The Shade of My Own Tree

by Sheila Williams

  “I grew up here,” the doctor commented. “I remember hearing my granddad say that Prestonn was a hotbed of abolitionist activity and that there were lots of ‘stations’ here in town.” His eyes twinkled from behind his glasses. “You haven’t come across any trapdoors, false walls, or secret passages, have you?”

  I thought about Troy’s continuing expeditions in search of buried pirate’s treasure. Gloria and I smiled at each other.

  “Not yet,” I said. But that’s not from the lack of trying.

  We all crowded around the portion of the painting where the fugitive family had disembarked on the riverbank and turned to face their pursuers. At least, that’s the way it first appeared. On closer inspection, I realized that the little woman, who held an infant in her arms, was looking toward the sky. It would be her first sunrise as a free woman.

  “Miss Caroline was the last of the Xaviers,” Dr. Kuenning mused.

  “She was probably the only person who knew that the mural was there,” I murmured, still looking at the woman with the baby. Miss Caroline was right when she told Bette that there was a “treasure” in the house. It just wasn’t the kind of treasure anyone expected.

  “It’s a masterpiece,” Dr. Kuenning told me. “But it will need to be cleaned, restored, and appraised. Ms. Sullivan, we can help you with this if you want. In fact, it would be a privilege.”

  Appraised?

  “You’ll have to figure out what you’re going to do next,” Dr. Innis added. “This mural sort of transforms your home into an art museum.”

  My home? An art museum?

  Everyone turned to look at me as if I were the goose that had laid the golden egg.

  What was I going to do with that egg? All I ever wanted was a simple, quiet life.

  What happened? Now I needed an appraiser and a special insurance policy and an art restoration expert and …

  Thank God that Bette arrived to distract me from thinking about these serious propositions. She stopped by to drop off a new homeowner’s welcome kit (“Lots of good coupons, hon”) just as everyone was leaving. Her eyes widened with interest as I told her about the mural and its legacy. But the historic mural wasn’t what had gotten her lace thong in a knot.

  The tips of her tangerine-colored nails went back and forth so fast that I got dizzy looking at them.

  “You didn’t tell me that Dana Drew is Maisie Beatme!” she said sternly, her eyes blazing with the accusation.

  I waved her off and acted nonchalant.

  “It didn’t come up,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. Then I looked at her. “Who told you?”

  “Never mind that. What do you mean, it didn’t come up?” she screeched.

  My shoulders rose in pain.

  “Yikes! Bette! You don’t have to shout! What’s the big deal? Dana Drew is Maisie Beatme. There. I’ve said it. That’s what the limo, the black-on-black clothes, the Cher wig, and the spike heels are all about. She dresses up as Maisie in order to make the characterization more … authentic,” I explained as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I figured that if I kept repeating this over and over, then I might come to accept it as normal myself.

  Bette was way beyond that.

  “I am a Maisie fan from way back,” she said, rummaging through her huge purse and pulling out a business card. “Give her this and ask her to call me.”

  Another Maisie fan? I was still getting over the shock of hearing that my daughter was one.

  “Why, my third husband …” She paused and frowned. “Or was it my fourth? Anyway, we went to one of her conventions in Reno.” Bette’s eyes twinkled and she smiled like the cat that had swallowed the canary. “It was unbelievable.” Her voice was husky.

  I held up one hand.

  “Bette, stop right there. If you want an introduction, fine. Dana’s usually here Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.”

  “Wonderful!” She stuffed the card into the pocket of my blouse. “You just give her this and tell her I’m a true fan. Why, before our divorce was final, Templeton and I tried that triple knot maneuver with the chocolate syrup—”

  “Give me a break here!” I screeched. I hadn’t had enough coffee this morning to listen to this!

  Bette rolled her eyes at me.

  “Darlin’, you need to get out more.”

  I laughed.

  Get out more? Why? When I had all of this right here on my doorstep?

