Notes from a Black Woman's Diary Read online

  July 11

  From my 5:30 A.M. vantage point I have watched the day come alive. Watched the river go from a cloudy mist to a soft, bright sunny fogginess. Listened to some mournful, repetitive bird humming a sad refrain and the boat bells hitting the wind. And now my room is full of sunlight and it is 7:30 and I am alive.

  When I look back over those days I see how centered I was in the present, connecting myself to the life in hand. Even now it is a period that makes me nostalgic. All those periods in my life when I have been very alone—waiting for a child, in the midst of a play or a film script or a story—those are the periods when growth seems to come in bursts. I am still. I listen. I learn. I’m not very concerned about tomorrow.

  But at other times, life takes over and the diary recedes. Then I feel in me a kind of determination to soak up life. Then I run away from these notes and make only cursory remarks.

  September 21

  I would like to catch up on some days left discarded . . .

  September 24

  I seem to avoid these notes like the plague. As if I don’t dare take off, don’t dare say anything, so tentative is everything.

  September 27

  I really cannot write much these days. What is clear to me I am unwilling to pin down too quickly. I want it loose, like I feel it.

  September 28

  I don’t write often these days—not here, not in these pages. I am abstracted, in limbo, hanging on by threads. But it is difficult to speak about this limbo, to describe it. The journey is too personal to write about . . .

  The most that can be said is that I trust these shallow periods, when I have left the solid ground of the present. When I leave that ground, it is because I am healed and the danger is past and a more risky life is manageable. One day toward the end of one of those times I wrote these notes . . .

  Sunday, August 24

  Rain. Alone in the house. I’ve just finished a book about the psychic experiences of a woman named Jan Bartell. While I have never known any paranormal events, I know I lead my life psychically, not only the larger moments of it, but the very smallest. I am always listening, knowing that if I listen I will be guided correctly, even if it means pain or discomfort. I cannot ever recall being without this “listening.” It is almost a feeling of being watched over and protected. I remember at a very difficult time last spring my car kept breaking down and draining away the little bit of money I was budgeting so carefully. I was standing in the kitchen thinking, This is just one thing too many, I can’t cope with these car problems . . . when the phone rang and the bank had cleared my very shaky credit for a new car. When I hung up, I found myself saying thank you to the space around me . . . thank you . . . you knew that was too much for me, didn’t you, that I’m just hanging on by so little . . . I don’t know who I am talking to at times like that, but the “listening” dictates everything I do—when I go shopping, when I stay home, when I put myself to making money, when I decide to live broke and write, when I have children . . . always I am listening for the right moment, always I am trying to make a complete circle and come back where I belong. I don’t know why this is so, why I try to stay in touch with what can take me further, make me stronger, give me greater self-containment . . . I don’t know why this is so. But I know it is at the source, that all my electricity, all my running power, comes from this field around me with which I must remain in tune. And when I come to a dead end, when things get muddy and my mind races overboard into a fog, I have to go somewhere and sit. Then help will come, a direction will be made clear.

  IV

  Letters

  Note: My mother left hundreds of letters, and I’ve included here just a small sampling and offered a bit of context preceding each one.

  —Nina Lorez Collins

  Written at age nineteen to her conservative parents, who are not happy about her activism at Skidmore College.

  January 5, 1962

  Hello My Daddy and My Mommy,

  I have first re-read your letter of late November—I send it back to you for re-reading—for there I feel we reached such a good, good peace together. And there we felt—each other—and the understanding was implicit—perhaps never to be explicit.

  I have felt good in the last few days—quietly preparing for my exams, reading and thinking—desperately trying to ask the right questions and find the right answers. It has been good and peaceful to be here for the first time in so very long—I should finish. I know that now, because I want to, first of all for myself—and I am glad about that. I should work, study hard to pass the biology, but if not I shall take it next semester and pass it then. But I shall finish, and I shall finish in June—and this itself gives me a sense of contentment.

  It has been a quiet weekend, but I have enjoyed the rest and the sleep. I have spent most of it in my room, reading and writing—taking naps when I felt tired—and generally putting myself in good physical shape for exams. Hank called Saturday night and in his gentle, strong way made things even nicer and that made me very happy.

  The turmoil and discovery of Christmas are past and perhaps, too, the brutality of a rebellious daughter—who cannot apologize for rebelling—but who wishes she had had the wisdom to do it with less pain. Your letter sees this all; this is why I send it back.

  I shall stay away for a while, methinks, no, not because I feel I must—but because my coming would not be peaceful for you at this stage. And when next I come, that is how I want it to be—peaceful and right—my respecting the way life makes you happy rather than demanding that you follow my path. But through all of this perhaps I am learning some good things about what love really means. And I know that I love you both very much—and I know that I write now because I love you, not because I feel responsible or feel you need me—for you don’t and I know this—not in the sense that I have felt.

  Nor do I feel deserted—for it is the strength and understanding you have given me that gives me the faith to know that I can find a healthy and full life.

