Tilda's Promise

by Jean P. Moore

  Eventually, her grandmother came out the door and began calling for her. She called back. “I’m up here,” she said. Her grandmother told her to come down and she said no.

  Soon her grandfather called to her. He told her to come down, and she answered, “I can’t.”

  Her grandfather came and stood under the tree. He asked her how she got there.

  “I climbed—and then I scooted out here on this branch,” she told him.

  “Well then,” he said, “scoot back down.”

  “How?” she asked. “I can’t turn around.”

  “Backward, then.”

  “Backward?”

  “You can do it.”

  So she did, backward off the branch, and then hugging the tree, all the way down.

  Emile’s address had been easy to find in the white pages online. With that information, Tilda had tapped the Williamsburg house number into Zillow to see that Emile Baptiste was the last person to have bought the house, and that was a little more than fifteen years ago. Driving east now on the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway, Tilda began going over the pieces of the puzzle she had put together in preparation for the moment at hand, when she would knock on Emile’s door and Amanda would answer.

  First puzzle piece: Lizzie.

  Why had she been so understanding of her mother’s abandonment? What if, Tilda speculated, she had known all along where her mother was? Tilda thought back to that first night when Lizzie had come over, when Darren was trying to find Amanda. She had said something about her mother needing to follow her bliss. (Funny that Tilly had used that phrase too, trying to convince her grandmother to go to Cuba.) Tilda had wondered how Lizzie knew such things and how she could think about her missing mother with such serenity. It made more sense to think that Amanda and Lizzie had a strong bond, one that enabled the mother, perhaps an emotionally adolescent mother, to confide in her daughter about her own needs. She wondered how much Lizzie might know about Emile. Surely Amanda hadn’t involved her daughter in her betrayal of Darren. Before indulging in any self-righteousness, though, Tilda, felt the tug of her own duplicity where Darren was concerned—and Lizzie, too—if it turned out she was wrong about her suspicions.

  And then there was Tilly.

  Why did she run away, if that indeed was what she’d done? Tilda believed that her granddaughter had given her parents and her reason to see that she was troubled—the cutting, her grief, her meltdown at Thanksgiving—these were all signs of her unhappiness. And yet, had they really paid attention to the flares Tilly was sending up? Didn’t they agree on some unspoken level that her arm had “scratches,” not cuts? Hadn’t they put Thanksgiving behind them? Where was the reckoning, the admission that all was not right? Here Tilda had to stop. Why was she including Laura and Mark? Was she so reluctant to face her own negligence? After all, Tilly had confided in her from the beginning that she wanted to be Harper, and Tilda had said nothing. At Thanksgiving, Tilly said she wasn’t sure who she was—and Tilda had let it go. Really, she had. Why? It was all too much. That was it. She could scarcely help herself since Harold had died.

  As Tilda thought about Thanksgiving, she remembered Tilly and Lizzie engaged in conversation. Thick as thieves, indeed.

  And now nagging Tilda was the way in which Tilly had questioned all aspects of her life, including her name and her desire to be called Harper. And Tilda had forgotten all of it, swept it all away so that she could continue to adore her perfect granddaughter, who was helping her slide out from under her grief.

  Hadn’t Tilda been charmed by their last conversation, their bantering, Tilly’s admonition to Tilda to follow her bliss? Where had that advice come from—from Lizzie, explaining to Tilly her mother’s motives for leaving? She hadn’t been paying attention, but that would change, she vowed.

  Among the many unanswered questions (if her suspicions so far were correct) were these two: What had Tilly told Lizzie that made Lizzie offer her mother’s new residence as a hideout for her friend? And, most perplexing, why had Tilly found her unhappiness so compelling that she had left home to find refuge with Amanda and Emile?

  These questions might have given Tilda reason to take it slowly, to be more cautious, and yet on a hunch, she was embarking on what might prove to be an ill-conceived mission. Or worse, she might be hiding from Laura and Mark what could be valuable information—and at the same time potentially disrupting an ongoing police investigation. These things might have given her pause, if it hadn’t been for one thing: she was in pursuit of her missing granddaughter, and for that she gave herself permission to be very wrong.

