Carrie's Phenomenal Journey

By Carrie Whitfield

Carries Phenomenal Journey vicariously takes you along on this wild journey of love. We stroll Parisian streets; hike the sandy roads of Niamey, Niger; mingle with people; and immerse ourselves in cultures. Sometimes we watch, laugh, or sigh and assimilate together.

I opened Carries Phenomenal Journey and was smitten with a young African American girls dream of an education. I followed this heroineand I dont use that word lightlythrough falling in love to the betrayal and divorce. Carries dream had not died, and soon she found hope and fulfillment in education and a promising career in education. But life was nowhere over. I celebrated as Carrie moves to Paris to study the language in preparation for her service in Niger, West Africa. I flew over the Sahara desert with Carrie, saw the blue men of the Taureg, and clapped with the colorful tribe women under Carries nurturing wing. As her days in the field came to a close Carrie returns to family and creating a home in Jacksonville, Florida.

Carol ODell, author of Mothering Mother: A Daughters Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir

An informative and entertaining book written by someone who spent years living with the peoples of Africa.

AMCS Louis Myers, USN Retired

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jan 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490818757

Carrie Whitfield

Carrie Whitfield marries and lives through the trials and joy of an increasing family. After the marriage falls apart, Carrie achieves her goal of an education and security. In the middle of career advancements, a call takes her to Paris and on an African adventure that reveals her ultimate life’s mission.

Book preview

Prologue

Readers:

Life’s span carries each of us on a journey. Each choice or decision adjusts or Modify the direction and the length of that passage. I write this Phenomenal Journey to carry you along. To have you experience with me the overwhelming joy of a journey that began in the mid fifties.

Cities now in post war recovery boomed with commerce, trade and a jubilant nightlife. The bigger the city the more the attraction for the migrant, the young an adventurous an impressionable that flocked to its shores as steel to magnet. New York City, my hometown boasted of being the largest culturally diverse and industrially prosperous city in the world and of its superior educational systems. Somewhere in this mid fifties environment the young and impressionable, believes the hype. I being young had the audacity to believe that I could do what no one in my close family had done. I had the confidence that I could accomplish whatever I set my mind to do. And of such dreams churned the power of Carrie’s Phenomenal Journey.

Bon Voyage,

Carrie Whitfield – Educator

Administrator

Missionary

CHAPTER 1

Blue Men Encounter

Beep, Beep,

I step off the porch and into a worn jeep.

Good you can be with us this evening, says Betty, a demure brunette from the back seat. Her two young daughters sit besides her on either side.

Next stop- Tuareg settlement, says her husband, a dirty blond with a receding hairline and a deep voice.

They are the Blue Men. Led caravans across the Desert dressed in blue? I ask.

Still have that National Geographic Magazine article at home, Betty continues, Exotic vagabonds of the Sahara.

It’s hard to forget those veiled knights, Corey says. Blue men pictured high atop camels with photographers below, while the caravan of precious cargo stretch like a line across desert sand.

But they can’t cross the desert anymore, says perky six-year old Amanda.

Cause it’s bigger.

Yea, too big to cross, says four-year old Patty, then hides behind her mom.

After a few yards along a dirt road, the jeep turns onto Main Street that connects outlying sections with downtown. We drive across a long, wide, now, almost empty bridge above the Niger River. A cool breeze flows through the windows. The river around us shimmers golden ripples of moonlight. I gaze into its waters. Thoughts of a desert too dry, too wide to cross flow through my mind: life-altering thoughts of a moment that changes the direction of one’s journey. A thought, deep as a river flows.

In one such moment, the Tuaregs realize their profitable desert niche has become obsolete and uninhabitable and they leave the desert behind. Could this traditionally nomadic tribe embrace a suburban like life-style or would they find the everyday struggles of that place too wide to phantom? I’ve been there, myself: know the place well. A desert that makes sand of your dreams: suck you in and spew you out into a haramattan windstorm. I’ve been there. The day my dreams dissolved into sand. Back in the 50’s, I remember that day.

