More than a Missing Heirloom
Author Othello Bach overcame unimaginable tragedy to become a successful author
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There is a well-worn adage used in creative writing: “Write what you know.” For Othello Bach, the adage proved to be sound advice, though it took decades before the tale of her personal experiences was published. In the interim, she became an award-winning author, a composer, and a painter.
Kokomo soon will experience an example of her work next weekend, as the Kokomo Civic Theatre will present the world premiere of her latest play, “The Missing Heirloom,” on Feb. 23-25, at IU Kokomo’s Havens Auditorium, 2300 S. Washington St. Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. on Fri., Feb. 23, and Sat., Feb. 24, and at 2 p.m. on Sun., Feb. 25. Tickets are available online at www.kokomocivictheatre.org/tickets.
Set in 1955 Kansas, 70-year-old Maggie Henderson receives a letter from the Smithsonian Institute, looking for a gold watch that was given to her grandfather by Theodore Roosevelt. Following a tragic accident, Maggie allows Sophie, a black woman who cleans houses, to stay with her.
Maggie’s friend and town busy-body, Betty, can’t help but share all this news with the town, which results in attempt to steal the watch, to take advantage of Maggie’s new-found fortune, and reveals previously unspoken prejudice and disapproval of Maggie and Sophie.
The fact that the play even exists seems impossible when Bach’s life is considered. The story of her life is much more a tragedy than a morality play. And her survival into her 80s seems equally improbable.
She sat in her kitchen one afternoon last fall, one leg tucked beneath her and the other drawn up to her chest, supporting the arm that delivered the latest draw of a cigarette. It was a pose and activity typically reserved for a woman less than half her age and twice the physicality of the average senior.
Her casual and comfortable demeanor showed a woman quite accustomed to being underestimated, only to prove people wrong time and again. There was no pessimism in it, no jaded screed against a patriarchal society, no axe to grind. This is Othello Bach, a woman liberated in word and deed.
She screwed the cigarette into a cut-glass ashtray, perhaps three or four drags into it, and then lit another. She shifted her weight slightly, tasted the first draw of fresh tobacco smoke, and smiled slightly.
And then she spoke horror into the world.
“We were poor, like, dirt poor, literally,” said Othello, recounting her life at the age of 6. “We lived in a ditch in Oklahoma. The farmer had a backhoe and dug a ditch for us to live in. I remember it clearly, but I don’t know how large it was.”
Surely not. Such hyperbole is clearly laughable. But Othello wasn’t laughing. The words were delivered matter-of-factly. There was no deception, no attempt to impress her audience. She lived in a ditch with her six brothers and sisters, her mother, and her father.
Her father was an alcoholic, drinking away his daily wages rather than providing for his family. This wasn’t the Great Depression. This was a self-inflicted situation that spread misery to his entire family; a depression of a different sort.
Fortunately, Othello’s family didn’t have to live in the dirt very long. Her father caught word of a job and a shack in Colorado. He loaded the family onto his flatbed truck, his only real asset, and relocated.
What came next isn’t fit to hear. As Othello recounted her brief stay in Colorado, more than seven decades past, a spectre of grief flickered across her face; still haunting her, still lurking in her mind’s shadowed places.
She pulled out a photograph. There sat the truck, parked in front of the shack her family called home. And there stood Othello with her brothers and sisters, her mother and father. The truck’s flatbed was larger than the building. Eight people crammed into a space that couldn’t have measured more than 400 square feet.
It is an idyllic scene, telling a vicious lie that somehow fortune had smiled. But there is no silver lining in that photo.
“That's the family, and that's me,” said Othello. “We lived in the shack, but it burned down. My mother had been in the kitchen cooking. My oldest brother with all the kids were in one room, almost all of us. My brother kicked the window out and started pitching us out.
“When the shack exploded, what happened was there was a can of gasoline. I knew it because I'd been watching mom in the kitchen from the doorway. I was sitting next to my brother, and we were waiting for dinner because we were hungry.