  Let the chips fall where they may, she thought as she turned onto Metropolitan Avenue and then onto the street where she would find Emile.

  Tilda found a parking space nearby. Emile’s home was one of two in a humble red brick duplex. The two single-family homes were side by side, each with two floors. The building was surrounded by expensive rehabbed artists’ lofts, no doubt inhabited by well-off non-artists.

  She rapped Emile’s doorknocker, a cast-iron depiction of a spider catching a fly, and felt a sudden seizing in her chest. That’s creepy, she thought, and rapped again.

  A very slim, very pale young man in sweatpants, a navy sweatshirt with the sleeves cut above the elbow, and a gray wool cap answered the door. Tilda noticed the single but very prominent tattoo running along the inside of his left arm, quite visible when he opened the door. In bold capital gothic letters, it read, PER AMORE.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Tilda, though on a clearly defined mission, found herself stammering in response. She was searching the room behind him for signs of Tilly.

  “Emile Baptiste?” she managed to say.

  “Emile? Oh, no, I’m Gregory. I work with him, but he’s not here now. I can show you his studio out back and what he has available, if you want, though.”

  “What he has available?”

  “Yeah, his paintings. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

  At that moment she saw Amanda walk by and stop at the foot of the stairs. She saw Tilda and came toward her.

  “It’s okay, Gregory. Let me,” she said, taking his place at the entrance.

  “I’ll be out back if you need me,” he said.

  “Are you going to let me in, Amanda?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I think you know why I’m here.”

  And with that, Amanda stepped aside and gave Tilda her answer.

  “Where is she?” Tilda asked, wishing she didn’t sound so breathy and therefore nervous. She needed to be strong in her self-cast role as granddaughter rescuer.

  “I’ll get her in a minute, but first we should talk.”

  Tilda was relieved, knowing that Tilly was actually close by but also anxious to see her. Amanda was standing between her and her granddaughter. “You have some explaining to do, it’s true, but no, no talking.” And yet . . . she was curious to hear what Amanda would say to excuse herself somehow for harboring a missing child, but no, she was more eager to get her granddaughter and leave.

  “Tilda, please, just for a minute, and then I promise I will get her for you.”

  Amanda’s calm response gave Tilda little room for further resistance, and so, reluctantly, she gave in, following her into a small, dimly lit living room.

  Sitting on two old sofas, facing each other and draped in colorful fabric helping to soften their obvious state of dilapidation—the whole room was a manifesto against anything fashionable—she and Amanda looked at each other across a steamer trunk functioning as a coffee table.

  “Can I get you anything, coffee?” asked Amanda.

  Tilda chose to skip the amenities. “What is it you have to say to me?”

  Amanda leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “First, I want you to know, I didn’t say she could come here. She showed up on our doorstep, so what was I supposed to do? Turn her away? I figured she’d be safer here with us than out on the street.”

&n
bsp; “Fair enough, but why didn’t you let Laura and Mark know? You must have known they’d be sick with worry. She’s been missing since Monday.”

  Amanda sat up, a slight frown drawing her dark eyebrows closer. “I don’t know how much of this you want to know.”

  Tilda, trembling, felt a chill in her stomach. She took a deep breath and asked for a drink of water. “No ice, just water.” She needed a minute to gain control over the fainting symptoms she hadn’t felt since she had agreed to go away with George. She took several steady, slow breaths and thought if she began to feel better, she could just bolt upstairs, grab Tilly, and make a run for it. But she knew she needed to hear Amanda out. By the time Amanda came back with the water, Tilda felt in control.

  “So Harper and Lizzie have become pretty close,” Amanda offered.

  Harper! She was Harper now—to Amanda? It was all Tilda could do to hold her glass of water steady. She had entered a new reality here in this house in Brooklyn, and she wasn’t sure she could contain herself, but somehow she did and nodded, and she refrained from saying that she’d had no idea their friendship could be described as close.

  “So of course they tell each other things.” Amanda suddenly stopped. “Look, I think some of this you need to hear from Harper and not from me. I just wanted to let you know I—Emile and I—didn’t ask for this.”

