“She Loves You…”

I still get that twinge when I hear the guitar at the beginning of “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” I’ve been getting that twinge for 50 years and it’s never gone away.

I was 13 years old when the Beatles came to America. We needed them so badly! We’d been through some kind of collective nightmare and we  needed something to bring us out of it. They were the perfect cure.

Three months before their arrival, President John Kennedy had been murdered in Dallas. We were still reeling from that. We couldn’t fathom how that had happened and it seemed that it had been rainy and gray and dark since that day.

I wasn’t really aware of it, but things were escalating in Vietnam. I had heard the name but what folks were really talking about in my circle was civil rights.

Black folks had just about had it. We were sick of having to step off the sidewalk, ride the back of the bus, not be able to vote, not be able to eat where we wanted, all that stuff that folks take for granted.

There were protest marches and folks getting hosed and beaten and like other little black kids at that time, the image of what had happened to Emmitt Till had never left my mind. I think all our parents made us look at that so that we would never underestimate the hatred we faced or what it could do to us.

My parents were both Southern and they had grown up with Jim Crow’s foot firmly on their necks. They moved to Illinois so us kids wouldn’t have to face that same thing and we pretty much hadn’t.

But anyway, things were pretty ugly for us in the USA right then. Not to mention our music had taken a turn for the worse. Suddenly we were listening to numerous songs about kids that had been killed. We called them “dead teenager” songs. Johnny Tillotson and Brian Hyland and Bobby Vee were tops on the charts then.

Oh yeah, that’s when my favorite song “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance came out. That was the first record I bought. The R&B was sounding good. The pop music not so much.

Things were even cloudier in my little world. My Mom and Dad had been fighting a lot. Mom had never been really happy about moving from Chicago to Galesburg and we went back every chance we had. Mom started getting sick and even more moody than usual and one day, they sat us down and told us that she had to go to the hospital and that they were taking her to Chicago. Weren’t there hospitals in Galesburg?

No, they said, she needed a special kind of hospital and she had to go there. I remember the tense and quiet ride when we took her there. We kids sat in the car while they checked her in. We didn’t know what was going on and we were playing around like kids did. Dad took us to see his brother Opra and we ate White Castle and then we went home.

We asked how long Mom would be gone and nobody really told us. She was still sick they said. We went up there to see her once and I remember the blank eyed look she gave us. No hugs or anything. A wan smile and that was all. Now I realize she was drugged up but all I remembered then was that she didn’t seem glad to see us even though we missed her.

I woke up one night in a pool of blood. I didn’t know what to think had happened. Mom had always been very secretive about her period. She hid her Modess pads and while I had kind of peeked at the box, I wasn’t really sure what they were for. Mom had believed that old wives’ tale that if she was late developing that her daughter would also be. She didn’t start her period till she was 17 and she assumed the same would happen for me. No. I started that fateful night in November, alone and scared.

I got up and wrote a will leaving my stuffed animals and three 45’s to my brothers and I went to school in tears.

Later that day after I had bled through my clothes, I went to the office and the school nurse realized I didn’t know what had happened and she sat me down and explained it to me and gave me a starter package with some pads and that hideous belt we had to use to wear them.

She called my father who called a friend who took me shopping for my “big girl” stuff and I came home feeling a lot better knowing I wasn’t going to die.

To compound life, my grandfather died. I had loved my Grandpa Jackson. He was a smart remarkable man with a great sense of humor and he could make you laugh even if you were so down you couldn’t see straight.

And then Dallas.

It seemed the whole country was as depressed as I was. The only thing that made it better is that my Mom came home from the hospital the week after Thanksgiving. We had a late turkey dinner and it seemed things were going to be ok and then the worst news of all for a 13 year old girl.

We were going to move.

We had two junior high schools in Galesburg. Junior high school was 7^th, 8^th and 9^th grade. If you lived on the east side of town, you went to Lombard. We had lived on that side of town since we moved there and I had finally settled into going to Lombard. It had been tough going. I was still rather an outsider and I was kind of brainy and I didn’t fit in with any of the local kids that much.

