Chapter 34
Once I arrived home, I took a hot bath and climbed into bed. This had been the longest, most exhausting day of my life.
I woke hours later to a call from Aunt Leah.
My groggy, pathetic voice told her everything she needed to know about my mental state.
“It’s midnight, Auntie.”
“I know. You didn’t answer before. Are you okay?”
I adjusted my head on the pillow. “No, and I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”
Aunt Leah sighed. “I understand, but I didn’t want you to be alone with this.”
Was she kidding? I sat up in bed. “Didn’t want me to be alone? Do you think talking to you is going to make me feel like I
have someone to walk through this with? I’m still alone because you’re no different than my mother. You didn’t tell me either.”
“It wasn’t my place.”
“I am an adult. You and I have a relationship.”
“We do, but you know this is complicated.”
“Even when my mother is wrong?”
“Even when she’s wrong,” Leah admitted. “I’m her sister. I had to respect her choice, and this was her mistake to make.”
“To deceive me? I’m a grown woman who had no idea what my father’s actual name was. That my father was a con artist who stole
our family land and went to prison, Aunt Leah.”
“I know.”
I sat up higher in bed. “I don’t understand. Was I never supposed to know the truth about who he was?”
“I think that was the idea Beck had in mind.”
I couldn’t speak. Did she not know how ridiculous she sounded?
She added, “Worse secrets have been kept.”
“By who?”
“Families have secrets,” Leah said with emphasis.
“Not like this.” I exhaled a laugh that had no joy.
All that I had gained from my nap was lost in this conversation as tension spread across my shoulders and over my head. “Auntie,
I need to go.”
“I love you. Call me if you want to talk, but I do want to say one thing if you’ll let me.”
I waited.
“Your father was only nineteen when it happened. His uncle was in his forties. He was the only relative Hiram had. He trusted
him. He convinced Hiram that he was bringing him into the family real estate business. I don’t think Hiram knew what he was
involved in until it was too late.”
“What makes you say that? You weren’t even around.”
“Because I did what Beck wouldn’t. I visited him in prison.”
Bile rose in my throat. I waited for her to go on.
“He tried to give his part of the money back to the people he stole from. Tom took most of it. Hiram’s cut was small, but
no one would take the money. They wanted their land.”
Of course. The only thing that mattered was the land. It was like skin to the Gullah.
“This is so tragic.”
“It is, and then he died, and there was no way for him to ever make restitution. Not that he ever could.”
Another tear spilled down my cheek. “I’ll call you if I . . . when I can talk about this.”
“I’m not just your aunt. I’m your friend.”
“Yeah,” I replied. I didn’t have anything else in me. I couldn’t agree or disagree with her words. She was the keeper of my
mother’s secrets, and I wasn’t ready to forgive her for that.
My tears began again. I’d created this beautiful program for the students, but my identity would not stay a secret for long.
Would the Edisto Gullah want me in their community?
Exhausted from bawling, I slept again, waking the next morning from a nightmare. My father being arrested, going to prison,
and his grave—the grave I’d never seen because I was told he was cremated. Was that even true?
I threw my legs over the side of the bed, trying to remember any parts of the dream that might matter, and then I felt it:
The tickle of a leaf. The waft of something sweet and musky. A hand gripping mine before it slipped away. Metal clicking.
Sobbing.
“Stop all that. This is going to get worse.”
The sobbing. I’d heard that cry recently. It was Beck. The sobs were Beck. “Stop all that. This is going to get worse.” My grandmother.
I called Beck, and she answered on the first ring as if she were holding her phone in her hand, waiting for me.
“Where was I the day my father was arrested?”
Beck was quiet. Stunned by my question. That palm tree. Metal clicking in my ear. The hand slipping away.
“Mom, tell me the truth.”
“We were at my parents’ house . . . in Manning.
My parents had moved off the island. All our family had.
The Chambers land was connected. Anyway, I came from New Jersey because he asked me to.
We were supposed to get married. I wanted to get married in South Carolina so my father could see me properly wed.
He hated that I shamed him by getting pregnant without a husband.
” Beck cleared her throat, which sounded thick with emotion.
“Anyway, Hiram had come from the island. He was trying to give people some of the money he had, but everyone was so angry. He knew the sheriff was looking for him, but he came to Manning to see us one more time before turning himself in.”
“Was he holding my hand?”
“Alex, what are you—?”
“Tell me. Was he holding my hand before they took him away?”
“Yes. When the sheriff came to the house, he asked him to step outside so they could cuff him. I tried to get him to let your
hand go, but he wouldn’t, and you wouldn’t let go of him, so we went from the living room to the outside.”
The tickle of the leaf brushed against my neck.
“Near a tree,” I cried.
“Yes, the palm tree outside the door.”
The smell, I realized, was the palm tree. Musty and sweet at the same time.
“They told him he had to let go of your hand. He did, and then they put the handcuffs on him.”
Metal clicked in my ear.
I joined her in telling the story. “And you started crying.”
“Yes.”
“Grandma told you to stop. She told you things were going to get worse.”
Beck shook her head. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“I do . . . remember,” I said. “Why did Grandma tell you it was going to get worse?”
“Because my father said he couldn’t look at me. He said I was a reminder of what he lost. I shamed the family with my sin.” Beck paused. “Mama warned me that I was going to be on my own with a baby. I couldn’t stay with them, and things in New Jersey were hard.”
My body folded into itself. I didn’t know how I would recover from this. Beck and I stayed on the phone. I wasn’t sure how
long. Neither of us spoke until I said, “I’ve had pieces of a memory for as long as I can remember. I didn’t know what it
was. I couldn’t connect it to anything.”
“You were just three.”
“I remember.”
I ended the call and crawled back into my misery.