White Like Her

by Gail Lukasik

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I had shoes,” she says. “I had really nice shoes.”

  My brother has powered through his food and asks for seconds. My mother pushes away from the table.

  When she sits down my father continues his punitive theme as if his words are lashes, opening flesh, getting under my mother’s skin. “You’re lucky I married you. Now you have shoes.”

  She doesn’t answer him. She’s defeated, crushed by his cruelty. I can see the depression descend as she rises from the table and clears the plates, in the slump of her shoulders, in the way she stares out the tiny window into the suburban back yard as she washes the dishes.

  Thinking back on that long ago meal, I wonder if my father had a suspicion about my mother’s racial identity, not conscious, just a hunch, some inkling like a tickling at the back of the throat. Had he begun to recognize the clues that she dropped like breadcrumbs—her avoidance of the sun, her wearing makeup to bed, and her reluctance to visit New Orleans—for what they were? Or was he in a drunken mood that evening and my mother was his target of choice in the tiny green house on Lincoln Avenue.

  But those days when alcohol didn’t rob my father of all reason, didn’t cloud his brain, he was a different man—humorous, patient, and instructive. When my brother was an infant, Saturday was my day with my dad. We’d make trips to the hardware store where I’d travel the aisles with him marveling at the different gadgets or watch the men saw wood for my father’s carpentry projects. From him, I learned about carpenter pencils, how to plumb a line, hammer a nail straight, and paint a wall. Though he was an alcoholic, he was a functioning alcoholic who never missed work and provided for his family.

  Sometimes we’d drive through the Cleveland streets and he’d point out buildings or houses he’d worked on. Once he showed me a church spire rising into the sky piercing the ordinariness of rows of roofs.

  “See that. I did that. I made that.”

  He showed me a world outside the house, a world of action and creation, not the realm of a housewife. I wanted to live in that world, not the self-defeating, confined world that my mother inhabited, full of helplessness and boredom.

  But there’s no escaping the toll his alcoholism took on us, or the dilemma of his love. My father loved me as only an alcoholic could—sloppily, in fits and starts, wavering and unpredictable. I’d wait for his love full of fear and longing, gauging the distance I’d have to travel to reach it or escape it, the price I’d have to pay in the process, and all the time I’d wonder if it was worth it.

  Then when I was seventeen, I no longer wondered. One evening during dinner he told me there was no money for me to attend college, that whatever money there was would go to my brother for his college education. I’d worked extremely hard my last year in high school and had earned all As. My parents had taken me to tour Dayton University, the college I wanted to attend, leading me to believe that they supported my decision and would help me financially.

  “Girls don’t go to college,” he snarled. “Girls get married.”

  What had I done? I wondered, that he would be so cruel. I said nothing stunned into silence by his punishing tone.

  “If you want to go to college so badly, you can pay for it.” Then he seemed to soften. “You can live here but summers you’ll pay rent.”

  At that moment I felt his love fall away from me and I let it.

  For the rest of my life, I would be a late bloomer, playing catch up while others zoomed ahead in their degrees and careers. It would take me a long time and it would be after I married and had children, but in my late thirties and early forties I earned a MA and a PhD in English, eventually teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and Roosevelt University in adjunct positions. I was too old, too saddled with family, for any university to seriously consider me for a tenure track position.

  By the time I earned my PhD from UIC, my father had to stop drinking because it almost killed him, though he never admitted he had a drinking problem. My father and mother attended my graduation ceremony. When the speaker asked the parents who helped their sons and daughters to earn their degrees to stand, my husband told me, my father stood. My mother had the good grace to remain seated.

  22

  Keeping Up Appearances

  MY MOTHER LEANS toward the bathroom mirror and begins her day by putting on her face. I perch on the edge of the blue bathtub and watch her morning ritual. The floor-to-ceiling cabinet door is open, displaying the three shelves of beauty products: liquid foundations, face powder (both loose and solid), mascara, rouges, face creams (night and day), cleansers, pore tighteners, dark shadow removers, eyebrow pencils and liners, and a pot of makeup brushes as varied as an artist’s array of paint brushes. I’m not allowed to touch any of these beauty items without permission. And my mother knows where she’s placed each one so I’m wary to disturb her arrangement. Though when I dare I mentally note where the item was placed and return it to that exact spot, right down to how it was positioned.

