The Color of Water

by James McBride

She wipes her memory instantly and with purpose; it’s a way of preserving herself. That’s how she moves. Her survival instincts are incredible, her dances with fire always fun to watch. “Ruthie,” my sisters affectionately called her. “Ruthie’s crazy.” In August 1993, after more than fifty years, Ruthie, aka Ruth...

As we neared Frances’s house in Portsmouth, Mommy began to get nervous and to talk excessively. “Look at these roads,” she said. “Not a bump. Not a notch. They fix them down here in Virginia, but you shouldn’t speed on them, because the cops here don’t play. They don’t play, you hear me! Billy, slow down! Oh, my knees hurt. The air-conditioning really bothers my knees. And these seats are too small.” Even after we pulled into the driveway of Frances’s house and her friend approached, she was babbling away, complaining now. “Oh, I can’t get up now. My legs hurt. Help me get up, what the heck are y’all trying to do anyway! Driving so fast like that! You can’t drive like that in Virginia, I tell you. Now my knees hurt, and—Frances! Look at how thin you are. Oh, you’re so pretty. Oh, I’m crying now. Oh boy, what are y’all trying to do …” And she wept as she hugged her friend. After the trip, she and Frances picked up where their high school friendship left off and remain close today. But Frances is as far back as Ruthie can go. Her reunion with her old friend is one of the small, beautiful side benefits of a book experience that Mommy was truly never interested in, exploring a past for her that in many ways is gone forever and is better left buried and untouched.

I’m glad she came over to the African-American side. She married two extraordinary men and raised twelve very creative and talented children, and I ought to list their names now. After all, that was part of the deal on my end, and her children’s achievements are her life’s work anyway.

ANDREW DENNIS MCBRIDE, B.A., Lincoln University; M.D., University of Pennsylvania Medical School; M.A., Public Health, Yale University; Director of Health Department, City of Stamford, Connecticut.

ROSETTA MCBRIDE, B.A., Howard University; M.S.W., Social Work, Hunter College; Staff Psychologist, New York City Board of Education.

WILLIAM MCBRIDE, B.A., Lincoln University; M.D., Yale University School of Medicine; M.B.A., Emory University School of Business; Medical Director Southeast Region, Medi...

DAVID MCBRIDE, B.A., Denison University; M.A., History, Columbia University; Ph.D., History, Columbia University; Chairman of Afro-American History D...

HELEN MCBRIDE-RICHTER, R.N., Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania; G.O.N.P., Emory University School of Medicine, Graduate Student in Nurse Midw...

RICHARD MCBRIDE, U.S. Army veteran, B.A., Cheney University, Chemistry; M.S., Drexel University; Associate Professor of Chemistry, Cheney Sta...

DOROTHY MCBRIDE-WESLEY, A.A., Pierce Junior College; B.A., La Salle University; medical practice offi...

JAMES MCBRIDE, B.A., Oberlin College; M.S.J., Journalism, Columbia University; write...

KATHY JORDAN, B.A., Syracuse University; M.S., Education, Long Island University; special-education teacher, Ewin...

JUDY JORDAN, B.A., Adelphi University; M.A., Columbia University Teachers College; te...

HUNTER JORDAN, B.S., Computer Engineering, Syracuse University; computer consultant, U.S. Tru...

HENRY JORDAN, junior at North Carolina A&T University; customer service and purchasing, Neal Manufacturing, I...

RUTH JORDAN, B.A., Temple Unive...

All of them have toted more mental baggage and dealt with more hardship than they care to remember, yet they carry themselves with a giant measure of dignity, humility, and humor.

Through marriage, adoptions, love-ins, live-ins, and shack-ups, the original dozen has expanded into dozens and dozens more—wives, husbands, children, grandchildren, cousins, nieces, nephews—ranging from dark-skinned to light-skinned; from black kinky hair to blond hair and blue eyes.

In running from her past, Mommy has created her own nation, a rainbow coalition that descends on her house every Christmas and Thanksgiving and sleeps everywhere—on the floor, on rugs, in shifts; sleeping double, triple to a bed, “two up, three down,” ju...

The subject of this book can be found on any given Sunday morning in the Trenton, New Jersey, area, driving a late-model Toyota with manual roll-down windows, bearing down on any one of four local churches. She goes to a white Lutheran church or a black Baptist church—make that three black churches. The ensuing pages, I hope, will explain why.

