by Ann Tatlock
Mrs. Nightingale nodded and added, “But we’re grateful, Mrs. Anthony, for your willingness to look after Mara while we’re gone.”
“Well, we’re very happy to have her,” Mom said.
Mara and I exchanged a smile as she pulled off her knit cap and unbuttoned her coat. “Hi, Roz,” she said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m better. But I have to have my tonsils out.”
Mara grimaced and nodded. “I’ve had mine out – ”
“There’s nothing to it, honey,” Mrs. Nightingale said, smiling at me. “Snip, snip, and they’re gone.”
It was the snip-snipping that worried me, but I tried to shrug nonchalantly. “I guess so,” I said.
Tillie came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Hello, Willie, Hester. Mara, honey, let me take your coat. Won’t you all come in and have something to drink?”
Mr. Nightingale repeated his earlier regrets and thanked Tillie for the offer.
“Oh, by the way, Willie, since we’re speaking of driving,” Tillie went on, “the car’s been running better than ever since you gave her that tune-up. You do work wonders, you know.”
Mr. Nightingale smiled shyly. “That’s fine, Mrs. Monroe. I’m glad to hear that. Any time you have problems, you bring the car to me.”
“We will, certainly,” Mom interjected.
Mrs. Nightingale pulled a piece of paper out of her pocketbook and handed it to Mom. “Here’s the number where we’ll be, just in case. Celia Greer, that’s our daughter. We’ll be staying with her.”
Mom looked at the paper and nodded confidently. “I’m sure everything will be fine. You just go enjoy that new grandbaby of yours.”
The Nightingales both smiled broadly at that, their white teeth shining in keen contrast to their dark skin. “We’ll do that, Mrs. Anthony,” Hester Nightingale said. “And thank you again for watching Mara.” She leaned over and kissed Mara’s cheek. “Now you be good, baby, and mind your manners.”
“I will, Mama.”
Her father laid his oversized hand on her head and patted her hair gently. His nails and palms were pink, though the skin on the back of his hand was tough and wrinkled as an elephant’s. “Bye now, baby girl,” he said quietly. “We’ll be back in about a week.”
“All right, Daddy.” She hugged him around the waist, then picked up her suitcases and looked at me. “Where’s your room?” she asked.
“Upstairs. Come on!”
I showed Mara the way and pointed to the bed that would be hers. She dropped the suitcases on it and sat beside them cross-legged. “I’ve been checking your desk at school every day while you’ve been gone,” she said.
“You have?” I sat down on my own bed and cocked my head.
“Yeah. You know, to check on the note to your daddy. It’s still there. He hasn’t come.”
“Oh.” I looked past her to the window, not wanting to lie but afraid to tell her the truth, that I’d seen Daddy at the library. Now that I knew Daddy was in town, and now that I knew what he wanted, I’d get rid of the note in my desk in the morning. “Well – ”
“Maybe whoever left those Sugar Daddies wasn’t your daddy.”
I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry, Roz.”
“It’s all right.”
“I know you were hoping . . .”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. What’s in your suitcases?”
Mara looked at the suitcases wide-eyed. “I’ll show you.” She tapped on one of them, saying, “This is just clothes and stuff, but this one . . .” She finished by pulling the suitcase toward her and popping the two latches. She opened the lid and smiled at me, as though she were showing me a treasure.
“What’s with all the books?” I asked.
“You haven’t done your report on Marie Curie. I’m going to help you get it done, so I checked out every book in the library that says anything about her.”
“All those books are about Madame Curie?”
“Well, not all of them. Some of them I’m just reading for fun. Like this one.” She lifted one of the books so I could see the cover.
I squinted, as much in exasperation as in an effort to read from several feet away. “Greatest American Poems of the Twentieth Century? You read that kind of stuff for fun?”
