Royce

by D. Hamilton-Reed

  It was her best friend Juanita who saw him coming back time after time and leaving wiping tears and she called him over and said, “Look I know where Hennie is. Promise me you mean to do right by her,” and he said, “I do, I promise, I’ll take care of her,” and she told him where she was even as she saw Hennie’s father come outside and stand on the porch and glare at her and Walker hopped in his car and drove the two hours south of Boston.

  “…I didn’t see your father for months and my belly grew and I felt the baby move and knew my father was right. I couldn’t raise a baby alone and I was ready to do as he said,” Royce listened enchanted as she told her story, “And then I saw the red and white Cadillac driving up fast to the convent and I couldn’t believe Wally was there and that he’d found me,” Royce saw her smile, and she continued...

  Walker knew one thing in the months he hadn’t seen her and that was that he loved her, desperately loved her and he didn’t know how he could do it, but he knew he was going to graduate and work for his father and he knew somehow he would take care of her. He knew he couldn’t marry her, she was a Negro, but he could take care of her and he told her so. He ran up the convent steps, “Hennie, don’t do this Hennie! I’ll take care of you I promise, I promise Hennie, come with me please Hennie,” he begged her and at first she wouldn’t listen, she thought her father’s plan was best. She could go back to nursing school, move on with her life, but Wally came back and kept coming back and each time she grew bigger. The baby moved and kicked inside her and she felt it and she knew how that baby was made.

  It wasn’t some fly by night one night stand. They’d been doing it for months in the back seat of that Cadillac fogging up the windows before that baby was made, it had been made out of hot passion, heat, sweating, panting and declarations of love, and she knew they’d made that baby the day before he was leaving to go back to Texas for the summer. It was in June and he came to pick her up and he wanted to love her as much as possible he said, so they picked up hamburgers, French fries and a couple bottles of root beer from the local diner and drove out to the make out spot they frequented. After they’d eaten they climbed in the back seat and made love and when they were done the first time and she lay in Wally’s arms, they draped his shirt over them and talked and he stroked her body and kissed her and he couldn’t stop kissing her and when he was ready they did it again, and when he was ready a third time they did it again. “I want to love you enough to last all summer,” he’d said, and they’d stayed too long because he took her home late and her father was fit to be tied. She knew that baby was made from love and she loved Wally she really did.

  “…I loved your father and I loved that baby growing inside me. I knew that baby had been made with love and I knew how brave he was being to take this on. We couldn’t marry I knew that and so did he, his father would have disowned him as mine had done me. My father said I couldn’t come home if I didn’t give our baby up, so we were realistic about that, we couldn’t marry, but Wally promised he’d take care of us. That he’d work for his father and take care of us if I’d just agree to come with him he’d take care of us and finally I put my faith in Wally and I said yes, yes I’ll come with you. And that March, just before my birthday I gave birth to Wallace, and Wally lied and told the nuns if they tried to take my baby his daddy was a big time lawyer he’d sue them, so they didn’t touch my baby they let me hold him and touch him and they showed me how to take care of him and he paid them to keep me until he graduated and that June after he marched down the aisle he came and got me and the baby.

  He loaded us up in his Cadillac and we drove to Texas and I was scared to death. I’d never been down south, but I’d heard stories. We traveled pretty much without incident, he drove and when he stopped for food he went and got it and if it was a white place sometimes I’d hide down on the seat with a blanket over me and the baby, if it was the Negro part of town we both got out and went inside. We stayed the night in the Negro part of town too and we only had one scare and that was in Tennessee. I was laying on the backseat under our blanket nursing the baby. I did that so big truck drivers wouldn’t see me and this one time I raised up and right beside us were police officers and I saw them look surprised to see me pop up like that and they pulled Wally over.

