Speaker 1: Family Secrets as a production of I Heart Radio. One day,
Speaker 1: I decided to organize mama's number running materials and went
Speaker 1: through the house, gathering everything together into one shallow cardboard box.
Speaker 1: I was enamored of my own organizational skills and decided
Speaker 1: to add one final touch on the side of the box.
Speaker 1: Using bright pink nail polish, I carefully painted in boxing
Speaker 1: letters Mama's numbers. I probably showed this to my mother,
Speaker 1: impressed with myself for remembering the possessive apostrophe. She took
Speaker 1: one look and said, you can't put my business out
Speaker 1: in the street like that. Looking back, this was the
Speaker 1: moment when I became consciously aware that I must keep
Speaker 1: my admiration from my mother's work a private experience. Before
Speaker 1: I had known to keep her livelihood of secret, but
Speaker 1: hadn't yet formed an opinion of feldny pride in when
Speaker 1: Mamma actually did for a living. Now I understood that
Speaker 1: my pride for her also had to be kept a secret,
Speaker 1: as did all the evidence of her work. That's Brigette M.
Speaker 1: Davis reading from her memoir The World according to Fanny Davis.
Speaker 1: Fanny is Brigette's mom, and Fanny was a numbers runner
Speaker 1: in Detroit in the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies. This
Speaker 1: is how she supported her family in style and provided
Speaker 1: for their future. And Brigette grew up knowing one thing
Speaker 1: for sure. Never ever was she to breathe a word
Speaker 1: to a soul about what her mama did for a living.
Speaker 1: I'm Danny should euro and this is family secrets, the
Speaker 1: secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep
Speaker 1: from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. At
Speaker 1: the time I was experiencing it, I thought it was
Speaker 1: normal my childhood because there were many rituals that happened regularly.
Speaker 1: I could listen to my mother on the phone every
Speaker 1: day taking her customers beds, and it was like a
Speaker 1: daytime lullaby. I loved it. It didn't seem odd to
Speaker 1: me at all to hear this recitation of numbers right
Speaker 1: by her, and then every evening we were all going
Speaker 1: to wait to hear what the day's winning numbers were.
Speaker 1: And that's how it worked if you were in a
Speaker 1: household where your parents, in my case, my mom was
Speaker 1: actually a numbers runner. It was simply a precursor to
Speaker 1: the lottery, and it existed decades before the state got
Speaker 1: around to taking it over, So that was the way
Speaker 1: that you lived in that kind of elsehold. And I thought,
Speaker 1: in an odd way, the structure was comforting because I
Speaker 1: knew it. To count on, Let's go all the way back,
Speaker 1: literally though, to Detroit the house here. We were in
Speaker 1: this home that was a colonial, four bedroom brick house.
Speaker 1: It was very traditional looking and for us, extremely spacious.
Speaker 1: There was seven of us and all the sisters shared
Speaker 1: a room. My brother had his own room, and then
Speaker 1: there was my parents room, so we all had our space.