My journey began late May 1954 across a modern concourse on a side street. A bell rings and students burst through doors out into the street. Scurry into apartment buildings or down long side streets like the one I take. Apartment houses line both side of the one-way street that ends a mile below at a busy park. I hurry along. An empty book bag dangle in one hand, a brown official envelop in the other.

One credit short of graduation, the counselor had said. You won’t graduate unless you attend summer school. A wry smile crosses her lips.

Once a year she sent for me.

You’re smart enough to land an office job if you try, the counselor said, inspecting me above wide rimmed glasses and dyed blond hair.

1You could even land an office job. I’ll change your track to vocational. Get you ready for and office.

Papa said I’m going to college, I lied each year, aware that counselors pushed all minority students into vocational courses. Now, here I am, one credit short of an academic high school diploma. Even with summer school, I never made up the full year’s credit the School Board took from all migrant students from southern school systems back in the forties.

You’ll get a diploma if you attend and pass summer school, the counselor said, with that wry smile.

Since junior high I worked all my spare time at Kay Bookstore. Mr. Kay, a kind old Jewish, would-be businessman offers a small but staple supply of books, magazines, comic books and toys in his little store along the intersection. In winter months his son comes from Florida with expanded supplies of up-to-date gadgets and toys. The store became a second home. A place I could mingle with neighboring families, or escape into the fascinating world of books and interesting people and children. And I used the extra income to buy clothes for school.

Near the bottom of the hill, I pause in front of our apartment. Enter the p111assageway that leads to the superintendent’s quarters. Papa landed the job because he passed for white. His light complexion, sky blue eyes and sandy thin hair along with a soft refined, obliging voice he learned serving on the railroad made him acceptable in this almost white neighborhood. It wasn’t until mama arrived that eyes buck. A medium height brown skinned, busty woman with a pompadour hair do, answers the doorbell one day.

"Mr. Mayer please, said a short Jewish woman in her fifties.

I smell gas in my apartment, two C.

I’ll tell him, Mama says. Did you check the pilots lights, refrigerator or stove?

You finish work and you go home. I wait outside for Mr. Mayer, she says.

This is my home. I am Mrs. Mayer and you’re welcome to sit inside and wait.

"Oh? I mistook you for…for. She’s flushed.

The maid, Mama says. Come in and sit in the living room. You shouldn’t go into your apartment until it’s checked out.

Papa arrives later to find the ladies in the living room in deep conversation, discussing the country they both left behind. Two C, Mrs. Jacobs fled her country before and invading German army. Mama concealed hers in a reluctant overnight drive up north.

Mama never outgrew her small town southern upbringing. She remained the daughter of the late minister Joshua Summers, who nourished a community around the church he built. Somehow, she managed to turn New York City into her new neighborhood.

Everybody’s some mother’s child, she’d say to my father’s dismay. And she befriended everyone, everyone but the drunkard. She had no tolerance for their indulgence. While the neighborhood accepted us, to some we became, half breeds, though we cared little about those opinions. We had our friends.

At the apartment door I pause to catch my breath and to resettle my nerves because I didn’t want to upset my parents or sound ungrateful. They had provided for me - given me an education in good schools and I was grateful but, it couldn’t end here, I wouldn’t let it end here. My dream of graduation couldn’t end one credit short of a diploma.

I sit on the red floral couch, facing two large windows with sunlight gleaming through white lace curtains reflecting light across the worn but clean linoleum floor. A newspaper on the coffee table read, "Eisenhower’s latest interstaing, delayed. I couldn’t concentrate on his concerns until I found a solution for my own.

My mind was stuck on graduation and a college education. I couldn’t recall all of the dropouts that crossed my path in the past. I would not become one of them. The children of every migrant group precede their parents in achievement and climb the ladder of success. I can at least graduate high school with a diploma and other opportunities open up. I brace myself and hold my breath.

Papa stands in the doorway and his tall imposing figure fills the room. He wears his stripped blue railroad cap, high bibbed overalls and black workmen’s boots after all his years in the city and I replay his often-repeated phrase.

You can take the people out of the country, but you cannot take the country out of the people, applied to him and the railroad, as well. He was a railroad man in the middle of New York City. A railroad man, still.

