The Color of Water (28 page)

She never wore “The Thing.” In fact she brought it back to the doctor's office twice, expecting to exchange it the way you exchange, say, a lamp or a pair of shoes at a discount store. After much haggling they finally agreed to give her another one, which was only further proof to her that “The Thing” was a piece of junk. It lives in a box now, next to the toys and junk she collects from the dollar store—Ping-Pong balls, water guns, bubble makers—all of which end up in her cluttered bedroom, clumped under her bed, to be doled out to grandkids, or simply forgotten.

She drives with her blinker on, at thirty miles per hour, windows rolled down because she's claustrophobic, and electric doors and locks give her fits, with her radio blasting
The Joan Hamburg Show
on WWOR in New York City, with an occasional nod to a local Holy Roller station, or Howard Stern.

After holding up traffic for an appropriate time, she will turn into a church parking lot, sometimes taking up two parking spaces, since she'll park cockeyed, with the car tires hanging over the yellow line. The motor quits, the car drifts a bit as the parking brake slams on, and she flings the door open. A gentle push—she's not strong anymore—but still
it's a kind of get-out-of-my-way shove. She then throws her purse, sweater, shopping bag, and cheap plastic sun visor out of the car, onto the pavement where it rolls around a little. She places her walking cane out the door, grabs the handle over the doorway, and hoists herself out of the car.

And thus Ruth McBride Jordan, my mother, is ready for business.

My mother is the only person I know who goes to four churches. She goes to the white Lutheran church when she wants to get out on time. She goes to her regular black Baptist church, where the services run long and where an older minister “gets down to business,” as she puts it. Sometimes she goes to an early-morning service at my Baptist church, run by a fine, young, well-educated minister (“they're a little uppity in there,” she complains), or she'll skip all three and head to a tiny Baptist church, where she is crazy about the minister's midweek “Hour of Power” Bible study lessons.

I would venture to state that in at least three of those churches, there aren't more than ten people in the congregations who know that the elderly white woman sitting among them singing “Come to Jesus” off-key is one of the most beloved women in America. Her story, which you have just read, has sold more than two million copies worldwide. It has been translated into nearly twenty languages and was serialized by the
New York Times
, where it sat on that paper's
bestseller list for two years. It is studied by thousands of students every year in sociology, literature, history, and creative writing classes. She is regarded, at least by some, as one of the most inspirational figures in contemporary American literature. Yet she claims she enjoys her anonymity. “What difference does it make?” she says.

I know for a fact that Mommy secretly likes being famous. A little. She's human. She's tickled by it the same way that, say, a homeless woman would be tickled to suddenly find herself at a cocktail party with fancy waiters breezing up to her every five minutes, holding trays filled with delicious cocktails and stuffed chicken tidbits. And the woman would say, “Don't mind if I do,” all the while knowing that when the clock strikes twelve the party's over, and she has to go back to her old life. Mommy won't mind when midnight arrives; she has perspective. She toasts her good luck, knowing that while fame is fleeting, God is forever. “I'm blessed beyond measure,” she says. She says that often.

It's been ten years since this book was laid at the public's feet. Neither she nor I had any idea it would become the classic that it has become. It is every author's dream come true. It has changed my life and that of my mother immeasurably, in mostly good ways.

While I have no complaints, the past few years have not been all peaches and cream. In those ten years, Mommy survived quadruple bypass surgery and a minor stroke. She
saw the death of two great-grandchildren, and the death of my brother Billy, a husband and father of four, who died of kidney cancer at the age of fifty-six, in April 2004. Billy was a medical doctor and vice president for research at Merck Pharmaceutical. To give you an idea of what kind of son he was: From the time he got his first job at fifteen in an ice cream cone plant in Brooklyn to when he graduated from Yale Medical School, he supported his mother. When he was a kid, he gave her cash. After medical school, he sent her a check. Every single month, until he died.

Nothing I offer here can effectively communicate the pain of watching Mommy howl with grief at Billy's wake, where his body lay in state, his tie so neat, his glasses perched upon his handsome face, his hair combed just so. His death broke us down. Yet it brought us closer as well. Billy was proud of this book. He urged his mother to be proud of it as well. He helped her accept her past, and she welcomed his encouragement. And while making my family's story public initially caused some tensions between my siblings and me, I would say they're proud of the book too. It has made us realize how special our mother is, and how blessed we are.

I've been welcomed with open arms by about a dozen relatives since this book was published, many of them white and Jewish. I'm a better person, a fuller person, for knowing them. And I hope they feel the same way about me. Naturally there are some among them who have no interest in
meeting their black relatives—just as there are a few on my side who have no interest in their white, Jewish relatives. This isn't the movies; this is the real world. Nothing is perfect. Everyone has a right to his feelings. As for me, I'm proud of my extended family—all of them. They are me and I am them.

