The crazy thing is, except for my secret, I was happy as could be. I missed my daddy and brothers and friends on the island, but I loved my new school and getting to learn about the world outside Talisa. In April, at a school assembly, Sister Helen called me up on the stage and gave me a prize for being the best student in her class. It was a little gold statue of Mary, and I got a framed certificate too.
But that afternoon, Sister asked me to stay after school. I thought maybe she had a new book for me to read, but when the other students were gone, Sister closed the classroom door, and when she turned around, she had a real serious look on her face.
I knew she had figured out my secret. I sat at my desk and I folded my hands on the top, just like all the students at Most Pure Heart were taught to do, but my hands were shaking and my mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow, and that secret in my belly was kicking so hard I was sure Sister could see it from where she sat at her own desk. In my head I was saying that Catholic prayer we said every morning, right after we said the Pledge of Allegiance.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
“Oh, Varina,” she said, and she sighed. Her face was as white as that wimple she wore on her head that covered her hair. “What have you done?”
I didn’t say a thing. Just stared at my hands.
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
“For several weeks now, I’ve seen something different about you. I thought maybe you were gaining a little weight, and that was good, because you are such a skinny little thing. But today, on that stage, I realized, you are … that is…”
I looked up and Sister turned her head, and when she looked back at me, her cheeks were bright pink.
“I had such high hopes for you,” Sister said. “And now you are about to throw all of that away because you’ve been a wicked girl.”
What could I do? I couldn’t look at her, and I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t me that was wicked, it was that bad man whose name I would never say.
I felt something wet hit the back of my hand and realized I was crying.
“Does your employer know?” Sister Helen asked, meaning Josephine.
I nodded, but I still couldn’t speak. It was like my mouth was full of cotton.
Sister sighed. “Well, I’m afraid you will have to leave this school immediately.”
I jerked my head up then. “Leave school?” I whispered. “But graduation isn’t until two more months.”
“You will not be graduating with your class,” Sister said. “And I’m sorry about that, but Mother Superior has rules. We can’t let the other girls and boys in this school be exposed to something like this. Most Pure Heart is not a school for fallen girls like you.”
“No, Sister,” I whispered.
She drummed her fingertips on the top of her desk.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me? Some … special circumstance you’d like to tell me about?”
“No, Sister.”
“Was it a boy at this school? This is very serious, Varina, because if the boy is a student here, I will see that he leaves this school too.”
“No, Sister.”
She drummed her fingertips some more. “Would you like to see Father? I realize you are not Catholic, but perhaps a good confession and an Act of Contrition…”
I shook my head hard. That priest went around with a mad face all the time. I could never tell him what had happened to me. Besides, I was kicked out of school, so there was nothing more to say.
“May I go, Sister?” I said.
“I suppose.” She rummaged around in her desk drawer and brought out a black leather change purse. I’d seen her take that change purse out before, on the sly, when some of the boys and girls who came to school looking hungry and raggedy and didn’t have enough money to buy milk in the school lunchroom.
She walked over to me and put one hand on my shoulder as I stood for the last time beside my desk, and she pressed a coin into my hand. “For the streetcar fare,” she said.
I wanted to throw that money back at her face. I wanted to scream that I hadn’t been wicked and that I wanted to stay in school and read all the books and someday, maybe, be a teacher, like her.
Instead, I said, “Thank you, Sister. I still have your book. Would it be all right if I brought it back to you tomorrow?” Sister lived at the brick convent attached to the school.
She wrinkled her brow. “What book do you have?”
“It’s Treasure Island, Sister.” I didn’t tell her that Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson’s book was my favorite one so far, even better than Jane Eyre.
She hesitated, looking down at me, and that’s when I saw her eyes get all watery. “You keep it, Varina. Keep reading. Keep learning, no matter what.”
“I’ll try,” I whispered.
“Take care of yourself, Varina. And the baby.”
75
“And you never told anybody?” Felicia asked.
“He told me he’d kill me if I told anybody what he’d done. And he took my pretty pearl pin that Millie gave me, because he said I’d stolen it,” Varina said. “I couldn’t go home the way he left me, so I snuck back here, to try to clean up, and that’s when Josephine found me. She guessed, just as soon as she saw me, what had happened, and she made me tell her everything.”
“That bastard,” Felicia said, the color rising in her cheeks. “Raping a child. I wish you had killed him, Auntie. I wish he were still alive so I could kill him for you.”
“No need,” Varina said. “He’s dead and gone. Everybody, all my family, all my friends, they’re all gone. Josephine was the last one, and now she’s gone too.”
76
Varina
March 1942
After I got kicked out of that school, there wasn’t much for me to do. Josephine thought I shouldn’t go out, because nice people would see me and figure out I was going to have a baby, so I stayed in her house and I did laundry and some cooking and listened to the war news on the radio.
We didn’t really talk much about what would happen next. Just the one time, really.
One night, Josephine came home from a party and she came up to my bedroom on the third floor of that town house her daddy owned. I was reading Treasure Island again, thinking about pirates and buried treasure and such.
She knocked on the door and then came in and sat on the little chair. “Varina, we need to talk about what will happen when your baby comes.”