With a thin smile, without meeting his eye, I hand him the report card.

His gaze passes me. Eyes fixed on the artificial fireplace on the opposite wall that became a niche for my grandfather’s portrait. Mama’s most cherished possessions. I hold my breath and wait an eternity.

School’s over for you, young lady, he says in his abrupt way. The abrasive voice used to end a dispute between him and the landlord, or an unruly tenant. The same abrasive voice he uses on me.

Get yourself a full time job. School’s over for you. And without even a glance towards me, he leaves the room. The report card fall to the floor, unnoticed. I sit in the room, watch it grow dark. Watch the sunrays recede across the linoleum floor and out the window. A cold chill covers me as a tear rinses away my childlike thoughts. I too begin the same journey my other siblings had taken at my age, without a hope of a better ending.

CHAPTER 2

Midnight Insight

The old green Ford swerves off the Grand Concourse. Down the narrow one-way block and flies past darkened buildings on shadowy dark streets. The car pulls to the curb and stops in an abrupt stop in front of an apartment house. The North Star alone shines through a hazy sky. Silence covers the streets. Andrew slides over to my side his hands enclose mine. Arms reach out to me.

"No, I’m late and you’re fast.

Another time then? he asks, hesitant to remove his hands.

It’s late and I must get inside. Thank you for the lift, I say open the door and hop out, rush into the passage way to our house. It was late.

Tap, Tap. The light over the door clicks on after a few minutes lapse.

Sorry I’m so late Mama, it’s me.

The door doesn’t open. I peep through the peephole and a blue eye stares back.

Where ever you’ve been till this hour of the morning, go back there.

My heart thump, thumps, again, not Papa.

You bold enough to break the rule, then you bad enough to take what comes with it, he shouts. The light clicks off.

I stand outside in darkness and the silence of early morning. I’m locked out. A pale moon hangs in the distant while two cats howl across the backyard fence, both in attack mode. The howls begin while I try the door again.

Papa. I take a deep sigh and the events that brought me to this overdue confrontation flash across my mind for a second. Gilda.

You’re and actress? I say and stare at the pretty girl. Hear her calypso toned, musically accented Trinidadian voice, smell the sweet fragrance of her perfume and see the smile in her eyes.

An actress and a part time waitress, she says.

And you work in this restaurant?

Most of the restaurants in the Big Apple’s crowded with part time theatre people, she says and casts a naïve look over me. It’s how we survive the slow seasons or afford that one special designer original everyone dreams of. Serves its purpose, she says.

I watch her deep dark eyes, above layered makeup expertly applied. See her bobbed black hair and the newest shade of lipstick. Admire the tall slender body under the coarse uniform.

You’re pretty, I say and are you on Broadway now?

Haven’t made limelight of The Broadway, yet. We’re at little theatre off Broadway. Mr. Charlie’s the production. Have you seen it?

It’s on my agenda.

I feel the warmth she eludes towards me and return the smile.

Haven’t had a chance to see the show yet, I say. I plan to catch a Sunday matinee first chance I get. I’ll make it this weekend. Sundays are my only free day.

We no longer do Sunday matinees, she says. But…. Her eyes drift off somewhere distant. I have, …yes, one free pass to Saturday night’s performance. Can you come?"

Well, I’m not sure. My mind races around for a possible solution for the time factor but without one. Then a boldness surges through me. Yes, I will come.

Saturday evening, dressed in a simple yet becoming turquoise dress, fluff my pageboy hair do a little, apply a second coat of lipstick and slip into my fancy matching shoes. I caution Mama that I’d be home late. The theatre was way downtown near Forty-second Street in Manhattan and I would have to wait on subways to get back up to the Bronx, or take a taxi, if necessary.

Keep an ear open for me, I say. I’ll see how time works out, but it’ll still be late.

Mama, in the kitchen kneading dough for biscuits, nods. She’s super.

Downtown in the swank ruby red interior of the little theatre off Broadway I’m delighted to have an orchestra seat down front near the stage and wowed by the glitter, the ostentatious show of luxury and familiarity that the audience seemed to exude as they chat and mingle together. Their buzz sounds like a contented beehive. I settle in my plush seat, pleased, and wait.

