The Color of Family (21 page)

“Oh, I know you are, honey. And you are so right about the moment your grandchildren are born. I will never forget one thing about the day Clayton was born. I still remember the room I was in over there at Oschner Hospital as if I was just in there yesterday. But you have no idea what kind of joy you're in for. I know for me, all the mistakes I made in trying not to spoil Clayton I don't have to worry about with my grandbabies,” she said with a hearty laugh. “Yeah, that's right. I just let Clayton and Susan do all the saying no and I just say yes, yes, yes. And you're gonna do the same, too, honey. Just you wait and see.”

And what Agnes couldn't see, maybe wouldn't see, was that the light that had been lit, barely long enough for scarce joy to transcend their enmity, had been doused. Antonia's anger rose in one solid wave of sadness at what she'd missed—Clayton's birth. But for Agnes to flaunt, so brazenly, so blithely, that Clayton was born at Oschner—the hospital for whites—just brought all of that woman's subterfuge back into the room to tap Antonia on the
shoulder and remind her of the trickery that kept Clayton from being born over at Charity Hospital—the hospital for coloreds. She wondered what to say. Although her ire was burning at her core, it had yet to tell her mind to shift from the enchantment of babies and childbirth to the vulgarity of Agnes's cruel-hearted machination of Clayton's truth to nourish her own insatiable low-down selfishness. Antonia cast her eyes down into her lap and longed for the moments just passed when she had shared a second of likeness with Agnes, so she made the decision, right there, to let the brightness in her life outshine the darkness. “Yeah, well I know what you mean. Momma died before Ellen was born, so she never got to know the kind of joy I'm going to have when my baby has her baby. Last night was scary, though, because Ellen's only just barely nine months pregnant. Of course nowadays they can do a lot for those kinds of preemies, but still, you just want them to stay protected in that womb so that they can be as strong as they can when they have to face this world.”

“So she's okay now?” Agnes asked with the sober face of concern.

“Oh yes, she's just fine. Her pride was a little hurt, though, because she was just as sure as anything that she was in premature labor,” Antonia said laughing with her memories of the night before. “‘This is what I do all day long, so I should know,' she told them. ‘I bring babies into the world every day, even premature ones, and I should know when I'm in premature labor.' That girl with her headstrong self was over there trying to tell everybody what to do. I guess it's true that doctors really do make the worst patients. I remember when Junior had to have his appendix out about twenty years ago. Oh my God, Agnes, those doctors had to put a sign on his door telling people not to go in there because Junior was so crusty and ornery to everybody. It was like I had a third child. Anyway, she's at home taking it easy today and for the rest of the week. In fact, I'm going past to see her when I leave from down here.”

The waiter appeared carrying two prawn salads, which he placed gingerly in front of each of them. He offered the peppermill without saying a word, as if just showing it should make it clear what he was offering.

“Yes, I'd like pepper,” Antonia said.

Then Agnes nodded for the same as well. And when he peppered her salad sufficiently, she simply held her hand up in the universal sign to halt. When he left them to their food, she picked up the conversation. “Well, anyway, I know that must have been something with Junior, 'cause men are a mess like that. But it's good that your daughter's resting herself. It doesn't matter how old you get, a girl needs her momma at a time like this. I always wished I'd had a little girl, but we just didn't have any more children after Clayton,” she said, her voice growing weaker as the sentence went along so that by the end of it,
Clayton
was barely audible.

But Antonia's mind had breezed by the perfect opportunity to question Agnes as to why they never had more children, at least for now. Her thoughts were with Ellen, wondering just how much she really needed her mother. Ellen was always so complete, Antonia remembered. There didn't seem to be anything in Ellen's whole life, since she'd left diapers, that she couldn't manage to do or get for herself. So Antonia chewed a prawn and, before it was barely swallowed, said, “Yeah, I suppose that's so for most other girls. But you don't know my Ellen. She's so self-sufficient. Doesn't need a thing from anybody, it seems.” She grew quiet and pensive for the barest second, then let out a thin laugh. “By the time she was ten years old I knew that if she'd had a job, she would have had her own place.”

