Sweet Karoline

by Catherine Astolfo

  "You were up there, Dembi? It doesn't look very sturdy."

  We are still whispering so as not to disturb the napping choir.

  "Oh, it's really safe. See the steps? It's really a ladder but it's OK."

  I stare at what looks like a fairly new ladder up against a corner of the church. I shiver. I don't think I'd ever want to make that climb. Leave the singing for the birds.

  When we return to the farmhouse it's almost dark. Dembi and I are covered in dirt. Mud is smudged on our noses and ground into our hair. Miriam is angry, I can tell, but she doesn't express it. She simply stands and stares at us from the front porch, one hand on her hips. A frown furrows her lovely brow.

  "I'm so sorry, Miriam," I say immediately as we mount the steps. "I know we were gone a very long time. Dembi and I got carried away searching for gold."

  "Gold!" Dembi says. His grin is mischievous and hints of secrets.

  "I guess we look a fright."

  "You do indeed. Dembi, go inside and have a shower. And make sure you wash your hair. And brush your teeth, too."

  Dembi hands over the picnic basket and skips inside. We hear him whistling all the way down the corridor.

  "I really am sorry. I know I was the adult in charge. I shouldn't have gotten so carried away. It was just so much fun."

  She sits down on one of the benches.

  "To be honest, I don't think I would've been so worried, but…I guess the shock of Karoline is finally sinking in. I feel so betrayed. I was anxious suddenly that you and she had cooked up some kind of swindle. I mean, maybe you came to see if the gold deposit was real. Maybe you had taken off with Dembi…"

  "My car's still here. Not to mention my purse and my passport."

  She has the grace to laugh along with me.

  "Yes, okay, I was being melodramatic." She sighs and I sit down beside her. "Memé is so bad today. She's been yelling and muttering, tries to get out of the bed. It's getting me down."

  I'm shocked by what comes out of my mouth next. "Listen, I've got some money. Please let me hire someone to help Memé. There must be a recently retired nurse around here who wouldn't mind the extra cash."

  At first she shakes her head.

  "Please. I haven't been here for you or Dembi or Memé. I know that wasn't really my fault but I'd still like to make up for it. I can afford it. Honestly."

  We stare at each other for a long minute, each of us still trying to come to terms with the fact of our existence. Although we are clearly different in many ways, it's difficult to look at the mirror image of your face without imagining that the emotions and reasoning are identical too.

  "We can spend more time together. You agreed that we should get to know each other. As long as you don't mind my staying longer, I would like to do just that. But you can't be tied to Memé every minute."

  That's when she relents. I know she is persuaded by the opportunity to be with me, know me, but Miriam's shoulders also demonstrate the burden of responsibility that has weighed on them for too long. She suddenly sits up straighter, looks lighter, when she says yes.

  "Do you know of an agency we can call?"

  "Yes. When the community care people came around, they gave me a card. I just never called."

  "Do that now, Triplet Miriam."

  We grin at each other and, as we stand, she embraces me.

  Afterward I wind my way to my room and shower. The water is soft and the pressure strong. Once I am clean and change my dirty clothes, I feel magnificent. A surge of love for my siblings races through me, warming my cells just as the shower heated my skin. I make my way back to the kitchen.

  Dembi, too, is fresh and clean, his short hair still damp and sticking straight up from his head. He looks like a cat who's swallowed a mouse. Although I have misgivings about going on this merry treasure hunt with him, encouraging him, I can't help but bask in his delight. After all, Karoline went with him. I high-five him as I walk in and he grins even wider. He sits at a small table in the corner, where a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle is slowly taking the shape of a full picture. He goes right back to work.

  Miriam has a pad of paper in front of her along with the agency's card. She looks up at me in relief.

  "It looks like you were right. The agency said they could probably send someone in the next day or two."

  "Excellent!"

  We sit at the kitchen table and talk while Dembi does his puzzle. As the sun completely disappears, we work side by side in the bright kitchen light while we prepare dinner. Miriam dashes off once in a while to check on Memé, who is at last sleeping soundly.

