by Tonya Bolden
“You think it’s too chewed up to rate a place in that new album of your’n?” Grandpa asked with a slight smile. “Maybe I can have it fixed up.”
“No need, Grandpa. No need. It’s perfect.”
- - - - -
Soon, Grandpa was saying “No” a lot less.
When I asked Miss Ida if I could help her cook and she said, “You need to ask your grandpa,” he gave his consent—and with a big sunshine smile, too!
They were both amazed at how well I knew my way around the kitchen—stirring pots, frying eggs and bacon, peeling potatoes, grinding coffee, baking pies. A lot had stuck from all those years of watching.
Then came the Friday in February when Grandpa mentioned, over supper, that he was going down to Malden to see about a property in the morning.
“Can I come?”
I not only got to see Malden. A few weeks later, Grandpa let me go with him to check on a shop in Boone County. And there, Grandpa had all the barbers come out to the buggy, then introduced me like I was mighty dear to him.
One of the barbers, Mr. Adams, looked a little like Adena’s father. During the ride home, I asked Grandpa if Mr. Adams was Melungin and if they were people to beware.
Grandpa said Mr. Adams was a fine barber and an honest man. “Wouldn’t care if his people from the moon.”
As the buggy rolled by a stand of sugar maples, with some old men tapping for sap, I asked Grandpa something else to do with my friend. “Can Adena come to the house sometimes, spend time with me?”
Grandpa said “Yes” to that, too.
- - - - -
“I know, Grandpa. Save my money. Don’t spend it on trifles. Save for something dear.”
That was on another Friday, the second of March. My thirteenth birthday.
We were in the sitting room and Grandpa had just counted out thirteen silver dollars into my hands.
“Thank you,” I said, giving him a peck on the cheek.
“There’s something else,” he said, patting the spot next to him.
As I sat down, Grandpa rubbed his chin, drummed his fingers on his knee.
“You all right, Grandpa?”
“I’m fine,” he said, but he still didn’t look it. “Want to speak on a question you asked me a while back. Right then and there I answered my heart but … never did answer you.”
Grandpa lifted my chin so we were eye to eye. “Delana, there’s nothing in the world you could ever do to make me cast you out. And I include in that … you going within a mile of your father … or him coming within a foot of you.”
I froze.
“When I said I didn’t know if he was still alive, that was the honest truth, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t try and find out.” After a pause, he added, “I did like I did after the war … when I was trying to find family.”
Did I hear right? Was Grandpa saying he had placed want ads for my father?
Yes, he had.
“… looking for Jordan Burkett, for a time of Wheeling, West Virginia. Mother named Ana.”
A tear rolled down my cheek.
Grandpa had Lawyer Sanders place the ads, pretending they were from somebody who thought my father might be kin. For the reply address, he used a friend’s in Roanoke. Grandpa said he preferred my father not know just yet that he was the one looking for him.
“A reply come the other week.”
I could hardly speak. “My father’s alive?”
“Seemed so.” Grandpa hugged me to him. “But I wanted to know so. Had Lawyer Sanders go see, check around. When need be he can walk through snow leaving nary a track.”
“Where’d you send Lawyer Sanders?”
“Baltimore.”
Alaska, that’s what I expected to hear. If not Alaska, then some other faraway place, with oceans and mountains, maybe even deserts, between here and there.
But Baltimore was near.
“Is he still … tumbleweed?”
“No, Delana. Seems he made out good. Tailor. Have his own little shop.”
“Does he have any … other … children?”
Grandpa shook his head.
“Wife?”
“Don’t seem he ever married again.”
From his vest pocket, Grandpa pulled out a piece of paper, pressed it in my hand. “What more you want to know, you can ask him yourself.”
I unfolded the paper, stared at the address. “I can write him?”
“Yes, Delana, if you want to. Your choice.”
“Thank you, Jesus!”
We turned to see Miss Ida standing in the archway.
