When Bernie Met Lorraine

If it hadn’t been for Kay, I would have never met Lorraine.

It was May of 1963, at the end of my sophomore year at Pratt Institute. Being one of the few Black students, and a full scholarship recipient at that, I was so aware and protective of my place in the college that, two years into my college career, I still rarely ventured off campus. I worked in the campus bookstore when I wasn’t in the library or the art studio, only leaving for required museum visits and professor-suggested gallery openings. I was a fine arts major from Rockford, Illinois, and my knowledge of New York was fairly limited. Yet, I knew it was where I was supposed to be.

My roommate, Kay, was a photography major born and raised in New York. She dressed like a beatnik but wore her blonde hair in a helmet flip, which made her look like a mod housewife. She was nice enough, but was never home, preferring to spend her nights and weekends rubbing elbows in Greenwich Village.

We had two more nights in our room before the end of the academic year. My hours were being cut at the bookstore, so I was supplementing them by answering the phone one day a week at a gallery in Harlem, plus house sitting for a friend of one of my professors in exchange for free room and board for the summer.

“You’re always so serious, Bernie!” Kay said to me from the other side of the room, crossing her long tan legs on her bed, as I boxed up my books. Suddenly she sat up.

“Come with me to a party tonight!”

I gave her a look. “I can’t, and you can’t either. We have to pack, look at his place!” I said, referring mostly to her side of the room, which was untouched, with empty boxes scattered on the floor waiting to be filled.

“No, it’s not...it’s not like a party-party,” she said. “There’ll be music and people and probably some dancing, but it’s more about the conversation, which is all about politics and books and people.”

“Politics? I’m not a socialist, Kay,” I told her, in case she thought I was a communist.

“I know, Bernie. It’ll be just us girls, anyway. It's at my friend Terry’s apartment and she always has good booze, plus you’ll meet some nice people. You stay here in Pratt land all day night, when the real action is downtown.”

I sighed, and looked around the room. My side was mostly packed up.

“Ok, I’ll go,” I said, putting tape on the last box. “But I can only stay until…” - I checked my watch - 11, and then we’re making a hard exit.”

The party was just like Kay promised - there was music, a little dancing, but mostly just great conversation. Politics, life, sex - I didn’t say much, but I listened a lot, and I really enjoyed myself.

The tiny apartment had become packed, so Kay went alone to grab our sweaters and purses from the bedroom when it was time to leave.

It wasn’t until we got back home and I opened my purse to get out my key that I realized Kay’s mistake.

“Kay!” I exclaimed. “This purse isn’t mine!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! None of this stuff” - inside the purse was a wallet, two pens, a little black notebook, and a prescription bottle - “is mine.”

“Well, it looked just like yours,” she said, looking sheepish.

“Yes, but it’s definitely not. This belongs to” - I opened the wallet - “Lorraine Hansberry Nemiroff.”

“Wait, who?” said Kay.

“KAY. Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin in the Sun was there?! Did you see her?!”

“If she was there I didn’t see her walk in, but I'm not surprised. I’ve seen her around the village before,” Kay said nonchalantly, rifling for her keys.

I stood there, slack-jawed. Raisin held a lot of meaning for me. I’d read the play and seen the movie, which was a big deal in my hermit lifestyle.

I then had another thought.

“Oh my God, Kay!”

“What?”

“Kay she’s, she’s rich! She’s going to think we robbed her!”

Kay laughed. “No she won’t. I’ll call Terry and explain,” she said, reaching into her own purse for a dime. ‘You can get it back to her tomorrow.”

According to Kay, Lorraine wasn’t bothered in the least, mostly because her car keys were in her coat pocket and not her purse. Via Terry’s instruction, Lorraine took my bag with her to her house in Westchester. Which is precisely how, the next day, I found myself on a train to Croton-on-Hudson, heading to Lorraine’s house.

When I got to her door, the most beautiful, fawn-like creature opened it. Lorraine had this short, slightly breezy haircut, these deep eyes, and a voice that spoke in deep, measured tones.

“So you’re…” she opened my near-identical purse, and pulled out my driver’s license, “Bernice Laverne Davis.”

“The one and only,” I said, handing her purse over.

“Thank you so much! Please come in.”

I walked through the door and admired the house, still stacked with boxes of books and papers on the furniture.

“So Terry said you and Kay are students. Where do you study?” she asked as she lifted a cigarette to her lips.

“At the Pratt Institute,” I said. “I’m a... hopeful painter majoring in fine arts.”

She smiled. “Wow, my world is all writers, so your being a painter is so unique! You are so special!”

And with those words, “You are so special,” we entered into an afternoon-long conversation.

