Leigh

by Lyn Cote

  Leigh looked down at her lap, fisting her hands. No. No.

  Bette sat up, looking relieved. “So you’ll keep Dory and Leigh for the rest of the week?”

  Leigh could defy her mother, but not her grandmother. She recognized this, but couldn’t explain it. She blinked back frustrated tears. Defeat tasted bitter. This can’t be happening.

  “Bette, while I agree to some extent with what you’ve said,” Chloe continued, “I can’t do what you want me to do.”

  Leigh’s head snapped up to see her grandmother’s face.

  Bette leaned forward. “Why not?”

  Chloe met their eyes. “Because I’m going to attend the march myself.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Shocked silence reigned in the summer house. Then Leigh squealed, “Grandma, we can go together! This is so cool!” She leaped to her feet and ran to hug Chloe.

  “ Mother”Bette opened her mouth and babbled, “have you lost your mind?”

  “Bette, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you.” Chloe let Leigh hug her and then pushed her to go back to her seat. “But your stepfather and I discussed it, and we’ve decided to go and show our support for civil rights. You know we’ve been hoping and praying for the end of Jim Crow since before you were born.”

  “But to actually attend a march, Mother.”Bette stared at her, her mouth still open.

  “You can’t stop me from going now,” Leigh declared. “Not if Grandma and Grandpa are going.”

  Bette’s gaze went from her mother to her daughter’s, and then sharpened. “You are still my daughter,” she stated firmly. “And you will not—”

  The sound of a car horn blaring from the drive interrupted the conversation.

  Chloe stood up, joy flashing over her face. “They’re here!” She hurried out of the summer house, nearly running toward the front of the house, calling, “Minnie! Minnie!”

  With open arms, an older Negro woman met Chloe in the drive. They crashed together—hugging, laughing, weeping. Leigh stood back, wondering who this woman was and why she was so special to her grandmother. And did any of this have anything to do with Wednesday’s march?

  Leigh couldn’t take it all in. That evening, the white-linen-covered dining room table at Ivy Manor was crowded with family—her own, including her stepfather (who’d arrived just as they sat down), her grandparents, and three strangers. At least strangers Leigh had heard of but never met. These were Mrs. Minnie Dawson (whose stage name was Mimi Carlyle), her husband, Frank Dawson, and their grandson, Frank Dawson III, who had been away in college. In her late eighties, Minnie’s frail mother, Jerusha—who’d still been the housekeeper at Ivy Manor when Leigh was a little girl—had also joined them.

  Minnie was very attractive for her age—she had a nice figure and was well-dressed, with only a touch of gray in her hair. Her husband matched her in good looks and fashionable clothing, as did their grandson.

  While this wasn’t the first time Leigh had seen Negroes sit at her grandmother’s table, Leigh sensed these strangers were different… special. Chloe and Minnie kept touching hands, grinning at each other and wiping away tears with embroidered hankies. From their conversation, Leigh understood this wasn’t a reunion of two friends long separated. Her grandmother and Minnie talked of visits over the years. But the visits had apparently been in New York City rather than at Ivy Manor. The tears, the auspicious quality of the moment, came from Minnie’s long-awaited homecoming—after having spent nearly fifty years away.

  Leigh listened with avid interest to Chloe’s explanation that Minnie and she had grown up together at Ivy Manor and had gone off to New York City in 1917. Minnie had ended up as an actress there. It sounded like a story from a book, but the truth was sitting here right in front of her.

  Delighting in the history lesson, Leigh asked several questions. After a while, though, she noticed Minnie’s grandson, whom they called “Frank Three,” glancing her way a few times, looking amused. Something about his looks made her feel very young and even gawky. Embarrassed, she curtailed her comments, answering just yes and no to questions sent her way. This was not like herself at all, especially here at Ivy Manor.

  After a dinner that passed with laughter and much banter (some of which Leigh didn’t fully understand), she was sent upstairs to put Dory to bed. She kept the door to the hallway open as she tucked her sister into the trundle bed for the night. Snatches of conversation floated up to her.

