The Bright Unknown

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  “Whoa, there, fella.” He looked over at me. “This weirdo with you, sweetheart?”

  My face twitched. I didn’t like that he called Angel a weirdo and me sweetheart.

  “We’d like to go here.” Angel ignored the driver’s words and handed him his parents’ address. The driver cautiously took the paper. But before he looked at it, he glanced over at me again.

  “You’re too beautiful to be with this jack.”

  I opened my mouth to speak but said nothing. Joann was the only person to ever call me beautiful.

  “Aren’t albinos witches or something?”

  Why wouldn’t he stop talking and drive?

  “He’s my friend,” I finally said. He eyed us both and mumbled something as he turned around. He looked at the address once more, then threw the paper back at us and started driving.

  This time as we drove everything became more green; the yards grew longer and wider. The houses became more ornate and oversize. Families lived there. The word family was such a strange and fickle word.

  “Here you go,” the cabdriver said and put his hand out. “That’s a two-fifty, pay up.”

  Angel quietly counted out the money and handed the change to the driver.

  This neighborhood was different from Ezra’s, but we didn’t belong here either. A woman pushed a baby carriage down the sidewalk—something I’d only ever seen in picture books. When the baby cried she stopped and patted it and the baby stopped crying. Another child ran in circles around her. Like she could feel me watching her, she looked up and our eyes met. She moved quickly away from us, yanking the little boy by the arm to stay close to her.

  “This is it. This is my family’s house.” Angel nodded his head toward a huge house as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I can’t believe it.”

  Joann had used the word dangerous. She’d warned us of his father. But I understood the primitive and innate need to know where you come from. My mother was mad and a German immigrant and my father was a convict, but it was my history, so therefore it was important. The imprint Ezra made on me had changed me—I’d lost my very name—and yet, he wanted to write me. The paradox of what it had cost me to gain a sliver of a father, I would never understand. Would these people change Angel? I would defy anyone who would want to change him.

  Angel didn’t wait for me as he opened a white gate and walked down a long, straight sidewalk with a flower garden on both sides toward a large brick home. It boasted white pillars in the front, and a woman was sweeping the patio. As we got closer we could hear her humming a tune. She had dark skin like Joyful. She was wearing a black dress and a white apron. She didn’t look much older than me.

  “Hello?” Angel’s voice broke through the girl’s tune.

  She was startled and jumped and pushed her back against the house. The broom dropped, slapping loudly. She spoke some words that sounded like a different language and then she switched to English.

  “You are money,” she said with slow pronunciation and slid toward the front door. “You should run.”

  “What?” I asked Angel.

  Angel kept looking at the uniformed woman. “I need to speak with Cynthia Sherwood.”

  Angel didn’t seem bothered by how afraid of him the woman seemed to be. Or that she called him money. What did she mean? He stepped closer to the front porch. The girl carefully walked toward us and looked so hard at Angel it was as if she wasn’t sure he was there. She raised her hand up and touched his face and checked her fingertips. I stood with them but felt invisible.

  “Be careful,” she whispered.

  “Careful?” he asked.

  “Where I come from, you are money.” Her English was broken and her accent unlike anything I’d ever heard. People sold albinos for money? She looked over at me and then back at Angel. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to see Cynthia Sherwood.”

  “What’s going on out here?” A woman’s soft, lilting voice came from the front door. “Reni, who’s here? What have I said about talking to—”

  “This stranger come to see you, Mrs. Sherwood,” she interrupted.

  The woman’s eyes followed the girl. Reni kept her head down and picked up her dropped broom. The woman’s eyes were sharp and lips tight as she waited for an answer.

  “They be turning bewitch. Be careful of the light one, ma’am.” The whites of Reni’s eyes shone brightly.

  “I’ve told you not to use those island phrases anymore. Dr. Sherwood doesn’t . . . ,” the woman started but then turned toward us and her voice faded away, as did her natural rosy complexion.

  The woman’s gaze only grazed over me but stopped on Angel. It didn’t take long for her eyes to go from confusion to something like recognition.

  I wondered at how much they looked alike. The shape of their eyes and mouths. His mother was a beautiful woman with light-blond hair, though nothing like Angel’s. Her skin was creamy, but she was turning paler by the moment.

  Suddenly she ran down the steps and threw her arms around Angel. And he hugged her back, like they’d done this before. Like he remembered her. Maybe he did but never told me. How opposite it was to my father’s reaction when we met.

  She wasn’t as tall as Angel, and she pressed her head against his chest and he bowed his head into the crevice of her neck and shoulder. She began to cry, and I’d never seen Angel cry the way he did now. He’d cried once when he’d broken his leg and another time when Joann had to give him stitches on his arm. There were other times, but never tears like this.

  Why couldn’t Ezra have greeted me this way? But he did what he could. I knew that much.

  His mother pulled away and looked at him in his eyes. Her gaze roamed his entire face. She took off his hat and handed it to me without a glance. She ran her hand through his hair, almost rustling it like a mother would a small boy, and then her palm cupped his cheek. They both giggled in the way you do when you share a memory.

  “Is it really you, Luke?” Her tears were like a row of diamonds that trailed her face. She looked even more beautiful when she cried.

