“Ms. Spencer: No trouble at all to check things for you again. All bodies in our town hospital and morgue are identified. And none have been found, knock on wood. I gave your description and photo to COs at the county and beat cops on the streets. If a woman fitting your sister turns up, I’ll tell you. God bless you.”
I believed it. The town was too small for travesties police couldn’t unwind just by showing up at the right bars after witnesses had the right number of drinks in them. He did not rule out authorities searching for Summer in Hedgewood. And he did confirm she did not go home to wind up dead, knock on wood. When a veteran big-city government employee returned to our call, he was less absolute.
“I’m just not finding any death certificates with that name on it,” he announced. “Whadya say it is again? Autumn Spence?”
“No,” I insisted. “Autumn Spencer is my name. I’m alive and well. And I’m the one talking to you right now. The decedent’s name would be Summer Spencer.”
“Oh, yes,” he chuckled. “Sorry, I had my note upside down. I did look up Summer, of that prior address. You live there, cause they would’ve come to—”
“I’m not here every second,” I interrupted. “They could’ve missed me.”
“What relation would you be to the decedent, ma’am? Only spouses and—”
“I’m her sibling,” I interrupted. “According to your policies I’m authorized to obtain a certificate. She has no spouse or children. Our parents are dead. I’m legal next of kin. I’d have to notify what family we have left, tell her friends.”
With a death certificate, I could rest well again. I could shut this gaping hole of not knowing, and get back to order. I could start on Summer’s affairs: run an obituary, transfer money from her bank accounts, address any bills she left behind, and (most importantly) do what Mama would want most: I would purchase her magnificent headstone for our family plot that Mr. Murphy’s business mind pressured her to pay for in advance, away from our father’s Spencer family burial ground in another town cemetery.
“Okay, when was this again?” he asked.
“She’s been missing since December 20. Or, maybe it was the nineteenth.” I sighed. “Look, I don’t know. I remember it was a frantic Christmas. But whether it was last year or last night, you’d have a death notice for a dead New York County resident.”
“Well, it takes a while to generate. And wait, you say she’s missing, or dead?”
“I’m saying I do not know, sir. No one does. But if by chance she has died, an accident or God knows what else in New York City, I am reporting as next of kin to see.”
“So if it was that recent and if some ID was on the decedent, something should be in our system. You be surprised how many people nobody bothers with. They get welfare burials, belongings auctioned off. But I have looked in—”
“Jesus Christ, sir, is there a supervisor I can speak with?”
“Ma’am, maybe you can come down here to Worth Street and fill out—”
I hung up. It was the third time I had called. I had completed two tasks of the day: checking coroner’s office procedures to look at unidentified black women for possible identification (I did not qualify for clearance) and pursuing a death certificate. Now I had to get down to Worth Street, and I would not make it before five o’clock.
I switched to finding more about Jaylyn Stewart, and more Black women I never heard of who were killed in Harlem. My top inbox was piled with stories that Google and my last days of a paid LexisNexis subscription helped me compile.
Regina Desormeaux was bludgeoned to death in her Morningside Drive garden apartment. The killer came through a sidewalk-level window that, in code violation, was missing its gate. Robbery was the apparent motive, with both jewelry and signs of sexual assault missing.
Graciela Alvarez was also killed at home, though technically not in Harlem but Washington Heights, past 159th Street. Her attacker was known: an ex-boyfriend. No rape.
Monique Salter was fourteen, and a fight with her grandmother (over boys in the home) ended in her falling down the stairs of their Mount Morris walk-up. She broke her neck.
Twenty-two-year-old Kameika Williams was found in a 135th street SRO strangled to death. It was unclear if sex was forced or consensual. A little cash was on the nightstand.
An unnamed woman was pushed into a gangway, her purse and cell phone taken, and her face slashed. She was still alive. This one committed by a duo. They were still at large.
There was also a professor in her sixties, walking into her brownstone after a class. The university was unnamed, but given the crime’s location it was probably City College. She was carjacked of her and her city official husband’s Lincoln Town Car, parked in a rare Manhattan driveway. She had not stereotyped the “Black male” who walked behind her for several blocks. He made his move quickly. She survived being thrown to the cement with only a broken hip. No arrests were made.
