The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgett M. Davis

Author:Bridgett M. Davis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

On New Year’s Day 1971, Rita wrote a new letter:

Dear God,

Please help me and do a favor for me and my family. I, Rita Davis, will not worry have positive thinking and have faith in you. My mother Fannie Robinson will be in good health and not worrying about things she have no control over.…Jesus thanks a lot for letting me leave my prayers to the throne of grace.

This can be a year of happiness. If everyone tries.

Thank you,

Rita

My sister knew. I didn’t exactly know what was going on, but already could feel that this new year wasn’t like the old one. Mama had recently been in the hospital, admitted to control the blood clots that often formed in her leg and were for her a chronic condition, one she treated more like a nuisance. “I suffer from blood clots,” she’d tell people in an offhanded way; she sometimes wore compression stockings to help with circulation and prevent swelling, and was prescribed Coumadin, the blood thinner. She felt the medication kept her perpetually cold, and so our house was always blasting with heat. Now I know how potentially dangerous a blood clot can be, but back then Mama never showed much concern. She’d say that short stays in the hospital—to “break up” a clot or prevent it from traveling to her lungs—gave her a chance for some much-needed rest, and when I visited her she never looked sick; there she’d be sitting up in bed in a pretty-colored nightgown and matching robe, sometimes wearing reddish-pink lipstick. Apparently, a doctor had told her years before that whatever she eventually died from, it wouldn’t be those blood clots.

The city itself was tense too. To kick off the new year, Detroit’s police commissioner formed a new elite undercover police operation called STRESS, which stood for Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets. Nearly all the officers of STRESS were white, and of course they targeted “high-crime” black neighborhoods. We saw a steady stream of black “perps” on the news, as well as regular reports of black men killed by police. (By the end of that year, Detroit’s police department led the nation in civilian killings, one-third of them committed by STRESS.) I had an eighteen-year-old brother. We were all on edge.

Somewhere in there, I found myself in the car with Mama, her friend Lula, and Jewell. My mother had found out that Anthony was inside a “shooting gallery,” and she’d decided to go get him. Why were we girls in the car? I can only assume that there was no one else at home and she didn’t want to leave us in the house by ourselves. So there we girls were, in the backseat.

When Mama pulled up to the actual house, Lula kept saying, “Don’t go in, Fannie. Don’t go in!”

“I got my pistol right here,” said Mama. “I’m not worried.”

She got out of the car. I watched in terror as she entered through the front door, wearing her soft blue leather coat with

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