Marc and I talked a bit more about his job as a mechanic; I laughed as he told me some of his favorite stories about irate customers, and he did the same as I told him about some of my college pranks. Both of us had mischievous personalities, and it occurred to me just how much havoc we might have raised as children had we grown up together. We laughed at this prospect, but soon my thoughts returned to Joni. Though she was sitting less than five feet from me, she might as well have been a universe away.
I poked around at my food, trying to determine what to do about Joni. What had I done when faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles? I had pushed through them. Why would this be any different? It was decided: I wasn’t going to let something as trivial as race keep me from my sister. Time, distance, and circumstances had done enough damage, but we hadn’t authored those conditions. Racial attitudes could be changed, but only if you are willing to fight through it. The only question was whether Joni would be willing.
“Hey, Marc,” I said. “Would you mind taking Mason for a walk? I want to try and talk to Joni.”
Raising a questioning eyebrow, he got up and walked over to Mason. Soon they were headed to the escalators. I let a moment pass and then walked over to where Joni sat. A new version of the carousel music began. “Do you mind if I sit down?” I asked.
She glanced at me briefly before returning her eyes to her plate. Again I was struck by the hollowness in her eyes. I pulled the chair out and winced as the metal legs screeched against the floor. “Look, Joni. I don’t know why you feel the way you do about black people. But when I look at you, I don’t see someone white. I see my sister, a sister I haven’t had my whole life. You’re the only sister I have and am ever going to have. We both have lost too much to let something like that keep us apart.”
She began to cry, deep sobs that shook her rail-thin frame. She held a small, gray purse that she kept twirling in her hands. “The man who touched me when I was a little girl was black.” She offered this as neither an explanation nor justification but simply as a statement of fact.
“Was this when we were with our mother?”
She nodded her head vigorously yes. I let out a long, slow breath of air. Joni’s childhood innocence had been yet another casualty of our mother’s wayward life.
I swallowed hard. “I won’t pretend to understand what you went through, Joni. And I am so sorry you had to go through that. I really wish I could take away the pain that you have, that all of us have, but I can’t. All I can tell you is this: whoever that monster was, he had nothing to do with me or anyone else who is black.”
She raised her head up then and looked down the mall toward the crowded shops, putting a hand to her mouth to keep the sobs from escaping. “It still hurts,” she whispered. Tears sprung from my eyes at this confession. Never before had I so wanted to assume another person’s pain.
I stood up from my chair and came to kneel beside her. I put my hand on top of hers, and to my relief she did not pull away. I leaned close to her and whispered, “You have brothers now, Joni. No one will hurt you as long as we’re here.” It was the only thing I knew to say. Off in the distance, the music from the carousel had finally stopped.
Later that evening, the four of us were standing in front of La Dolce Vita, an elegant Italian seafood restaurant twenty minutes away from Freehold. Joni’s attitude toward me had thawed considerably; she even held my hand as we walked in. We milled about the lounge area for a few minutes, snapping pictures and looking at paintings, when the front door swung open.
As soon as Ben—neatly attired in a tan blazer, yellow shirt, and black jeans—walked in, I knew he was my brother. He was a shade over six feet, with an athletic build and a shock of perfectly coiffed blond hair. It wasn’t these features that gave him away but the striking resemblance he bore to Joni. Both had deep-set, dark-brown eyes, pale complexions, and strong jawlines. Joni must have seen it, too, because as soon as he stepped into the small reception area she ran over to give him a huge hug, a scene similar to the one when she and I had met earlier that morning. And as she had with me, she was holding on to Ben for dear life.
When Joni finally let him go, Ben and I gave each other a warm embrace. “So you’re the investigator,” Ben said, once we separated.
“At your service,” I said, laughing.
Marc and Ben shook hands, and I envied their familiarity. The hostess escorted us over to our table where a wonderful view of the ocean awaited. We sat down, Marc and I side by side; Mason, Joni, and Ben shoulder to shoulder on the other side of the table. Joni was directly across from me, Ben across from Marc.