“Sure! I love poetry. Besides, how am I going to be a great writer if I don’t read important stuff ?” She was beaming. I was frowning. She didn’t seem to notice. “Do you want to start reading about Madame Curie?” she asked.
Schoolwork hadn’t exactly been on my list of things to do when I learned Mara was coming over. But she’d gone to the trouble of getting the books I needed for my report, and anyway, I didn’t want to disappoint her.
“Yeah, okay,” I said with a shrug. “I guess I should get started on that paper.”
I sure hadn’t had any friends in Minneapolis like Mara Nightingale. She was like a grown-up living inside a little girl’s skin. But I liked her, and so far she was my one and only friend in Mills River.
I took the book she offered and together we quietly read about the life and work of Madame Curie until finally, to my relief, Tillie called us down to supper.
That night, when I turned out the bedroom light at nine o’clock, Mara turned on a transistor radio she’d brought along with her.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Listening to a show. Will it bother you?”
“No, it’s all right. What is it?”
“The Literary Hour With William Remmick. Though I don’t know why they call it that, since it only lasts a half hour.”
“I never heard of it.”
“No, I didn’t think you would have. It’s coming out of Chicago.”
“What’s it about?”
“You know, books and stuff. Professor Remmick, he interviews authors and talks about their books. Stuff like that.”
The radio was turned down low, nestled on the pillow close to Mara’s ear. I heard the murmur of voices, first a man’s voice, then a woman’s. I couldn’t quite make out the words, but I knew I wouldn’t be interested anyway. I wondered why Mara wanted to listen to a show like that. I wondered even more why she’d rather listen to a grown-up talk show than talk with me. Mom had told us to go to sleep, but I’d have gladly lain awake whispering in the dark with Mara, and would have too, if it hadn’t been for the radio putting a wedge between us.
I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice when I said, “Do you listen to this show every night?”
“No,” she said. “Just Sundays and Wednesdays. That’s when it’s on.”
“Oh, okay.” I lay on my back in the dark, looking up at the ceiling. Laughter came from the radio, and Mara chuckled along with it. I felt like I’d been abandoned. “Well, I’m going to sleep now. Good night, Mara.”
“Good night, Roz.”
She probably thought I drifted off, but I didn’t. Not quite, anyway. I might have been right on the edge of sleep, but after a time my dreams got snagged by the show’s theme song rising up from Mara’s pillow. Mara must have turned the volume up a notch, because I heard the man’s voice say, “That’s it for tonight, folks. We’ll see you again on Wednesday, when we’ll be interviewing best-selling author J. P. Westmoreland. Until then, this is William Remmick saying good-night and thank you for joining us. And good night to you, Beatrice. Sweet dreams.”
And then Mara’s soft voice drifted toward me as she whispered to that faraway man, “Good night, Daddy. I love you.”
The radio clicked off, the room fell silent, and in another moment Mara’s steady breathing told me she was asleep.
chapter
19
In the morning, I didn’t say anything to Mara about the man on the radio. But over the next three days, as we went to school, worked on homework, ate supper, helped Tillie with dishes, played with Valerie, and fell asleep side by side in the twin beds in my room, I regarded her with n
o small amount of suspicion. I had heard that crazy people could appear completely normal, and I wondered whether that was the case with Mara Nightingale. I thought maybe her dreams had carried her into a fantasyland and somehow imprisoned her there, though imprisoned may not be the right word. Maybe she wanted to stay in that place of make-believe, where some guy on the radio was her father. Maybe she was happier there than in the real world, since in the real world her daddy was a mechanic and not a professor of literature.
I couldn’t wait for Wednesday night. I wanted to see what Mara would do when the show came on again.
At nine o’clock I turned out the light. I heard the radio click on in the dark.
“Will it bother you?” she asked.
“No. It’s all right. It won’t keep me awake.”
“Good night, then, Roz.”
“Good night, Mara.”
