by Tonya Bolden
The Rice girls told your mama of the glorious time she was sure to have at the parade, at the fair. There’d be a ball, too. They also told her some of their Charleston kin was coming so she’d have company for the journey.
Up in Wheeling, that’s where Joline met Jordan.
“He’s so full of life!” That’s what your mama wrote me about him. Said he was living, breathing adventure. Had mined silver in nevada, outrun alligators when draining swampland down in the Everglades, and sailed the seas on fishing ships out of nova Scotia. Your pa had recently come to Wheeling. He and some cousins were cooking up an enterprise.
“I am going to marry this man! I am going to have a vivid life!” That’s what your mama wrote me.
Decide what you want, Delana.
Watching Over You,
A.
Now it was my own hand clamped over my mouth lest all of Kanawha County hear my cries.
I buried my face in my pillow to muffle myself more. When the tears let up, I looked at my mother again, read Ambertine’s letter again, cried again.
I felt a heap of hate for Aunt Tilley—for all the lies!
No boys with Cheshire cat smiles!
No jackleg preachers!
No people who beg for bones!
I couldn’t imagine nobody—nothing—doing me more harm, being more a danger than Aunt Tilley. All along, she was the biggest Beware! All her lies!
In my nightstand drawer was The Book of Bewares. I could hear Aunt Tilley crying out from the grave, You gonna need my cautions!
I didn’t care.
I tore up The Book of Bewares.
And Grandpa? Why didn’t he ever tell Aunt Tilley to hush and tell me the truth? I hated them both. I was going to hate them forever and didn’t care that this sin would count soon.
I looked at the picture again, dabbed away the teardrops with my cuff.
“Mama …”
First time in my life I ever said that word.
“Mama …”
I wanted to believe she could hear me … wanted to believe she was seeing me meet her likeness and knowing she loved my father and three-cent silver.
Suddenly, I felt the strength of a second self.
When I heard noises downstairs, calmly I put the letter and the tintype back in the envelope, then slipped it in the pocket with my mother’s note and the three-cent silver. Next, I fastened my cloak, walked over to my window, and looked down at the sturdy black hand surging up from the earth.
I took a deep breath and trusted the knowing part of my soul—climbed down that tree like I’d done it a hundred times before, then ran to the only place I could think to go.
To the Hollow.
Nine
She out back.”
That was Adena’s little brother, Micah.
“Adena!” he hollered as he dashed back into the house. “Sad girl here to see you!”
I plopped down on the top step. Dazed.
“What happened?” gasped Adena, joining me. “You look like you seen a ghost.”
With the dark patches on her face and hands, Adena looked like she had been dumping coal ash.
“Adena, you were right about Ambertine.” I held up the envelope. “From her. Not only is she not done with me, she’s close by. Just my name. No stamp. No postmark. And you won’t believe what’s inside.”
I handed Adena the envelope. She wiped her hands on her apron, but there was no rubbing all the soot away. “Better you show me,” she said.
The photograph first. “The one in the middle.” “Your mama?”
I nodded.
“She’s pretty.”
Suddenly, I was all choked up. I thought my mother was pretty the minute I looked at her, but then remembered that Ambertine said I looked like my mother. I’d never felt pretty in my life.
A nice girl. A good girl—those were the kinds of things grownfolks said about me. Never that I was pretty. And when Viola wasn’t calling me dumb, she was oftentimes snickering “Blackie” or hissing “Ugly Bug” at me.
“Thank you,” I said to Adena, still fighting back tears. Then I put Ambertine’s letter up to her eyes.
It didn’t take Adena long to read it through. I was much better at memory things like Bible verses and poems. She was the faster reader.
“Your pa don’t sound like a bad man at all, Delana. And your ma … she’s got a power to her. Can’t see a man running off from her. And, you know, their names, Joline and Jordan, they match up nice … like how our names could be sisters.” Adena was trying hard to cheer me up.
It was working.
A little.
