Widow Basquiat (9 page)

Suzanne thinks: he was so slight and gentle; I could have put a pair of handcuffs on Michael.

It was about ten in the morning when I got a call from Michael’s mother. She told me that some police had come to
her home and told her that Michael was in the hospital. She was calling from the hospital. She was in the emergency room. She told me to come. I arrived at the emergency room of Bellevue Hospital and found Michael’s parents there. I asked what had happened. They said that they did not know.

Michael’s mother was a pleasant, short woman with light skin and a deep sadness and worry in her black eyes, which always looked watery like pools. She had a very pretty face with a big, thin stretched smile. When she smiled her whole face lit up except her eyes, which always remained sad—probably because of the death of her first son. Michael’s father was perhaps the most elegant man I have ever met. A tall, thin light-skinned black man with white features. He always wore a suit and tie and a ’40s-style hat, which he removed whenever he entered a room. He was quiet, shy and modest like Michael. I was impressed by his dignity. He always sat in the visitors’ room reading
The New York Times
from cover to cover. He was in terrible pain; you could see it on his face. But he was so silent with it. He just kept reading and reading and reading.

I asked Michael’s mother why no one had told her what had happened and she said all she knew was that he had been arrested and was now in a coma.

I went up to the emergency room desk and said I was Michael Stewart’s fiancée (which I wasn’t) and I demanded to see him and to know what had happened. I was told that the information I wanted was not available at the time.

I was then approached by a plainclothes detective, who immediately started to question me. He asked me questions about Michael. Did he do drugs? I said no. Was he known to be violent? I said absolutely not. Then I became very angry and I started to question the detective. The detective said he did not know anything. This I instantly found curious. He was a police officer. It was either one or the other. The police either found him this way or they did this to him. That would be in a police report and the detective would have access to that information. I knew that something was not right. I then asked him exactly what state Michael was in and if he was going to die. The detective whispered, “Yes.” I told the detective that I would not answer any more questions until I had a lawyer present. I walked up to Michael’s mother and I asked her if she knew a civil rights attorney. She said she did.

When the attorneys arrived everything began to move quickly. We were whisked into a private room. Finally, the lawyers and their own doctor were allowed to see Michael. When the doctor came back, he sat down and said, “There are so many things wrong with your son you should hope that he dies.” We all let out gasps. But no one cried. The doctor told us he was brain-dead. He said that he had a massive hemorrhage at the base of his brain that appeared to have been caused by strangulation from an illegal choke hold with a billy club. He also said that Michael had numerous abrasions and contusions all over his body and lacerations on his wrists and ankles that appeared to be from handcuffs and foot shackles.

Suzanne calls Fiorucci, where she is working for Maripol, the jewelry designer. She says that she will not be coming to work. Suzanne cuts her hair. She goes to a thrift shop and buys a conservative pink blouse, a black skirt and a plastic string of pearls. She calls Jean-Michel’s loft but no one answers.

She borrows a friend’s camera and goes to Bellevue Hospital. Michael is in a room with a police guard outside the door and a video camera in the room. They tell Suzanne this is because Michael Stewart is under arrest. She tells the police officer, “Sir, mister, he is my boyfriend. Sir, mister, please let me in for two minutes. Please, sir, please, mister.”

The room smells of rotten meat. Suzanne throws her coat over the camera and pulls back Michael’s sheets and photographs every single mark on his body. His face is covered in small cuts, and bits of glass are visible in his flesh. (Later she learns that the police broke the window of the police car with his face.) His face is huge and swollen. His eyes are bloated, closed pieces of red and black meat. He has cuts and bruises all over his chest and legs. His head is wrapped in a gauze bandage. Tubes are coming out of his nose and
there is a respirator tube in his mouth. There are welts on his ankles and wrists. There is no place on his body that has not been hurt.

She can’t touch him. He cannot stand for anything else to touch him.

Michael Stewart’s parents surrender to this frail, skinny girl who is so strong she can set the world on fire.

I immediately started working with the lawyers on the case. They told me that the most important thing we needed was press coverage. No reporter would cover the story at the beginning. The lawyers told me to go to Peter Noel at the
Amsterdam News
. So I did. He was the only reporter who would talk to me. I also started meeting with members of the National Black United Front. At first they did not accept me until I told them that I was half Palestinian.

I also became aware that the lawyers were going to cost a lot of money. As almost every single art gallery in SoHo was showing graffiti art at the time, I went to them and told them about the case. I said that Michael was a graffiti artist. (He wasn’t, he just dabbled in it because it was hip.) I told them they should donate money for his legal defense. In one month I raised fourteen thousand dollars. The bulk of this money was donated by Keith Haring. Many galleries also donated money and Madonna did a benefit at Danceteria.

After two weeks, Michael died. He died on September 15, 1983. I remember this date so well because I read somewhere that on September 15, 1963, five young girls were killed by a bomb in a church in Birmingham, Alabama, by the KKK. I found it a very strange thing that Michael died exactly twenty years to the day of this incident.

The Stewarts’ lawyers’ forensic pathologist found the final cause of death to be strangulation caused by an illegal choke hold with a billy club and a massive brain hemorrhage. The medical examiner for the city made a formal statement to the press saying that there was no evidence that the injuries sustained while in police custody had caused Michael Stewart’s death. When asked by the press what caused the death of a healthy twenty-five-year-old, he answered, “Heart failure.” It was simply unbelievable.

The lawyers later discovered that someone had Michael’s eyes removed. This was not a standard procedure and he should have secured permission from the lawyers and the family. It appeared that someone had also secretly placed Michael’s eyes in a bleaching formula that would bleach out the hemorrhaging that could have been proof of strangulation.

A group of us got together and demanded an inquiry into the autopsy report to prove that there was a city cover-up of racially motivated police brutality. We got about four thousand signatures.