  “Where you going with that pretty gal across state lines?” They said seeing his Texas license plates and I was nervous and scared, “I’m taking her to Texas, she’s going to work for my mother,” Wally told them. “Whose baby is that?” I knew they’d seen my little almost white baby. He had blue eyes just like his daddy and I fell in love with him the minute he was born and I was glad I’d chosen to go with Wally. I would have never been happy wondering where he was or what was happening to him, but anyway your daddy looked them square in the eye and said, “It’s her baby who’d you think it was?” The cop nodded and walked away.”

  Royce drank his tea as he listened and he was fascinated hearing her story about his father being young, in love, and desperate, it sounded like a completely different person than the man he grew up with. He looked around the room and he saw a picture of Hennie when she was young, it was a head shot, a high school graduation picture. Her hair was short and waved and flipped out and her shoulders bare and she was wearing some kind of fur shawl and she was slightly looking over her shoulder and he knew that was the Hennie his father fell in love with, so was his father like him? Was he Louie too? He had a taste of brown sugar and was lost to it?

  Hennie continued, “And when we got to Texas, Wally said he knew of an area where they were building new houses for factory workers, people of color and that he’d buy me a house…”

  “I told you I’d take care of you,” Walker said and he showed Hennie the new tract houses they were building close to the factories. Hennie saw those houses and they were small, definitely not what she had in mind for what she needed, but there was a street Holzer Street that ran alongside the neighborhood and it was Holzer Street you turned onto from Bell Street that divided the neighborhoods, on one side of Holzer were the tract homes and on the other was the white neighborhood. It was a nice older neighborhood and right on the corner was a house, a big yellow house with a “For Sale” sign in front of it. “I like that house Wally.”

  Walker knew it was on the white side, “I’ll check into it, okay,” and he called the agent who said, “I can’t keep nobody in that house since they built those factory homes, it’s too close to the coloreds and Mexicans and right next door it’s got two families of Jews,” she told him this shaking her head after she sold it to him and Walker didn’t care he bought Hennie the house she wanted, and Hennie wanted the house because it was big. She took one piece of advice from her father who found out what she was up too when she didn’t come home, “Hennie don’t be stupid, you going off with that white boy it don’t set right with me and I don’t think it’ll last but don’t be stupid. Take whatever money he give you. Don’t be proud you got another mouth to feed, but always put some away and whatever he buy for you make sure he put your name on it, so when the day come he leave you and he will leave you you’ll have money in your pocket and something to show for it,” he told her.

  Walker paid cash for the house and put it in her name and the agent didn’t care as long as she sold it, and Hennie loved that it had Negros on one side and she didn’t care about Jews, and she didn’t know anything about Mexicans had never even seen a Mexican so she didn’t care about them either. She had a home. She thought she was going to rent the rooms out, it was a large house, it was three stories really. It had a finished attic, a second floor and first floor. The second floor and attic were bedrooms and the first floor had a master bedroom with formals, a small family room, large kitchen and outside there was a little yellow detached one car garage.

  “…Wally bought me this house on Tillman Street and a car, an Oldsmobile Super 88 and he had to teach me to drive,” she chuckled, “And oh I was a terror at first." 'Slow down Hennie you’re gonna kill me and the ba
by,' he would say, but he taught me until I learned and I was going to rent the rooms out when your daddy left me, that’s what I thought I’d do. I’d put my faith in Wally but I was under no illusions that it might not work out, but we kept filling those rooms with babies,” she laughed and said, “After I had Wallace in 1953, I had Hollis in 1955, then Warren in 1958 and then I had Pauline in 1960, our first daughter but that was the year he married your momma. He got married in June 1960 and I had Pauline in July, and that’s when we broke it off. I told him I wasn’t going with another woman’s husband! He had to get married you see, his father wanted him to give him grand children like his brothers and sisters. He was the oldest, a man of thirty and your grandfather was tired of him stalling and was wondering what was the hold up on him marrying and settling down and he didn’t know it was me and he already had children.”