I still felt dazed. And weak. That stronger second self that got me out my window, down my tree, and to the Hollow was playing hide-and-go-seek on me.
Just like Ambertine.
Why?
I was starting to think Ambertine didn’t have a hiding kindness at all. More like she was cruel. Or maybe came down with an early case of whatever made Aunt Tilley get so twitchy.
Why didn’t Ambertine just lay everything out for me, like Aunt Tilley and now Miss Ida laid out my clothes. What did Ambertine want me to decide—and want me to want?
“You decide what you want?” Adena asked, her mind tracking mine.
“To know why Ambertine’s doing this to me, acting like a shadow. Why don’t she just come out and tell me all she knows and if my father—”
I looked at my mother again. Adena was right, she did have a power to her. I could sense her spirit, her fire, and I wanted more.
“Adena, you ever lost somebody?”
She nodded. “Grandma on Pa’s side, when we lived in Tennessee. In Kentucky, I had a big brother, Sherman. A rusty nail made his foot rotten, then the rest of him.”
“How well you remember your brother?”
“Get whiffs sometimes. See a picture in my mind of a tall boy walking me, feeding me. First time I told Mama about it, she said it was Sherman all right.” Adena sighed. “Sometimes when I’m out in the woods picking berries … I hear a voice say to me, ‘Watch your step.’ Sure enough some critter scampers out from where I was about to walk … and I know Sherman was being my watchout.”
“And your grandma?”
“She comes to me all the time. Like when I’m kneading dough and my hands get tired and I’m ready to quit. Then I hear my grandma saying, ‘Thorough, Adena, do it thorough.’ And I keep kneading with a new strength.”
“Aunt Tilley came to me plenty after she died, but I don’t want her near me no more.”
“You might not have a say in that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t think the living call up the dead, Delana. I think the dead summon themselves up into our lives.”
Why had my mother never come to me?
“Your brother Sherman loved you, right?”
Adena nodded.
“And your grandma?”
She nodded something fierce.
“Never even had a whiff of my mother, Adena. Think that means she didn’t love—”
“Oh no, Delana, don’t think that! Your mama loved you! She never would’ve told Ambertine to watch over you if she didn’t love you.”
That made me feel a little better. It felt true. And yet, Adena looked puzzled, strange.
“What’s wrong now?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me, Adena.”
“You won’t like it.”
“Go on anyway. I’m getting used to pain.”
“It’s not something I know for sure, Delana. Something I only wonder.”
“Say it.”
“Can the dead come to us if we don’t remember them?” Adena fiddled with her laces. “What if our memories are like a drawbridge let down between our world and the next.”
Adena was right. I didn’t like what she had to say. Having no memory of my mother was bad enough. The notion that she would never ever come to me because I had no memories of her—
Unless—
“Adena, you think the dead can cross over on secondhand memories?”
She shrugged. “Possible.”
We sat silent for a while, watching a cat with a caravan of kittens tramp into the field across the road.
Soon, Adena and I were back to talking about the dead.
“Minute Aunt Tilley reached Heaven, I reckon my mother went at her madder than a wet hen for telling me all those lies.”
“Can’t fuss and fight in Heaven.”
“So long as you don’t do bodily harm, can’t you say your piece?”
One kitten was scrambling from the field, out to the road. The mother cat was soon there, grabbing her baby by the scruff for toting back into the tall mass of weeds.
Adena and I switched up to what we’d do when we were dead. All I could think about was talking to my mother. Dawn to dusk. Dusk to dark. Adena looked forward to seeing Sherman all healed and eating her grandma’s butter rolls.
That willful kitten was near to the road again. Like before, the mama wasn’t far behind.
And Adena had something else for dead us to do. “Come nightfall, we swoop down and haunt Viola Kimbrough!” I’d never seen Adena smile so. I smiled, too.
I was back to wondering if the dead can cross over on secondhand—or maybe make-believe—memories when Adena shot up and raced to the road.
Her mama was coming home.
