William Smith’s Writing
William Smith, Oakland, CA. Courtesy of William Smith.
People Who Died
I grew up on the same corner, 64th Ave. & E 14th St. (now Int’l Blvd.), where the local news reported a three-year-old being shot to death in a drive-by the other day. So, with me it’s like a real-life version of that Jim Carroll song, except, unlike the protagonist, I’ve remained relatively passionless over the years as I hear the local news and gossip report the violent deaths of neighborhood and school toughs, one by one. They were all my bullies, and they died: Maurice (first ever drive-by victim on 64th Ave., in 1977), his younger brother, Cederic (stabbed to death by a girl he was trying to rape), James Mitchell (shot while robbing a gang hideout), Jerry Parkin (beaten to death in jail by four cops after beating up three other cops), Keith Edwards (“Rabbit,” and hunted down like one), Russell Thurmond Jr. (son of 1969’s king of Whittier Elementary School, murdered around the corner from there in 2011), Danny Lovett (killed by a rival pimp), and Terry Broadnax (who actually got slit in the jugular vein; I feared him more than all the others and still get recurring nightmares of the brother).
Willie Nichols and William Smith (Nichols). Photo courtesy of William Nichols.
Funeral Tribute
Hello. My name is William Nichols. I am the third child of Willie Jean Dangerfield Nichols. I was born the day after Momma turned 21. She wasn’t able to keep me at that time. But, 52 years later thanks to my big brother Nick on Facebook (!), we found each other. And I found a big, beautiful family, cousins, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, great-grand-nephews, aunties, and seven crazy brothers and sisters. And by amazing grace, Momma and I have had a blessed 2 1/2 years. However much time could never be enough, but we made the best of it. Many beautiful mother and son moments together. Even when all we could do was talk on the phone, Momma would always ask me to describe where I was, because she wanted to see through my eyes, and now that we had found each other, she wanted it to feel like we were never separated again. Like all of you know, our Momma was a very motherly woman, but she was also like a partner you could hang with and laugh and joke with about anything, and I do mean anything. Since we are in a house of the lord, I’ll keep some of those jokes between me and her.
But, I will repeat some of Momma’s favorite phrases every chance I get: Shucky Ducky. Well, Damn. Don’t Fret, My Pet. That’s a Good Thing. We liked to laugh at the same things, and we found out we had other things in common. Like, Momma always said she felt very bashful around a lot of people. Me too. Very nervous to be up here. But I’m proud to be bashful like her, because I’m grateful to be anything like her. Most of all, I pray it’s her generous spirit I also inherit. Momma knew that nobody is perfect. She did not believe in judging people. She was very adamant about not doing that. Unless you messed with family. Then she would sho nuff be ready to get you told. But Momma shared with me, as often as she could, that she believed, very simply, this one thing: from the book of St. Matthew, 7:1, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” And this from 6:14: “If you forgive and have mercy for others, Christ will forgive and have mercy on you.”
I’ll end by sharing just one of my favorite moments with Momma. A couple of years ago I was showing her where I grew up in East Oakland. We went to dinner in the neighborhood and a panhandler came in, looking all broke down. Everybody at every table just waving him on. But when he got to us Momma said, “You hungry? Come on here and sit down, baby.” See, she didn’t waste no time. Momma got right up, gave him her seat, and gave him her food.
My wife Lisa, our family, and I, loved Momma and she loved us. And she loved all y’all.
They say my Momma is an angel now, but Momma was already an angel right here on this Earth, her heart bigger than the whole sky.
Thank you and bless each and every one of you.
William Smith in grade school, Oakland, CA.
Maternal Life
Beatrice Davenport, a middle-aged woman and my adoptive mother, was raped at knifepoint while I, a five-year-old, lay in bed next to her. She never reported it because, having been a black sex worker, Bea knew reporting such an event in 1965 would only bring worse trauma. Trauma she struggled to shield her small child from as best she could. It had taken a village of uncertainty.
A madam running a local brothel, my adoptive mother had also been a member of the local black church community. In that community five years earlier was 20-year-old Willie Jean Nichols. As a young married woman who had been left alone with no support from a military husband stationed overseas, Willie Jean was briefly involved with an older man and became pregnant. With typical self-righteous chauvinist piety, which was anything but pious, the “hero” attacked Willie Jean for not being willing to leave her husband for him even though her husband had virtually abandoned her. She threw him down a flight of stairs and left him licking his chivalrous wounds.
Willie Jean’s father, a prominent local pastor with typical patriarchal self-righteous piety, which was anything but pious, the “loving father” tried to force her to have an abortion. Willie Jean was pro-choice. And it was her choice to refuse her father’s insistence that she save his reputation as a Christian minister. She was determined to give birth. The preacher then traded community reputation for village practicality and put his daughter under the care of Bea, the madam who was also a member of the black West Oakland Baptist church community, and childless. Bea let young Willie Jean stay in the back of her West Oakland Victorian brothel in 1960 while pregnant with me. Not one of the girls, but still just a girl.
Bea knew that Willie Jean would not be able to raise the child. She still had a husband, delinquent, yet her co-parent with two other children. They were a military family and he would return from his station in Japan soon.
Having been unable to bear children, Bea now saw an opportunity to at least bear witness. The church lady madam shut down the brothel and became my legal guardian and eventually adoptive mother.
After I was born the day after Willie Jean’s 21st birthday, the two women made a decision only survivors under 300,000 years of patriarchal rule had developed the wisdom and heart to make. Share two separate stages of motherhood on behalf of a baby with zero fatherhood times two. After I was born, Willie Jean returned to her husband and eventually six other children together.
Bea had to struggle at first to get free of her past life. Being raped at knifepoint was just one of the many consequences of inescapable oppression. A strong woman and loving mother, she survived the perpetual disenfranchisement of women to raise me with unbridled, unbittered and unbroken love. She married a widower, John Smith, when I was seven. It takes a village. My beloved mother, Beatrice Davenport Smith, passed away from cancer in 1979, when I was 18. I had felt so close, I took 50 of the sleeping pills she left behind. I woke up anyway, the transitive stubborn love of two mothers. In 2013, my wife Lisa, said, “find your birth mom, find yourself.” Through Facebook I found my birth family. Willie Jean had survived cancer twice in hopes of finding me again. We were reunited when I was 52, and we had 2 1/2 years of eternal bonding until Willie Jean passed away from leukemia in February 2016. I was very close to both of my mothers. Because of Beatrice and Willie Jean, l have lived the best kind of forever, a maternal life.
Published in 2018 by Cassandra Rockwood-Rice in Rag Zine 9 and by Amos White in Bay Area Generations 64. I performed a live read of it on Dec. 17, 2018: “International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.”