After holding up traffic for an appropriate time, she will turn into a church parking lot, sometimes taking up two parking spaces, since she’ll park cockeyed, with the car tires hanging over the yellow line. The motor quits, the car drifts a bit as the parking brake slams on, and she flings the door open. A gentle push—she’s not strong anymore—but still it’s a kind of get-out-of-my-way shove. She then throws her purse, sweater, shopping bag, and cheap plastic sun visor out of the car, onto the pavement where it rolls around a little. She places her walking cane out the door, grabs the handle over the doorway, and hoists herself out of the car.

And thus Ruth McBride Jordan, my mother, is ready for business.

My mother is the only person I know who goes t...

I would venture to state that in at least three of those churches, there aren’t more than ten people in the congregations who know that the elderly white woman sitting among them singing “Come to Jesus” off-key is one of the most beloved women in America. Her story, which you have just read, has sold more than two million copies worldwide. It has been translated into nearly twenty languages and was serialized by the New York Times, where it sat on that paper’s bestseller list for two years. It is studied by thousands of students every year in sociology, literature, history, and creative writing classes. She is regarded, at least by some, as one of the most inspirational figures in contemporary American literature. Yet she claims she enjoys her anonymity. “What difference does it make?” she says.

I know for a fact that Mommy secretly likes being famous. A little. She’s human.

She toasts her good luck, knowing that while fame is fleeting, God is forever.

I’ve been welcomed with open arms by about a dozen relatives since this book was published, many of them white and Jewish. I’m a better person, a fuller person, for knowing them. And I hope they feel the same way about me. Naturally there are some among them who have no interest in meeting their black relatives—just as there are a few on my side who have no interest in their white, Jewish relatives. This isn’t the movies; this is the real world. Nothing is perfect. Everyone has a right to his feelings. As for me, I’m proud of my extended family—all of them. They are me and I am them.

One of the nicer things that has happened as a result of the book’s publication is that people of mixed race have found a bit of their own story in these pages. I have met hundreds of mixed-race people of all types, and I’m happy to report that—guess what, folks—they’re happy, normal people! They’re finding a way. Grandparents and grandchildren, husbands and wives, cousins and second cousins. And they will continue to survive and even thrive. The plain truth is that you’d have an easier time standing in the middle of the Mississippi River and requesting that it flow backward than to expect people of different races and backgrounds to stop loving each other, stop marrying each other, stop starting families, stop enjoying the dreams that love inspires. Love is unstoppable.

No one understands that power more than Mommy, who, when asked about her celebrity status, will be the first to confess, “I did nothing special.” Or when asked how she raised twelve kids will say, “Y’all raised yourselves,” or she’ll say, “God raised you.” She’s happy that the book speaks to so many parents. She knows how hard it is to raise kids. She read the book only once, cried after reading it, and pronounced it “okay.”

She wakes up each morning with a smile, saying, “I’m blessed,” or “Thank you, Jesus,” or “I hold on to God’s unchanging hand.” She’s content with her life, has taken the bumps and bruises with as much grace as she can, including the July 2005 death of her courageous childhood friend Frances Moody Falcolne, of Suffolk, Virginia.

There will be reams of books and newspapers and video footage and movies that will attempt to answer the unanswerable questions of racism, sexism, classism, and socioeconomics for her—hard-line intellectuals have already had a field day with this book, using it to promote every sort of sociopolitical ideology. But at the end of the day, there are some questions that have no answers, and then one answer that has no question: love rules the game. Every time. All the time. That’s what counts.

In all the important ways, my family’s story is not unique. It plays out across the world, on every continent, in every nation, city, town, and village every day.

if you see a woman driving in Trenton with her blinkers on, look out. Back off. Give her some space. She could go left, she could go right. She could go up into Heaven clear out of sight! But no matter which way she goes, she’s not likely going your way. And if she is, don’t bother her with any questions about it, or you’ll get an earful of God. James McBride September 2005 New York City

My mother and I would like to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for His love and faithfulness to all generations. Thanks to my loving wife, Stephanie Payne, who stood me up when I could no longer stand, who would not let me back away from the dream, who made me a man. To my children, Jordan and Azure, that they might know where they came from. To my eleven brothers and sisters: Dr. Andrew Dennis McBride, Rosetta McBride, Dr. William (Billy) McBride, Dr. David McBride, Helen McBride-Richter, Richard McBride, Dorothy McBride-Wesley, Kathy Jordan, Judy Jordan, Hunter Jordan, and Henry Jordan. Thank you for your help in putting this book together and keeping us strong over the years. To my special sister, Jacqueline Nelson of Louisville, Kentucky, who helped me turn my life around.