I then went with Reverend Herbert Daughtry, who was the head of the National Black United Front, to City Hall. We had notified the press and they were all there. Every New York news station and newspaper. Suddenly all the news cameras flashed and Rev. Daughtry said to me, “Suzanne, I am not in good standing with the mayor. You do it.” I was shocked. I thought that he was going to do it. I instantly became composed and walked up the steps of City Hall by myself and handed the petition to Mayor Koch’s lawyer and said, “On behalf of the citizens of New York, I present you with this petition that demands a formal inquiry into the chief medical examiner’s report concerning the death of Michael Stewart while in police custody.”

A grand jury investigation did ensue, but all the police were let off free. Then a civil suit was conducted and the family received one million dollars for wrongful death. But those police officers are still out there walking the beat.

Suzanne is invited to Harlem to a place called Fight Back to speak about the Michael Stewart case. It is a small room with wall dividers and the walls do not go up to the ceiling. Everyone is black except for one pregnant Puerto Rican woman and her husband. Suzanne realizes she is in the wrong place. This is a very radical black Muslim Five-Percent Nation meeting. These people believe you should arm yourself against whites. They believe all whites are the devil and they believe in the revolution that will come when blacks will take over the world. They are all radical extremists and followers of Louis Farrakhan.

They ask Suzanne to go up to the front of the room and speak about the Michael Stewart case. Which she does.

A man in the back of the room starts screaming, “White bitch, white girl!” He is asked to leave the room.

Five minutes later this man returns with a ski mask on his face and a gun, which he points at the door. “White bitch, you’re dead,” he screams. Someone jumps up and shuts the door on this man.

Suzanne cannot swallow. Her mouth moves and says, “I am a follower of Islam. If I must die I will die in the name of the almighty Allah.”

Everyone stands up. Everyone is suddenly very frightened. The women crowd around the pregnant woman and the men crowd around all the women and they leave together in a huddled mass.

After this, Suzanne stops working on the Michael Stewart case. She is frightened and moves back to Canada for a few months, afraid that she might be deported. She thinks her telephone is bugged and that people are following her.

Michael’s mother has chosen to have an open casket. Even though the body is very badly beaten and even though an autopsy was performed. She wants everyone to see what was done to her son. She speaks at the funeral. She says something short and simple. She says something like, “When Michael was a little boy, I taught him to believe in justice. I taught him that if he treated people the right way he would be treated the right way. The first song he learned to sing was ‘God Bless America.’ ”

The designer Dianne Brill donates a suit for the burial. Dozens of news cameras are waiting outside the church.

The girl is wearing a tight black skirt and black fishnet stockings.

Suzanne says, “Michael would have liked me this way.”

The girl puts three of her bracelets in the coffin.

I don’t believe in God. But I do believe that each of us has some sort of inner dynamic, that we are not always aware of, that
guides us in life to witness certain profound things. These profound things change us forever and bring us closer to our ultimate selves. My relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat and the death of Michael Stewart were experiences of this nature.

Jean-Michel paints
Untitled (Defacement)
, 1983. Acrylic and ink on wallboard, 25 x 30½ inches. The painting is of two policemen beating up a small, childlike black figure that already appears to be in a shroud. The head is surrounded by a halo. There is graffiti in the background. It says: C.O.P., hoh and DEFACIMENTO?

Jean was very upset by Michael’s death. It made him feel very vulnerable. But, at the same time, he was very mad at me for causing such a fuss over Michael’s death. He even told me that I should forget about it, that it was over and done with, and that there was nothing that I could do about it. He hated that I was working on the case and that I was so obsessed with it. I think it really frightened him. I think he thought he was next. He always thought that the police, the government or the people in charge were going to kill him. He was such a barometer for the racist culture he lived in. He felt everything around him in a very heightened way. It was not only cocaine paranoia.

Jean-Michel calls Suzanne and tells her to come over. He actually says, “Come over and play, Venus.”

He is freebasing coke because he has developed a hole in his nose and has a piece of cotton stuck in one of his nostrils. He is wearing a blue Armani suit that is covered with paint. Jean-Michel is so skinny the suit flaps around his skeletal body. He is barefoot and there is paint all over his flat, wide feet. Suzanne does some coke too.

Jean-Michel tells Suzanne to lie down on a canvas that is on the floor. She lies down feeling the pitter-patter of the coke inside her. Jean-Michel draws a line around her body, over her head, down her arms and in and around her fingers. He tells her she can get up. They do some more coke.

Then he fills in the life-sized portrait with a liver, heart and spleen. He draws two eggs for eyes and a big watermelon mouth. He kisses the face in the drawing but he does not kiss Suzanne.

When they start to come down from the coke they go to bed and shiver and shake in each other’s arms.

I first met Keith Haring at Club 57, which was in the basement of a church on 8th Street. He was a really nice guy. Jean introduced him to me. He and Jean had a great deal of respect for each other. But my strongest association with Keith was at the Paradise Garage club. This club was a really tough black gay club, a huge loft with no liquor license. It was so cool. There was no liquor so everyone came high on mushrooms, pot and mostly hallucinogens like ecstasy and acid. Jean went there a lot and so did I. But usually not with each other. He would see me there and get mad. He didn’t like me hanging out there because this club was a really tough black club. There were metal detectors at the door and there were not that many girls that hung out there. I guess Jean thought he would have to keep an eye on me.

I used to go with Andre Walker, who was an underground black gay fashion designer, and Leslie Macayza. Leslie and I were the “Andre Walker girls” because we used to model for him. Jean used to come to these fashion shows and not speak to me but just stare.

Anyway, Paradise Garage had terrific music and Keith Haring was always there and threw parties there too after his openings.