This chapter of Billie Holidays autobiography captured a major transitional period in her life. As quickly as the second paragraph she started to describe a young man named Jimmy Monroe. She was clearly infatuated with him because she said “he was the most beautiful man I have ever laid eyes on”. After giving this man such a flattering description, she followed up by stating her doubts a possible interest for her “he was a big deal, I figured what would he want with me?” She spent a bit of time with him every now and then “going around” with him. Billie Holiday had then discovered her mother and Joe Glaser felt he would never marry her. This fueled her to pursue the man everyone thought she couldn’t get.
Billie and Jimmy get married and she shoved the marriage certificate in both their faces. The marriage was full of abuse and eventually Billie “got wise” that something was going on. Jimmy turned from having affairs with other women to experimenting with drugs. Things worsened but the couple moved to Los Angeles together anyway.
It was not long after moving when Jimmy got into “trouble” and Billie was left with no husband to support her. She moved back to her old city and lived alone in an apartment close to her mother. It was not long until she met a new man named Joe Luke Guy, who was a musician from Alabama. They were set to ride a tour bus in a few weeks. Her mother was lonely and insisted on her to move back in with her, but Billie mets the offer half way by staying three days a week with her mother and the rest of the week with Joe Luke. Billie gave her mother a dog named Rajah Ravoy. That dog kept her mother company until the day it died from old age. Billie recalled her mother saying “that dog was all I had to live for”. When on tour with Luke Guy and her newly formed band Billie found out that her mother died. No one verbally told her the news, she just felt it. With no husband, and no mother left, she told Joe Luke Guy “ god dammit you better be good to me because your all I have left now”.
My question is as follows, does it seem that in the beginning of the chapter Billie is looking for independence? Did she try too hard and not cherish the only woman who ever cared for her? In the end of the chapter is she “alone” or “independent”?
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