There seemed to be no boilerplate habit or way of being that could shield women from the unthinkable. It was possible I had heard of all of these lives and endings, from the news and online, but I blocked them out for fear of compressing my own vulnerability with too much possibility. And, compassion fatigue set in often.
I put the sad pile of tragedy down and walked to the bathroom. I used bleaching toothpaste against wine and coffee stains. Then I boiled water for instant coffee as I ate two cherry Jell-O cups. The water bubbled to sizzling drops on the stove, breaking me out of imagining all the Jaylyn Stewarts out there waiting on women like Summer (and me) to waltz down any street on any night.
WHEN MAMA CAME TO LIVE with us on Thanksgiving 2013, we sisters put our fears of unsafety at bay. So many long weekends Summer and I alternated had added up: in plane fare and missed work. What a team we were, together. When I could not get away, Summer went alone to mitigate my guilt and I gladly did the same for her. Mama’s brother was never around to help. One of her sisters was dead. The sister left behind, my Aunt Mae, had her hands full. My in-town cousins were lazy. Other nieces and nephews were distant. The Illinois winters were aggressive. The house was too big. The money was too tight. The days were too numbered. The Trummel Lane home sale was worth its weight in health insurance deductibles.
So Mama and her Medicare finally came to New York. Her first visit was her last.
By the time we departed our Amtrak sleeper cars, too exhausted for a restaurant dinner to mark the occasion, Mama was answering to her oldest daughter, far above Summer and me. Her name was Virginia Slims. But only we were there to manage the combination stomach and lung cancer their lifelong bond brought. By Christmas, it came out of her every few hours as a light green stream. Penny, her hospice helper, was a modern nun. Penny gathered the pan for us to measure the output. Sometimes Summer and I helped Penny hold the measuring stick. Always, we expected the sturdier and better-funded New York City doctors to phone, their lab results a reversal of fortune.
That call never came. But Chase phoned Summer, all of us, often. His ticket to live decently in New York was SWAG Marketing: his college buddy’s multicultural branding firm. He was the token Golden Negro there. So his excuse to bail on our ordeal many nights was convenient, but true. We all struggled to manage. Summer was interrupted in painting and making things, stuck home rather than at street festivals and tiny gallery openings. She lost money on postcards and print-on-demand T-shirts and totes she sold in online stores. I myself was delayed from heading back to graduate school. Or coding bootcamp, if only I could save up enough money for it. The value of my bachelor’s had expired and I had to learn how to use a different language if I was going to make it in the world.
It was a nice time, more time than I had spent with Mama since I was a child.
IT WILL SOON BE SPRING.
Over three months past Summer’s disappearance now . . .
An investigation is “ongoing.”
No arrests have been made.
With no body, my sister’s disappearance could no
t be ruled a homicide and thus graduated on to the manpower and attention we deserved, as we held no fame or prominence or money to command it otherwise.
So it is ruled something else: Women of color don’t matter in America unless we are rich or famous.
Summer’s detective is “doing all I can.”
The mailbox broke my heart every day. Nothing ever came from Summer. I feared the ink-smudged cards from names, addresses, and signatures across my networks instead. They had hearts scribbled by the names or fancy insignias pasted on back of the envelopes’ seals, making me have to do more work to open them. Address labels showed off the senders’ donations to the Easterseals, Sierra Club, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. But I did not have to go out or move too much for the most wretched automatic habit of all: checking voicemail. Those who were privy to my cell phone number got a clue and finally kept their distance. They adapted to the reality—efforts to dial Autumn Spencer got them nowhere. A few left messages on the home phone, whose number I gave only to the most tolerable relatives and high-paying clients. Their spoken notes ranged from perfunctory to pathetically un-hilarious to disciplinarian, to plain shocked and confused . . .
“Hey. This is your cousin Sandy. I’m just giving you a call to see how you are. We put some fresh flowers on Mama’s headstone just the other day. Love you!”