- - - - -
Miss Lottie had a sack over one shoulder and an empty basket on one hip. She was all lace and lavender as Adena took the sack from her, but when Miss Lottie saw me, she turned sour. She started walking faster toward me, like a fright, her black cape flapping like a raven’s wings.
Adena skipped to keep up.
“Delana! Your grandpa done sounded the alarm, got folks searching for you!” Miss Lottie dropped the basket on the ground. She towered over me, arms akimbo, like Goliath before David. “Ida Nash about to lose her mind. I was at the Kimbrough place when she come there asking if anybody seen you since school let out, babbling about how she lost track of time on errands.”
I looked to Adena for rescue.
“I was feeling poorly after school. She helped me home,” Adena said.
Miss Lottie harrumphed, grabbed me by the arm, and marched me up the road. I tried to tell her she didn’t have to put herself out. I promised to go straight home.
“Most surely, but not without me, missy. Something happen to you between here and home, there’ll be no living it down when folks find out you was last seen at my place.”
Miss Lottie had us walking faster and faster the closer we got to my home. And my heart, it thumpthumped louder.
And louder.
Lawdamercy, what would Grandpa do to me?
- - - - -
When we turned onto Shrewsbury, I saw someone sitting on the front steps.
It was Jude. With the puppy-dog eyes.
As soon as Jude spotted us, he jumped up and hollered at the house, “She found, Mr. Hannibal! She found!”
Before Miss Lottie and I reached the walkway, Grandpa was through the front door.
High boots.
Denim jacket.
His traveling hat in his hand.
Grandpa was dressed like he does when he goes for a day or overnight to check on a property or barbershop.
All he did was stare at me.
Miss Lottie, huffing and puffing, commenced talking like the hangman was near.
“Mr. Hannibal, when I come home from deliveries, what do I find but your Delana. Seems my Adena was feeling poorly when school let out. Delana seen her home. I swear Mr.—”
Grandpa raised his pointer finger. Miss Lottie hushed. “I got no quarrel with you and your’n, Mrs. Mullins. I thank you for bringing Delana home.”
Grandpa looked calm but there was something brewing in his voice. And he was fiddling with his pocket change.
Next, I heard footsteps behind me, then “Thank you, Jesus!”
Miss Ida.
Grandpa came to the top step. “All’s well now. Y’all can go home now.” He flipped Jude a piece of change.
Jude caught the coin in one smooth move. “Thank you, sir, Mr. Hannibal,” he said, tipping his hat. Then Jude skittled down the steps and was in the wind.
Next, Miss Lottie took her leave. “Good day, Mr. Hannibal,” she said with a nod.
Miss Ida headed to the back of the house. “Supper be on the table in a few minutes.”
Grandpa stopped her with two words: “No need.” Not until Miss Ida was far along on her way home did Grandpa speak again.
“Quite a scare you give me. All sorts of things run through my mind.”
“Sorry, Grandpa,” I said to the ground.
“Look at me when I speak to you!”
He had never yelled at me before.
I looked up. “Yessir, I’m sorry, sir.”
“Next time something like that happens, don’t linger!” he snapped, then opened the screen door.
I couldn’t move. The thought of being in that house, just me and him—
“Don’t try me, Delana,” Grandpa said over his shoulder. “Git in the house!”
When I still didn’t move, he spun around all angry-eyed.
I flinched, stepped back.
He had never struck me, yet I feared a beating like Ambertine got from her pa. But if anybody had a right to be riled, it was me. I was the one lied to and all jumbled up.
Then I heard Aunt Viney.
Meek ain’t weak, Delana. Meek ain’t weak.
“Adena didn’t take sick,” I blurted out. That strength of a second self that got me down my elm tree was back. “I came right home after school, Grandpa. Then I left—left by the tree outside my window—because of this.”
Ten
Tears were streaming down my face.
In my outstretched hand was the envelope with my mother’s photograph and Ambertine’s letter.