  I added the Duncanson mural dilemma to my “to do” list. It was a multifaceted problem. What about the cleaning and restoration of the mural? Whom would I get to do that? Dr. Innis? Dr. Kuenning? And how would that be paid for? Did I need a special security system for the house now? A guard? How much was that going to cost me? I rubbed my temples. I was starting to get a headache.

  I did call my insurance broker, however, a nice gentleman fondly known as “Arnold Agent.” He drove over a few evenings later in his 1970 Impala wearing his trademark fire engine red jacket. After I’d explained the situation to him, Arnold ran his hands through his coal black hair. Bless his heart. Arnold is four hundred years old if he is a day, but I have more gray hair in my head than he does in his. He has sold insurance around these parts since Jesus Christ wore short pants.

  “Well, golly,” Arnold said, peering at the mural through the smudged lenses of his glasses. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything that looks like that anywhere ’cept in a museum.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But I have a preliminary appraisal on this beauty and I need to have my homeowner’s policy amended.” I handed Arnold the quote that Dr. Kuenning had prepared.

  Arnold’s eyes popped out of his head. “That’s really something!”

  That was the understatement of the year. The mural was worth nearly as much as the house.

  Arnold put on his best “I’ll have to call this in” expression.

  “I’ll have to talk to Underwriting about this,” he said. “We may need to have a meeting.”

  “Of course,” I told him. I could only imagine what Underwriting was going to say, and it wouldn’t be, “Golly!”

  As I went inside, the telephone rang. I stopped for a moment and waited. Gloria and Troy were shopping for furnishings for their new place, Becca was working upstairs, but she used her cell phone, and Imani had gone shopping. The phone was probably not for any of them anyway. Ted had started calling again. Calling and hanging up. Calling and cursing at me. Calling at three in the morning. Caller ID was a wonderful thing, except that it didn’t always work.

  I took a deep breath and picked up the receiver.

  “Opal? Opal, it’s me, Beni Douglas.”

  I hadn’t seen Beni since her parents took her to Illinois after she got out of the hospital.

  “Beni, how are you? You OK?”

  The voice that came over the telephone was so small, so young.

  “I’m fine. I’m only in town for a minute. My father brought me over to pack up my stuff. I’m moving back to Illinois. I just wanted to thank you for helping me a-and letting me stay awhile.”

  The snap and enthusiasm of the old Beni was gone and that made me sad. I hoped that P-Bo hadn’t robbed her of it forever.

  I hated to hear her say that she was giving up on the theater program that she enjoyed so much, leaving all of her friends and moving away. But, as she explained it, the experience with P-Bo had left so many bad memories that she needed to make a fresh start.

  “I don’t want to see anything that reminds me of him,” she told me. “I don’t want to see anyone who remembers … what I went through. I want everything new.”

  I wished her luck. But as I walked out onto the porch I thought about what she said and how subdued and quiet she had sounded and wondered. For women like Beni, Gloria, LaDonna, and me, can life, or anything else for that matter, ever be “new” again? Different, yes. But new?

  I heard the bac
k door slam. I put my pen down and took off my glasses.

  “Mom? Mom, where are you?”

  “Out here!” I yelled back. “On the front porch!”

  The screen door opened behind me.

  “This house is so big,” Imani commented. “You need to get an intercom system or walkie-talkies or something.” She flopped onto one of the chairs and reached over to stroke CW, who didn’t move.

  “Is it alive?” she asked facetiously.

  “Oh, yes,” I said, grinning. “She just doesn’t let anyone interrupt her siesta, that’s all.”

  “I see,” Imani replied, still stroking the cat.

  “What did you buy?” I asked, snuggling into the cushions.

  Imani shrugged her shoulders. “Two sets of sheets; the ones I have got those little beady things on them. I picked up some towels and another frying pan. Somebody walked off with the other one.”

  I remembered those days. I am still looking for the felon who stole my Sly and the Family Stone album.

  “Did you stop at the designer discount store I told you about? The one off the interstate?”

  Imani nodded. “Yes, I did. I picked up two pairs of jeans and a nice shirt. Where’d you find that place?”

  I smiled triumphantly. “I’m not telling you. You think your momma’s out of touch and doesn’t know what’s up. I have my sources for stylish shopping bargains.”

