Dena suddenly stopped talking. Slowly, it began to dawn on her, what Christine had assumed she knew all along. What had been right before her eyes, and had been so obvious from the start. Something she had missed completely until this very second. All at once everything began to clear and things started to fall into place one by one, like pool balls dropping into pockets … and everything began to make sense: the neighbor, the odd photographs she had seen around the house. Christine was not Italian or Greek or anything else. Christine was a light-skinned black woman. Dena was in a black neighborhood, and had not even suspected it.
Dena and Christine sat there for a moment staring at each other, both in shock but for different reasons. After a time, Dena went outside and motioned to Gerry to roll his window down. “Gerry, I think you’d better come in.”
Gerry got out of the car quickly. “Did she tell you anything?”
“Oh, yes. You’re not going to believe this—”
“What?”
“Wait.”
Tilt-A-Whirl
Washington, D.C.
1978
When they got back to the hotel late that afternoon, Dena was worn out. She felt as if she had been riding a giant Tilt-A-Whirl at the carnival for the past five hours, whipped first one way and then the other. Even after she had taken a hot bath and was lying in bed, her mind was still spinning. Gerry registered them under his name but had gotten a suite with two bedrooms. At eight-thirty he called her from his bedroom. “How are you doing? Sure you don’t want me to order you some dinner?”
“No, I just want to sleep.” Then she asked, for the twentieth time, “Do you believe this?”
“Well … it’s different from what we expected.”
Later, Gerry was rereading What’s Doing in Washington magazine when the phone rang. He jumped up and ran into the bathroom and picked it up as fast as he could, so it would not wake Dena. It was Macky Warren, wanting to know how things were going. Dena had said he might be calling and to let them know what was going on. Gerry whispered, “Well, we found the woman we were looking for.”
“Great. What did she say?”
“Mr. Warren, could you hold on a moment?” He went into his bedroom, closed the door, and picked up the phone. “She told Dena that her mother was a black woman.”
“A what?” Macky was quite sure he had not heard right.
“A black—you know, like Lena Horne. Light but black. She didn’t know what happened to her, but at least now we know the mother’s real name; that’s a start. Dena’s asleep in the other room but I’m sure she’ll call you when we know more.”
Macky walked slowly back into the living room, where he had left Norma and Aunt Elner cracking pecans. Norma sat, waiting for news like a bird waiting for a worm.
“Well?” she asked, her eyes wide.
Macky sat down in his BarcaLounger and picked up the paper, hoping to avoid conversation.
“What did she say?”
“I didn’t talk to her, I talked to her friend. She was asleep.”
“Yes … and?”
“And he said they found the woman.”
“They found the woman. Yes—and?”
“And what?”
“What did she say about her mother?”
Macky tried to sound casual. “She said that Dena’s mother was a black woman.”
She looked at him incredulously. “What?”
“Black.”
Norma closed her eyes. “Macky, why do you do this? You know I’m a wreck over this thing. Now tell me what she really said.”
“I told you.”
“Macky, you are not funny. What did she say?”
“Norma, I am not trying to be funny. She said her mother was black.”
Norma squinted at him. “What do you mean, black?”
“Just like I said. Black.”
“You mean Amos and Andy black?”
“No, he said more like Lena Horne black.”
Norma waved him off. “Oh, you are making this up. You probably didn’t even talk to him.”
He looked over the top of the paper at her. “I’m telling you, he said she was black. That’s what the woman said. I’m just repeating.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, she was no more black than I am!” Norma cracked a pecan to make her point and threw the shell in the green bowl in her lap.
“Norma, you asked and I told you.”
“Well, he’s wrong. Don’t you think somebody would have noticed if Gene had married a colored girl? Don’t you think one person would have looked at her when she got off the train and commented, ‘Oh, look, Gene married a colored girl’? Not one person said that, did they, Aunt Elner?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Of course they didn’t, she was a white person, for God’s sake. That woman has her mixed up with somebody else. How can you be black if you are a white person? It makes no sense at all, I’ve never heard of such a crazy thing. Lena Horne, my foot.”
Aunt Elner looked up, confused. “How did Lena Horne get in this? Was she there?”
“Oh, she’s not in it, Aunt Elner,” said Norma. “He’s making it up just to get my goat. He is determined to drive me insane. Keep it up, Macky, and when I’m down at the state hospital foaming at the mouth, then you’ll finally get your wish.”
Macky heaved a sigh. “Have it your own way, Norma. I’ve told you the truth and you don’t believe me, so forget it.”
A few minutes passed. Norma cracked two more pecans. “The very idea of saying a white person is black. I knew her, you didn’t.”
“Norma, I’m not saying it. The woman said it. I don’t know!”
“Well, you shouldn’t be passing that kind of false information along. How can you be black if you have green eyes? Answer me that.”
“I don’t know, Norma.”
“No, I didn’t think you did.”
