Stand Up Straight and Sing! (9 page)

It was nourishing on every possible level to be seated at my grandparents’ table, to have someone offer a long prayer over the food, and to have everything served family style from this glorious presentation laid out in front of us. This family fellowship would continue long after the plates were cleared and the kitchen was cleaned as the men settled into conversation on one side of the front porch and the women watched out for us children, who, dressed in our Sunday best, played out in the yard. They knew that red clay and grass would have to be cleaned from our shoes and socks, and must have hoped that our clothing survived the games of tag, hide-and-seek, and softball. Perhaps I didn’t fully understand it then, but I do now: that time together laughing, walking, playing, sharing, loving, truly was food for our souls and spirits.

Of equal importance to my spiritual foundation was the enlightenment, ritual, and sense of community I enjoyed as a child in what was truly the center of our lives, our church. I learned fairly early on that the learning of Scripture and attending Sunday school and the church service that followed were valuable and significant. But so, too, was the bonding, the friendships that came to us through our worship services and social hours. Those friendships were not reserved for Sundays but carried on through the week—at chorus rehearsals and children’s circle meetings, in the deacon board and missionary club meetings my parents attended, and in the barbershop, which my father and several deacons from our church counted as their personal discussion hall for social and political matters and the airing of church concerns.

In the African American community of my youth, the barbershop served not only as a place where men and boys could go to get their hair cut on Saturdays, but as a gathering place where they could discuss politics, news of the city, prevailing social matters, and the like. The happenings of the church were discussed often as well, because in the case of the barbershop in our neighborhood, all those with “chairs” were members of the board of deacons at our church. Private matters of the church were discussed during lulls in the shop’s activity.

I remember vividly the younger men and boys gathering in the shop beginning early on Saturday afternoons to listen to those all-important discussions—to listen to the older men simply talk.

Just a few years ago, I encountered one of these young men—Roscoe—and he wished me to know what a wonderful philosopher he thought my father had been, how he encouraged people to look at things from different points of view and to be able to defend their own thoughts on what was being discussed. Roscoe stated that my father believed firmly that a contrarian opinion should be informed. This lovely man stated that he had learned more from my father and those deacons in the barbershop than he ever did at university. Roscoe went on from the teachings of the barbershop to become a college professor.

That sense of community came, too, at Vacation Bible School and the many afterschool activities in which we participated. There was an unspoken competition on those occasions when our church would be the guest of another church in Augusta, or in a nearby Georgia or South Carolina town. Which choir was better? Would our preacher bring the congregation to its feet? At every turn, we found ourselves in the company of our neighbors and fellow church members in living rooms throughout Augusta, full of ease and comfort, not from luxurious surroundings, but from the soul-sustaining presence of true amity. This is where our spiritual lives flourished, alongside the deepening core of our social lives. These activities rooted in the church and community provided a wonderful opportunity for people to get together, to talk about things that were important to all: raising children, maintaining stable marriages, ensuring the proper education of the children, politics, staying safe in a segregated climate that made life demanding and, yes, dangerous, for our people.

It was really an amazing time, because although we all led distinctly individual lives, this strong sense of community bound us together. Everybody was interconnected and naturally supportive of one another. Everybody knew everybody else, what the parents did for a living, which church member failed to show up for Sunday service, and the like. There was much talk about the cooking skills of the church ladies, and everyone knew which of the women on the usher board made the best casseroles and which deaconess you could count on to bring the perfect lemon pound cake to share after Bible study. Our corner of the world was, in the purest sense of the word, a true village “raising children,” and I learned from the best the importance of protecting that village—being there for one another.

We kids took those cues and applied them to our own interactions with one another. We moved as a unit, my little group of friends. It was composed of boys and girls, and no one gave it a second thought. We did everything together—chorus rehearsals and club activities in school, youth social clubs at our various churches, and surely in Scouts and Y-Teens. The friendships were uncomplicated because, in spite of the indignity of Jim Crow laws and the hostile atmosphere created by the desperate and often despicable behavior of whites who continued to rail against those of us “in the struggle,” we felt an unerring sense that “this was our country, too,” because our communities and our parents and our history said so. Our very lives were protected by a deep sense of belonging, by our friendships, our parents, the village. Gender differences played little role in those bonds, even when we reached the age when boys and girls started to have different kinds of friendships and some in our group began to date. The funny part was that until it was stated otherwise, we all expected to accompany the friend from our group and his or her new love interest when they went out as a couple. It seemed completely normal to us to be together and share everything. When I think of this, it is really quite hilarious. But we were innocent of any jealousy or anything of that kind; our tight-knit group was built on a foundation of immeasurable trust—the kind we saw amongst our parents and the adults in our community and in our clubs and church pews.

My siblings and I speak of this often and wonder how the parents of the day managed it all: raising children and taking care of a home and tending to all of their various responsibilities within the community and the church and the many different organizations to which they belonged. My mother’s responsibilities as the church auditor alone took up a huge portion of at least one of her Saturdays every month. She was tasked with publishing the names of every member of the church and every club in the church and what financial support they’d contributed to Mount Calvary that month. She did this on a manual Remington Rand typewriter. I can recall so easily the smell of the typewriter ribbon, and of the red rubber eraser with the little plastic tassel at the other end. I used to marvel at how she never looked at her fingers on the keys as she typed. When I think about the technology available today, I imagine how much easier it all would have been for my mother to manage if she’d had one of these fancy word processors with the newest of software. But even using what today we consider rather ordinary tools, her reports were never late. She and my father would go over to the church on Saturday, open the glass doors that housed the bulletin board in the lobby, and post the information, page after page, for everyone to see when they arrived at church the next morning. Since you could look at this and see what every member and every club donated for the month, it was probably a good incentive to pay your tithes! But my mother’s work and intentions were concerned fully in that she had a job to do and she felt it her responsibility to do that job to the best of her ability because doing so honored God and her church. Mind you, this was a volunteer position, as was every other position in our church, other than that of our pastor’s.

