Gone by Morning

by Michele Weinstat Miller

  “We’ve found a large group of us on the Black side, but it probably won’t help you much. Never know, though. Some of us are pretty light skinned and have ancestors who passed for white who could have married white. Their descendants would be as white as Ivanka Trump. So, you could be one of us.”

  “My DNA profile doesn’t include any African American,” Jackson said, trying to keep the huffiness out of his voice, wondering whether this call would be a total waste of his time.

  “Well, we’ve had contact with the white side. Not that they’re much interested in us. Don’t believe everything you see on CNN about the Black and white sides living happily ever after as one big extended family once they find each other. Most of them are like Thomas Jefferson’s white family, trying to fend off the kin of Sally Hemings. Maybe the white side will be more open to you. Most of them treat us like gold diggers … even though some of us are doing quite well financially.

  “Truthfully, it should be us who wants nothing to do with them. We’ve got family stories passed down from slave times. We’ve all heard them from our parents and grandparents. Our ancestors were the worst kind of slave owners. Punished hard, raped the women in the most sadistic way, didn’t have even a semblance of decency when it came to separating families.

  “Still, they’re your kin, and I’m sure there’s some good ones in the bunch. A couple of the white ones come to our reunions. They seem okay, even if they think their presence provides healing … and it’s so nice for us. Don’t make that mistake. We always knew we had white relatives. It’s only them that needs to heal from the surprise of finding us.” She laughed. “They tend to be the poor relations who come, though, not the hoity-toity ones.”

  “There are some who still have money?”

  “Boy, not just money. I’m talking about a lot of money. There’s a branch of the family that came to this country rich and has milked it successfully for four hundred years. Each baby is born with millions. They all go to Yale. That’s a legacy school for them. Affirmative action is alive and well for rich white people.” He heard her exhale, now talking low. “They’ve got a lot of power. More than people know. In both political parties. But don’t get me started. I’m sure you didn’t contact me to hear my political views.”

  She was right about that. Jackson didn’t want any more involvement with her than was necessary to get to the rich white side. He didn’t want to know anyone who couldn’t help him.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll give your information to a couple of my cousins. They can give you some names and phone numbers. You’re going to need to narrow things down a lot more if you’re looking for your parents. Didn’t XFactor give you names for closer cousins?”

  “I emailed, but no answers yet.”

  “What are their names?”

  He told her.

  “Oh, yeah, that’s the snooty white side, for sure. Some of the younger generation took it upon themselves to get tested for school projects or for fun. I’m sure their parents would never have allowed it if they’d known. They know they have skeletons in their closets. They certainly don’t want to learn the identities of all the people they still owe forty acres and a mule to.” She sighed wearily. “Well, anyway, once my cousins and I get you all the information we’ve gathered, you’ll have a good start—at least to fill in your family tree some more. I’ll send you over my file of news clippings too. I bet you’ll find your parents.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, Emily and Lauren walked a lesser-known path that led from the back of the Dancing Crane Café to Congo Village, the Bronx Zoo’s gorilla house. They’d come early to beat the worst of the weekend crowds. At ten AM, it was quiet enough to hear birds singing—the calls of local Bronx finches laced with the chatter of exotic zoo birds up ahead.

  Lauren looked happier than Emily had seen her in a long time. “Carl’s doing so well,” she told Emily. “The doctor thinks the next round of tests will confirm that the study drug is working.”

  “He seemed better last time I saw him. I noticed.”

  “Fingers crossed that he’ll be going back to work soon. Before he drives himself—and me—crazy.”

  Emily pushed an empty stroller while Skye ran ahead, past a flock of flamingos standing in a pond. Emily kept her sights trained on the little girl, who paused slightly now as she approached brightly colored exotic birds as tall as her in cages along the path.

  Emily knew every path in the zoo, the map tattooed on her mind from her own childhood. Lauren had kept an unlimited membership to the zoo when Emily was young and brought her there several times a month, even in the dead of winter. Emily had heart-level memories of those days that made her feel a deep sense of comfort here. When Skye turned two, Lauren had surprised Emily with a membership.

