Purebred (6 page)

Carole understood. “With all the ice, it would really be scary.”

Louise shrugged. “Aunt Jessie is going to go out there at
midnight during the next full moon. She’s going to take a picture of the moon rising over the lake. She’s not afraid.”

“It’s an awfully dangerous climb for a person,” Carole said. She was surprised that Aunt Jessie would try it—not only in the winter, but alone and at night.

“She’ll go by horse,” Louise replied. “They’re much more surefooted than people.”

“That’s even worse!” Carole exclaimed. “It might be true that horses are more surefooted, but Jessie would be putting her horse at a terrible risk! It’s not right; the horse doesn’t have a choice. The horse doesn’t care about a picture.”

“Jessie’s horse will be fine.” Louise frowned and pulled her gaiter back up over her nose. “Can’t you tell she’s a wonderful mount?”

“Jessie’s always got the wildest ideas,” Christina broke in before Carole could point out that Kismet’s being a great horse had nothing to do with it. “Remember, Louise,” Christina went on, “how she wanted to drive us to Louisiana last February? We had a three-day weekend and she wanted us to go down, dip our toes in the ocean, and drive straight back up. She said she knew where the Mississippi River started and she wanted to see where it ended up. She thought three days would be enough time.” Christina gave Carole a reassuring look. “But we never went. It was just talk.”

Still, Carole thought, driving to Louisiana and riding to
Lover’s Point in twenty-five-below-zero-degree weather were two different things. And she didn’t think Jessie had planned to ride a horse to Louisiana.

It was getting cold. They turned their horses and headed for home.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, after breakfast, Grand Alice invited Carole to come to her apartment. “We’ll have a cup of tea and some talk,” Grand Alice said.

Carole agreed to come at once, but as she followed Grand Alice down the walkway to her apartment she couldn’t help but feel a little nervous. What other skeletons might Grand Alice pull out of the family closet? Carole didn’t want to hear about another Jackson Foley.

Grand Alice’s apartment immediately helped to set Carole’s mind at ease. Sun streamed in from large windows set in both the east and west walls of the open, spacious room. Green plants grew on the west windowsill. A bright pieced quilt covered Grand Alice’s bed, a colorful rag rug covered much of the floor, and gaily embroidered cushions decorated
the cozy red chintz davenport. The colors in the room were continued in a series of bright oil paintings hanging on the walls. Looking closely at a picture of blue and yellow wildflowers, Carole saw the name
Alice
in the corner.

“Did you paint this?” she asked Grand Alice, who was taking a steaming teakettle off of a little two-burner stove.

Grand Alice laughed and gestured toward the east window. An easel was set up next to a desk and chair. “Most mornings, when the light’s coming in that window, I sit and paint, or I sit at my desk and write. The sunshine feels good.”

Carole carefully examined the other paintings, including the one in progress on the easel. “They’re really good,” she said.

“They please me,” Grand Alice replied. “That’s all that matters.”

Another wall was covered with photographs. Carole went over to look at them, and was astonished at how good they were. Some were landscapes and some were portraits, but an equal number were almost abstract. Her favorite was an extreme close-up of a row of icicles.

That’s winter, she thought to herself. That’s what winter feels like around here. Aloud she asked, “Are these …”

“Jessie’s,” Grand Alice finished for her. “Yes, they are.” She brought the tea things to a low table by the davenport and continued. “There’s more than one way of looking at
everything. Some angles are more interesting than others, but some are just more confusing. When Jessie takes photographs, she goes hunting for different angles. Problem is, she sometimes does the same thing in her life.” Grand Alice smiled. She sat down slowly, and motioned for Carole to come sit beside her.

Carole sat down. She wasn’t sure what Grand Alice meant, but the way she was talking reminded Carole of Mrs. Reg, and her habit of telling lessons as stories. Carole was sure her great-grandmother could teach her a lot.

Grand Alice poured Carole a cup of tea, but at first did not take one herself. Instead she reached down slowly, and pulled a small wooden box out from under the table. “I got this ready for you when I heard you were coming,” she said. She handed the box to Carole.

“I can’t be sure what I’m telling you is true,” she continued. “I can’t be sure, nobody can, but this is the story that’s been passed down, generation to generation, on my side of the family. My mother told me. Her mother told her. Way back, to at least the late eighteenth century, one woman told another. The story is that the first woman in my family came over from Africa on the slave boats and brought this with her, around her neck.”

Carole opened the box. It was lined with yellowed satin. Inside was a small, finely carved wooden amulet on a leather thong. She held it up. It was a figure of a four-footed animal—a horse perhaps, or a donkey, or even a
zebra. The wood was dark and smooth and the carving was exquisite. Carole held it up to the sunlight. She was amazed to think that something so delicate survived first a trip in a slave boat and then over two hundred years, passed down from hand to hand through Grand Alice’s family until now, when she held it in her own hand. The little animal was unscathed, and the thought of its history nearly took her breath away.

“The leather’s new,” Grand Alice said. “Leather rots, you know, and the old string didn’t look sound to me, so I had a new one put on. You don’t want to put it on a metal chain, Carole, because it might scratch the wood.” She took the necklace away from Carole and gently held it in her own hand.

“This would have been your mother’s, Carole. I had only sons, you know, so I decided I would save this for a granddaughter. I would have given it to your mother, but I waited too long. After she died, I decided to save it for you.” Grand Alice slipped the necklace over Carole’s head.

All at once Carole was overcome with joy and sadness. She flung her arms around her great-grandmother and buried her head against the older woman’s shoulder to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. She had never thought that anyone in her family, much less herself, would have such a treasure.

“I’ll save it for special occasions,” she promised. “And
I’ll always remember the story. Oh, thank you, Grand Alice!”