  Her hair is pinned back from her forehead held by three silver clips that resemble metallic insects as long as a grasshopper, revealing a naked face made vulnerable by cold cream, looking nothing like my mother. She retrieves her bottle of foundation, then shakes it before opening. She applies the foundation in upward strokes.

  “Always apply your foundation this way, upward, to prevent wrinkles and sagging,” she cautions me.

  I watch in fascination as her skin is transformed from its dusky olive shade to a lighter shade, not too light to be noticeable, but absorbing the olive tone of her skin as if she’s received a shock from which she’s yet to recover.

  The foundation shade is new and she asks me if I think it fits her. “Is it too light?”

  I’m not sure. But I say it looks good, and my answer satisfies her.

  Then she takes out an assortment of eyebrow pencils, chooses one and pencils in her eyebrows. The shade is never black as she explains because that would be too black and look penciled in, would look fake, even though that is what she is doing, faking her eyebrows, which she’s skillfully plucked to a narrow line.

  “Always wear makeup, Gail. Make sure when your husband comes home from work that you have your makeup on and that you’re dressed nice. You never know what temptations he’ll have out there in the work world.”

  Her advice bristles. Even then I had no intention of being a housewife.

  “Why do you wear makeup to bed?” I ask. It’s the 1960s and young people are opting for a more natural look.

  “Because you never know if you’ll get sick in the middle of the night and have to be taken to the hospital. You want to look your best.”

  “But mom, if you’re sick, what does it matter what you face looks like?” I’m fourteen and starting to question my mother’s advice about beauty rituals among other things. It won’t be until I’m close to fifty that I’ll heed any of my mother’s makeup strategies, preferring light powder instead of her machinations.

  “You’ll get better treatment at the hospital if you look presentable. But that doesn’t mean you wear the same makeup to bed you wore all day. No. My sister Shirley would do that. It’s not good for your skin. Cleanse your face of all makeup, then reapply a light coat of foundation before bed and pencil in your eyebrows.”

  Not that I’m agreeing with Aunt Shirley’s carelessness, but my mother seems just as wrong in her insistence in wearing makeup to bed.

  She applies her rouge subtly, smiling so her cheekbones emerge. As if she’s a painter, she selects one of the many makeup brushes from the large jar where they sit brush end up, dabs the brush carefully into the box of loose powder, and with the exactness and skill of an artist she dusts her face with the fine powder. Her face brightens as if her mood has lifted. Lastly she circles her mouth with lipstick and blots her lips on a tissue. The day has begun.

  Another clue I missed, chalking her obsession with always having a made-up face to vanity, how beauty becomes
even more dangerous as it fades.

  But on that fall morning of motherly beauty secrets shared, she was still beautiful, still desirable, and skillfully hiding beneath the lighter shade of a liquid foundation she chose from the shelf of her own making.

  Years later when my daughter and I visit her in the assisted-living center she is still applying her face every morning. Still starting her day in a lighter shade though with a less steady hand.

  23

  The Mystery of the Two Felicites and the Burden of Proof

  “When evidence is contradictory the problem of proof becomes more complex.”

  —Kimberly Powell, Genealogy Expert

  AT AN INTIMATE party on a warm summer night in the suburbs, the conversation winds its way to my book project about my mother and her racial secret. When a friend asks me how it’s going, I reply without thinking, “You know, cracking the whip.” Then I make a whip-like sound.

  My friend responds sharply, “You should be used to that.”

  Her attempt at humor falls flat, at least with me. Our other friend gazes off into the night yard as if the remark came from someone out there. I let it go with a warning about her own suspect ancestor she’s been researching. We’ve all had too much to drink, each nursing our own private sorrows.