“But the door slammed shut with the explosion. I can still remember it. If I close my eyes, it's easy. You could see the fire behind the walls. So anyway, my brother pitched us out the window. And my mother came running out, totally on fire and screaming … and screaming.
She was screaming, ‘Take care of my babies! Take care of my babies!’ She called us all her babies as she was rolling around on the ground. It was too horrible to even cry about, you know what I mean? You just were mesmerized.”
The fire didn’t claim her mother, at least not initially. She was transported to a nearby hospital, where she languished for two weeks before finally succumbing to the severe injuries. Othello was allowed to see her mother once during that time.
“The blisters on her face closed her eyes,” said Othello.
The funeral quickly followed, but the entire ordeal seemed surreal to Othello. Her six-year-old mind couldn’t process what she was experiencing.
“I didn't believe she was dead,” said Othello. “The reason I didn't is when I looked into the coffin, over the edge, I saw she was so badly burned. They had papier-mâché on her face or something, but I could see she had no nostrils. And I thought, ‘That's a dog. That's not my mama.’”
Young Othello was in shock, to be certain. Perhaps that was a blessing because the sideshow of grotesqueries had not reached its apex. And as she recounted what came next, her words shifted from past to present tense. She relived the moment as she extinguished the next half-smoked cigarette and reached for another.
“The night we buried my mother, my father took me into his bed,” said Othello. “He took me out of my bed with my sisters. And he molested me. He did not penetrate me. He (finished) between my thighs.
“I didn't know what was going on. All I knew was this ain't meant for me. This had to be something he did with mama, you know? We had just buried her. I could still hear the earth hit the coffin. And I’m terrified mama's gonna walk in. I feel so guilty. I didn't do this. I didn't do this, you know?”
Thankfully, her father never repeated that violation. Instead, he loaded up his seven children and surrendered them to an orphanage. But they weren’t kept together.
“They immediately separated my brothers and sisters,” said Othello. “I had one brother with me in that orphanage. You're separating your family that was already just crushed, right? Where are my sisters? Where is my family, the last thing we had?”
That question went unanswered for 18 months. Othello recalled being treated “horribly” while in the orphanage, though the details never surfaced.
Unfolding her legs, she walked to the trash compactor installed beneath the kitchen counter and emptied her ashtray. The tale of the orphanage went with the ashes. So, too, did Othello’s façade.
The grace and fluidity and casual composure that she had portrayed at the start of her story was gone. As she took the few steps across the kitchen, they were made deliberately, if not uncertainly. One shoulder was shifted unnaturally above the other. A car accident a year earlier had left Othello broken and still hoping to heal.
But in the viewing of this scene, it seemed as if her story was playing out across her slight frame; each word a stone or dagger; each memory a burden.
She returned to the orphanage as she unwrapped another pack of cigarettes. Her story wafted through the air with each thin cloud of smoke. After 18 months in the orphanage, her father returned. He had met a woman he thought would care for his children. Othello and her siblings were together again, but the arrangement was short-lived. When the woman left, her father once again was faced with a family he clearly didn’t want.
“He took us and put us in a second orphanage,” said Othello. “The first one wouldn’t take us back. I remember he stopped his car in front of a pay telephone and told me to call to ask if we could come back to the orphanage. They said no, so he found another one.
“He told my second oldest brother to drive us there. I remember my brother saying, ‘Daddy, don’t do this!’ When we're in the lobby at the orphanage, my sister, just younger than me, and I were begging Daddy, ‘Don't leave us here. Please, don't leave us here.’ He kept saying, ‘Get away, get away.’ Finally, he said, ‘I don't want you!’”
The final dagger found its mark. Seven devastated children. Othello’s brothers never recovered. All four eventually ended their tortured lives by their own hands. And Othello was left to her own devices in the orphanage where she remained until adulthood.