  “And I want to know why you didn’t tell her parents their daughter was with you.” She set the glass down on the trunk between them, its surface lumpy with peeling leather. “I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with your daughter, but this is all a little strange. I’ve been beating myself up over not telling Darren what I know—because that’s what you asked—and feeling pretty bad about Lizzie. And now I see that Lizzie is in on it, Emile and the whole thing. How do you do it, Amanda? Go back home to be with Darren and Lizzie on Christmas, and all the while Darren hasn’t a clue about what’s really going on?”

  Amanda took a deep breath, clenched and unclenched her jaw, then slowly let the words come.

  “Harper came here because she thought she could be herself without judgment, that she wouldn’t have to live up to everyone else’s idea about who she should be. So maybe my less-than-perfect situation isn’t so bad in that regard. And Lizzie? She’s fine. And Darren will be fine, too.”

  Tilda nodded, but not in agreement. “I’m glad you have this all worked out. But you still haven’t answered my question, and now I just want my granddaughter.”

  Tilda stood, and Amanda rose, too. “Tilda, wait. I’ll get Harper, of course, but please don’t rush off with her. I think that would be very upsetting.”

  “I can’t stay here and go along with this. I have to call Laura and let her know her daughter is okay.”

  Amanda didn’t move, standing her ground, giving Tilda a minute to think.

  She swallowed and said, “You should let Tilly know I’m here—and, please, make sure she knows the only reason Lizzie said anything is that I figured out where she was.”

  “It’s okay, Tilda. Lizzie told her already, and Harper figured you’d be coming for her.”

  Tilda could take it no more. “Please, stop calling her Harper to me. None of that has been settled yet. Don’t you think you may be intervening in a family matter—the child’s birth name, for God’s sake?”

  Amanda stood facing Tilda, not backing down. “Really, Tilda?” she replied.

  Tilda took a breath, exhaling forcefully, deflated by what she knew to be true. Who was she to call out anyone for intervening?

  “I’ll wait and talk to her here, but just the two of us.”

  “No, Tilda. You’ve raised the subject—and I said I didn’t know how much of this you wanted to get into. So now I think we should talk.” She pointed to the sofas. Tilda took her seat once again.

  “Do you know why Harper chose a new name?” asked Amanda.

  “Of course I do. She’s confused and mixed-up right now. She misses her grandfather and, frankly, I think, she’s afraid of growing up.”

  Amanda continued to stare at Tilda. “You honestly think that’s all that’s going on?”

  Tilda could no longer stifle her anger, knowing where this conversation was headed—and that Amanda was setting herself up to be the teller of the truth everyone close to Tilly had been avoiding, including Tilda.

  “If you have something to say to me, just say it. Do you honestly think I’m so naive that I don’t know she’s questioning her sexuality?”

  “I’m not the enemy, Tilda. I’m honestly trying to help.”

  There was that word, irony, again popping up in Tilda’s head, in Amanda’s stance as the concerned surrogate parent even though she had just recently abandoned her own child.

  “I’m glad you realize this is deeper than some free-floating confusion, but it isn’t her sexuality she’s questioning. It’s her gender.”

  Being schooled in these distinctions rankled, and in spite of her opinion of Amanda, Tilda knew she had to hear her out.

  “Harper trusts you, Tilda, and she wants to talk to you. She knows on some level that you will understand. And right now, she doesn’t have that confidence in her parents. That’s all I wanted to say. She will tell you the rest. Let me get her for you.” She turned to go but then stopped and faced Tilda once again. “I’m sorry about the name business. I know it must be hurtful to you. She’s named after you, isn’t she? But I’m afraid she’s Harper now.” And then she left to get her.

  Alone, Tilda smoothed her skirt and looked down at her hands, her mother’s hands. She wondered what her mother would think if she were suddenly thrust back into the world. What would she think of her beautiful great-granddaughter, named after her grandmother, wanting to be Harper?

  Just then, Gregory walked in, holding two bare canvases. “Have you seen Amanda?” he asked.

