Willetta went about lighting candles. She knew Mama Jean would be pleased. She had yet to meet a woman who loved candles more than Mama Jean. There was a candelabrum in every room. There were two made of brass in the kitchen. One made of glass in their bedroom, another made of glass in the bathroom, and three made of gold in the living room. The electrical lights were hardly ever used. Willetta had secretly kept the tradition. She too loved candlelight in the nighttime.
The house was illuminated with candlelight. Willetta could hear Mama Jean moving around on the couch. She left the stove to go peek around the corner. Mama Jean was standing. Willetta's heart hurt at how small and fragile she had become. Mama Jean looked up.
"Etta, why haven't you asked me about Andrik," she said.
Willetta frowned, "Who is Andrik?"
"The young man you met in the yard today," Mama Jean said. She reached her hand out toward Willetta. Willetta took it and guided her into the kitchen.
"How do you know there was a young man in the yard," Willetta asked. She had no idea how much Mama Jean had heard.
"He was in here helping me when he heard your car coming down the road. He stepped out on the yard to see who was coming. Don't nobody come down this road too much," she said.
"He takes care of you," she asked
incredulously.
"Yes. I took care of him ever since he was a baby," Mama Jean said. "Some people show appreciation for that kind of thing."
"I've never seen him before in my life," Willetta scoffed. Either Mama Jean was crazy or she was making up stuff.
"Your mamma brought you to me when you were nine. Andrik was eighteen and gone off to college by that time. He's Stanley Thompson's boy."
"What! Mama Jean that man doesn't look a thing like Stanley Thompson." Willetta laughed.
Mama Jean sat at the table and waited for Willetta to fix her plate. "Well, that's his boy and now since Stanley is dead, Andrik owns all that land and that beautiful house too," she said.
Willetta busied herself fixing Mama Jean's plate. Her thoughts were on the tall dark-skinned man who had stopped her car from running into Mama Jean's front porch. He didn't look like someone who had grown up down the same country road she had grown up. He looked distinguished and educated even though he was driving an old beat-up pickup. Looks were always so deceiving. Was anything ever as it actually seemed?
Willetta put the plate before Mama Jean and sat down beside her. "Can you feed yourself, mama," she asked.
"I can try. Andrik usually feeds me. He's a good boy," she sighed.
Without a word, Willetta picked up the spoon and began to feed Mama Jean. She was only able to take a few spoonfuls of everything, before she declared she was full. Willetta gave her a glass of juice and then led her away from the table. She sponge bathed her and put her into a fresh gown. Willetta then led her to the small bedroom they always shared.
"Etta, I ain't smelled candles burning for a long time. Thank you, baby," Mama Jean said before pulling the covers up to her chin and closing her eyes. Her breathing eventually evened out and Willetta knew she was asleep.
She sat on the bed she used to sleep in. It was less than a foot away from Mama Jean's. She could reach out and touch Mama Jean from her bed. They had slept like that for years. Willetta missed the closeness they once shared.
Candlelight flickered against the low ceiling. Willetta lay back against the pillows and stretched out on her bed. She had showered and changed earlier. She wore a t-shirt and baggy flannel shorts. She was ready for bed and tired, but knew from long ago that leaving food out when your home sat in the middle of a field was not the best idea. So, she got up and went back into the kitchen.
The knock at the door frightened her and she screamed. The door flew open and the huge man that Mama Jean claimed was Stanley Thompson's son suddenly filled the kitchen. Willetta stood in the middle of the kitchen and stared at him in disbelief.
"Are you all right," he asked.
"I was until you scared the mess out of me. What do you want?" she said
Andrik's eyes traveled the length of her. Her hair was tousled and unkempt around her head and face. The t-shirt she wore was tight and stretched across her breast. A small bit of stomach showed between the shirt hemline and the waist of the baggy flannel shorts. She was indecent. But she was at home and he was not.
Willetta would not give him the advantage of making her nervous. "I said what do you want," she repeated and turned her back on him as she walked to the sink to run water for the dishes.
Andrik had never seen a woman look so adorable in the most ridiculous outfits. "I came to make sure Mama Jean was okay. Did she eat?" he asked.
Willetta turned slowly away from the sink to face him again. "Look, Andrik. She told me who you are. I'm here now. Please do not invade my privacy by bursting in on me in the middle of the night. I am quite capable of taking care of Mama Jean without your help. Thank you for everything you have done, but you may leave now," she said.
He crossed the room in one step and once again was in her face. "You don't thank me for taking care of my own. Mama Jean is more mine than yours. She raised me for eighteen years and I left her with a hug and a smile. I called, wrote letters, sent postcards, and came home when she asked me to. What have you done Willetta? You came home when you thought she was dead. I saw that smile on your face as you drove into the yard. You may fool Mama Jean, but you don't fool me." he finished meanly.
What did he think? What did Mama Jean think? Willetta was tired of it all. "For your information I left here to keep from breaking Mama Jean's heart. I was raped by a boy who was older than me after school one day. That one encounter got me pregnant. I was scared to death to tell Mama Jean and so I ran away. I ended up in a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia having a miscarriage. I have not looked back since then. I'm here now. So, please leave me alone and go away. If you don't think I'm good enough to take care of Mama Jean, give me my keys back and I will leave her to you." Willetta said.