When you’re a kid like that, not fitting in was possibly the worst thing that could happen to you. I was just beginning to find myself and understand that being different was really all right. But now I was going to have to go to a different school and go through all that all over again.

I was going to have to start the new semester at Churchill Jr. High. That was where all the “rich” kids went. And I couldn’t walk to school like I had been. I had to ride a school bus and that meant I had to walk 4 or 5 blocks to the bus stop. I didn’t really know anyone at Churchill. I was broken hearted. I cried like a baby my last day at Lombard.

And so, halfway through my 8^th grade year, we moved to a bigger house on the other side of town. And it was during that time that I first heard “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

It didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before. The guitar was different. The vocals were different. The words were not about some kid dying in a car accident or breaking up after a summer love.

It was a happy song, a lively song and it made you feel good. I couldn’t believe it. I was caught off guard by it but I smiled and I was singing along with it.

When I went to the record store to buy it, it was in a black and white cover. 45’s had covers then and this was perfect. Those four guys were sitting together, smiling, holding cigarettes, wearing those gray suits with the black trim and shirts and ties. Their hair was longer and hanging down to their eyebrows. No more of those tall pompadours with the duck tail in the back. They had long bangs and it looked great.

They were all so cute but I couldn’t take my eyes off the one on the left, the one with the big bright eyes and the smile and he was holding a cigarette in his hand. His name was Paul McCartney. My poor little heart started pounding.

I was in love.

I didn’t think that perhaps I shouldn’t be falling in love with a long haired musician from England. Or that he was white and I was black. That didn’t enter my mind. All I knew was that I was in love.

I played that record over and over and put the cover on a stand by my bed so I could look at it as much as I wanted.

I took it with me my first day at Churchill. I needed the distraction. I felt lonely and out of place those first few days there. I had showed the record to some of my black friends who looked at me like I had grown a second head. Why was I listening to that “white” music and looking at those white boys?

I wondered why I was enthralled and why they weren’t. It was one more thing to make me different than everybody else. I couldn’t say why they got to me they way they did. They made me feel good. I hadn’t had much that did that for me so it was a welcome feeling.

I was just starting to notice boys and that was a definite problem for me. The boys were not noticing me. And I realized something then that would be with me the rest of my life – the boys I was noticing were white boys. I didn’t really want to go out with any black guys. I wanted to be with white boys.

Uh oh.

I had never seen any interracial couples then. Logically, I knew folks had to be crossing that line but I had never seen it and it really didn’t happen in that little Midwestern town I grew up in. That was just not done in the early 60’s. So I kept my preference to myself.

I didn’t know till later that the Ronettes had been on that plane with the Beatles when they first came here. I didn’t know that Phil Spector was there too, keeping a close eye on his wife in case she was tempted by one of those beautiful British boys. I didn’t know that they had to wait till the Beatles had deplaned before they did so it wouldn’t be an incident. And I really didn’t know that George was dating one of them. They were all mindful of where they were and kept it cool.

I saw the picture of George sitting with them and read that a reporter had asked them if they would go out with a black woman and they looked at him like he had grown a third eye and said of course they would!

My heart leapt out of my chest. I realized at that moment that there were white guys willing to go out with black women and I just hadn’t met them yet. While I knew I didn’t have a chance in hell with any of the Beatles, it opened a door for me. Somewhere there was a guy who would not be ashamed of me or think he was better than me.

I wasn’t pretty enough for the black guys and the white guys would never have considered me for a mate. That was all right. I wasn’t going to stay in my hometown all my life. I was going to leave and go see other places and other people and somewhere along the line, I would find someone whose mind and heart was open to someone like me. 

I was no longer ashamed or afraid to admit what my preference was. I didn’t care if folks didn’t like it. I liked it and that was all that important to me. So I was a black girl who liked rock music and liked rock musicians. That was who I was….and who I am.

The Beatles helped me find myself and accept myself. I will always love them for that.

So yes, she DOES love you….yeah, yeah, YEAH.