  Hennie was wrong on that Walker’s father did know about her and the children and told Walker, “I know about your negra. I know you keep her and your half negra children over off Tillman Street, but now I want legitimate grand children from you. I’m tired of making excuses on why you’re not married, you’re a grown man of thirty, now settle down and find a proper wife or you’ll never inherit Harrington Industries. You can keep your negra mistress, I don’t care about that, many a white man like a little sass in their women. They like saucy and sassy women who do wild things in the bedroom, I’m not one of them,” his father said and Walker was wondering who he was talking about. Hennie wasn’t saucy and sassy, she was just Hennie and he loved her, but in the end his livelihood and future won out and he wanted to run Harrington Industries, so he started meeting daughters of the wealthy in the state of Texas and it was Allison Whitehurst of Austin who won him over. She was young, only twenty-one and she was beautiful, had knock out green eyes and blonde hair, he found her very attractive and he liked her soft southern personality.

  “…He met your momma and fell in love and I knew it was over. We’d had ten good years together and I was okay with that. They planned a huge beautiful June wedding, I read all about it in the paper, the paper had a picture of him dressed in his tuxedo and her in her white wedding gown and I was happy for Wally. I knew he couldn’t marry me, but I was pregnant at the time he got married, while he was on his honeymoon I gave birth to Pauline and like Wallace she was her daddy all over again, and I loved her and I thought she was going to be the last child I had with him…,”

  “Why do you call him Wally?” Royce asked still fascinated at the story. He was imagining his father young, fiery, passionate, and in love. He’d already drunk two glasses of tea he was so engrossed. Hennie continued and he reached for the pitcher on the coffee table again, “Well I started off calling him Walker, but Walker always sounded so stiff, so proper and pompous and that wasn’t the guy I was with. He was fun, we laughed, we had fun dancing the night away,” and she didn’t want to say and he thrilled the hell out of her in the back seat of his Cadillac, he wasn’t prim and proper Walker then. “He just wasn’t a Walker to me, so I started calling him Wally and it stuck,” she said, “That’s why I named our first son Wallace, it was a play off the name Wally, but when we got to Texas it helped, it was best we call him by a different name so people wouldn’t get suspicious. Your family is prominent around here and I was meeting people and making my own life and the kids were growing up, it helped keep our relationship from people who might have a problem with it and cause us harm, so we all know him as Wally.” “Oh,” Royce said understanding.

  “Well where was I? Oh yes, when your father married your momma he was happy and in love I knew that and we had agreed to stop seeing each other,” and Royce smiled at that, at least he loved his mother, “And we did, he didn’t come see us on Thanksgiving or Christmas that year like he usually did and the children were sad and wondered where their father was, and I told them he wasn’t coming around anymore, and it was alright we was okay your father had given me lots of money over the years, and he still put money in my bank account every month like he promised. He took care of us. We always had food on the table, the milkman left milk on our porch and we had ice for the ice box and I had put a little away like my daddy told me too, but then right around my birthday I saw his car pull up in the driveway and he got out and came in through the back screened in porch like he always did and the kids were so happy to see him. They ran to greet him and he was happy to see them too, he was smiling and happy, and I said, 'Wally what you doing around here?' And he said, 'I came to see my children, can’t a man come around to see his children,' and I couldn’t deny him that, so he started coming back around, and for my birthday he gave me a mink stole and said, 'This is for the time I was away, for Christmas and everything,' and just like that we were back to the way it was.

  He had his place at the head of the table and he came around like he used to, and he changed a few things, instead of spending Thanksgiving with us, we fixed our Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday, and instead of Christmas he spent Christmas Eve with us and we opened our presents then, but he always spent my birthday and his with us.” “How? I mean I don’t know how, he was always with us on his birthday,” Royce said, and Hennie looked at him, “I said we changed a few things,” she smiled at him, “He changed his birthday for you all, he’d already been spending his birthday with us for years, he couldn’t change it for us we knew the date, your father’s birthday was May 29, 1931, exactly two months after mine. I was born March 29, 1931. We use to kid each other that we were meant to be together.”