“Bless your heart, Mr. Hannibal,” she continued, fighting back tears. “It’s been such a joy to see you stop making Delana live such a locked-up life. And now this. Finding her father.”
Something in my spirit flipped. That phrase “locked-up life”—I’d heard it before.
This locked-up life ain’t what your mama would want for you.
That was something Ambertine had said.
Queer things suddenly made sense, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle coming to fit. Starting with how fidgety Miss Ida looked when she told me to hurry to my room after Aunt Tilley’s funeral.
Best go upstairs and rest yourself awhile. … Hurry now, hurry.
And when I got to my room—
I sprang to my feet, arms akimbo. “Miss Ida—you been Ambertine’s spy?”
Miss Ida lowered her eyes and fiddled with her hands.
Grandpa’s mouth fell open.
That’s how Ambertine knew Aunt Tilley called her “Trash and trouble.”
Miss Ida!
How Ambertine knew I liked geography and knew other things about me.
Miss Ida!
When I got word she was gone, I decided it was time for you to know some things, get some freedom wings.
Miss Ida!
Grandpa looked from Miss Ida to me, from me to Miss Ida, who finally fessed up.
To sending Ambertine reports on me like she’d asked her to do years ago.
To sending Ambertine word that Aunt Tilley had died.
To sneaking Ambertine into the house the night of the funeral.
To putting Ambertine’s letter on my bed.
To eavesdropping the evening Grandpa told me all those truths.
“True,” Miss Ida added, her eyes still on her hands, “I saw Ambertine as a strange one, but I never felt her evil. When she said Delana’s father didn’t merit everlasting banishment and damnation, seemed to me there was something to it. With all due respect, Mr. Hannibal, you was a stubborn man and hard-hearted for too long.”
Now it was Grandpa who lowered his eyes.
“And for the record,” Miss Ida continued, “I never asked Ambertine for a dime, but over the years, I did accept her freewill offerings. But I swear, Mr. Hannibal, every cent I spent on y’all’s Christmases.”
That explained why Miss Ida had lavished so much on us this Christmas.
“And I’ll spare you the trouble of telling me my services are no longer needed. I’ll get supper on the table, clean up, then never darken your door again.”
Grandpa looked as he did when working in his ledger book, like he was adding and subtracting in his head.
I looked at my father’s address again, then at Miss Ida. “Ambertine knew all along where my father was, didn’t she?”
Miss Ida nodded. “She said all she could do was plant a seed and see what grows.” Then Miss Ida turned to Grandpa. “Had she come to you, Mr. Hannibal, she figured you wouldn’t give her a hearing, what with her being a family outcast.”
Grandpa rubbed his chin. “She figured right.” Then he brightened. “But this is a new day. Where’s Ambertine now?”
“I don’t rightly know,” Miss Ida replied. “Only know how to get a message to her.”
“And you’ll be giving her a new report, I suspect.” Miss Ida’s reply was a quick nod and a nervous smile.
“When you do, I want you to give her a message from me. We can
talk about it later.”
Miss Ida turned to leave the room.
“And one more thing, Miss Nash.”
She stopped.
“I want to thank you for your service. All of it. And you were right. About a lot of things.” Grandpa got fidgety, drumming his fingers on his knee. “It would please me greatly if when you set the table, you set a place for yourself, have supper with me and Delana.”
Miss Ida was beaming. She bounced from the room.
Grandpa had a nice smile on his face. I couldn’t help but ask, “You getting sweet on Miss Ida?”
“You think I should be?”
I nodded. “And Grandpa …?”
“Yes, Delana?”
“Your message to Ambertine … you’ll tell her she’s welcome here?”
“You think that’s what I should do?”
“Yes!”
“Me too. I want mercy to abound in this house.” Grandpa gave himself a good stretch. “First thing tomorrow, going to see Lawyer Sanders. Have him draw up some new papers.”
Grandpa looked down at the paper in my hand. “And what are you going to do?”
Thirteen
As I lay in bed that night, in my head I started writing letter after letter to Mr. Jordan Burkett in Baltimore, Maryland.
