by Tonya Bolden
Grandpa had done just that, coming up from slavery. After seeing his pa killed, with his ma lost to him forever, then the family he made in freedom … I thought about all his truths, all he had been through. I saw that pain on his face.
And now Aunt Tilley was gone, too.
I was the closest kin left to him.
Your grandpa done sounded the alarm, got folks searching for you! That’s what Miss Lottie had said.
If he didn’t care about me, Grandpa would’ve been in the sitting room playing checkers with himself. But when Miss Lottie brought me home, he had his traveling clothes on. He must’ve been about to go search for me himself.
And the way Jude hollered out when he saw me—
She found, Mr. Hannibal. She found.
Sounded like Jude and the whole wide world knew I was dear to Grandpa.
Couldn’t lose you, too!
I wiped tears from my eyes.
Grandpa came to mind some more when I read Mr. Bruce’s remarks on the import of saving money—and how he chided an old colored man who shucked that off.
“Great heavens,” said Mr. Bruce to the man, “if you are too old to save for your own benefit, think of posterity!”
I wondered if posterity was the same as legacy.
For family.
I remembered Grandpa’s slight smile when he talked about adding the library for my mother’s sake. More likely than not, the whole house was for family’s sake. That must’ve been why he was content with The Traveler’s Room. Grandpa was the kind of man Mr. Bruce would’ve been proud to know. I couldn’t help but smile.
But then, my heart sank as I read Mr. Bruce’s stern words to young women about picking a husband.
Tell the young man he must be industrious, be sober, strive for knowledge, if he would wed you. Do not marry a dude.
A dude? Sounded like the kind of man Grandpa said my father was.
Tumbleweed.
I didn’t want to read anymore. So I set the article aside.
The next thing I took from the carpetbag was a book, done up with a red ribbon even though it wasn’t falling apart.
“Sketches of Southern Life,” I read when I opened the book.
By Frances E. Watkins Harper.
A page on, in plain hand, was written:
For My Beloved Joline,
You are my poem.
Everlasting Love,
Jordan
Tears rolled down my cheek. For her. For him. Tears for me.
At last, I had something of my father.
My hands were shaking as I leafed through this book of what seemed to be all poems. I soon saw why Sketches of Southern Life had been ribboned up.
In between two pages was a tintype of a man.
I didn’t need to study it. Didn’t need to wonder.
The tears were hot and fast.
This had to be my father.
Twelve
I wanted to be in a never-ending dream.
I wanted to be in my room on a golden day, reading a book or writing a poem when Miss Ida would rap on my door.
“Delana, my dear, you have a visitor!” Then she’d hurry me down to the parlor, where she had everything laid out for tea. And there, sitting on the red velvet settee with Grandpa—my father.
“I’ve been on an adventure!” he’d say.
“All’s forgiven,” Grandpa would chime in. “All’s right with the world.”
But nothing was right in my world.
I was sitting up in my bed, still in yesterday’s clothes, hugging myself under my quilt.
I tiptoed over to my window.
It was barely first light. Some of the moon was still showing through. Far off a cock crowed. Closer, a dog let out a wounded howl.
I picked up my father’s picture from my bureau.
Why did he choose scenery with a tree? Was this photograph taken before they met? If after, was he looking off to the side like that because he was looking at my mother?
But wouldn’t my folks have had a picture taken together after they married up in Morgantown?
Grandpa. There had to have been other pictures. Grandpa had destroyed them. All my forgiveness feelings were fading.
Grandpa was wrong about my father, wrong about him being tumbleweed. All these years Jordan Burkett had been working hard—as hard as he could. He had struck gold in Alaska or become prosperous somehow else in a faraway land. Right now he was on his way to West Virginia, to Charleston, right up to the front door of this house! Coming to get me and to tell Grandpa to give his legacy to somebody else!
I looked at my father’s picture again. Had Grandpa been right? Would I have had an awfully wretched life? Ended up a ragamuffin?