  Royce looked at her surprised and said, “But his birthday was…” “June third, I know that’s what he told you all. Check the obituary, he told you all that to make this work,” Hennie said, and Royce understood, his father had lied about his birthday so he could be with his mistress and other family.

  “He didn’t mean to, it was just how he worked things out. Well when he started coming back over to see the children one thing led to another and before we knew it he and I were back together too. I’m not proud of it, but he was the one man, the only man I have ever loved and I loved him, loved him deeply. And from there the babies kept coming for me and your momma. Your mother had your brother Tommy in 1962 and I had Collette in 1963. Your momma had your sister Alice Ann in 1965 and I had my Thomas in 1966, your momma had you August 4, 1968 and I had Holly Ann ten days later on August fourteenth and then it seemed both me and your momma was done having babies,” and she stopped and looked at Royce.

  Royce was stunned by this story, “So how do you know so much about us and we don’t know anything about you?” He asked. “Well…he talked about you all, we asked about you all. We saw things in the paper about you. You were his public family, so everyone knew about you, including us…, but we had a good life together. We shared and had good times…Here take a look at this,” she pointed to a photo album on the coffee table.

  Royce picked it up and looked through it and he saw pictures of the children, his father, Hennie, all at various ages and times, Christmas, Thanksgiving, “Hollis took most of these he was our budding photographer.” Royce scanned through the book and saw his father in pajamas reading the paper a child on his lap, in some his father is smiling and in some he’s looking at the camera as if to say, “Don’t take my picture I mean it,” and there was one that was his favorite. It was black and white and it captured to Royce the true essence of his father. The picture was taken in the kitchen, the same kitchen he’d seen when he walked in. Hennie was in the background in a bathrobe cooking at the stove, children of various ages and sizes were sitting around the table in pajamas, and his father was sitting at the head of the table in a robe and pajamas and he was reading the paper, but in this shot he’d pulled the paper down to one side because it looked like he listening to one of his children. He was looking at one of the boys and he was smiling as the boy was talking to him and it looked like the perfect father with the perfect family and Royce thought it could have been him, his father could have been him.

 
He finished looking through the book and he felt his emotions getting the best of him, and he felt the tears, his father was happy with them. This wasn’t making sense, “I don’t understand, if he had you why…Why would he do what he did to me?” He said through his tears, and Hennie looked sadly at him, “Your father was a complicated and complex man and he believed certain things, it was part of his era, his way of thinking. I can’t defend him… but I might have something that can explain it to you,” she said, “Holly Ann! Holly Ann!” Holly Ann came in, “Go look on the top of my bureau and bring me…I have a little wooden box where I keep little things. You’ll see it, bring that to me baby,” and she saw Royce wiping his eyes. “I loved your father and I was with him for fifty-two years and it took fifty-two years for him to break my heart.”

  Holly Ann came back in with the box and Hennie opened it and rummaged through it and pulled out a letter and handed it to Royce. On the envelope there was one word, “Hennie,” and he recognized the handwriting. He opened the letter and began to read,

  Hennie,

  I’ve been a fool. I never meant to hurt you, never meant to hurt my boy and I’ve done both listening to a stupid girl in a library. I know you won’t forgive me for what I’ve done and it took me a long time to realize how foolish I’ve been. Please try and forgive me…

  It took Walker many years to write that letter and to see what he’d done. And it all came from one innocent ordinary day.

  Walker and Hennie had been in bed and they’d been together fifty-two years and shared everything together. He told Hennie everything and couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t talked to her. He told her about business deals and got her advice and he talked about Allison, his children Tommy, Alice Ann and Royce. It was Hennie who told him to let Royce go to Tech, “Look if it’ll make him happy and you say he wants to run the ranch. Well he doesn’t need a Harvard degree to do that, let him go to Texas Tech. Tommy has the Harvard degree and he’s going to run the company anyway right,” and he agreed and he loved seeing the smile on Royce’s face when he told him he could go to Texas Tech.