'Things I Should Have Told My Daughter'

AUTHOR EVENTS

Pearl Cleage reads and signs “Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs.”

Next week: When asked where she gets her long red hair, Pamela Wright always answers, “My mother.” It’s only a little white lie. After all, it is her mother who dyes it for her every six to eight weeks.

Jan. 1, 1979

Goals:

1. To lose 10 pounds by June and keep it off.

2. To exercise regularly in the morning and run two miles a week.

3. To get back on a regimen of 10 pages a day.

4. To try and query one mag a month.

5. To get an agent.

6. To sell two scripts to somebody.

7. To finish a draft of the novel.

8. To complete five short stories.

9. To complete 20 new poems.

10. To quit my job.

11. To revise “Cat’s Song.”

12. To go to L.A. on business.

13. To pay all consumer bills.

14. To have my own accounts.

15. To go to New York on business.

16. To have my own place by June.

17. TO BE VERY BOLD.

Jan. 4, 1979

(Husband) Michael (Lomax) is being sworn in as a member of the Fulton County Commission.

The room is very crowded. People spilling into the hallway outside and the police officer stops me and then realizes I am a commissioner’s wife and lets me pass. They seat me up front in a row with a big “Reserved” sign hanging from it. I am the youngest person in the row by about 30 years and the only black person. He is now a real elected official and I’m sitting here with (daughter) Deignan on my lap to watch him get sworn in. It feels like a movie. I don’t want to be here. I am nervous. Feel ill at ease. Tense. Michael looks tense, too. Isn’t this his arena? Shouldn’t it be more fun? Before the swearing in there is a prayer saying, “Thank God for these men and their wives and families who help them. A good wife makes it all so much easier.” What is a good wife?

Jan. 5, 1979

Went to see "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf" last night and it was just wonderful. It was amazing. It was all true. It was so good. It was just so good to hear it and see it and talk about it and just know that it is OK. I felt so close to all the black women up there. I felt so close to all the things they said. One talked about having an abortion and it made me cry. "This hurts me," she said. "This hurts me." And I just cried right there at the Alliance
Theatre. In the bathroom afterward, one white woman said to another: "I didn't really get offended, but I just got bored."

Sweet Jesus! Bored? They were bored with one-and-a-half hours of my life! (Expletive) ’em! (Playwright) Ntozake Shange might not ever do another thing, but this thing she wrote is just incredible. Go, girl! I want her to be rich and famous because she deserves it!

June 1, 1979

We got our first threatening call last night. 1:10 a.m. Michael got the phone and the man said, “If you run for mayor, you’re dead.” That was it. We lay there for about two hours after that and just thought our thoughts about it. It scared me. I thought about the Kennedys. I thought about guns. Thought about people hurting him and hurting Deig and me. Having to live with him hurt or gone. It was awful. Thought about changing the phone number, but the cops say keep the number so the crazos can call you and then they can trace the call.

It scares me. It scares me a lot. I feel like something is sitting on my chest. I am tense and scared and don’t know what to think about all this stuff. “If you run for mayor you’re dead.” Daddy (civil rights activist Albert Cleage) used to get those calls. He would tell us not to answer the phone. Maynard used to get them. And now Michael. I keep thinking about nothing like that ever happening to political folks in Atlanta and why would he be the first one somebody hurts? And then I just get scared again. Nobody to talk to about it either. “If you run for mayor, you’re dead.” For what? For (expletive) what? Jesus!

July 11, 1979

My mother has cancer. I read poetry last night at Georgia State. After the reading, Michael came back to get me and told me that Ernie called to say the tests came back and she has cancer. She has to go into the hospital on the 25th and the operation is on the 26th. I called and talked to Kris, who was a basket case. Me, too. I started crying and we couldn’t really talk too well, but then I took a Valium and drank some rum and called Ma. We just talked for an hour. About the movies. About Skylab (space station). About (Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio) Somoza. Just talking. Just talking fast and stumbling all over each other and talking/talking/talking.

I told Michael in Martinique that sometimes it doesn’t matter if you’re telling the same stories over and over. Most people don’t have many to tell. Talking is just a way of having pleasant social intercourse with people and of establishing contact; and concern; and love. And so we talked. And she said, “No, don’t come now. I am supposed to rest and get myself together.” And I said, “Are you sure?” And she said, “Yes, don’t come now.” But I am going after she has the operation.