Speaker 1: And what I loved about it as a child is
Speaker 1: that it really did have this incredibly fascinating addict where
Speaker 1: I could go up and just play and imagine all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. I was as many writers as a child,
Speaker 1: I was very caught up in my own imagination. I
Speaker 1: could spend hours in my own head, and the attic
Speaker 1: was a great place to do that because I could
Speaker 1: look out that window and see everything in front of me,
Speaker 1: the entire goings on of the street. But the basement
Speaker 1: was the same way. It was this gorgeous space that
Speaker 1: it turns out my mother had uh she renovated it
Speaker 1: so it became like a lounge. And it was the sixties,
Speaker 1: so there was wood paneling, there was a wrap around
Speaker 1: bar that was you know, necessary back then. And because
Speaker 1: I had all these siblings who were teenagers, there were
Speaker 1: what I thought was parties every night. When I looked back,
Speaker 1: it couldn't have been every night, but in my memory
Speaker 1: it was. It was all of my siblings friends coming
Speaker 1: in the side door and running down the steps and
Speaker 1: listening to lots of Motown. You know, we were in Detroit,
Speaker 1: so Motown was our soundtrack, and those records were spinning
Speaker 1: regularly constantly, and I remember laughter and people playing cards
Speaker 1: and smoke and you know, this sort of sense that
Speaker 1: it was a social hub. So that was happening, and
Speaker 1: at the same time, my mother was also inviting lots
Speaker 1: of people into the home because she was a magnet
Speaker 1: for people. They loved being around her. She really was
Speaker 1: what we call a pillar of the community, but no
Speaker 1: one used that term. She was just Fanny, Miss Fanny,
Speaker 1: and her doors were open, so people who were really
Speaker 1: wanting to come over and have a meal knew they
Speaker 1: could do that at Fanny's house. If they needed advice,
Speaker 1: they could come to her. If you know, a young
Speaker 1: woman was struggling in her marriage and things were a
Speaker 1: little crazy. My mother would say, why don't you stay
Speaker 1: here a few days until things cool off. So there
Speaker 1: were always these people in the house. My sister used
Speaker 1: to call a Grand Central station. The doorbell was always ringing,
Speaker 1: the doors were swinging open, the phone was going off
Speaker 1: all the time. Describe Fanny for me, I mean, what
Speaker 1: did she look like, what did she wear, what was
Speaker 1: her style, what her voice sounds. So my mom was
Speaker 1: really pretty. I often say that everyone thinks their mother
Speaker 1: is beautiful, but mine really was. And we would say it.
Speaker 1: The girls would say, Mama is prettier than any of us.
Speaker 1: You know. She got the looks, but she wasn't in
Speaker 1: any way arrogant or vain. She was just self assured
Speaker 1: and she was pretty simple in her style in the
Speaker 1: sense that my mom really only wore makeup if she
Speaker 1: was going somewhere special. She wasn't someone to wear makeup.
Speaker 1: She had this beautiful, naturally long, thick hair, which some
Speaker 1: days she would comb and some days she wouldn't. And
Speaker 1: the days she didn't want to comb her hair as
Speaker 1: she put an Aramis scarf around it and cover it up.
Speaker 1: She didn't shy away from luxurious things. She loved minx
Speaker 1: and she liked beautiful leather purses before it was a thing.
Speaker 1: She also liked to lounge around the house in these
Speaker 1: gorgeous I call them ensembles, but they were basically beautiful
Speaker 1: gowns and matching robes, and she had an array of them,
Speaker 1: and they were so pretty. My favorite was just lace
Speaker 1: trimmed with this ribbon woven through it. Gorgeous, you know,
Speaker 1: white with pink trim. Yeah, sitting there looking lovely but
Speaker 1: taking care of business. Brigette and her family lived in
Speaker 1: the heart of Detroit. Fanny bought the house in from
Speaker 1: a man named Mr. Prince during a time of white flight.
Speaker 1: Whites were leaving the city and droves and they were
Speaker 1: selling their homes to blacks. So this was a neighborhood
Speaker 1: called Russell Woods, upscale, but not as tony as Gross Point,
Speaker 1: where the automagnates lived. In the nine sixties, the auto
Speaker 1: industry in Detroit was doing what it was supposed to do,
Speaker 1: creating a solid middle class, and much of that middle
Speaker 1: class was black, backed by strong unions and able to
Speaker 1: buy their own homes. Then, as the sixties progressed, and
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement really got a foot. Um. You
Speaker 1: could see, you could feel the changes. I was just
Speaker 1: a child, but I could feel this thing that was rumbling. Um.
Speaker 1: This these tensions that I couldn't have given a name to,
Speaker 1: but they were there, these racial tensions happening in the city.
Speaker 1: And of course it all combusted in ninety seven with
Speaker 1: the race riots, as they've called them in the media.
Speaker 1: Detroitters called the uprising or the Great Rebellion. But that
Speaker 1: was the moment when um, things really as in many
Speaker 1: other cities, urban centers, in the city, in the country, Uh,
Speaker 1: things really came to a head. And there were riots
Speaker 1: that lasted across five days. And you have memories of this.