My mother and I would also like to thank our friends and family in Harlem, in the Red Hook Housing Projects in Brooklyn, in St. Albans, Queens, and in Philadelphia, who stuck with us over the years: in particular my godparents, Mother Rachel and Rev. Tom McNair and family; Mother Virginia Ingram and family; Rev. Edward Belton and family of Passaic, New Jersey; the late Irene Johnson, her daughters Deborah and Barbara, her sister Vera Leake, her brother Rev. Hunson Greene, and the rest of her family; Rev. Elvery Stannard, Rev. Arnet Clark and Tiberian Baptist Church; Pastor Joseph Roberts and Ebenezer Baptist Church; Dr. Gary Richter, Rose McBride, Rebecca Randolph; Gladys and Fred Cleveland, Alice and Neddie Sands, Dorothy and Thomas Jones. The Napper and Harris families, Sheila Warren and Evelyn Hobson; Trafinna “Ruth” Wilson and family of Wilmington, Delaware; our late beloved Aunt Sallie Candis Baldwin and Etta and Nash McBride; the Hinson, Leake, and Rush families of Mount Gilead, North Carolina; Aunt Mag Lomax, Cousin Edna Rucker and the Gripper family of High Point, North Carolina; the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn; Rev. Thomas Davis of Crossroads Baptist Church in Harlem; Cousin Maggie Harris and family of Richmond, Virginia; Thelma Carpenter, Uncle Walter Jordan, Flossie Jordan, and the Jordans of Brooklyn and Richmond; and the Payne and Hawkins families in Los Angeles.

Thanks to the folks in Suffolk, Virginia: Frank and Aubrey Sheffer, Helen Weintraub, the late Aubrey Rubenstein, Mrs. Frances Holland, Mary Howell-Read of the city clerk’s office, Curly Baker, and Eddie Thompson. A heartfelt embrace to Frances and Nick Falcone of Portsmouth, Virginia, for reentering our lives. Thanks to Dina Abramowicz of the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York City and to all the brothers on the Corner at Vermont Liquors in Louisville, especially Mike Fowler, Big Richard Nelson, and the late Chicken Man. Thanks to tax accountant Milton Sherman, Janette Bolgiani, and Julian “Sharon” Jones. Thanks to Jim Naughton at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rhonda Goldfein, Holocaust survivors Halina Wind and George Preston and their son David Preston, who helped reveal the wonders of Judaism for me. Thanks to my friends at the Boston Globe: Dennis Lloyd, Al Larkin, Jack Driscoll, Ed Siegel, Cindy Smith, Steve Morse, and of course Ernie Santosuosso. Thanks to Mary Hadar, who was a guiding editor at The Washington Post, and bebop guitarist Jeff Frank, whose second career still awaits. Thanks to Jay Lovinger and Gay Daley, who read my manuscript and whose kindness has always been an inspiration to me and my family. Thanks to Bill Boyle, Mike Daley, Hank Klibanoff, Marguerite Del Giudice, Doran Twer, Gar Joseph, Gary Smith, and Sally Wilson; thanks to Isabel Spencer and Fred Hartman, who gave me my first journalism job, to Norman Isaacs, who taught me to be good e...

Ruth McBride Jordan was born Rachel Deborah Shilsky (Ruchel Dwajra Zylska) in Poland, in 1921. Her family immigrated to America when she was two, and eventually settled in Suffolk, Virginia. After high school she moved to New York City and married Andrew D. McBride, with whom she founded the New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. After her husband’s death in 1957, she remarried, to Hunter Jordan, who died in 1972. She is a 1986 graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, where she received her degree in Social Work Administration at age 65. Today Ruth travels to Paris, London, New York, and Atlanta regularly; works as a volunteer with the Philadelphia Emergency Center, a shelter for homeless teenage mothers; runs a reading club in the Ewing, New Jersey, public library; and works at the Jerusalem Baptist church in Trenton, New Jersey, in their program to feed the homeless. She lives in Ewing township with her daughter Kathy Jordan and Kathy’s two children, Gyasi and Maya. She has twelve children and twenty grandchildren.