Growing Up X

Aftermath I was there that day. We all were, all except baby Gamilah who, in the last-minute rush to go hear Daddy speak, got left behind with friends because her little snowsuit was too damp to wear out into the cold. But the rest of us were there, sitting stage right on a curved and cushioned bench: Mommy, Attallah, Qubilah, myself. Even the twins, Malikah and Malaak, were present to bear witness, carried not in Mommy's arms but inside her womb, deep beneath her heart. It was February 21, 1965. My father, El-Hajj Malik El-ShabazzMalcolm Xtelephoned my mother at the Wallace home that morning with a surprising request. He wanted Mommy to bring us girls and come to the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem to hear him speak. My mother was elated; just the day before he had warned her not to come, saying it was too dangerous. We were staying with the Wallace family because eight days before our house in Elmhurst, Queens, had been firebombed. It was early Sunday morning and cold outside. Mommy and Daddy were asleep in their bedroom, Attallah, Qubilah, and I were in our room, and Gamilah was in the nursery when a blast awakened us all. Barking orders and grabbing terrified children, my father got us all up and out the back door into the yard. It took the fire department an hour to extinguish the flames. Mommy telephoned the Wallaces, saying, "The house is on fire." The Wallaces put their twelve-year-old daughter Gailour baby-sitter and play "big sister"in the car and drove to our house. Gail told me she remembers walking into the house and being almost overwhelmed by the smell of smoke. "Everyone was in the kitchen," Gail said, "and to get to the kitchen you had to walk through the foyer, the living room, a long hallway, and your room, the room you girls slept in. That room was a mess, burned and wet and scattered, because that's where the bomb had been thrown. I saw all these people standing in the kitchen. I remember crawling through men and women, Muslim men, to get to your mother. She was sitting at the kitchen table talking and when she saw me she said, 'Oh, dear heart, they're trying to burn me out of my house.' She was happy to see me because she knew once I was there I would take over the girls enough so she could get the situation under control. She had a little grin on her face but it wasn't one of pleasure." The Wallace familyAntoinette, her husband Thomas, who is Ruby Dee's brother and was known then as Thomas 57X, and their four childrentook us in that night. My father made sure we were settled at the Wallace home, then checked into the Theresa Hotel. He knew he was a walking target and he didn't want anyone else to get hit. He told Mommy he wanted to take the trouble away from us. Four days later, the Nation of Islam went to court to evict us from our home. In the aftermath of the fire, my father never stopped working. Friends like Ossie Davis begged him to flee. His brother Wilfred advised him to "hush and forget this whole thing" and go to Africa until things cooled down. There were any number of African nations whose leaders would have been happy to offer him refuge, but Daddy refused to even discuss the idea. He was not about to run. He took what security precautions he could, but through it all he kept working, flying to Detroit to speak at an event in honor of Charles Howard, a renowned journalist who covered the African liberation movement for Muhammad Speaks and other black newspapers, then turning around and flying back home to New York for another flurry of speaking engagements and interviews. In between all this activity, he worked hard to find new housing for all of us. He knew the end was coming soon. Percy SuttShabazz, Ilyasah is the author of 'Growing Up X' with ISBN 9780345444950 and ISBN 0345444957.