Later that semester, I started organizing talent shows in the basement of the Catholic school. I’d both MC the shows and perform. I would do two songs, let someone else sing half a song, then I’d come back to do three more. If a song in my act had multiple parts, I’d do them all. At any given time, fifty or more people would pay thirty-five cents admission. Like I said, I admit I took all of the proceeds and usually went straight to Miss Bubbles for fake Chinese food.
Everyone at John F. Kennedy Junior High School knew I could sing and that Aretha was my favorite. One day, Mr. Santos, who was one of the few non–African American teachers, saw me with my head down on my desk, crying. “What’s wrong, Jenifer?”
I raised my head and said, “I’ll never hit those high notes like Aretha Franklin! I’ll never be famous!” He smiled gently and continued the lesson.
Three days later, as we changed classes after the bell, Mr. Santos called after me in the hallway. He looked strange: both shaken and smiling. It was weird, and I drew back a little when he started to speak: “Last night when I was washing dishes, I broke a plate. It broke into several pieces. As I bent to pick up the pieces, I had a vision: you will be known, Jenifer. You will be famous in this world.”
Mr. Santos’s vision wasn’t enough. “Do you think I can be a star?” was the question I asked every authority figure, including our pastor. I was in the front seat of his car, getting a ride back to Kinloch from the youth choir’s visit to a church in the city. Riding with the pastor was a feather in my cap; anybody would jump at the chance to ride with Pastor Heard.
After I asked the question, my pastor pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped. He leaned over to me and suddenly pressed his lips to mine. I clenched my teeth and leaned away from him. He persisted in trying to push his tongue between my teeth. He groped for my breast with the hand he wasn’t sliding over my shoulders. I tightened up, pressing myself backward as far as the car door would allow. I pushed against his shoulders, and he finally stopped. He scooted back to his place behind the wheel and said nothing as he drove onto the freeway. As we got closer to home and he slowed the car onto an exit ramp, I opened the door on the passenger side to spit. I’d been holding it back for as long as I could, disgusted by the taste of his mouth. He must have thought I was going to jump out. He grabbed me by the left arm. I snatched my arm from his hand and thought, Don’t touch me, motherfucker! But I didn’t say anything. I had been conditioned to respect and revere my elders, especially my pastor.
I told Mama as soon as I got home. She looked at me and said, “Go to your room.” About ten minutes later, she came to my room, pulling the telephone extension cord as far as it could reach. When she got to my doorway, she aimed the receiver at me. She had called Pastor Heard.
“Now tell him,” she said, “what you told me.” I took the phone. But before I could say anything, she snatched the receiver out of my hand, walked into her bedroom, and closed the door. I was devastated, betrayed by my pastor and my mother.
By the time I entered Kinloch High School, my brothers and sisters were either working, in college or married. The house was quieter. I had fewer people to hide behind so I spent most of my time trying to avoid my mother.
My teachers at Kinloch High School knew about me before I even got there. As my friend Rose Wilson put it: “You were number one, Jenifer, our role model. We all wanted to be you.” I soon ruled high school much as I had junior high. I was bossy (but not mean). I was captain of the cheerleaders, and no school could bring it like the Kinloch High squad! Of course, yours truly made up all the cheers. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We hate to beat you, but we must, we must!” For the fourth year in a row, I was elected president of my class. I was fine with my grades, but never got straight A’s like my sisters.
We were living in times of great upheaval and promise. A spirit of rebellion could be felt everywhere. The Civil Rights Movement had won some big battles, and the Black Power and anti–Vietnam War movements were ever present, even in our small town and even smaller school.
Racism hit close to home when some men from Kinloch went fishing in Illinois. They never returned and we heard they’d been lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. We never felt far from the threat of those hooded murderers.
“Free Angela!” was our rallying cry when I staged a walkout in tenth grade in support of Angela Davis, the brilliant young university professor and revolutionary whose huge Afro and miniskirts were unforgettable in the photos that captured her on the news. Davis’s image hung in the homes of black people as a hero and in the post office on the FBI’s list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.
Now, in January 1972, Davis was being held without bail on charges of murder and conspiracy because she had purchased guns that were used in a courtroom shootout in Marin County, California, about a year and a half earlier. The shootout took place during the trial of George Jackson, a Black Panther and political prisoner who became famous as one of the Soledad Brothers. Angela wasn’t a member of the Panthers; she was in the Communist Party, which was just as bad in the eyes of the FBI. She was also in love with the compellingly brilliant Jackson, who died, along with five others, in the courtroom tragedy.
Mind you, I had no knowledge of these details when I organized the walkout. I knew that Angela was a powerful black woman. I loved her Afro and had begun to wear one myself a few months earlier, as had my mama and some of my sisters. When I heard about the nationwide protest on the black radio station that morning, I was ready! With my big mouth and social power, it wasn’t hard to get most of the students out of their seats.
When Davis was acquitted of all charges a few months later, I don’t think I was aware of it. I was consumed by a million activities for church and school, staying out of the house as much as I could.
There was one teacher who didn’t like my take-charge attitude and tried to take me down a peg when she could. He took my gym uniform and threw it on top of the lockers where I couldn’t find it. Losing possession of your uniform could earn you an F. I had put my uniform on the bleachers next to my books while I went in the hallway and held court with some fellow students. When I went back to get my stuff, my books were there, but my uniform was gone. My name was sewn inside the collar, so I knew no one had stolen it.
After looking everywhere, I climbed on a chair so I could see the top of the lockers. My uniform lay in the dust and cobwebs. I was mad, but I shook the dust off and emerged with my uniform looking sharp and my nicely shaped Afro intact.
JOURNAL ENTRY: Got her ass! Bitch. I am Dorothy Mae Lewis’s daughter. You can’t come for me and win.