I hope it hasn’t spread. I hope they catch it. I hope she is OK. I am so scared, but I haven’t even cried. I love my mother. I don’t know how to feel all this without just letting myself fly apart and I can’t do that. She may be OK. She is not dying. They don’t know if she is dying. We are all dying. We are all dying. She has been spotting since December, but wouldn’t go to the doctor. Too scared. Scared to know, so she just told herself it was from shoveling snow. Strained herself. Things like that. Eight months of things like that. She has carried on this fantasy for eight months. There must be some relief to having it out; having it said; knowing. Fear, but at last things are happening. Appointments are made. Doctors scheduled.

After I talk to Ma, David calls to say, “You got the job. You are working on ‘Bustin’ Loose.’ Richard Pryor, Cecily Tyson, Oz Scott will be directing. You’ll be on location in Spokane and you will make $600 a week.” I tell him about my mother and he says, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

True confession: I feel guilty because I think immediately of transferring all this into writing. I think that is an attempt to get some control where there is no control.

July 24, 1979

“I am getting ready to go to the West Coast to make a movie,” I say to my mother. “I don’t want to fly, but I can handle it. If I don’t fly, I will get a bus or rent a car or something! Richard Pryor is in it.” I know she likes Richard Pryor; feels protective of him because she thinks he sees the truth so clearly it will surely kill him. “Be sure you get enough rest,” my mother says. “And don’t forget to eat your vegetables.”

I feel like everything I am writing is (expletive). I feel like pretending to be a writer is a good way to get to do what I want, which is not to work too hard and make a lot of money. I don’t wanna write novels. Too hard. I can’t think of why anybody should read the drivel I’m writing. I can’t think of why or who or how. I can’t string it all together. I might just do little sections and then let them get together the best way they can. Can’t I do the connecting tissue later?

Then I read Gayl Jones’s “Corregidora, “and I say, “Damn, Pearl, that is her first novel.” It is real. It is black. It is so good. And I think my writing is so glib; so slick. I am depressed. How can I get to Detroit to see my mother? I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna drive. I don’t wanna do any of it, but I will. I have to.

Jan. 24, 1980

Another plane. Another departure. More rewrites are pointless. The movie is terrible. It cannot be saved. Not by the director. Not by the producers. Not by the mad genius of Richard Pryor. This movie is (expletive).

I realized this morning that I am making my living writing.

Jan. 25, 1980

Re-entry blues. Dexter Gordon is on the radio playing a song called “I’m a Fool To Want You.” I don’t want to campaign. I don’t want to hear about the campaign. I don’t want to talk about the campaign. I’m so tired of politics.

Q: Why am I so blue?

A: Because I’m not writing anything of my own.

Feb. 4, 1980

I know we are not going to make it. I think he knows it, too.

I don’t want to feel crazy and unhappy.

I want to be writing.

I want to be myself and be clearheaded and strong and beautiful.

I want to make myself as perfect as I can be.

I want to make myself as wondrous as I can be.

I want to be free.

Feb. 7, 1980

Michael is in a runoff for City Council president. He got 27 percent of the vote. Marvin Arrington got 35 percent. The runoff is going to be hard, but win or lose, I think the poor showing was a moment that changed him. A trial by fire. In public. Bare feet on hot coals.

I leave for L.A. late tonight. I’m exhausted. Have been up with the campaign for days. I want the runoff to be over so we’ll know what is what and who is who. Whew ...

Feb. 14, 1980

Back from L.A. and already feeling guilty. Can’t do enough. Ever. Michael wants me at the campaign. Deignan wants me at her school. I feel torn. Like I’m deserting my husband and not being much of a mother either. I have to get organized!

Feb. 18, 1980

Election Day tomorrow. I am dreading the outcome. Should I stay or go?

Feb. 19, 1980

3:45 p.m., Campaign HQ

I feel like a bitch because I am hating being here at the HQ so much. I am hating listening to Michael calling people and saying who he is and asking the folks if they voted and if they “took care of me.” He says: “Thank you now,” at the end of every conversation and his voice is thick with determined cheeriness. I feel like a bitch because this morning when he came out of the voting booth with a barely awake Deignan in his arms, he brushed the curtain away and said to her, “Smile, baby.” And he said it to her on the way into the place, too. “Smile, baby. They are going to take our picture.” And she shook her head “no.” I feel like a bitch because I know I haven’t done enough for his campaign. Flying back and forth to try and fix a movie that can’t be fixed. Now here I sit writing a draft of a concession speech, “just in case.”

