“Hi, Pam. It’s me, Charlene. Happy Thanksgiving.”
Pam looked the same as when Char last saw her—with one difference. She seemed less anxious—even with a Web cam in her face.
“Happy Thanksgiving to you, too,” Pam said. Her tone seemed more like the old Pam, confident and focused. “My sisters and I always called it turkey day because it was hard to feel thankful for much when Daddy was around. He was such a pill.”
Char remembered her mother using that phrase to describe some of the men she dated.
“Aunt Marilyn used to say that Grandma was a saint for putting up with Grandpa,” Char said, conversationally.
Pam seemed to reflect on that comment a moment. “Mama never argued or fought back. She didn’t like to draw attention to herself. She was happiest in her garden.”
Char had only vague memories of her maternal grandparents, but she pictured her grandmother as a small woman with a gentle touch. “She grew fabulous gladiolas and roses, didn’t she?”
Pam’s short locks bounced forward and back as she nodded. “That’s what I told the boy who called.”
Char wasn’t sure if Pam was still in the present or slipping into some other plane. She was about to ask, “What boy?” when Pam added, “He said you were his mother. When did you get married? I must have forgotten.”
“Damien contacted you? Really? When?” Knowing her aunt had lost all sense of time, she changed her question. “I mean, why? What did he want?”
Pam started to fidget, as if Char’s tone made her uncomfortable.
“Sorry, Aunt Pam. I didn’t mean to upset you. Do you remember what you and Damien talked about?”
Pam’s gaze drifted sideways. Her lips moved but it took a moment for her words to come through on Char’s end. “He asked about Mama’s family. About them being Negroes. Daddy told me the truth. To be mean. He didn’t want me to love her so much. But I did anyway. More than him. That’s for sure.”
Char shook her head. Now, she was positive her aunt had slipped into some parallel universe. Her grandmother wasn’t black.
How do y’know, chickadee? She mighta been passin’.
Pam suddenly stood, effectively ending their video conference. Char tried calling her aunt’s name but the camera fell sideways and a moment later the attendant leaned down and said, “I think that’s it for today. Happy Thanksgiving.”
Char’s throat was bone dry and her hands were shaking as she turned off her computer. Talk about unfair. Even if she wanted to check out her aunt’s wild assertion, she had no one to call. Her mother was dead and Aunt Marilyn had written a note in her Thanksgiving card saying she’d be ministering to the poor in Helena today.
She paced back and forth, trying to think of someone else to ask. Would Eli’s uncle Joseph would know?
She grabbed her cell phone off the desk and was in the process of scrolling down to Eli’s name when she heard a knocking sound coming from the front of the building. She glanced at the surveillance screen of the parking lot. A large, unfamiliar black SUV was parked in the handicap spot.
Phone open—in case she needed to hit 9-1-1—she started across the room. Two men in parkas were standing in the shadow of the overhang. She recognized them even without seeing their faces. Eli and Damien.
She let out a yelp of excitement and rushed to unlock the door. “This can’t be happening.”
Sure it can, chickadee. And it’s ‘bout time.
She opened the door.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” they shouted in far from perfect harmony. Between them rested a large ice chest and they each carried a grocery bag in one arm.
“We brought dinner,” Damien said, a mischievous grin on his handsome face.
Char felt so many conflicting emotions she couldn’t keep them straight. Shock, surprise, hope, love. And fear. She’d let herself believe in this possibility before.
“What’s going on?”
Eli set his bag on the cooler and removed his gloves. “I wanted to call, but I got voted down. It was three to one in favor of surprise.”
Three?
“We spent the night with Uncle Joseph and his girlfriend, Mae,” Damien explained.
“She lives near Sturgis, remember?” Eli asked. “I was headed there and wound up here.”
She remembered their first encounter all too well. She’d relived that wild, impulsive kiss about a thousand times in her mind.
“Okay. So…you were in Sturgis and suddenly decided to surprise me with a Thanksgiving dinner?” She pointed at the cooler. “If there’s a turkey in there, I hope one of you knows how to cook it.”
Damien juggled the bag in his arms. “Naw. It’s a venison roast. Already cooked. Joseph said it was bad manners for Lakota men to go visiting without bringing a gift of food—preferably meat. We got up at dawn to start the coals and do a little prayer ceremony. Wild, huh?”
“At least we didn’t have to kill and dress the deer,” Eli said. “My bow skills are a little rusty. Not to mention the fact that I don’t have a license,” he added. To Char he said, “Can we come inside. It’s cold out here.”
Char stepped back to let them in.
“Cool place,” Damien said. “I like the teepee.”
She was so overcome by emotion she had to clear her throat twice to be able to speak. “Thanks.”
“You’re not working, are you?” Eli asked. “We were going to drive around back when we noticed your lights on.”
She locked the door behind them. The aroma of roasted meat filled the air, making her mouth water. “I was on the Web cam with my Aunt Pam. She told me the strangest thing. I—”
Eli exchanged a quick look with Damien before breaking in. “Sorry to interrupt but Joe wrote out specific instructions about how to finish cooking everything. Can we talk while we take this stuff next door?”
