20
Home Again
1937–1940
Coming home didn’t make all of Shar’s troubles go away. Her mama was still in the hospital while Shar and her daddy was trying to come up with the money for her needs. She hadn’t been able to find any day work when she arrived home, so Shar was singing in a club that Rosetta recommended her for. Sallie had been mostly right about Shar’s voice coming back. She could sing, she experienced cracking every so often, but the folks in the nightclub were too drunk to know the difference. And Shar didn’t care enough to work the imperfections out of her voice. She was no longer singing for the Lord, so all the joy she’d gotten from singing was now far from her.
She was at the hospital visiting her mama, so she tried to take her mind off of her troubles. The nurse had just wheeled her mother’s bed outside so that she could get some fresh air. Shar had no understanding of how fresh air could cure tuberculosis, but she guessed it was the poor man’s cure.
“Girl, why are you standing around gawking at me? Don’t you have some songs to sing somewhere?” Marlene said with a hint of a devilish grin on her face.
Shar hadn’t told her mama where she was singing at these days, and she didn’t plan on having that conversation until her mother was good and well. But Shar was happy that her mother was in a joking mood. She’d been so fearful when she’d first seen her laying in that hospital bed, looking thin as a rail and coughing up her lungs. She smiled back at her mother. “Seems like you’re feeling better this morning.”
“I’ll be better when these doctors stop poking and prodding on me.”
“Stop giving them a hard time, Mama. I need you to get better. I’ve been terribly worried about you.”
Marlene’s body racked with coughing, as she tried to lift herself from her bed.
Shar jumped to action and helped her mother lift herself. She put a cup in front of Marlene as her mother spit out the gunk she’d coughed up. Breathing heavily, Marlene stretched back out on her bed. A colored nursing assistant rushed toward them. She looked over Marlene and then said, “I think you’ve had enough air today, don’t you?”
Marlene nodded.
The woman turned to Shar and said, “You might want to let her rest. You can come back later on, okay?”
Her mother looked so frail and so ill all of a sudden, that Shar wanted to object to leaving her for even a moment. But her daddy had made her promise not to tire her mother out when she spent time with her at the hospital. He wanted his wife to get as much rest as possible while she could; they had no idea when the hospital would throw her out because of the cost of her treatment.
Grabbing hold of her mother’s hand, she squeezed it. “I’ll be back later on, Mama. You go get some sleep.”
Marlene tried to squeeze her hand back, but the pressure was a little weak. “Go home and practice your singing. You need to get back on the road instead of sitting around here worrying about me.”
Shar averted her eyes. “I’m not going anywhere until you get better,” was all she said about that.
The nurse rolled Marlene’s bed back into the hospital, and as Shar stood watching her go, a tear trickled down her cheek. So many colored people were denied access to hospitals when this epidemic first hit Chicago. But thanks to Provident Hospital and the visiting Nurse Association that had been trained at this colored hospital, her mother was receiving care. The hospital wasn’t free. Provident relied on fees paid by patients, donations, and welfare reimbursements from the government. Shar might not be willing to tell her mama how she was making a living these days, but she was thankful that the earnings helped pay down the hospital bill they would now have to contend with.
As she left the hospital, she slowly walked home, kicking around street rocks as she thought about how life had taken her on so many twists and turns that she hadn’t expected so early in life. She turned twenty-one that day, October the eleventh, and her mother hadn’t even remembered to wish her a happy birthday. But Shar wasn’t upset with her mama, not with all she was going through. She knew that if her mama had been in better health she would have baked Shar a yellow cake with white icing and her father would have sang happy birthday to her in his soft baritone voice.
But the world wouldn’t stop rocking just because it happened to be Shar Gracey’s birthday. No sir, that wasn’t the way things worked for her family. No, even on sunshiny days, the Graceys still seemed to find the rain.
“What you moping around like that for on such a beautiful day like this?”
Shar lifted her head as she stepped on the porch of the poor excuse of a home she shared with her parents. Her father was in the doorway holding a slice of pound cake with a matchstick in it. “What’s this?”
“You thought I forgot, didn’t you?” Johnny Gracey asked as Shar walked into the house. “Now just sit down at the table and let me light this match so you can make a wish.”
Shar was practically giddy as she sat down. “Mama didn’t remember that it was my birthday, so I thought for sure you had forgotten because she has to remind you about everything.”
“Girl, hush, your mama ain’t the only one around here with a good memory.” Johnny set the cake in front of her. He then sang, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you, my sweet little girl, happy birthday to you.”
Shar smiled. “Thank you, Daddy.”
