The Measure of a Man (15 page)

Then we went to New York, and on opening night the energy was at its apex. The director saw it, but he wouldn’t characterize the added excitement he sensed as coming from the way I had played the role. The producer saw it too, but he said it was just a great night. The playwright was in the audience, and I went out and helped her up on the stage so that all the world could see this magnificent young woman, this gifted person. She assumed that the incredible night of theater we’d all just experienced was as she wrote it.

Well, I say it played well because there was something special in the conviction I held, and I carried it from Chicago to New York.

There’s special moment in the third act, just before the end. They had put a down payment on a house before they lost the money, but a man comes to tell them that they’re not wanted in that neighborhood. My character, the son, has to stand up and talk to this man. He’s talking to this man about his family. After a given point in the speech, he says, “This is my mother.” Then he says, “This is my sister.” And then he says, “This is my wife,—and she is”—pride, pain, and love overpower him and he’s not able to get her name out. And by the time he turns to his son, his emotions are more than any words could express. The tears roll down his cheeks and he begins to cry. He gestures to the boy, but the words won’t come out, and finally he forces out the words. He says, “This is my son,” and the house goes nuts, you hear me?

I know from my own experience that when a guy is just afraid, and he wishes to succeed
because he’s afraid of failure
,
that’s not much of a commitment. But there’s another kind of drive to succeed. I think of my father, going from bar to bar selling his cigars, probing my arm because he’s worried that I’m not getting enough to eat. Then sitting down to write a letter to his eldest son, telling him that he’s no longer able to control and guide his youngest, that he needs help. You find a man like that, with a need to do something that’s over and above his own ego-requirement—a need that’s for his
family
, as he sees it—and you get every ounce of his energy. When a man says, “This is for my
child
,” you get over and above that which he thinks he’s capable of.

My father was with me every moment as I performed in
A Raisin in the Sun
. The themes, too, seemed like so many threads from my own life. The days in Nassau and Miami and New York when I seemed to be in such a downward spiral and there was no promise of resurrection. All the risks I took, all the brushes with destruction. I know how much it pained my family, but there was nothing they could do. It was this art form that saved me. Ultimately, by taking even greater risks—by going to New York and then by choosing a life in the theater—I came through. And it wasn’t just for myself. It was for Reggie too.

My work reflects that respect for the bloodline. When I commit to a job, I go into a kind of hibernating mode. I start with the script. I read it. And I don’t just lie around and skim it, mind you; I read it with no distractions, in a very quiet place. In my mind I go to work, and the words on the page, the descriptions, the words of the characters, the words of
my
character—my mind’s eye takes all these and creates visual images. So I
look at all of the images and scenes and backgrounds at the same time I’m looking at the needs and the wants and the fears and the hopes and the dreams of the characters, mine included. And during each reading of the script I remember first impressions. By the third or fourth or fifth reading of the script, first impressions have given way to richer and more detailed images, and then I start taking on the words that create these images in my feelings. When there’s a contradiction in a speech, behavior, or text that relates to my character I go on a long search trying to find a way to bridge that contradiction by not changing the author’s words. Because sometimes the flaw is in the actor not the words.

I look for themes that say something positive and useful about the human condition. I look for that material; I draw all of me into it. When I first read
A Patch of Blue
, what attracted me to it was the attempt to salvage a human life, and the depiction of the amount of energy such an effort can take. But I think that, in an effort like that, life itself is the central force. The energy expended by all the players in that movie was directed to extending ourselves and enlarging ourselves so that we could partake of that preexisting force.

In that film the girl had no sight, so—metaphorically at least—the seat of her soul was elsewhere. Her ears and her fingers were employed in service to her soul. Through those senses, she could preceive dangers of every kind—hear it in people’s voices; feel it in the air. She wanted to be a whole person, but she was in a world that didn’t give a shit. Then she happened, by chance, to cross paths with a man who knew
quite a bit about how little the world did or didn’t care about a lot of things, and he took the time to give a little of himself to someone in need. By doing that, he saved her life. It’s that simple,
that simple
.

Now, I think the lasting value of the movie was the comment it made, not about me or any of the other characters, but ultimately about humankind. It may sound perfunctory, or simplistic, or even naïve, but I think it’s fair and useful to observe that there are wonderful things about our species. My feeling is borne out by the fact that the picture still appears on television periodically, and people are still moved by it. We’re talking about something captured on film more than thirty years ago. The life of that girl and the life of this guy are informing people who weren’t even born when the film was made.

