

  It was the Anthonys who stepped in one time when I was thirteen and Qubilah and I were feuding furiously. Like many closely spaced siblings, Qubilah and I were both the best of friends and the fiercest of enemies. As a child she tended to blame me for anything that wasn't good in her life, perhaps because I came along when she was only nineteen months old and gobbled up attention in the ways that babies do. She loved me and if anyone outside the family tried to hurt me Qubilah was there as my protector, but inside the house she tortured me. I don't even remember what set her off on that particular occasion, but she chased me through the house yelling “I'm going to get you!” And believe me, I was scared. Mother was away with the twins and it was just the three of us older girls at home. Attallah distanced herself from the fight, leaving me on my own.

  Qubilah chased me through the hallway and through the dining room. Petrified, I managed to slip into the breakfast nook, close the door, and then slide into the closet, grabbing the telephone as I went. I called Lisa.

  “Lisa!” I cried into the phone. “Help! Qubilah's going to get me! She's yelling and chasing me!”

  Lisa ran to her father, who got into his car and drove to our house immediately. “Come with me, Ilyasah,” he said. When Mommy returned Mr. Anthony called and offered to let me remain at their house for a week or so, until tempers cooled. Looking back now I see how remarkable a man he was, not only for opening his home to his daughter's friend, but for taking the tensions between two sisters seriously.

  I loved sleeping over at Lisa's house. That night we did the usual things: ate popcorn and danced to music and giggled about boys. Then we all climbed into the bottom bunk bed in Lisa's room and talked about our dreams. When Kim heard mine she burst into tears.

  “If you had actually gotten into your father's arms,” she said, “you would have died in your sleep.”

  Now that was a frightening thought, one that would never have occurred to me. But Kim was a very spiritual person; she went to church all the time with her devoutly Baptist parents. I thought if anyone was capable of interpreting dreams, it would be her.

  “Wow!” I said. And then, because Kim was crying, Lisa and I also burst into tears at the thought of me dying in my sleep to be with my father. We cried for maybe five full minutes, then wiped our tears and snuck downstairs to raid the kitchen in search of strawberry Pop-Tarts.

  Mr. Anthony was the one adult who spoke to me directly about my father, the man. As I've said before, my mother did a superhuman job of keeping Daddy alive for us as a parent. But for all the times she referred to him in the present tense, for all the times she admonished us in his name—“You know Daddy would not like that!”—she rarely spoke about Malcolm X. I didn't learn about my father at home; I had to get older and read about him and ask my mother direct questions before she and I finally sat down to discuss his accomplishments and contributions. As a child, I knew my father was Malcolm X, and I knew Malcolm X had done something important for black people, something tremendously important. But what precisely that was, I did not know. My mother did not discuss his role in the human rights movement just as she did not discuss his death. Neither did Aunt Ruth or my uncles or my grandparents. Everyone was far too busy feeding and educating and protecting us—nourishing us—to focus on that.

  But sometimes when I was visiting the Anthony house, Mr. Anthony would sit me down. “Ilyasah,” he would say, “I loved your father. Your father was a powerful man, a great man, and a hero. I want you to know that.”

  Mr. Anthony would talk politics with me, discussing the plight of the African diaspora, the civil rights movement, affirmative action, and on and on and on. Most times I had no idea what he was talking about, but he spoke with such authority I strove to understand. I loved Mr. Anthony and I loved listening to him. He reminded me of Daddy: tall, handsome, commanding, and passionate about the predicament of African people and the human race. And I admired his total dedication to his wife and children.

  He guided his children with firmness and love and sometimes with gentle good humor. As Lisa and I got older and began going out with friends or staying awake late on the weekends, Mr. Anthony began a habit of waking us up at the crack of dawn to make breakfast. The later we stayed out, or even just awake, the earlier he woke us to make a pot of tea or cook up enough pancakes or cheese blintzes to feed an army. We would stumble around the kitchen until finally we were awake enough to laugh about what he was doing to us.

  But as much as I loved Mr. Anthony, being around him was sometimes painful. Watching him at the breakfast table, hearing him joke with his family, seeing him build, with his own hands, a gymnasium for his daughter—all of these things made me miss the father my mother had not been able to supply: the physical man. The presence of Mr. Anthony made real my father's absence.