  “Is that my name? Luke?” he asked. He looked at me, smiling. “My name is Luke.”

  I raised my eyebrows and smiled back. Angel had just been given his name; mine had been taken away.

  “You didn’t know your name?” she asked, her voice hiccupping in her throat. “Then what were you called all these years? How are you here?”

  “Angel,” he said and then pointed toward me. “She named me Angel, so everyone called me that.”

  “Angel,” his mother said in a whisper, like she was contemplating the name. “Well, now you’ll be Luke.”

  “I like Luke,” Angel said. Luke said. Which one was he now?

  The two looked at one another for several long moments. Then her countenance shifted, and she peered around the sidewalks like she was wondering if anyone was watching. Her expression went from shock and joy to concern.

  “Let’s put your hat back on, Luke,” she said and put her hand out toward me. I handed the hat to her and she returned it to his head. “Come inside with me.” She took his hand and began leading him inside, then she stopped and took me in. I had not moved from my spot. Was I to go with them? “Are you two—married?”

  Angel turned to look at me and took a deep breath before he spoke. “No, we’re not married. This is my best friend, Br—”

  “Nell,” I interrupted. “I’m Nell.”

  “Nell.” Angel’s flossy voice felt approving even though I knew what he preferred.

  “Nell.” The polished beautiful woman nodded as she said it. “Please, come inside with us and we’ll get acquainted.”

  I followed behind the two. My father said I resembled my grandmother, but I still wondered why I had chosen her name to use as my own. She had died unhappy and not in her right mind. She’d been like my mother. Had I just sealed my fate? But I wouldn’t take it back, because as soon as I’d spoken the name, I knew it was what I would use for the
rest of my life. It was small, simple, and almost invisible.

  Once we got inside, the woman dropped Angel’s hand and went to the girl, Reni, who had snuck in behind us. She spoke quietly to her as I looked at our surroundings.

  “Can you believe this?” Angel’s smile was bursting from his face.

  I shook my head but didn’t look at him. If I had, I would’ve cried. Because his mother loved him. Because his real name was Luke. Because he had a name. Because his family didn’t live in a gray world but in one full of color. I wasn’t sure how to be happy for Angel—Luke—in my sadness. I had lost so much, and I was afraid of losing him.

  This morning we’d stood in my father’s one-room home with decades-old furniture, scampering mice, the scent of sewage and something rotten in the air, and everything had a fresh layer of coal soot. And now here we were, in a redbrick home that stood statuesque against the expansive yard framed by a bright blue sky—no smokestacks in sight.

  I had no idea people lived in such luxury. Of course, I’d never been inside a real house, a real home, for a real family. My father’s place wasn’t really a home; even he said so.

  A curious-eyed girl walked down from the curved staircase to my right. She was beautiful. She was also fair, like her mother, but not like Angel. Her blond hair and pink shiny blouse both beamed in the sunlight that flooded the staircase window. She stopped halfway down and looked at Angel, her gaze passing over me unconsciously.

  Maybe I was dreaming all this.

  Angel was looking back at the girl on the stairs. Neither said anything for the length of about twenty or more ticks from a large clock in the corner. The ticking was so loud I couldn’t help but count it. It calmed me and gave weight to my legs so I wouldn’t float away.

  Finally she spoke. “I found a photo of you about two years ago.” She came down a few more steps. “You were a year old and you were smiling.”

  I looked at Angel and he swallowed hard but remained silent.

  “I was only thirteen, and I wasn’t sure why Mother would have a faded photo of a boy I could see was—different. I knew it wasn’t Howard Junior.” She walked the rest of the way down the stairs and stood a few feet away from Angel, looking at him so intently. The way she clasped her hands and tilted her head—it was like she was part water, her movements were so fluid. “I asked Mother about it and she told me. I couldn’t believe she’d kept you a secret for so long, but she said she couldn’t do it anymore. Daddy was angry and threatened to take away my trust fund and cut Mother’s allowance if we told anyone. But here you are. What would Daddy say now?” She shook her head, and her wood-thrush laugh filled my ears.

  What was a trust fund?

  “My school library had a book about albinos. Besides the obvious facts, there was folklore and myths about magic and sorcery. I didn’t believe it, though. I was sure that you weren’t much different from me.”

  Angel nodded and chuckled. He was smiling now. She stepped closer.

  “Hi, Luke. I’m your sister, Bonnie,” she said and put her hand out. “We resemble one another, don’t we?”

  He awkwardly shook her hand.

  “Bonnie, there you are.” Angel’s mother returned from wherever she’d been. She inhaled deeply and shook her head. “Oh my, to see the two of you together.”

  Her eyes were glassy, and the newly introduced sister and brother looked at each other and smiled. This was a family.

  Angel—Luke—was home.

  1990

  From Dark to Light

  That girl Kelly had the dark room at the local high school secured for us by morning. A fact that causes so many contradictory emotions inside myself. I feel pulled in two. The night before, Kelly and I talked until the restaurant closed. I was surprised how talking about my stories and life at Riverside to a perfect stranger loosened the straightjacket I’d worn around my soul for so long. And brought the kind of healing I’d never given myself over to. Talking things over with my husband and throwing occasional prayers up to the Big Guy were the extent of my raw openness. Nobody needed to walk all over the brittle fallen leaves of my life.