Speaker 1: I have memories. You were a little kid. I was
Speaker 1: a kid, but I definitely remember it. It was sixty seven,
Speaker 1: forgive me, you know, King was assassinated and the rise
Speaker 1: of sixty seven, and those years collapsed for me because
Speaker 1: they were both traumatic, and I was seven and eight,
Speaker 1: and I remember them almost as though they merge in
Speaker 1: my mind. One long year of just trauma. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what trauma does. We're going to pause for a moment.
Speaker 1: So there's a story about the way Fanny was able
Speaker 1: to buy that house from Mr Prince, a story that
Speaker 1: Brigette really only learned when she began to do research
Speaker 1: for her book. It says something about the way our
Speaker 1: parents present our lives to us, and the way as
Speaker 1: children we don't tend to question this stories we received.
Speaker 1: In Brigette's case, all her life, what she knew was
Speaker 1: that her mother bought their beautiful family home on contract,
Speaker 1: as it was called. She essentially went into this arrangement
Speaker 1: one on one with the seller Mr Prince, and didn't
Speaker 1: involve a bank, and essentially bought it from him that way,
Speaker 1: so that she paid him a mortgage. Every month paid
Speaker 1: on the mortgage, and when she was done paying for it,
Speaker 1: it was hers. And it seemed to me that she
Speaker 1: was making that choice because she had this unorthodox profession.
Speaker 1: I always thought, well into my adulthood that well, she
Speaker 1: couldn't show a pay stuff. My dad wasn't able to work,
Speaker 1: he was disabled, so she had to figure out this
Speaker 1: creative way to buy home. It was only years later,
Speaker 1: while working on this book that I found out that,
Speaker 1: in fact, because she was a quote unquote Negro woman,
Speaker 1: she wasn't allowed to get a mortgage in the ways
Speaker 1: that most Americans can because there was this thing called redlining,
Speaker 1: and it it enabled the Federal Housing Authority to impose
Speaker 1: these boundaries around so called high risk communities and neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: What made it high risk? If one black family lived
Speaker 1: in that community, it was high risk. So what did
Speaker 1: that mean? They wouldn't ensure the loans that banks were lending.
Speaker 1: So banks could say, we're not lending to you because
Speaker 1: we can't get this loan insured by the f h A.
Speaker 1: It's too risky. And so it trickled throughout the real
Speaker 1: estate community. Right realtors wouldn't show homes just two blacks
Speaker 1: and certain communities, or sell their homes to them, sell
Speaker 1: certain homes to them. And so imagine having the means,
Speaker 1: but not being able to buy a house only because
Speaker 1: of the color of your skin. You know, this thing
Speaker 1: that is the symbol of your American dream. It really
Speaker 1: is your foothold into the middle class. And so that
Speaker 1: infuriated me when I learned it. Never did I hear
Speaker 1: my mother talk about it that way or in that context.
Speaker 1: But I have to tell you, it's pretty predatory because
Speaker 1: it is essentially like renting your home, so you have
Speaker 1: all the risk of renting and none of the none
Speaker 1: of the benefits of owning. You put a huge deposit
Speaker 1: down and you never actually build equity in the home.
Speaker 1: The seller continues to hold the title and you don't
Speaker 1: get the d to the property until you've completely paid
Speaker 1: for it um And so if you, for instance, can't
Speaker 1: make one payment, if you're late one month, the seller
Speaker 1: can take the house back. So in fact, Fanny was
Speaker 1: creating this, there was tremendous risk, and what she was
Speaker 1: doing it was the only thing she could do to
Speaker 1: buy a house. But there was this tremendous risk, and
Speaker 1: yet you and your siblings I didn't know it. We
Speaker 1: didn't know it was. It was there somewhere, you know,
Speaker 1: thrumming in the underbelly of it all. Yeah. I suspect
Speaker 1: my older siblings understood more because they were older. Now,
Speaker 1: what I felt was Mr Prince coming to our home
Speaker 1: every month to collect his mortgage payment. And I look
Speaker 1: back on that and I thought, did he not trust
Speaker 1: her to send him a check, you know, or he
Speaker 1: was still checking on his investment in a way. While
Speaker 1: there you go, there's that possibility too. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know why, but I just felt every month that he
Speaker 1: came that I was almost holding my breath until he
Speaker 1: left to be able to say, okay, everything's all right.
