"Skinny" -- The Black babysitter narrates her life with the Philipsons

Meet Doris Hale, the most intimate and important African American that my famlly knew and trusted, in her own words. Dr. Philipson conducted and transcribed the interview back in the early 90s. In anticipation of releasing the manuscript of the family memoir, we present certain chapters as podcasts performed by voice actors. "Skinny" was recorded and mixed by Joyce Licorish.

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

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Transcript

My momma wouldn’t let me babysit none when I was comin up cause I had tried to kill my baby brother.  I was the fourteenth child and there were two under me, but I’m five years older than my baby brother.  I had Momma to myself and all of a sudden here he come.  When I was sleepin in Momma’s bed she had this baby lying next to her and then my father would come and he’d beg me to get out the bed cause there wasn’t no room for him.  “No,” I said.  “You shouldn’a got that ol baby.”

We used to have these sewing machines, the big old fashioned ones with wheels, and we’d push the kids down the road on em.  I put him on there and pushed him down and throwed him in a ditch and he screamed like the sky was layin around him in little pieces.  So they wouldn’t let me babysit no more.  I’d a liked to kill him but when my baby sister came along, I gave up.  I figured I couldn’t kill em both.

When I came to work for the Philipsons I didn’t have no experience takin care of no kids.  I wasn’t hardly more ‘n a kid myself, just 17 and straight outta Blythe.  Didn’t know shoes from Shinola.  Blythe was too small of a town and it wasn’t anything to do.  My husband had asthma.  The cotton and lint from the hay made him feel bad all the time.  The doctor told him he had to leave Blythe and I couldn’a been no happier to hear it.  My sister lived in Pasadena and we moved there and lived with her for a little while.  I saw this ad in the paper and I asked my brother-in-law if he would take me to see about this job they was advertising for.  He drove me up and it seemed forever to get to the house but the place was nice and there was all these kids runnin around.  I didn’t have no references cause I was just out of a country town, but it was just something about Miz Philipson; we seemed to hit it off.  So I started living in two days a week.

I wasn’t there but four weeks before Miz Philipson told me that her and Mr. Philipson was going somewhere for a week.  Well I couldn’t go home then and we didn’t know each other too well.  I was scared cause here I am living with some strange people that I didn’t know and they don’t know me either.  But I was proud too cause here was Mr. and Miz Philipson leaving me in this big old house with the cars and the pool and the kids.  And Miz Philipson made it rare.  She could make you feel like you was a different person anyway.  When I moved in with the Philipsons I was still young so it didn’t matter to me.  It was just like with my nieces and nephews.  I could play around with them and do whatever cause pretty soon I would be leavin anyway.  So it was kind of that way at first but it got to be different pretty fast.  I had never been away from home before and a lot of it was new to me.  I had to take care of the kids.  I had to get up in the morning to get em ready for school and then when they came back at night it didn’t take long before they’d have their homework did.  We’d be out if it was summer.  We’d be swimmin cause I knew how to swim.  I knew how to do everything so it made it where I could fit in.  I wasn’t standing back and couldn’t do anything.  In the summers we’d go to the drive in and the kids ‘d bust up in the playground below the screen.  It was real cheap with a carful of kids and sometimes we’d take that floppy old basset hound too.  Cokes was only a quarter back then and popcorn a dollar.  We just got a big old tubful and let fly.  By the time the two movies was over the kids was all asleep in the back of the station wagon. 

And then it got to be like the kids was gettin to me cause they were always there and so it started working out.  I started relaxing.  And after awhile the kids started relaxin too especially when I started cooking the right food for em.  I didn’t know nothin about the tacos and the pizzas when I first came there but they learned me real fast.  I started likin that stuff too and Miz Philipson showed me lots of things about cookin.  She was a good cook.

Pretty soon I was living in five days a week and seein my husband on the weekends.  He had a job too so he didn’t mind and sometimes he’d come up to the house when the folks wasn’t there.  I was supposed to clean up but I wasn’t much of a housekeeper.  I’d never really did it too much in Blythe.  I didn’t mind washin.  I washed the clothes but ironing I hated.  There was six of em and it was clothes coming out of my ears.  Days I ironed I couldn’t do nothin else and finally Miz Philipson realized I was no ironer so she hired another lady to do it.  That was Ora Lee.  “Don’t worry about the house,” she said.  “Just take care of the kids.”  But I kept the house neat cause I didn’t have nothin else to do while the kids was at school and I always been clean for myself.

We just sort of growed up together.  I would drive those kids everywhere, and we had some times. It was always cars around.  We’d go to Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, the beach and just everywhere cause by the time we got back home on the weekends they’d be tired and ready for school the next day.