I was thirty-nine years old when that film was released. Now, at seventy-two, I don’t think a month goes by that I don’t hear from three or four people about that movie. Either they saw it years ago and remember it as one of the most moving films they’ve seen, or they’ve just seen it and love it. “Whatever happened to that girl?” they often ask. Many of these people who talk to me about the film are now thirty-five years old, thirty, twenty-two—and they’re seeing it for the first time. And they don’t just say, “Oh, I remember that picture, yeah,” and go on to something else. They say, “That was with the blind girl. Oh, yes, that’s right, and you stopped in the park with her, and you really took care of her. That was really nice. I liked that picture.”

I come to
A Patch of Blue
with a fondness and with a sense of satisfaction that I was a part of that piece of work then, that I was knowingly,
knowingly
a part of it over and above the professionalism. I, as well as Guy Green and Pandro Berman and the others, we all embraced it. We all chose to be a part of it because of the value we saw in it.

Freud once said that life is love and work. But if you do
bad
work, it can’t provide the meaning in your life that you need from it. I feel most critical of myself when I notice any trace of slovenliness in my work. My work is
me
, and I try my damnedest to take very good care of me, because I’m taking care of more than just the me that one sees. I’m taking care of the me that represents a hell of a lot more than me. I’m taking care of Evelyn, you hear me? And I’m taking care of Reggie.

BACK IN THE HEYDAY of my acting career, I took a vacation in Acapulco with my agent Marty Baum and some other dear friends. On a gorgeous afternoon, Marty and I left our wives roasting under the tropical sun and went for a swim forty feet offshore. A solitary lifeguard was perched on top of a wooden lookout tower, but he was engrossed in a magazine, not us. Like two carefree adolescents joyfully skinny-dipping in a water hole, we splashed about in the bright blue ocean, clowning and laughing.

Life didn’t get any better than this. For a moment there, it was all peace and plenty. We were on top of the world, enjoying the pleasures that, after years of hard work, seemed only our due.

After about fifteen minutes of this blissfulness offshore, we began to breaststroke our way back to the beach. But by now something had changed. When we had first entered the water, we had been surprised to find that the beach didn’t
gradually
descend into the sea. Instead, it plummeted straight down a sheer wall of sand, falling quickly from about knee depth to a depth of fourteen feet or so.

Now, as we headed back toward shore, the water temperature was different. The currents were different too. As we came within a few feet of the wall of sand, a turbulence from below started pulling at our legs—pulling
forcefully
. Scared to death, we swam harder, but for all our thrashing we made no progress. Then the ocean rose up beneath us. It wasn’t a wave on the surface of the water. It was a raging, thundering swell that lifted off the floor of the sea and slammed itself against the wall of sand, then exploded upward and over onto the beach in a mighty rush of foaming waters. The momentum of that angry wave yanked us free of the undercurrents that were pulling at our legs and flung us violently into the shallows of the beach. Relieved to feel the sand under our feet, we started wading through the receding water on our way to higher ground and safety, up toward the ridge where our wives were sunbathing, paying us no mind.

But then the receding water took hold. With increasing momentum it overpowered us, pulling us back toward the sea. In a panic, we clawed at the sand, trying desperately to plant our feet against the pull of the ocean. But we were outmatched, sucked back to the edge of the wall and pushed fourteen feet
down to the bottom. The churning undertow twirled us around like rag dolls in a washing machine. For seven or eight seconds it held us there until another incoming wave, thundering along on the floor of the sea, smashed into the wall of sand, reversed the momentum, and pushed us up again to the surface and onto the beach. Once more we scrambled to our feet, wading and clawing our way upward in another desperate effort to get free of the tide. But again the ocean reversed its momentum. Again we were pushed back down along the wall of sand to the bottom of the sea, back into the turmoil of the undertow.

By now we knew the intervals between waves. The seconds ticked away. We held our breath and prayed that another swell would toss us up again. One more chance, please, God. Then it came, smashing into the wall, pushing us ahead of it and once more onto the beach. We wasted no time checking on each other. It was every man for himself, running, wading, clawing, scrambling with the tide. We got as far up the beach as we could before the moment of truth. We dug in and braced ourselves. We cried and prayed, and I’m sure I called at least once for my mother.