Speaker 1: It was serious business. Fanny had bought this home in
Speaker 1: a risky manner and she had to trust that Mr
Speaker 1: Prince would do right by her. On top of this,
Speaker 1: her livelihood was risky when it came to her income.
Speaker 1: There were no guarantees and she didn't have the space
Speaker 1: to miss a single payment or she could lose everything.
Speaker 1: Describe what running the numbers is for the uninitiated. Running
Speaker 1: the numbers is a a way of being engaged in
Speaker 1: this entirely underground but sprawling lottery business that proliferated throughout
Speaker 1: much of the country underneath the radar, and it generated
Speaker 1: millions of dollars in many cities throughout the country. It
Speaker 1: was literally exactly like today's lottery in that today you
Speaker 1: can go and play a lottery at any corner bodega
Speaker 1: and you can say, here's three digits, I want to
Speaker 1: play nine too, and I want to play them for
Speaker 1: a dollar, And if those numbers come out, it's all
Speaker 1: electronic now, so they just randomly choose those numbers. If
Speaker 1: the number comes out, you could win five dollars because
Speaker 1: the payoff is five one. Here's how it worked back then.
Speaker 1: The winning numbers were arrived at using a convoluted system
Speaker 1: involving the racing forms from certain race tracks like the
Speaker 1: fair Grounds in New Orleans or Aqueduct in New York.
Speaker 1: Once the winning numbers were determined, someone high up in
Speaker 1: Detroit's racket received it through a long distance call from
Speaker 1: the numbers service boss in Chicago. The winning numbers hit
Speaker 1: the streets and spread by word of mouth. Numbers men
Speaker 1: told their bankers, who told their bookers, who told their customers,
Speaker 1: who told other customers, and so on. One of Brigette's
Speaker 1: jobs was to call her mother's customers and give them
Speaker 1: the winning combination. That system, which either way in New
Speaker 1: York they called numbers, is exactly what my mom was
Speaker 1: doing back in Detroit as a numbers runner. She and
Speaker 1: many many others were basically engaged in and sort of
Speaker 1: unofficial knows. I like to call it an informal lottery system.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a precursor to even the numbers.
Speaker 1: There was a game called Policy that was completely invented
Speaker 1: by and run by whites, and it proliferated throughout the
Speaker 1: country prior to this new game that was introduced by
Speaker 1: one man in Harlem who came up with an elegant system,
Speaker 1: a lot less complicated than what had come before it.
Speaker 1: So this black man creates the numbers, and it thrives
Speaker 1: in Harlem, and it moves across the country, and yes,
Speaker 1: within a very short amount of time, others wanted in
Speaker 1: because it generated millions of dollars. We saw it as
Speaker 1: this communal business that was turning dollars over in the
Speaker 1: community many times, right, and providing all of these legitimate
Speaker 1: services through that money. Um. So it's like I knew
Speaker 1: that it was. I now know that it was happening
Speaker 1: everywhere and in many communities. Before they moved to Detroit.
Speaker 1: Before the numbers running and began, Brigette's parents, like millions
Speaker 1: of other blacks, migrated north as part of the second
Speaker 1: wave of the Great Migration. This was the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and at that point they had three small children. When
Speaker 1: they arrived in Detroit from Nashville. Brigette's father thought he'd
Speaker 1: find work in the factories, which he did, but it
Speaker 1: was difficult, inconsistent. Eventually he became disabled and couldn't work regularly.
Speaker 1: So what was Fanny to do. My mom has these
Speaker 1: young children, she's left her home. You know, all they've
Speaker 1: ever known was in Nashville, air she her family had
Speaker 1: been for generations. My mom's grandfather was born into slavery
Speaker 1: in Nashville. That's how far back their roots went. So
Speaker 1: she's in this new northern city, tough place. The discrimination
Speaker 1: has its own flavor, and she's not prepared for it.