  What stings is how vulnerable I feel, as if I’ve done something I should be ashamed of, that this is my fault for having the temerity to reveal my African heritage, which makes me fair game for racist comments. No one would ever know of my African heritage if I didn’t reveal it. All three of us are as pale white as the moon. It’s as if my mother is there, whispering to me, “See, this is why I didn’t tell anyone. This is what happens. Even friends see you differently.”

  Even though I’ve yet to find any evidence of a slave in the Frederic line, it’s a given that there are slave ancestors, however distant in time. And it’s a given I want to find them. How else can I fully and deeply understand my mother’s ancestral story?

  There are too many ghosts I need to lay to rest. Too many voices wanting to be heard.

  The next time my friend and I talk, she apologizes, citing too many glasses of wine as her excuse, repeating how she was appalled by what she said. We’ve been friends for over ten years. I’m not willing to let our friendship go over a drunken comment meant to be humorous.

  “No problem,” I say. But I see her differently and maybe myself differently as well. A flaw I hadn’t expected in such an educated, savvy woman. None of us are perfect, I think, myself included. I don’t have the energy to explore her particular brand of bigotry.

  The impetus that generates the discovery of an enslaved ancestor begins in the same way that the journey to find my grandfather Azemar Frederic began, with an omission, a space demanding to be filled—an absence of story, blank pages in a family photograph album, and the need to leave no family member unspoken for, especially those who had no voice.

  The long thread back to the enslaved ancestor begins haphazardly with my third great-grandmother, Felicite Mayronne/Merrone/Meyrone and her marriage record.

  I realize that in telling Bernard and Felicite’s touching romance, I’ve neglected to investigate her. Even her surname confounds me, Mayronne/Merrone/Meyrone, so many variations resulting in so little information. She is merely a cipher—someone’s wife, someone’s mother. A free woman of color so beloved by her husband that he married her late in life when the ban on interracial marriage was lifted, proving that their relationship was not only long-term but loving. Bernard felt no need to have a plaçage arrangement with another woman. Felicite and their children were enough for him.

  Where she met Bernard or the circumstances of their union are unknown. What I do know is that when they met she was a young widow with three sons. Her first husband, Noel Daniel Montesquieu, was a free person of color, making theirs an endogamous marriage.

  Within four years of Noel’s death, Felicite is living with Bernard and their daughter Philomene. Was she looking for a protector for herself and her sons? Was she thinking that an intimate relationship with a white man, even one who was new to the city, would provide her with the security she needed to raise her young sons? Was she willing to accept a plaçage arrangement, hoping it would turn into a life-long relationship? She’d once been someone’s legal wife. Did she think she could demand from Bernard Lanabere the same marital fidelity and devotion? Even though, as a free woman of color living with a white man, she had no legal rights?

  Bernard and Felicite don’t appear in the census records until 1850 and by then her sons from her first marriage are not living with her. When Bernard finally slipped a wedding ring on her finger in 1873, Felicite must have felt some measure of satisfaction that she had chosen wisely.

  Based on Felicite and Bernard’s marriage record, Felicite’s mother is Catherine Dauphin (my fourth great-grandmother) and her father is Manuel Meronne. Here’s where the dilemma of the two Felicites lies and where the genealogical burden of proof becomes onerous. Catherine Dauphin, a free woman of color, had twelve children, possibly more. In the exhaustive list of her children, there is no Felicite. The closest in name to Felicite is Aimee Felicitas. And there are no fathers listed in any of the baptismal records for Catherine Dauphin’s children. Additionally, there are no other Felicites born around the time of Felicite Meyronne’s birth.

  The baptismal record for Aimee Felicitas Dauphin is dated May 1810 and names the mother as Catharina Dauphin. The father is unnamed. Aimee Felicitas is a “natural” child, meaning illegitimate.

