Henry reached for his hat and realized he still hadn't retrieved it from Emma Lynn.
"What's going on with you, Henry? We used to tell each other everything. We were a united front against our brothers the barbarians. Now you're keeping secrets from me. You've been acting strangely for weeks. Are you in some sort of trouble?"
Trouble? Yeah, I'm in quite a bit of trouble, Henry thought.
He stared at his older brother for a moment. John, the level headed one. The only Miller he could relate to. Surely John would understand. And it would be cathartic to finally get all these emotions off of his chest.
Though he knew no one was outside at this time of night, Henry still didn't want to take the chance of being overheard. "Let's go upstairs and I'll tell you everything."
In the small apartment the Millers called home, their parents occupied one bedroom, the twins the other. John and Henry were relegated to the living room. Their father tried to say it was because both of them had jobs that required them to wake up very early in the morning. But when they weren't on strike, their father and the twins had to leave just as early.
Henry tossed his bag in the corner then paced the small rectangle also called the living room floor while John made himself comfortable on the sofa.
"Well, spit it out," John said after several minutes of Henry's pacing.
After taking a deep breath, he blurted, "I'm in love." Already, he felt like a boulder had been lifted from his chest.
John nodded. "I knew it. It's Rebecca Jane isn't it? That's why you smell like sugar. You were at the Goodwins’ Confectionary tonight, weren't you?"
"Well, yes, but —"
"And that's why Charles invited you to the reception Saturday night. He wants to get to know his future brother-in-law, doesn't he?" John smiled proudly. Even he was being influenced by the Goodwin's money.
"No, he —"
"Well, I can see how this would be a problem." John leaned back and pinched his chin. "She's practically engaged to Frank Gibson."
"No, John, I'm not in love with Rebecca Jane."
John stared at him in confusion. "Then whom?"
Henry took another deep breath. "Emma Lynn." Once again he had meant to say it with the conviction he felt, but instead it came out as barely a whisper.
"I don't understand."
"Emma Lynn. I'm in love with Emma Lynn." Each time he said it, he felt more confident.
John's brow wrinkled in thought. "The Emma Lynn I know is Negro. Is there another one?"
Henry shook his head.
"You're in love with a lying, thieving Negro?" John said standing from the sofa.
"Yes … No. She's not —"
"I can't believe this. Do you know what she did to Frank Gibson just yesterday? She dressed up like Rebecca Jane and tricked him into kissing her."
The confidence Henry felt just seconds ago quickly crumbled. Was this possible? Henry sat on the floor and put his head in his hands.
"If you don't believe me just ask your new friend Charles. He'll tell you," John continued.
Henry had a hard time focusing on John's words. He was too busy thinking of Emma. Why would she do that? Could that be why she was beaten? Maybe it was retaliation from Frank.
"Were you in her bed tonight?" John asked pulling Henry away from his thoughts.
"No. Well, yes, technically speaking, but it's not like you think. I—"
"That's disgusting Henry. You better hope our parents don't find out. Or anyone else for that matter. No self respecting woman will want you if they know you lay with Negros." John pulled off his pants and prepared to crawl into his bed on the sofa. It was actually Henry's turn to sleep on the sofa and John's turn to sleep on the floor, but Henry wasn't about to bring that up given the circumstances.
Henry rubbed his temples as he studied a speck on the cement floor.
"Don't beat yourself up about it, Henry," John said unfolding a blanket over him. "Everyone makes mistakes. Just forget it ever happened. Forget about Emma Lynn."
John completely misinterpreted Henry's reaction. There was no way he would forget about Emma. While this information about Frank Gibson raised some new questions in his mind, it in no way changed Henry's feelings for her. It did, however, convince him to not trust John ever again.
Sleep was a pointless endeavor that night. His mind kept replaying images of Emma Lynn, Charles, Rebecca Jane and even Frank Gibson. Frank Gibson, who thought Emma Lynn was Rebecca Jane . Then suddenly, it all became clear.