Speaker 1: And she checks out the landscape and realizes that se
Speaker 1: Detroit's black women are either doing day work, which means,
Speaker 1: you know, cleaning white women's homes, or they are in
Speaker 1: really low wrong jobs in these factories, making less than
Speaker 1: the men, or they're cleaning offices at night. And as
Speaker 1: she used to say, it seemed risky to her to
Speaker 1: not figure out something else, because the idea of leaving
Speaker 1: her children at home while she took one of these
Speaker 1: jobs for very low pay and letting them raise themselves
Speaker 1: was not an option. And so she started looking for
Speaker 1: something else to do. And she didn't have to look
Speaker 1: that far actually, because my mom was pretty observant. She
Speaker 1: was a quick study, and everywhere around her her neighbors
Speaker 1: were playing the numbers, you know, betting their fifty cents,
Speaker 1: their quarter, their dollar, not a lot of money, but
Speaker 1: she saw that it was a brisk business. So as
Speaker 1: a child, you I know your mom is running numbers,
Speaker 1: and it's not remotely hidden from you or your siblings.
Speaker 1: It's it seems like it's almost sort of command central
Speaker 1: of the home. You know she's there and and this
Speaker 1: is her job, and she's not remotely ashamed of it.
Speaker 1: Um none of you are, but you also know that
Speaker 1: it must be kept a secret. Yes, I've been asked,
Speaker 1: how is it that your mother never got caught? And
Speaker 1: I don't have an actual answer for that. I think
Speaker 1: she was lucky. But also my mother was really cautious
Speaker 1: and really smart, and I think there were a few
Speaker 1: things that she did to really mitigate, you know, the
Speaker 1: risk of exposure. And one of them was my mother
Speaker 1: only had customers through word of mouth, so she'd only
Speaker 1: take your business if you came highly recommended. There was that,
Speaker 1: and even though we had a household that felt like
Speaker 1: grand central station, my mother was actually careful about who
Speaker 1: came into the house. So there was that piece as well.
Speaker 1: And also she wasn't flashy. She loved beautiful things, but
Speaker 1: she was understated. I think that was really important too,
Speaker 1: and then she had to take some very practical measures.
Speaker 1: My mother had a lovely I say it's lovely because
Speaker 1: I thought it was safe that she kept in her
Speaker 1: bedroom closet. It was a metal safe with the combination lock,
Speaker 1: and that's where she kept the day's proceeds. That's where
Speaker 1: she kept the business. The cash was all in that
Speaker 1: combination lock in her bedroom closet. She also carried a
Speaker 1: pistol in her purse, and there was another one that
Speaker 1: remained in the house in the linen closet underneath the
Speaker 1: islet trimmed table claws and the lace napkins, and we
Speaker 1: all knew it was there, and we understood. We actually
Speaker 1: felt safer knowing it was there, because my mom was
Speaker 1: not only worried about exposure and risk that could lead
Speaker 1: to arrest, she also had to worry about being in
Speaker 1: a cash business and and it getting out that that
Speaker 1: maybe there's a lot of cash and family's house, and
Speaker 1: so there was that precaution as well. You know, she
Speaker 1: was really constantly trying to safeguard against a lot of
Speaker 1: different things. We're going to take a quick break. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. Brishette grows up in a
Speaker 1: mixed race neighborhood and goes to a mixed school. She
Speaker 1: lived on the street that's around the corner from Diana
Speaker 1: Ross and the Supremes. They've all just begun to rise,
Speaker 1: to start them, and all three of the supremes decided
Speaker 1: to buy homes on the same block. Diana Ross gets
Speaker 1: the big corner home. So it's a neighborhood of contrasts
Speaker 1: and also of tensions simmering beneath the surface. I was
Speaker 1: in first grade and I was just in my class,
Speaker 1: showing my teacher and assignment, and she said to me,
Speaker 1: literally out of nowhere, you sure do have a lot
Speaker 1: of shoes. And the thing that was striking is that
Speaker 1: the week before, she had asked me what my father
Speaker 1: did for a living. I'm six years old. I said
Speaker 1: the truth. I said, he doesn't work, which because by
Speaker 1: then he really had become disabled. And then she said, well,
Speaker 1: what does your mother do? Oh my goodness, Um, I
Speaker 1: told her I didn't know, which wasn't true, but I
Speaker 1: knew enough to not tell her the truth. But I
Speaker 1: was nervous. So when she mentioned these shoes the next week,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, even as a child, you have
Speaker 1: a sense of things. Something's not right here. I thought,
Speaker 1: all right, just not and you don't know what else
Speaker 1: to do, Just not when she tells you that. And
Speaker 1: then she really surprised me and said, before you sit down,
Speaker 1: I want you to name every pair of shoes you have,
Speaker 1: and you know, trying to be a good girl. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is a test and I don't want to get
Speaker 1: it wrong. I'm so anxious. Let me just really try
Speaker 1: to picture all the shoes that line my closet shelf.
