With two children to care for, Rufus and Odessa carried out their distinctive roles. She looked after the boys and the house while he went out to earn enough to keep everyone fed and clothed. I don’t know if my father ever thought about using his GI benefits to go to college or purchase a home. I can only imagine that my mother’s illness forced him to focus on what was immediately before him. With so many health crises and practical matters to attend to, there was no time for dreaming.

For a black man who did not mind hard labor, jobs were plentiful. Rufus had steady work at Wabash Railroad — a good job with good benefits. And he was skilled at fixing almost any engine around, especially after he had a drink or two in him.

For some strange reason, my father left Wabash to drive a truck for Gershon’s, a neighborhood grocery store. We never knew why he left a comfortable railroad job at that time. But Gershon’s was at least convenient, about two blocks from our house, close enough for Rufus to walk there.

I can only guess about my father’s motives, about how the delicate seams connecting our lives started to unravel. Gershon’s must have paid much less than the railroad job, and that must have put considerable strain on my father, who was trying to feed and clothe the four of us, and possibly on his marriage as well. Still, my parents endured.

Odessa Boyd

Photo courtesy of the family

Gerald Boyd, who believes that his mother had sickle cell anemia, wrote, "My mother was my secret weapon, this angel who watched over me and argued with the rest of the angels on my behalf."

Odessa was almost twenty-seven when she and Rufus had their third child, a girl who they named Ruth Etta. I was two when my sister was born, another mouth to feed.

Bringing Ruthie into the world further weakened my mother’s frail body. And so it was that, in 1953, when she conceived that fourth baby, Odessa tried again to beat the odds.After a bedridden pregnancy, Odessa began 1954 with yet another trip to the hospital. Relatives and friends rushed to give blood and hovered around the waiting room, praying that she would pull through.

She had always pulled through. But this time the transfusions were futile, and the doctors were unambiguous. Odessa was going to die.

Doctors suggested a Cesarean, at least giving the baby a chance at life. But Odessa’s father, Elige, argued that three children were enough to handle without a mother. My father complied.

Despite her weakened state, Odessa organized her affairs. She told her husband to do whatever he could to keep their children together.

She wanted them raised under the same roof. Her older sister, Laura, was bringing up four children clear across the country in Oakland, California, but said she would take Odessa’s children in. My father agreed to his wife’s deathbed wish.

Along with the doctors, whom the family blamed, Rufus was on the firing line for my mother’s going to an early grave. His drinking somehow must have worsened her condition, my mother’s kin whispered. He was not worthy of her anyway, they said. Rufus was an easy target, since he was taking to the bottle even more.

When Rufus did not have enough for the funeral that Odessa’s family wanted, they blamed his drinking for that, too. Elige helped foot the bill to bury his baby girl.

And the tension wedged itself between the Boyds and the Thomases, pushing our families apart.With my mother, the anchor, gone, our little family was cast adrift. My mother’s mother, Georgia, took in Ruthie while my father took Gary and me and moved in with his mother, Evie.

When Georgia went west to be near her daughter Laura, she took Ruthie with her. Despite my mother’s wishes, Odessa’s three children would never again live in the same house. Sometimes the longing for my sister, for having my family whole again, would bring me to tears.

I cannot imagine why Evie Boyd would want to take in two more children — especially two boys — at the age of fifty-seven. By then, she already had the children of her youngest daughter, Katie Mae — the same daughter who had brought her to St. Louis and who had died in 1944. Grandmother was convinced that her child had been poisoned, that someone slipped something in her drink while she was at a club.

the basics

 

'My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times’

 

By Gerald M. Boyd, Robin D. Stone (Afterword)

 

List price: $26.95

Publication date: Feb. 01

Publisher: Chicago Review Press

432 pages

Katie Mae left two boys, Ronald, thirteen months at the time, and Walter, three months. Seven years later, their father, a cab driver, was murdered in an apparent robbery. The crime was never solved.

While Evie took care of four grandsons, Rufus continued to punch the clock at Gershon’s. He piled the brown boxes of groceries high in the back of the big brown truck and made one stop after another on his delivery route. Some weekends, I would get the thrill of riding with him, watching as he maneuvered the stick shift to negotiate the busy St. Louis streets. I wanted to drive a stick just like him.

Our evenings were filled with anticipation of what goodies my father would bring home from Gershon’s. Day-old cakes and pies and damaged cans and other items supplemented the government cheese and powdered milk that my grandmother received each month as a part of the public assistance that, along with the domestic work, helped stretch her money. Gary and I would rush to greet my father as he walked in the door, where his mother and four boys awaited him. However disjointed, however ragtag, we were a family. Gary and I had someone we could call Daddy. To my cousins, he was Uncle Rufus.

As a young boy, I was keenly aware of that difference, that Gary and I were bound to my father with stronger ties. I felt special and wanted.

I thought my father was doing his best to take care of us boys. His gentle demeanor was no doubt mellowed by the constant flow of liquor.

By now, his drink of preference was white port wine, a bottle of which he always carried in a brown paper bag. Drinking must have eased his pain, at least temporarily, because the routine of raising the bottle to his lips clearly gave him comfort.

From “My Times In Black and White” by Gerald M. Boyd © 2010, to be published by Lawrence Hill Books on February 1^st, 2010.  Reprinted with permission of the author. All rights reserved.