Temple of My Familiar (42 page)

“‘And sometimes your grandmother would lie to mine and say, “No, us hadn’t seen her.” I used to love to hear her say that. We’d both of us, you and me, be hiding under the edge of Miss Shug’s bed. It was a mammoth, silver thing that was spoon-shaped and resembled a ship, and the lace from her bedspread hung down before our faces like a net. We’d be eating teacakes.

“‘First we’d hear the heavy crunch, crunch of my grandmother’s step in the yard. Then we’d hear her heavy thump as she put one foot on the bottom step. She’d never come in the house, of course. She’d never even ascend to the porch.

“‘“I’ve come for Tanya,” she’d say.

“‘And Miss Celie’d go, “Tanya? Why, us hadn’t seen her.”

“‘And you and I would just fall over, in our hiding place, giggling.’

“‘What did she look like, your grandmother?’

“‘She was real fat,’ said Tanya. ‘And she walked with a stick. She almost never smiled and always seemed to be remembering something she hadn’t liked. My grandfather had died a long time ago and there wasn’t even a picture of him in the house. The only nice thing about her, she had snow-white hair.

“‘How can you not remember those times?’ Tanya asked. ‘I could never forget them. I was never so happy in my life.’

“‘I remember being at your house,’ I said. ‘Vaguely. Or, rather, being in your backyard.’

“‘I couldn’t understand why you couldn’t come in,’ said Tanya. ‘And whenever I asked, one of them, my mother or father or grandmother, would say, “She wouldn’t
want
to come in, honey. Don’t ask her to; it might hurt her feelings.”

“‘Hurting you was the last thing I wanted to do. So we played outside in the backyard—we weren’t even supposed to play in the front; somebody might see us! And I never asked you inside. And you never asked, and didn’t seem interested in going inside our house, which was like Tobacco Road compared to yours anyhow, so I thought my parents and grandmother were right.’

“Robin,” said Fanny, frowning comically, “I didn’t remember any of this. Tanya remembered it perfectly. How is this possible?”

“For some people, happiness is easier to remember than pain,” said Robin. “You had to repress, ‘forget’ your pain in order to continue playing with Tanya. Although the ‘play’ had gone out of it by this time, I think.”

“Yes, I think so, too,” said Fanny. “What I did remember of our times together had an unreal quality, as if they existed on film, or had happened to someone else.”

“You became alienated from your own body, your own self,” said Robin. “You became two beings in your relationship with Tanya. The cheerfully playing little girl that others saw and the hurt child who was bewildered by her very first encounter with irrational rejection.”

Fanny continued. “‘And then it ended,’ Tanya said. ‘Surely you remember that?’

“‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Did your mother try to give me some of your old clothes?’

“‘Not hardly,’ said Tanya. ‘You were always dressed like a little princess. I was the one always begging to wear something of yours! But I could only wear your dresses and hair ribbons and lockets—and rhinestone socks!—at your house. Any little pretty thing you or your folks gave me promptly disappeared if I took it home.’

“‘What, then?’ I asked her. “

“‘Are you positive you don’t remember? All these years, I’ve thought you were sitting somewhere remembering and cursing us.’

“Oh shit, I thought,” said Fanny, leaning toward Robin. “As soon as Tanya said that I got a headache. I gritted my teeth and dug my heels into the carpet. I squinted at her in segments—at her feet, in beige house slippers, at her fat ankles, her stomach, over which her breasts flopped. Her chin. Her dark gray eyes. Her brown hair, its wide streak of gray.

“Tanya sighed. ‘It was my grandmother,’ she told me. ‘She died eventually, by the way. In the course of things. Not because of what she did to you.’

“‘Your grandmother,’ I said. ‘She did something to me?’ I was beginning to feel the way I feel under hypnosis. As if I were falling deep inside myself.

“‘She slapped you,’ said Tanya.

“‘Did I see stars?’ I asked.

“‘Yes!’ said Tanya. ‘You do remember!’

“‘No,’ I said. ‘I was being facetious.’