Andrik didn't know whether to be stunned at her candidness, her awful experience, or her flippant willingness to leave Mama Jean again. Two things were for sure. She was not at all what he had expected and she definitely needed his expertise, but not for what Mama Jean thought. CHAPTER 4
The kitchen was cast in shadows of goldenyellow hues. The flickering of the small flames of the candelabrums seemed to make soft noises of their own as silence settled over the kitchen. Andrik's face was taut, but without expression. His eyes, though, sparkled with a new alertness and intensity. Willetta instantly regretted her outburst. She just didn't have patience for judgments made by people ignorant of the facts.
"Mama Jean is not really my grandmother," she said by way of explanation.
Andrik stood to his full height and reached for one of the chairs at the kitchen table. He settled his tall frame into a seat and leaned both elbows and arms onto the table. He turned to face Willetta who still stood at the sink.
"Well, I'm sure that will be news to her," his deep voice said softly.
Willetta tilted her head to the side and watched Andrik. He was posing and she wondered why. He was obviously making a great effort to seem at ease and nonchalant about the conversation, but his eyes told a completely different story. They were bright and they were focused intently upon her.
"When I was in the hospital having the miscarriage, they tried to contact a family member. I was out of it and scared. I could barely tell them my name. After I came to my senses they kept telling me that my foster parent couldn't be reached. I finally got up enough nerve to ask who they were talking about and it turns out Mama Jean was the foster parent they were referring to."
Andrik remembered how lost he was when his mamma died. He was fourteen. Mama Jean said Willetta was fifteen when she ran away. His eyes lifted once again to her face and he was surprised to find a look of patience instead of selfpity there. She was waiting on him to assimilate the facts, before she continued.
"So, what did
you do after that," he asked.
"I got up and left the hospital and I started to use my mind. I went to the poorest black
neighborhood I could find and looked for families that had children, lots of children. I knew they would want my help and all I wanted was someone to enroll me in school. I found the perfect family and I stayed there and watched those babies and cooked and cleaned until I graduated from high school with honors and a scholarship," she finished.
Andrik didn't believe her. It was too farfetched, but he didn't say so. He just asked another question, "Why didn't you just come back home, Willetta?"
"I didn't want to. I wasn't raped by your average student. He was popular. I was nobody. I was scared and without a voice. Mama Jean would have made everything worse. She wouldn't have rested until the boy was brought to justice. I just wanted to forget about it and move on."
Willetta rinsed and dried Mama Jean's plate and poured the dish water out of the bowl. She neatly folded the dish towel and draped it over the middle of the two sinks. She turned to face Andrik again. He was no longer posing. His avid interest was apparent. Willetta left the sink to sit down with him at the table.
"Would you like something to drink," she asked.
"No," he said distractedly, "That shouldn't have stopped you from coming home. You could have just kept the truth about what happened to yourself."
"Well, when I found out I had no real relatives, I decided to immediately start being responsible for myself. I have never liked Mississippi and after that it represented everything sad and wrong in my life."
"Well how do you feel now, being back here and everything," he asked.
"It does feel like I have been in a long sleep and am waking up back in the same place where I left off eleven years ago. It feels weird, like none of the past eleven years actually happened."
Andrik leaned back in his seat. She'd just expressed how he felt when he was forced to come home to attend to his father's estate. The death of his father had wrought many changes in Andrik's life. Coming home had brought him face to face with his own painful past. Mama Jean wanted him to help Willetta, but the truth was that the both of them were really in the same situation.
Andrik remained silent for a moment more. He didn't feel inclined to comment on her last statement. Somehow, he knew whatever he said would reveal his own emotional dilemma. He did not want Willetta to know how similar their plights were. He would let her sound off of him, but he was a professional and he could deal with his own problems.
Andrik looked at the brass candelabrums on the kitchen table and realized for the first time that the only lighting in the house was candles. One heavy eyebrow went up, as he asked, "What's up with the candles?"
"You should know since you are such an expert on Mama Jean. She loves candles. We never used lights at night. It was always candles by nightfall," Willetta said.
Andrik watched Willetta through the dim lights of the candle. She was open and honest. It had been a long time since he had met a woman who would speak openly about being raped. She seemed unaware of her beauty as well. She was not self-centered and therefore, could not be selfish. He suddenly realized that he may have misjudged her entirely. Her experience and her resultant actions were understandable. He wondered why Mama Jean had not told him that she wasn't Willetta's real grandmother. How much did Mama Jean know about Willetta's rape? How much did she know about what Willetta knew? Andrik knew he would probably never know the answers, because Mama Jean was too fragile to answer such questions and she wasn't going to last much longer either. CHAPTER 5
Willetta and Andrik stood on the rickety porch and listened to the night sounds. The white moon sat still in its place and the rest of the big black sky was splayed with stars. Andrik and Willetta were alone except for the night creatures and a sleeping old Mama Jean. The silence surrounding them was oddly gentle and comforting though shared between strangers.
"I guess I should get on back down the road," Andrik said. "It looks like you have everything under control."