Then the tide reversed, causing billions of grains of sand to swirl around our legs and erode out from under our feet, loosening our grip on life. With every ounce of strength left in us, we tried to hold our ground, but there was no holding against that tide. It had come to take us down for the last time.

We screamed for our wives, their eyes closed against the sun, and we screamed for the lifeguard, still focused on his magazine. They didn’t hear us. And then it came again, the sea,
pulling us back into itself, and down we went for the third time. And then, amid the violent turning and twisting in that undertow, serenity began to enfold me. “O God,” I thought, “has my time really come? Is this sense of well-being here to ease me through that final barrier?”

No answer. Just turmoil. “Lord, I ain’t ready to die here,” I confessed. “I’m simply not ready. I’m
certainly
not ready to die on the beach in Acapulco.” There seemed to be seven or eight seconds between waves. I prayed, “O Lord, don’t let the wave be late. If we’re forced to breathe down here, it will be all over. Let it come on time; please, Father, don’t let it be late. A few seconds off the mark and we’ll be done for.”

Suddenly the wave arrived, with no time to spare, and it smashed into the wall of sand and jettisoned us up to the surface and onto the beach. I checked to see if Marty had made it up this time. I spotted him ten feet away, half-conscious. The man had started to take in water. He was coughing from having tried to hold his breath beyond endurance, and he was turning blue. Now I had to scream for both of us; Marty no longer had the strength. I screamed and screamed and screamed.

At long last that dummy on top of the tower looked up, saw the situation, and started down the steps. But he was coming down at a rate that said clearly, Oh, shit, why do you guys have to interrupt my reading? As he sauntered over I screamed, yelled, and struggled to hold on. The unrelenting sea paid no heed. Marty Baum and I were swallowed up once more. But this time at least I knew that somebody was coming. I had to hang on.

I was tossed forward and backward and twirled and spun, but I hung on and waited. It was like an underwater sandstorm down there. I could only hold my breath and close my eyes and hope. With consciousness fixed on my last view of the lifeguard strolling in our direction, I managed to hang on until the next wave brought me up, I was too weak to do anything more than look over toward the lifeguard, who was standing in the water waiting for Marty. When Marty came up this last time, the guard grabbed him and pulled against the tide. Miraculously, he was able to drag Marty up on the beach to safety.

In the meantime, I was dragged down once again. I had fought all I could. I found myself crossing over to a place where struggle was no longer necessary; all I could do was relax. I was pretty sure that if I got tossed up again, and if that lifeguard was there, I would be okay. Otherwise, I didn’t think there was anything I could do about it.

My children were on my mind each time I came up and each time I went back down. I worried about how they would get their education, how they would manage. Would their mother be able to get a job and continue to make a home for them? How would my family react back in Nassau when they heard that I’d drowned? All this was going through my mind as I held my breath. And while you may not be able to visualize this, take my word for it—I was turning blue.

One more time I was tossed up on the beach, and I opened my eyes to see a pair of legs in the sand. The lifeguard grabbed me and I grabbed him. He hung on to me for dear life, and after the water receded, he dragged me up and dropped me by
Marty, who by now was coughing and choking. We lay there side by side like two beached mackerels. Our wives came dashing over, and soon a doctor arrived on the scene and declared us to be okay.

We hadn’t been okay twenty minutes before we began laughing and telling jokes about it all. But I guarantee you there was no sacrilege in our laughter. Tears we had shed aplenty, and genuine prayers for mercy had filled our hearts while nature held our fragile existence in the balance for an absolutely critical few minutes. A reprieve had been granted, and we knew it.

Close calls like this—“Nearer, my God, to thee” moments—inevitably make us stop and take stock. Almost invariably, the calibrations by which we measure ourselves move inward. It often takes a near-death experience like ours to make us realize how simple life is, how few the essentials really are. We love; we work; we raise our families. Those are the areas of significance in our individual lives. And love and work and family are the legacy we leave behind when our little moment in the sun is gone.

We never had a pot to piss in when I was small, but my parents left me great riches in the form of a childhood that’s traveled with me down every path I’ve taken. Ironically, though, there may be more to the legacy of Evelyn and Reggie Poitier than love and warmth and the solid ground beneath my feet.

When my father died, he made me the executor of his estate, and in sorting out his affairs, I went back to the time when it first became possible for blacks to own land in the Bahamas,
which was 1858. Because of the vestiges of colonial possession, the ownership of land in these islands has always been fraught with mystery, but back a century and a half there were several ways in which black families could obtain land.

