Chapter Four #2
“Making coffee?” She chuckles. “You know your husband can’t find forks in the kitchen drawer.” Her tone carries the same affection she’s had for Lisle since the day they met and she learned he was a graduate of Columbia Dental School. “He left a little while ago.”
“Left? This early?” I frown as we slide onto the upholstered chairs at our mahogany dining room table. I didn’t hear him in the bath, nor his return to our bedroom.
“You two had quite a discussion this morning,” she says.
My eyebrows lift. Lisle and I weren’t speaking loudly, but my mother could catch a whisper through a brick wall.
I sip my coffee. “He’s upset with me.”
A beat passes, then, “Do you want to talk about it?”
That’s not the question my mother wants to ask. She wants me to repeat our conversation from the first word to the last—in case she missed anything.
“No.” I shake my head.
When my mother says “All right” far too easily, I squint at her over the rim of my cup. Has she spiked our coffee?
Addie Waites Hunton—the woman The Amsterdam News declared one of the greatest women of our race for her work with the YMCA, the NAACP, the National Association of Colored Women, and countless other causes—has been here with Lisle and me for just over a year.
Living in the family brownstone on Greene Avenue in Brooklyn became too much once her rheumatism crept into her joints and weakened her limbs.
So Lisle and I invited her into our home.
That was the only choice, because she would never leave New York for Washington, DC, where my brother, Alphaeus, works as a professor at Howard University.
While the rheumatism may have slowed her body, it hasn’t touched her mind.
She’s as sharp as ever—whether she was born in 1866…
or 1867…or 1875…depending on which year she claims on any day.
Whatever year she settles on, one thing about my mother has never changed: She has never had a thought she didn’t speak or encountered a piece of information she didn’t want.
So I’m not surprised when she adds, “It always helps to talk to your mother.”
“It’s the same thing, Mama. Lisle wants me to quit. He says it’s because he doesn’t think it’s safe to be part of Dewey’s team.”
My mother tilts her head. “That’s what he always tells you. But it sounds like now you think it’s something more.”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think back to the day when I told you and Lisle about this new job. You were so excited, but Lisle…”
“What you have to understand, sugar, is that the news was everywhere, on the radio, in the newspapers, in the beauty shop, in churches. Thomas Dewey was hiring a team of prosecutors. The whole city was abuzz, certain that Dewey and his men would wipe out crime in the city. So do you know what it was like to find out that one of Dewey’s men was you?
Your husband was just dumbfounded, that’s all. ”
“No, it was more than that for Lisle. Sometimes…I wonder if Lisle wants me to step aside not because of the danger but what he sees as an affront to him.”
My mother leans back. “You think Lisle is jealous?”
“ ‘Jealous’ may be overstating it, but it’s something close.
Not so long ago, The Amsterdam News always mentioned Dr. and Mrs. Lisle Carter at some society affair or opening night performance.
But since I’ve been on Dewey’s team, the newspapers refer to us as Dr. Lisle Carter and his wife, Eunice Carter, the attorney.
And now, there are articles in The New York Times just about me, and reporters from The Amsterdam News call our home to get a quote from me. ”
My mother nods slowly. “And that’s why Lisle wants you to step aside.”
“That, and the ribbing he’s taking from his friends. More than once, he’s mentioned that the men at the Forum have a laugh at his expense over what I’m doing. Men’s work, they call it.”
My mother waves her hand in the air. “That’s how menfolk are. They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they couldn’t razz each other.”
“Perhaps, but it bothers Lisle, and I think he longs for a time when I was simply his wife and Junior’s mother.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. Because being a wife and mother is God’s highest calling for a colored woman.”
“That was never enough for you,” I snap. “That calling never kept you home with Alphaeus and me. How many times did you go away, leaving us behind to do the work you loved?”
My words cut sharper than I intend, but being away from my parents is perhaps the most indelible memory of my childhood.
The first time was when I was eight years old and my father decided that after the violence and destruction of the Atlanta riot—which came within blocks of our home—living in the South was no longer safe.
So he and my mother packed up my four-year-old brother and me and shipped us to Brooklyn, New York.
Alphaeus and I lived with friends of my parents, people who were strangers to us.
Those scary days marked the first in a long chain of separations, when, even though my parents always came back—sometimes after two, three months—my brother and I often felt abandoned.
My mother says, “I did what I had to do. Because some of us are called to be wives, mothers…and more. I believe you have a calling to do more, too. But I have to tell you, sugar, that calling always carries a cost.”
“I love my husband, Mama, and I don’t want to pay that cost. But I’ve spent my whole life as someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, someone’s mother.
And while I’m proud of all of that, for the first time I’m doing something that is meaningful and for me.
” I rise and glance down at her. “I won’t allow this to slip away. Not for anything. And not for anyone.”