Dear Father,
I trust this letter finds you well. I am doing fine. …
Dear Father,
I still live in the house on Shrewsbury Street. …
Dear Father,
Your head must be spinning like a top. …
Dear Father God, I prayed, show me what to write. Show me how not to worry.
I worried that my father might not write back. Or that if he did, he’d say he didn’t want to see me.
And what if he and Grandpa never made peace?
Suddenly, Uncle Matthias’s picture postcard was in my head. But this time, I didn’t get all panicky when I put myself in the railroad scene.
I felt like that train would take the curve just fine. When it reached the other side of the mountain, I still didn’t know what I’d see, but I didn’t fear an abyss.
Next, I saw myself in Cousin Clare’s postcard, on Market Street. I was looking in all the shop windows, and I saw a lot of things I liked. And that’s when it hit me.
While I was wrestling with what to write my father, there was something else I needed to do.
I made up my mind to do it the next day.
- - - - -
“Miss Ida?” I called out on my way down the front stairs. I knew Grandpa wasn’t home. After breakfast, he had gone to see Lawyer Sanders.
“In here,” Miss Ida replied from the parlor. She and Jude were moving furniture to the walls. Next, he’d be carrying the rugs out back for beating.
Jude looked at me once. Then again.
“My, my,” said Miss Ida.
I had on one of my church skirts, best bonnet, and, most dear to me, Aunt Tilley’s Christmas blouse.
“Miss Ida, I am going out.”
“Where to?”
“Not far.”
“Does your grandpa know?”
“No. That’s why I’m telling you, Miss Ida. So nobody sounds the alarm.”
With that, I left home with a pocketful of silver dollars.
My first on my own.
I wasn’t going as far as my mother had gone, but it was a start.
- - - - -
Capitol Street was beehive busy. People going in and out of shops, some fast, some slow. Others crowded around carts piled high with fruits and vegetables and around a peddler covered in kazoos.
Up ahead a ways, a dog yapped. Closer, a baby squalled—and only a couple of colored on the street.
I’d never been all alone around so many white folks.
Thump-thump.
But as none looked like they would do me harm, I calmed down, strolled on. And it was easy to mosey.
So much to see.
The few times Aunt Tilley took me shopping with her, she never let me linger at a store window like McCrory’s, chock-full of shining china, glittering glassware, crystal birds, tin toy soldiers, and other playthings, including a golden teddy bear.
Farther along, I came to Friedman’s. There, a girl not much older than me was neatening up a mannequin in a peach satin gown. When I looked at my reflection, I was bothered by my bonnet. I wanted to see myself in a different kind of hat, something akin to the one my mother had on in that photograph.
The girl in the window smiled.
I went inside to find that of all the hats in Friedman’s, only one came close.
“For you?” the saleslady asked.
“Yes’m.”
“Maybe a little too old?” She peered at me over her glasses.
“No disrespect, ma’am, but I … I like it.”
When I left Friedman’s, I only lingered at a few more shop windows—Stromboni’s ice cream parlor, Sterret’s grocery, Bogg’s pharmacy.
I walked fast by the saloon and didn’t slow down until I reached Gates Art Gallery.
A whole lot of hubbub inside. People oohing and aahing and hmmming over oil paintings up on a long stretch of wall and in bold, gold frames. Some of every kind of scene. A castle with turrets piercing clouds … sheep in a peaceful valley … people enjoying a picnic in a park. The woman standing closest to that picnic painting had a measuring tape in her hand.
Up on the other side of the room, I saw a man and a little boy coming down the stairs. At the counter, a skinny sour-faced clerk talked sharp and fast to the man. I couldn’t make out everything, but I did hear the clerk say, “Four dollars for the first. One dollar for each copy.” And then, “Darkroom’s a little backed up. Your order will be ready on Monday afternoon.” The clerk told the man he had to leave a two-dollar deposit.
I never knew there was so much business to do around getting your picture taken.