“‘Well, everyone kissed at your house. It was the common greeting and the common good-bye. Nobody hardly shook hands; unless they were total strangers. I loved it that everybody kissed. It certainly wasn’t something any of us did at home. But when I told my folks about it, they didn’t like it one little bit. They especially didn’t like to hear anything about grown women kissing. I now realize they had a conference about it and made a resolution for me. Since I was into kissing—I even started in kissing them—I, as a white person, could kiss any of you. But you must never kiss me. They sent me forth with this dictum and sat back expecting me to be able to implement it. I didn’t even try.

“‘But I did tell your folks about it, and they stopped on a dime. Not only did they stop kissing me, but they stopped touching me, period. I soon discovered I had my own personal glass and plate whenever I came to your house.

“‘Only you couldn’t hear me the way your mother and grandmothers could. You’d always kissed and been kissed. “Give me some sugar? You want some sugar?” Those seemed to be the two main questions in your life. One day when we were playing together in my backyard, you kissed me on the cheek. My grandmother was watching from the back steps, where she tended to park herself whenever we played.’

“‘Incensed, was she?’ I asked.

“‘Enraged,’ said Tanya. ‘She weighed a wet ton, and she lumbered over to us, and she slapped you so hard she knocked you down, and when you sat up you were holding your head between your hands as if you were afraid it would fall off. And you said, “I see stars.”

“‘And she said, “If I ever catch you putting your black mouth on Tanya again, I’ll knock your little black head off.” And she turned and lumbered back up the steps.

“‘You cried and cried. You were very upset. I cried and cried, too.
I
was very upset. But for some reason I was afraid to try to comfort you; after all, it was you that had been hit. I stood there totally rigid, as if turned to stone. You said you were going to tell your grandmothers; and I knew if you told Miss Shug she’d kill us all. I begged you not to say anything. I was so ashamed; and I hated my grandmother so much; but more than that, I was afraid of what would happen if you told.

“‘And I don’t think you ever told,’ said Tanya, ‘but I never knew for sure because that was the last time you played with me.’”

“Well,” said Robin, when Fanny finished. “How do you feel about this?”

“I still don’t feel it,” said Fanny.

“Do you want a tissue?” Robin asked.

And Fanny felt the tears of horror on her face.

Part Six

Remembrance is the key to redemption.

—
Inscription on a memorial to

Jews who died in World War II
c
oncentration camps, Land’s End

San Francisco

“D
EAR
S
UWELO,” WROTE
Mr. Hal in a large, shaky scrawl, “I take pen in reluctant hand to write you the sad news that my beloved Lissie, companion of nearly all my years, left us on June 3rd, a week ago. You will be happy to know she wasn’t sick, not in the least. In fact she painted right up until the afternoon she laid down to die. She had been complaining of a restlessness, and was all the time going around inside the house opening and closing windows. During the last month or so of her life, she didn’t want to spend much time inside the house anyway. She wanted to live out-of-doors. Thank goodness, the weather was fine, for the most part (of course she would love storms, too), and we dragged her mattress out onto the porch. Her easel stood in the corner, and she would lie down and rest for a bit, then get up and paint.

“Her last paintings are incredible, and unlike anything she’s done before; I mean, the subject matter itself is strange. I am enclosing some slides of them so you can see for yourself. I don’t know what to make of them.

“I am also sending along these cassette tapes Lissie made for you; and also, I believe, for Fanny. Both of us took a liking to that young woman’s face.

“A week ago, I didn’t see how I could make it without Lissie. I thought it would be easier to do without my own breath. She died, was cremated, and her ashes were scattered within twenty-four hours, just as she had instructed, but so fast. I came in from the yard where I had just scattered her ashes and I started to call her to ask her where I should put the empty urn. But as soon as I opened my mouth to ask her, I knew it didn’t matter. And that was my first inkling that grieving over Lissie’s departure was a little premature.

“It’s not that she’s here, or that she’s a ghost, Suwelo. She did die. She is gone. But she is also here, in me. And I realized Lissie was always in me, only now that I’m not distracted by her physical presence I can feel it more clearly.

“So think of me rattling around in our little house that the blue morning glories are burying and the pecan tree is sheltering from the sun. It feels big now, and for the time being I’ve left Lissie’s mattress on the porch. I look out the window at it, and it’s just a big fluffy cloud of white.

“Lissie liked you very much, Suwelo. Not just because you were Rafe’s descendant. She liked you for yourself. She liked your struggle against confusion. Lissie had no patience for people whose lives weren’t as convoluted as a ball of string.