I am so down. “What did I do to be so black and blue?”

Feb. 22, 1980

I am here in my studio, trying to work. Michael is at home recovering from the loss of the election. He is depressed, but I think he is mostly just glad it’s all over. I am, too. We had a great conversation yesterday about everything. In the midst of, in spite of, everything, we know each other. We love each other. We have survived the election. What comes next is hard to say.

March 17, 1980

Got a great letter from Daddy today. Came special delivery to Forrest Avenue to my studio address. He sent the money I had asked to borrow and said don’t bother to pay it back. He said: “I’d probably just buy bubble gum with it anyway.” Then he said perhaps I didn’t need the stability of any kind of romantic relationship as most people did. “You may not,” he said. “I didn’t. I recall a great sense of relief when I realized it. Perhaps you’re like me.”

I wanted to say: “Of course I’m like you. I’m gonna start preaching as soon as I finish making movies and write the great American novel.”

I love and miss him!

March 29, 1980

I have moved out of the house. There is too much going on to write it all down. I’m staying at Janie’s for a week until my apartment is ready, but it was getting too weird for us to be still living together; counting off the days. It was time to go. It is scary to be on my own, but it was time. I can figure it all out. I WILL figure it all out.

March 30, 1980

How do you feel?

I feel tense. I feel scared. I feel weary. I feel exhilarated. I feel disbelieving. I feel depressed. I feel anxious. I feel strained. I feel like I am holding in a huge fit of tears and sobs and racking noises and trembling. I don’t know if I can absorb it all. I feel pushed and pulled. I feel cruel and selfish and willful and wild. I feel deceitful. I feel alone. I feel abandoned. I feel foolish. I feel like I can’t trust anybody. I feel like someone is after me. I feel like I am still not good enough. I feel like I am still not determined enough. I feel like the issues are too complex and the time is moving too fast. I feel like I am nobody’s mother or wife or daughter or child. I feel like I don’t really like anybody and people who like me don’t know me because I’m always lying or withholding or editing.

I am so scared.

April 5, 1980

Things are still crazy, but at least I’m not crying all the time and over-explaining everything to anybody who cares to listen. Here’s the rub: I thought I would be free immediately, but I’m still entangled, submerged, trapped, sad. I would like to have my own life back! How can I get it?

Take it, fool! Just take it!

April 8, 1980

Fulton Superior Court

Final Judgment and Decree

Under consideration of this case upon evidence submitted as provided by law, it is the judgment of the court that a total divorce be granted, that is to say a divorce a vincula matrimonii, between the two parties to the above stated case upon legal principles.

April 9, 1980

Michelle calls from Indiana to say hello and inquire as to my mental health. We laugh and screech at each other about how sane we are. Then she says she read the poems I sent and she had one question for me: “Do you have a lover?” I said yes and she screamed. “Well,” she said, once we stopped laughing, “I guess if I had gotten divorced in the ’80s, I’d have a lover, too.”

April 14, 1980

My last night at Janie’s. My last night of transitional womanhood. I am moving to my own place at Peachtree North tomorrow. I feel so good about it! Packing up the last of my stuff from the house was hard. Michael and I have been through so much together. When I was leaving, I drove to the end of the driveway, stopped, backed up, kissed him one more time and told him I loved him. Said good-bye.

April 18, 1980

25,000 feet above the earth, Delta Flight 856

On my way to Kansas City. Alone and OK! Had a great talk with Kay when she came over to take me to the airport. I told her I felt like she was the only sane person I know. That is: She is the only person who thinks reality is what I think reality is.

Talking to the men who say they love me makes me feel fragile and feeble minded! Like I don’t know what I’m doing unless they tell me, but that isn’t true!

Kay says my lover feels powerless because now I am freer than he is. Because now I don’t have to be the one who gets up to go home, he does! This is too complicated. I promise to write more tonight.