Over drinks and appetizers, we talked about Ben’s early life, how he had grown up in Tuckerton, how for years he had thought our mother was his aunt and Marc his cousin, how before Alzheimer’s had overtaken our grandfather, he had asked Ben to take care of our grandmother, Loretta. It was a promise Ben had kept. Our grandmother had actually served as Ben’s accountant as he built a very successful career in sales.
Our conversation turned to Joseph Murphy, our grandfather. In his honor, our mother had given all four of her sons the middle name Joseph. Joe was the son of Irish immigrants and a member of what Tom Brokaw would later call the Greatest Generation. A veteran combat infantryman who had risen to the rank of sergeant, he had stormed the beaches at Normandy, was wounded in combat in France and Germany, and earned several commendations, including a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, two of the military’s highest honors. He also battled what the military termed a “mother hen” complex, a near-paralyzing reluctance to send the young men under his command to what he knew would be their deaths. In August of 1945, three days after the Japanese surrendered, Joe Murphy was honorably discharged from the United States military, his service to country complete.
Americans took to the streets to celebrate the end of the war, but very few fully understood the sacrifices that the war had required. As did many soldiers who returned from World War II, Joe struggled, haunted by the faces of the young men he had seen perish. Peaceful sleep rarely came, for he was often awakened by nightmares. He drank frequently and Loretta and he were nearly separated. When Loretta sought the advice of Joe’s commanding officer, his counsel was simple and direct: “These men have seen horrors you can’t even imagine. And you can’t erase it from their memory. So, young lady, you’re going to have to decide if this is what you want. Because this probably won’t ever get better.”
Adding to Joe’s postwar struggles were the difficulties of his oldest daughter, Marian. Early on, she had shown a contrarian personality, and with Joe away at war, nobody was around to rein her in. Marian’s mother, Joe’s first wife (also named Marian), struggled with severe mental health issues and was likely an alcoholic. Joe was so distraught by his first wife’s behavior that, late one evening, he whisked away his daughter Marian and her younger sister, Josie. They never lived with their biological mother again.
Ben’s recounting of the Murphy family history was interrupted by the waitress who came over to get our drink orders. We decided on bottles of red wine, except for Joni, who wanted vodka. We raised our glasses with the simple word “family” and toasted our brother Bernard. By the time the waitress came back to get our dinner orders, Joni was ready for another drink. She polished this off faster than the first. I saw Ben cast curious glances in her direction.
The restaurant was now bustling with patrons and in the full flush of summer activity. The once-audible roar of the ocean was now gone, drowned out by clinking glasses and fast-moving waiters. Ben was about to resume the story about our grandfather when Joni interrupted him to tell us that she and Mason were getting married. Congratulations echoed across the table.
“She’s got brothers now, Mason, so you’re going to have to get our permission,” I said with a smile.
“You can’t run, either,” Marc said. “With Steve around, you know we’ll find you.”
We all laughed, and Joni was beaming.
“Dem big too,”
Mason said in response. He pointed at the three of us and struck a double-biceps muscleman pose. Another burst of laughter erupted from our table.
As entrees of chicken cacciatore and meatball marinara came to our table, so did a steady stream of vodka. Joni was becoming increasingly inebriated. Her movements became more exaggerated and violent; she didn’t reach for her glass as much as she snatched at it. When some of it spilled, she grew furious. Her language coarsened and became laced with profanity. As her behavior declined, Ben became quieter and quieter. At one point, he physically picked up his chair and moved it a couple of feet away from her. Joni seemed not to notice. She slammed her empty glass down on the table and bellowed, “I want a drink! Somebody get me a drink—now!” Other patrons turned to stare.
“You’ve had enough, Joni,” Marc said patiently. Our collective silence seconded his motion.
