38.
Her name was Cordelia Dubois, and she had sent in the DNA sample after reading an article in Time magazine about the lab and Ruby and Delaney’s work there. Ruby had asked not to be named in the article. She didn’t want
fame. She wanted to do the work. Delaney had been more than happy to pose, giving the camera a big thumbs-up and telling Ruby
to get over herself.
“I consider myself the family historian,” Cordelia told Ruby, after welcoming her into her cozy home outside Atlanta the following
morning. “Betty not being found bothered me. I thought, what if someone finds her bones somewhere and don’t know what they
mean? Like a hunter. So I sent your friend—she’s your friend, you say?—a sample. Spit in the tube just like her new website
told me to. That way if anyone ever does find Betty, I’ll know about it.”
The living room was crowded with family pictures, including a large portrait of a civil war soldier hanging over the mantel.
Ruby was surprised to see that it was a Union soldier. Usually, white people in the South claimed to be Confederates, even
if it wasn’t true.
“That’s my great-great-grandfather Eldridge Dubois,” the woman said, proudly. “Now,” she said, patting the crochet-covered
couch, “you have a seat right there. I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Ruby sat, waiting.
Cordelia was soon back, carrying a silver tray holding two cloudy glasses of iced tea and a plate of store-bought cookies.
Her feathered mules almost caught the edge of the rug, and she lowered the tray carefully.
“Don’t get as many visitors anymore,” she said, smiling.
She had clearly readied for Ruby after getting her call.
“I’m not much of a cook,” Cordelia said. “Around here that’s bad as admitting your great-great-grandfather snuck down to Tennessee
to fight with the Union. There were only a few thousand of them—the white soldiers from the South, I mean. He led a Black
unit.” She bit into a cookie, and took a dainty sip of her tea.
“What made him do that?” Ruby asked, drinking her own tea. It was very cold, very sweet, and delicious.
“Not everyone in Hammock County believed in slavery. My great-great-grandmother was a fixture on the Underground Railroad.
She was a Quaker.”
“I thought Quakers didn’t fight,” Ruby said.
“These ones do.”
It was quite comfortable in the house. It felt like the home of the grandmother Ruby had never had. She could curl up on this
couch and nap the day away, watched over by the ancestors on the wall.
“So,” Cordelia said. “The execution is tomorrow.”
“It is,” Ruby said. “Were you planning on attending?”
“No. I don’t believe in the death penalty.”
“Well, you’re definitely the odd one out.”
She was watching Cordelia closely, trying to discern something. She had similar bone structure to Betty’s and Willa’s. But
the family resemblance ended there.
“Is that why you’re here?” Cordelia asked. “On such a beautiful morning?”
“I’m here because we have a DNA match,” Ruby said. “Not to any remains, at least not yet,” she quickly added. “But you are
related to someone in our system.”
“Who?”
“Mitchell Brown.”
She watched the news hit the woman. The first sign was in her carmine lips, painted with an Avon shade. Ruby had seen that
color before, and smelled the scent of her youth.
“But . . .” Cordelia said, flabbergasted. “He’s the one who . . .”
“Or so they said.”
“He’s my relative? So that means . . . he was related to Betty, too?”
“Apparently, yes. Exactly how we don’t know yet.”
“But . . . he’s a Black man.”
“Many Black Americans have some white in them.”
“I know that. I just . . .” The woman was confounded.
“That’s why I came,” Ruby said. “To figure it out.”
“Okay. Let’s do that.” Cordelia clasped her hands together.
They walked the room like it was a museum, and Cordelia explained the connections. The first Dubois, recruited into the Quaker
faith after watching slave catchers mutilate a Black man. A wedding party outside a Quaker meetinghouse. Country streets,
somnolent afternoons. A family reunion with people sitting around tables.
One photo was of the Pickleweed Motel. It had been taken in better days, when the sign was new. A little boy was sitting on
the curb outside, playing with a stick in the dirt.
“What can you tell me about the motel?” Ruby asked.
“Well, I know that Betty bought it. She was always smart with money. But she had bad luck, all the same. The gas station.
That was a bad move. She buys the place, the county builds a new road. Gets the motel, the economy crashes.”
“What about Willa and Frank?”
She looked uncomfortable.
“What about them?”
“They’re cousins of Betty’s, right?”
“I don’t know much about them, besides the gossip.”
“Tell me the gossip, then.” Ruby smiled.
“Well, their dad was a cousin of Betty’s, which makes them distant cousins, I suppose. Their mom died young, and their dad . . .
well, they got words for men like that now. Bad words. But back then, why, they didn’t do much. I think people were afraid
of him.”
“Why?”
She looked uneasy. “Because of what he was. A bad man, like I said.”
“He treat the kids poorly?”
The woman’s face said it all.
“You got a picture of Frank?”
“You just went past it. That little boy at the motel.”
Ruby went back to the photo. It was blurry, but something about the little boy moved her.
“Not long after that, Frank and Willa got taken away, and that was the last anyone saw of them for a long time.”
“What happened to them?”
“The county took them. Back then, if you were a ward of the state, they made it hard for families to get you back. I heard
Betty tried, but there was red tape up to here.” She gestured under her chin, and it looked like she was cutting her own throat.
“Frank tried to protect Willa, from what I heard. Eventually, they grew up and left.”
“When did you last see them?”
“Oh, they were little. Maybe at the time of that picture? I heard Frank eventually turned up working at the courthouse. And
Betty had Willa helping at the motel.”
“If there are more of you, why did Willa inherit everything?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“In the probate, Frank was the executor. He claimed there were no other relatives. He gave it all to Willa.”
“Why, that—” the woman exploded.
“You didn’t know?”
“Of course not!” She was upset, and spots of color appeared under the powder on her cheeks. Her bright mouth pursed. “Frank
told others that Betty had left everything to Willa. It was all cut-and-dried, he said. We had no reason not to believe him . . .
none of us live down there anymore. Nothing there for us. And this . . .”
“It’s okay,” Ruby soothed, not because it was but because she was concerned about the woman, and she led her to a chair with
doilies on the arms to sit. Cordelia regained her breath.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“You really want that motel?” Ruby asked.
“No. I suppose not. It just isn’t right.”
Cordelia patted her chest, and Ruby passed her the glass of tea. She drank, steadily.
Ruby circled the room. She stopped at a picture of a large brick building, and a bad feeling began crawling up her legs. The
institutional nature of the building reminded her of the poorhouse. But it was clearly here in Georgia. The antiquated lettering
was crooked underneath.
hammock county home for children, it said.
“What’s this?”
“That’s the home where Willa and Frank got sent.” She made a face. “I have the picture for posterity, I guess. I hear it was
an awful place. Just plain awful. If they thought their dad was bad . . .”
Behind the home there were pens and pastures, and an old red barn. Ruby could see animals in the pens, and what looked like children tending them. The poor need to work. Even children. They might become lazy, otherwise. They might start feeling like they had the right to exist.
“What kind of animals did they raise?” Ruby asked, stepping closer to the old photograph.
“Oh, all kinds. Chickens, mostly. And pigs. They slaughtered them and sold the meat. Can you imagine, being a ward of the
state and being forced to kill the animals you raised?”
“Their dad, what was his name?”
“Jerry Lee Castle. He’s dead now.”
“He the kind to spread it around?”
“I’m sure he was.”
“You got any relatives by the name of Higginbottom?”
Cordelia drank her tea. “Not that I know. But clearly, there is a lot I do not.”