June Cross - Secret Daughter

 

Every family has secrets. In my family, the secret was me. I was secret because I was black. These days, you'd say I was biracial. But in the 50s, when you were born, there was no biracial. You were either born black or you were born white, end of story. My mother was a farm girl from Pocatello, Idaho, who'd come to New York to seek her fame and fortune here on the big stage. She met my dad, who was a performer from Philadelphia. He was part of a duo called Stump and Stumpy. It had been popular in the 40s. They met backstage at the Paramount Theater and pretty much became constant companions for the next four or five years. And here I am.

 

But as the 50s progressed, my dad's career began to go downhill. And as his career began to go downhill, so did his life. And he drank more and more. And the more he drank, the angrier he got. And in some kind of twisted sort of vision, he thought that if he beat my mother long enough, she'd stay with him. My mother had sunk pretty low, but she hadn't sunk so low that she was willing to stay with a man who beat her every day. So, sooner or later, she got up. I was about 18 months old. She left him and we moved into another apartment, upper west side of Manhattan. And that's where I lived with her for the next four or five years. But there was one problem. She had the courage to get into a relationship with a black man, but she didn't have the courage to raise this child who looked like me, who was me.

 

And so she began to leave me for periods of time with a friend of hers in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was a couple that she called Peggy and Paul. And whom I would come to call Aunt Peggy and Uncle Paul. And I would go and I would stay with them for periods of time. And gradually, one day, it was about a week before I would have started my first day of school. She left me there, and I never came back to New York. So, the way it worked was this, I would go to school Monday through Friday in Atlantic City and then on school vacations or breaks, I would come visit my mom here in New York. And I really lived two lives. I lived a life where I lived [chuckles] when I was with my mom, the life where I liked Perry Como and the Beatles and Barbra Streisand.

 

And then when I was in Atlantic City, I lived a life where I liked the Four Tops and James Brown. And that's sort of the way life went. Aunt Peggy was a very strict disciplinarian. She thought that my mother had been way too lenient with me, which mom had been. There was no structure in Mom's house when I lived in Atlantic City. Peggy had structure. If you can imagine trying to live with two mothers, having one is bad enough. [audience laughter] Here I had two. [chuckles] I had one very strict one and one who was actually very demanding. My mom was very demanding. But when I would go to visit my mother on weekends, there was absolutely no structure.

 

We would leave the Port Authority, go out, head out to the rotisserie chicken place across the street from Port Authority, pick up a chicken, go home, eat dinner at 11:30 at night, stay up and watch whatever was on television as long as I wanted until I fell asleep. And then the next day we would get up, go to matinee, usually on Broadway. We might go to a second one on Saturday night. And then to whatever we could watch on Sunday matinee as well, before I got back on the bus and went to Atlantic City-- went back to Atlantic City. It was almost like I used to liken it to crossing a razor blade. And if I crossed it carefully, it would scrape instead of cut. Six years went by in this fashion and gradually she began to date other men.

 

And finally, she began dating a comic and character actor who, some of you may know, he was Larry Storch. He became Corporal Agarn in the series F Troop in the 60s. And mom was elated that she'd finally found a man and thought she was finally going to be able to actually get him to marry her, which had been the driving force of her life, [chuckles] to try to become Mrs. Somebody. And one weekend while I was here in New York, she threw a party for Larry and his family and the managing agent and she asked me to play a game with her and the game was call her Aunt Norma during the entire period of this party and being eight years old and not knowing really what she was asking me to do, I said, “Fine, I will.” And I did.

 

But at some-point during the evening, the adults started giving me champagne. Being a showbiz crowd, they thought it was cute to see a tipsy 8-year-old running around the house. And I slipped and I called her mom. And she snatched me and dragged me into the bathroom and really, her face was so contorted with, I thought then was anger, but what I now know was fear. And she said, “Don't you ever call me Mommy in front of people like this. Don't ever call me Mommy in front of Larry's family. They will disown him, and we'll lose everything.” And I hung my head, not knowing quite what I had done. And I said, “Yes, Aunt Norma, I won't.”

 

And I went back to Atlantic City, and I told Aunt Peggy and Uncle Paul about this, and they were horrified. And then several months later, when mom called to say that she was going to become Mrs. Larry Storch, that her dream was finally going to be fulfilled, I was as elated as she was. I was jumping all around the house. “Oh, I'm going to be the child of daughter of a star, daughter of a star.” And we hung up the phone, and Aunt Peggy pulled me aside and said, “Not so fast. You need to make sure that you never tell anybody that your mom is married to Larry Storch. If it's found out that he's married to a woman that had a black child, his entire career could go south. They'll cancel the show that he's in. All those ballet classes and tap dance classes and swimming lessons and piano lessons and the summer camp that you love, that'll all disappear.”

