I hope you will treasure Juliana’s words. I love knowing so much about someone who lived so long ago, and without whom we would not be here. How could such a woman have had a daughter like Mercedes, though, who defied her own mother and made things harder for all of us than they were ever meant to be? Still, growing up without knowing there was a mother loving you might do a certain damage to a soul.
Well, my hands are starting to give me fits, and my eyes aren’t doing well either, so I guess I’ll say my one last thing. My life hasn’t been much different from most folks like me. In fact, for my first thirty-seven years, I figured I was pretty blessed, or at least lucky, one of the two. I often wondered why God let me off the hook so easily. Sometimes I felt like I should creep around, lest He see me and remember that He’d forgotten to let me suffer some. Well, I guess I didn’t have to worry, because He remembered me, all right.
My hardship came right at the end of the War Between the States. And who could I have been to be left untouched? You might think that being here in St. Louis we didn’t have things so bad, but you’d be wrong. See, we didn’t rightly know if we were North or South, so we couldn’t even pull together. My own sympathies were for the North, of course, never having owned slaves in my life, nor seeing the right of it. All my children felt like I did, my never having been one to keep that type of thing to myself, especially if I felt I was in the right. My twin boys both went off to war when they were seventeen, and at least they both fought for the right side. That was something to be thankful for, since it was not uncommon here in Missouri for two brothers to take up arms against each other. It was as though those boys wished to aim their rifles at each other’s hearts.
My boys went off together, but they never came back. In some ways, you could even say I was lucky I got the word. Lots of folks just waited and waited for their sons to come home. But what’s better: giving up hope little by little, or all at once? I don’t know. Thank God I had your mama, or I don’t know how I’d have gotten through. Even now, after all these years, I have some mighty dark days.
Once again, Jenny, I’m begging your pardon for giving you the hardship of the promise you’ve made to keep silent about this amazing gift. I believe you’ll get something from it, though. At least you know you’re one in a line of women, all of whom have been or will be a part of you. I’ve been finding contentment in just that, now that I figure I’m about to meet up with some of them. Remember, we’re all always there for you, even if you don’t know each one’s particulars. We’re all there, that line of women, stronger than any army men can dream.
Your grandmother,
Lizzie Bates Compton
1881
53
Jenny
St. Louis, 1936
My dearest granddaughter,
First, I thank you for fulfilling your oath, as I know you will do. I would not have chosen you had I not been certain of this. Second, I want to tell you that I am sorry for requiring the secrecy that was demanded of me. Believe me, I know what it was and will be like for you, as did my grandmother before me. You will long to share what you learn from these papers, but your sacred oath forbids that. I want you to know that I chose you not only because of my confidence in your strength, but also because I love you so very much.
These letters and diary are your heritage, a heritage the meaning of which you may spend years trying to decipher. Indeed, as I have reread them at different points in my life, I have taken away something different each time, since as we get older our experiences constantly remake who we are. Remember this my dearest, dearest child: the papers form a link with the past, with the life, with the innermost thoughts of another woman who lived centuries ago, and with those who came after her. Consider the possibility that perhaps the link itself, even devoid of its own particular content, is worth some of the anguish of keeping the secret.
I could say much more to you, my darling, of the love I feel for you, and of what you might feel over the years, after you have read the diary and letters. But I do not think that is the intention of the writers. I believe that each woman is meant to experience the papers in her own world, though their worlds may have few similar circumstances. I am grateful to all of the women in this unbroken line, that they have carried the message for us, that they have not let our link be severed.
Some of the letter-holders have given some details of their own. I find that I haven’t the heart to review my life here. You will know many of the important things about me from your mother. When I look back, I find that the milestones have to do with my children. I suppose that’s true of most women.
Of my husband I will say that a marriage that started with love ended with emptiness and recriminations. I don’t know whether that would have happened if we hadn’t lost our only son on the fields of France during the Great War. One tells oneself that one must take joy in one’s remaining children, but their presence sometimes seems to be only a reminder of the absence of the one you have lost. Perhaps that is why I was able to love you so much, because I saw nothing in you of your uncle.
I hope that you never live through a war like we did, though the news from Germany seems every day more concerning. I wish you an easier life, as I suppose every generation wishes for those who come after, but I don’t have much confidence that it will be. Although outsiders may rank the sorrows and problems of others as lesser or greater, when they are yours you will suffer, even though they may not have the weight of others’ difficulties. Still, as we know from Juliana and those who have come after her, women endure.
Enough of that. I just ask you to remember how I loved you, how we shared those quiet moments together that were so precious to an old woman who otherwise could only have lost herself in painful memories.