Relative Truth
Henry waited in the alley behind the Goodwin home for Emma Lynn to appear. After several minutes passed he assumed she was still asleep from the medication he gave her. He left the milk on the back porch and then headed toward the cellar window. He just had to get one glimpse of her. He didn't know if he could make it through the day without seeing her face.
As soon as he touched the window he heard a bottle crash. Looking up, he saw a figure stumbling down the alley. An obviously inebriated Charles Goodwin staggered toward him, giving Henry an idea. It was time to have a talk with him in order confirm his suspicions.
Leaving the window, Henry stood by his truck until Charles approached.
His palms started to sweat even though it was quite a chilly morning for the end of June. He knew it was nerves. He didn't know how Charles would react to the accusation he was about to make. Henry wasn't particularly afraid of Charles. He never had reason to be. But Henry knew from living with his father for so many years that alcohol drove people to do irrational and sometimes violent things.
"Does she know?" Henry asked once Charles was in earshot.
"Does who know what?" he slurred with a smile while sitting on the stairs and pulling out a flask. He seemed jolly enough. Maybe Charles wasn't a mean drunk like his father was.
Henry took a deep breath and blurted, "Does Emma know that she's your sister?"
The smile vanished, as did his relatively happy demeanor. Charles stared at his flask. “There’s nothing more sobering than years of deception.” He closed his eyes and smelled his liquor. “That is most certainly why I prefer to be drunk.” He took a long swig from the flask.
“You didn’t answer the question.” Though since Charles didn’t deny that Emma was his sister, he at least knew his theory was correct.
"How did you figure it out?" Charles asked.
Henry shrugged. "Frank Gibson believe it or not. I heard he thought Emma Lynn was Rebecca Jane. That got me thinking. They do look a lot alike. Then I thought about the way you look at Emma. It's the same way you look at Rebecca Jane."
Charles sighed, took another drink, and then said, "She was my favorite you know. I don't remember when Mary Anna was born, but my first memories of her are not very nice. She was always a spoiled brat who I couldn't relate to. I was two when Rebecca Jane was born and while I do love her, she's always had this need to be contrary just for the hell of it. Emma Lynn though, was always a sweet little angel."
Henry sat next to Charles on the stairs and waited for him to continue.
"She was the calmest, sweetest baby. She rarely cried. She was always just happy, calm and lovable," he smiled to himself then added, "You know, my name was her first word? We were such a close family back then. We were living in a small town in Indiana. Mother stayed home with the girls while I went to school and Father took care of his shoe repair business. Every day I came home to fresh baked cookies and warm milk. Then Emma Lynn, Rebecca Jane, and I would play our pretend games until we sat down as a family for dinner."
"What happened?" Henry asked.
After a long sigh and an even longer swig of bourbon, Charles said, "She was always darker than the rest of us. I knew she was my sister. I was there the day she was born. I just couldn't understand why she looked so different. Our parents would say that she stayed out in the sun too long or that we had a distant Indian relative. But when I was eight and Emma was three, someone called her a nigger baby. That's when our parents knew she
wouldn't be able to pass for white any more like the rest of us."
"Like the rest of you?" Henry asked slightly confused. He had figured out that Emma Lynn was Charles and Rebecca Jane's sister, but he wasn't quite sure how. He thought maybe Mr. or Mrs. Goodwin had an affair with a Negro.
Charles nodded. "It took me a few years to figure it out, but I did." Charles stood and walked over to the milk truck in front of him. Leaning his head against it he said, "Both of my grandmothers were slaves on neighboring plantations in South Carolina. One had a love affair with her slave owner; the other was raped by hers. They both gave birth to several children. My parents happened to come out looking white.
"My half Negro parents met as teenagers living in a supposedly free society. They bonded over the fact that they didn't fit in anywhere. Even though they looked white, everyone knew they were Negro. So they ran away together and assumed new identities.