  Still, looking at Mr. Anthony, I also knew that if my father were alive, that was the kind of man he would be. And I knew the love I felt in the Anthony house was the kind of love I would feel if my father had not been taken from us. There was nothing the Anthonys didn't have, nothing that mattered. They were full of love, and they generously shared that love with me.

  That I missed my father, even if subconsciously, was made evident by the way I sometimes reacted to tall, intelligent-looking black men. Once, when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I was taking the bus home from White Plains when I met a man who looked like Daddy. I started a conversation. He was about ten years older than myself, tall and dignified. He told me people often remarked on how much he resembled “Brother Malcolm.” So naturally, I invited him home to meet Mommy.

  When my mother walked into the house we were sitting in the breakfast nook having a snack. I'm sure she must have nearly fainted at the idea of her young daughter bringing strangers into the house. Fortunately the guy turned out to be harmless. He was one of those back-to-basics spiritual brothers who worshiped Malcolm's ideology and was thrilled to meet his family.

  We had only sporadic contact with Daddy's family when we were young. I'm not sure of all the reasons, but I believe part of it was that my mother naturally turned to her own family in a time of such great need. Then, too, most of my father's brothers were at one time actively involved in the Nation; in fact, it was my uncles who introduced Daddy to the organization. When Daddy split with Elijah Muhammad, several of my uncles remained with the Nation and thus were forbidden contact with us. Right after Daddy was killed, my uncle Philbert was ordered by Nation officials to attend a press conference. When he arrived and sat on the stage, he was handed a statement condemning my father and ordered to read it, and so he did. On the Friday before Daddy was buried, both Uncle Wilfred and Uncle Philbert stood before thousands of Nation of Islam members in Chicago and urged unity with Elijah Muhammad.

  Two other of my father's brothers, Wesley and Reginald, virtually disappeared after Daddy was assassinated, losing touch not only with us but with their other brothers and sisters. Uncle Wesley didn't show up until my mother's funeral.

  But my mother never spoke ill of my father's family. What I knew about the Littles I knew from my father's autobiography and, as I've said, that portrait was not completely accurate. As an adult I learned that some of my father's sisters and brothers were displeased with the way he portrayed the family in that book.

  But even during those early, difficult years there was the occasional reaching-out from my father's family. Aunt Hilda, my father's eldest sister, sent us gift-wrapped mother-of-pearl necklaces and earrings. It was like receiving Nefertiti's treasure from the waters of the Nile, a grand and beautiful prize given by Daddy's sister, a real live blood relative. I was ecstatic.

  When I was about ten, Uncle Wilfred came to visit us. I don't know th
e reason or the impetus; one day he was simply there and we were thrilled. He played with us, took us out to dinner, sat in our living room, and talked to us as if we were the most interesting people on earth. I was a happy child—Mommy worked so hard to see to that—but during those days of Uncle Wilfred's visit I felt a sense of peace and family togetherness that was above and beyond even our usual state. Looking back now I see that my uncle's presence filled a void I didn't realize existed. In him I saw my father and felt my father's love, and when Uncle Wilfred announced it was time for him to go I was devastated. How could he leave us? How could he be so mean?

  I sobbed uncontrollably all the way to the airport and I sobbed as he waved and then disappeared onto the plane. No one could comfort me, not my sisters, not even Mommy. I could not understand why he was leaving us. I couldn't understand that he had a family and a home and responsibilities elsewhere, and even if I had understood, I probably would not have cared. He was my uncle, I loved him, and I wanted him to stay. He belonged with us.

  Despite my teacher's shortcomings in African history, I enjoyed St. Joseph Montessori School. I loved the huge, open classrooms, the way younger children and older children intermingled and learned from one another (just like at home). I liked Mr. Schneider, who was six-foot-five, dark-haired, and from Switzerland, and who taught us geography and math in a booming German accent. “Sixteen times twenty-five divided by eight multiplied by three! Go!” he would bark as we sat around a long table, pencils in hand. If a student failed to follow instructions or lapsed in his work, Mr. Schneider would train his piercing eyes on the student's face and say, “You will regret!” He made regret sound like the worst thing that could happen to a person, like a slow, wasting disease that would haunt you the rest of your life. I vowed early on to view everything that happened to me in life and everything I did as a learning experience. I wanted never to regret anything.