Growing Up King (7 page)

My father and I did get to ride our bicycles together once or maybe twice more. We rode them up and around the gently undulating
red clay hills in Vine City in January of ’68, with the smell of honeysuckle and the sound of music and children playing replaced
by winter’s chill and desiccated leaves blowing in the wind between us. I remember chinging my bell, hearing him encouraging
me to try and keep up, gently saying, “Careful, Dexter, until you get a feel for it.”

We rode our bikes on the streets of Vine City, past shotgun houses, Egan Homes, Magnolia Ballroom, Flavor Palace, Pascal’s,
the Bonds’, the Davises’, the Halls’, Mrs. Toomer’s, the Ollie Street Y, Washington Park… our world. My father had insisted
that we be in an environment where we would be with the people, not be on a mountain talking down to the valley, but in the
valley, and perhaps go up the mountain together one day, in a perfect world. I remember biking beside my father, him not going
so fast as to leave me behind. Remember how I said some were afraid to go by Egan Homes? When we rode by Egan Homes and my
father waved to a few of the people, they waved back and said, “There goes the Reverend King and one of his boys. Spit that
boy out. Look just like him.” I ended up making a couple of good friends from Egan Homes… Afterward.

The couple of months after Daddy’s and my birthdays in January of 1968 felt ominous. Martin, Yolanda, and myself asked Daddy
not to go to Memphis. We might have been worried. Not that Daddy would die… just that he might be put in jail again. He went
to Memphis two or three times that spring. The first time he went, we didn’t say anything; it was after he came back, and
planned to go again, that I recall this nagging feeling that something was wrong, something was off. The three of us felt
it, Yolanda, Martin, and me. Something bad was going to happen. He knew it better than we did. How we picked up on it, I don’t
know. It was a frustrating period for all of us because we felt we had no control. And when it happened, Afterward, you felt
death had been hovering over you all along, death seen from a child’s view, and it would always be there, after that. We knew
things were changing, and not for the better.

S
uddenly, he was just—gone. Just like that, his short life like an exploding flashbulb that blinds you momentarily, fixes you
in time, reveals you to yourself—then expires forever.

We were watching television. That’s how I learned. TV told me. Special Bulletin. Yolanda says that until this day every time
she sees one, it’s a shock to her system. Now this is part of her imperial conditioning too. If she sees a Special Bulletin—
“we interrupt this program for a Special Bulletin from CBS News”—her pulse races, she feels faint, her throat closes, she
senses death.

I, on the other hand, feel nothing but numb.

Martin and I were sitting on the floor in front of the TV. Yoki was there somewhere, but I’m not seeing her or Bunny in this
picture, in the same room with us. Yoki was twelve. We were sitting on the floor watching TV, I don’t remember what—maybe
some game show. If it had been on Saturday, earlier in the day, it would’ve been
American Bandstand
. The Special Bulletin came on, and an unforgettable voice said, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been shot in Memphis, at
6:01
P.M
.”

Martin and I looked at each other. We said nothing.

We both jumped up and ran back into our parents’ bedroom.

Mother sat on their bed, ankles crossed, fingers of her free hand and the phone receiver at her mouth. “Mother? Mommy? Mama?
You hear that? What do they mean?”

Mother held up a finger, telling us to be patient, quiet, to wait; she was being briefed, on the phone to Memphis, with Jesse
Jackson, who was the first to call her. She was obviously just getting the news from him. We waited for her to get off the
phone—and dreaded her getting off.

She kept saying, “I understand.” I’ll never forget those words, how I couldn’t understand why she would keep repeating them.
I wanted her to get off the phone and make me understand. She replaced the beige receiver back in its cradle and turned to
us. Yolanda came in; Mother’s mouth opened, but before she spoke the phone rang again. It was Uncle Andy from Memphis this
time. Mother listened again. “I understand.” She hung up. Yolanda pressed her hands over her ears. “Don’t tell me! Don’t tell
me!” she screamed. She fled the bedroom. Pain filled Mother’s face. She encircled us boys in her arms and drew in a deep breath,
as if about to dive underwater.