“Forget you,” she spat back. She shot up from her chair, bumping the table hard. Liquid from our glasses splashed across the table. She nearly fell, reaching out at the last minute to steady herself on Ben’s chair. Mason opened his mouth as if to say something, but Joni sent a time-stopping glare in his direction. “Forget all of you,” she said, pointing at us one by one, her index finger making a small semicircle around the table. She backed away from the table like a bank robber exiting the crime scene, eyes shifting right to left, before staggering off toward the bathroom.
Ben leaned over to me. “You asked me what our mother was like, what I remember about her.” He nodded in the direction Joni had gone. His voice was hard and cold: “That. That’s what I remember.”
Ben paid for our dinner, and we went to the reception area to wait for Joni to emerge from the restroom. She came out several minutes later, her voice loud and abrasive, announcing her arrival well before she actually came into view. “Let’s go!” she barked at Mason. The two of them strode right past us, stepped outside, and vanished into the night. Marc simply shrugged his shoulders, and Ben shook his head in disbelief.
I shook hands with Ben and Marc, and the three of us agreed to stay in touch. I stared at the door Joni had just walked through, and it hit me: The four of us might never be together again. A long-sought connection had been found and lost all at once.
I drove back to New Bedford the following morning, unpacking all the events of our reunion. It had not been ideal, but at least I finally had answers to questions I’d had nearly all my life. When I returned home to my dark, empty apartment, memories of Joni lingered in my mind. Over the next two nights, I wondered how she was doing and whether she was safe. The woman I met was so fragile, mentally and physically. How long could she survive, living the way she did? On the third night after I returned from New Jersey, I called her. A mechanical voice answered, and I left a message.
A week later my phone rang.
“Yeah, hello, is Steve there?” a woman asked, rather brusquely.
“You’ve got me,” I said.
“It’s me, Joni.”
“Oh, hey—”
She cut me off. “I can’t talk to you no more. You’re black, and I can’t talk to you no more. Don’t call me here again.” And with that the line went dead.
I stared at the receiver until the incessant beeping began. Then I hung it up gently.
More than twenty-five years later, it remains our last conversation.
CHAPTER 35
Expectation is the root of all heartache.
—AUTHOR UNKNOWN
Discovering my mother’s family and meeting Kenny’s during the summer of 1991 was both cathartic and sobering. I’d chased the mystery of my family and my origins for as long as I could remember, yet when I miraculously caught it, held it down, and wrested the truth from it, I found a Pandora’s box of pain and loss and suffering. My mother’s life had cast a long shadow over the Murphy family and they appeared to want to close the door on the past. The Pembertons seemed fractured and disconnected. The family had never recovered from the fire that destroyed their home and the loss of Kenny’s mother at an early age. Kenny’s tragic end seemed to further divide them.
On my mother’s side, my grandmother seemed the only one among the Murphys interested in knowing me. Ben had been so shocked by my sister’s appearance that he wanted as much distance as possible from the entire affair. Marc had simply disappeared. I tried to schedule several trips to meet my mother’s sister, Josephine, but our schedules never seemed to align. My efforts to locate my youngest brother, Bernard, were thwarted time and time again. And Joni had disowned me.
I had grown tired of it all, and so during the early fall, I consciously decided that I should let the Murphys and Pembertons go. Flicking them away with a sweep of the hand, I’d simply move on. There was just one more thing I needed to do.
For my entire life, the name Klakowicz shadowed me, igniting questions I was no longer interested in answering. Later, the search for my roots had confirmed my long-standing suspicion that Klakowicz was not my real name. In September 1991, I petitioned the Probate and Family Court Department in New Bedford to change my last name to Pemberton. I met briefly with a judge in his chambers so he could establish that I was not a criminal trying to change my identity. A legal notice indicating that I desired to change my name would run in the newspaper for several weeks. Unless there was an objection, my petition would go through.
