What Happened, Miss Simone? Page #6

probably are happier,

but you see, I have to live with Nina,

and that is very difficult.

I think 19 people

depend on me for their livelihood.

That's a hell of a lot of people.

I know that if I say, "Well, look,

I'm too tired to work tonight,"

I'm gonna get it from both ends.

Nobody's going to understand

or care that I'm too tired.

I'm very aware of that.

Now, I would like some freedom,

somewhere...

where I didn't feel those pressures.

By the late '60s,

I realized that Nina was fighting

demons that could appear

at any moment and you wouldn't know it.

She could get violent,

she could get really physical,

and the change in her

would be dramatic...

boom, like a switch.

And I... I, after a while,

realized that I was...

I wasn't with my sister,

I was with "that one..."

and that one was... menacing.

She was very concerned,

in her sane moments,

about these fits of depression and anger.

We even went

to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital,

I think, signed her in

for four or five days.

They conducted every test

known to... medicine at the time

and they were unable to find anything.

And her downward spiral,

it just got worse and worse.

We did a tour with Bill Cosby,

and the last night,

she became erratic.

She had a can of shoe polish.

She was putting it in her hair.

And she began talking gibberish,

and she was totally out of it, incoherent.

It appeared she was having

a nervous breakdown.

And when it came time to go on,

I had to escort her

by holding her arm onto the stage

and sat her down at the piano,

and I immediately stood in the wings

on the opposite side

where we could see one another.

She's watching me pantomime

and she performed.

Basically, she had no control

over her emotions,

and underneath it all,

sex dominated her.

There were times, once or twice a week,

when there was a sex attack

when she goes into a maniacal rage.

There had to be sex.

I mean, this is driving her.

My attitude towards sex

was that we should have it all the time.

How did Andy act towards you?

I just wanted him to move me

sexually, and he never was able to.

Right.

He didn't know how to touch me

and he never had enough time.

He'd come to see me late at night

and be there two hours and leave.

I knew that she was

dating other people.

We agreed that we could both

have our own outside partners...

but we would work together for the sake

of the business and the child.

I can't sit here and speak about

Aunt Nina and Uncle Andy's marriage.

What I can say is that

participation and activism

during the '60s...

rendered chaos in any individual's lives.

People sacrificed sanity,

well-being, life.

Nina Simone was a free spirit

in an era that didn't really

appreciate a woman's genius.

So what does that do

to a household and a family?

Not because of income,

but because of your soul

not being able to do what you need to do.

Direct from our newsroom in Washington,

this is the

CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

Good evening.

Dr. Martin Luther King,

the apostle of non-violence

in the civil rights movement,

has been shot to death

in Memphis, Tennessee.

Jesus!

Jesus.

There was shock

in the nation's negro communities.

Men, women and children

poured into the streets.

They appeared dazed.

Many were crying.

I think White America

made its biggest mistake

when she killed Dr. King last night.

He was the one man in our race

who was trying to teach our people

to have love, compassion, and mercy

for what white people had done.

When White America

killed Dr. King last night,

she killed all reasonable hope.

We want to do a tune written...

for today...

for this hour

for Dr. Martin Luther King.

We had yesterday to learn it, and...

so we'll see.

Last year, Lorraine Hansberry

left us, and she was a dear friend,

and then Langston Hughes left us.

Who can go on?

Do you realize

how many we have lost?

Then it really gets down

to reality, doesn't it?

Not a performance.

Not microphones and all that crap,

but really something else.

We can't afford any more losses.

Oh, no. Oh, my God.

They're shooting us down, one by one.

Don't forget that...

'cause they are...

killing us one by one.

I knew that we were lost.

I felt chased all the time,

no matter what I did or how sad I got.

I felt that there was just

no life for me in the country.

I knew I had to quit

or I had to leave Andy

or do something.

So I took my ring off,

put it on the table...

and I left the country.

According to my godsister

Attallah Shabazz...

I was staying with them,

and Mom had gone away,

and the phone would ring

and whenever it would ring,

I would go running, saying,

"Is that my mommy on the phone?"

And then I remember going back

to the house in Mount Vernon

and Dad just wasn't there.

He wasn't there.

And nobody told me anything, you know?

And, um, so...

One day you're at home

and the staff is there

and your dad's there

and the dog's there

and everything that's familiar

to you is there,

and then you come back,

I don't know, weeks later

and... nothing's there,

nobody's there.

I decided that I wanted

to go to Africa to live

and never come back to America.

I got a divorce from Andy

and I went to Liberia...

and I moved there to stay.

When I got to Africa,

I am happy, I'm beyond happy.

Liberia is a place that was founded

by the American slaves,

and it only makes sense

that I should feel at home there.

I wore... Bikinis and boots is all I wore.

Yeah.

Well, there was no loneliness.

There was no boredom.

The days flew into nights,

and you just couldn't

keep up with the times

'cause there was so much to do.

It was always fun.

I also am keenly aware

that I've entered a world

that I dreamed of all my life

and that it is a perfect world.

And I remember thinking

of the United States

as something that

I had had in a dream

sometime in my life,

but is now gone,

like it never existed!

It was a dream that I had had

and I had worked myself out of it

'cause I had toiled so long

in that place, in that prison...

and now I'm home, now I'm free,

and there is no going back.

There, it was vast and open,

and everything was natural.

Everything!

I have seen lightning in Africa

not flash, but hover,

and what it does is it electrifies you

into complete speechlessness.

I have seen it!

I have seen God.

In my seventh grade year,

Mom moved me to Liberia,

but she was always traveling,

and I never knew half the time

if I wasn't going,

that she was leaving

or when she was coming back.

So I lived with a family for a year

and I went to school there,

and I lived with them

until Mom came and decided

to buy a house on the beach,

and I went from living with them

to living with her,

and she just...

I could never do anything right.

She went from being my comfort

to the monster in my life.

Now she was the person

that was doing the beating,

and she was beating me.

One time, we were in public somewhere,

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