 

She was trying to get me to understand the economic price of being black in this country, which, during the 60s, was still pretty severe. And frankly, it still is. In 1960, according to the census, something like 25-- there were only 25 black millionaires in the United States of America, which is an amazing thought to think about. And so, the money that she and Paul got to help raise me was really important in our family. So, I learned that I was just going to be black, and I was fine with that. By the time I had reached college, I was blacker than now. We got to the 60s. You have to remember, I'm growing up at the same time that the country is going through the Vietnam War crisis, and African-Americans as a whole are reaching the point where we've had it.

 

This is the period when Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston and changed his name to Muhammad Ali. It's the period when Stokely Carmichael invented the phrase black power. I went to work with the Black Panther program. I served breakfast in Atlantic City, New Jersey. I sold the papers as long as Aunt Peggy would let me. And she found out about that, put the kibosh on that pretty fast. And by the time I got to school, I was really determined that I was going to live my life as a black woman. There was a group on campus of multiracial students. There was a multiracial. I think they called themselves the multiracial students--Harvard Students alliance or something like this.

 

And I refused to join them because I didn't want to have anything to do with being multiracial. If I was multiracial, why had I just lived this entire painful existence that I'd been growing up with? And sure enough, I chose my side. And then in November of that year, my freshman year, my mother calls me. She's having her 50th birthday party. She's decided to have it in Las Vegas. Now, as a card-carrying member of the Black Panther Party and an avowed socialist at the time, [audience chuckle] going to Las Vegas was a counter revolutionary act. [audience laughter] I couldn't figure out what I was going to do, but Aunt Peggy had raised me to always do what my parents told me to do.

 

So, mom was turning 50 and she wanted me to come to Las Vegas. I was going to have to figure out a way to go to Las Vegas. But I went to Las Vegas on my terms. I had this big afro that was like, bigger than Angela Davis. [chuckle] Some of you remember Roberta Flack's first album? [audience laughter] I had a leather miniskirt and my leather high heeled boots and my fishnet stockings. And I arrived at Caesar's palace in Las Vegas to a sea of white folks wearing chiffon and Indian and coral turquoise jewelry. [laughter] And I didn't want to have anything to do with them. But there I was with my mom and with Larry. She was wearing a Ralph Lauren original navy-blue rayon long gown and a white feathered headdress, looking gorgeous as she always did. 

 

And she wanted to go see Johnny Cash for her 50th birthday. Now, black folks don't listen to country music [audience laughter] in Atlantic City, New Jersey. So, this really wasn't happening for me. I was like, “Johnny Cash, are you serious?” So, I had to go because she was going. So, we go and we're sitting in the grand ballroom of Caesar's palace, which I think at the time was the largest place I'd ever been in. It was just huge. And Larry looks around and all of a sudden, he sees the heavyweight champion of the world, Muhammad Ali, sitting a few tables away. And we get up and we go to meet Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali at that time, who was still a heavyweight champ, was still in shape. He was the biggest man I have ever, ever met. Huge.

 

It was like meeting the Berlin Wall. [laughter] He put his hand out to shake mine and I felt like a 6-year-old. My hand just disappeared inside of his. But as I looked around, I'm seeing he and I are probably the only black folks in the grand ballroom of Caesar's Palace. So, I decided that I was going to rib him a little bit because I was so shy that was the only thing I could do was use laughter to try to get out of the situation. So, I said, “Hey, champ, how come you and I are the only black people in here getting ready to listen to Johnny Cash?” And he says to me, “Girl, I'm from Louisville, Kentucky. Where I came from, there's a whole lot of black people listening to country music.” [laughter]

 

So, this sort of put a damper on my revolutionary fervor. And I go and I sit down, and I'm listening to Johnny Cash begins to play. I'd never really listened to Johnny Cash. I didn't realize the degree of talent, the degree of emotion that the man brought forth from an acoustic guitar in his voice. And as he sang the song, it was almost a trite reaction. But as he sang the song, I Walk the line, I felt like he was singing it to me. I felt like he was describing my entire life. I had grown up in a world where my friends were either black or white, where my family was either black or white, where I listened to music that was identified as music that black people listened to or as music that white people listened to.

 

I dressed the way I thought black people should dress. I talked the way I thought black people should talk. But that night, the Champ and Johnny Cash taught me a lesson. The lesson was that maybe I could balance myself on that razor and walk the line and have the people that I loved and the things that I like be on both sides in me and not have to choose. Thank you.