“Hey, baby. This your Auntie Mae. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Autumn . . . Oh my goodness. I ran into Jonathan Parks at the NAJMBAX conference in Houston about a week or two ago. And, well, we weren’t at all gossiping, but your name came up, since it’s been way too long since we’ve gotten together for drinks or anything like that and . . . Well, I won’t repeat it here. Just gimme a call, girlie.”
“Autumn, this is the second time I’ve left you a message this week. I know all that’s going on, but I can’t believe you won’t call me back. Call me back. Please.”
The most promising were the upbeat ones reeking of avoidance.
“Sooo . . . I was Uptown the other day. Just wanted to go to that one great vegan spot over there by your place, to stock up on their version of crab cakes and gluten-free muffins. My son loves those! Anyway, I wound up on 1-2-5 spending all my money on clothes for the new baby. My goodness, when that bill hits. Well, anyway, enough about me. I hope you’re well. Just thinking about you.”
I figured this must be my college buddy Cathy. Messages like these were left by the people most likely to succeed a relational breach preceded by tragedy, extreme life change, or estrangement for a prolonged time. Such largely anecdotal communications and nonjudgmental, non-assignment-oriented messages revealed characters who yearn for connection with the individuals they seek, but who also display comfort with rejection or relational impossibility until the offending and triggering separator dissolves. Such successful overcomers of life’s relational ebbs and flows are characterized by the rich variety of their friendships, social activities, spiritual practices, and superior physical health levels. Such personalities are most likely to forgive a self-separated or alienating individual.
Or so it said in a book I happened upon at the Strand, when I went searching for a classic I had yet to read. Instead I bought a manual about bouncing back from grief.
“Autumn, it’s Noel Montgomery returning your call. I’ll be away from the desk all afternoon, but you can contact me in the morning.”
Now this was a message I could use.
He was brief, unrevealing, and undetailed. He didn’t just check off the task to return my call. He told me where he would be, and when I should call him next. He had to have something new to tell me. Messages stacked up so high I did not know where he belonged in the queue. Should I have called him yesterday or today? Or should I call him tomorrow? Was I prepared for whatever he had to tell me?
I couldn’t figure out if an accident or a murder was more palatable than an unsolvable disappearance. The first one was consolation that something was fated or meant to be, no matter what. It was more proper to bring up in normal conversation, a better interlude to reminisce about the good times, a normal event to give sympathy to. The second option would silence me for life. Nobody would want to hear it. This fact of my sister’s life would always have the pall of controversy and violence, a repellant to any mind outside of a movie. But an unsolvable disappearance was unspeakable. All loved ones are blamed and viewed as apathetic assholes. I could never cry enough tears to convince anybody I really cared for her, advocated for her safety, and didn’t let her slip away.
I dialed Montgomery’s direct line. He did not answer. I hung up, not knowing what to say or how I would wait to call him again.
My “no wine before dark” rule lapsed into just a little wine before noon. The tinkling downpour into a glass ignited me like caffeine. I returned to bed, the only place I sensed a semblance of naïveté to staple to my soul. I froze under Summer’s duvet, feeling her beside me. I manipulated the remote to put Virginia Rodrigues on surround sound, so at least I would not understand the Afro-samba beyond its joyous drums and up-tempo. I settled in to read the arrest affidavit and search warrants made public from Jaylyn Stewart’s case today.
Most women have imagined waking up to a dark block covering what they would normally see in their bedrooms. The closet, door, and window dressings are still there as usual. But something is in front that was not there before we closed our eyes. After sweat and lightning-fast heartbeats sprint forward to leave us immobile for an eternity, we will determine the block is a person. The person is a man. The man wants to do things to us and the things will feel excruciating, and we are already at a disadvantage called shock. So, we will just close our eyes to pretend it is all a dream. And as we are waiting to reawaken, we will repeat blame on ourselves: for leaving the door unlocked, the window open, both eyes shut.
