“That’s just it,” Lyle said, “You’re proving my point. Their every move is watched. They’re always performing. They’ve got twenty-year-old white boys who don’t know their heads from their asses taking notes on them.”
“It’s not for you to decide,” my father said.
“It’s not for you, either.” A glass coming down again on the coffee table. “This isn’t your house. It’s that damn monkey’s house and you know it.”
“You know what you are.” My father’s voice was cold and deliberate. “You are jealous. Laurel always thought you were, and I said you weren’t, but now I see it.”
We heard the springs of the Toneybee sofa squeal. Then Lyle’s voice.
“I know you don’t mean that, little brother. I know tomorrow morning you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna want to call me and make a joke and tell me you were tired and Laurel’s sorry and that monkey really meant well. But you know what? I’m not going to pick up the phone.”
“Fine,” my father nearly shouted. “Don’t pick up the phone. Don’t talk to us. Don’t come back.”
We heard the stomp of Lyle’s penny loafers. Then the hallway door swung open. The movement made the overhead light click on, and Lyle started for a moment, startled by the sudden sight of me and Callie.
He leaned his hand against the side. “One of you go and get Gin for me.” He caught at Callie, held her close to his middle. “Charlotte, you go get my wife.”
I walked to my parents’ bedroom. When I got there, I found Ginny sitting on the bed, staring steadily into space. My mother stood at the open closet door, trying to pick out a blouse for her. There were a few already discarded on the carpet. My mother held up a dark green silk one with brass buttons. Ginny turned dully and shook her head.
My mother pursed her lips, annoyed.
Ginny rubbed at the bare flesh on her arm, where the sleeve was torn away. “What I can’t understand,” she announced, “is why did he tear up my sleeve? I would have given it to him. I would have let him kiss my hand if he wanted to. He didn’t have to get nasty about it.”
My mother held up another shirt. Ginny shook her head.
“It’s like he didn’t really care about me at all,” Ginny said. And then she started crying again.
My mother shot her a pitying glance. Then she caught me in the doorway. “What is it now?”
“Uncle Lyle says he’s ready to go.”
“We don’t have anything for Ginny yet.”
“I think that’s really okay.”
“Can you tell him she needs some more time?” She saw my face and misunderstood. “Don’t be scared. She’s just in shock, that’s all. It’s okay.”
“I’m not scared.”
My mother studied my face, still didn’t understand. “Fine,” she said with a sigh, giving up. She knelt by the pile of clothes on the floor.
“Mom.”
My mother looked up at me.
It’s Lyle, I signed.
“What did he do?”
Ginny was now toeing at a few of the discarded shirts on the ground.
They had a fight. It’s bad. They yelled about Charlie. I don’t think Uncle Lyle’s coming back here anymore.
My mother’s hands fell to her sides. She looked at Ginny one more time. Then she went over and helped her to her feet. “Gin . . .”
“Ginny,” Ginny corrected her. “I don’t like it when you call me Gin, Laurel. You know that.”
“Ginny, I’m going to have to ask you to pull yourself together, please.”
Ginny lowered, wounded. “I am together, Laurel.”
“Good. I need you to pick one of these shirts and put it on. And then I need you to walk with me down the hallway and we are going to go into the living room and figure out what’s going on.” My mother spoke in the same clear, bright tones she used when directing Charlie.
Ginny stiffened, offended.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll take the green one you just showed me. The garish one.”
My mother ignored the insult, picked up the blouse and handed it to Ginny.
“A little privacy, please.”
My mother stood beside me at the threshold, ready to close the door.
“You know what your problem is, Laurel?” Ginny called as the door swung shut. “Your voice. It’s too proud.”
In the light of the hallway, my mother suddenly looked very tired. Her curls lay dried and scattered around her face. She brought one hand up to her forehead, pressed her wrist there.
I caught her other hand and signed into her palm, It will be over soon.
From behind the closed door we heard a muffled shriek. “Lord, what is it with that woman this time?” my mother said through her breath.
Ginny had worked the blouse over her shoulders, but she hadn’t buttoned it up all the way. She pinched the lapels between her fingers, turning the front of the shirt inside out to show its cotton lining.
“There’s blood in this shirt, Laurel. Here, in the lining.”
“Now, Ginny, calm down.” My mother took a step closer. She hesitated only slightly, only for a moment.
“I don’t see any blood.”
“Quit lying, Laurel. It’s there, plain as day. Right here, see it?”
“I don’t.”
Ginny rubbed the cotton lining between her fingers. “See. It’s smudging when I touch it.” She held up a finger to my mother, who jerked her head away, disgusted. Ginny faltered. Then she turned to me.
“Charlotte,” she called. “Come over here. Do you see it?”
I stood between her and my mother and looked at the shirt lining. There were two small full blooms of blood, right where the tip of a breast would press up against the fabric. Ginny’s fingers were shiny with faint traces of the blood and something else, something translucent. I realized, with a lurch, that it was the grease from the cold cream my mother rubbed into her chest, to keep her skin from chapping after Charlie fed there.
I glanced at my mother, but she was looking steadily down at the dress. I started to speak.
“It’s a trick of the light,” my mother said firmly.