  “How’s it been going with the dog?” Lauren asked.

  “It’s been good. My main concern was that Skye would get too attached. But she only sees Rusty a couple of weekends a month and I always tell her Rusty is a guest, not ours. I’m thinking that, when he goes to a veteran—a few weeks from now—a new puppy will arrive to replace him and she’ll be excited to meet him.”

  As Emily and Lauren reached the exotic-bird cages, Skye was off running again. She shouted with excitement and pointed, launching onto an empty lawn. Emily and Lauren double-timed up the path after her.

  “What is she looking at?” Lauren asked.

  Skye shouted, her little legs picking up speed. “Fire hydrant!”

  In the middle of the stretch of lawn, a green fire hydrant stood about a foot taller than typical street hydrants.

  “Oh lord,” Emily said, laughing. “Lions, tigers, and bears, take a number.”

  The women watched from the path while Skye climbed and examined the hydrant closely, clearly imagining herself as a firefighter.

  Lauren spoke after watching for a while. “Hector dropped by the house yesterday. He was in the neighborhood.”

  Emily sighed, knowing where the conversation was going. “Do you know how much this sounds like a sitcom? My ex-boyfriend hanging around my mother’s house. My mother advocating for him.”

  “Art imitates life, my child.”

  “I began dating Hector when I was sixteen. He’s a great guy and an even better father. but I don’t know anyone who ends up life partners with their high school boyfriend.”

  Lauren ran her fingers across her lips, zipping them.

  “Oh, you are so exasperating.” Emily laughed. “Sometimes it amazes me how traditional you are. You and Hector are peas in a pod. You both really thought we should have gotten married because I was pregnant.”

  “I will spare you the lecture about it being better for Skye to grow up in a two-parent household.”

  Emily looked askance at Lauren. “That right there was the lecture.”

  Although she wouldn’t admit it, Emily had given her mother’s point a lot of thought. She believed she’d made the right decision. Skye was flourishing. But she also had to admit to herself that she missed the comfort of Hector as a boyfriend. She couldn’t even date him anymore because that would be a slippery slope, confusing now that they had Skye together.

  Emily and Lauren watched Skye step up onto a metal lip near the bottom of the hydrant and grab the top as if she were riding it. It must have morphed into an entire fire truck in her mind. Watching Skye, Lauren gave Emily a hug around her shoulders. Her mother was known for random hugs, and Emily leaned the side of her head against Lauren’s shoulder.

  Emily changed the subject as they parted. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you … it’s terrible—a friend of my neighbor was killed.”

  “Killed? How?”

  Emily told Lauren about Sharon and the apparently lackluster murder investigation. “It turns out that Sharon was a call girl. And my neighbor was her madam.”

  Lauren’s face hardened. Emily could see the gears clicking in her mother’s head, drawing all the wrong conclusions about Kathle
en. Emily wished she hadn’t said so much. She talked too much, sometimes without thinking, especially when it came to her mother.

  Lauren exhaled. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

  “She’s retired. She really is just a nice old woman.”

  Lauren scoffed, her silence speaking volumes.

  “Mom, she’s not trying to recruit me. She’s retired. Anyway, my theory is that the killing had nothing to do with Sharon’s sex work.”

  Lauren spoke tensely. “You may be the only person who can identify a murderer and you mention it more casually than telling me you lost your iPhone. Plus, you’re hanging out with a pimp like that’s okay.”

  “She is not a pimp! You’re overreacting.”

  “I’m going to talk to Carl. Maybe he can find something out and make sure you’re not in any jeopardy.”

  “Mom, I’m an adult. And a journalist. I can handle this myself,” Emily said, remembering how upset Kathleen had been about her going to Chief Reilly to ask about Sharon. “And Kathleen wouldn’t want me to involve Carl. It might piss off the local cops.”

  “An overage criminal wouldn’t want you to tell your cop stepfather about you being the only person who can identify a murderer? You’re crediting that?”