“By the tree outside your window,” Grandpa mumbled, looking a little dazed. Then, slowly, he took the envelope from my hand. “What is this?” He frowned, opening it.
Grandpa glanced at the letter, eyes skitterscatter. When he focused on the photograph, it was like he had the wind knocked out of him. “Joline,” he whispered.
Grandpa put a hand against the door frame to steady himself, then, slowly, went inside.
When I followed, I found Grandpa in the sitting room, in the rocker by the fireplace. He was holding the picture like it was a robin’s egg.
I sat down across from him, on the sofa.
“Where’d you get this?” All the snap had left his voice.
“Cousin Ambertine.”
“Ambertine?” He squinted.
“She was here. The day of Aunt Tilley’s funeral, after everybody left. When you took Cousin Richard to the depot.”
“Ambertine, you say?” Grandpa looked addled. “Jake and Mamie’s daughter?”
“Yes, Grandpa, and … what Ambertine told me and what Aunt Tilley told me about my ma and pa—things don’t match up.”
“This here letter from Ambertine?”
I nodded.
He looked at the letter, as if beholding a whirlwind, then handed it back to me. “What it say?”
Whenever Grandpa had me read him something from the newspaper, or Aunt Tilley a passage of Scripture, or Lawyer Sanders a document, I figured Grandpa wanted to see if I was a strong or weak reader, that he liked the way Aunt Tilley put drama in a verse, and that all lawyers read important papers aloud before people signed them.
Now that I thought about it, other than a hymnal at church, the only book I’d ever seen Grandpa handle was a ledger in which he did sums and such. I hardly ever saw him in the library. The few times I did, he looked lost in a forest.
“Dear Delana …” My voice trembled as I began reading Ambertine’s letter. “Your mama had this picture taken years ago when she was up in Wheeling …” I paused now and then to read Grandpa’s face.
He nodded when I read abou
t Bethany and Miriam Rice and the freedom festivities.
After I read, “Up in Wheeling, that’s where Joline met Jordan,” Grandpa winced. And his eyes were glistening when I finished the part about my mother aiming to marry my father and have a vivid life.
“Ambertine said I should decide what I want, then signed off with ‘Watching Over You.’”
“Watching over you?” Grandpa was riled up again.
“Before my mother died, she wrote Ambertine … asking her to watch over me. Ambertine gave me that note.”
Now that envelope was in my outstretched hand.
Quickly, I pulled it back.
“From Joline?” Grandpa was squinting again.
“Yessir.”
“Let me see that.”
I hesitated. He still had her picture. What if he never gave it back—kept her note, too?
But the anger was gone from his eyes.
I handed over the note. “It says, ‘Keep watch over my baby girl.’”
He ran a finger over the purple maypops up top.
“Grandpa, Ambertine said my folks had a powerful love. Him for her. Her for him. And that my pa didn’t truly run off, but faced a hard choice.” By now, my eyes were on the carpet. “All I want is the truth, Grandpa.”
“The truth?” His voice was low. “People like to talk about how truth set you free. Truth can come with burdens.”
“But, Grandpa, is a burden worse than mystery?”
Our eyes locked. Soon, Grandpa’s eyes were the ones on the carpet. A wave of weary washed over him. And he was traveling to the wayback of his mind.
“Delana, everything … this house, the shops, properties … all for family. My whole life’s prayer was to do for mine what my ma and pa was denied.”
Grandpa spoke of seeing his mama iron precious pinafores for the master’s girls, while his sisters went about in rough and ratty tow-cloth shirts.
“Never forget my pa’s hollow eyes when they brought him back hog-tied, bloody. He was to make it north, work at whatever he could, find a way to buy all our freedom.”
I thought about Grandpa as a boy working hurry-scurry to buy his freedom.
“That was the second time my pa tried to escape. First time flogged. Second time hanged. All us colored on the plantation was made to watch. Then, my ma, sisters, brothers … we was all sold apart.” He paused, then turned to me. “These some of my truths, Delana.”