Space Between the Stars (9 page)

“They were going to a festival someplace in Upstate New York. It would have taken two or three more days to get there and back,” I said, getting out of the car.

The front door opened before I got up the stairs. Mom stood in her housecoat, eyes blazing.

“I'm sorry, Mom.”

“You must have lost your mind to run off like that without telling us! We don't know that man or his family. Kitsaun didn't even know what hotel you were in!”

“I'm leaving for college soon. You're going to have to trust me sometime.”

“College isn't New York with Sly Stone.”

I stared at the floor.

Dad came into the front hall. His eyebrows were furrowed. “Your mother was sick with worry. You had better think about what you're doing, Dobs. I know who he is. My buddies on the street are watching him. He's not worth the cement he stands on. He's nothin'.”

ly called me when he got back to San Francisco. It was late—eleven o'clock. I lay in bed listening to him tell me how I should have stayed for the concert in Upstate New York.

“We drove into this small town, Woodstock, with cows on the hills and red barns and shit. Backstage was a bunch of trailers with musicians everywhere. We went onstage, and all I could see was bodies for miles. You should have been there when we hit ‘Higher’—people started jumping up and down, thousands of them.”

It sounded like the pinnacle of concerts, an unexpected three days of musical bliss—and I had come home. But Mom and Dad never would have forgiven me if I had been gone one second longer. I could not really envision what I had missed. I hadn't been to many rock or R & B concerts before: I had seen Johnny Mathis, acoustic guitarist Bola Sete, and a free show in Golden Gate Park with Richie Havens and War. Woodstock had 500,000 wet, muddy people listening to thirty-two bands for
three days. Sly was high for weeks remembering the experience. By the time I read about it and saw the photographs in
Life
magazine, I was sorry I had not been there.

I worked my final two weeks at the phone company and spent most evenings with Sly. We slept together—made love— at his house. I was embarrassed around Mama, thinking her Baptist rule book was the same as that of Christ Holy Sanctified: No sex before marriage. Mama did not lecture me or treat me differently than before my New York trip with her son. Sly would drive me home by midnight, and I would softly close the front door and tiptoe to my room. Mom and Dad frowned when Sly picked me up, but they did not fight or argue with me or forbid me to be with him. It would not have changed my path. I would have lied to be with him.

Sly had an office in Hollywood with a small staff that booked the band's tours and managed their recording. Stone Flower Productions was on Vine Street, and Sly's manager, David Kapralik, lived in Los Angeles. I packed my suitcase for Cal State Dominguez Hills, and Sly decided it was time for him to move to Los Angeles, too. He suggested I live in an apartment rather than in the dorms. “That way, when I'm in L.A., we can be together,” he said.

I could not afford to rent a place. I would not even risk the scene of discussing it with Mom and Dad. Sly had his secretary, Stevie Swanigan, find a one-bedroom apartment, and Sly promised to pay the rent. He told me I could drive his purple 1957 Thunderbird with a paisley convertible top to L.A. and use it for school. I could not believe it. The car was flashy and
expensive—quite a contrast to my parents' drab Dodge Dart I'd been allowed to drive at home. Sly treated me as though I was integral to his life, the girlfriend he did not want to be without. He couldn't drive to L.A. with me because he was going on the road; and he warned me that the engine had just been rebuilt, so I would have to drive fifty-five miles per hour the whole way. Kitsaun made the trip with me—my suitcase and a box of books stuffed into the small trunk.

Our apartment was on Fountain Avenue, one block below Sunset Boulevard, near La Cienega, an upscale area of Hollywood. The two-story building I was moving into was modest and run-down compared with the elegant, 1930s stucco buildings a few blocks south that had wrought-iron gated entrances with enormous fan palms and rows of bright impatiens. Stevie met Kitsaun and me out front with the key. She was about five feet three inches tall, with green eyes that glowed brightly against her skin, which was the color of beach sand. Her smile was wide and welcoming as she showed us around the tiny apartment. She had worked for Sly two years and was also originally from the Bay Area.

The front door of the apartment opened onto a long driveway with parking spaces squeezed into the back. Across the drive was another apartment complex. It was as though we were living in a miniature city with everyone close together.

The morning of registration, Kitsaun and I drove the hour and a half to the college. Dominguez Hills had been built on farmland south of Los Angeles. There was nothing for miles around. I stood in lines for classes in creative writing, math, and
Afro-American studies. We toured the campus and drove back to Hollywood, the T-Bird sputtering and heating up because I had forgotten to keep the speedometer at fifty-five.

Kitsaun flew back to San Francisco. I was alone for the first time, car horns on Sunset waking me just after I had fallen asleep; people walking by at all hours of the night howling and talking so loudly, it sounded as though they were right outside my door. I slept with lights on in the kitchen, bathroom, and by my bed. The daily drive to school took me through some neighborhoods with mansions and others with tiny houses. Palm trees swayed above them all. I did not remember apartment houses at home having names like “Cahuenga Gardens,” “Sunset Arms,” or “Los Feliz Casitas,” but every housing complex in L.A. had a name.

