As my cousins chased the truck down the street I was on my way to a whole new world. For the next few days we rode a Greyhound bus from Montgomery to Newark, New Jersey. We stopped like every hour going through the South, and it seemed like we were on the bus “fooooor-ever.” I was sick the entire time.
We were sitting on the right side of the bus three or four rows from the back. I never thought about why we were sitting closer to the back of the bus. What I was thinking about was that’s where the gas fumes came up from under the bus and it made me sick. I was lying in my grandmother’s lap the whole time. I didn’t know where I was going. I was just going because my grandmother and my uncle Tim were taking me.
My aunt, Martha Ann Gardner.
When we got to New Jersey, there were people everywhere. That was my first experience of seeing a great deal of white people. It was the train/bus station in Newark. Just walking in there was an eye opener for me. The South is easy going, we just moseyed along. Then, I got to Jersey, and they’re going “Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!” There were people everywhere.
I’m just a little black kid holding my grandmother’s hand and looking around at all these people just flying past. No one discussed with me why we were going there. We get there, and there is this lady waiting. We walked up to her and my grandmother said:
“I want you to meet your mother.”
I went, “But you’re my mother.”
She said, “Nope. This is your mother, honey. I’m your grandmother.” All those years I thought she was my mother and that my cousins were my brothers.
My mom started calling me Willie James. That’s when I learned my name was Willie James. I was Bobbie Lee for the first six years of my life, but that day I became Willie James.
My mother took my hand. We got in the car and went to Union, New Jersey, which was called Vauxhall at the time. Mother had married a guy named Gene Lynn. My baby brother, Anthony Lynn, had been born in May, so he was just a few months old. All of a sudden, my grandmother said, “goodbye,” and I was just hanging out with this lady I didn’t know, this guy I didn’t know and a little brother I didn’t know.
“I never really understood why my momma went up there, too,” Martha said. “Henry was in 9th grade – that’s uncle Tim. I always had it in my mind that they wanted momma to baby sit Anthony because they were both working. And I guess Dot knew that my momma wasn’t going to leave my brother. So that’s how they got up there.
“That’s what I always thought it was. The idea about them going up there wasn’t until after she had Anthony. Then she wanted them up there. But my momma didn’t stay with them when they were in Vauxhall. She stayed with another woman in Newark. Then, when they moved to Summit, she was closer to them.”
I stayed at the house my mother and her husband had. I don’t really know where my grandmother and my uncle Tim went. It was just me, my mother, my brother and my stepfather. That’s when I kind of got really quiet and went into my shell.
I wasn’t really scared, just sort of confused by everything that was going on. Nobody had ever talked about my mother in Montgomery. They just didn’t. In Southern cities in those days, everything was so hush-hush. I don’t really know why my mom had left. I have a feeling why she left. I think she left to find my dad – who I found out much later was living in New York City. But I don’t know. We never really talked about it.
Within, maybe, a month, we moved from Vauxhall to Summit because the schools were better. Gene, my stepfather, was a window washer, and he had a great job in Summit. Summit was a small little town, lots of windows and a lot of stores. He would wash all the windows. We never knew where he was going to be in town, but when we walked to school, we could always find him and he would give us our lunch money.
I never met my real father. I talked to him two times. My mom never really talked to me about him. We were down in Alabama when my grandmother was celebrating her 80-something birthday. We were at a family reunion, and this guy came up to my mom and said, “You know that young man sure looks like my brother.” She talked with this guy, and somehow they figured out that his brother was my father. He gave her his brother’s number, and my mother gave it to me. When my mother got pregnant, I guess she was going out with two different people.
I called him, and we talked a little bit. I wasn’t looking for anything. I wasn’t trying to get money or anything. I just wanted to say, “hello.” The third time I called, his wife answered the phone, and she recommended I never call him again. I don’t know what she thought I was doing or whether she thought I was trying to break up his home, or what. I know she wasn’t a very nice lady who didn’t have any sympathy for someone who didn’t know his dad.
I don’t think my father ever knew that I played baseball. It turns out I have two half-sisters and a brother. I don’t know any of them.
My mom was really cute. That’s one of the first things I thought about her. She was a really pretty lady. She was very slim. We were only 17 years apart, and she was a really good looking lady, but she was demanding.
She wanted it “this way” or “that way.” She didn’t want any lip. I learned very early that my mom had a quick right hand. I mean it was quick, man. She would just “whap,” like that. So I would get on her left side so I could see it coming.
I was really quiet, and knew that if I did what she said, I got no problems. My little brother, Anthony, was the complete opposite. He would question, “Why? Why? Why?” My mother would say, “Because I said.” And he would say, “Why?” I would just be like “Anthony ... be quiet.” ... “Well why?”
One thing I could do was make my mother laugh. She would be so mad at me sometimes, and I would say something funny. Then, she would say, “Don’t you make me laugh!” And I was like “C’mon, ma.” That was after I got to know her. Later on, she would be like Gestapo some times. She would come in the house, and would start putting her fingers on all the furniture or the windows looking for dust. When we got home from school, we knew we had to wash dishes, dust, vacuum, do all that stuff. On weekends, because she worked two jobs, I learned how to wash clothes, iron clothes and make my bed.
I do that to this day, and I can make a mean bed. I can make a bed where I can take that quarter and “boing!” But that’s how she was. She was so demanding.
She got divorced from my stepfather when I was in elementary school about 6th grade. My brother actually left with his father to go to Buffalo, N.Y., after they got divorced. When I was a 9th or 10th grader, he came back and started staying with us. My mom just kept fighting and fighting to get him.
So for a while I really didn’t have a father figure. Even when they were together, him and my mom used to get into some knock-down fights. He liked to drink, and he liked to gamble. My mom didn’t like to drink or gamble.
“None of us drink,” Martha said. “Momma didn’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t drink. Henry don’t smoke. He don’t drink. I guess we weren’t able to ever buy it, so we didn’t do it.”
My stepfather would be having these card players over at the house and there was a lot of drinking. I was the guy running, the go-fer. I would go for the food at the Summit Diner. Back in those days you could go get cigarettes as a kid because the store clerks knew you. I would run in there and get cigarettes, come back and all that.
The last time I saw my stepfather, he and my mom got into a fight. My brother and I jumped in. I jumped on his back, and my brother had his legs. So you have three people in the mix-up, and my mom is going “Boom! Boom! Boom!” just whaling on him. That was the last time I saw him.
When they were together my grandmother wasn’t living with us. After he left we were all together.
My mom was a good mom. She did everything she could for us to be fed, clothed and living in a great spot. Summit was not cheap. It was an expensive little area. Even though we weren’t in the high-priced area, it was not a cheap place. But she knew the school system was good, and then when I became a sports star in 9th grade, everybody starting telling her how much potential I had, so she stayed for that.
I didn’t like Jersey that much when I first got there. Within two days I was in a fight. We didn’t live in Summit right away, I didn’t move to Summit until a month or so later when school started. My mom and stepfather picked out a place. My grandmother and my uncle Tim were downstairs. We were up stairs on the other side.
I still don’t really know why we went to Jersey. My grandmother and uncle Tim stayed because he was going to go to school there. I guess they thought it was going to be a better life for us, a better way. My aunties and my grandmother had all discussed it and figured out what was going to be the best for us three. They all couldn’t go to New Jersey because they were married and had kids and were set in their ways. My mom had left – whether it was to find my father or just go up there for a better opportunity because she was just 18 years old. I don’t know what the discussion was, but I’m sure there had to be quite a discussion knowing my aunties.
I do know this. To this day when I smell gas, I go back to riding that Greyhound bus those two days to New Jersey – sick the whole way.