  We talk about everything. Lovers, friends, jobs, aspirations. Our adoptive families. My twin was raised in Ottawa, Ontario, by a fairly elderly couple—both light skinned blacks like us—who doted on her. Despite finding out later that they weren't her biological parents, she says she feels lucky that she was a part of their lives. They died too soon, one after the other, which devastated her. Her experience of family and her roots are decidedly different from mine. Perhaps because she wasn't straddling two races all her life, despite the lightness of her skin.

  Miriam is particularly interested in my parents. These are her aunt and uncle, Elizabeth her cousin.

  "There is a bible with a bit of a family tree. It stops at Memé and her siblings. We should look at it later."

  "I brought some of the pictures Elizabeth showed me, too. Maybe we can match up with the names."

  Memé's screams interrupt dinner several times. When Miriam scurries off, Dembi and I sing a song or tell a funny story. Anything to keep us from hearing the guttural sounds from the bedroom. The last time Miriam returns, her eyes are puffy and shadowed.

  "I don't know what she's saying half the time." She pushes her curls off her perspiring forehead. "She won't settle down and I hate to give her too much sedative."

  We are enjoying our dessert before the screams start again. I stand up.

  "Miriam, let's switch blouses. This time, I'll go. You've had enough for one day."

  My sister reluctantly agrees. We step into the next room, peel off our tops, and trade.

  "If this doesn't work, I'll call you," I promise her.

  I tiptoe into the hallway. Follow the hoarse screeches as much as the memory of where Memé's room is located. When I reach the doorway I see the skeletal body of our mother, scrunched up in the sheets, twisting and writhing on the mattress. Her nightgown is, mercifully, pulled all the way down this time. In fact she appears to be trying to crawl inside it. Even her toes disappear into the cotton. Her knees are doubled and she attempts to shove her arms in as well.

  Silently I approach the bedside. I am very close to her before her rheumy eyes focus on me. At first, I can tell Memé thinks I am Miriam. When the reality hits, her face contorts with fear. She gapes, opens and shuts her mouth continually. Spit drips down her chin. She's unable to emit any sound, however.

  I hunch down to hover just at her ear and whisper.

  She struggles to get away from me, but I hold onto one wrist as I tell her what she needs to hear. Finally she lies very still, as though her last breath has already rattled through her. I mix a dose of her medication and she obediently swallows. I am not afraid to give a little extra sedative so she'll stay asleep tonight. If anyone asks, I am simply being kind. She's had a shock today.

  Just as I turn my back to leave, she hisses.

  "Diable," my mother says very clearly.

  I smile at her and join my trio. The one I lost and found, the one I was cheated of for far too long. The one I substituted with poor choices, people who ultimately betrayed me. It isn't going to happen this time.

  Dembi and Miriam cleared the dishes while I was gone and are happily washing and drying. I take Miriam's place. She knows where the dishes go and I don't, I say.

  "It worked," I tell her. "I don't think Memé realized I wasn't you. She's asleep again."

  "You're a miracle worker. Thank you."

  We have fun doing this si
mple but satisfying chore. I can't help but recall my breakdown, the hours I spent washing every dish. Purifying, perhaps. Tonight, the task is pure pleasure. We laugh at Dembi's antics and his silly, funny stories.

  Miriam checks on Memé, but she is sound asleep. We settle in the room that I called a parlor, with tea, cookies, the Bible and the pictures I brought. Dembi is as interested as we are.

  I look more closely at all the antiques. An old gramophone, its reddish wood polished and mostly unscratched, stands in the corner. It still works, Miriam tells me. She demonstrates with an old record by a singer from the forties whose voice is warbled and soft.

  The chairs are of the Louis XIV variety, stiff and uncomfortable for long sits, but beautifully covered and carved. Several brass or iron statues look at me with disapproving frowns. They are so heavy I can barely lift them. Judging by the dust, nothing has been moved in here for quite some time.

  I try very hard not to think about how much all of this is worth.

  The three of us sit together on a fairly new sofa, new at least in comparison to the rest of the furniture. Miriam is in the middle, the family Bible on her lap, while I hold the pictures, ready to be disseminated. Dembi is alert and excited. This is history, his favorite subject. His obsession.

