Letter to My Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page A

innocent raisins, which made me violently sick for one month.

Porgy and Bess
    Porgy and Bess,
the George and Ira Gershwin opera, was still bringing audiences to their feet on its European tour. The colorful cast was still robust and welcoming to me but I was anxious to leave the tour and return to San Francisco, California.
    I was riddled with guilt because when I joined the cast I had left my eight-year-old son Guy with my mother and an aunt in San Francisco.
    The opera company offered me a sizeable increase in salary if I would send for him, but there were already two children traveling with their parents, who exhibited behavior that I did not want my son to see, nor imitate. I was principal dancer and sang the role “Ruby.” I received a decent salary, which I sent home, but my guilt assured me that my money was not sufficient, so I stayed in pensiones or youth hostels, or with families to save money. After the curtain came down in the theater, I doubled singing the blues in nightclubs and in the daytime I taught dance wherever I could find students and I also sent that money to my mother.
    Still, I began to lose my appetite and weight and interest in everything. I wanted to go home to my son. I was told that I was obliged to pay my replacement’s fare to Europe, and my own fare home. I met that new pressure by singing in two more nightclubs and teaching dance to professional dancers and to children barely able to walk.
    At last I had the money and at last I boarded a ship in Naples, Italy, for New York. I refused to fly because it occurred to me if the plane crashed, my son would only be able to lament, “My mother died when I was eight years old. She was an entertainer.” I had to get back to San Francisco and let him know that I was that and more.
    After nine days on the ship I arrived in New York and took a train for three days and nights to San Francisco. Our reunion was so emotional that I confess it may have sent me over the edge. I know I loved my son and I knew I was blessed that I was not in love with him, that I would not smother him by trying to be too close and at the same time I would love him and raise him to be free and manly and as happy as possible.
    After one week of living in the top floor of my mother’s big house, set on the top of a hill I became anxious again. I realized it would be difficult if not impossible to raise a black boy to be happy and responsible and liberated in a racist society. I was lying on the sofa in the upstairs living room when Guy walked through. “Hello Mom.” I looked at him and thought I could pick him up, open the window and jump. I lifted my voice and said, “Get out. Get out now. Get out of the house this minute. Go out to the front yard and don’t come back, even if I call you.”
    I telephoned for a taxi, walked down the steps and looked at Guy. I said, “Now you may go in and please stay until I return.” I told the cab driver to take me to Langley Porter Psychiatric Clinic. When I walked in the receptionist asked if I had an appointment. I said, “No.” She explained with a sad face, “We cannot see you unless you have an appointment.” I said, “I must see someone, I am about to hurt myself and maybe someone else.”
    The receptionist spoke quickly on the telephone. She said to me, “Please go to see Dr. Salsey, down the hall on the right, Room C.” I opened the door of Room C and my hopes fell. There was a young white man behind a desk. He wore a Brooks Brothers suit and a button-down shirt and his face was calm with confidence. He welcomed me to a chair in front of his desk. I sat down and looked at him again and began to cry. How could this privileged young white man understand the heart of a black woman who was sick with guilt because she left her little black son for others to raise? Each time I looked up at him the tears flooded my face. Each time he asked what is the matter, how can I help you? I was maddened by the helplessness of my