“I know that,” I said, struggling to sit up in the bed.
“It’s going to be very hard on you, trying to raise a baby as young as you are. And there are going to be people saying terrible things about you, because that baby is going to be half-white,” Josephine said. “Your family might not want to take you back once they find out.”
“I don’t want to go back home,” I said, because I’d been thinking a lot about that. “I want to finish high school and then get me a job.”
“All right,” she said. She looked tired. “We still have a couple of months to figure things out. I know lots of people here, and maybe somebody will be looking for a maid or a live-in babysitter.”
The first thing I thought of when she said that was Jane Eyre.
I couldn’t tell Josephine I didn’t want to do the kind of work Geechee ladies on the island did, cooking or cleaning or watching other people’s children, because that would make me seem ungrateful for all she’d done for me. I really wanted a real job, like in an office. The nuns taught us what they called vocational skills, and I could type fast as anything.
I didn’t tell her I dreamed of going to college and someday maybe being a teacher like Sister Helen. It sounds bad to say this, but I was all mixed up inside. Nothing that had happened to me since that night at the party seemed real to me. Not any of it. Not even after the baby started kicking so hard I woke up in the middle of the night. Not
even when I had to go to the bathroom every hour and my back hurt every time I went up and down all those stairs at her house.
It didn’t start seeming real to me until that very next day. We were in the kitchen, listening to The Romance of Helen Trent, our favorite radio program, and all of a sudden I got this awful cramp in my belly—like a lightning bolt or a live wire. It hurt so bad I doubled over. When I looked down, I saw all this warm water running down my legs.
“Josephine!” I screamed.
77
Felicia buried her head in her arms and wept. Her sobs echoed in the big kitchen.
Varina patted her back and tried to soothe her. “Now, honey, that was a long, long time ago. You don’t need to be crying for me. I cried all the tears a long time ago.”
“How can you say that?” Tears ran down Felicia’s anguished face. “After everything that happened to you?”
“Hush now,” Varina said, handing her a paper towel to wipe her eyes. “You’re getting yourself all worked up about something that’s in the past. You think I do that? Look back at those bad times? No, ma’am. Every morning when I wake up, I think, Thank you, Lord, for giving me one more day in this beautiful place you made for me.”
“You amaze me, Varina,” Brooke said.
Felicia got up and poured four glasses of iced tea. She brought them back to the table and handed a glass to each woman.
When she sat down again, Felicia took a deep breath. “What happened to your baby, Auntie Vee?”
Varina’s face clouded over. “The baby came too early. I was only seven months along. Josephine got the doctor over to the house as soon as she could, but there wasn’t anything he could do. My baby was too little and too weak. Jesus took my baby home. And I never even got to hold him.”
Lizzie and Brooke looked away, each hating the burden of the secret that they shared.
“Oh, Auntie, I’m so sorry,” Felicia said.
“Don’t be. It’s like Josephine said—maybe that was just a blessing. You know, I was just a baby myself when all that happened. And I don’t know what my daddy or brothers would have said if I’d come home with a baby from a white man. Josephine took real good care of me. I was sick with a fever after I lost the baby, but she got me medicine and looked after me just like I was her own little sister. Then, when I was better, she found me a new school to go to. I finished high school, and I went to business school and learned to take dictation, and then she helped me get a good job in a real office.”
“Good old Josephine,” Felicia said bitterly.
“You don’t realize it now, but that was a real hard thing for a little black girl like me,” Varina said proudly. “Back then, not many colored girls in the South worked in offices. I worked at the shipyard in Savannah, and then, after the war, I went down to Jacksonville, where one of my brothers worked, and I got a job at the railroad.”
Brooke’s throat felt dry. She sipped her iced tea and tried to ignore the laser stare Lizzie was giving her. “Varina,” she said finally. “You know Josephine had all these secrets she kept all those years. And that’s why she hired me and brought me over here to Talisa. Those secrets were eating away at her. She knew she didn’t have long to live, so before she died, she wanted to make things right with the people she’d hurt.”
“Josephine always did play things close to the vest,” Varina agreed. “When Felicia told me about your mama being Josephine’s niece, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I never would have known that sweet Millie had a baby with Mr. Gardiner—and then that baby was your mama!”
“How does Marie feel about Josephine keeping that little tidbit to herself all these years?” Felicia asked.
“She was pretty angry,” Brooke said. “But then, Millie kept it a secret too. All these years, my mom had no clue that her pops wasn’t her biological father. She’s slowly getting used to the idea, but it’s going to take some time.”
“Didn’t Josephine tell you that Millie and Ruth and Varina were her best friends? All that High Tide Club stuff, that was just a bunch of crap,” Felicia said.
“Josephine had one more secret she was keeping,” Brooke said, looking at Felicia. “Lizzie found it by accident this week as she was going through Josephine’s papers looking for material for her magazine article, but it didn’t make much sense until yesterday when the sheriff gave me the report on the DNA comparison between Josephine and C. D.”
Lizzie nodded. “After I found that letter from the priest, Father Ryan, telling Josephine about that little boy, Charlie, I started to wonder again why Josephine was so concerned about that particular boy and no other child.”