Grand Alice patted Carole’s arm. “You’re welcome. I know you’re a good person to give it to. You’re like your mother, you know. Now drink your tea. I have pictures to show you.”

Carole obediently drank her tea. But all she could think about was the amulet. “Just think,” she said, fingering the tiny animal, “I may not be the first member of the family to be horse-crazy. Maybe she—the woman who first wore this—loved horses too.”

Grand Alice chuckled. “Maybe so. And Carole, you take care of that necklace, but mind you do one other thing too. You be sure that you pass it on to your family someday.”

Carole nodded solemnly, not trusting herself to speak. Someday she would give the necklace to another young girl, and tell her the story she had just been told.

After tea and two cookies apiece—“Always need a cookie with tea,” Grand Alice declared, even though it was still close to breakfast time—Grand Alice instructed Carole to bring out several photo albums from the bottom drawer of her desk. Carole was thrilled at the number of pictures they contained. What stories they must hold! She got a pen and notebook ready so she could write everything down for her project.

First Grand Alice opened a big black album whose stiff cover crackled with age. “These are the old ones. There
aren’t too many of them—photographs were a rare luxury in those days. We start with Jackson Foley. Here he is.”

Carole looked at his picture. To her surprise, Jackson Foley looked like an everyday person, not like the villain she thought him to be. He was thin and slightly stooped, and he looked a little stiff in his formal clothes, but he was smiling and his eyes looked kind.

“Course, he would have been Jackson Washington then,” said Grand Alice. “On the back of the picture it says that it was taken in Boston in 1865, during the Civil War. It’s the only picture of ol’ Jackson I have. It may be the only one he ever had taken.

“Now here …” She turned the page and showed Carole another photograph, this one of an unsmiling young black woman in a frilly white dress. She held a baby, also dressed in white, on her lap, and a toddler leaned against her knee. Two other children stood beside her. The girl was dainty, with ribbons in her hair. The boy’s belly pushed against his suspenders. He looked ready to fight. “This is Jackson’s second wife, and their children. The boy, Frederick, was my husband’s grandfather.”

Carole wrote his name down. “Who are the rest?”

“The woman’s name was Cleone. Little girl with the ribbons was named Elsie. She died the next year, but James—that was my husband, James—said his grandpa had been fond of Elsie and used to talk about her.”

“What did she die of?”

“Oh, honey, nobody knows. In those days children could take sick one day and die the next, without anybody really knowing why. Weren’t any immunizations or medicines—weren’t hardly any doctors. Even when I was a child—I had a sister, you know.”

“You did?” Carole tried to remember what she knew about Grand Alice’s family. She didn’t actually remember anything, brothers or sisters.

“I had two brothers and one sister, but all I remember of my sister is her casket”—she held her hands apart—“just this big. I was four years old and my whole arm swelled up from my shoulder to my fingertips, and no one knew why. The doctor came to operate on me, right on top of our kitchen table. He cut into my arm to drain the swelling. As I was lying on that table, just before he put me out with the ether, I looked into the other room and saw that little casket. That was my sister. She was two years old and her name was Sophie, and that’s all I can remember of her.”

Grand Alice pushed up the sleeve of her dress. “See here.” Carole saw a thick, dark scar on the older woman’s arm. “From the surgery,” Grand Alice said.

“But how …” Carole was confused. “How can that happen, and how can people forget? I mean, your sister …” She didn’t know how to say what she meant.

“People forget. Families forget. We’re lucky, Carole, because our family told stories, and so we know an awful lot about our history. But that’s why it’s so important to keep
on telling the stories. Take little Sophie—I’m the last person left alive that ever saw her. My parents were poor. They couldn’t afford photographs. They never had one taken of Sophie. I didn’t have one taken of myself until I was seventeen.” She shuffled through the old black album. “Here it is.”

Carole smiled to see Grand Alice in a long ruffled dress, her hair piled intricately on top of her head. She was wearing thin, wire-rimmed glasses. “When did you start needing glasses?” she asked. Grand Alice wore them now; she needed them most of the time, but sometimes they hung around her neck on a thin silver chain.

At this, Grand Alice laughed long and hard. “Not until I was sixty years old and my eyes started to wear out,” she said. “Carole, back then eyeglasses were the fashion. That pair just had pieces of glass.”

Carole was more resolved than ever to pay close attention to her family history. These stories were important.

Grand Alice went through the rest of the old photos carefully, and Carole took voracious notes. The newer albums were filled with snapshots, and here Grand Alice sped up the pace. “When cameras got cheap enough that people all had their own, they took a lot more pictures. And let’s be honest, some of them aren’t all that interesting.”

She hurried past old landscape shots from trips taken long ago, then slowed down again when she came to Carole’s
mother’s childhood. “Here’s your momma.” There was Carole’s mother as a baby lying naked on her changing table; sitting in her high chair with food all over her face and hair; wide-eyed with excitement in front of a flocked Christmas tree.

There she was again, playing with John and Elaine in the snow in front of the farmhouse—Carole was surprised to see that the house looked just the same—or, a little older now, running with her brother and sister along a rocky beach.

Then came a posed shot of the children together, a tiny baby lying across Elaine’s lap. “That’s Jessie,” Carole guessed. In the pictures, the children grew up and graduated from high school and then college. John appeared in a football uniform, and Jessie as a gangly cross-country runner in a pale blue tracksuit.

Then there were pictures of Carole’s mother and father together. Carole giggled. “I’ve never seen my father with that much hair.”

Grand Alice nodded. “First thing the Marines did was shave it all off.”

Then there was a picture Carole recognized from a copy they had at home: her parents together, holding an infant Carole.