  Imani chuckled. “OK, Mom,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows. “I’ll have you know that I bought a pair of Fred jeans there for twenty-nine fifty,” I said smugly, referring to a brand of jeans made from the same denim as Levi’s but costing five times as much at retail price. “And they fit, too,” I added proudly.

  “I guess I’ll have to start getting up earlier so that I can keep up with you.”

  “Believe that,” I testified. I closed my eyes against the bright red sun and leaned my head back against the cushion.

  “I saw Dad,” Imani said abruptly. “He took me to dinner.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at her. Then I reached for my iced tea glass and almost dropped it. Good thing I’d grabbed an el-cheapo plastic tumbler.

  It didn’t make me happy to realize that the mention of Ted whether by name or by the title Dad still had an effect on me.

  “Oh,” was all I managed to say.

  “Mom, he’s a real asshole,” Imani said without emotion.

  Of course, I knew that Ted was an asshole, but it was a revelation hearing it from Imani. She was usually ambivalent in her feelings about her father. But there was no ambivalence in what she just said.

  “Imani, he is still your father, asshole or not.” Not the most adult thing to say to your daughter about her father. But it was all that I could think of.

  “Whatever. I mean, he takes me to dinner and says he wants to hear about what I’m doing. Then, he let me go on and on about India and Bombay and Delhi and wanted to hear about Kashmir. But that’s not what he really wanted to talk about. He started asking me a lot of questions about you, what you are doing, where you go, if you’re seeing someone.” At this, Imani stopped and looked at me. Her pretty features had settled into a serious and angry expression.

  “About me,” I said, thinking aloud.

  “Yes, about you,” Imani repeated. “And then the dinner went to hell because Dad started on a rant. He went on and on about all this money you had taken from him. Robbed was the word he used. And how you never earned a damn penny in all the years that you were married. And that now he was going to have to sell the house and work more hours and that was your fault for being …” Imani sniffed and looked away. “Momma, he called you a lazy, stupid bitch.” She bit her lip.

  If I could have gotten my hands on Ted at this moment, I probably would have choked him to death. The thought gave me a lot of satisfaction.

  In the divorce from Ted, I promised myself that I would not trash his sorry ass in front of his daughter. I figured because he was really a lowlife bottom dweller I might get a bid for sainthood if I did that. I wouldn’t call him a violent, mean, drunk son of a bitch (which was actually true, because his mother, God rest her soul, was a bitch). I wouldn’t talk about him beating me up; that was between him and me. And I would try, even if it meant biting a hole in my tongue, not to resort to name-calling or try to come between him and Imani.

  Some wounds are self-inflicted. Ted was destroying his relationship with his daughter on his own.

  Imani wasn’t finished.

  “Then he—he said that I didn’t need all that expensive university education. That … I was just like you, trying … to be something I’m not. He said that the court has ordered him to help pay for my college, but that he’ll be damned if he does it. He says that if you want me to go, you can pay for it.”

  She stopped for a moment and looked at me. There was so much pain in her dark eyes.

  “Mom, I’m not a leech. I’m willing to take on another job to pay for school.”

  I closed my eyes. I tried to call on my Baptist Sunday school upbringing to get me through this. I tried to think of a Psalm that would calm me down. I remembered lessons from the Scriptures. But turning the other cheek didn’t work for me this evening.

  She was angry when she spoke again.

  “Why didn’t you divorce him years ago? Why did you stick around and let him treat you like that?”

  The accusation stung and kicked the air out of my lungs. My mouth was open, but nothing came out.

  “Momma, I don’t understand you!”

  My first reaction was to lash out at her and put her squarely back in her place as my daughter. Where was the respect?

  “I don’t understand you!” What was she talking about?

  “You don’t understand me?” I snapped back at her. I could feel my face splitting open in anger, my eyes bulging. My skin felt as if it were stretched drum-tight over my cheekbones. “What are you talking about? You don’t even know me!”