“Your father—there’s been an accident.” From then on our mother was stoic. She made you feel she was in control. No hysterics.

The phone rang again. Mayor Ivan Allen, offering to escort Mother to the airport. Yolanda composed herself, came back to the
bedroom to help Mother pack. As they worked, I asked, “Mommy, when are you coming back? When’s Daddy coming back?” She didn’t
seem to hear.

Soon she’d leave the house with Aunt Christine and Uncle Isaac, in a car with Mayor Allen and his wife to go to the airport.
Aunt Christine had been in her kitchen in her Collier Heights home when the Special Bulletin had come. She’d left the house
after getting a baby-sitter for Isaac and Angela. While Mother waited for her and Uncle Isaac and the Allens to arrive, Martin
said nothing, only sniffled. I turned back to Mother.

“Mommy, when is Daddy coming home?”

I kept repeating. “I’m going to Memphis to see Daddy, Dexter. When I get there I’ll call and let you know.”

“Okay.”

Then they left for the airport. Sooner than expected, she would come back. She arrived at the airport and was informed there
was no reason to rush. Dora McDonald, my father’s secretary, met my mother at the airport to accompany her to Memphis; she
was the first person to share the bad news. She saw Mother and walked toward her in the terminal. She asked Mother to sit
down. She did. Then Mayor Allen received the news on the phone. When he returned, Mother knew without his saying it. But he
had to say it anyway. “Mrs. King, I’ve been asked to tell you that Dr. King is dead.” Her husband, our father, was dead.

Hope went out of many lives. We were not alone in that, and never would be alone in it from then on. Wherever America went,
particularly black America, we’d go careening with it.

Mother came back to 234 Sunset. People were here by then. Mrs. Rachel Ward had come quickly. We had no time to sit and talk
or break down or anything else on our own because people had started coming to the house right away. The phone rang. Mrs.
Ward answered it. People in Memphis were communicating with our house, not knowing Mother was gone. Mrs. Ward was on the phone
one minute, the next minute she screamed and fell straight back, collapsing onto her back as if she had been shot or snatched
onto her back by a giant hand. That’s when I knew—when the thought first struck me, never again to leave: “Daddy is dead.”

Mrs. Ward was catatonic. Then came emotional people gathering at our house, coming to our aid, with best intentions; then
their hysterics upon seeing us, the grief uncontrollable.

I knew what had happened. Then, of course, it was official on the news. But I knew when Mrs. Ward fell back. As a seven-year-old
I didn’t have an understanding of death, but I knew it was worse than the first report: he had been shot; he had lived. Now
the worst had happened. By the time Mother returned, I was in bed. Bernice was asleep. Every time someone had mentioned my
father, she had mimicked Yoki and left the room with her hands over her ears. Sleep came as a blessing to her. Martin and
I went to bed; he got up. I couldn’t sleep either.

Mother had dreaded coming back to the house, dreaded having to tell us the news, not knowing quite how. How do you tell a
child, let alone four children, that their father is not only dead but has been murdered? You don’t, in our case. The world
let us know. Yolanda and Martin were still up. Yolanda asked my mother, “Mama, should I hate the man who killed Daddy?”

“No. You shouldn’t.”

I could see both of their faces, golden in the lamp-shaded light. I stood watching. “Then I’m not going to cry,” Yoki said.
“I’m not going to cry because maybe my daddy is dead physically but his spirit is alive and one day I’m going to see him again
in Heaven. Oh Mommy, you’re such a brave and strong lady. I don’t know what I’d do if I was in your shoes.”

With a wrenching exclamation, Mother pulled my sister to her and they hugged tightly. Mother said, “Your father would be so
proud of you.” Mother wiped her face and they sat holding each other’s hands. Finally Yolanda got up, strong and ladylike,
and left the room.

Soon, Mother came back to our room.

“Dexter… do you know your father was shot?”

“Yes.”