David he was the oldest.  Miz Philipson said, “You can’t sleep in David’s room.  He acts crazy; he starts to throw things.”  So I slept in Bobby’s room.  We both had twin beds.  Miz Philipson told me about the psychiatrist and him having temper tantrums but it didn’t bother me none.  I never did think David was as crazy as he wanted you to believe cause he could get more over that way.  One night when Mr. and Miz Philipson was home he was throwing things in his room.  Miz Philipson would go back there and I could hear all this stuff hitting the wall behind my back cause I was already in bed.  So I said, “I can’t understand that,” and I got up and went back there.  “No Doris, don’t go in.  David’s in a bad mood.  He’s throwing things.”  I just said, “He better not throw it at me” and went inside.  He was standing in the middle of his room, his eyes bugged out and face all twisted up.  He had a horse drawed back and I said, “If you throw that thing you better aim good cause I’ll let you have it if you don’t knock me out.”  That took him right down.  “Oh Doris, I didn’t know it was you.”  Now see I’m just working there.  If he was going to hit somebody, you’d think it’d be me instead of his mother.  So he had a pretty good act.  He let people think he was crazy and he got away with a lot.  Me and him we’d lock horns some but he’d always come in that night and apologize for things he did, why he hit Bobby or Jeannie or somebody.  He was always hitting somebody.

Alice was bossy.  I used to tell her, “You know, your mommy didn’t leave you here to babysit, she left me.”  She and Jeannie was in the same room and she liked to boss Jeannie around.  One time Jeannie was playing outside and she left her tennis shoes out on the lawn.  It was cold and frost fell on the shoes and they was wet.  So I was in the kitchen cooking and in their bedroom I hear all this ruckus.  I go in there and Jeannie is crying cause Alice is going to make Jeannie wear those wet shoes to school.  So I said to Jeannie, “Don’t you got another pair of shoes, baby?”  She said yes and I said, “Well, you go and put em on.  Alice is not your mother.”  Alice talked back to the other kids but she didn’t try it with me too much so she left Jeannie alone and then it was all settled.  

And Jeannie.  She wasn’t more than a little bit.  She was four when I started workin there and I went through a lot of things with her.  She broke out all over when she had the chickenpox and she’d get into bed with me and she’d be burnin up with fever.  I never had it but I never caught it.  And I took her—I took all them kids to the doctor.  But she was the baby and a little spoiled.  We’d sit down to eat and Jeannie might decide she wanted to eat her cake before dinner and I said, “No you’re not.  You’re goin to eat your dinner and then you’re goin to eat your cake.”  “Well,” she said, “I’m gonna hold my breath until I turn green.”  I said, “You can hold your breath ‘til you turn any color you want.”  Then she’d say, “All right” and she’d sit there and hold her breath and Alice would say, “Doris, Jeannie’s turning green.”  “She can turn blue too, but she’s not gonna get no cake.”  So she’d sit there and see she really wasn’t gonna get no cake and then she’d go to breathe and get her color back.  She was a character but if you paid her no mind she’d get over herself after a while.

Now Bobby was the kind that always had to be readin something.  Miz Philipson wanted the two little ones to go to bed at 7:00 and it was just too early.  In the summertime you still got two more hours of daylight.  I had to bust him on top the head or spank his butt to make him go and then he’d be readin under the covers or in the light of the doorway.  Didn’t nobody ever close doors in that house except for David.  But Bobby, he was ruinin his eyes sittin behind that door.  It wasn’t enough light.  Finally I said, “The heck with it.  Let him sit up.  When he gets ready, he’ll go to bed.”  Yes, Bobby was stubborn too.  He and David used to tear the place up fightin with one another.  David knew he could whip Bobby cause Bobby was no bigger ‘n a hairpin.   But he’d have to come through me to get to Bobby so that cooled him down a lot.  And then the neighbors thought everything that happened in the neighborhood was David’s fault.  One day when we was all in the house some of the neighbor kids was hollering “Phony, phony Fuller,” and, oh God, Mr. Fuller came over mad as plucked chicken.  “You don’t have no business with the boy!”  I said to him.  “David wasn’t even out there; it was those kids up the hill.  David haven’t been out this house all morning.  I’m so sick of everybody in this neighborhood thinking that everything that go wrong, David do it.”  I really tore into him and it set him back some.  Later he found out the Baker girls did it and he had to come over and apologize.  It think it hurt him to do it but he did. 

That was really the only problem with any of the neighbors.  The Philipsons was the only ones had a swimming pool so everybody had to kiss up a little.  Before Miz Philipson leave, she’d tell all of them if they wanted to swim they would have to ask me.  And they would.  They’d come down and maybe it killed them to do it but they’d ask and I’d say, “Sure.”  Anyway I didn’t go up there to make friends with nobody.  I was going to protect the kids regardless of what.  And the neighbors never made any difference.  They all spoke to me.  We didn’t have no conversations or anything but nobody ever treated me like the neighborhood was goin to hell because I was there even though there weren’t no other blacks.  They treated me all right and I treated them the same.  It could have been there and it didn’t show up or I didn’t see it none.  Maybe you have to really look for it but generally stuff got all kinds of ways of speakin for itself.  A couple a Miz Philipson’s friends, they went along with me because of her but if I had to meet ‘em out somewhere, I got the feelin they’d walk right past me.  

I remember when Greg White and Bobby was friends.  Bobby come home and David did somethin to him and Bobby called David a nigger.  And Miz Philipson said, “What did you call him?”  And Bobby repeated it again ‘cause he didn’t know what he was saying and, Lord, Miz Philipson had a fit.  “Greg White told me,” he yelled, but Miz Philipson collared him and took him to the sink and, honey, the bubbles just boiled out of his mouth.  That’s the last time I ever heard that word in that house.