Willetta remained silent. Her experience had been that when one shared their past with another, the confidence was returned unless there was something to hide. Andrik had been closedmouthed about himself, and Willetta knew what that meant. He had secrets. She wasn't big on secrets and had no use for them. In her mind secrets were the root of all evil.
She knew no more about him than his name. He hadn't even been the one to tell her that. She took another look at him and shook her head. He was a good-looking man with secrets. That had to spell a whole lot of trouble for some poor woman. She dusted her hands against her thighs, figuratively wiping Andrik off.
"Well thanks for checking on us," she said.
Andrik stepped off the porch and walked backwards to his truck. He watched Willetta as Willetta watched him. "You did good for your first day home. I'm sorry about being so hard on you this morning. I guess I misjudged you. I'll see you in the morning," he said and climbed into his truck. He drove off leaving a trail of dust and a
contemplative Willetta.
"Now why would he bother to judge me at all?" she asked into the night.
Willetta sat on the steps for a while. She was in no rush to sleep in the twin bed and sheets that she had left behind eleven years ago. Everything was just too eerily the same. She'd had a baby that was violently conceived growing within her young womb the last time she slept in that bed. Willetta held her head in her hands and cursed the past and the winds that had blown it to the present.
She wanted to be left alone, but she knew what this was. This was what everyone eventually had to go through. This was the reckoning. She had only been surviving the past eleven years. She really hadn't dealt with anything. The time had come for her to feel it, deal with it, and be done with it. She vowed to take her time and sort it out. She was twenty-six and had her whole life ahead of her. She would come out stronger for it, not weaker.
Willetta stood and faced the old house. She went through the door and locked it this time. By the time she reached the bedroom, every candle had been blown out except for one. Willetta took one more look at Mama Jean and blew out the last candle. The room became pitch black and then her eyes adjusted. Moonlight filtered through the lone window along the side of her bed and she could see again. She eased between the covers and closed her eyes.
"Etta, I'm not gone live another day," Mama Jean's crackly voice rose above the silence.
Willetta stiffened beneath her covers. She knew Mama Jean had more to say and so she remained silent.
"I know your secrets baby, because I made it my business to know them, but I'm a secret keeper and always have been. I want you to marry Andrik. He's the one for you."
"Mama Jean stop it! I don't have any secrets. I was raped and then I had a miscarriage and I worked like a slave in order to make it through high school. I didn't want to come back and bring shame on you and I know you aren't my real grandmother. There! You keep more of your own secrets than anybody else's. I don't believe in secrets. And what are you talking about? Marry Andrik?" Willetta finished wheezing out.
"Child, I ain't got much breath left in me to argue with you. The journals are under the mulberry tree in a black trunk. Don't touch it if you don't believe in secrets. Save it for you and Andrik's children. You'll have one that believes in secrets. Give them to her."
"I don't believe I'm having this conversation with you. It's crazy. The whole thing is crazy. Whose secrets are in the journals? Why are you so sure Andrik would even think about marrying me?"
"I love you Willetta. I always have. I ain't your grandmother, but your little soul done always spoke to mine. Andrik is gone see what I see. Now I got to rest, baby. Just do what I tell you to do." she said.
"Mamma! Mama Jean whose secrets are in the journals?" Willetta all but screamed.
Mama Jean wouldn't say another word. Willetta jumped into bed with her and got underneath the covers. After Mama Jean's little speech, Willetta wasn't taking any chance
s of her dying while she was in the other bed dreaming about fiances standing alone at the altar or tall handsome black men saving runaway cars. Mama Jean had always had a way of getting on her last nerve and if ever there was a proverbial straw that actually did break a camel's back, Mama Jean had just delivered it.
#
Years later another journal would be written and the beginning page would read something like this:
I awoke the next morning with Mama Jean still in my arms. She was dead with a slight smile on her lips. I didn't know whether to scream in sorrow or laugh at her crotchety ole ways. I had always tried to win against Mama Jean and had always been miserably defeated. Even in death, Mama Jean was victorious. I fled from her control eleven years before, only to return and submit myself once again under the mighty hand of Mama Jean.
I climbed out of Mama Jean's bed and went to sit on the porch. I waited on Andrik. His timely arrival that morning marked a new chapter in my life; one filled with many astonishments. I soon became unwillingly the next Secret Keeper.
CHAPTER 6
Volume 1, pg. 10 (January 1901): "I want this house so badly. It don't matter to me that I am not a family member. I done cooked and cleaned for Mrs. Williams for years. She ain't got nobody left. I'm her kinfolk now. Her white skin and my black skin makes no difference to me. I made her sign the house and the land over to me. She did it too, because I said I was leaving if she didn’t. She in her quiet moment; the one when you're old and nobody comes around. Your peers are dead and all you hear is the sound of the person taking care of you. She needs me and I need this land."
# The final car to leave the yard was that of the coroner's. Willetta and Andrik stood side by side in the yard. They were two strangers bound together by the death of one old woman. Andrik's long fingers snaked around Willetta's forearm. The single touch screamed a silent accusation Willetta dared him to verbalize.
Journals of the Secret Keeper Page 2