Lady Sings the Blues - Billie Holiday [62]
But I couldn’t get any of my mail because the rule book says you are only allowed to get letters from your immediate family. And death had done me fresh out of immediate family. There was nobody left. Pop and Mom were dead. If there had been anybody, believe me, those federal social workers would have found them. Those people are thorough.
I had a white half sister and brother somewhere—the ones I met at Pop’s funeral. But they had vanished into the ofay world without a trace. Everybody was dead except my step-mother, Fanny Holiday, and my cousins Henry and Elsie. Neither of them were considered immediate family.
And the stuff people sent that I couldn’t touch! Fruit, wine, whisky, champagne. I loved them for it, but they had to send it back.
A wonderful couple in Zurich, Switzerland, sent me a thousand dollars and a telegram telling me that America would never accept me again when I got out, so I should come to them in Europe. They telephoned me twice from Europe and the warden was nice enough to let me speak to them. I told them I couldn’t run away; maybe they were right and America wouldn’t accept me. But I had to find out for myself. I had the warden, Mrs. Helen Hironimus, send the thousand dollars back, and I told them if I didn’t make it when I got out I’d call on them to send me the money and I’d come over. “But I think I can make it,” I told them.
The warden didn’t have to let me talk to these friends from Europe. And she didn’t have to let me receive any mail from friends, but she finally decided I could get my three letters a week from people besides my family. The ones selected were Bobby Tucker, my faithful accompanist, and Ed Fishman, a fellow who wanted to be my manager when I got out. Fishman used to call the warden every day. And since the warden wanted to do everything she could about helping me to make a comeback when I got out, she let me talk to Fishman and Joe Glaser.
The warden was a real nice chick. She was a fine woman. She had money and didn’t have to work at a job like that. She did it because she believed in what she was doing. After church on Sundays she would always come by the hospital where the girls were kicking dope. That’s the first time I saw her, on one of those visits. When you’re lying there in torment, counting the minutes, the last thing you want to see is a pretty woman, and warden Helen Hironimus was a pretty one. But she knew and didn’t let that stop her. She’d bring flowers and give them to the girls having a rough time. After a few days you get to thinking she’s kind of sharp. Then you discover yourself liking the dame.
I didn’t sing a note the whole time I was in Alderson. I didn’t feel like singing. So I didn’t. A lot of the girls in there were nice kids. They used to beg me to perform and they’d get sore at me when I refused. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t have sung if I’d wanted to. If they’d understood my kind of singing they’d have known I couldn’t sing in a place like that. The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing. In the whole time I was there I didn’t feel a thing.
The girls used to give those goddamn amateur shows. Even the warden asked if I wouldn’t participate. I gave her the same answer. I told her I had been sent there to be punished and that was that, and nothing to sing about. I went to the first show the kids gave. It was Halloween and some of the girls were dressed up as boys, carrying on on stage the way they couldn’t off stage.
It was absolutely disgusting and so depressing I never went back to see any of their damn amateur nights. This made everybody mad. But they’d still play my records. People must have sent me more than five hundred of my recordings while I was in there, and I left them there. I seldom listened to my own records outside, so I didn’t in there, either.
When it got near to Christmas of 1947 in the joint, I was determined to have some whisky some kind of way. I had the run of the kitchen and I figured, if anybody could do it, it was up to me. I remembered