"They took a gamble having children and it worked out three out of four times. Mary Anna, Rebecca Jane, and I can pass for white. Emma Lynn can't. When our parents realized this, they wanted to abandon her. They wanted to leave her with relatives in South Carolina. But I wouldn't let them. I'm the one that came up with the idea to move to yet another city and pretend she was an adopted playmate for Rebecca Jane. Later she became the maid. We convinced Emma Lynn that we were only pretending she was our sister when we were little. Over time she forgot all about those early years and just accepted her fate." Charles swallowed hard as if he was holding back tears. "It was all my idea. I'm the one that turned my baby sister into a virtual slave."
Succumbing to an onslaught of tears, Charles dropped the flask and put his head in his hands.
"You just wanted to help her," Henry said trying to console Charles. At the time, making Emma Lynn a maid probably seemed like the only logical option. It was the only way to keep her in his life. If someone threatened to take Emma Lynn out of Henry's life, he wasn't sure what he would do or how far he would go to make sure it didn't happen.
"It may have started out that way," Charles said after composing himself. "But it's been twelve years and I haven't told her the truth. I'm so comfortable with my privileged life that I'm afraid of what will happen if ... If people know I'm a Negro."
Henry wasn't quite sure how to respond. On the one hand, he could understand Charles' desire to keep the secret. Life for Negros wasn't easy. On the other hand, Emma Lynn deserved a better life. She was as much of a Goodwin as Mary Anna, Rebecca Jane, and Charles. She deserved the fancy clothes and the leisurely life they enjoyed. She deserved to be loved.
"I'm going to fix this mess I've created," Charles said a few moments later. "I'm going to leave East St. Louis and start a new life. I'm taking Emma Lynn with me. I'm going to take her some place where she doesn't have to live like a servant or be treated like she's nothing because of the color of her skin."
"You're taking her away?" Henry stood abruptly.
"I have to. It's the only way I can give her the life she deserves. There's nothing for her here."
"What about me? I'm here."
Charles paused and looked at Henry incredulously. "And what exactly can you do for her? Do you think you can marry her, build a home, and live happily ever after? I don't even think it's legal. You two don't have a chance in this town."
The burning sensation in Henry's chest told him that Charles' words were true, but he still didn't want to believe them. He hadn't thought this through. He hadn’t worked out the details. But he would start thinking about it now. There had to be a way for him to have a future with Emma Lynn because there was absolutely no way he was going to let her go.
George Goodwin
George Goodwin burst through the door of his home and collapsed in a chair. For the first time in several days, he took a deep breath and relaxed.
It was three a.m. and the house was dark. His wife and his children were asleep. All of his children, including Emma Lynn.
George stumbled to his liquor cabinet in search of his bourbon only to find barely a teaspoon left in the bottle.
"Damn it, Charles," he swore under his breath. His son had no idea just how much he needed that bourbon at just this instant.
Blindly reaching for another bottle out of the cabinet, he settled on gin and began drinking directly from the bottle. Settling in a chair, he thought about his baby girl. His Emma Lynn. Should he feel guilty for what he had done to her? For making her a maid? A second-class citizen in her own home. If he was supposed to feel guilty, he didn't. He had protected her. He had protected her from what the world saw of her and what the world would do to her.
From time to time over the past fifteen years, pangs of guilt had entered his being, but he had pushed them aside. And based on what he had just witnessed in South Carolina, the guilt had receded permanently. He had protected Emma Lynn. He had kept her with her family and protected her from a life of pain, discrimination, and ... lynchings.
"George, dear, what on Earth are you doing?" Elizabeth Goodwin asked, coming down the stairs. "It's the middle of the night and your carrying on like a drunken elephant down here."
Instead of responding, George stood and embraced his wife.
"Are you all right?" she asked, hugging him tightly in return.
He shook his head.
"What happened? I wasn't expecting you until tomorrow." She stepped out of his embrace. "Oh God, someone recognized you, didn't they? Someone knows. I knew you shouldn't have returned to that damned plantation."
"No one knows anything," he assured her. He plopped back down in the chair and took another swig of gin once again, wishing it was his bourbon.