  But I am thinking a bit differently about it now.

  “What happened to your arms, Ms. Friedrich? How did you get so scratched?” Kelly gently touches my skin. I bristle and pull back. “Does it hurt?”

  Yes. It hurts. That is the truth of it. But the scratches are not what I mean. The reason why they are there is what hurts. It happens sometimes. Often enough that I don’t always notice in the mornings.

  I shrug. “I’ll be fine. And please, call me Nell. Ms. Friedrich feels so formal.”

  “Why didn’t you take your husband’s last name?”

  The question surprises me.

  “It’s just so modern and unexpected.”

  I smile. “My husband understood it was important to me.” I clear my throat, not expecting the emotions it brings up. “To feel closer to Mother.”

  She smiles and doesn’t ask again about the scratches.

  She also is trying to convince me to attend the town hall event promoting a positive vote for the demolition of the old asylum so a community center can be built. I started considering going when she told me that the town council was planning to name it Wolff Community Center after a hospital administrator who was documented as handling the overcrowding and understaffing during wartime and was considered a hero. A man they didn’t know. But I did. I hadn’t thought of Dr. Wolff by name in years. I didn’t have many dealings with him, but I could picture his face. I knew him to be a heartless and cruel human being. The idea that he might be honored for the torture he put Mother, my friends, and me through brought back the reason I took the pictures to start with—so that someday I could expose what was happening inside the walls.

  Once we get to the dark room my mind shifts gears. I force myself to wear the hat of professional photographer and teacher instead of former asylum patient. I thread two filmstrips at a time, one for each of us. I teach Kelly along the way—this is what I do. Once we develop the five cartridges, I start exposing the negatives. I use the enlarger, and after I teach Kelly how to rock the developer trays, she handles that part.

  There are many duds—my amateur photography skills are obvious—but when the photographs begin to appear correctly, I have to fight the urge to run away. The faces of my past appear, and with them the sounds and smells that photos should never be able to convey so distinctly. But these do.

  These photos—memories—had been captive inside these small cartridges for almost fifty years, and I was afraid bringing them freedom would make me captive a second time. But as each photo comes into focus, I am also freer. I am recognizing that my version of moving on looked a lot like hiding. These pictures will finally be seen and the truth revealed and my friends from long ago will be heard. Will this mean telling the world all of my secrets? I’m not sure I can do that.

  My eyes glance over the images, but I fight allowing my soul to take them in. I only view the images with the eyes of a technician and nothing else. Not yet.

  “How could you have—” Kelly searches for the right word, her eyes surveying the many photographs. “Survived all of this?”

  “Someone told me a long time ago that ‘all the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.’” This wisdom of Saint Francis is like a long exhale. “As long as I kept my eyes open there was always a sliver of light to follow.”

  The five empty canisters line up like valiant soldiers having done their jobs. Within those slim pieces of plastic so much has lived. I release a long-held breath and finally let myself walk around and look at the images hanging on the wire. The faces are everywhere. They are all around me, and it doesn’t feel bad. I smile at them until my eyes settle on Grace.

  My Grace. I remember the day I took the picture. It is from those early days with her on the ward. Her hair had been shorn, like mine. Her beauty was still profound and brightness beamed from her eyes. She didn’t think the s
tay would be longer than a few weeks—a month at the most. She thought it was just one more ploy by her parents to control her.

  “She’s bald.” Kelly stands next to me. “She’d seem like a revolutionary now for doing that.”

  “Not her decision.” I smile. “It was lice.”

  I take the photo from its place on the wire and press it to my chest.

  I’d never even told my husband that I always look for her—for Grace. I don’t just mean in every building I go in or every sidewalk I travel on—though that is true. But it is bigger than that. When there had been a choice to move to dull, factory-filled Pittsburgh or warm and faraway Texas, I still picked Pittsburgh. I had a feeling Grace wouldn’t have gone that far. She might be somewhere in Pittsburgh.

  A few times I made phone calls to people I found with the name Grace Douglass or Hannah Douglass, hoping I’d recognize the voice or be able to probe enough to know if I’d found the right person. Once, when the kids were in school and Doc was out of town, I drove all the way to the address I’d found for Grace’s parents. It was a two-hour drive. I was in my midthirties by then, and I was sure I’d used up a lifetime of shocks and surprises. That was not true. The opulence and luxury of the home Grace had come from was startling. She’d told me they were wealthy and influential, but the iron gate with the name Douglass scrolled at the top was far more than my imaginings. I never got closer than fifty yards from the front door and was still on the other side of the grand gate. I never caught a glimpse of anyone but the gardener. That day I learned that the Douglass family owned the newspaper and the banks in town. Had donated wings of hospitals, libraries, and schools.

  Just last week I heard someone say the name Grace at the grocery store, and when my head snapped over I found a toddler, not my dear friend. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop looking for her.

  I place her picture on top of the stack. I need Grace to see what I am trying to do for her—for all of us.

  1941