Pressure Makes Diamonds - Valerie Graves

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been stuck with the silliest goody-two-shoes sister in the projects. My stepbrother, a poor student, had already developed some bad habits like shoplifting, though the adults didn’t know it. I, while happy to have a daddy figure, had a bad reaction to my mother’s sudden deference to her husband. Every time I heard, “What do you think, Al?” my thirteen-year-old mind interpreted this as a stunning loss of self-confidence. It was a phrase she uttered far too often for my liking. I also thought my stepsister Sharon, with her tough friends, cigarettes, and grown-man suitors, was fast and embarrassing.

      For a short time, we all lived in the two-bedroom apartment I grew up in. To my mind, the roll-away bed in the downstairs hall was a booger on our cute, modern living room—by then updated with a sectional sofa and blond corner table—and offended my upwardly mobile sensibilities. Shortly after Mama’s wedding, I awoke after sharing that roll-away bed with Mama Allie to the sound of the television, and was greeted by the sight of tens of thousands of marchers in the streets of Washington. The night before, having heard of the intended demonstration, I had said a silent prayer that at least a few hundred people would show up. I did not leave the TV for the duration of the day’s activities. I was buoyed by the spectacle of so many of my brethren gathered together to demand participation in a world that was as omnipresent as the propagandizing television screen, and as unattainable as a two-week all-expenses-paid trip to Disneyland. The multitude marched for jobs and equality. I was too young to work, but my snotty idea of economic justice had a lot to do with a single-family home with three bedrooms and a new living room suite, in a neighborhood where the furniture would not be called a living room “suit.”

      For Mama and Mr. Munson, hereafter known as “Daddy,” things were already getting better. Two incomes and one rent afforded them a bit of economic relief, both were taking steps toward better jobs with the federal government, and they were in love. Even for me, those days were not all bad. One bright, indelible spot is the night I persuaded my brother Gary to use his new driver’s license to chauffeur Spurgeon, our cousin Dorethia, and me to Berry Gordy’s Motown Revue at the Fox Theatre in Detroit. For about three dollars, we saw thrilling live performances by the Supremes, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, the Temptations, the Marvelettes, Marvin Gaye, and other acts from this celebrated label where I would one day work. Our senses were nearly overwhelmed by the lights and the tuxedo-clad Earl Van Dyke Orchestra, the glamour of silk suits, mirror-shined shoes, sequined dresses, deftly coiffed wigs, and sophisticated choreography. All the way home, we relived our favorite parts of the show, singing snatches of songs, talking over each other, so excited we hardly noticed that the heat in my mother’s old Buick had stopped working. When we got home, our delight was so apparent that even Mama and Daddy were happy we had gone. For at least that night, we were a happy family.

      Our move to a larger project apartment eliminated some of my superficial concerns, but I was still dismayed by the changes in my mother’s behavior. My stepsister, though never verbally disrespectful to Mama and Daddy, became ever more incorrigible outside the house. Despite my mother’s kindness, Sharon wanted an adult life more than she wanted a mother, and was soon placed in a residential facility because of school truancy. My stepbrother remained aimless. My brother Spurgeon was smoldering with resentment, and Daddy’s attitude—“This is my house; whatever I say goes”—was a perfect accelerant. It wasn’t long before spontaneous combustion between the two of them became a feature of our lives. Once, despite the truth of what Spurgeon was saying, I thought a lightning bolt would strike him when he said to Daddy, “You know, you just keep repeating the same thing over and over. I wish you would just shut up.” By today’s standards it seems almost innocuous, but in the 1960s, a black child who spoke to a parent like that was likely to be physically assaulted. I wondered why Mama and Daddy couldn’t have been content to just be boyfriend and girlfriend living next door to each other.