Just then, a man in a gray smock came down the stairs. When he reached the desk behind the counter, he tended to some paperwork. He looked up when someone called out, “Mr. Gates!”
It was the woman before the picnic in the park painting. And now I knew the man in the gray smock was Mr. Gates.
“Will you do me a kindness,” the woman asked him. “Hold this painting for me? I’ll come for it next Friday.”
“Will do, Mrs. Moore.” “Next!” the clerk called out.
When I turned, Sourface was looking at me, and I saw the spirit of Viola Kimbrough in him.
Thump-thump.
I tried to smile as I moved to the counter. “I came to get my picture taken.”
“What time is your appointment?”
Lawdamercy! I paused, lowered my eyes. “I don’t have an appointment, sir.”
Sourface flipped through a book. “Wednesday afternoon … at four.”
So much for my first on my own, I thought. “Yessir. Thank you.”
“Name?”
“Delana”
“Spell that.”
I did.
“Surname?”
I hesitated, but not for long. “Hannibal. Delana Hannibal.”
Now Mr. Gates looked at me. “You kin to Sam Hannibal?”
No spirit of Viola Kimbrough in him!
“Yessir. He’s my grandfather.”
“When’s my next appointment?” Mr. Gates asked the clerk.
Sourface looked at the book, then at his pocket watch. “About another forty minutes,” he replied.
“Then I can take the young miss,” said Mr. Gates.
- - - - -
Gates’s upper room was a wonderland. Sunshine flooded in from a skylight. In one corner was a table and chair set up like two were having tea.
Nearby was an armchair, side table, bear rug—a little sitting room.
With a fireplace, too. A shelf up above was a clutter of candlesticks, hurricane lamps, urns, vases, big and little baskets, shields, Ali Baba hats, and a parade of knickknacks.
The camera faced the fireplace. It w
as fixed on a cart with wheels and draped with a cloth. Made me think of the story about the Trojan horse. A Trojan horse with a little cape.
“What kind of scene do you fancy, young miss?” Mr. Gates asked. He pointed to the back of the room, where I saw huge paintings, from one of woodlands to one of a sea with sailboats in the distance.
“No scene, sir.”
“Props?” Now he pointed to the big baskets in front of the scenes, baskets overflowing with books and scrolls, feathers and fans, hats, spears, parasols, umbrellas.
I shook my head. “No props. Just me.”
“Then just you it’ll be,” he said with a smile.
Mr. Gates pulled over a dark screen, had me stand before it, then faced the camera at me.
Such a big eye.
I stood as straight as I could.
“Not yet. You can relax.”
He ducked under the cloth, fiddled with the camera. When his head popped back out—“Look straight at the camera. And now’s the time to stay still. Don’t blink, don’t move.”
So I stood there before the big eye. I stood there eyes wide open, not breathing deep, hoping I didn’t look severe or sassy.
When you turn thirteen, Delana, you’ll be getting your picture taken at Gates … when you turn thirteen.
Aunt Tilley had been right. And as I thought back, it dawned on me that she never said she would be taking me to Gates. Only that I’d be here.
How did she know?
Could it be that despite all her twitchy and strange ways, in the knowing part of her soul Aunt Tilley saw a change was coming for me? After all, she put by a grown-up blouse for me months ago. Maybe there was a part of her not bedeviled by fears and bewares that wanted me to get some freedom wings. Was that Aunt Tilley’s last wish?
The camera’s flash had me blinking fast.
“Done!” Mr. Gates beamed.
On my way downstairs, I counted in my head. Grandpa … Miss Ida … Adena … Ambertine …
“Six copies,” I said to the clerk, then asked, “They’ll be ready Monday afternoon?”
To my surprise, Sourface smiled. When I brought out two silver dollars, he waved his hand. “No need for a deposit. You can just pay when you pick up.”
- - - - -
On the way back down Capitol Street, something caught my eye in a tiny bookshop I hadn’t noticed before.