In some cases, slaveowning families would simply bequeath land to their former chattel. In other cases, as the plantation system began to falter, families would abandon land and sail back to England or the Carolinas, opening up their property to a kind of “squatter’s rights.” And finally, after 1858, once black people were allowed to own land, they could, over time, simply but it out of the few shillings a month they might earn.

My father, in his years on Cat Island, became caretaker for a certain portion of land. He was in charge of land on behalf of absentee landlords, who left him there to look after the land. He had a right to farm, and to take care of the paths that had to be cut with machetes, but caretakers too could work the land as much as they wished for their own needs. If, by chance, one of the owners lived on the land or visited there, then the caretaker had to supply the casabas and the beans and the peas and whatever for the landowner as well.

There’s a law in the Bahamas that states that if you can prove you were for a substantial amount of time once the caretaker of land now abandoned and unused by absent, former slaveowner families, you can, under certain provisions, claim rights to that land. That law is currently at play where my family is concerned, and ownership of several pieces of land is being adjudicated on the basis of my father’s verifiable service as caretaker and overseer. My dad also owned other land there outright. My
grandfather March owned land as well, and my grandfather’s father had owned land, having purchased it over time with earnings. In addition, my uncle David, who traded goods and ran a sort of grocery store, had acquired land through the barter system, meaning that, at times, he had traded groceries for land. When he died, this land went to my father.

Of course, the recordkeeping on Cat Island was problematic at best during the time in question. In the early days the colonials were very clever, and hardly any of the slaves could read very well. That combination spelled trouble for the rights of the blacks. If a white family had left certain property rights or a patch of land to a slave, the slave had only one place to go to prove that: to the records that were kept by the church (because the government kept no records for black people). So after it became known that slavery had ended and black people could own property
if they had the proper records
, whenever a black person wanted to assert rights to a piece of property, he had to say, “Well, in his will my master left me this piece of land here, and here’s where he marked it off. He marked it off here and here and here, and I have this piece of paper that shows…”

The black person would then have to go to a white person, who would put the claim in writing, and the former slave would have to put an X to the document. That would authenticate the claim in favor of the former slave. Well, an awful lot of that land was confiscated through the misuse of this trust, you know what I’m saying? Because the white person who was the scribe would just say, “This land was left to so and so,
and it is to be so and so and so and so, and I, so and so, declare that this is true.” Well, an unscrupulous person could put in that phrase anything he wanted to put in it, because who’s to say otherwise?

But despite all such chicanery in the past, and despite all the hardships and disappointments, if my family can substantiate our claim—and I believe we will—then it appears that Reggie Poitier will have left to his heirs a substantial portion of beachfront property on an unspoiled Caribbean island, an estate of not inconsiderable value.

The irony of the situation pleases me. It will be a marvelous vindication for my father if the land is declared his, and a testament to the importance of the bloodline, the primal connection, and to holding on for the long haul, through all the changes from one generation to the next.

WHEN I WENT BACK to the Bahamas after my time of ashes in New York, despite the joy I experienced on seeing my parents again after eight years, I had changed irrevocably. I stayed in a hotel. I didn’t wish to use the outhouse with its brown-paper-bag or green-leaf toilet paper. I didn’t want to have to carry water a quarter mile to have a wash-up. I didn’t want to have to build a fire to heat the water before I could take a bath. I wanted to turn a faucet and have limitless hot water. I wanted to flip a switch and have light. After eight years of struggle I was able to return to my father’s house, but in certain ways I was never able to go back home.

But looked at another way, it may be that I’m always “at home.” Thanks to the more fundamental legacy my parents gave me, I’m always at home because I’m the same person no matter where I am. I’m the same person at some Hollywood dinner that I was when I was being hassled by the cops in Miami or sleeping in a pay toilet in New York. It’s that consistent definition of self, I’m sure, that allowed me to get through the tough times, when others were more than happy to try to define me according to their own prejudices.

For some people this kind of situation would pose a wrenching conflict. You come from one place and you find yourself in another place. Which one represents who you really are? Oddly, for me, the answer is very simple. I’ve lived a lot of places, but in every place I’ve lived, what’s basic and fundamental in me has remained the same. The same guiding principles were operative on 5th Avenue as in Harlem; the same on 68th Street on the West Side as when I left Cat Island.