  “We don’t know he was the murderer. He could have been Sharon’s friend. He could just be a material witness.”

  “I see you’ve been watching Law and Order,” Lauren said in the most annoyingly sarcastic manner. Then she blew air through her lips, her features softening gradually.

  Emily was glad. She hated fighting with her mother, although they seemed to have these squabbles a lot. Skye wasn’t the only stubborn one. Emily wasn’t looking forward to Skye’s teenage years. She could only imagine the three of them.

  “Okay. But please stay out of it,” Lauren said. “You don’t know anything about the Life or the Street. You have too much to lose to get involved with shady people.”

  Knowing it would be better to end the conversation before it took another bad turn, Emily called out, “Let’s go, Skye.”

  Skye looked toward Emily from her perch atop the hydrant.

  “Come on. Let’s go to the gorillas.”

  “Okay!” Skye took off in the direction of the Congo Village, already knowing where it was.

  CHAPTER

  25

  THE PHONE RANG, cutting short a Mariah Carey song, just as Kathleen was getting ready to head out for a morning power walk in Inwood Hill Park. She always tried to get outside before the midday sun superheated the sidewalks. “Hello,” she answered.

  “Ms. Harris? This is Mr. Lee from Riverdale Funeral Home. Ms. Williams’s remains have been released from the morgue.”

  Kathleen talked with the funeral director, confirming her choice to cremate Sharon, given that there was no one to express a preference.

  “I’ll email you forms,” he said. “I need your electronic signature to attest that there’s no next of kin and that you’re taking responsibility for disposal of the remains.”

  “Okay. I can do that.”

  Kathleen hadn’t found anything among Sharon’s belongings to give her a clue about her family. Sharon had emigrated from Europe on an education visa as a teenager. She’d never gotten a green card, so she wasn’t permitted to work on the books, and there’d never been any reason for Kathleen to know her birth name, which was surely not Sharon Williams. For whatever reason, Sharon had never mentioned her family, and Kathleen honestly believed there was no one Sharon viewed in that way.

  Kathleen supposed that must be what her own daughter felt too. Lauren had lived most of her life without Kathleen. It appeared she’d done just fine without a mother. Kathleen was glad for that, even though she wished Lauren had been even a little needy, just to provide any opening that would have given Kathleen a chance to enter her life again.

  The other women in prison understood what it was to lose their children. They’d told her, Don’t worry. She knows who her mama is. She’ll come back to you. But it hadn’t happened that way.

  * * *

  Kathleen took a path through Inwood Hill Park, where ancient caves peeked out from the hilly woods above. She thought about how she had hoped to be a better mother than her own mother had been. Kathleen was sure her mother had suffered from undiagnosed bipolar or a severe personality disorder or both. At best, Kathleen’s mother had not been known for kindness.

  Kathleen remembered one June day, a beautiful day like today. She had been seventeen years old, quietly eating a bowl of cereal in the kitchen of the Columbus Avenue brownstone apartment where she lived with her mother. Dressed for work in a dress and pumps, her mother turned to Kathleen out of the blue and said, “I’ve never known whether you’re the child of my husband or my father.”

  Memories of Kathleen’s grandfather, long dead, streamed into her mind at that moment. Was her grandfather also her father? He’d had sex with Kathleen’s mother. He’d had sex with Kathleen too. Her emotions ricocheted within her that day as the memory came back, his heavy weight on her, the physical pain that had pulsed through her when it happened. He’d been dead since she was seven years old, so it had happened before seven.

  Kathleen stared at her mother with unadulterated hatred.

  “Well, I’ve got to go to work.” Kathleen’s mother drained her coffee cup and placed it in the sink. “Good luck on your Regents today.”

  Kathleen’s life at that point was like two sticks rubbing together. Sparks were inevitable. Shortly after graduation, she moved in with Michael, wild and handsome even when he’d been up drinking the night before.

