Love Never Leaves (eBook)

Chapter 1

Dark Clouds

After I returned to my parents’ home, my marriage all but over, it took a while to settle in. Finally, I began to feel at ease and knew it was time for my two boys, George and David, to attend Sunday school and for me to rejoin the choir. This was the church I had belonged to since my early teens. As we headed out on a Sunday morning in April, the sun was shining, the forsythia was just starting to bloom, and the smells of spring were permeating the air.

Downstairs, in the Sunday school, the room was beautifully decorated for preschoolers. There were teddy bears and ducks stenciled on one wall and on another there was a picture of a pasture with sheep, black-and-white cows, and a huge yellow sun shining down on all kinds of flowers. The profusion of bright colors was everywhere.

When I returned to pick the boys up after church, I noticed children had gathered around David’s playpen. George and David were the only biracial children in an otherwise all-white Sunday school class, so I thought to myself, It’s perfectly normal for them to be curious. When they saw me coming, however, the whole class scattered like they were doing something wrong.

The teacher did not seem concerned and said she was confident things would change once the newness wore off. For the time being, I agreed with her.

There were many storms in my life that I would have to deal with, and one never knows when a cumulus cloud will turn dark and produce rain, then thunder and lightning. Perhaps a hurricane or tornado will happen, and happen it did. That morning, when the children scattered, it was a very small cumulus cloud beginning to take seed.

***

My brother, Bob, was the only one in the family who ever inquired about my husband, George Sr. One day when Bob dropped in, he asked if I had had any word at all from him.

“No, I have not.”

“Do you know if he is working?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he sending you any financial help?”

“No, he isn’t.”

“Do you still love him?”

“My feelings are conflicted at this point,” I said. “I am not sure about anything.”

It was not just uncertainty that marked the start of this dark period in my life. When I moved back home to Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1952, I was still not fully aware of what was happening in other parts of the country regarding racial discrimination and our ambivalence as a nation about interracial marriage. In 1948, 90 percent of American adults opposed interracial marriage, and 48 percent felt that a person who married someone of another race should be charged with a crime. During the 1950s, half of the states still had laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Even by 1967, when the United States Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage everywhere in the country, sixteen states still had statutes against it on the books.

Not in New Hampshire, though, where on April 22, 1950, I married George Emerson Taggart, whom I had met at the New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston, where we were both students. I was not aware at the time of the term interracial marriage, but that is what ours was called, because George was black and I was white. After a year and a half, we moved into a rental apartment in a predominantly black section of Boston called Roxbury. For reasons still difficult for me to comprehend seven decades later, things quickly turned sour and I found myself back home in Lowell, with one mixed-race baby boy at my side and another on the way, in a community not quite ready for their presence. I was completely unaware of what lay ahead for us. But I was about to find out.

***

There was joy singing in the choir once again. It brought a light back into my soul that had been dimmed for some time. I was welcomed by some but sensed a distance from others. At home I began receiving phone calls telling me we were not wanted, but I dismissed and ignored them. There were episodes at church in which George, who was two years old, would complain about kids picking on him and David, calling them names, asking why they never washed and looked dirty all the time. One Sunday when I went downstairs to pick up the boys, George was nowhere around. I asked the teacher where he was.

“He was in the hall a few minutes ago,” she said. “I saw him run out, thinking you had come to pick him up.”

I went to look for him and began to get a panicky feeling in the pit of my stomach when I couldn’t find him. I walked around the church and found George huddled in a corner with his nose bleeding. When I ran over to him, he was crying and nothing he was saying made any sense. I tried to calm him down and said we would pick up David and head home. He cried all the way, and it took the rest of the afternoon for things to settle down. The following week the only thing he would say was, “That big boy was bad. I don’t like him.”

I tried calling the teacher but was unable to reach her, so I decided to leave early the next Sunday and talk to her then. When we started to head out for church the following week, George became agitated, and as we approached the building he began to cry.

“I don’t want to go to Sunday school anymore,” he said.

“I need to go in and talk to the teacher about what happened last Sunday and see if we can find out who the boy was that hurt you,” I told him.

“Do I have to stay?”

“No.”

When I went into the classroom, George clung to my leg. I explained to the teacher what had happened and asked if she remembered seeing a bigger boy talking to George. She was unable to shed any light on what had gone on or who the bigger boy might have been. We talked for a few minutes and it became apparent she was embarrassed. I said I did not know if I could get George to come back to Sunday school.

I took the boys out into the hall and suggested to George that he could sit with Mama today upstairs in the big church.

“David too?”

“Yes, David too.”

The phone calls, meanwhile, were becoming more frequent. They were always in the daytime. The language was becoming more offensive. There were threats about what would happen to me and my boys if we didn’t move out of town. I learned very quickly when I picked up the phone to ask who was calling, and if they did not answer I quickly hung up.

I do not know why I did not recognize it sooner, but the boys and I were becoming isolated. Previously, I had often sung as a paid soloist for weddings in the local churches, but now no one would hire me. I would make phone calls to people I had known all of my life, and they were not returned. The boys were never invited anywhere by anyone outside the family. Bob and his family had moved up to Canada, and my sister, Priscilla, and her husband were down in Florida. When we went to the park, if other children started playing with the boys, their mothers would come over and take them away. I fought the urge to scream out, “What is wrong with you? They are just little boys!”

The phone calls grew more threatening. I tried calling the police. They said they could do nothing. Many times I would not answer the phone, but that stopped when my mom said, “I know you are home. Why don’t you answer?”

I knew I could not tell her the real reason. “I was busy changing David’s diaper,” I said. “Sorry about that, Mom.”

From that point on I would just pick up the receiver, and once I heard the vile words spewing out of the caller’s mouth I would slam it right back down again.

One afternoon the boys and I had just come back from our daily walk when the phone rang. I figured if I did not answer it, whoever was on the other end would just let it ring. The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming. What should I do? Try talking to them? That was the one thing I hadn’t done. What was there to lose? I practiced what I would say but couldn’t do it. A week went by. Finally I found the courage to speak out. This time when the phone rang I answered it, and the person at the other end—a male; it was always a male—went on a tirade. When he realized I was not hanging up, he asked, “Are you still there?”

“Yes, I am still here and would like to ask you and try to understand why you hate us so much.”

“Well, you are right about one thing,” he said. “I do hate you and do not have to explain anything to you.”

He asked when I was going to move and I told him I had no intention of moving.

“I want you to listen very closely to what I am about to say,” he replied, “because your life and your black n***** babies’ lives depend on it. If you do not move and one of your n***** babies start school, he will disappear. You cannot be with him every minute of the day, and I promise you will never see him again.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“You are damn right I am threatening you, and you better listen.”

“Why would you hurt an innocent child? He is just a child.”

“Lady, you keep referring to him as a child. He is not a child. He is a n***** baby and not a human being.”

With that I vomited onto the phone and screamed, “May you burn in hell!” then slammed the receiver down and started walking around the house in a panic. I ran into the bathroom and vomited some more.

By now both the boys had woken up from their naps, and I ran upstairs and held them...