      I should have been careful what I wished for. In a little less than two years, fearful that his conflict with my increasingly insubordinate brother would lead him to commit violence—something that never happened—Daddy moved to a small apartment on the South Side. My mother was welcome to visit him. Between work, night school classes, a twenty-five-mile commute, and her efforts to save her young marriage, my mother, the most reliable person in my life, had less and less time to spend with me. I developed a rough, persistent facial rash that threatened to make me miss our class trip to Washington, DC; otherwise, there were few outward signs that I was losing my way. A dermatologist declared me not to be contagious, my skin cleared up, and I enjoyed a wonderful class trip, prom, and graduation. My grades had faltered slightly, but I managed to get through ninth grade without anyone realizing that I might need help. Coincidentally, I was making new friends, and like most teenagers, I had no idea how much I needed my mother’s guidance.

      My new friends were already in their first year of high school. Because I had skipped a grade, I was hanging out with girls who were two years older, a big gap when the ages are fourteen and sixteen. My friends were nice girls like Ruth Ann, from good Pontiac families, so my mother didn’t seem to worry that I spent so much time with them. Her mind was on bigger and more obvious problems. Marriage, which was supposed to bring our family together, seemed to be pulling it apart.

      Chapter 3

      High School, Low Point

      The summer before high school, my desire to learn shifted from school to all things social. My best friend Ruth Ann, almost two years older, had whetted my desire for high school life while I was still at Jefferson. During our frequent sleepovers, she shared everything about how to be part of the “in” crowd and their activities. I even participated where I could.

      The year I was in ninth grade, my cousin Melvin DeWalt was the star of the Pontiac Central basketball team. I basked in the status of being related to Melvin and his predecessor, my uncle Willie DeWalt, who in the late fifties had been the Michael Jordan of the squad. With my friends, I went to every game.

      Summer gave me an opportunity to get the jump on being asked to join Les Jeunes Filles, an invitation-only club. Les Jeunes Filles was one of two girls groups that guaranteed a certain level of acceptance. The most popular girls were members or alumni of one club or the other. The differences between the clubs were fuzzy. Devonaires, the other group, may have been a bit prettier and more circumspect, Les Jeunes Filles a little spunkier and more irreverent, but all were cute, smart girls, and belonging to one of the clubs was what mattered. I tagged along with Ruth Ann doing grunt work for LJF summer parties: carrying and cleaning folding chairs, setting up tables and spreading paper table cloths, doing whatever I was asked in hopes of becoming a member in the fall.

      During summer, the fun moved to the Hayes Jones Community Center—named after a hometown Olympic gold medalist—where the crop of males was not limited to junior high boys. The parking lot was crammed with twenty-something guys in fresh-off-the-line cars. Chuck’s fire-engine-red Catalina convertible, James’s black Mustang, Clifford’s midnight-blue Grand Prix, Bobby G’s yellow Chevy Impala: all gleaming with the promise of plentiful joyrides and fodder for fantasies. My friends and I would pile into these chick magnets for raucous trips to the local McDonald’s, Motown music blasting. Our newly found sex appeal radiated from us like Martha & the Vandellas’s “Heat Wave.” Finding safety in numbers, we flirted with these older guys like crazy. For that summer, we girls were young and invincible and life was a feast on shiny chrome wheels.

      Academic life in the new school year just wasn’t the same without homeroom 202. Even though all of us had selected a college prep curriculum, we might have only one or two previous classmates in any given class. At Pontiac Central High, we college-bound black kids were once again isolated, standing out first because of our skin color, then because of our unexpected intelligence. In advanced biology, I sat next to the sons and daughters of doctors. In civics classes, I defended the “equality now” stance of the civil rights movement against the “steady progress” arguments of the children of attorneys. My years at Jefferson and in homeroom 202 had imbued me with the belief that I could compete with anyone academically, but they could not provide me with the experiences and intellectual arsenal that these kids took for granted. Family trips to Europe, summer camps focused around particular interests, the ability to have complex science questions answered at the dinner table—these were among the privileges

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