Speaker 1: And I started listening them, all of them, the black
Speaker 1: and white, polka dotted once with the bow tie and
Speaker 1: the buckle ruby red ones, you know, And I managed
Speaker 1: to come up with I recall ten pears. That teacher
Speaker 1: Ms Miller said to me, what tim pears is an
Speaker 1: awful lot. And then she just told me to take
Speaker 1: my seat. But I could hear that thing in her voice.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to call it then, but it
Speaker 1: was totally disdained, you know. I thought that was it.
Speaker 1: And the next day she called me back to her
Speaker 1: desk and she said to me, you did not tell
Speaker 1: me you had white shoes. I looked down at my feet,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, I was wearing a pair of white
Speaker 1: shoes that I had forgotten to mention, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I've been calling a lie. I thought, I have so
Speaker 1: disappointed my teacher, and I hope I'm not in trouble.
Speaker 1: I was really worried, and that's why I went home
Speaker 1: and told my mother what happened. I just thought I
Speaker 1: have to let her know. And I confessed, that's what
Speaker 1: it felt like. I was confessing that I forgot to
Speaker 1: tell miss Miller about the eleventh pair of shoes. My mom,
Speaker 1: I had never seen her get this angry. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean her eyes flashed with anger like I had
Speaker 1: never seen, and I thought I'm about to get a spanking.
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened. She looked at me and said,
Speaker 1: that's none of her damn business. Who does she think
Speaker 1: she is? So I'm relieved that I'm not in trouble.
Speaker 1: But then she said to me, get your code, let's go.
Speaker 1: I thought, please God, I hope we're not going back
Speaker 1: to school to come front miss Miller. But we weren't.
Speaker 1: My mom put me in the car and drove me
Speaker 1: to Saxoforth Avenue and then took me to the children's
Speaker 1: shoe department and pointed to the most beautiful pair of
Speaker 1: like yellow patent leather shoes that I've ever seen in
Speaker 1: my life. She pointed to them and said, those are pretty,
Speaker 1: and then she bought them for me. She pulled out
Speaker 1: a one dollar bill and pay for those shoes. And
Speaker 1: I still remember how the saleswoman looked at me and
Speaker 1: her that saleswoman looked at my mom the way that
Speaker 1: that Miss Miller I looked at me. My mom didn't
Speaker 1: seem to even notice. She just said to me, you're
Speaker 1: gonna wear these school tomorrow, and you better tell that
Speaker 1: damn teacher of yours that you actually have a dozen
Speaker 1: pair of shoes. You hearing me, So what could I do?
Speaker 1: I did what I was told, and as nervous as
Speaker 1: I was, I walked up to Miss Miller's desk. I
Speaker 1: had chosen a beautiful little yellow knit dress to match
Speaker 1: the shoes, and I said, Ms. Miller, I have twelve
Speaker 1: pairs of shoes. Oh my god. She looked down at
Speaker 1: my feet, she looked at my face with those blue eyes,
Speaker 1: and she told me to sit out. And you know,
Speaker 1: she never said another word to me ever again the
Speaker 1: rest of the school year. How did that feel to you?
Speaker 1: I mean, you're six years old, you're in first grade.
Speaker 1: You again something you don't have language for, right, you
Speaker 1: recognize disdaining, but you know you don't have that word. Um,
Speaker 1: you recognize it in the saleswoman at sacks for your mother.
Speaker 1: You don't have that word. But what your mother does
Speaker 1: is models for you. UM, dignity, Yes, that's it. If
Speaker 1: she had played that any other way, you know, I
Speaker 1: think about that now because it's still stuck with me.
Speaker 1: Look how it has stuck with me my whole life.