Your loving friend,
Grandma Jenny
May 10, 1936
54
RACHEL
All of this was too overwhelming. I would have a lifetime to reread each letter, to think about what it meant, to try to imagine what it must have been like to live through each writer’s experiences. But for now I was caught in wondering about their connection to me. This last was a letter signed by a Grandma Jenny, and she would have been of an age to be my mother’s grandmother. But Helen never talked about a Grandma Jenny. Could Jenny be Grandma Scottie’s first name? According to the records I’d found, her first name was Janet, not Jenny or Jennifer.
I pulled out the baby book that I had bought, since Ned and I weren’t having much luck agreeing on a girl’s name for our child. The book not only listed names but gave their meanings, their histories, and even their popularity. I looked up Janet. In Scotland, Jess and Jenny were common pet forms of the name Janet. Janet Maude Scott’s father was born in Scotland. Jenny was Janet Maude Scott Meades, born in 1866, my great-grandmother.
55
RACHEL
I went back to my desk and frantically searched through all of the papers I had spread out. I knew that I hadn’t missed another letter, but how could Helen not have left anything of her own like all of the other women had done? Had she been taken too soon? Was that why she said she had failed Juliana?
Then it hit me. Of course there would be no letter— not for me, anyway. My mother was supposed to give the papers to her granddaughter, and she didn’t have one. She had left the package as a contingency, in case something unexpected happened, but maybe she was waiting to write her letter. She was only seventy-two. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to think about her own mortality just yet.
But how could a promise she had made to keep a secret seem so important that she couldn’t share it with me, or even with Gabe, since it didn’t seem like she was going to get a granddaughter? I could feel myself reconstructing between us the defensive wall that I’d had recourse to over the years, when I’d sensed that she was holding something back from me and I had not reached out, knowing that I would be rebuffed. Even in death, I had to make myself angry with my mother in order not to be hurt by her.
The next morning, I decided that I had to do something more than just keep running everything through my head over and over. I would go see my cousin Carol again. I called her to ask whether I could come over after my classes that day, and she said that yes, she’d make a point to be home by then.
I taught my classes mechanically. Sometimes I wonder whether the students have any idea of how much preparation and effort I put into my lessons, but on that day, I would certainly have forgiven them if they had thought I wasn’t even paying attention myself.
When I got to Carol’s and she and I sat down with a soda, I didn’t know what to say. Usually I rehearse difficult conversations beforehand, but I hadn’t even come up with a way to begin.
“Are you all right, Rachel? You look so tired—haunted or something.” That seemed like a strange, though perceptive, thing to say. I just looked at her, not knowing where to start. She must have taken my silence to mean she had overstepped, because she started again.
“Are you having any luck with the family-tree project?”
“A little, but it hasn’t given me all the answers,” I said.
“What kind of answers?”
“It’s just that I was hoping to find an explanation.”
“For what?” asked Carol.
Finally I decided just to go ahead and ask what I assumed would be a fruitless question. “Carol, have you ever heard anything about some secret papers in our family?”
Carol took a drink of her soda, then slowly and deliberately put the can back on the coffee table and said, “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. Wait here a sec, Rachel.”
“Wait here for what?”
“Please, Rach.”
After a few minutes, Carol came back to the room, holding an envelope. I got up and grabbed it from her hand, recognizing my mother’s handwriting: “To be given only to the granddaughter of Helen Jordan Pearson when she reaches the age of fifteen. Not to be opened by anyone else.”
I fell back onto the sofa. “What does this mean?”
“Rachel, I’m sorry, but I don’t know . . . I found it in my mom’s stuff after she died last year. I just really didn’t know what to do. After all, my mom had apparently kept this letter for Aunt Helen, and I didn’t feel ready to go against the instructions on the envelope. When you came over the last time, I almost told you about it, especially when you started asking me what I remembered of our family background, and whether there were any old papers. It all seemed so weird, and it was still so close to when Aunt Helen died, and why wouldn’t she have addressed it to you? And then when you said you were pregnant . . .”
“You were going to wait years and years to maybe be able to give it to my child, who might be a daughter?” I couldn’t control my voice anymore, and I didn’t want to.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Rachel. I’m just so sorry.”
“I can’t believe you kept this from me!” I turned and walked out of Carol’s house.
I probably shouldn’t have driven in the condition I was in, but I did. I knew that Ned was working late and that Gabe had track practice, so I’d have the house to myself. I went into my home office and closed the door. I opened the letter that was not addressed to me.
56
Helen
St. Louis, 1990
To my dearest granddaughter,
I’ve entrusted this letter to my beloved sister, Sandy. It’s my safeguard, in case I should pass away before you are born. I’ve asked Sandy to keep it for me until I ask for it, which would be when you are fifteen years old. If Sandy survives me, she or her daughter Carol will hopefully follow the instructions on the envelope. I haven’t left this letter for your mother, because I don’t want her to know that I’ve kept a secret from her for her whole life. This has been harder than you can imagine for me, and at times I felt myself pulling away from her, afraid I’d be tempted to reveal too much.