“How old are you? How old are you?” he continued singing in that soft baritone, looking to her with expectation in his eyes.
Shar knew her father wanted her to sing-song, “I’m twenty-one years old.” But she couldn’t bring herself to try even such a small riff. If her voice cracked while she tried to sing, her father would immediately want to know what happened to her. It was enough that he knew she was singing in saloons. He didn’t have to know of the other hardships that had befallen her while on tour. “I’m twenty-one, Dad, you know that,” she said in her regular voice.
Johnny gave her a puzzled look, but he didn’t question her. He just pulled the match out of the cake and scratched it against the wood table leg. As the match lit, he put it back down in the center of her slice of cake. “Now, blow that out and make your wish.”
Shar closed her eyes, quickly trying to come up with a wish. She wanted to beg God to get her out of these nightclubs and to fully restore her voice, but with her mama being in the hospital and needing a healing, Shar felt selfish requesting anything
for herself. So as she blew out the makeshift candle, she wished for health, strength, and long life for her mama. “There, I blew it out.” She then kissed her father on the cheek, “Now let me eat my birthday cake and then I’ll help you with the house.”
Johnny grabbed his tool belt and hammer. “It’s your birthday. You stay right in here and rest and I’ll get the house done.”
Shar shook her head as she watched her dad grab some wood blocks and head out to the porch. He was a hardworking man, taking odd jobs wherever he could and then still coming home and working on their raggedy old house, trying to get the draft out so that his wife wouldn’t get sicker just by simply coming home to a drafty home.
Shar was so thankful that her daddy remembered her birthday, but she wasn’t going to dally long. She would eat her piece of cake and then go help so he could get to bed on time tonight. Her father had been so happy for her to go off with Thomas Dorsey and sing in a group the way he had wanted to do, but he had never been able to. So, he’d let her to go off and live his dream. While Shar had been excited to go, leaving had caused her daddy to become the sole supporter and caregiver for her mother. He was worn out from the weight that had been placed on his shoulders, and Shar planned to do everything in her power to ease some of his load.
After eating her cake, she changed into a pair of old work pants that she used to wear while helping her mother with the wash. By the time she came out of her room, her daddy had finished boarding up the porch. He then walked back into the house with a bunch of plastic under his arms. “What are you going to do with that?” Shar asked.
“Got to close up some of the draft that’s coming through these useless windows.” Johnny threw all the sheets of plastic on the floor except one. He pulled out his hammer and a few nails and began tacking the plastic to the window pane.
“What do you need me to do?” Shar wasn’t about to stand around twiddling her thumbs while her dad did all the work.
Johnny pointed toward the back of the house. “Bring those rugs that I laid on the back porch in here and start putting them against the walls in the kitchen.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” Shar got to work, helping her daddy in his quest to decrease the drafty feel of the old house. The rugs were all tattered, worn, and torn. Shar imagined that her father had been scouring trash bins all over town in order to get his hands on enough rugs to lay around the house.
She got down on her hands and knees and placed half of the rugs against the wall and the other half of them on the floor next to the wall to block the draft blowing into the house from outside. The draft wasn’t so bad right then, in mid-October; however, within the next few weeks it would become unbearable. So she moved along the floor, placing one rug after the next against the wall.
“I like the sound of that,” Johnny said as he turned away from the window he was tacking plastic to.
“Huh? You like the sound of what?” Shar asked with furrowed brows.
“You’re humming. You and your mama used to do that all the time while you worked. Well, your mama used to do the humming while you sang. But it has always sounded good to my ears.”
Shaking her head, Shar told him, “Daddy, everything I do sounds good to your ears.”
“You better believe it. You’re my baby girl, and I’m right proud of you.”
“Thanks, Daddy,” Shar said with a big ol’ grin on her face. She liked knowing that her father was proud of her. As she started to turn back to her job, she caught a glimpse of her dad’s face as it contorted a bit and he grabbed hold of his chest.
Shar jumped up and ran over to her father and just reached him as he began to stumble and fall. Grabbing hold of him just before he hit the floor, Shar started screaming, “Daddy, Daddy, what’s wrong?”
His eyes bulged as if trying to burst out of his head. He tried to speak as he clutched at his chest, but then his eyes closed and his body went limp.
“Oh God, no, no, no. Don’t let this happen.” She grabbed hold of her daddy as tears blurred her vision. “Daddy, please don’t leave us here without you. Please wake up.”
Shar realized that she couldn’t just sit there begging her father to wake up. She had to do something . . . had to get some help. She gently placed her father on the ground and ran out of the house looking for somebody, anybody who could lend them a hand.