Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [10]
Chapter 2
Ghost of Yesterdays
Everybody was talking about Lindbergh’s hop to Paris that summer of 1927 when I made it solo from Baltimore to New York.
From the day she got me sprung from the Catholic institution, Mom and I were drug with Baltimore. We had had it with roomers after the deal with Mr. Dick. There was nothing to do except for Mom to go back slaving away as somebody’s maid. In Baltimore she couldn’t make half the loot she could up North. So I dragged my scrub brush and bucket from house to house trying to make up the difference that could keep us together.
One night I came home long after dark. I had worked all day and had ninety cents to show for it. Mom took one look at me and busted out crying, I looked that beat. I tried to comfort her and tell her I’d be all right, but she kept saying, “There’s got to be something better than this.” And if there was, she and I knew it had to be up North. It wasn’t going to be in Baltimore.
So up she went. And back I went into the little house with Cousin Ida and her husband, Grandma and Grandpop, little Cousin Henry and Elsie—to wait for the day Mom could send for me to come to New York.
Life with Cousin Ida was just more of the same. I couldn’t wait for it to be over, and then I hated the way it ended. She was one of the worst black bitches God ever put on earth, but I hated the way she died. Goiters ran in my mother’s family; Mom had one, but Cousin Ida’s was the worse, a great big horrible one that hung from her chin to her breast. One day she had a choking spell and there was nobody around to help her but her husband, and he was passed out drunk. She died like a dog, on her knees, choking for air. The doctor said if her man had even come to enough to raise the window and let in some air he could have saved her. But he was too juiced even for that. Mean as she was, I hated to see her die like that.
In those days they kept dead bodies around for two weeks for the waking and crying. Cousin Ida and her husband were Baptists and they gave Mom and me a hard time because we were Catholic. We were always accused of thinking we were better than the Baptists. They used to make fun of Mom with her candles and creeping up to the altar. So when I refused to look at Cousin Ida’s body they thought it had something to do with that. They wouldn’t let me alone. Finally, when I wouldn’t go near the coffin, someone dragged me over by it, held me up, and made me look at her. I was sick from that.
With Cousin Ida dead and nobody to look after Henry and Elsie, let alone me, Mom sent for me to come to New York. I finished up the fifth grade, and as soon as school was out Grandpop put one of those big tags around my neck, saying who I was and where I was going. Grandma made me this big basket of fried chicken, hard-boiled eggs—enough food to last Lindbergh across the Atlantic. And Grandpop put me on the train. I had a ticket to Long Branch, where Mom was going to meet me. But as soon as I got on the train by myself I decided, damn Long Branch, I was going to get to see Harlem someway. So I took off the big tag, decided I’d get off the train in New York, take the subway to Harlem, have myself a time, and then contact my mother.
I was only thirteen, but I was a hip kitty. I was traveling light—except for that basket of chicken—but I was traveling. When I got off at Pennsylvania Station in New York, I had never seen a place so big. I was wandering around, taking my own sweet time, looking at all the big buildings, taking it all in. I must have been a sight, traipsing around, gawking, with this basket of chicken and my little suitcase. Anyway, this social worker spotted