I made my first friend in my Afro-American studies class. He was the president of the Black Student Union and lived in South Central L.A. We ate lunch together a few times a week, and he taught me what it was like to be black in Los Angeles— where police drove through South Central stopping young black men just for being out on the street.

“That's why I have an American flag sticker on my bumper,” he said. “Now, the pigs think I'm patriotic and don't pull me over just because I'm black.”

One day he saw me drive off, and caught up with me in his Volkswagen Beetle. “That is a
bad
car,” he said. “Is it yours?”

“No. It's my boyfriend's.” He began interrogating me about who my boyfriend could be, and when I told him, he nearly fell out of his car. His bowled-over response was similar to the reactions I had witnessed just walking down the street with Sly. People were overly impressed with him because they knew his
songs, had seen him on TV. I guess it wasn't that different from how I'd felt the first time I met him, but I learned to keep my mouth shut about Sly so other students wouldn't look at me as a star's girlfriend, or try to get to know Sly through me.

Sly came home and stayed with me two nights. He wanted me to go on the road with him; so, six weeks into my first semester, I flew with the band to Cleveland to see Sly and the Family Stone in concert for my first time. Sly hung his arm around my neck, dragging me around backstage while he and the other band members chose clothing from an array of satin shirts, leather, and gold lamé on a garment rack. Cynthia blew her trumpet in the hallway; Larry thumbed his bass. Sly pawed my body. “I can't make it out here without you.”

KC called for the band to go on, and Sly darted into a bathroom. KC paced the floor, shaking his head and mumbling. I knew Sly was snorting coke. He swung open the door, pranced out, and threw a kiss in my direction—his furry boots shaking. His pupils were dark and dilated. As he twirled, the fringe on his Western-style satin shirt caught the glare of the spotlight.

In a fleeting, intuitive moment, I saw his false bravado, his vulnerability.
He's nervous.
I had assumed he got off on performing with his band and getting the adulation of the fans.

I walked out front to the audience and climbed stairs to the balcony. Cynthia and Jerry moved side to side as they played their horn riffs. Larry slapped and thumped his bass, his knees bending deep as he marched across the stage. He wore a hat over his hair, cocked down over his forehead. Greg played the drums as though he were multijointed, a massive swing popping his beat. Rose stood center, her straight, blond wig flap-
ping against her cheeks as she sang “Everyday People.” Freddy was stage right, his wah-wah pedal distorting his guitar chords.

Sly sang the intro to “Stand,” raised his right arm high, and leaped straight up in the air behind his keyboard. People jumped up from their seats and sang along. A funnel of music poured from the speakers, overtaking us all in exhilaration. When the chords to “Hot Fun in the Summertime” started, I dipped and danced to the memories of New York and my first time making love with Sly.

The day after the show, we all waited at the airport for a flight to the next city on the tour. Sly and I left the group to grab something to eat. He joked and riddled and teased the waitress, and we laughed, our eyes locked on each other. We heard the last call for our flight and ran to the gate just as the plane was lifting off with the rest of the band on board. I stood still, afraid we had done something terrible.

Sly put his arm around my waist and said, “We'll fly out later. Let's go to the zoo!” He hailed a taxi, and we spent the afternoon watching monkeys swing through trees, hippopotamuses wade in water, and lions sleep in the sun. One moment Sly's fingers traced the outline of my face as we sat on a bench, the next he grabbed my hand and pulled me down a path where we fell on the lawn rolling in laughter. We took a taxi back to the airport and flew to Kansas City immersed in our love.

By finals, I was struggling to study and spend time with Sly. He was recording in L.A. and staying with me when he wasn't in the studio all night. One night I was falling asleep on a couch in the control room. It was three o'clock in the morning, and I
had to be at school by eight. Sly handed me a rolled-up dollar bill and said, “Just do a line, Debbie. It will wake you up.” I took the dollar and put it against the mirror at the edge of the white crystals. I didn't think it would kill me to try cocaine once, and I did need to leave for school soon. I leaned forward and inhaled the coke through my left nostril. It shot through my nose like a miniature cannon and exploded in my brain directly behind my eyebrow. I looked up, squeezed my eyes closed, and sniffed the crystals down my throat. I bent over again, inhaling through the other nostril, even though the burning pain made my eyes water and my head pound. It took a while for the stimulant to recharge me, but when it did, a needle-sharp energy flung open the door of my careful control and I stayed awake through school and made it home, where I fell asleep on our couch by five at night. It became impossible to complete my schoolwork, drive the hour and a half to school, and be with Sly in the studio at night. Unaware of the sacrifice I was making to be with a man, I chose the studio over attending my classes and I dropped out of Cal State Dominguez Hills in March of 1970.

When I told her, Mom screamed on the phone, “You're throwing your life away.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said something to Dad, and he came to the phone.