We talked about us both being from Illinois, my painting, which at the time was in a style period of Cubist-esque landscapes, and her thoughts on A Raisin in the Sun, becoming famous and living in the country.

“So, what else are you working on?” I asked.

“You actually had it on you last night.”

“Pardon?”

“My notebook,” she said. She reached over to her purse, opened it, and picked out the little black book. “I’m making edits on another play, but it’s not going anywhere so I’m basically re-writing it.”

Suddenly, she grimaced. “Would you do me a favor and just hand me that whole bag, actually?”

I passed it to her and, almost in a fit of greediness, she scrambled inside for the pill bottle and popped the cap off. I got her a glass of water from her kitchen and brought it to her.

“Thanks,” she smiled. “It’s my Darvon. I have ulcers, and they cause me a lot of pain.”

“I’m sorry, I know that must be an inconvenience to your work.”

“Well, I still write,” she said, “but I’m also less tolerant of projects I’m not passionate about.”

I nodded, and glanced at my watch. It was 4:30, and I needed to get back to the city. As I got up to go, Lorraine called my name.

“Hey Bernie, listen, would you be interested in making some extra money? I really need to get my life out of these boxes. I already know I can trust you,” she said, nodding in the direction of her purse. “If you’d be willing to spare me an afternoon or two a week, I could pay you for your time. Maybe $50 a week, at least until you have to go back to school this fall?”

I did the math. I could put Lorraine’s money towards room and board for the year. That cushion, plus my hours at the bookstore and the gallery, could help me gain financial peace of mind in the fall. It didn’t take me long to make a decision.

***

My two-afternoons soon turned into four, and lasted until Lorraine died senior year, in January of 1965. Lorraine doubled my salary, so I quit the bookstore and became her de-facto secretary and manager: replying to letters, sending her contracts, taking calls, setting her schedule. Aside from ulcers I never knew what Lorraine's exact illness was, but she never seemed to get better. She came to the city less often, and once or twice a week a girlfriend or two would drive up and spend the day with her. I could tell that their presence made her happy, made her feel safe.

Robert Nemiroff, Lorraine's ex-husband, was executor of her estate, and he asked me to stay on until her home sold and her belongings were divided. I told him I could stay until the end of May; I’d earned a scholarship to graduate school in London, and had saved enough money to leave early and spend the summer in Paris before the year started.

On May 30, he came by the house to get my keys.

“I want you to know,” he said, “how much Lorraine loved you, and how much I‘ve appreciated you here. I couldn’t have gotten through these last months on my own, and you were a big help.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I loved Ms. Hansberry.”

“I have something for you. As you know, Raisin put Lorraine in a very wealthy position. She was especially enamored of your talent and your drive, and wanted to do as much she could to make sure you thrived. So-”

He pulled out a small white envelope from his sport coat “- she left you this in order to help you pay for your graduate school, or whatever else you need help with when you go to Europe to study.”

“Wait, what?” I was confused. “Is this my final paycheck?”

Robert chuckled. “Just open it.”

Inside was a check for $20,000.

“Robert!” I exclaimed. “Did you...what am I...I can't take this.”

“Yes, you can Bernice. You have to! It was Lorraine’s wish,” he said.

“But I...I mean what about...her causes? What about her medical bills? Surely someone else needs this.”

“Bernice!” Robert was growing impatient. “Don’t YOU need it just as well? She believed in YOU.”

“Well, I can’t take it. I won’t.”

“Really, now?” He cocked his head at me.

As I continued stammering, the phone rang.

“Look, I’m expecting this call. Take a walk, think about it,” he said as he raced to answer it.

I put on my sweater and walked outside, moving through the events of the last few years that had led me here. How I’d come across a copy of The Best of Everything in the school library in ninth grade and read it, and knew that New York was where I was meant to be. How my painting grew from hobby to method of survival when my father died of a heart attack the next year, and I couldn't find a way to talk about it because my mom had grown despondent and my older brother left for the Army. How I wouldn’t have even known Pratt existed if it weren’t for my own high school art teacher, who got the application from a colleague of hers in Chicago.

How Kay was the first white person I’d met who wasn’t my superior, and how keeping my distance from her almost cost me an invite to that party, where I crossed paths with Lorraine and didn’t even know it. How if it weren’t for her, I might still be working in the bookstore and eating scrambled eggs for dinner when the weeks were especially tight. How, if I played my cards right and actually did take the check, I could pay for room and board fully, and not work at all during grad school, and, for the first time, actually be a student. How in a weird way, I’d arrived just in time to be IN the world, and not just OF it.

I walked back into the house just as Robert was ending his call.

“So?’ He said. “Have I sold you yet?”

“Robert,” I said, while extending my hand. “You’ve got a deal.”