Speaker 1: I still remember as much as I tell people that story,
Speaker 1: I can recall how I felt as a six year old.
Speaker 1: It was traumatizing. And if my mother had, you know,
Speaker 1: handled it any other way, said we'll just ignore her,
Speaker 1: or well, you don't have to wear all your shoes
Speaker 1: as cool. If she had done any of those things,
Speaker 1: I think the shame would have come rushing down onto me,
Speaker 1: all that shame that she had kept at bay. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it would have really been really a very
Speaker 1: different outcome. Um. So I'm grateful that she had to
Speaker 1: wherewithal to handle it that way, because I knew right
Speaker 1: then that no one could tell me what I was
Speaker 1: entitled to. That was the thing that I quickly grasps
Speaker 1: from that situation. There are stories that stay with us
Speaker 1: and stories that we need to rediscover and re understand
Speaker 1: as adults once our childhood's become clearer to us, especially
Speaker 1: when our childhoods have involved a secret. Brigette is already
Speaker 1: deep into her adult life. She's in her fifties, a journalist,
Speaker 1: a professor, a wife, and a mom. Before this secret
Speaker 1: she has kept her whole life starts to sit less
Speaker 1: comfortably within her. Fanny's gone. The risks of what she
Speaker 1: did are long past, and yet still the secret remains.
Speaker 1: Why I was so used in not telling it was
Speaker 1: all I ever knew. I inherited that way of life
Speaker 1: that I never struggled with the idea of wanting to
Speaker 1: tell of Oh oops, I'm gonna share this and I shouldn't.
Speaker 1: I never did. It was incredible because as my best
Speaker 1: friend since fourth grade, Diane Um, was being interviewed by
Speaker 1: me as I was researching the book and now we're
Speaker 1: in our fifties, and she thought, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about my mom, and she thought, well, that's a
Speaker 1: great subject, because we all loved your mother. And we
Speaker 1: all have stories of how she helped us. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd love to talk to her, talk to you about her.
Speaker 1: And then my final question to her was did you
Speaker 1: know that my mom had this whole business? And and
Speaker 1: she was like, what are you talking about? What it's like?
Speaker 1: That's when I realized, Wow, I really did keep this
Speaker 1: secret pretty well, and that we all did, and that
Speaker 1: my mother did. And you know, I could see it
Speaker 1: in my friend's face. She was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I I did know your mom was running something. I
Speaker 1: just didn't know what. Like I could tell she was
Speaker 1: in charge, I just didn't know what she was in
Speaker 1: charge of. So it was both a revelation but not surprising.
Speaker 1: But that was my way of understanding for myself that yes,
Speaker 1: we did keep that secret, solidly kept it um across
Speaker 1: many years. But here's the thing I came to learn
Speaker 1: to just because it wasn't a dark, shameful secret didn't
Speaker 1: mean it wasn't weighing on me. It was because a
Speaker 1: secret morse, it ultimately becomes something that attaches shame to itself,
Speaker 1: to itself. Right, It's like I call shame a secret
Speaker 1: country cousin because they're not far from one another inevitably,
Speaker 1: and in my case, I started feeling bad about not telling.
Speaker 1: I started thinking, I'm acting like I'm ashamed of my
Speaker 1: mother because I'm not telling anyone, and that felt awful.
Speaker 1: At what point did you start feeling that way? It
Speaker 1: really became a hute once I had a child, and
Speaker 1: once my son got older and actually asked me one
Speaker 1: day when he was like ten years old. This was
Speaker 1: nine years ago, and he very innocently looked at a
Speaker 1: photo of my mom and said, what was she like? Oh?
Speaker 1: I managed to answer him. I said, oh, she was amazing.
Speaker 1: But in my heart, I thought, Jesus, what have you done?
Speaker 1: You know you have really now reached gone into a
Speaker 1: territory that's unhealthy. You kept the secret longer than you
Speaker 1: had to. Why are you still keeping the secret now?
Speaker 1: Your own children don't know who their grandmother is, what
Speaker 1: she did, what she accomplished. Then I thought, get it together.