He bought you a future.
Maybe my father knew I couldn’t bear up under a tumbleweed life.
But what would happen to me after Grandpa died? What would I do with the legacy? Me run barbershops? How would I know how much rent to make people pay?
Maybe I’d ask Lawyer Sanders to handle things, if he wasn’t dead, too, then I’d travel around, visiting kinfolk for real. Bring Adena with me. She wouldn’t have to do chores and errands anymore. I’d pay Miss Ida and Jude to help Miss Lottie.
Better yet, I’d tell Adena her family could move in here with me. Also Miss Ida. Save her a lot of back and forth. Jude, too. I once heard Miss Ida say Jude don’t half live no place but among hoot owls and ramps. Jude could have The Traveler’s Room.
If I couldn’t fill up the house … I couldn’t imagine nothing for myself but getting old and crazy. Spending my days in the sitting room making doilies and in the parlor conjuring up stories about photographs. And I didn’t even have a wishing-place, a place to say my dreams.
I closed my eyes. I imagined myself walking down to the Kanawha River, knowing in my soul which was the welcoming tree.
Father God, I prayed, please don’t let me be miserable all my life. Let the sorrow lift.
I wished I was back in the Bible days, when prayers moved God to do miracle things. Seas parted. Walls came tumbling down. Dry bones lived.
Nothing like that happened for me.
When I opened my eyes, I was beholding the same sad sky. And that elm outside my window no longer looked like a sturdy black hand, a rescue. It was just a tree.
- - - - -
My days were like snails in the darkness. Parts of my heart … nibbled away. During recess and after school, I didn’t even have much to say to Adena.
Only one bright spot—Viola Kimbrough had stopped nettling me. The teasing of Adena had also eased.
The turnaround came the day I had to recite. I rose slowly, prepared my mind. From across the aisle came the ghosty voice, “Dumb … Delana.”
I turned to Viola. “Why don’t you just hush up!”
The class roared.
Viola cut her eyes at me.
“And keep your nasty eyes to yourself while you’re at it!”
Again, the class broke out in laughter. Viola slunk down in her seat.
When I faced front, I figured I’d find a furious Miss Tolliver, but she looked like she was doing her utmost not to laugh, too.
“Class, settle down now,” she finally said, then, “proceed, Delana, proceed.”
I did. Only it wasn’t the poem Miss Tolliver had assigned. I didn’t understand this new poem any more than the other one, but this poem was dear to me. It was the one my father’s picture faced.
I cleared my throat. “‘I Thirst’ by Frances E. Watkins Harper.”
Miss Tolliver seemed surprised but not riled. “Yes, Delana, go on.”
I thirst, but earth cannot allay
The fever coursing through my veins;
The healing stream is far away—
It flows through Salem’s lovely plains.
The murmurs of its crystal flow
Break ever o’er this world of strife;
My heart is weary, let me go,
To bathe it in the steam of life;
<
br /> For many worn and weary hearts
Have bathed in this pure healing stream,
And felt their griefs and cares depart,
E’en like some sad forgotten dream.
- - - - -
“Good morning.”
“Good night.”
Some days those were the only words that passed between Grandpa and me. Suppertimes were horrible. Him at the head of the dining room table. Me at the side. Us eating to the whip of the wind or the clock’s ticktock until one of us said, “Pass the cornbread, please.”
I’d gotten used to being alone upstairs. Had come to the conclusion I’d just have to mother myself.
Sleeping in my mother’s room helped some. Often, before I went to sleep, I looked at the pictures of my folks, searching their faces for clues to me.
Sometimes I fiddled with my mother’s things from that carpetbag. Put on a neck chain. Hold her eardrops up to my face.
Reading my mother’s letters from friends and family, I was starting to piece together more of her personality. She liked to bake pies, to dance, and to talk about the books she read. And she was fond of saying Pshaw!
My next comfort was being in her library. I did my needlework there—and no more primroses for me! I was stitching stars. Sometimes moons, with plans to tackle purple maypops soon.