“It’s blood and you know it,” Ginny said.
My mother still wouldn’t meet her eye. Ginny’s face softened. “What is it, Laurel? You in trouble?”
My mother drew herself straighter. “I think we’re all just getting overheated right now. I’ll find you something else. Give me back the shirt.”
Ginny watched my mother a little longer, waiting for her to break. Then she shrugged the shirt off and balled it up. She stood there, unembarrassed in her underclothes, the heavy beige bra that started somewhere just above the ends of her ribs and reached up nearly to her collarbone, her skirt and stockings still on right and proper.
My mother took the shirt and tossed it in the corner. She went back to the closet and took out another. Ginny ran her fingers again along its lining, watching my mother the whole time, then pulled it over her head.
“It really is time to go now, Ginny,” my mother said in those same patient tones. Ginny nodded, slipped on her brown leather pumps and followed her out the door.
In the hall, we came across Dr. Paulsen and Max. Dr. Paulsen cradled Charlie in her arms. She had just gotten him to calm down. He was not asleep, only sedate. When he saw my mother, he stretched out his hands. She went to him immediately, she couldn’t help it, even over Dr. Paulsen’s protests, “We just got him to stop.”
“We’re just saying good night,” my mother insisted, and Dr. Paulsen stepped back.
Charlie draped his arms around my mother’s shoulders and rested his forehead against hers. She closed her eyes. Then her expression changed. Her eyes flew open, her lips parted as Charlie had worked his fingers down the front of her shirt, reached for her breast, and curved his lips into a nursing ripple.
“Oh my,” Dr. Paulsen said. “He’s really misbehaving tonight.” She and Max both reached for him.
Charlie tried to ang
le his head into the right position. He felt the hands of Dr. Paulsen and Max on him, and in desperation he tried to grab for the ends of my mother’s hair. But they got him off in time, so his fingers grasped at nothing. He began to twist and shake in their arms. It took both Dr. Paulsen and Max, holding on as hard as they could, to still his body. They shuffled him back into the dining room, Charlie shouting his objections.
The front of my mother’s blouse was askew, the hem of a buttonhole caught on the edge of her bra. Ginny and I could see the swell of her left breast. My mother was so stunned, she didn’t even notice. She touched her hand to the back of her hair, patting it down in place.
“Laurel,” Ginny said, gesturing to the front of my mother’s shirt, “he got you.”
My mother stuck her hand into the cup of her bra, fished around so the flesh set right, then pulled the blouse the right way around.
Ginny figured it out. I guess it was how my mother did it without thinking, her finger run through the inside of the bra. Ginny’s face fell. She looked down at the front of her own shirt. Then she took off down the hall, my mother and I hurrying after her.
We got to the living room just behind her, just in time to hear her shout, with her eyes squeezed shut, “She’s feeding him with her titties.”
Everyone looked up at Ginny, and then at the doorway, where my mother and I stood.
“She’s lost her mind,” my mother said. “She’s in shock.”
Ginny shook her head furiously. She turned to my father. “Charles, she’s got bloodstains on the inside of her dress, where the—” Here Ginny paused. She was taken, for a moment, with the audacity of what she was saying. My mother glared at her. Her hostility gave Ginny courage. She took a deep breath. “Where the breast”—this word she hissed under her breath—“goes. And just now in the hall. He lunged at her. And tried to eat from her. Like a baby would. She’s feeding him. She’s sick,” Ginny finished, triumphant.
As Ginny spoke, my mother’s shoulders slumped and her jaw went slack. I couldn’t bear to see her headed for defeat. When Ginny called my mother sick, I couldn’t help it. I declared, “She’s only trying to help him.”
They all turned toward me. My father put his glass down slowly. “I think, Lyle,” he said, “you and Ginny have done enough”—he searched for the right word—“accusing here tonight.”
Uncle Lyle, though, was not going to let this chance pass. He got up, put his arm around Ginny. “Accuse?” He said. “You calling my Gin a liar?”
Ginny shrugged at the weight of his hand, but Lyle only gripped tighter.
“I think your wife doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Your own daughter confirmed it—”
“I’m going,” my father said very carefully, “to ask you both to leave right now. I’ll walk you to your car.”
My mother had not lifted her head the whole time. My father didn’t look at her. I kept my eyes on the ground. Then I heard the door close behind them.
Callie sat up suddenly. Is it true? she signed.
My mother didn’t move her hands.
“Yes,” I said.
Callie’s hand began to shake. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
My mother crossed to Callie, tried to hold her. “There’s nothing to tell.”
Callie shrugged her off. “You told Charlotte,” she managed to say. She blinked wildly, trying to stop tears. “Why didn’t Charlie tell me?”
My mother tried to catch Callie up again, but she kept twisting away. Finally she stopped trying.
“You know I love you,” she said, her arms at her sides.
Callie took a ragged breath. “No, you don’t.”
And she ran from the room.
My mother walked over to the couch, sat back on the cushions. The springs squealed. She was not a drinker, but she picked up my father’s glass of brandy and drained it.
“Clearly,” Dr. Paulsen said when she had finished, “there is much to discuss. But I don’t think we can make any headway at the moment.” She crossed to the door, Max following her.