  I sent the words out like knives in the soft, unseasonably cool evening air. And Imani, whose dark eyes were flashing with anger, had opened her mouth to send back a sharp retort. She changed her mind. Instead she sat there on the edge of the settee, her hand resting on the cushion where the cat had been. CW had long ago given up on taking a quiet evening snooze and vacated the porch.

  “No, I don’t know you at all. You were always quiet and … and sad when I was little. My pretty, quiet momma, I called you. You painted in the dark and in secret. ‘Don’t tell Daddy, OK?’ ”

  I took a breath and closed my eyes. I had sent these memories deep inside. I had hoped that my child, only four or five years old then, would have forgotten. I was wrong.

  “You were a good momma, but you were never really there. You were like a ghost. You gave me what I needed, fed me, took me to school, helped me with homework, but …” Imani paused and looked down at her feet. “But, Momma, I never knew what you were. Who you were. Daddy did that to you, didn’t he?”

  The easy answer would have been yes, it was all Ted’s fault. But I don’t believe in easy answers anymore. Nothing is black-and-white, not even newspapers.

  “Why didn’t you fight back, Momma?”

  Why didn’t I? My retaliation had been retreat. Withdrawal. Survival.

  “How do I say this?” I fidgeted. Squirmed in my seat, scratched my head, and grabbed up Wells, who was strolling by. When I’m nervous, I can’t keep still. I turn myself into a ball of energy. “I buried myself, Imani. Sent my personality, my dreams, my self into a cave, put her on cold storage. I kept quiet to survive. Until I thought it would be safe to bring me out.” I paused. “Only it was never safe. And, for a long time, I—I was afraid to walk out of the door and leave. Your dad … threatened to take you away from me. He threatened to have me locked up for being mentally unbalanced. He … I …”

  I didn’t want to make excuses. And I didn’t
want to tell it all; no daughter should hear the things I could have said. Obviously, Imani had absorbed enough in her eighteen years living with me and her father.

  “He said that he would kill you, didn’t he?” Imani said quietly.

  I looked at her and thought about my answer. No, Imani. He said that he would kill you.

  “Yes, he did,” I said aloud.

  She looked away. I decided to move in a different direction. Something that I had been doing a lot of these past months. Something the “new” Opal was prone to do. I stood up and extended my hand to my daughter.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m your mother, Opal Sullivan. I don’t think we’ve been introduced. Let me tell you something about myself. I like to paint. Very badly, so everyone tells me. I love to eat, so I’m taking Italian cooking lessons. I like jazz, the color blue, roses (but I have a purple thumb), and buttered popcorn with lots of salt on it.”

  Imani took my hand and gave me a huge hug.

  “I’m Imani, your daughter,” she said, smiling. “And I’m really proud of you, Mom.”

  I smiled and gave her a long hug. She was proud of me. That alone was worth millions.

  “I love you, Mommy, a bunch,” murmured my daughter.

  “I love you, too, Imani. A bunch.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You’re just using me for my body.”

  These words came from Jack, whose face was hidden behind a tower of boxes. We were thumping down the back stairs to the kitchen, where I was moving my studio.

  “I am using you for your body; now quit whining. Will you set those boxes over there in the corner?”

  I turned my attention back to the easel that I had set up. Yes. Absolutely. Just about perfect. I had completely rearranged the kitchen so that I would have enough room for my art studio. After trying the third floor (ceilings too low), the second-floor sleeping porch (cluttered because of the furniture that didn’t fit up the third-floor stairwell), Imani’s room (cluttered because of the furniture that didn’t fit up the third-floor stairwell and not enough natural light), the back parlor (too small), and the dining room (too large), I was disappointed that I couldn’t find a decent painting space in such a large house. Following the dining room fiasco, I was ready to give up and paint in the toolshed. That night, when I went upstairs to bed, I left my sketch pad on the kitchen table. In the morning, when I came down to make coffee, I noticed it lying there. The sunlight filled the room and cast a warm golden glow on the paper. I stepped back and looked around the room. It was as if I was seeing at it for the first time. The kitchen faces north, with windows on both the east and west sides, and it gets great natural light at all times of day.