“He was hurt badly.”

“But why?”

“Dexter, why don’t you go to sleep now and I will tell you all about it in the morning. Sleep.”

“All right, Mother… Mother! Are you going to sleep here? Where will you be?”

The next morning, there was this great droning hubbub around our house—and unbeknownst to us, chaos was now reigning in a
horribly destructive way all across America in neighborhoods like Vine City. Vine City itself was quiet, morose, calm, but
our house wasn’t.

My mother was taking calls; family, friends, and people who worked with our father were descending on the house. Mother didn’t
know how she was going to get to Memphis. Then a call came in. It was a Kennedy—the second time a Kennedy had called 234 Sunset.
This time, it was Bobby. He offered to send a chartered plane for her, to take her to Memphis to get the body. He offered
to put phone lines in the house, telling my mother she would need extra phones now; by daybreak it was done. Uncle Ralph and
Uncle Andy were there. They were quiet around Mother but whispered of ramifications on RFK’s campaign for the presidency,
in its primary season. Uncle Andy was back from Memphis and had come to the house—when, exactly, I don’t know. Could’ve been
the morning of that Friday. It could have been Saturday. There was no sense of time. Uncle Andy talked to us, kept calm. I
could see hurt in him. It was Uncle Andy who actually told us my father was dead. He told us, and said we’d talk more about
it later, but that we would have to look after our mother now, because that’s what our father would’ve wanted. I don’t know
how much time had passed. I don’t know if I slept, or how. At some point we had a conversation, Uncle Andy, my brother, Martin,
and me, in our bedroom. He told us our father did not die in pain, and that he would not want us to mourn in vain, or stand
still in bereavement, but to move on, live, prosper, take advantage of the world he dreamed of, remember what he said at the
Lincoln Memorial, that he wanted his four children to one day be judged by the content of their character, not the color of
their skin—it was us he was talking about. Please don’t let him die in vain.

I said to Uncle Andy, “The man who shot my father with a gun must not have known him, because everybody knew my father, and
everybody knew he was a good man.”

“Yes,” Uncle Andy said. “Yes, he was.”

We went to the airport to meet the body. I had Bernice with me; even though I wasn’t that much bigger than her, I kept picking
her up then putting her down because I wasn’t big enough to carry her. Then Uncle Andy picked her up and we headed toward
the airplane. I questioned why. I went to my safe asking-why place with it. The question I played over in my head is, Why
did this person kill my father? I wouldn’t have thought it was because the killer was a “racist” and wanted to see “segregation”
stay in place. I thought of my father’s voice, how it sounded different when he preached at Ebenezer, and when he asked us
not to play with toy guns. Why would anybody shoot him? I didn’t understand. Uncle Andy had addressed it more from a suffering
standpoint—Daddy was never in pain; if he’d lived he would’ve been paralyzed. Uncle Andy was trying to help us understand
that God had taken one of his disciples home, so we could come to grips with it.

We got to the airport; we boarded the airplane, an American Airlines Electra that Bobby Kennedy had chartered. I remember
American Airlines because of the metallic finish. We walked up the portable stairs. Bernice kept asking, “Mommy, where’s my
daddy?”

Mother sat her down right in the front of the plane. And then suddenly we were at Hanley’s Bell Street Funeral Home, which
handled all of our family’s burial needs. My memory goes back and forth between the inside of the plane and the dully lit
back parlor of Hanley’s. I’d looked around at the plane’s interior, anywhere but at the coffin. I didn’t want to think about
my father in there, unable to get out. They had taken out some seats. I kept asking Mother unrelated questions, like, “What’s
this?” pointing to parts of the plane. She knew I was avoiding the fact of our father’s corpse being on the plane. I didn’t
understand the inanimate part of death, never had seen anybody dead or even been to a funeral. I was curious about him being
in the casket, but I didn’t want to face it. Mother spoke about being worried about how my father would look when they opened
the casket. She was concerned the funeral home in Tennessee had “fixed his face,” as she called it.