For my mother
I can’t breathe.
Beneath the ground, the wooden casket I am trapped in is being lowered deeper and deeper into the cold, dark earth. Fear overtakes me as I fall into a paralytic state. I can hear the dirt being shoveled over me. My heart pounds through my chest. I can’t scream, and if I could, who would hear me? Just as the final shovel of soil is being packed tightly over me, I convulse out of my nightmare into the sweat- and urine-soaked bed in the small apartment on the island of Manhattan that my family calls home. Shaken and disoriented, I make my way out of the tiny back bedroom into the pitch-dark living room, where my mother and father sleep on a convertible couch. I stand at the foot of their bed just staring … waiting.
What kind of dream is this for a five-year-old? What have I experienced to produce this kind of imagery? It’s 1969. The only violence I’ve seen is in cartoons of Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner on the eight-inch black-and-white screen of our Singer portable television.
Mom senses my presence and awakens. What’s wrong? I confess I’ve had a bad dream. She picks me up and carries me back to my bedroom. She quickly changes the sheets, brings a warm washcloth to wipe me down, and dresses me in fresh pajamas. She consoles me. I drift back to sleep.
This dream recurs countless times. Years pass before I understand its true meaning.
I now know that God was speaking to me. I believe the dream was telling me that life does not end in the grave. There’s something beyond. Something eternal. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I want to go back to the beginning of the journey.
MANHATTAN AND BROOKLYN
GREENWICH VILLAGE, 1963
On the small bandstand of a cellar jazz club, where the air is thick with smoke and the lights are low, John Coltrane commands his rhythm section. With a gentle nod of his head, he sets an achingly slow groove. Elvin Jones effortlessly works his whisper-quiet brushes. McCoy Tyner plays a subtle piano intro. Bassist Jimmy Garrison provides a gentle heartbeat. Then Coltrane, breathing deeply, exhales into his horn. The sound of his tenor sax is startling—rich, lush, sultry.
At a corner table, a self-assured Jewish man looks into the eyes of a beguiling Afro-Caribbean woman.
She’s my mother, Roxie Roker, and he’s my dad, Sy Kravitz.
Dad’s a thirty-nine-year-old journalist-producer for NBC News at 30 Rockefeller Center, in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. Years before, he started out as a page in this same building before working his way up. He’s a self-starter. A former Army Green Beret who saw action in the Korean War, he’s also a member of the Reserve. His parents, Joe and Jean Kravitz, live in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, with many other Jews of Russian descent.
Dad’s divorced with two daughters. He lives alone in a $350-a-month one-bedroom apartment at 5 East Eighty-Second Street, just off Central Park on the Upper East Side. A graduate of New York University, he’s a sharp dresser and a consummate charmer. He loves music, especially jazz, and theater. He has his artistic side, but it’s overpowered by order and discipline.
It’s at 30 Rock where he meets Roxie Roker, age thirty-four. My mom is a soulful, deeply elegant person. An Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority member and drama major, she graduated from Howard University with honors before studying at the Shakespeare Institute at Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and joining a theater company in Copenhagen. She performs in Off-Broadway productions and supports herself working as an assistant to a high-ranking NBC boss. She’s the ultimate executive secretary: efficient and graceful in every manner.
She has inherited the work ethic of her parents. Her Bahamian father, a self-made man, and her Georgia-born mother, who works as a domestic, own the home where she was raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.
Roxie has never dated a white man before. But it’s not my father’s skin color that bothers her. It’s the fact that they work in the same office. She’s also a little uneasy knowing he’s been married and divorced. And the fact that he doesn’t seem very close to his daughters. She is skeptical of his nature.
Dad takes Mom to a Broadway revival of The Crucible; they catch Thelonious Monk at the Five Spot; they see Alvin Ailey at City Center; they hear Langston Hughes read at the 92nd Street Y. Sy and Roxie are kindred spirits. He’s determined to win her affection.
You see, now that he’s found the most beguiling woman in New York City, Sy is confident. Roxie is intrigued and flattered by all the attention. She’s delighted to have someone trek downtown to see her act in avant-garde plays. She’s taken by his enthusiasm and perseverance, qualities that her own father taught her to appreciate.
Mom has dreams and ambitions. She is a bright young star: a talented, trained actress and a person of passion and poise. She suggests and later insists that Sy reach out to his two daughters and reconnect with them. For her, it’s a deal breaker. He agrees, and despite his trepidation, a bond is forged.
In an alchemical way, Sy’s and Roxie’s dreams meld. They fall head over heels. He proposes. The next night, my mom goes to the Café Carlyle, on Madison Avenue, to consult with her dear buddy Bobby Short, the iconic cabaret singer and pianist. What does he think about her marrying Sy?
In his grand manner, Short responds, “Well, I don’t see anyone else asking.”
The wedding is a humble affair that Dad’s parents, heartbroken that their son is marrying a Black woman (and a gentile to boot), refuse to attend. It takes my birth to bring them around. I love knowing that without doing a thing except existing, I bring peace to my family.
GEMINI
I am deeply two-sided: Black and white, Jewish and Christian, Manhattanite and Brooklynite.
My young life was all about opposites and extremes. As a kid, you take everything in stride. So, I accepted my Gemini soul. I owned it. In fact, I adored it. Yins and yangs mingled in various parts of my heart and mind, giving my life balance and fueling my curiosity, giving me comfort.
Though nightmares haunted me throughout childhood, once I was awake, I was ready to go. Awake and alive. Looking to explore. Looking for adventure. Many people remember their early years filled with trauma. Despite the drama and dysfunction I will regale you with, my story is not one born of darkness. My youth was filled with joy, and I was surrounded by what felt like endless, unconditional love. From my mother, from a dozen glamorous godmothers, from grandparents, from neighbors who felt like aunts and uncles, from sisters and cousins and friends who became my chosen family.
My father cared for me deeply as well, but it took me a while to realize it. He didn’t know how to show me affection, and our relationship was strained because we were just so different. He lived in a framework of extreme discipline. I ran free. I was born messy and feral, like most little kids. Dad hated clutter and would scold me at the sight of a single toy left on the floor.
The thing is, the discipline never took. He was stubborn, and so was I. That quality we shared. I had a kind of rambunctious will that couldn’t be locked down. He had the kind of authority that couldn’t be challenged. Dad and I worked toward deeply disparate goals with equal fervor. Our differences would only deepen as time went on. It is only in recent years that I have begun to understand our incredible similarities. I am so grateful for his place in my life. He never ran out on me. He was there at critical times, offering me critical help. Our impasses were epic, but, as a result, I grew stronger. I simply would not be who I am today without those power struggles. As ugly as our battles became, they were an education. I had to go through Dad to become me.