  “I’ll never forget the first time we saw you on the stage.” That from her grandfather Roarke, she assumed, to Minnie.

  “Oh Bette, I loved picking out your prom dress.” That from Minnie. Why did Minnie pick my mother’s prom dress?

  “I can’t believe I’m really here.” That from Minnie, repeated one more time. “And sitting at the dining room table.” She chuckled. “Chloe, what would your parents say if they could see us now?”

  Leigh heard her grandmother laugh amid the sounds of everyone rising to go sit out in the summer house. But she missed the rest of Chloe’s response because Dory interrupted Leigh’s eavesdropping, reminding her primly she hadn’t said her prayers. Leigh performed the nightly ritual, concluded with hugs and kisses, and then left her sister. She knew the younger girl would get right up and sit at the window watching and listening to the night sounds and the conversation below. She didn’t blame her. The day had turned out so much differently than Leigh could have predicted.

  She walked down the front hallway stairs. With everyone outside, the house felt empty and silent. Leigh decided to use the front door and strolled outside, somehow hesitant to join the adults. Although she’d enjoyed the dinner conversation, hearing facts she’d never known about her grandmother’s life and from strangers had struck her as… odd. It pressed her to change how she’d thought of her grandmother, as a woman without a past. Why hadn’t I ever thought of Grandma Chloe as young?

  Outside, twilight had taken over the sky in blazing pink and bronze layers and a watermelon-red sun hung suspended just behind the silhouetted tree tops. As she walked down the side of the house, she glimpsed Frank Three standing near the line of poplars along the drive. His skin was the color of coffee with cream; he was tall, lean, and good-looking. He’d shed his sports coat, and his starched white shirt glowed in the dusky light. Her own casual shorts and blouse made her feel at a disadvantage. Wishing she were wearing something more elegant, like his grandmother’s white Chanel sheath, she halted, uncertain of approaching him, uncertain of her welcome.

  With a nod, he acknowledged her. In fact, he appeared to have been waiting for her and now he motioned her to come to him.

  She sucked in a breath. Anywhere but here at Ivy Manor, a conversation between Frank and her would be dangerous, especially to him. But here he was, the grandson of her grand mother’s oldest friend, a welcomed guest. Leigh considered this, gathering her courage. Then she tossed her head, shaking off her fears. This wasn’t 1917. Her hands clasped behind her, through the growing shadows, she sauntered toward him and onto shaky ground. “Hi,” she murmured with what she hoped was the right amount of friendliness.

  “Hi.” He grinned. Then he nodded toward the summer house, where conversation and light laughter continued. “I don’t feel up to any more ‘do-you-remembers.’ Why don’t we take a walk? There’s a river near here, isn’t there?”

  Leigh tingled with uneasiness. In spite of the twin protections here of privacy and family, speaking to Frank challenged her to cross more than one line. He was older than she, and she’d never talked to a Negro boy before and certainly never alone. But then, attending an all-girls school meant that she rarely spoke to white boys either, and also never alone. It was his color, though, that heightened her reaction to him, to the situation. She felt awkward and yet she also felt daring. Speaking to a Negro boy carried many possible consequences. Or was she just prejudiced?

  This thought struck her then with blinding force. She’d wanted to go to Dr. King’s march on Wednesday,
but she realized now she’d intended to go only as an observer, not a participant. Until this moment, civil rights had been abstract to her. It hadn’t been to her grandmother. She and Minnie had grown up here together; they’d helped each other break away from Ivy Manor. And now they were planning to march together on Wednesday as they had back in 1917.

  What did this Negro college boy think of the reunion between their grandmothers? Why was he daring her to step out of her place and his?

  “Meeting you, your family… This is really weird,” he murmured. “Isn’t it?” He glanced in the direction of the voices. “Maybe we should just go to the summer house?”