That’s not your seat, a short, deep toned, Trinidadian woman says. It has reserved on it, can’t you see that.

Reserved for me, I say and remain seated with the intension of an explanation.

No. You find another seat or I’ll call the usher.

I have a ticket, I say.

Not for this seat. Move. She stands and motions for the usher occupied in the rear’s attention. She’s draped in a deep purple dinner skirt and pumpkin orange satin blouse. Her round face matches her ample body while a native accented voice rises high and deep.

Reserved for me, I say then begin to explain but she searches around for the usher. Rather than make a scene I decide to ignore her and stay seated when lights flood the stage and music flows throughout the theatre. Mr. Charlie’s world comes alive on stage with a light musical comedy that illuminates the black-white chicanery in a small southern town during The Depression years. It centers around a tragic love story. The music, the chirography, the show itself was Broadway quality and the audience laughs and applauds their approval.

At the end of the performance I make my way to the dressing room to thank Gilda. Other performers, still in costumes, surround her. Most show a family resemblance while their conversations are casual and familiar between them. Her short, round mother and tall dashing, accented speech father welcome me. I under stood little of what he says while they all laugh and joke together, one big family reaffirm each other behind dressing screens and wide lit-up mirrors. Then I notice the squat woman in the purple and orange blouse that sat next to me.

What are you doing back here? she demand, her face frowned, eyes squinted.

And, who are you? I ask, tired of her regal attitude.

She’s my co-worker, Auntie. I gave her the pass, Gilda says, otherwise it would have been wasted.

The lady in the pumpkin dress continues to mumble but now to herself.

A co-worker, you work with Gilda? her mother says. Come with us to Uncle Leo’s store, have some food and we’ll get acquainted, Gilda’s mother smiles a broad smile while gentle eyes greet me. She’s tall and looks a lot like Gilda, a dressing robe covers her slender body. A typical mother, I sigh.

I can’t stay. Got to get home, it’s already late. I had to thank Gilda before leaving and I’m so happy to meet you all but…

But, you must stay. We want to know you better, her mother says. No more talk you come with us for refreshments.

The orange-purple lady slips out the side door while the persuasion continues, from both parents.

I can’t. Must get home because it’s already late. Thank you all for a lovely evening. I walk to the door.

Oh, you must stay. Gilda doesn’t have a lot of friends her own age. Please stay awhile.

She comes over and hugs me. Stay awhile.

I explain that I’m alone and have to travel up to the Bronx and that trains are slow at this hour and my mother won’t sleep until I arrive.

We live in the Bronx too, Monroe Avenue, right off the Grand Concourse.

I’m a few blocks down, so you know the distance.

Don’t worry, she says and beckons to a bright-eyed young man at the door, Andrew, her younger son with a full head of dark curls, though formally dressed hurries over. He’ll drive you home," her mother says.

Now here I am, a cast out on the doorsteps after all the years and maneuvers around this iron clad door rule. The door safety double-locks at twelve o’clock until clicked off in the morning. Locked out until late morning. This dumb rule went into effect with World War II and has outlived its time. I rang the bell and waited. A light inside clicks on again. A sliver of light appears through a creak and I duck through into the dim light inside. There waits Papa.

Big limp hands hang alongside blue-stripped pajamas and sad blue eyes express betrayal. A 25watt bulb casts shadowy figures across the cement wall behind him. He’s aged. I gaze at his Santa tummy, though the body’s slim. Remember the Alka-Seltzers he gobbles down after each meal. Papa’s old and not well. Papa. Mama stands in the apartment doorway and her wise, but tired eyes follow me in silence. She’s weathered many a storms and always in silence. Her concern always for others, for the solitude of her home, her family and that encompasses the world around her. Mama. Shame covered me. They don’t deserve this, this miserable scene. They deserve better. I’ve got to think of how I can help them. It’s time to undergird them, their needs.

Go rest yourself child, Mama says.

Mama, I’ll make breakfast this morning, I say.

No you will not, Papa says. "Mama cooks for me. You out all night and come in to cook breakfast