  Yes, Daddy—you are right. You have a daughter who is perhaps in some ways still a child—but you have wisely rejected the child and in your own way demanded the daughter. And this is so much helping me to grow.

  Thank you, Mommy. Thank you, Daddy. Please let me hear from you.

  Much love,

  Kathleen

  Written at age twenty in Albany, Georgia (where she worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]), to her only sister, Francine, the inspiration for the character Josephine in the story “Scapegoat Child.”

  August 3, 1962

  Dear Frannie,

  It was awfully good to talk with all of you last night, especially Daddy, as I had felt great apprehension during those days in jail after your letter was received.

  Sometimes I felt you were cynical toward me, feeling I was being unfair to Daddy, but I feel that this was your natural concern in what I’m sure was a very tense situation. I knew when I decided to come south that it meant distress to Mother and Daddy, and though I was sorry I had to and have to worry them, this could not be the determining factor. For one must move upon the things that one is committed to.

  There’s a biblical quote that goes: “He to whom much is given, much is asked in return.” The suffering and pain I have witnessed reinforce the truth of this statement. I ask over and over again: Why—why was I so blessed? There must be a reason—and that is to give to others. Otherwise life is a total absurdity of injustice.

  But I do not feel I am the sacrificial lamb—because I do not believe there is such a thing as sacrifice. Nor do I feel I should be held in admiration or pride. For truly I believe we all do the things we want to do. And I wanted with all my soul to go south and I wanted to go to jail—because I wanted to pray that right would triumph. I wanted to pray on the steps of city hall in Albany. To confront all of those policemen and city officials with the moral issue—the fact that they have made us dogs—but I wanted to force them to see me and others as human beings who feel pain and frustration, who, too, can cry and be hurt.

  And if I could not pray, then I wanted to go to jail for what I believed. But do not feel proud of me, Frannie. I don’t deserve it.

  All I want is to live my life as honestly as possible, giving what I can to other human beings—all kinds, black, white, or yellow—because this is the way I want to live—never selling other people cheap—because we are all in this crazy game, or play, called life together. And I want always to live simply—perhaps wandering for many years—finding my joy and peace in a sunrise, in a rainstorm—finding my happiness in seeing another smile.

  Perhaps I make no sense; maybe I’m some kind of nut. But I have to respond to these things inside me—perhaps most of all because I must always try and be true to Kathleen.

  Forgive my rambling, Frannie—these weeks here have been so full of the brutal, the painful, and the beautiful that sometimes I feel suffocated. But I guess I am rambling most of all because I am begging to be understood by you. Because I want to be able to cry on your shoulder maybe, sometimes when the road is rough. But more than this because I want you to cry on my shoulder, maybe, when things don’t look too rosy.

  And maybe I’m rambling on because I want to tear down forever those unconscious and sometimes conscious walls of hostility that have kept us from a truly deep and genuine relationship.

  And maybe I’m rambling because I want to release all the guilt I have inside me because I’ve been a lousy, cold, selfish sister so much of the time.

  But mostly I’m rambling because I have you. And I think finally we are really becoming sisters. And this fills me with such happiness that the tears are beginning.

  Love,

  Kathleen

  Written at age thirty to her m
other, now a widow. My mother was married at this time to my father, but the union was rocky and full of separations.

  Dec. 30th 1972

  Dear Momma,

  Happy New Year. Though I do not imagine having to face another year without Daddy can ever be too happy a time. I can only think of what I would feel without Douglas. That is the curse as well as the joy of really loving someone: you know in the end you must suffer more for it.

  Also, as I said on the phone, I may be a little farther away than before and have one more child to travel with, but I am still mobile and strong and being with you at any crisis point would and is just a fact of my life.

  Nina had a nice, though quiet Christmas. Emilio is doing fine. They’re both well over the flu, having not been outside at all since we came back from your house. But this morning Douglas took Nina out for the first time. He came up last night and this morning took her into town with him. She was delighted.

  Here is a check. I’m sorry I had to call upon you again. I hope ’73 puts us on some more solid foundation. I have a feeling it will. There are good signs that Douglas’s business is going to make it.

  Love,

  Kathleen

  Written to Bluette, one of her closest girlfriends and the inspiration for the character Liliane in A Summer Diary.

  September 14, 1973

  Dear Bluette,

  My man has finally understood what it means to harm someone else. We had a scene, which will leave a very long-lasting impression: I was hysterical, like an animal, frustrated because he didn’t seem to understand what was going on with me. Suddenly, an innocent remark of his plunged me into a fit of rage. I think I must have blacked out for a moment, because I rushed toward the open window and climbed onto the ledge with a speed that was almost superhuman. Douglas tore me away from there. I was one second away from hurling myself out the window. There, in his arms, I envisioned myself already dead, on the ground, because during those few seconds I had been overcome by something, I no longer knew the person that was acting that way. All that I knew with absolute clarity was that at that very moment I had been capable of killing myself. Afterward I shook for several hours; I was completely out of it . . . I imagined Nina’s terrible suffering, Emilio’s instinctive loss (they were not there when it happened). Douglas was next to me, crying like a baby. The most rational of everyone: he led me to understand how my moving to Woodstock had left him feeling abandoned . . . There was nothing but a little boy talking . . . He told me about that terrible night not long after our move when he had felt this abandonment . . . All the contradictions. Rationally he understood . . . he saw me as being capable of total acceptance . . . and the shattering of this image with such violence. I can’t find the words for it.