Felicia’s eyes widened as she realized what was coming. “Oh my God,” she whispered. She grasped her great-aunt’s hand. “Josephine lied, Auntie. She told you your baby was dead, but that was a lie. She gave the baby away! To an orphanage.” She turned to Brooke and Lizzie. “I’m right, aren’t I?” she asked. “C. D. isn’t Josephine’s son. He’s hers!”
“What’s that?” Varina asked, confused. “You’re saying my son is alive? He didn’t die? How can that be?” She shook her head violently. “No! Josephine wouldn’t have done me that way. She wouldn’t hide my child from me for all these years. Let me think he was dead when he wasn’t?”
“I’m so sorry, Varina,” Brooke said. “There’s no explanation for it, but yes, we think that’s exactly what she did. A priest who was the pastor at a black church in Savannah was the go-between. He found a couple, probably in his parish, who took the baby for a few weeks, and then he turned the boy over to a Catholic orphanage, where he stayed until he was six. After that, he went to live at the Good Shepherd Home for Boys.”
“And you think my boy, my grown-up son, is C. D.? Living right here on this island, working for Josephine?” Varina asked. “I don’t understand.”
“That bitch!” Felicia exclaimed. “Playing God with people’s lives. How dare she!”
“My baby is alive,” Varina said, looking from Lizzie to Felicia. “I can’t believe it.” She turned pleading eyes to Brooke. “How can you be sure it’s him after all these years?”
“The only way we can be really positive is if we tried to DNA match you with C. D. There are so many compelling facts it can’t be a coincidence. The DNA report we had done on C. D. showed he had African heritage. C. D. was told he was named after the priest who found him abandoned in his church after Sunday mass. That’s the same priest who wrote Josephine to give her an update on the baby. We talked to a nun in Savannah; she’s nearly a hundred years old, but she remembers the little boy named Charlie who came to live at St. Joseph’s Children’s Home. The nuns gave him the last name of Anthony, for St. Anthony, who is the patron saint of the lost. And the priest who brought him there, he was driving a new Cadillac not long after that. The rumor was that the Cadillac was given to him by that baby’s family as a reward for keeping his mouth shut. When Charlie was six, he was sent to the Good Shepherd Home for Boys. We talked to a man who lived in the same cottage at the boy’s home. He remembers C. D. from that time.”
Brooke reached for her phone and scrolled through her camera roll. She found the photo from Good Shepherd of the boys standing in front of their cottage. She enlarged it and handed it to Varina, tapping the photo of the boy the others had nicknamed Buck. “That’s him.”
“Oh, my. Oh, my,” Varina whispered. “He looks like my brother Omar.” She thrust the phone at Felicia. “See? Doesn’t he look like a Shaddix?”
“I’ve never seen a blue-eyed Shaddix before,” Felicia snapped. But she examined the photo closer, reluctantly nodding. “He was light enough to pass, wasn’t he? You know, I’ve seen that old man dozens of times since we started staying over here, but I never saw it until now.”
Varina could not take her eyes off the photo. “When it was my time, the pains were awful. We knew something was wrong. There was so much blood! When the doctor came, he gave me a shot. And when I woke up, there was no baby. Josephine said th
e baby was born dead, and the doctor took it away with him. She said it was better that way so I wouldn’t be so upset.”
“I hope she rots in hell,” Felicia said. “I’m glad Gabe killed her. Josephine needed killing. I only wish I’d done it myself.” She stalked over to the counter, picked up the cooling cake layers, and dumped them into the trash. “I’ll be damned if I’ll bake a cake and sit in a church and pretend to be sorry that old bitch is gone.” She looked over at Varina. “Come on, Auntie. We need to get you home and give you your meds. I don’t think I can stand to be under Josephine’s roof for one more minute.”
“No, ma’am,” Varina said. Her voice was loud and clear.
“Now, Auntie Vee,” Felicia started.
“You go along home,” Varina said. “You’re upset. I’ll be along in a little while. Lizzie will bring me home, won’t you?”
“Happy to,” Lizzie said, earning her a glare from Felicia, who stomped out of the kitchen, slamming the screen door as she went.
“Fetch me those cake layers out of that trash, will you, honey?” Varina said. She pointed in the direction of the door. “That girl has had a temper her whole life. There wasn’t no reason for her to throw those cakes out. I’ll put some icing on ’em and nobody will know the difference.”
Lizzie reached into the trash and rescued the cake layers, which had split in half. She brushed away some stray potato peels and placed them on a plate.
“Are you all right?” Brooke asked as the old woman returned to chopping pecans. “I know you’ve had an awful shock.”
“I’m going to pray about this,” Varina said, not looking up. “I don’t rightly know what to think.” She blinked back tears, and a moment later, her shoulders shook as she sobbed quietly on Brooke’s shoulder.
Lizzie slipped from the room. A moment later she was back. Varina had regained her composure. Lizzie put two items on the table in front of her. One was a small prayer card with a color rendering of the Virgin Mary, eyes cast heavenward. The other was a string of mother-of-pearl rosary beads.
The High Tide Club Page 43