She reached for the bag Eli carried. “Sure. Of course.” She spotted two bottles of wine wedged between several plastic containers and a loaf of bread.
“Awesome spears,” Damien exclaimed as they wound through the displays. “They could do some damage.”
Char stifled a grin. “I’ll introduce you to the artist who carves them. How’s your hand, by the way? No lingering problems with your fine motor skills?”
“I’m better than a hundred percent. In fact, I’m two hundred percent. Unfortunately, some people don’t believe that. Some people won’t let me drive until I get written clearance from a doctor. Can you believe it?”
The two men argued about law versus common sense and personal liberty the entire time it took to unpack the cooler and the bags. Char loved every minute of the quick-witted, good-natured exchange. She wondered if this was the way real families were supposed to act.
“So, Char,” Eli said, handing her the last of the cold stuff to put away while Damien slid the roast into the oven and closed the door. “We wanted to—”
“Wait. Are these cranberries?” she asked, cracking the lid on the small plastic container.
“Yes, but they’re made with chipotle peppers. Mae says the recipe is killer with venison.”
Char looked at Damien. “Interesting. Learn something new every day.”
Damien picked his backpack off the floor where he’d dropped it and said, “Should we tell her now?”
Tell me what? A sudden jolt of panic made her lose her grip on the bowl. It would have hit the floor if not for Eli’s quick reflexes. He put the container on the table after giving Damien a scolding look. “Did you set the timer?” he asked. “Joseph was adamant about not letting the meat dry out.”
Damien fiddled with his cell phone a moment. “Set. Now can we tell her?”
Eli took her hand, drawing it to his lips as if to reassure her not to be afraid. “Why not? Shall we go into the living room?”
A minute later, they were gathered around her glass and pine coffee table. She and Eli sat beside each other on the couch; Damien was across from them in a chair. “What’s going on, guys?”
/> Eli was about to open the discussion as he and Damien had discussed when he looked at her—really looked at her—and noticed something different. “Charlene Jones,” he exclaimed. “What did you do to your hair?”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “I colored it. All one color. It’s called Truffle. Jack’s sister helped me pick it out. Rachel and I both agreed that if I’m going back to college to get my degree in social work, I need to look more…um…neutral. I’m already going to be old compared to the other students. I don’t want to be weird, too.”
He put one arm around her shoulders and hugged her tight. “Oh, love, different and weird aren’t the same. Don’t you know that, Chickadee?”
She stiffened. “What did you call me?”
He took a breath and let it out. “Let me tell you a story. When I was five my mother drove me to South Dakota from Oklahoma and dropped me off at my grandparents’ place for the summer, then drove off. I cried for days. My cousins—including Robert—laughed and called me a baby.”
“You were a baby,” she said sympathetically.
“The thing is, even at the age of five, I knew I would never fit in. I had black hair, but light eyes and pale skin made me different—especially compared to my cousins.”
He leaned his face against her palm when she touched the side of his face. “But my grandfather was a very smart man. Instead of ordering the other kids to be nice to me, he told us about a Lakota brave who went to a gathering of tribes to trade buffalo hides for food that his family would need to survive the winter. Unfortunately, he got suckered into gambling with some men from another tribe. Before long, he was down to his last hide. If he didn’t win, his family would starve.”
Eli looked at Damien who had heard this story on the way here. He’d grudgingly agreed that Char would understand its significance, even if Damien didn’t.
“The man was a fool, but a little bird—a chickadee—saved him by pretending to be the playing piece. If it was supposed to be white, the bird flipped one way. If it was supposed to be black, it flipped the other.”
“I’ve never heard that story,” Char said.
He shrugged. “I think Grandfather adapted it to fit my needs. Years later, at a powwow, I heard a much more gruesome version. The point is it made the other kids look at me differently. And that gave me a chance to blend in.”
She started to say something but he needed to tell her everything. “Even as an adult I’ve struggled with a sense of identity—white boy from Oklahoma or red man from the Lakota Nation? It took reconnecting with you and meeting Damien to make me realize that I don’t have to be one or the other…because I’m both.”
“I helped you figure that out?”
He nodded. “Yeah. For one thing, you not only embrace being different, you elevate your uniqueness to a new level. There’s nothing black or white about you, Char…” He looked at Damien, meaningfully.
“And, yet, there is,” their son said cryptically.
“Pardon?”
Damien reached into his backpack and produced a small, plainly bound book about the size of one of Char’s journals. “Your aunt in Montana sent this to me,” he said, passing it to Eli.
“Aunt Marilyn?”
Eli flipped to the table of contents page and pointed to his name, which was right below her grandmother’s. “I interviewed your grandmother in seventh grade as part of an oral history project.”
He handed her the self-published treatise. “I didn’t remember anything she said until I reread it. Then it was almost like sitting in the flower garden with her. It’s like your journal, Char. Written word trumps inaccurate memory any day. It’s all there in black and white.”
Damien cleared his throat. “Correction. Your great-grandparents’ names are there. It took some serious ass research on my part to get the rest of the facts.”
That tingle of awareness she’d felt when she talked to Pam returned. “Are you going to tell me my grandmother’s family was black?”