I’d also decided to do a whole lot of reading in the library, starting with Jane Eyre, a little bit every day.
Didn’t know which book I’d pick up next.
Emma?
The Wide, Wide World?
Or maybe The Way We Live Now or Uncle Tom’s Cabin or The Count of Monte Cristo or Bleak House or Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany.
All I knew was a burning desire to read every book my mother put on those shelves.
It was also in the library that I began bringing some order to the kinfolk. Matching up husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, noting what I knew and what I wondered.
Like the man Aunt Tilley had just called “Tophat.” Uncle Dub’s brother, if I remembered correctly.
And there were the Dowds. Three sisters and a brother. All four took their picture against the same scene. The ghosty house in the distance never made sense. It looked a little like Adena’s house, but the Dowds looked prosperous. Maybe they posed with that house as a show of modesty.
What else were they trying to say about themselves by what they picked to pose with? I most liked the brother’s fetching kerchief placed over the tree stump. Maybe he was a magician.
A frightful feeling came over me. Was this how it started with Aunt Tilley? When she couldn’t remember or didn’t know or didn’t like a truth, she just made things up?
I was going to start from scratch.
- - - - -
“Grandpa?”
I had the Dowds with me when I went into the sitting room. Grandpa was playing checkers with himself.
“Who are these people?” I asked.
The Dowds, he said, were some of Grandma Delia’s people.
“Where do they live?”
“Toledo.”
“Is he a magician?”
“Magician? No, preacher. Big church.”
I ran back to the library for Aunt Tilley’s husband, Uncle Dub, and Tophat. Maybe they weren’t brothers. They didn’t much favor.
Grandpa said Tophat was Uncle Dub’s brother, Thomas. “Butler for a judge in Richmond.”
“Uncle Dub? Was that his real name?”
“No. Double. Something to do with his time of birth.”
I was headed back to the library for another picture when Grandpa asked, “What is it that you’re up to, Delana?”
I feared a scolding, but then saw Grandpa didn’t look cross.
“Unscrambling family. Just want to know who is who.”
“You’ll wear yourself out you keep running back and forth like that. Could just bring the whole lot in here.”
Grandpa and I began spending evenings together in the sitting room visiting kinfolk.
I learned that Grandma’s sister, Aunt Rachel, wasn’t a floozy, but a poet, making me like the way she decorated herself even more.
As for Cousin Eula, she really was Emma!
“Remember Clare who came to the funeral?”
How could I forget Ole Weepy?
“Emma her baby sister. They Ambertine’s cousins, on her mama’s side.”
I was also glad to hear that Emma wasn’t dead. And not passing for white. Grandpa said it was another sister, Lena, who did that.
I turned Emma’s photograph over. “And this Pearlie Bruce who Emma gave her picture to?”
“Used to board with Jake and Mamie.”
“Was Pearlie Bruce kin to Blanche K. Bruce?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
But Grandpa did know for sure that we were no kin to Martin Delany.
“That was Tilley being fanciful.” Grandpa sighed. “Strange as she got, would rather have her with us still than not.”
- - - - -
That’s just what I was thinking on Christmas Day—Aunt Tilley.
Grandpa and I were in the parlor ready to exchange gifts.
Miss Ida was in the kitchen. For Christmas dinner, on top of the roast turkey and ham and yams and rice and cowpeas and greens, we were having roast duck, and rabbit, a goose, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and oyster soup. Enough for five families! Lawyer Sanders would go home with enough food to last him days. Ever since his wife died, he took holiday meals with us.
Back when Grandpa asked Miss Ida how much money she needed for Christmas dinner, she said, “Not a cent, Mr. Hannibal. All this year’s Christmas doings is my gift to you and Delana.”
Miss Ida had always given us decorations for the tree. This year she had gone above and beyond on that count. Along with the popcorn string, paper angels, and fringed foil for the tree, we had store-bought baubles and stars for the first time. There was also holly and wreaths all over the house—and a big bowl of candy on the parlor’s lion’s paw table. All this on top of so much food.