  The question is are Aimee Felicitas and Felicite Meyronne the same person? Why it is crucial that Aimee Felicitas, daughter of Catherine, be Felicite Meyronne Lanabere is because Catherine/Catharina Dauphin is the linchpin in the Frederic family slave story. Catherine Dauphin’s mother Marta was an enslaved woman. If the two Felicites are not the same person, then I have no slave story to tell. I have no way of knowing who our African ancestor was. I have no way to finally and irrevocably put a name and story to the DNA I carry and that my mother carried.

  If I’m to prove they are the same person, I’ll need direct evidence from primary sources. The birth year offers no reassurance only adding to the uncertainty that Aimee Felicitas is Felicite Meyronne.

  Aimee Felicitas: birth year 1808, baptismal record

  Felicite Meyronne: birth year 1813, marriage record

  Felicite Meyronne: birth year 1816, death record

  Felicite Meyronne: birth year 1811, 1850 census

  With so many different birth years and knowing that ages and birth years were often inaccurate, they just might be the same woman. But I still haven’t met the genealogical standard of proof for resolving conflicting and contradictory evidence.

  The only unturned genealogical stone in this investigation is Felicite’s father, Manuel Meronne, whom she names as her father on her marriage document to Bernard Lanabere.

  I ask Judy Riffel to investigate Manuel Meronne, reasoning that in one of his records she might uncover evidence that Felicite Meyronne is the same person as Aimee Felicitas, which would verify that Aimee Felicitas’s unnamed father is Manuel Meyronne.

  Though Judy pieces together the circumstances of Manuel Meyronne’s life (born in New Orleans in 1790, son of Francisco Mayronne and Feliciana Bunel, both white, of French extraction, and slave owners), she’s unable to prove that Manuel Meyronne is the father of Aimee Felicitas or that Aimee Felicitas is Felicite Meyronne Lanabere.

  Even though Felicite Meyronne Lanabere names Manuel as her father on her marriage record, there is no other document supporting her claim, including Manuel’s probate files. If he was Felicite’s father, she was just one of many children he had with various women of color. After his wife’s (Louise Cantrell) death in 1823, he fathered children by two different women of color, Catherine Moriere Fazende (Rosalie in 1827) and Cidalise Landon (Joseph in 1831). Whether these relationships were plaçage arrangements is difficult to know.

  With no solid proof that A
imee Felicitas is Felicite Meyronne, I’m left with a dilemma many genealogists face when the records don’t support their suppositions and often their desires.

  In a last-ditch effort to confirm these two women are the same, Judy suggests I research all of Catherine Dauphin’s children and try to connect at least one of them to my Felicite.

  She ends her advice with a caveat: “This could be very time-consuming.”

  Seeing no way to do this time-consuming task without flying to New Orleans, I shelve the genealogical research temporarily and do extensive research into Louisiana’s colonial period and slavery, then I write a first draft of that section of the book based on Judy’s research and the supposition that Aimee Felicitas and Felicite Meyronne are the same person. It’s a risky gamble and one that could cost me countless hours of research and writing. But my gut tells me the two women are the same person.

  Then I learn of another way to research Catherine Dauphin’s children that doesn’t involve flying to New Orleans. Jack Belsom mentions Chicago’s Newberry Library’s vast genealogical collections, specifically the sacramental records of the Roman Catholic Church of the Archdiocese of New Orleans (Earl C. Woods).

  “Do you live near Chicago?” he asks.

  “Near enough.”

  “Why not go there. Sure would save you time and money.”

  For months I’ve been requesting baptismal, marriage, and death records from the Archdiocese of New Orleans Archives. As much as I enjoy receiving the official certificates with the embossed seal at the bottom, at twelve dollars per document, it was starting to add up.

  In the excitement of researching and writing, I’d forgotten about the Newberry as a possible genealogical research site.

  I plan a research trip for the following week. But it doesn’t happen. A few days later I wake to excruciating lower back pain and can barely get out of bed. It will be months before I’m well enough to make the two-hour train trip and overnight stay in Chicago. In the interim I keep writing and researching and praying that my hunch about Aimee Felicitas and Felicite is right. It’s as if some trace of my grandmother Camille’s second sight beats inside of me, urging me on against all logic.