  The Bible is enormous, leather bound and filled with brightly colored pictures, most of them depicting horrific scenes. Bodies spread out at the feet of a serpent with a variety of death grimaces etched on their faces. People are punished in so many different ways, drowned, speared, killed by toppled towers, that we stop looking very quickly and focus on the pages at the front.

  They are designed to fill in your family tree, with a spot for birth and death dates. As Miriam mentioned, the names at the top are those of our mother and her siblings. We start there and go down the tree backwards.

  Elizabeth May Johnston, born May 31, 1926. It's a shock to realize that Memé is only 56 years old. She looks thirty years beyond that, the way her body has shriveled and caved in. I shiver.

  Vera June Johnston, born June 4, 1924.

  I can't help but laugh. "My mother—our aunt, that is—told me and Elizabeth that she doesn't have a middle name. No wonder! Looks like they just picked the month the girls were born in. Not too creative."

  "The boys didn't get a second name at all," Miriam says.

  William Johnston, born February 11, 1923. Died August 3, 1928.

  "Wow, just a little boy when he died. I wonder what happened to him."

  "Memé would only have been two at the time. I wonder if her parents ever told her how he died."

  "Maybe he drowned in the river," Dembi says.

  "Why would you think that, honey?"

  He shrugs his shoulders, but he has that furtive look around his mouth. I wonder if he found some information that he's withholding. Dembi isn't exactly good at hiding his thoughts.

  "At least he couldn't be our father," I say and instantly regret the gaffe, my siblings' faces reflect such shock. I must remember that Canadian sensibility. "Sorry. It just slipped out." Which is the truth.

  David: October 9, 1921. No death date listed.

  Philip: September 7, 1920. Died April 11, 1954.

  John: July 15, 1919. Died April 11, 1954.

  Cornwall: July 23, 1918. No date of death listed.

  "Two of the brothers died the same day," Miriam says. "I wonder if it was a farm accident or something. Maybe we could look it up in the local paper archives."

  I think of the C. Johnston listing in the Vryheid history book. Was it Cornwall back then, too? Did its origin have an exotic counterpart or had the enslaved ancestor taken a location for his name? Why does Cornwall Johnston sound so familiar?

  "Somebody kept this Bible up to date until 1954. I wonder if it was Larue. He's not listed here anywhere."

  "None of the other spouses are listed, either. He could've been Memé's lover or even her husband and still not be here," I say. "Maybe you're right. Maybe Larue was our father. Memé would have been twenty-three when she had us. I would think she'd have made her own choice of lover or husband by then."

  "True. Perhaps Larue and Memé were married. You're right, there are no marriages listed for anyone of her generation. David and Cornwall might still be alive. They'd only be in their sixties. And all of them would have been old enough to marry before 1954. I wonder why nothing's recorded about their marriages."

  "Maybe they had all left the area by then. In the case of Vera, she ran away and never looked back. She pretended that she had no siblings. Instead she built an entire legend for herself. Indian princess intermarried with black slaves who were undoubtedly descendants of African kings."

  Dembi smiles at me. "Joseph Brant's slaves married his family."

  I laugh. "Yes, I guess Vera's story is almost true, Dembi. She just left out the part of her dysfunctional family and poor Memé. Not to mention the fact of my real birth and the two of you."

  "They thought they were protecting you," Miriam says.

  "I know. But I still think it was wrong. I'm angry with Vera and Ian Williams, I must say. Your parents never told you either, did they?"

  "No. They didn't. And I have to admit I was angry, too, once Anne—sheesh, I mean Karoline—found me. But don't you think it's odd that Karoline discovered us and we didn't?"

  "We weren't looking. We didn't know we had anything to discover."

  "Other Anne looked in the book," Dembi says, startling us both.

  "What book?" we ask in unison.

  "The book of Vryheid."

  Miriam and I look at one another.

  "How on earth did she get here in the first place, though?" Miriam asks.

