Chapter One
victoria williams"You people have so much fun now."
Victoria Williams, at 106 years old, was the size of atwelve-year-old girl. They brought her to me in a wheelchair. On theseat next to her was a black vinyl pocketbook, its stiff handleplaced up over her shoulder. Her lips were pressed tight together.She was angry.
The health aide pushing the chair rolled her eyes as she approachedme in the visitors lounge and said in a low voice, "We''ve had arough morning."
"Miss Williams, would you like a cookie?" she said, coming around tothe front of the chair.
"I want coffee," said Victoria Williams, loudly. The woman walkedoff without introducing us.
"Good morning," I said in my most chipper voice. Victoria Williamsstared at me like a bug, expressionless. I leaned toward her. Therewas a faint smell of urine.
"I''m the reporter who''s come to interview you."
"Interview me?"
"For radio. I just want to ask you some questions about your life."
Victoria Williams was the first centenarian I met. I had applied fora grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to interviewcentenarians and I needed a sample tape, to give the review panel anidea of what my radio series might sound like. I was in a hurry; thedeadline was soon.
I called the Washington Center for Aging Services, a huge home forthe elderly in Northeast D.C. It''s not the kind of place I wouldchoose to live in. The aides seemed caring but stretched hopelesslybeyond their means. I was taken to a lounge area where residents satsilently, some watching television, some in a stupor.
I was not surprised to find myself there for the first interview. Itmatched my stereotypes and I thought, This is what happens whenyou''re old if you have no place else to go. I expected to see manymore places like this. I also expected, at that time, that mostcentenarians would be like Victoria Williams.
The skin on her face was smooth and shiny and taut. She jutted herjaw, sliding her false teeth forward and then back, inspecting me,shifting her attention away from her struggle with the aide,whatever it had been.
"Here''s your coffee, Miss Williams." The aide returned with asteaming Styrofoam cup and two chocolate-chip cookies on a napkin.Evidently, it was a peace offering, and it was accepted.
With her elbows on the armrests and her dark, bony fingers wrappeddelicately around the cup, Victoria Williams held the coffee beneathher nose, inhaling the vapor.
"My mother and father died and we had to go to work," she started inabruptly, without looking up.
"You went to work after they passed on?"
"Part-time? No! We didn''t no part-time, we worked if it was all dayor all night."
I shifted closer to her right ear so she could hear me better.
She sipped the coffee loudly and said, "Ooh, that''s hot!" Then shecontinued: "We had to work all the time. Didn''t no place stay andpay no rent. No! We worked! We stay where we worked."
She put the edge of the cookie between her teeth and broke off apiece, chewing as she talked, not looking at me.
"You people have so much fun now."
I wasn''t sure whom she meant.
"You think people have more fun now?"
"Yeah, you all have a lot of fun, setting down and drinking coffeethat somebody make and give you. You didn''t make and give us none.We had to make our own."
"Miss Williams, do you remember when you were a little girl?"
"A little girl."
"Do you remember?"
"When?"
"When you were a girl. Do you remember?"
"Yeaaaahh." She dragged out the word and smiled.
"What was it like when you were a little girl?"
"We used to know a lot of little girls in our day," she said.
"No, I mean when you were a little girl."
"I was in school. There were a lot of little girls."
"Where did you go to school?"
"Wherever Mother worked, if it wasn''t too far for us to walk, we''dgo in that school."
"You walked to school?"
"Yeah. The teachers were nice to us, too. There weren''t no nastyteachers."
"What did you learn in school, what did you study?"
"Studied everything. Graduated. Mmm-hmm. Teachers were nice to us."
Before long it became clear that Victoria Williams could tell onlyone story about herself and she kept coming back to it, as if itwere a tape playing in her mind: She graduated from high school andthen from Hampton Institute in Virginia, one of the country''s firstblack universities, and then she taught school. She got work becauseshe was highly recommended. People respected her parents, who werehonest and hardworking, so she had "good backing" and got good jobs.She kept coming back to parts of this story no matter what questionI asked. Often she would break into a remembered conversation,speaking both parts.
I asked her, "Where was your daddy from?"
"My daddy''s son?"
"No, where was he from?"
"When did he ...?"
"Where was he born?"
"Where? I forgot. My daddy was born somewhere in New York or NewJersey. My mother was a teacher. She cooked and washed and ironedand taught school, too, so she had a good recommendation."
"Do you know where your mother was born?"
"Yeah! She was born down in North Carolina."
"And where were you born?"
"North Carolina."
"What town?"
"Near Hampton Institute. That was the hospital where people used togo in. People didn''t have their babies out in the street. You''d haveyour baby in the hospital with a doctor, and when the baby''s born,the doctor would say, ''She was a healthy child,'' and they''d take youright in school. So the background helps to push you. Yeah. And thenyou get you another teacher and you do pretty good. ''Well, where didyou learn that?'' ''I learned that at such and such a school.'' ''Oh,you went to more than one school?'' ''Yes I did!''"
After an hour or so, I began to feel frustrated, deciding that Icouldn''t have a real exchange of ideas with Victoria Williams. Therewould be no stories from the early part of the century, onlyfragments of memories that I had no hope of putting in context. I''djust try to get some good one-liners and leave. Luckily, though, thehealth aide was listening in and had more patience than I.
"When you were coming up, when you were a little girl, did you hearmuch about slavery?" she asked Miss Williams.