As a result of this book, my mother and her sister reunited after more than fifty years. They were each happy to know the other is alive. But they are not close. They are different people, living in different worlds. On the other hand, Mommy has reunited with one of her favorite Jewish cousins, whom she knew as a child and whom my siblings and I adore. Mommy flew all the way to California alone to visit her cousin, and that says a lot, because Mommy is claustrophobic and afraid to fly. She traveled there at her cousin's invitation, and they had a ball. It's amazing to see them together. They're so alike, yet so different.

One of the nicer things that has happened as a result of the book's publication is that people of mixed race have found a bit of their own story in these pages. I have met hundreds of mixed-race people of all types, and I'm happy to report that—guess what, folks—they're happy, normal people! They're finding a way. Grandparents and grandchildren, husbands and wives, cousins and second cousins. And they will continue to survive and even thrive. The plain truth is that you'd have an easier time standing in the middle of the
Mississippi River and requesting that it flow backward than to expect people of different races and backgrounds to stop loving each other, stop marrying each other, stop starting families, stop enjoying the dreams that love inspires. Love is unstoppable. It is our greatest weapon, a natural force, created by God.

I have met hundreds of mothers—African American, Jewish, European, Arab, Latino, African, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist—and all of them understand that family love, a mother's love, gives us grace, courage, and power beyond measure.

No one understands that power more than Mommy, who, when asked about her celebrity status, will be the first to confess, “I did nothing special.” Or when asked how she raised twelve kids will say, “Y'all raised yourselves,” or she'll say, “God raised you.” She's happy that the book speaks to so many parents. She knows how hard it is to raise kids. She read the book only once, cried after reading it, and pronounced it “okay.”

“I tried to read it over to see what everybody was hollering about,” she said recently, “but then I said, ‘Ahhh, why go back there?”'

Because of her age and heart condition, she takes an array of pills each day, prescribed by a wonderful Jewish heart doctor in Philadelphia who treated her like a queen long before he knew who she was. He insists that she eat a particular
high-fiber, low-fat diet. Personally, I don't know if she follows it or not. Only thing I know is, when I'm short on potato chips, chocolate chip cookies, fried chicken, eggs, cheese, or vanilla wafers, I head to Mommy's house.

She wakes up each morning with a smile, saying, “I'm blessed,” or “Thank you, Jesus,” or “I hold on to God's unchanging hand.” She's content with her life, has taken the bumps and bruises with as much grace as she can, including the July 2005 death of her courageous childhood friend Frances Moody Falcolne, of Suffolk, Virginia. This book has given Mommy her past back, embodied in the painting of her mother that now hangs on the wall in her living room, a woman who was a mystery to me until I wrote this book.

One afternoon, a few years ago, my African American daughter, who was about eight years old, asked me, “Daddy, if Grandma is your mother, how come she doesn't look like me or you?”

I gave her the only answer I could. “I don't know,” I said. “But she loves us, and that's the most important thing.”

That seems to satisfy her, at least for the time being. There will be other issues, other questions she'll have, I'm sure, as she grows older. There will be reams of books and newspapers and video footage and movies that will attempt to answer the unanswerable questions of racism, sexism, classism, and socioeconomics for her—hard-line intellectuals have already had a field day with this book, using it to
promote every sort of sociopolitical ideology. But at the end of the day, there are some questions that have no answers, and then one answer that has no question: love rules the game. Every time. All the time. That's what counts.

For me, this book has always been, and will forever be, a book about a mother and her children, and how that mother raised her children with love and respect and God. About a mother's love, a father's love, family love. In all the important ways, my family's story is not unique. It plays out across the world, on every continent, in every nation, city, town, and village every day. Family love: It is firm footing, something to cling to in a frightened world that seems to spin out of control with war, turmoil, terrorism, and uncertainty. It is our highest calling and our greatest nobility.

So if you see a woman driving in Trenton with her blinkers on, look out. Back off. Give her some space. She could go left, she could go right. She could go up into Heaven clear out of sight! But no matter which way she goes, she's not likely going your way. And if she is, don't bother her with any questions about it, or you'll get an earful of God.

James McBride

September 2005

New York City

My mother and I would like to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for His love and faithfulness to all generations. Thanks to my loving wife, Stephanie Payne, who stood me up when I could no longer stand, who would not let me back away from the dream, who made me a man. To my children, Jordan and Azure, that they might know where they came from.

To my eleven brothers and sisters: Dr. Andrew Dennis McBride, Rosetta McBride, Dr. William (Billy) McBride, Dr. David McBride, Helen McBride-Richter, Richard McBride, Dorothy McBride-Wesley, Kathy Jordan, Judy Jordan,
Hunter Jordan, and Henry Jordan. Thank you for your help in putting this book together and keeping us strong over the years. To my special sister, Jacqueline Nelson of Louisville, Kentucky, who helped me turn my life around.