I have, over the course of my life, asked myself why I have adhered so strictly to the vow I made to my grandma Jenny to keep the letters secret from everyone except my own granddaughter. It was a promise not only to my grandma, but to God. Still, in my adulthood, I have not been a very religious person. I believe that part of me felt that I had no right to go against this contrived tradition, for in a way it would be betraying all of the women who kept the promise, to make light of the sacrifices they had made to maintain their silence. Who was I to so arrogantly disregard the strictures they had lived up to? Now that I have reached the age of seventy and still have no granddaughter, I question my decision.
In those first years, I maintained my silence equally from my love of my grandma and from a vague fear of some dire consequence. By the time I became a woman, it was habit and almost seemed a part of who I was. If I gave away this secret, was I giving away part of myself? When I married, I didn’t tell your grandpa Daniel right away, and then, as time went on, I felt it would be too hurtful to all of a sudden tell him I’d been keeping secrets from him. As your mother grew, I longed to tell her, but how could I? Then both of us would have a secret from Daniel, and I couldn’t do that to either of them. When Daniel died, Rachel took it so hard and was angry with me for a long time, because she had missed the last few moments with her dad. I was afraid of what it would do to our fragile relationship to tell her that I had kept something from Daniel for our entire married life.
I’ve always treasured the feeling of having been chosen as one more link in a chain of connection going back over three hundred years, to the first time Juliana wrote down her thoughts in a notebook. Even more amazing, I am only the sixth in this line: Mercedes, Luz, Dolores, Lizzie, Jenny, me. When I think of all that has happened in the world in that time, of all of the miles traveled, of all of the joys and sorrows, it’s almost beyond comprehension. And yet, because of the faithfulness of this handful of women, we know something of the life of a woman who lived so long ago. We are a part of all of them, our foremothers.
Sometimes I wonder whether Mercedes’s plan to dilute the message of her mother’s life worked instead to preserve it. Maybe the very secrecy and conditions that Mercedes demanded instilled in each of us the realization of a great responsibility, that without us, the papers would be lost forever.
Having said this, I’m not going to ask you to keep the secret. I wouldn’t be unhappy to think that my Rachel would, after all, know why at times I seemed to pull back. I would love for her to share in the revelations here. Maybe you will want to show your brother, my dearest Gabe, too. My sister, Sandy, and your cousin Carol might also be included. After all, was there really any reason that our grandma chose me, instead of Sandy? I guess that I’m a coward, not having shared the writings myself, but encouraging you to do so. Still, I am breaking half my promise by not asking for your secrecy.
Please don’t judge me harshly for keeping silent. I know that nowadays being open with thoughts and feelings is admired more than it ever was when I was young. Still, I hope you’ll find what you inherit worth knowing, our family’s line for centuries, and the lives of women who, like us, had some choices in life but also found themselves in circumstances that augmented or deformed them.
I’d also like to tell you a little something of myself, as other secret holders have done. I always loved my grandma Jenny. She would come to stay with us in the city in winter but in summer returned to her home in the country, so that she could be close to the place where her husband had been buried, long before I was born. She used to let me brush her silver, silken hair, and try to put the tortoiseshell combs in it. I’m sure I often hurt her head, but she never complained.
It was Grandma Jenny who taught me to love books. When my mom had scolded me for something, she would often then take pity on me and suggest that I might want to look for Grandma. I’d knock on Grandma’s door, and she would usher me in, book already in hand, and we would escape. Perhaps she wasn’t just introducing me to her favorite world. Perhaps she was also preparing me for the gift tha
t she had very early on decided it would be my privilege to receive.
As the years passed, Grandma started to stay with us year-round, as even she admitted that her home in the country was too isolated. On my eighteenth birthday, in that hours-long lull between receiving everyone’s morning good wishes and the evening’s special supper and cake, Grandma asked me to join her in her room. As I had grown and no longer needed her to read to me, I had still spent many happy hours with her over the years, sometimes just talking, sometimes reading over letters that she kept in a large box under her bed. She would show me the old stamps and stationery, and also explain who the writers were and what relationship they bore to our family. She would read short excerpts from some, but only passages she thought would be of interest to me. Most of the letters were from friends and older relatives of hers already gone, and contained only the most superficial news, such as do most letters, which convey nothing of universal significance but somehow manage to give the recipient a general feeling of care and love.
Seated there in her old wicker rocker, Grandma asked me to get the box out. We had been through the letters so many times over the years, and I didn’t really want to spend time on my birthday to look at them again, but I handed it to her. Grandma took out all of the letters, put them on the edge of her bed, and, with some difficulty, removed the bottom of the box. The “bottom” she had taken out, which I had seen countless times, with the old-fashioned Valentine’s card pasted onto it, was false.
The Lines Between Us Page 26