Elizabeth exhaled. "Good." She sat across from her husband in the settee. "Well then what is the problem? Your mother was sixty-three years old. You knew she would die eventually. I don't even know why you felt the need to go all the way back there in the first place."
George glared at his wife. "How can you be so insensitive? I hadn't seen her in thirty years. Thirty years of living this lie. A lie that you concocted."
"A lie that has provided you with a decent life. With more than a decent life. There was nothing for us in South Carolina. We didn't fit in anywhere. Would you really want to live there under the Jim Crow laws? Is that the life you want for your children?"
He didn't answer. He knew she was right. He didn't want to live that way. The fact of the matter, however, was that no one deserved to live that way.
"I saw a man die yesterday," George said, staring into the gin bottle as if it replayed the scene.
"People die every day."
"Lynched. I witnessed a lynching."
"Oh." Elizabeth certainly understood the difference between death and lynching. There was actually no comparison. It was a horrific way to die and an even more horrific thing to witness.
"I knew him," George added.
"Did I know him?"
George nodded. "It was Winston Hill."
Elizabeth gasped. "No, no."
For a moment, George wasn't sure why his wife was so upset at the mention of Winston's name. Then he remembered that she'd had a childhood romance with him. They couldn't have been more than eight years old at the time, but no one forgot their first love.
"I could have stopped it and I didn't." George continued to stare into the bottle as if he was memorizing every crease and ripple in the liquid.
"What do you mean? How?"
"As I left my mother's burial, a police car pulled alongside me. Winston was in the backseat. He looked over into my car and instantly recognized me. It had been thirty years since I'd seen him. I was sixteen when I left South Carolina. How did he even recognize me after all these years?" He took another swig of gin. "He yelled for me. He begged for my help. He said he didn't do it."
"What happened? What did you do?"
"Nothing. I did absolutely nothing. I turned away. I was afraid the police officers in the front seat would wonder why I knew him. So I did nothing."
"Oh."
"A few hours later, though, my conscience weighed on me. I went to inquire why he was there. The police said that he resisted arrest and fired his weapon at them. I knew immediately it was a lie."
"How?"
"Winston lost his index finger when we were eleven while he was cutting firewood with his father. He wouldn't be able to pull the trigger of a gun." George paused, thinking back to that day. At the time, he thought Winston had gone through the worst type of pain imaginable. How mistaken he was. "I asked the officer why he was arrested in the first place, and do you know what he said?"
Elizabeth shook her head.
"He didn't remember. He didn't even remember."
"How did Winston end up getting lynched?" Elizabeth asked seemingly getting impatient.
"There was a public lynching planned for yesterday morning. It was in all the papers. Tickets were being sold. Food was going to be served. Amos Whitaker was to be lynched for stealing a white man's cow. But he died during the night. The town didn't want to cancel the lynching, so they lynched Winston instead."
Elizabeth pressed her eyes shut tightly. George imagined she was either trying to hold in tears or block out the images.
"I tried to get out of town. I didn't want any part of it. But the roads were blocked. I was trapped. I heard his screams. I heard the cheers from the crowd." George shook his head. "If I had just acknowledged him. If I had helped him when I had the chance, he might be alive."
Elizabeth stood and went over to her husband. She placed her hand on his shoulder. "There was nothing you could do."
George couldn't help thinking back to his life in South Carolina. The discrimination on both sides was unbearable. There was no way he could live the rest of his life like that. He didn't deserve it. Several times growing up he had been mistaken for white. Once his mother was almost beaten because they thought she had stolen someone else's child.
Though he looked white, George had never even considered living as such. He knew he was Negro. It wasn't until Elizabeth suggested running away together that the thought entered his mind. He still wasn't convinced, but one weekend they decided to try it out. They were just sixteen when they traveled to Savannah together then went shopping in a white's only store. No one even questioned them. That was the first time he believed it might work. That was thirty years ago.
Shadows of St. Louis Page 5