Speaker 1: Your mom died when you were thirty two. Yes, when
Speaker 1: were your children born? So my son was born seven
Speaker 1: years later. Okay, so you died before, right, So they
Speaker 1: never knew her. They never knew her. I, as an aside, thought,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll never have children. Um, I totally waited till
Speaker 1: the last possible moment because I thought, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought it was because I could never be the kind
Speaker 1: of mother I had. And I wonder now, you know,
Speaker 1: was that whole business of the secret implicated in there somehow?
Speaker 1: I don't know how, but maybe something about children requires revelation.
Speaker 1: And maybe I was hesitant about that too. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I definitely felt an urgency once he was asking
Speaker 1: about her. That was the trigger. What has it been
Speaker 1: like for you after a lifetime of that being so
Speaker 1: embedded as a secret, Not only to have it stopped
Speaker 1: being a secret um to your children or to your
Speaker 1: inner circle, but um really shining a light on Fanny
Speaker 1: and on everything that had been kind of kept in
Speaker 1: the dark, kept quiet. What what what's that been like
Speaker 1: for you? Oh? My, Sally, And emotionally and psychologically, it
Speaker 1: is incredible. It's life changing. I can't put it in
Speaker 1: any other way. It's a relief. It's such a relief,
Speaker 1: and it's so validating. All that time I was stopping
Speaker 1: a lot from happening, from my children knowing who she was,
Speaker 1: from myself being able to brag about her, from all
Speaker 1: these people who loved her, and had been touched by her.
Speaker 1: They weren't really able to talk about her. Is as
Speaker 1: though I gave everyone permission, and then I gave permission
Speaker 1: to all these people who didn't know Fanny but had
Speaker 1: similar stories. It dawned on me I hadn't thought about it.
Speaker 1: Everyone was keeping the number secret. Well. One of the
Speaker 1: things about secrets, too, is the way that they they
Speaker 1: beget secrets. That begets secrets, that begets secrets, and so
Speaker 1: everybody is walking around holding some version of a secret,
Speaker 1: and they think that they're the only one, right, right,
Speaker 1: that's it. I thought that I thought that I, um,
Speaker 1: I didn't have any friends who had, you know, mother's
Speaker 1: doing what my mom did, so it felt like I
Speaker 1: was the only one. But of course now I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: Almost everyone I talked to wants to tell me an anecdote.
Speaker 1: Not just about I had a friend who was in
Speaker 1: the numbers, though I remember that family down the street
Speaker 1: or my uncle was doing that, but people who want
Speaker 1: to tell me about their grandfather who bet on horses,
Speaker 1: or you know, the history of bootlegging in their family,
Speaker 1: or you know like that, to me is the quintessentral
Speaker 1: American story. It's something. It's really something. Here's Bridgette reading
Speaker 1: a passage from the World according to Fannie Davis, in
Speaker 1: which the love of this remarkable daughter for her remarkable
Speaker 1: mother shines through as a family secret finally blossoms into
Speaker 1: the light of day. My mother gave us a good
Speaker 1: life a great expense. I thought I knew her skills
Speaker 1: as a number runner, that she used her facility with numbers,
Speaker 1: good judge of character, winning personality, and dose of good
Speaker 1: luck to build and maintain her business for three decades.
Speaker 1: But I had no idea just how much of a
Speaker 1: gambler she was, or the kind of psychological work it
Speaker 1: took to keep our world afloat. Scariest of all, is
Speaker 1: this The only way for me to tell Mamma's story
Speaker 1: is to defy her by running my mouth. Many thanks
Speaker 1: to my guest, Brigette M. Davis. She is the author
Speaker 1: of the World according to Fannie Davis, and you can
Speaker 1: find out more about Brigette at Brigette davis dot com.
Speaker 1: Family Secrets is an I Heeart media production. Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: is a supervising producer, Lowell Brolante is the audio engineer,
Speaker 1: and Julie Douglas is the executive producer. If you have
Speaker 1: a family secret you'd like to share with us, get
Speaker 1: in touch at listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer,
Speaker 1: and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fami
Speaker 1: Secrets Pod. For more about my book, Inheritance, visit Danny
Speaker 1: Shapiro dot com. Yeah for more podcasts. For my heart radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.