Thanks to my editor, Cindy Spiegel, at Riverhead, whose creativity, imagination, guidance, hard work, and foresight created the organization and magic of this book, and to my agent, Flip Brophy, of Sterling Lord Literistic, who stuck with me for ten years despite the fact that I never made her a dime.

My mother and I would also like to thank our friends and family in Harlem, in the Red Hook Housing Projects in Brooklyn, in St. Albans, Queens, and in Philadelphia, who stuck with us over the years: in particular my godparents, Mother Rachel and Rev. Tom McNair and family; Mother Virginia Ingram and family; Rev. Edward Belton and family of Passaic, New Jersey; the late Irene Johnson, her daughters Deborah and Barbara, her sister Vera Leake, her brother Rev. Hunson Greene, and the rest of her family; Rev. Elvery Stannard, Rev. Arnet Clark and Tiberian Baptist Church; Pastor Joseph Roberts and Ebenezer Baptist Church; Dr. Gary Richter, Rose McBride, Rebecca Randolph; Gladys and Fred Cleveland, Alice and Neddie Sands, Dorothy and Thomas Jones. The Napper and Harris families, Sheila Warren and Evelyn Hobson; Trafinna “Ruth” Wilson and family of Wilmington, Delaware; our late beloved Aunt Sallie Candis Baldwin
and Etta and Nash McBride; the Hinson, Leake, and Rush families of Mount Gilead, North Carolina; Aunt Mag Lomax, Cousin Edna Rucker and the Gripper family of High Point, North Carolina; the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn; Rev. Thomas Davis of Crossroads Baptist Church in Harlem; Cousin Maggie Harris and family of Richmond, Virginia; Thelma Carpenter, Uncle Walter Jordan, Flossie Jordan, and the Jordans of Brooklyn and Richmond; and the Payne and Hawkins families in Los Angeles.

Thanks to the folks in Suffolk, Virginia: Frank and Aubrey Sheffer, Helen Weintraub, the late Aubrey Rubenstein, Mrs. Frances Holland, Mary Howell-Read of the city clerk's office, Curly Baker, and Eddie Thompson. A heartfelt embrace to Frances and Nick Falcone of Portsmouth, Virginia, for reentering our lives. Thanks to Dina Abramowicz of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York City and to all the brothers on the Corner at Vermont Liquors in Louisville, especially Mike Fowler, Big Richard Nelson, and the late Chicken Man. Thanks to tax accountant Milton Sherman, Janette Bolgiani, and Julian “Sharon” Jones. Thanks to Jim Naughton at the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, Rhonda Goldfein, Holocaust survivors Halina Wind and George Preston and their son David Preston, who helped reveal the wonders of Judaism for me. Thanks to my friends at the
Boston Globe:
Dennis Lloyd, Al Larkin, Jack Driscoll, Ed Siegel, Cindy Smith, Steve Morse, and of course Ernie Santosuosso.
Thanks to Mary Hadar, who was a guiding editor at
The Washington Post
, and bebop guitarist Jeff Frank, whose second career still awaits. Thanks to Jay Lovinger and Gay Daley, who read my manuscript and whose kindness has always been an inspiration to me and my family. Thanks to Bill Boyle, Mike Daley, Hank Klibanoff, Marguerite Del Giudice, Doran Twer, Gar Joseph, Gary Smith, and Sally Wilson; thanks to Isabel Spencer and Fred Hartman, who gave me my first journalism job, to Norman Isaacs, who taught me to be good enough to get one, to Jann Wenner of
Rolling Stone/Us
magazines, who let me practice my soprano sax at work, no problem, and to Eric “Bud Powell” Levin, Jesse Birnbaum, Pat Ryan, Jim Gaines, and Mercedes Mitchell at
People
. Thanks to Jill Nelson, Richard Ben Kramer, Carolyn White, Gerri Hirshey, and living legend and author John A. Williams, whose life's work is an inspiration to all writers. Thanks to Anita Baker and Walter Bridgeforth, whose generosity helped me survive the lean years, jazz legend Jimmy Scott, who taught me to swing, saxophonist Grover Washington, Jr., Gary Burton, Everett Harp, my homie Damon Due White, my homegirl Rachelle Ferrell, Gerard Harris, writing partner Ed Shockley, Larry Woody, Sy Friend, and Vinnie Carrissimi, who still can't jump; to George Caldwell, musical partner Pura Fé, Dana Crowe, Lisa Hartfield Davé, Professor Wendell Logan, Fred Nelson III, Laurie “Colgate” Weisman, Roz Abrams, and the Rouet
family of France. Finally, thanks to the Bien family of Concord, New Hampshire, and their sons Alec and Leander, who sat up for many nights listening to me recite my dreams, then stood by me in the reality of the hard days that followed.