I didn’t close my eyes. I pinched my earlobes against sleep as I listened to the low rumbling of Professor Remmick’s voice. I heard Mara alternately sigh and softly laugh. After my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could make out the shape of her in the other bed. Her hand rested on the radio by her ear, and by the end of the half hour the little box was pressed against her cheek.
Then, as on Sunday night, the closing tune began to play, and this man named William Remmick signed off, saying, “That’s it for tonight, folks. We’ll see you again on Sunday, when my colleague Dr. Margaret Jamison will join us to talk about what’s new in the New York Times Book Review. Until then, this is William Remmick saying good-night and thank you for joining us. And good night to you, Beatrice. Sweet dreams.”
And then, as on Sunday night, Mara whispered, “Good night, Daddy. I love you.”
The radio clicked off. Mara placed it on the table between the beds, sighed, and rolled over. But this time I wasn’t going to let it go.
I sat up and turned on the light. Mara, blinking, looked at me over her shoulder. For a long moment, neither of us spoke.
Then finally she said, “I thought you were asleep.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Well, I wasn’t.”
She sat up and nodded. Her face was placid; her lips hinted at a smile. “Roz?”
I hesitated. My heart was pounding. She was scaring me, and I was ready to run, if need be. “Yeah?” I said.
“I want to read you something.”
“Um, okay.”
She had placed the radio on top of a paperback book. She reached for that book now, and when she opened it I saw it was the book of poetry she’d brought along, Greatest American Poems of the Twentieth Century.
She found her page, glanced up at me, and began to read. “ ‘Cross,’ ” she said, “ ‘by Langston Hughes.’ ” She looked at me again, uneasily now, and took a deep breath. In a quiet, almost faltering voice, she read, “ ‘My old man’s a white old man, and my old mother’s black.’ ” She stopped, shifted nervously, then sat up straighter and crossed her legs. She went on then, and though her voice went up in volume I didn’t hear what she was saying. The first words of the poem were stuck in spin cycle in my head. A white old man? A black old mother? What was Mara trying to tell me? When she stopped once more she paused for so long I thought she was finished.
“Mara?” I said.
She didn’t look at me, but raised one index finger to tell me to wait. She went on to read about the old man dying in a nice big house while the woman died in a shack, and finally, her voice dropping to a whisper, she concluded, “ ‘I wonder where I’m gonna die, being neither white nor black.’ ”
With that, she closed the book, pressed her lips together, and raised her eyes to mine. Those two dark eyes were filled with something I couldn’t quite understand. Sadness? Shame? Longing?
I thought of the couple who had dropped Mara off at our house, the man and the woman in worn old coats, sadly outdated hats and shoes – and yet, on top of everything, a cloak of quiet dignity. Was she trying to tell me that this couple, Willie and Hester Nightingale, were not her father and mother after all but some sort of adoptive parents?
“Mara?” I asked quietly, drawing my knees up to my chest in a kind of protective stance.
“Roz, I want to tell you something no one else knows. At least, not many people.”
Why? I wanted to ask. Why me? I hugged my knees more tightly.
As though in answer to my unasked question, she said, “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“And I can trust you, right?”
I nodded.
She beckoned me over to her bed with a crook of her finger. Hesitantly, I unlocked my arms and willed my legs to carry me the short distance between the beds. When I arrived, claiming a spot on the quilt, she reached beneath the neck of her nightgown and pulled out the locket she always wore. Fingers trembling, she opened it and held it up for me to see.
Inside were two oval photographs, each one smaller than a dime. I leaned forward to get a better look. On the right side was a beautiful young Negro woman, hardly older than a teenager and looking hauntingly like Mara. The other was a white man, slightly older, fair-haired, serious and unsmiling, his eyes intelligent. Mara didn’t say anything, as though the pictures themselves told the whole story. I gazed at them, waiting. Finally I looked to Mara in search of an answer.
“My mama and daddy,” she whispered.
I gasped.
She nodded. She pinched the locket, and I heard it clasp. She tucked it back under her nightgown, where it rested against her heart.