My mother’s work ethic and dedication to her faith extended, too, to our personal lives and those around us. She felt it her duty to God and her community to be there for those who lived around us, and I know for sure that she was not alone in this thinking. There were many people on our street who were older than my parents—people whose children had grown up and moved away and who were getting on in age and having a difficult time taking care of themselves. Medicare and Medicaid were yet only dreams in our country at the time. These neighbors needed help with managing their lives, and it never would have occurred to the younger parents on the street to leave them to fend for themselves. I remember clearly when Mrs. Hubert, one of our favorite older ladies, who lived directly across from us, was not really feeding herself properly. She had lost the ability to cook for herself, so the women in the community simply got together to work out on which day of the week each of them would be responsible for making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for her. It was understood that this was something they would do. There was no discussion other than of the logistics of providing Mrs. Hubert the care she needed: food and a little company during the course of the day. No one said anything like “Gee, I don’t have time.” I loved taking my turns bringing breakfast over to Mrs. Hubert before going off to school; she was always so happy to see me and made a point of asking if my grades were still good in school and if I had time to sing her that song she had heard I’d sung at church last Sunday. I was always happy to oblige; she was just the best audience.

Today, we can live next door to someone for years and not recognize them in the grocery-store queue. But that simply was not the case in our community. Indeed, more than twenty years ago when I became involved with City Meals-on-Wheels in New York City, one of many such organizations around the country that deliver nutritionally balanced meals to thousands of seniors. I noted that what we were doing on a very large scale was, in many ways, what my mother and our neighbors did while I was growing up in Augusta. As neither the federal, state, or local governments provide food to our older citizens in need on weekends or holidays, many of whom are unable to avail themselves of the physical and spiritual nourishment of a senior citizens’ facility, it is essential that community efforts and privately funded organizations fill the gaps.

In our community, it was absolutely natural, too, for our neighbors to look after each other’s children, and for the children to extend the same respect and consideration they gave their own parents to all the adults in their lives. It was perfectly acceptable for any adult entrusted with the care of a child to call that child to account for bad behavior. A parent would be comfortable in saying to a neighbor, “I’ve got to go to the supermarket—just keep an eye on the children there in the backyard.” And were any child to be questioned by an adult in the neighborhood, the child’s response would have had to include the words “Yes, ma’am,” or “Yes, sir.”

Being neighbors meant something—and doing the right thing by those neighbors had meaning. There was a spiritual element that compelled the neighbors to help one another, because they knew these actions to be a part of serving their faith and their Creator. My parents believed in this wholeheartedly and demonstrated their belief in the most tangible of ways. The Mrs. Huberts of our community had nothing to fear.

The church informed my journey into adulthood. It was there, too, that I learned to share and work in cooperation with others. Singing in the chorus meant I had to learn to blend my voice with everyone else’s, an ability that carries through in my professional life. There is a great deal of ensemble singing in operas and oratorios and the greater the harmony among the singers, the more thrilling the presentation.

We also learned how to take constructive criticism—how to stand up in front of our peers, which surely was not simple, and, after doing whatever it was that we were charged with doing, to have the humility to listen to the person in charge who offered comments on our presentation and ways it could be improved. “No, try that again,” or “Next time, do it like this.” We accepted the suggested changes because we understood that we were learning, and that those adults cared about us and wished us to be good at whatever we found ourselves doing. Of course, when I was six years old, I was not thinking of these things as learning experiences; I was doing as I was told. All that I did in the church and my community gave me pleasure, which was a plus, but I was not thinking beyond that place and time. Yet, less than twenty years later, on an opera stage in Germany, those teachings from my youth would come in handy, because in many important ways, I was already well rehearsed.

In other words, leading prayer, singing with my mother at the piano, or in Sunday school, performing in Christmas pageants, reciting the Twenty-Third Psalm or a Walt Whitman or Langston Hughes poem, all of these things were more than just ritual. The elders, the parents, the Sunday school teachers, the choir directors, the teachers at our schools, all of them understood that they were preparing us to move about in this world. They understood how very important it was to support and nurture us—to teach us how to walk onto a stage, look around and smile, and say in our minds,
I’m glad to be here, and now I would like to sing for you.

The training ground of my community was as crucial to my performance life as to my spiritual journey. Music has always been an essential part of the African American worship service, and this was no less true in my community. The church choirs were phenomenal. There were gospel singers, young and more mature, who could easily have had professional careers as they were truly that good.

I used to enjoy in particular listening to the deacons “line a hymn.” I’ll explain: Just as in Mother Africa, with the tradition of the call-and-response in group singing, in our churches, lining a hymn meant that a person, most of the time a deacon, would offer the name of the hymn to be sung and announce the meter that the hymn would take. “We’ll now sing ‘Amazing Grace,’ a song in common meter,” the deacon would say. Just as in Africa, common meter is a song in three-quarter time. The deacon would say the words, one line at a time: “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me,” followed by the congregation’s singing of that phrase. Then the deacon would follow with more text: “I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see,” and the congregation would sing that phrase, the melody always led by the same deacon who lined the hymn.