Aunt Elner said, “Well, whatever she was, she was a pretty thing. Isn’t that what they say? That black is beautiful?” She emptied her bowl of shells into the paper bag at her feet. “And I’ll tell you another thing, they ought to put Amos and Andy back on the radio. Where did Amos and Andy go, is what I want to know.”
Who Was My Mother?
Washington, D.C.
1978
The next day after their first meeting, Dena went back to see Christine. They sat in the kitchen drinking coffee. “Last night after you left,” Christine said, “I racked my brain trying to think of someone who might know where Theo is. I called my brother, and a few other people that knew him, and they all said the same thing. They have no idea. And your mother? Well, God only knows. I know I’m the only one besides Theo who knew that she was passing.” She sipped slowly. “I just don’t know what to tell you. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’m as baffled as you are. All I know is that your mother adored you; she used to call me up and tell me all about what you were doing, how pretty you were.… You were the only thing that kept her going. After your father was killed, you were the only thing she cared about.”
“If she cared about me so much, why did she just leave? How could she do that?”
“I don’t know.” Christine sighed. “Your mother was a complicated girl, even when she was young.”
“What was she like?”
Christine weighed her words. “Well, she and Theo were both different. When I say different, I don’t mean in a bad way; it’s just that they both had been raised in Vienna.”
“What were they doing in Vienna?”
“Your grandfather went there to study medicine, that’s where he met your grandmother.”
“Was my grandmother black?”
“No, she was a German, a doctor’s daughter, came from plenty of money. I don’t think your grandfather would ever have left Vienna if it had not been for the war. He may have had blond hair and green eyes but his visa still said Negro and don’t forget Hitler didn’t like blacks any more than he did Jews.”
“How old was m
y mother when they came back?”
“Theo was already fourteen or fifteen, so she must have been ten or eleven. So you can imagine what a shock it must have been for them. I don’t think either of them had ever seen real Negroes before. It must have been hard for them. One day they were little white Viennese children and the next thing they knew they were colored children living in a colored neighborhood. But your mother was such a little lady, she spoke perfect French and German, played the piano; both she and Theo were so well behaved.” She smiled. “Not like me. I was more or less your mother’s age and I think she wanted to play and have fun, but she just didn’t know how. A lot of people used to think she and Theo were stuck up but they weren’t, they had just been raised in a different culture. And, oh, how they loved their father. He was so proud of his children.”
“Do you remember him?”
“Oh, yes, Dr. Le Guarde and my daddy were good friends, they were in the same clubs. We used to love to go over there all the time. It was a beautiful home, so tastefully decorated; when you stepped into that house it was like going into another world. I remember your grandfather and grandmother both loved music and always had music playing—Brahms, Schumann, Strauss—and the parties they had. A library that was second to none, as my daddy used to say, and the art. They brought a lot of wonderful paintings from Europe. They almost never went out; their home was their haven.”
“What did my grandfather look like?”
“Oh, he was a good-looking man, tall, very distinguished.”
“I see.” Dena wanted to ask the next question but was concerned about not making it sound like an insult. “Well, just how dark was he?”
Christine was not offended. “About as dark as you with a tan; he was a real blue vein.”
“A blue vein?”
Christine laughed and turned her arm over. “So light you can see the veins. His mother had been one of those light-skinned quadroons from New Orleans and had married a Frenchman. My mother was a blue vein. My sister, Emily, is as white as you. I got my color from my father and he wasn’t happy about it, either. In the summer, if I would come home with just a little tan, he would be furious with me. ‘Sister,’ he’d say, ‘you get any blacker, I’m sending you to Harlem with the rest of the darkies.’ He didn’t like dark skin.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He just didn’t. That’s the way he was. The first time I brought my husband home to meet Daddy he almost had a fit. ‘Too black, too black,’ he said.” Then she laughed. “But I didn’t care, I think I might have married him just to spite Daddy.”
“What did Theo look like?”
“Theo? Oh, well, if it’s possible for a man to be beautiful, then he was. I was in love with Theo. He looked more like his mother, with those big brown eyes and those long lashes. I used to sit and watch him practice his violin for hours.” She dropped another cube of sugar into her cup. “But he never looked at me or any girl as far as I know. All he cared about was playing that violin.”
Dena sat there trying her best to keep up. “If my mother’s mother was full-blooded German and her grandfather was French, how much black blood did my mother have?”
“About a drop, if there is such a thing as black blood, which there isn’t. All blood is red or blue. But it was enough. Back then, one-sixteenth of a drop of Negro blood was one drop too much. You were still Negro under the law.”
“Do you think my father would have cared?”
Christine shrugged. “I don’t know. But that was just it, you never knew how people were going to feel. And don’t forget that was in the forties, and it was all illegal in some states for a person to marry outside their race. People were still being put in jail for it. Things were very different then. But me, I was lucky. When I was young I never took the race thing all that seriously. I even changed my name to Whitenow—it was a big joke to me. I was just out for some fun, and I had it, too. I wanted to be a Rockette and I wasn’t going to let a stupid law stop me. If they felt better thinking I was Spanish, let them.”