“You mean, the Nightingales aren’t your real parents?” I asked.
She shook her head. “They’re my grandparents.”
“Then who are . . .” I pointed to her chest, where the locket lay hidden.
“My mama’s the one in Detroit who just had the baby, the one Mama and Daddy are visiting.”
I was confused. “You mean your sister?”
“No. I have to tell people she’s my sister, but she’s not. She’s my real mother. She had me when she was eighteen.”
“Why didn’t she keep you?”
“She couldn’t marry my daddy.”
“And he’s . . .” Again, I pointed toward the locket.
She nodded, laying her hand over her chest. “He’s the professor,” she said. “William Remmick.”
My eyes widened, and I knew my mouth hung open foolishly, but I couldn’t help it. “The man on the radio really is your father?”
She nodded again, silently.
“But how do you know that?”
“My mama” – she tapped at her chest – “she told me. She gave me these pictures.”
“But . . . but . . .” I was having trouble gathering my thoughts. “He calls you Beatrice. On the radio he says good-night to Beatrice.”
“That’s right. That’s my real name.”
“It is?”
“He told my mother, if I was a girl, to name me Beatrice after a character in one of Shakespeare’s plays. He said Beatrice was strong and independent and intelligent, and that’s what he wanted me to be. So he calls me Beatrice, but Mama gave me the middle name Mara, and that’s what everyone calls me.”
“But, how come? Why doesn’t she just call you Beatrice too?”
“She thought Mara fit better. It’s from the Bible, from the story of Ruth and Naomi. In the Old Testament, in Hebrew, Mara means bitter.”
“But,” I said, cocking my head, “you’re not bitter.”
“No, it’s mama. She’s the one who’s bitter.”
I thought a moment. “Because she couldn’t marry your daddy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Because he’s white and she’s black?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it wasn’t against the law, was it?”
“No. By that time it wasn’t against the law. But his family didn’t want it, and neither did mine. My grandma and grandpa threw a fit. They said they’d never allow their daughter to marry a white man.”
“They did?”
I thought of how Tillie said the Nightingales had worked with her on civil rights in Mills River. “What do your grandparents have against white people?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Mara said. “Or not much, anyway. I mean, they let me stay with you when I asked them if I could, didn’t they?”
“Well, sure. But so?”
“But marrying a white person, that’s another thing. They didn’t want their daughter marrying William Remmick. They said it was a sure recipe for disaster. You can’t have whites and Negroes getting married and not expect them to have troubles every day for the rest of their lives. And the kids . . .” Mara looked away and shook her head. “The kids aren’t white, and they aren’t Negro. Neither one. They don’t belong anywhere at all. That’s why my grandparents want me to pass for a full Negro. Anyway, I’d never pass for a full white, would I?”
She looked at me, waiting for an answer. I shook my head slowly. I watched as she laid her hand slowly over the hidden locket again.
“Your mom and daddy,” I said, “did they love each other?”
To my surprise Mara’s eyes glazed over. But her face turned stern; she seemed determined not to cry. “I believe they still do. At least a little bit, anyway.”
“But your mom – she’s married to someone else?”
Mara nodded. “To Raymond Greer. He’s all right, I guess. They have three kids together.”
“And your dad?”
“He’s married too. He has two boys and a girl. But I only know that because he’s mentioned them on the radio show.”
“All those kids – they’re your half brothers and sisters.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know them?”
“I know Mama’s girls, but I haven’t met the new little boy, Jeremiah. The one just born.”
“You don’t know your dad’s children?”
“I don’t know my dad, Roz. I never met him.” Tears pooled in her eyes again. She brushed them away. “But someday I will. Someday, I’m going to meet him.”
“You think he wants to meet you?”
“I know he does, Roz. I believe he’s waiting for that day too.”
“Well, why doesn’t he come see you now? What’s he waiting for?”