While the notice was running, I spent a lot of time thinking about this decision. Friends questioned why I wanted to assume Kenny’s last name; after all, his lawless reputation had endured even years after his death. Strangers in New Bedford asked me which Pemberton brother I belonged to. When I told them, they would take a step back, eyeing me warily, trying to determine whether Kenny’s darkness lived in me too. Yet I had already carved a life and made profoundly different choices than he had. Over the years, nearly everything had been taken from me, including my birth name. I simply wanted what was rightfully mine. Most important of all, I wanted the name Pemberton as a legacy that I could pass on to my own children someday. Laying claim to some history, even if it is imperfect, is better than having no history at all.
The petition went unchallenged, and in October 1991, I fully assumed the last name Pemberton. Armed with this new identity, I moved on.
PART 3
THE JOURNEY HOME
CHAPTER 36
Years passed, and although I occasionally called the Pembertons and the Murphys, I did not actively pursue a relationship with either family. In the late summer of 1991, I had accepted a position as an assistant director of undergraduate admissions at Boston College. I was back at the university I adored, entrenched in the work of higher education that I thoroughly enjoyed. Boston College had become a highly sought-after institution with a national and international footprint. I had responsibility for parts of the West, and suddenly I found myself flying to states I’d previously only heard of. In addition, I became an adviser to several student organizations and an informal mentor to many students.
When I eventually did reconnect with my family, it was as a result of developments in my romantic life. During the summer of 1995, I found myself on Martha’s Vineyard, an island long popular with African Americans. A large group of my college friends rented a house less than a block away from Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs, a popular gathering spot for the singles crowd. Early in our stay, we decided to take a walk down the avenue. A light rain had been falling all morning, rendering the beach out of the question. As we turned the corner, the crowd of people on the avenue amazed us. Cars were parked next to the quaint clothing shops and overflowing restaurants. That summer’s anthem, “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan, pumped from car stereos. A line of people staggered out the door of Mad Martha’s, the popular ice cream shop, known for its vast array of choices.
We walked down the avenue, bopping our heads to the music, when we saw three or four African American women walking in our direction. We stopped to talk, and I stood next to Tonya, a strikingly beautiful woman with chestnut hair
pulled back into a bun. She had a caramel-colored complexion, high cheekbones descending to a small, delicate mouth, a radiant, genuine smile, and deep brown eyes. She was also engaged, a fact my friends made sure to point out. We chatted for a few minutes about my career in college admissions and hers as an elementary schoolteacher in New Jersey. We would have continued talking, but the rain had picked up, and her friends were calling her to join them.
As she walked away, pulling the hood of her blue sweatshirt over her head, I was struck by her aura of an almost angelic innocence. What an amazing spirit, I thought. Whoever marries her is going to be one lucky man.
I saw her one other time that weekend. She was standing on a crowded beach, ankle-deep in the surf, looking out to sea, her arms wrapped around her shoulders, seemingly unaware of the impromptu game of beach volleyball that had sprung up right behind her. Dark sunglasses rested on her head, and she removed them momentarily to wipe a strand of hair away from her face. She appeared to be deep in thought. It reminded me of how I felt on my bike rides along Horseneck Beach. I knew not to intrude.
The following summer found me back on Martha’s Vineyard, looking forward to another July Fourth weekend with friends. We rented the same house, a tan two-story New England colonial, down the street from Circuit Avenue. The number of people on the island seemed to have doubled from the previous summer, and large, exciting crowds met us everywhere we went. Our first night there, we got dressed early and headed out to a popular nightspot, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It was unusually humid, even by summer standards. The line was long, but we managed to make it in right before they starting turning away patrons. I was leaning against a pole and watching the ebb and flow of nightlife, when I felt a pair of eyes on me. I turned to see a stunningly beautiful woman, dressed in a white shirt and red pants. Every time I glanced up, I found her staring back at me, keeping her gaze on me so long that I finally had to look away. Who is she? I wondered. Finally, she and her friend began walking in my direction. I nodded at her and smiled as she walked past.
A Chance in the World Page 18