  His uncertainty matching hers made the difference. She felt the tension inside her loosen. She straightened. “You got that right,” she whispered and gave him a smile. “The creek’s this way.” She led him down the rutted dirt lane toward the nearby wide creek that fed the Patuxent River farther downstream. As they walked, she realized that until that moment she’d thought of him as just a boy. But he wasn’t like the other boys she met. For the first time, she realized, she was alone in the company of a young man.This was unusual enough without anything else added. Waves of reaction to his alien masculinity flowed through her. She hoped she wouldn’t do or say anything stupid and embarrass herself.

  “I had planned to attend King’s civil rights march with a couple of college buddies,” Frank spoke casually as if they weren’t really strangers, “but then my grandmother said no, to come with them. And then one buddy got drafted and the other got a job.”

  Frank’s easy conversation helped Leigh get a feel for him, helped her relax more. “You’re in college?” she asked.

  “Just graduated. I completed a B.S. in mechanical engineering from NYU.”

  Frank was even older than she’d thought. “Congratulations,” she said automatically.

  “Where are you drudging away?” Frank kicked a stone with the polished toe of his brown shoe.

  Leigh hated to admit to still being in high school, but he’d know she was younger than he. “I’m a junior at St. Agnes, a girl’s school in the D.C. area.”

  “Really? I thought you’d be starting college by now.”

  Leigh flushed with pleasure.

  “So you want to go to the march, but your parents, especially your mother, don’t want you to?” he asked lightly.

  “How did you guess that?” Leigh stared up at him as they passed under the tall, tangled oaks, stretching over the lane. The argument over the march had not been referred to at the dinner table.

  “Your mother has a very expressive face.” He chuckled. “Every time the march was mentioned she frowned—usually at you.”

  “Oh.” Leigh didn’t want him to get the wrong impression. “Mother isn’t against civil rights. She just doesn’t—”

  “Doesn’t want her daughter in a march,” Frank cut in. “My father was the same way when I decided to go south and join a sit-in at a lunch counter in South Carolina.”

  Leigh took in her next breath sharply. Stark black-and-white newspaper photographs of the incidents flooded her. “You did that?” How did you have the courage?

  “Yeah, two summers ago, right after my sophomore year. My father, Frank Two, was afraid I’d get arrested and have that blot on my record to dog me the rest of my life.”

  As they neared the creek, she picked her way over the ruts, patches of grass, and tree roots with care and chose her words the same way. “Did you get arrested?”

  “Yes, twice.” He shrugged. “But it was just a misdemeanor charge, like a parking ticket. No big deal.”

  He must think the controversy over whether I can go to the march is lame.Although she was impressed by his courage, Leigh didn’t think she should remark about it. His casual attitude had set up the way he expected her to react. “You’re lucky,” she said. “You’re older and male. You can get away with… going against your parents. I’m afraid I’m going to miss the march.”

  With one hand, Frank batted a floating swarm of gnats away from his face. “Maybe your grandparents can persuade your mother to let you go with them.”

  “Maybe,” she replied without conviction.

  They arrived at the stream, which was edged by weeping willows, maples, and brush. Frogs bellowed back and forth. The stream rippled in the twilight, reflecting the gold, pink, and red sinking sun behind them.

  Frank took one of the weeping-willow whips in his hand, running it through his palm. “My grandmother has never been back here since she left in 1917. I’ve heard about Ivy Manor all my life, but I never thought I’d be here.” He glanced over his shoulder at the distant lights from the house.

  “Really? I love it.” Leigh mimicked Frank and tugged at a willow whip, feeling the long slender leaves and smooth bark rasp across her palm. “Grandma Chloe and my other grandmother, who lives nearby, always have us—Dory and me—stay for most of the summer. And we visit often.”

  “You don’t know, do you?” Frank asked, releasing the willow branch, which snapped back into place. He turned to face her. The low light illuminated his face, making his large black eyes glimmer. She nearly took a step backward.

  “Know what?”

  “Know that Minnie was your grandmother’s maid?”