  “She went upstairs,” said Tilda.

  Gregory set the canvases down and sat across from her. “So you’re Harper’s grandma,” he said.

  Harper to everyone, it seemed. Tilda shifted. “Um.”

  “She’s a great kid.”

  “Yes. She should be down any minute, so . . .”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m just leaving. Have to get these in the studio for Emile,” he said, gesturing toward the canvases leaning against the wall.

  Gregory was younger than Tilda had first thought—maybe early twenties. “Have you worked here long?”

  “Oh, yeah. I was . . . friends . . . with Franklin,” he said, “Emile’s son. Died. Motorcycle.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Tilda. Her thoughts immediately gravitated to Harold, a reaction that occurred at any mention of death.

  “Yeah, he was a great guy. I knew him since we were kids, when they first got here from Saint Lucia—Franklin and Emile. His Mom, well, she left them when he was just a kid. So they came here. Emile was already pretty well-known as an artist there. Portia, she had her own gallery then, said she would rep him. She got him started.”

  Gregory must have seen Tilda looking at his arm. “This is for Franklin,” he said, turning the inside of his arm up so Tilda could see more clearly. “Per amore, it’s what I believe. Everything should be about love. That’s how I think about it. I’ve tried a lot of things, even hate, but love is better. It makes me happy, so that’s what I choose now.”

  “Good, Gregory. Good for you. I’m glad that works for you,” said Tilda, not knowing what else to say.

  “Well. Gotta go. Nice talking to you.” He left with the canvases, one under each arm, unfazed, if he had taken any note at all of Tilda’s less-than-sincere response to his philosophy.

  Tilda thought about how often these days she seemed to be confronted with poster-like sayings. Was everyone cranking this stuff out? Choose love: it makes you happy. Just as she was about to congratulate herself on her discriminating taste, she realized Gregory was a member of the same “elite group” to which she now belonged—the one Rabbi Ross had told her about. Franklin died; H
arold died. Gregory and Tilda mourned. And Emile, she realized. It also did not escape her that his wife had left him—and now he was harboring Amanda. There was more wonderment. It seemed odd to her that Gregory had a tattoo on his arm, and Tilly may have “scratched”—no, tried to cut a word—into hers. The ironies abounded.

  Tilda began to grow impatient. It was taking a long time for Tilly to come down. When finally she did appear, Tilda had to hold back from folding her into her arms and heading for the door. Still in that plaid shirt, her hair obviously uncombed and hastily pulled back into a stingy ponytail, it did not appear that Tilly was thriving under Amanda’s unjudgmental care.

  “Hi, Grandma,” she said softly. She hesitated, and then she rushed into Tilda’s waiting arms. Amanda was nowhere to be seen. She must have stayed upstairs, and Tilda was grateful for her discretion. They sat on the sofa where Tilda had been waiting, and, still holding on to each other, Tilda rocked her and told her everything was okay, relieved that Tilly was apparently not mad at her for coming.

  “Have you called Mom yet?” Tilly asked.

  “No, sweetheart. I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if you want to hear it, about why I ran away.”

  She pushed Tilly away just enough so that she could hold her by her shoulders. “You know how much your mother and father and I love you. You could tell us anything, and as long as you were all right, we would still love you. You couldn’t make us stop loving you, no matter what.”

  Tilly looked at her grandmother. What she was thinking, Tilda couldn’t know. What must it be like, she wondered, to be so confused and unsure of your place in your once-familiar and comfortable world that you take off from everything you know, not understanding exactly why you’re running or where you hope to end up? Maybe her world was never that comfortable, thought Tilda.

  Looking into Tilly’s eyes, Tilda saw something soften, a subtle shift in her expression. She began to talk.

  “Weren’t you curious about why I wanted to be Harper?” she began. “It’s because if my name is Harper, no one knows if I’m a boy or a girl. And honestly I don’t know, and maybe I don’t want to be either one. All I know is I don’t want my body to change. I don’t want breasts, and I don’t want to bleed. I know something’s wrong with me because when my friends talk about getting married and having babies I want to puke.”