  But the sparks became flames when Michael was hurt in a car accident while their daughter was in elementary school. He’d been a good dad until then. Even though he had been barely twenty when Lauren was born, his love for Kathleen and the baby had stabilized him, other than his occasional binge drinking. But his use of prescribed pain medication after the accident morphed into heroin addiction. Kathleen tried to hold the family together, although her nagging and yelling at Michael had surely made their daughter think she was the bad parent. Being high on heroin made Michael playful and affectionate, while Kathleen became an anxious shrew.

  On their last day together, after three years of crack and heroin addiction, Michael lay sprawled in the bathroom with a needle jutting from his arm. Lauren cleared the apartment of drugs and weapons like a child soldier clearing a minefield, rushing to finish before the police arrived. Was there something Kathleen could have done instead of shrieking about the worms and snakes she saw coming out of her dead husband toward her? She remembered knowing that her husband was dead, and she remembered the reptile invaders just as clearly. It had been as if fifteen-year-old Lauren were a specter passing through the room, busy at her own task, unaware of the creatures launching themselves at her mother. And the invaders seemed just as unaware of the young girl. Kathleen had screamed and screamed.

  When Kathleen finally came to her senses, she’d found herself on Rikers Island, awaiting trial for the murder of her husband. After her plea bargain, she spent most of her five-year sentence in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. She’d known Lauren had gone to residential drug treatment. The caseworkers had come to Bedford to get Kathleen to sign the consent papers. But when she tried to contact her daughter again, the caseworkers told her that the drug program had helped Lauren become an emancipated minor. Kathleen didn’t even have the right to know the name of the program. From the disdainful way the caseworker spoke to Kathleen—treatment she richly deserved—Kathleen knew the caseworker and the program had done everything they could to make sure she didn’t cause Lauren any more harm than she already had. After that, it was as if her daughter had vanished from the face of the earth. There wasn’t even an address where Kathleen could write to her.

  Kathleen had never forgotten that she was accountable for the nightmare Lauren’s childhood had turned into. In prison, Kathleen had joined a twelve-step program that called for he
r to make amends to those she’d harmed. Lauren was at the top of the list. Kathleen wanted to explain, apologize, make up for what she’d done, even though she could never undo it. But when Kathleen finally located Lauren after prison, she’d wanted nothing to do with her mother. Who could blame her? After two angry rejections, Kathleen’s sponsor had finally suggested that the best amends Kathleen could make to her daughter was to honor her wishes: stay away from her and stay out of her life.

  Kathleen had mothered dozens of women instead, filling the painful chasm inside her with their challenges and affection. Some would think her promoting sex work was predatory, but she’d never turned out a girl who wasn’t already hooking. Instead, she treated them fairly, rescued some of them from abusive pimps, and tried to keep them healthy and safe. For some of them, she was the closest thing to a mother they’d ever known.

  Now, Kathleen wished she knew more about Sharon, wished Sharon had been more open about her past so that Kathleen could find her family. Sharon’s ability to keep information to herself was an asset in their business. Kathleen could keep a secret, but she wasn’t cut from the same cloth as Sharon. Her secrets burned fiercely in her, leading to a constant sense of inner discomfort, even now—especially her new secret, her snowballing deception of Emily.

  Ultimately, staying out of Lauren’s life had become more difficult as time passed. Kathleen’s yearning for her child had led to the very kinds of deception that had likely motivated Lauren to reject Kathleen’s amends in the first place. Instead of respecting her daughter’s wishes, Kathleen now owed additional amends for worming her way into every facet of Emily’s life.

  Kathleen felt a flash of self-hatred. That was why she’d started to unravel her deceptions, the easiest one first: Sophie. She’d taken down her Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, though she still yearned to check in and see what Emily was posting today.

  Kathleen walked along a lake now, Columbia University’s sports arena on the far side. She looked toward the sound of squealing children in birthday hats playing tug-of-war on a field nearby. She watched them, turning her mind away from the negative thoughts that were keeping her from enjoying the day. She completed her circuit on the path around the field and headed home, thinking about the calls she needed to make. Absent any information about Sharon’s current friends or family, Kathleen would reach out to their mutual friends, Kathleen’s former employees, and invite them to come to a memorial.