The looming block in my bedroom had hands the size of rosebushes. I smelled Hedgewood, aroma of fresh cut grass wafting from nearby yards. I saw scarecrows we kids made in those yards. This was the dream I fell into as the block did more than cut up my space, but come toward me. I blamed myself for not moving the hell out of a building my sister already proved was unsafe.
THE SHOWER REFRESHED ME AND just the smell of coffee made me more alert. I wrapped a towel around and came into the bedroom. Chase dabbed a wet sponge at soft magenta stains from the bougainvillea leaves fallen to the light comforter and carpet. He had cleaned up the ruined plant’s potted soil. Then he gathered and neatened all my research, notes, and news printouts I meant to examine before I passed out. He skimmed a few pages, shook his head, and sighed.
“Autumn, you really need to stop looking at all this stuff. No wonder you acted like I came in here to kill you. This ain’t healthy.”
I kissed him to distract from taking my notes out of his hand.
“I’ll do that,” I told him. “It’s my fault things are a mess.”
“No, you get dressed,” he said. “I’ll do it. And I’m sorry. I’ll call next time.”
But of course, I also should not have been dead to the world at 6 p.m., when Chase was that guy every girl wants. He remembers even the mistress is a lady. He remembers to celebrate milestones and make reservations. He picks up flowers with significance, not just roses in a hurry. I adjusted to his surprise eventually. My terrified response to him using his key to let himself inside was a knot on his forehead and scratch on his cheek.
I chose a red shirtdress for the evening we had planned weeks ago, but work kept us too busy. We missed the steakhouse reservation and had to settle for walking in like the younger crowd. It was our anniversary of sorts. In Chase’s telling, it was “A night to let the drama go for a while and remember what brought us together.”
My sister brought us together, technically. Chase was her man first, off and on. In retrospect, only our mother’s deterioration pushed him on more often for her.
Perfumed and put together in killer heels, I hugged Chase in the back of our
cab to Lower Manhattan, the night air more even-tempered and cool. His gesture forced us out of my apartment where Summer’s absence made her an ongoing presence. Yet, I marked our “anniversary” in secret thoughts of my argument with Summer that led me into this affair. She and I never resolved the last time we had Mama with us, alive.
I was single. Caring for my ill mother provided my excuse to bail out of a six-month egomaniac ordeal. But Summer had the nerve to refuse Chase’s invitation to accompany him on a business trip to his homeland, Grenada. We had spoken in hushed tones away from her bedroom, the one Mama took over, the larger one capable of holding her rolling carts of medicines, pain packs, and drawing stuff.
“Most guys just want to drag us to the Poconos or Atlantic City for a change of sex venue, Summer,” I told her. “He wants to take you to Grenada.”
“He’s not taking me,” she snapped back. “His job is.”
Chase’s bright marketing idea was a story and photo shoot on a ninetysomething Grenadan author named Gabriel Johns. Chase dreamed of launching a Grenadan author as a Wolcott or García Márquez in the world. The win-win was a smarter, patrician image for a men’s luxury brand seeking more than pretty boys who couldn’t drink yet to sell their goods to the kind of men who drank only the best. Out of everybody he could have brought along, Chase invited Summer. She found his offer rude, in light of Mama’s care needs.
I continued to scold her: “Most guys wanna jiggle us out of meeting their mothers. He wants to take you thousands of miles away for it. Maybe he’ll propose.”
“And what about Mama?” Summer wanted to know.
“It’s only five days,” I had argued. “Somebody’s gotta break out of this tomb.”
“Fine, you break out.” She walked back to answer our mother’s latest moan.
The fact “somebody” wound up being me was the reason for “anniversary” now.
Chase wriggled us into a South Street Seaport restaurant with a river view. He ordered us a Chianti. We waited for his steak and my whole snapper. I spoke of celebrity gossip, avoided my own. He was especially happy for his work updates. I appeared to enjoy him. I celebrated us as friends, above everything else, always without question, even if Summer waltzed in tomorrow, to tumble our house of cards. The prospect always loomed in both hope and paranoia, undergirded in deceit.
Speaking of Summer Page 5