  It’s an experience, which will fill us up for a lifetime.

  Oh, Bluette, suddenly, in a second, I would have transformed the lives of several people, by an act . . . but you know in the depths of your being what I am talking about. But what I’m trying to touch is the inner violence, as if the soul has limits, which the heart knows nothing about. As if it were my soul that were controlling me, which could no longer tolerate the injustice of existence . . . that perhaps a suicide is not necessarily selfish but rather required by the force of the soul . . . When I try and capture these few seconds, all that I can grasp is a force which suddenly came to life in me and which dominated everything.

  That’s the story. This morning is thick with fog.

  Kathy

  Written to Peggy, another dear friend (and the inspiration for the girlfriend character in the story “The Happy Family” from Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?), whom she met when they were both teenagers working for SNCC.

  1974, a Sunday morning

  Dear Peggy,

  Your call was long awaited, with patience, like a place remaining open that only you could reach. Now it is quiet. God! The revolutions we live! And yet every day unfolds with all the safety of habit and repetition, the outer shell goes on about its tasks and the world, for the most part, is none the wiser. Yet inside! Inside! What revolutions are possible! So many people are born inside us while others are sent away, often to their death . . . where is the Kathy of 18 and Peggy of 18 whose lives first touched . . . where have they gone? Do we hold, even, still, a passing acquaintance with them? I wonder . . . Stayed awake much of last night in the aftermath of your call, the clean places I can finally see I am reaching, the hands-off places that will not allow sneaky compromises.

  Much love,

  Kathy

  Another to Peggy. My mother, now thirty-eight, is long divorced and living and raising us in Rockland County. I am eleven, my brother, Emilio, eight. She has a married lover named Henry Roth and is deep in the throes of her writing career.

  February 16, 1980

  Dear Peggy,

  A winter entirely without snow until this morning—only to awaken to a nice sleek coating. The river whitish gray in the distance. I come downstairs. Throw a few more logs on my brand-new woodstove that sits in the living room fireplace now and heats the entire house! (Have not burned a drop of oil all winter!) Now I have the full pleasure of my living room in the mornings—it used to be the “cold” room, the “avoided” room somehow throwing the gravity of the house off-balance. Now we use it constantly. For the past several months I have been reading intensely, volumes of classic novels: all of Henry James, all of Ford Madox Ford, all of Thomas Mann, all of Anthony Powell, and some odd writers Henry discovers for me. It has been a long period of wonderful withdrawal. The kids came home day after day to find me curled up in the living room by the stove reading to my soul’s content. It has been the fullest, the most pleasing of times. Have not written a word in months. Henry and I went for weeks barely seeing each other—he in a kind of terrible sadness, yet there, with me, bringing me books—me in a kind of incredible lassitude, empty and quiet, wanting only more and more and more quiet. Long phone calls with each other. Quiet lunches. Held intact. Never a question of not being held intact. Then, a new phase . . . I can feel it starting. Just this week we got our first perfectly color-corrected print of the movie. Already it has been snatched up by one important film festival! Screenings now begin—promotion, lectures—the New York State Council on the Arts just awarded us a Post-Production Grant! I can feel it starting . . . a busy time. And I am ready for it. Fully rested, content within myself again. Have been buying myself pretty clothes—a pleasure I have not indulged in over three years. Have a yearning for silk blouses, loose-fitting slacks, “my lingerie dresses,” as Henry calls them. The center of my life is very involved in Henry, Nina, and Emilio these days. Nina and I have come through grandly, “in the grand manner,” as she laughingly describes it. Faced each other with such honesty from which neither of us flinched. She saw clear through to my impossibly troubled childhood, I to my terrific fright at her growing up. Layers upon layers fell away and the most uplifting kind of pleasure returned, her face and body in the last few months have become again so loose and lovely, so happy with herself and her home. I cannot tell you how light the air is, simple, direct, without games or subterfuge. Emilio is still fine and easy, direct, macho in the most absurdly funny ways . . . to Henry I am attached these days as if suddenly I took on some new tone. It is hard to describe: like breathing for two, sensing whatever is going on with him immediately, sometimes it is uncanny. The other day, around dinnertime, I was suddenly in a terrible state, nervous, anxious . . . when he called, about an hour later, I blurted out, “For the last hour you have been in the most intense pain, suddenly discouraged beyond belief, the hurt has been awful . . .” There was only silence. It is like the texture of my skin has changed, become porous to everything connected to him, open, breathing in some new way. This is the time in my life when loving a man has caught up with me.