“If you ever should come back to Baltimore, you must come to see me. I will make us a cup of good coffee and tell you about myself. I’m finding I’m too old to be lonely, but I miss seeing younger faces. My memories keep me company, and they are flooding back to quite a degree. I remember the years with Lissie, when we still lived on the Island. I remember her mama and that fishy-smelling little store. But that place was paradise. I remember that old witch Granny Dorcy. And baby Jack. And Lulu. We didn’t know what hit us, me and Lissie and Rafe, when Lulu never came back from Europe. I try not to think about that part. Every day, every minute, for years and years, we waited for a word about our daughter. None ever came. All those hopes. All that love. Lost.

“When your daddy was called to fight in the war, we were all glad. To hell with the Germans. I think we thought he’d be able to spot Lulu. But he didn’t find her; he found only terror and brutality enough to make him lose part of who he was in his soul, along with losing his arm.

“No, I don’t think of those things. I think of Lulu when she was a baby. I think about dressing and feeding her. I think about teaching her to read and watching her take her first steps in a forest. She grinned and grinned to find herself so small beneath the trees, but able to stand on her own legs, like them.

“Well, they go on and on, my memories, and right now I’m going back to them. If you want Lissie’s paintings, after I die, you can have them. Write me a card, and I will put it in my will. When I die, I’m convinced this house of ours will simply cave in. All that holds it up is my breath and the blue morning glories. Otherwise I’d leave it to you, too. As it is, I think our neighbors, who have a lot of children, could use the empty lot as a place for their children to play. So I will leave it to them. But do let me know about the pictures.

“Your friend.

“Harold (Hal) D. Jenkins, Esq.

“P.S. ‘Being a genius means you are connected to God. And you know it.’

“Every day I think of something like this that Lissie used to say. Today this is what came to my mind. I pass it on to you, for what it’s worth.

“Something else: ‘Men make war to get attention.’

“Something else: ‘All killing is an expression of self-hate.’

“And something she loved to say whenever people made fun of her, which was often: ‘Hal, I have been laughed at by some of the
funniest
people!’”

“T
O THE EXTENT THAT
it is possible,” Ola had said one day as he and Fanny sprawled on the grass after a morning of weeding his vegetable garden, “you must live in the world today as you wish everyone to live in the world to come. That can be your contribution. Otherwise, the world you want will never be formed. Why? Because you are waiting for others to do what you are not doing; and they are waiting for you, and so on. The planet goes from bad to worse.”

“Is that why you married a white woman?” Fanny asked, nibbling a blade of grass she’d broken off near her feet.

“No,” said Ola, surprised. “How did you know about it?” He shrugged. “I married Mary Jane to cause trouble; that’s why I married Mary Jane. And no matter how I’ve tried to explain it, no one is willing to listen to a different point of view.”

He tugged out the large handkerchief that hung from his back pocket and thoroughly mopped his perspiring face. When he’d finished, Fanny took it, looked for and found a still-dry corner, and gingerly dabbed her own forehead.

“Mary Jane?” she said. “Not a very Swedish name, is it?”

“Mary Jane isn’t Swedish,” said Ola, taking back the handkerchief and tossing it to the ground. “Oh, I see it now. You’ve been reading my plays! Beware of assuming the playwright always writes about himself.” He wagged his finger at her. “It’s true I had lovers in Sweden—it’s a damn cold country and I was lonely. Unbelievably lonely. And certainly there’s no crime in returning the kindness of strangers. There was a woman, Margrit, whom I lived with for two years. She was pregnant once, but being as pragmatic as she was beautiful, and hefty, too, by the way, she aborted the child. I couldn’t convince her to keep it; after all, I was the one who refused to wear condoms, even when she provided them. I thought it very racist of her to insist. I was the one who’d be leaving her country and coming home. I couldn’t bring her with me. I wasn’t Seretse Khama of Botswana, and she wasn’t Ruth Williams of England. She knew what white racism was, even in Sweden, after living there with me. She couldn’t bear to think of the suffering of her child. Ironically, I recently read an article that said that brown and golden children there these days are highly prized. I find this doubtful. I imagine they’re considered to be ...”