“Oh, honey, it might seem that way to you, but believe me, she needs you,” Agnes said to Antonia, with sympathetic eyes that held Antonia tightly. “From the time they get out here they're trying to conquer this world on their own. And I don't mean high school or college either, honey. I mean from the time they take those babies from our wombs we are having to learn step-by-step and stage-by-stage how to let them go, because instinct makes them want whatever is meant for them in this world.”

“Well, then that's my Ellen, wanting everything that's meant for her in the world.” She fell quiet long enough to finish her prawn salad, which was sparse to begin with, even though the prawns seemed as big as her hands. Antonia dabbed the corners of her mouth with a corner of her napkin, then smoothed it back across her lap. Looking over at Agnes who'd had one last prawn she seemed to be coveting as if she wanted to take it home with
her, Antonia said, “Tell me something, Agnes. Why is it that you and Douglas never had more children?”

Agnes looked sharply at Antonia, and only when she loosened her tightened lips did she say, “Now listen, Antonia. I know what you're getting at, and you're wrong. Douglas and I tried for a few years, but then we both decided that we were happy just to have our Clayton.”

Antonia smiled with just a hint of irony. “Agnes, I simply asked a question that was nothing if not innocent. My question has absolutely no bearing on what I truly believe.”

“And what you believe has no validity,” Agnes snapped. Then she cut her last prawn and ate half of it. She let loose a chest full of air, put her fork down and said, “Now listen, Antonia, I don't know why all this has to happen between us. Why, just now we were getting on fine, and then just like that we're at each other's throats. I don't want to be that way with you.” She skewered the last bit of prawn on her fork and put it in her mouth, chewing it slowly and deliberately as if it would be some sort of sin against the culinary artistry of the chef to swallow, but she did, then said, “The truth is, Antonia, I've always liked you. Not just because you're Emeril's sister, but because you've always had spunk. You were so sure of yourself with every step you took, and even though everybody else around thought you were crazy, calling you fou-fou Antonia and all, just because you went around with that yellow cat of yours in that basket, I defended you because you knew who you were. None of that fou-fou Antonia stuff ever made you doubt for one second who you were. Even when you were running around behind me and Emeril tryin' to make our lives miserable, I defended you.”

“Of course I knew who I was. I was Emeril's twin sister and I was loved. There wasn't anything or anybody that could have ever changed that,” Antonia replied defiantly, looking starkly at Agnes. Then, as her lips softened just enough to let one corner of her mouth turn up toward a smile, she said, “Besides, I don't believe you defended me back then.”

“I did, though,” Agnes said assuredly as she looked briefly at the plate of food that was just put down before her. “Why, do you remember that first summer the three of us met and we all worked over there at the Devereuxs'?”

“Yes I do,” Antonia said sprightly with the memory of a time long forgotten. “You were their nanny, and I worked in the kitchen with Cora Calliup's mother, who got me and Emeril jobs working over there.”

“That's right. And Emeril was their yard boy.” She waited for the waiters to clear their salad plates and get completely behind them before continuing, “Okay, so one day, Mrs. Devereux nearly tossed you outta there when she found the bones from the ribs they'd had for dinner the night before tucked away in your sweater pocket. She couldn't believe that you had dug those things outta the garbage and was savin' them to take home with ya. She thought you were some kind of dangerous nut for doin' that. And honestly, honey, I couldn't think of a darn good reason myself, but I still told her, I said, ‘Mrs. Devereux, Antonia ain't crazy. She's just gifted is all. She's one of those seers, and them bones is what she uses to help her see what us regular ungifted folks can't see.' Anyway, I knew you weren't no seer, honey, but she believed it, and she didn't fire you. Why did you take those bones, anyway?”