Damien’s face fell. “You knew. Eli said you didn’t.”
“Pam mentioned it this morning. She said you called her, too. I didn’t know what to believe. I still don’t. Are you sure? Seriously? How is that possible?”
Damien pulled another piece of paper out of his bag and laid it on the coffee table in front of her, this time dropping to his knees on the carpet so he could point out things as he explained what he’d learned.
She put her hand to her mouth in shock. This was the same genealogy chart she’d attempted to fill out when she was Damien’s age. No one in her family would tell her anything. Now she knew why.
“Look at all those names and dates. Damien, you’re a genius.”
He didn’t argue the point, but he did add, “Your grandmother’s family—the McGruders—pulled out of the area in the Dirty Thirties. She was the only colored person—her words—left behind. She stayed because of your grandfather. I guess she loved him.”
She closed her eyes a moment. “But from what Mom and my aunts have said, he was a real bastard. How sad!”
Eli squeezed her hand. “He might not have been very pleasant at the end of his life, but there may have been extenuating circumstances. Your grandmother told me he suffered frostbite during a blizzard when he helped rescue the children at the Checkerboard School—a rural school where six white students and six black students were enrolled. He lost several toes, which meant he was excluded from military service when World War II started.”
“And the Great Depression didn’t help,” Damien said.
Eli nodded. “The only reason they kept their house was because your grandmother took in laundry and boarders.”
“Grandma supported the family?” She pulled a face. “That would have been hard on a man of that time’s ego.”
“You can see why he would have tried to keep her ethnicity a secret. To save face.”
“That’s sad. Really sad. My poor grandma never got to be who she was because of her husband’s bruised ego.”
He shook his head. “I think she really loved him, flaws and all.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look at your family tree. She passed away less than a month after he died.”
Damien’s cell phone suddenly made a loud ding-dong sound. He jumped to his feet, proclaiming his need to eat before he keeled over.
Eli held her hand as they walked back to the dining room. They didn’t speak, which gave her time to marvel at the strange connection they shared. His grandfather’s story that shaped Eli’s life. The old black woman’s pet name for her. Her grandmother’s heritage that provided a missing piece in Char’s story. Their son, who was an amalgamation of all those convoluted pieces.
Once they were seated around the table, she lifted her wine glass. “Thank you both for making this the most memorable Thanksgiving of my life.”
Eli touched his glass to Char’s and waited until Damien’s made a faint clinking sound, too. “To the completed circle.”
Damien kept the moment from turning utterly maudlin. “Yeah, yeah. I’m starving. Somebody cut the meat.”
Eli did the honors with practiced skill and finesse. The smell of roasted venison made her mouth water, but seeing her two favorite men in the world sharing a meal was even more delicious.
Char sampled the wine before filling her plate. “Good wine,” she said, passing the green bean casserole her son’s way.
“Libby recommended it. I called her to see which kind you like,” Eli said.
He made that thoughtful gesture sound like nothing, but she was so touched she could barely swallow her second sip.
“Did Dad tell you I met Cooper at the hospital?” Damien asked, handing her the roasted yams. “He’s funny. His two friends were pretty cool, too. William said I might be able to fly their jet someday if I get my license. Right, Dad?”
Dad. She tried not to be envious, but it was hard to control her reaction. Damien must have sensed something because he said, “It’s sorta co
nfusing having two mothers. Like, do I call my California mom Mom One and you Mom Two? Or do I keep it simple and call you Char?”
She relaxed. “The latter, thank you.” She took a bite of meat swirled in a dab of spicy cranberries. Her taste buds erupted as she chewed. “Oh, my…good meat.”
Damien chewed a bite three times as big as hers then swallowed loudly. “Eli, on the other hand, is Dad because I only have one of those. Plus, he gets this grumpy look on his face when I call him Eli.” Under his breath, he added, “Probably because E.J.’s being such a jerk.”
Char was sorry to hear that. She had a lot of questions but decided they could wait. She didn’t want to ruin this pleasant interlude by bringing up harsh reality.
To her surprise, Eli said, “For the record, my divorce will be final in March. Our house is on the market. The girls have forgiven me and are dying to show off Damien to their friends.”
Damien whinnied as if he were a prize stud.
“Bobbi and Robert are back together. After her near-death experience, Robert’s wife, Sue, came to her senses and decided she was better off without him.”
“Wow,” Char exclaimed. “Things have been popping since you got back.”
He took a gulp of wine for courage then pushed his plate aside. “That’s true. And after careful consideration, we’ve decided that Damien would be happier in a college prep high school with a more urban flavor-relatively speaking—so we’re checking out what Rapid has to offer on Monday. I have résumés with a couple of small PDs and the Highway Patrol. Once I tie up the last of those pesky loose ends, I plan to ask you to marry me.”
Damien, eyes wide with mock horror, groaned. “Eli. Dad. No. That was the suckiest proposal ever, man. What were you thinking?”
Eli shook his head, stubbornly. “What did you expect? Me down on one knee? That’s not our way.”
Black Hills Native Son: a Hollywood-meets-the-real-wild-west contemporary romance series (Black Hills Rendezvous Book 5) Page 20