I wondered what had come over Miss Ida to make her so generous. Was she trying to make up for letting that teacup slip?
Later I’d give Miss Ida hankies with moons and stars. And when Grandpa and I made the rounds, I’d be giving Adena some hankies, too. But right now it was gift-giving time for me and Grandpa.
“Me first,” I said.
In Christmases past, Aunt Tilley wrapped up some socks for me to give Grandpa. This year when I handed him a little package, the gift really was from me.
He looked puzzled but pleased when he lifted the fifty-cent piece from the red velvet pouch.
“Cousin Richard gave it to me. Prettiest one I’ve ever seen. So I want you to have it.”
“This will be a most prized possession.” Grandpa looked so happy. “Thank you, Delana.”
Then he handed me a package. “From Tilley. Put it by for you months ago.”
It was a beautiful white blouse with a touch of lace, not like for a child but for a girl growing up.
Your day will come. That’s what Aunt Tilley had said.
Even with all her fancifuls … all her bewares, I was wishing she was with us still. Things would be different now. I had some truths.
Then I remembered something Ambertine had said.
When I got word she was gone, I decided it was time for you to know some things, get some freedom wings.
If Aunt Tilley hadn’t died, who knows when Ambertine would’ve come into my life.
When I looked at Grandpa, there was so much tenderness in his eyes. Then he held me in his arms. “Go ahead,” he said, “let it out. Let it all out.”
It was a bigger cry than the night Aunt Tilley died, a deeper cry than when I first laid eyes on my mother’s likeness. My tears were hotter than when I found my father’s picture in that book.
There was still so much I didn’t understand, so much more I wanted to know, but mostly I was feeling so sorry for hating A
unt Tilley. And Grandpa.
How many more years would I have him? That brought on a new wave of tears. If talk about my father caused Grandpa harm, I’d bide my time. I never again wanted to see that pain in his eyes.
Your day will come.
I wasn’t hearing Aunt Tilley this time. I was spirit-speaking to myself.
“Delana,” Grandpa said softly. “Been a rough patch for you, I know. And, no doubt, you been wrestling with some hard-hearted feelings about Tilley. About me, too. … Things Tilley told you … was from fear. Fear there’d come a day you’d want to know about your father, try to find him. Leave us.”
My tears had eased up, but Grandpa was still holding me. “I let Tilley tell you what she wished because I was afraid, too. And I’m sorry, Delana.” Grandpa swallowed. “Sorry, too, for not letting you know how dear you are to me. So busy protecting you, so afraid of losing you … I made you too dear.”
I looked up, confused.
“What I mean is, I wanted you walled off from anything I thought might bring you harm or hurt. Only way I could do that was to stand guard outside the wall myself. … Older you got the higher the wall I thought was needed.” Grandpa wiped his eyes. “Ain’t a right way to live. Not for you. Not for me.”
I felt tears on the rise again.
I also felt the sorrow lift.
The scent of cinnamon filled the room. We were also having peach cobbler. And sweet potato pie. Red velvet cake, too. I hoped all that cooking didn’t send Miss Ida into a faint. She’d been working on Christmas dinner for a week.
And Grandpa was now handing me my Christmas gift from him.
It was a big beautiful photograph album! On the shiny cream cover was a dance of yellow-faced pansies.
“Oh, thank you, Grandpa! Thank you so much!” “Family been in that basket long enough, don’t you think?”
We both started laughing. Nothing was truly funny, but it felt good. So we laughed some more.
I stopped when Grandpa brought out a photograph from his jacket pocket.
A photograph of him!
“Was going through some old papers when I come across this,” he said, handing it to me.
The photograph was taken, I saw, where Aunt Tilley once sat in a chair that brought to mind a throne. Where she was wearing her white festivity hat. Shadle & Busser. In York, Pennsylvania.