  Dembi shrugs, as though the question is moot. Other Anne simply appeared and that was good enough for him. Same with Triplet Anne.

  Our grandparents are listed as Cornwall Johnston and Margaret Fredricks, married in 1904, born in Vryheid. Cornwall had five brothers, all carefully noted, with birth, marriage and death dates. Every single one of them had been born in Vryheid and every single one was deceased.

  I wonder which of these uncles were among poor Memé's rapists. Curiously, no offspring are mentioned for any of Cornwall Senior's brothers. Perhaps this Bible belonged solely to Cornwall Junior and Margaret. Maybe Grandma planned to keep better records, but got sidetracked by booze and shame.

  The tree ended, or began, I should say, with our great-grandparents. Once again he is called Cornwall. I wonder where the name originated and how many Cornwalls there had been. Was the name handed down over generations or is this some anglicized version of an African name? Like Dembi to Donald. Maybe the slave's owner hailed from Cornwall, England. I want to know more about the Cornwalls, especially Junior Junior.

  Now I place Elizabeth's pictures down one at a time. We are able to discern Grandpa Cornwall and Grandma Margaret as young parents, the wide expanse of the farmland behind them. My sister is as shocked at the images as I had been. This house, which now looks so quaint and well preserved, is strewn with garbage and discarded bottles. The porch, half the size of the one now out front, leans dangerously.

  The young ones are barefoot. Tangled hair erupts over their heads. Tiny faces are unscrubbed and dirty. Babies appear in diapers scrabbling in the dirt. Every year a new face. Their expressions don't reflect the normal carefree nature of children their ages. In most of the pictures the adults laugh, drink, list with drunkenness, while the kids hang around at their feet or in the background. There are lots of adults, mostly men, presumably Cornwall's brothers. Strong farmer bodies designed to hold a lot of food and booze. Did they still work the fields in those insane days?

  We debate, at least Miriam and I do, the origins of our mother and her siblings. The older generation suffered through the depression, despite the fact that they were farmers. Perhaps they hadn't gone hungry, but had they been damaged in other ways? Did their drinking and carousing reflect a desire to drown their previous sorrows? From what Miriam had been told, they had slowly
sold off all the land. Every time they needed a new room in the house for another child or an uncle, whenever the booze ran dry, the crops failed or the jobs were scarce, they sold an acre.

  As we leaf through the photos, we discover the dazzling images of our mother as a long legged youthful beauty. She has the same coffee-with-cream complexion as we triplets, wavy luxurious hair, thick lips and come-hither smile. Her eyes are wide and guileless. The countenance of a naïve innocent unable to think deep thoughts. No wonder the poor child was abused so easily. She must have melted into any male's arms, searching for attention and love. Unable to tell the difference between that and sex.

  Is this the origin of my disrespect for men who tried to woo me? I suddenly remember one suitor's excuse for stalking me. "No man can resist you, such is the power of your beauty." He mistakenly thought I would consider his statement poetic and flattering. Instead I had spurned him with even greater alacrity. Was beauty and its allure the excuse my mother's family used for incest and rape?

  Gazing at these photos and comparing her to the skeletal shape in the bed, I can scarcely believe this is the same person. The one whose face launched a thousand sins.

  Despite the tragic reality of her background I refuse to forgive Memé. She split my trio. The one I was meant to have at my side all my life. Instead I unconsciously substituted the disappointing Giulio-Karoline combination, which had not exactly worked out well.

  My brother and sister ooh and ah. Lament our mother's loss of beauty. Mutter sweet responses. Even Dembi recognizes her from her youth and appears to understand that she is gravely ill with a disease that has robbed her of any real life. He has easily transferred his affection to his sisters. Perhaps he suffers from the same mental affliction as our mother and many of our other siblings. They are merely simple creatures formed from too many duplicate genes. Maybe they don't have very complex emotions.

  "I wonder why there are no picture albums here in the house," Miriam says. "You'd think there would be lots, especially since Margaret seems to have been somewhat of a record keeper."

  "That is weird. Seems like Vera was the only one who had any photos. And she hid them at my sister's so I'd never see them."