"We didn''t know much about slavery. We learned about the collegepart of a colored person. No indeed, we were above that! Yes.Mmm-hmm. He has to either be in college or have finished. He can''tbe out in the street. You can''t teach him nothin'' in the street. Youcan help him after he got in college."
In my deaf impatience, I failed to realize the richness of thisquestion and changed the subject.
"Miss Williams, do you remember when you came to Washington?"
After a couple of hours, I said good-bye. The interview had mostlybeen a failure. I had no coherent stories and only a vague idea ofwhat her life had been like.
A couple of days later I interviewed another lady; this one had onlyjust turned one hundred.
"Rochelle" had a small, sunny apartment in an assisted-livingfacility. She was high-spirited and bossy but sweet, too, and alittle loopy the day I met her. She assumed she knew what questionsI had and insisted on telling me right away why she had lived solong.
"Ever since I was a kid, I drew people like Bies and I still do.When I come down to dinner-I''m not showing off, I''m telling you thetruth-there''s a lineup that passes me. Honest to God, I''m not lyingto you. People admire the hundred age, but people have always beendrawn to me. That''s one thing I can really boast about. I always hadfriends."
She seemed nervous and impatient, and wanted to get this over with.I raced through a list of questions I had prepared in an effort todo a better interview than I had with Victoria Williams. Thequestions involved most of the major historical events of thetwentieth century. But Rochelle had a fuzzy memory for some things.She couldn''t remember the difference between World War I and WorldWar II.
"Oh, now I''m confused," she said, her hands buttering above her lap,but with some prompting, she did recall the end of World War I. Shewas living in New York at the time.
"I remember the excitement. People went out in the street, they wereso happy! They were so happy!"
Her eyes suddenly welled up.
"It brings tears to my eyes. That I remember distinctly. I wasmarried by that time. I remember them rejoicing when the war wasover."
She surprised me. One moment she seemed scattered and confused, thenext moment she cried. I didn''t know where to go from there.
"Tell me about your husband," I asked.
"Ahhh, that''s a story in itself. There isn''t much to tell. I fell inlove because of his kiss. I fell in love immediately; nothing elsemattered. And now, in my old age, I take inventory."
She leaned forward conspiratorily and mouthed the word "Nothing!"
She leaned back and paused. "I''d rather you wouldn''t write about myhusband. I thought I loved him. It was just a physical attraction.But," she said, "we were very happy. We had two beautiful children."
I could not imagine telling a stranger such a thing. I hadn''t beenwith her more than twenty minutes. I think part of her was upsetthat she had revealed so much.
Rochelle said, "My mind is going. I can sense it. I don''t know whathappens. I become confused. I don''t know what the hell I''m doinghalf the time."
Rochelle was aware that she was losing control and it made heragitated in conversation with a stranger. The walls of her apartmentwere covered with photos of her children and grandchildren andgreat-grandchildren, and I felt glad to know she was surrounded bypeople who loved her, who knew her story, who didn''t care whethershe could remember the difference between World War I and World WarII. My presence was a reminder that she had changed and I made heruneasy.
From those two first encounters I learned to be more patient, tospend more time. But I took those interviews and made my sample tapefor the grant proposal. I chose a recording of a bittersweet ScottJoplin piano piece and played the edited tape cuts over that, withthe non sequiturs edited out.
I won the grant. I promised to interview twenty centenarians aroundthe country, but I would need a better strategy. I needed to getthem to tell me stories instead of one-liners. I knew how to dothis, I''d been doing it for twenty years, but never with people whohad so many difficulties. The dementia, especially, was a new factorand I expected to encounter it repeatedly.
I would have to relearn what I knew about interviewing, and I wouldhave to edit these interviews in a way that would make thecentenarians sound coherent without completely misrepresenting theirmental condition.
The sample tape had a pleasant enough sound to it, but I did leavein a hint of Victoria Williams''s disorganized mind.
"Miss Williams, I see you have your purse with you."
"Yeah, I carry it everywhere I go. That''s my driving permit andthings. Because I might run into something."
"You still driving?"
"Yeah. And if someone said, ''You have a driving permit?'' ''Certainly,I do.''"
"Do you still have your car?"
"Yeah. I have a car. Mmm-hmm."
"You did have a car."
"I do have a car, but I don''t need it, so I leave it for my motherto drive."
Chapter Two
ella miller"Everybody drank water ... and it was good."
Two years passed. I took a full-time job with NPR and had to put thecentenarian project on hold, but a friend called and said he''d heardabout a woman who lived nearby and claimed to be 117 years old.
President Clinton is on the radio as I drive to see her. He''sanswering questions from lawyers about Monica Lewinsky and I''mriveted. Early in my career, I was a newscaster, a reporter, andthen a producer for All Things Considered at NPR, so when big newshappened, I was able to do something about it: write scripts, makecalls, edit audiotape. It felt like being part of history, if in aperipheral way. I''ve moved on now to journalism work without dailydeadlines, but the adrenaline rush still comes when the news is hot.This is one of those great news days. I''ll have to add it to my listof the century''s big events.
I have an appointment to interview a woman who is 117 years old, andas I turn off the car radio and walk up her sidewalk, I have thesense that I''m walking toward the past.
Continues...
Excerpted from If I Live to Be 100by Neenah Ellis Copyright © 2002 by Neenah Ellis. Excerpted by permission.
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