Not knowing what to do with her life, she moved to California and turned to writing. Unknowingly indulging in self-directed therapy, she decided to “write what she knew” as the adage instructs. She intended to document her life story. But there was a problem.
“I was still basically a non-reader at that point,” said Othello. “I had to look up the words I wanted to use and teach myself.”
Still, she completed the manuscript and delivered a synopsis to a book editor.
“I sent it to the editor and said, ‘Would you be interested in this?’ He said, ‘Who are you trying to fool? Things like this don’t happen. And you need to choose a less pretentious pseudonym.’ He didn’t believe my story, and he didn't even believe my name.
“So I thought, if he doesn’t believe this, I'll write something he will believe. I started writing fiction novels. I sold my first one to Avon Books, and it was a bestseller. My second one was a best-seller, too. That’s when I decided I could write.”
Othello went on to write 30 books, making a very successful living in the ‘70s as a writer of thrillers and horror stories. She exorcised her demons behind the mask of fiction. But she wanted a different avenue of expression. Having processed her pain, she turned to the gentle genre of children’s stories in the early ‘80s.
Her first effort in this arena was a book entitled, “Whoever Heard of a Fird?” All the characters were odd mash-ups of animals. A fish and a bird make a fird. A hyena and an ant make a hyenant. She even composed a musical score to accompany the story; another self-taught skill.
“I took it to my agent,” said Othello. “He said, ‘You're not a children's book writer. You're a thriller writer. I wouldn't touch this with a 10-foot pole. And you did the music? I wouldn't touch it.”
No publisher would, either. Othello shopped “Whoever Heard of a Fird?” with no success. But she was undaunted. The word “no” is painless to someone who has known and lived rejection. She took a different approach.
“I thought my songs were good, so I sent it all to a music publisher,” said Othello. “They didn't just publish sheet music. They produced full orchestrations, and they were a very recognized, reputable company. They were the best at the time.
“So, I sent ‘Whoever Heard of a Fird?’ to them with a letter. I asked, ‘Would you please listen to the music and tell me if it's worth publishing this book?’ I thought they weren't gonna answer. It took two months, but they finally they did.
“They said, ‘Based on the strength of your characters, your storytelling, and this music, we are going to start a book publishing company. You will be the first book.”
“Whoever Heard of a Fird?” was published by Caedmon Childrens Books in 1984. It was the first of 17 children’s books written by Othello, and it was successful. Her first residual check paid her $147,000. She kept the receipt. It still sits in a box in her closet as an indelible affirmation.
For years, the receipt rested just feet away from her true affirmation. The manuscript of her life story went untouched for 30 years. No one would believe the story anyway. And Othello wasn’t certain it was meant for anyone but her. Her pain was engraved on paper, not on her soul.
“Once you get (the pain) out? You know you've got it,” said Othello. “You don't have to think about it anymore. One of the things we do with pain is we hold on to it. We know it's important. We know it's our excuse for our fumbling. We want people somehow forgive us based on that.
“But when you write it and put it in a drawer, it's there. Don't even touch it. Don't look at it. You don't want to because you know why you wrote it. Once I had it on paper, it cleaned me out. And it's safe if I ever want to look at it again.”
Having moved to Kokomo from California in 2000, she came across the manuscript while unpacking. Perhaps her unbelievable story might seem more plausible after three decades in a drawer. She sent it to a publisher who previously had hired her to read manuscripts.
“He loved it,” said Othello. “And he published it.”
“Cry Into the Wind” hit bookshelves in 2005. Her story has been called “a modern-day version of ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’” Another affirmation. The book is currently available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. She can be contacted directly at www.othellobach.com.
Othello continues to write. Her latest work, “The Missing Heirloom,” will make its debut next weekend with the Kokomo Civic Theatre. It concentrates on tolerance and acceptance, like many of her children’s books. Tickets are still available for each performance at a cost of $15 for adults, $13 for seniors (60+), $12 for students (through college), and $10 for children 12 and under.
Tickets are available online at www.kokomocivictheatre.org/tickets.