Aug. 5, 1980

I had another Richard Pryor dream last night. I was in a car in a parking lot, underground like in “All the President’s Men,” and he was there. And I saw him and leaned way out of the car to wave and he waved and I cupped my hands and called out “I love you!” And he cupped his hands and called out “I love you, too!” and I tried to get back to where he was to say something else, but couldn’t get to him. And I kept hollering things and he kept hollering things, but we couldn’t get the car and him and me together.

Sept. 24, 1980

This is what I wanna know: How do you get the people you love and the people who love you to leave you alone long enough to write a book?

Oct. 9, 1980

Last night, 11:30 p.m. I am curled up on the couch, reading about ol’ Richard Pryor again and feeling protective and depressed and afraid for him. Knowing what he means about having no self-image. About feeling like he was a piece of (expletive), and knowing he can’t get out of the mess he’s in with the people he’s got around him. Stuff about being taken advantage of by people who are supposed to be handling his affairs. He asserts his new-found self by buying a $200,000 Rolls Royce. But back to the story at hand. The phone rings. I pick it up and it’s Coretta King! She wants me to work with her on a slide show. She’s been looking for me, she says. She wants me to come see her at the King Center. Amazing. I have just finished reading the “Daddy King” bio, which was so good, and now she calls me, out of the blue. Only in Atlanta. My first job when I got here was working for her so we’ve come full circle. “Can you do it?” she said. Of course, I told her, I would be honored.

Oct. 10, 1980

I just finished reading the morning paper and this is what I read:

Another child’s body found in Atlanta; still no suspect in custody.

Someone in Buffalo, N.Y., killed four black men last month by shooting them in the head with a .22. This month, two black cab drivers have had their hearts cut out by someone.

Fans rioted at a rock concert by Black Sabbath because the band left the stage after a bottle hit the bass player.

“Dressed to Kill” is showing for one buck at the Garden Hills Cinema.

It depresses me.

It scares me.

It makes me feel bad about people.

It makes me feel scared for Deignan.

It makes me want to have the people I love around me all the time.

It makes me want the (expletive) president to go on TV and confess that things are (expletive) up and help us get out of it.

It makes me wish somebody was in charge.

Where are the adults?

Nov. 26, 1980

I feel terrible. My stomach is one big cramp. My worries about taxes and financial matters are escalating. I feel abandoned after realizing that neither of my lovers is available to me, even in a crisis, because they are married. I don’t know what to say about that. I like living the way I’m living, but when I get sick or my funding gets shaky, I feel alone; vulnerable; desperate; frightened; isolated.

Dec. 31, 1980

New Year’s Eve

Didn’t think I’d make it, but here I is, black-eyed peas and collard greens cooking on the stove. Feel good/look good and John and Yoko on the stereo singing “Give Peace a Chance” on that lil’ 45 record that Michael bought for me at the Yale Co-op that summer of 1969 just before we moved to Atlanta. My, my, my ... the end of the first year of the next decade. Ronnie Reagan on the front of Time magazine looking, as Phil Garner said, “Like an old boy, no good attached.” And John dead in front of the Dakota and, oh, lord, am I ready for 1981?

What it mean?

What it look like?

It mean everything/and nuthin’.

It look like diamonds.

Good-bye, John, take care of yourself.

Good-bye, Henry.

Good-bye, Jean-Paul.

Blessings on Yoko and Simone.

Blessings on Bob Marley and wishes that he will make it over.

And peace.

And peace.

And peace.

Excerpted from “Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons & Love Affairs” by Pearl Cleage. Published by arrangement with AtriaBooks, a Division of Simon & Schuster Inc. Copyright ©2014 by Pearl Cleage

HOW WE GOT THE STORY
Pearl Cleage is an award-winning playwright whose "Flyin' West" was the most produced new play in the country in 1994.  She is also a best-selling author whose first novel, "What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day," was an Oprah Book Club pick and spent nine weeks on The New York Times bestseller list.  Her new memoir, "Things I Should Have Told My Daughter: Lies, Lessons and Love Affairs," is crafted from journal entries that offer a revealing look at the events that transpired in her life during the '70s and '80s. Set in an era when women were chafing against traditional gender roles, it tells the story of a woman beginning to assert her independence and establish a career. But ultimately it is a universal story, which still resonates today, about the challenges and rewards of following the path of one's choosing.

Suzanne Van Atten
Personal Journeys Editor
personaljourneys@ajc.com