  “Well, I suppose that makes sense.” She tickled the underside of her chin with the end of the willow, wondering why he’d brought this up. “I mean, it was the World War I era, wasn’t it?”

  “And did you know that my great-great-grandmother was your grandmother’s mammy?”He said the final word with a disdainful twist, like a taunt.

  Leigh tried to follow the connection through what she knew of Ivy Manor and her grandmother. Was he trying to make her uncomfortable? “You mean Aunt Jerusha’s mother?”

  “Yes.” He gave a sudden twitch and batted away a mosquito.

  She looked down at her open-toed sandals, at the white pearl Maybelline nail polish her mom hated. What was he trying to get from her? She challenged him with a grin. “When I was a little girl, Aunt Jerusha made the best sticky buns.”

  Allowing the moment to lighten, Frank laughed. “She did. She made them for us when she came up to New York to visit us. But it’s interesting you called her Aunt Jerusha. That form of address goes back to slavery, too, you know.”

  Finally, Leigh processed the other part of his original statement. She cocked her head toward him. “A mammy? You mean like in Gone with the Wind?”She’d seen this 1939 film classic in 1960 when it had re-released in theaters.

  “Well, I hate to give any credibility to a movie that portrayed Negroes as preferring slavery to freedom, but yes. Haven’t you ever realized that the Carlyle family, your mother’s family, owned slaves? In fact, owned my ancestors?”

  Leigh felt her mouth open but no words came. The willow whip slid from her fingers, bouncing away from her. Finally, she said, “But Grandmother’s not like that.” I’m not like that.

  “Well, I’m not talking about your grandmother. I’m talking about your ancestors. Maryland wasn’t in the Confederacy, but it was a slave state.” Frank’s tone was merely conversational. He wasn’t giving her any hint of what he might think about this.

  “I know that.” I just never thought of my family as slaveholders. “Are you sure?” For something to do with her hands, she tightened her ponytail by pulling on its ends.

  “Both my grandmother’s family name and your grand mother’s family name was Carlyle. That tells the story.” He took a few steps and leaned a shoulder against a venerable wide oak. “Slaves usually took the name of their masters at the time of emancipation. It also means that we’re probably related by blood, too.”

  Leigh couldn’t believe that this young Negro man was standing here telling her these things as if it were common knowledge. Did everyone else know these things about her family history? Was she the only ignorant one? What else don’t I know?

  “Have I shocked you?” he teased, grinning.

  “I think you wanted to sh
ock me.” The words came out without forethought. “I’ve never had a conversation like this before.”

  He chuckled. “You’re not a kid. Though I think you have a mother who overprotects you. The next time you’re alone with your grandmother, ask her. I’m sure she’ll tell you the truth.”

  His affirmation that she wasn’t a kid and could be trusted to hear such things heartened her. But was he telling her the truth? “Why didn’t Aunt Jerusha ever say anything to me?”

  “Probably for the reason you gave earlier—you’re a young white girl and must be protected from the harsh realities of life and history.” Turning, he rested his head against the trunk, facing her fully.

  The same irritation that she’d felt on the way there that day flushed hot in her stomach. “I don’t want to be protected.”

  “Ah, you may say that—” He lifted one eyebrow in the lowering light. “—but I’ve been unprotected, and it’s not fun.”

  When had he been unprotected? She thought over his words and he gave her time, just watching her. “You mean when you were sitting-in?” she asked finally, hesitantly.

  “I do indeed. You see, I hadn’t realized how much I’d always been hedged in by money, my professional-level family, and living up north where discrimination is more subtle. But two minutes sitting at an all-white lunch counter in South Carolina stripped all that away from me.” His voice firmed, hardened. “People bumped me, struck me from behind, cursed me, aimed catsup down my collar. And then I was dragged, and I do mean dragged,off to jail. If that doesn’t humble you, nothing in this world will.”

  Leigh felt as well as heard the passion seeping into and through his words. Before they’d just been talking about history. Now this young man was revealing himself to her. It was almost as if he were warning her. But of what? “But you went back?”