You know me and Miz Philpson, all the years I worked for her, we never had one bad word between us.  You know what I’m sayin?  When I went to work for her I didn’t have that much.  Not a lot of clothing and stuff because I was just comin from Blythe.  Looking for a better life.  And she had beautiful clothes that she didn’t wear.  I was so skinny and she wasn’t fat but some of those clothes was too small so she would give them to me.  At that time the youngsters would wear what they called the cancan slip and put the dress on over.  It made the dress stand out.  It was crazy but it worked.  Miz Philipson just went to the store and bought me that slip.  She used to buy me everything.  She’d dress me up.  All her beautiful clothes.  She’d give me beautiful bags too.  I couldn’t wear her shoes ‘cause my feet was too big.  I guess that was why I was so fond of her.  Me and her got along so well because she really took an interest in me and I don’t know why.

Now Mr. Philipson and I never did do much talking.  I’d say something in the morning but we never had a conversation.  He’d come home and go through the mail, then he’d have his dinner and get his coin collection.  Never did watch T.V. but every once in awhile.  The kids and I hit the sack already and he was still up counting his money.  But he had his ways.  He liked to walk around in his underwear.  Miz Philipson would tell him, “Joe, put on some clothes.  Don’t you see Doris is here?”  “Doris don’t care about me walking around in my shorts,” he’d say and I’d say, “It don’t bother me if it don’t bother him.”

Their bedroom was right by the driveway.  One time I was in there cleanin and I heard the car door slam and Miz Philipson callin, “Doris, Doris can you come out here and help me?” I ran outside and her clothes was just bloody so I run back in and throwed a sheet over her bed.  Me and Mr. Philipson undressed her but I cleaned her up.  She had been to the doctor and they did all they could do.  She insisted on comin home.  They had wrapped her in some kinda sheet but when she got home her clothes was all soiled.  I didn’t dare throw no other clothes in the washing machine.  The water looked like soapy blood.  Miz Philipson went off to sleep right away and was droopy for a good time after.  I ain’t never had kids myself and I guess she could take comfort in what she already birthed but my heart just hurt for her.  This was a little before they went to Paris.

They was gone two years and I went back to livin with my husband full time.  I guess spendin all that time apart was one of the things that kept us together ‘cause we split up before they came back. But my husband wanted his cake, his cookies, and the whole darn meal.  He wanted to play around with the woman he was with and then he wanted to come over and see me and I knew sooner or later somebody was going to get hurt or killed.  So I moved back to Blythe ‘cause my mom was down there and she wanted me to.  But Miz Philipson wrote me and kept up with me the whole time she was gone.  The kids was older when they got back.  David was drivin and eveybody had growed up more but when Miz Philipson got ready to go out of town, she would call me and I’d come up. 

Then I met Lester again.  I had known him for years; he come from Blythe.   But he got married and went one way and I got married and went another.  He moved to the Bay Area.  The marriage busted up but Lester’s mom was already up there.  He still had a brother in Blythe and him and his mom come to visit and that’s when I saw him again.  After that we started talkin and when he asked me to see him in Richmond up I went.  Anything to get out of Blythe.  Me and Lester been married 31 years now so that was the end of that.  But Miz Philipson, she would call me and she would write me.  She would let me in on all the events.   

Miz Philipson still had Ora Lee to clean the house on Thursdays.  Matter of fact she used to come and clean when I was there, the heavy stuff that is.  I couldn’t do it all and take care of the kids too.  But I never got to know Ora Lee too well ‘cause Thursdays was my day out.  I got to know her better when Alice got married but she blessed my name later on.  It was Miz Philipson asked me to come down.  When I got there she was telling me it was going to cost $2000 for them to cater that wedding.  “I can do that!”  I said.  “Just get some nice lookin food and cook it up right and we can set the table and make it look prettier than any people who don’t even know who Alice is.  This’ll be Alice’s wedding present.”  Miz Philipson said OK and she had Ora Lee and a coupla more women come in.  After I got through cookin, Miz Philipson said to me, “OK, you sit down now.  Ora Lee and the others is takin over.  They gonna do the servin and everything.”  Well, I didn’t need no more invitin.  I sat down and got me a bottle of champagne and went to gettin drunk.  And they did all the work, all the clean up.  The way they looked at me I was glad wasn’t none of them knew anything about roots.  When I got ready to go back to Richmond, Miz Philipson wrote me out a check for $500.  I said, “No, I told you I was doing that for Alice’s wedding,” and she said, “No, no, no, you still saved us fifteen hundred dollars.”

I know people have a hard time seein one another.  Some people look at you and all they see is the outside.  And they see you different from what you really are cause they don’t get to know you. Miz Philipson to me was my friend.  She was my employer but she was my friend.  I never did understand it.  I was just glad.  When I came to work for her I didn’t have no references.  Later on I asked her why she took me in when she didn’t know anything about me.  She says, “Oh Doris, you was so skinny.  I knew you was all right.”