“Laurel. We’ll speak in the morning.”
My mother held the door open for them. When they were gone and we were alone together, I turned to the wall so I wouldn’t have to look at her.
“Charlotte—” she started to say.
But I couldn’t listen anymore. I got up and walked out the door.
I took the staircase to the left and I climbed all the way up to the top floor, to the practice rooms. I found the broken bass drum and I tried to roll it over me. But my legs were too long and my trunk too broad to fit inside the tear. I curled my hands over my shoulders and began to slap the skin there, first the right one, then the left. I tried to pretend it was Adia’s skin I was arguing with. But it was no use, it was my own. I did this over and over again, warming to the sting, until my skin felt thin and hot and watery and my fingers burned. I lay under that drum the whole night and my hands would not be quiet.
What She Said to Me:
An Apology to the African American People
by
Julia Toneybee-Leroy
NOVEMBER 23, 1990
Toneybee Estate, Courtland County, Massachusetts
African American people, I am sorry.
It is terrible to think that what I have grown here, what I have dedicated my very heart and soul and self to for over sixty years, has harmed You and wounded You and driven You to rage.
Already, the source of my shame and my downfall is coming. The book Man or Beast? has recently been published and will embarrass me and the Toneybee Institute. Embarrassment, of course, is a very small emotion compared with what this book claims I put You, African American people, through.
When I first heard the accusations, I thought for certain they could not be true. I became defensive and a little mean, but as it became clear that everything in that book was correct, I became only very, very ashamed. And guilty.
African American people, guilt is different from shame. It has a different weight. Shame just heavies the bones, in a most insinuating way, rousing them to a dense, salty jelly. Guilt, though, is quick and hot and silvery, and it flashes through you with the regular, metered pulse of an electrical current, animating everything inside you to do something, anything, to make the shock stop. A very queer sensation, to be working through the body at my age. I am eighty-one years old and supposed to be past such obligations as shame and guilt and remorse. The only way I’ve found to get such feelings out is to do something reckless and big and a little bit desperate, which is why I write this apology to You, African American people.
In brief: the book claims that my Institute has not been happily concerned with language acquisition and chimpanzees for the past sixty-five years. It claims that when this Institute started, our very first director, Dr. Terrence Gardner, used the African American men in Courtland County and Spring City in terrible eugenics experiments at the Institute. It claims the men who participated were left humiliated and never properly compensated. Worse: the book claims Dr. Gardner took improprieties with an African American woman. She has only ever been identified by a horrible joke of a name, “Nymphadora.” Dr. Francine Gorey, the author of Man or Beast?, has drawings from my very own archives, she says, to prove it.
After reading an early version of this book, knowing it was soon to be published and my defamation assured, I decided that there was work to be done. It was time to make amends. I hope that You, African American people, will appreciate this.
I ordered the Toneybee Institute’s board to hire a public relations man. He came up with a lot of ideas: scholarships, and prizes and maybe bronze plaques, but none of them seemed enough. It was Dr. Paulsen, who hemmed and hawed and finally told me that she had found the Freemans. It seemed miraculous. It seemed fortuitous. I have to say that I knew it was fate when Dr. Paulsen told me about them.
Not very many people know how strongly I believe in fate. They think I am an armchair scientist, and like
amateurs everywhere, I must be overzealous in my hobby. But I abandon all scientific principles when it comes to fate. Or rather, I believe that fate is a kind of science. I believe it is stronger than history and the past and love and hope. So I agreed immediately to hire the Freemans and I fooled myself, for a while, that this would be enough. That it would make You, African American people, if not forgive, if not forget (I would not expect You to do that! I know You are not stupid!), then at least, perhaps, not be so offended and angry.
But as the Freemans moved in and as they settled down and as that lovely boy, Max, brought me reports of their progress, it did not help. Even when I heard what they got Charlie to do, it did not stop the terrible sinking feeling of utter wrongness in my heart.
And I have lately, just today, had an experience that makes it clear to me that I was a fool to think the Freeman’s love could be stronger than fate. Because of that experience, I’m awake now writing this letter to You. In my old age, I don’t sleep well or often. But tonight, what little sleep I got was interrupted by a sudden low, dull, sensation: as if someone were paddling a mute and rusted dinner bell that woke me with the absolute that I was in the wrong. The Freemans will not be enough. I have to do more to make it right.
I do not think I can make up for any of it, but something within me, perhaps foolishness again, thinks if You could only understand why I started this place, You might begin to feel better and You might begin to think about forgiveness. (But I am not pushing or commanding You to forgive! Please do not accuse me of that!)
As I understand it, You, African Americans, are very much concerned with history. With Your past. From what I gather, You claim to be nameless. You claim that Your history has been taken from You and what is left is a vacuous hole where the words should be.
Do You know, African American people, I understand this? I understand it completely because I suffer from the inverse. I suffer from too much name. You will see, as I tell my story, that to support the weight of a great family name is as much a burden as being nameless. At least, I believe that to be so.
I will tell You, African Americans, what Man or Beast? did not.
We Love You, Charlie Freeman Page 18