“I took them because I thought if I strung them on some pretty gold string, they'd make a pretty necklace. Turned out I was wrong.” Then with an emotion that boiled up from way down deep, from a place that had been constructed so long ago and then abandoned, Antonia shared a laugh with Agnes that gave her a freedom that had eluded her for so long, it was all at once unnerving and the most ebullient life could ever offer. And it lasted, because as with anything that can make a body tingle from its soul, Antonia was in no hurry to let it leave. But then as it drew to an end, she said, “Well, anyway, it's a good thing I didn't get fired, because if I had I wouldn't have been able to get another job that whole summer. And most of the money I made at the Devereuxs', Momma and Daddy made me put in the bank, and I couldn't touch it till I got to college. It's a good thing they did too, because that money plus the money Momma and Daddy would add to it from time to time helped me when I went to Spelman. So I guess I ought to thank you.”

“I guess you ought to,” Agnes said with a lilt of jest in her voice that somehow seemed to restore her whole face, dancing eyes and all, back to her former girl-self.

Antonia sliced off a piece of what she could only identify as some sort of fish with her fork, then scooped it up and put it in her mouth to discover it was catfish. She thought to tell Agnes of how she'd never, ever thought to fix catfish any other way but fried, but that what they were eating now was quite a tasty way of fixing it, but she chose instead to say, “Agnes, I wish I could understand why it's so hard for you to just admit to me that Clayton is Emeril's son. I mean, I know I've said all of that stuff about how the world should know what kind of man my brother was and what kind of man he fathered, but that was just a lot of other stuff in me talking. Really, it would only have to be between the three of us, me and you and Clayton. I don't want anything else from you, Agnes, except to know my brother's child. I don't think that's asking for the world.”

Agnes only chewed, staring straight ahead at Antonia. Her face had fallen flat, coming back to her present woman-self. And as if waiting for minutes to be added to the day, she sipped from her water glass, set it back on the table, then replied, “Antonia, there is absolutely nothing I can say to you that I haven't said a million times before. You're going to believe what you're going to believe, and all I can do is tell you that what you believe isn't so. I've always known, Antonia, that we wouldn't even be going through this if I was black.”

“You're right. We wouldn't be going through any of this if you were black, because there'd be no reason for you to hide his color, now would there be?”

“That's so unfair, Antonia,” Agnes said, diverting her eyes from Antonia's as if a force larger than she had snatched them away.

“It may be difficult for you to hear, but there's no way it could be unfair because it's true.”

Agnes went to pound her fist down on the table until she seemed to remember where she was, and then she simply slapped the tips of her fingers on the edge of the table. Though it was nowhere near the same explosion as her fist, the tenacity was quite clear when she said, “What in the hell do you want from me, Antonia? I have tried to be reasonable with you. I have come to your home. I have invited you here to have a beautiful lunch, and all you can do is continue to needle me and take me round and round in your circles about something that cannot possibly be true.”

So Antonia stared back and said with an even firmness, “Well if
as you say it's impossible to be true, can you tell me why it is that Emeril died on July twenty-third nineteen fifty-six, and Clayton was born on April twenty-third nineteen fifty-seven? And just in case you're bad with math, that's exactly nine months to the day after Emeril died.”

Agnes twittered with nervous laughter, then said, “Antonia, what are you saying? Okay, so he was born nine months to the day after Emeril died, not nine months to the day after the first time Emeril and I made love.”

And Antonia laughed, as well, only with slyness, and said, “But Agnes, do I need to remind you that on the morning of the day he died, I caught the two of you doing it right there in the living room of the house where you looked after those children down in the Garden District? Now I am married to a doctor and I do know that most babies are not born exactly nine months to the day after conception, but I do also know that it
can
happen.”

Agnes, flustered, flushed and, stammering all over herself, seemed to be pecking in the air right before her in search of what to say. And when she looked into every corner of the room and back, it seemed as if she needed to search in another part of the dining hall's atmosphere for words that only Antonia would understand. “So—So—So, how in the world do you know that about him? How is it that you know when his birthday is, Antonia? Have you been stalking him or something?”