“Why didn’t she tell me? It wouldn’t have made any difference to me.”
Christine’s smile was sad and weary. “Oh, yes, it would have. Maybe not as much as your mother thought, but your mother figured you were better off not knowing about her, and it would have made a difference because—don’t kid yourself—there were people back then who if they had known about your mother would have looked at you with an entirely different eye.”
Dena was astounded. “Me?”
“Yes, even you. It would have been a stigma. To a lot of people it didn’t matter how small the amount of Negro blood your mother had, all that mattered was that she had it no matter how far back it went.”
“But that’s idiotic!”
“Maybe so, but you have to think of all the advantages you might not have had if people had known. Everywhere you went they would be whispering behind your back, and she knew it. Think about it: Could you have gone to the same schools, dated the same boys, walked through the same doors? Oh, you might have made it eventually because of your looks and talent, but everywhere you went they would have been looking at you with that in mind. They might not have said anything but they would have been thinking it.”
“I wouldn’t have cared, it wouldn’t have changed the way I felt about my mother.”
“No, maybe not, but it would have changed the way you looked at the world. And how the world looked back. You would always wonder what people were really thinking, no matter how nice they were. You’d wonder what they didn’t say around you. It changes you. Believe me. I’ve had to deal with it all my life. Your mother was just trying to spare you the same heartache.”
“Did my mother ever tell you why she decided to pass for good?”
“No, but I just figured that she felt the same way Theo did. I couldn’t blame either one of them, really; they never really fit in from the beginning. Especially Theo. He was pulled one way and then the other till he didn’t know what or who he was. Finally he was just pulled apart. He had to choose between his daddy and his music. He didn’t want to be the great new Negro musician, he just wanted to be a musician. And believe me, they weren’t going to let a Negro in any symphony orchestra, not back then. You still don’t see all that many today.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I could have passed for good if I had liked it, but I just felt more comfortable with my own people. But I don’t judge those who did. When you get as old as I am you realize that life is hard, and if you can get a break in this world, why not take it? But even so I can tell you passing was not an easy thing to do. I don’t envy those who did. It was like going to another country and never being able to go home again. They couldn’t even come back to their own daddy’s funeral, and in your mother’s case passing was particularly hard. She couldn’t pass into rich white society, you had to be born into that; she had to take a step down. Why, with her background and education, that girl shouldn’t have been working in any department store. I didn’t even know she was passing until that day I ran into her.”
Christine got up from her chair and went over and shut the kitchen door. “I had this cute white boyfriend at the time and we go waltzing into Saks Fifth Avenue to shop for my birthday present. He wanted to buy me a nice dress so I figure, why not? So I’m sitting there and up walks your mother to wait on us. Well, I looked at her and she looked at me, and I knew who she was and she knew who I was but neither one of us said a word. The next day I went back and that’s when she told me all about you and what had happened to your father. We kept up with each other for a few years, then after that I just lost touch.”
Christine sighed again. “I tell you the truth, I’m so tired of this race thing I don’t know what to do … the things it does to people.” She looked away. “You just don’t know the insults my poor husband had to take all his life because of color. He was one of the sweetest, most refined gentlemen that ever walked on the face of this earth, and then to
be treated so badly, even by my own father. I don’t know what happened to your mother; she may have just been worn out from the whole thing. I wish I could be of more help to you, but I guess none of us will ever know what’s in another person’s mind. I don’t know what caused your mother to run off like that, but whatever it was, she must have had a good reason. Because I know she loved you.”
After Dena’s morning with Christine, she got in the car and Gerry looked at her. “How are you?”
“Fine.” But she wasn’t. She had been strangely touched by Christine. There was something about her that made Dena deeply sad. It was a look in her eyes. She had seen the same look at times in her mother’s. She started to cry.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“That’s all right, Dena, you’re going through a lot right now. It’s OK.”
“I really liked her.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know why I’m crying over it.”
She had learned much in two days but she still had not found out what had happened to her mother that Christmas. But at least they had a little more information to pass on to Richard Look.
That night as Gerry was walking her to the plane, he reassured her: “Richard said this is plenty to work with, more than he had hoped for, and I promise the minute he finds anything I’ll call you.”
When they reached the gate she shook his hand. “Gerry, I don’t know how to thank you for everything; you’ve really been a good friend. I couldn’t have done this without you—and I just want you to know I really appreciate it.”
He shrugged it off. “Hey, that’s what I’m here for.” He smiled and waved back as she went through the gateway.
He wanted to get on that plane with her so badly it almost made him dizzy, but he knew he had to let her go. Gerry thought of nothing but Dena as he drove back to New York.
On the plane home, Dena could think of nothing except a family she never knew she had until yesterday.
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