Finding Family Read online

  Whenever Aunt Tilley told me about Grandpa helping her son get his start in life, she said Grandpa would have helped Richard if he wasn’t his nephew. “Your grandpa always been a good judge of character. No industrious young fella ever had to ask twice for his help.”

  - - - - -

  Cousin Richard got here as soon as he could, and looking so tired from all the hours spent on one train or another. But no amount of tired could hide his handsome.

  It had been a while since he’d paid a visit. I’d forgotten that he wasn’t as severe as he looked in his pictures. Close to mean in the last one.

  “His simpleton of a wife couldn’t even see to his tie being straight,” Aunt Tilley had complained. Seemed to me it was the photographer who should have told him to fix it. Too, Cousin Cora didn’t look like a simpleton to me. Sharp as a tack, she seemed.

  And she was in the family way again. That’s what I heard Cousin Richard explain when Grandpa saw him up to the room Miss Ida had readied for him. Of the four bedrooms upstairs, it was the only one that didn’t have walnut or oak furniture. Instead, every piece, from bed and bureau to trinket mirror on the dressing table—all the furniture was sandy white with glimmers of gold. And the wallpaper was like a song. Big purple maypops in a whimsy.

  I’d always figured that room had been my mother’s, but never dared ask. Aunt Tilley got so flustery whenever she caught me peeking in there.

  But that room wasn’t on my mind the evening Cousin Richard arrived. Aunt Tilley’s was. During supper, I asked Grandpa if I could sleep in her room.

  Miss Ida had just served the corn soup.

  “Might give you nightmares.” That’s how Grandpa said “No.”

  “But—”

  “Finish your soup.”

  While Grandpa frowned, Cousin Richard gave me a smile. More glorious than even his mother’s sunshine smile. Suddenly, he was the most handsome man in the world. I wanted to run down to the Kanawha, find myself a wishing-place, and ask Father God to still be making handsome men when I get grown. And good men, I would add. Men who don’t run off like my father.

  Cousin Richard would never do a thing like that. And I was sure he wouldn’t mind at all if I made a remembrance for Aunt Tilley on her bedroom door. But, Grandpa, he’d just say no.

  So I made that remembrance in my mind between spoonfuls of corn soup.

  - - - - -

  What I imagined on Aunt Tilley’s door was a big black velvet bow and, in the center, her favorite photograph of herself. It was from the time she went to Huntingdon, when Richard and Cora had their first baby, James. While Aunt Tilley was in Pennsylvania, Richard took her to see kin in York.

  “For no rhyme or reason my dear Richard bought me a hat!” That hat had what Aunt Tilley called “a white festivity.” She couldn’t wait to get her picture taken.

  “That photography place was beehive busy and them Shadle and Busser people had all kinds of scenery,” she’d told me. “You could get a picture of yourself at a mountainside or with sailboats in the distance. You could pose with a book, touching a table.”

  Aunt Tilley got all big-eyed when she told me about a chair that brought to mind a throne. “Perfect match for the hat my dear Richard give me!”

  She gave me a sunshine smile, a smile I’d never see again, a smile I wanted to believe she had on when she went down to the Kanawha that one last time. To make a wish. Under the welcoming tree.

  After I made that remembrance in my mind, I was thinking Aunt Tilley ought to be buried in her white festivity hat, but I knew better than to interrupt Cousin Richard and Grandpa’s talk about taxes, suppliers, rates, and such.

  So I finished my soup, hankering to know Aunt Tilley’s last wish and wondering, Who will mother me now?

  Four

  I said “No!” to Cousin Mahala. Lawdamercy, I sure didn’t want her to be the one. May she stay in Boston, I prayed.

  That’s what I was thinking after Grandpa and Cousin Richard left to take their coffee in the parlor and I was helping Miss Ida clear the dining room table.

  Earlier, I’d overheard Miss Ida tell Grandpa there was no end to women kin who would be happy to come finish where Aunt Tilley left off with me.

  Mahala’s was just one of the photographs that popped up in my mind. She looked the type to fuss a lot and I didn’t want somebody fussy taking care of me.

  Until Grandpa made his pick, I supposed he’d have Miss Ida come every day for whole days. She’d like that, I was sure. She seemed sweet on Grandpa. Better, she never acted like I was a bother. Even slipped me a piece of candy now and then. And sometimes she seemed downright interested in me, as me.

  If I was watching her make a mess of greens, frying fish, or polishing the silver, she asked me questions. Not like she was checking up on me, the way Aunt Tilley did, but like she was just curious.

  The more I thought about it, the more I hoped Grandpa would have Miss Ida be full-time and have an aunt or cousin move in. Then I wondered, What if I had some say?

  After I scraped the tablecloth for crumbs, I slipped into the sitting room, took the basket of kinfolk from atop the sewing table and up to my room.

  - - - - -

  I fished out Mahala first.

  I had remembered right. Too fussy-like.

  I said “No!” to Mahala again.

  But “Yes!” to Aunt Rachel, never mind that Aunt Tilley sucked her teeth and muttered “floozy” at her picture.

  I liked the way Aunt Rachel decorated herself. She had the same sense about her as Eula. Top boss of her world!

  And I was so hoping Aunt Tilley had mixed Eula up with somebody else. I wanted her name to be Emma, like was on the back of her photograph. “Emma” sounded more bouncy.

  Above all, may she not be passing. Or dead. That way when she came for the funeral she’d tell me all about her life as an opera singer or something lively like that, something that had her traveling around the world, but now she was tired, so tired. Tired of crossing oceans. Tired of keeping up with hatboxes and steamer trunks. She was ready to stay put where she had family. Like Charleston, West Virginia. Then I’d say “Yes!” to Emma.

  I could see Aunt Tilley up in Heaven hollering “Yes!” to Cousin Clare.

  I’d forgotten how she was kin, but I remembered Cousin Clare always rated placement on the parlor mantel or the lion’s paw table. That’s because she was a teacher. With her, I’d end up double-smart, but never laugh again, I feared. She always brought to mind stories about damsels in distress. So weepy! My stomach hurt every time I looked at her.

  Under her picture was that of Cousin Ambertine. She had grown up here, down the street. And blood kin, I knew. Her pa was Grandpa and Aunt Tilley’s older brother, Jake, another one dead, like his wife, Mamie.

  Aunt Tilley would have a fit if I said “Yes!” to Ambertine.

  “Trash and trouble!” That’s what she muttered when we strolled by Ambertine down on a baseboard.

  Ambertine had been wild. She had run away. To join the circus—that’s what I figured the first time I saw the photograph of her in a beehive-busy black dress and a hat like something from an Ali Baba tale.

  But then, when Aunt Tilley told me Ambertine made her money off other people’s miseries, I wondered if Ambertine was a thief. I could see her swinging and swacking at people with that umbrella.

  “Sold her soul to the Devil for filthy lucre!” Aunt Tilley also said of Ambertine. “Night and day from Wade.”

  Wade was Ambertine’s brother, a doctor in Washington, D.C. “He made the family proud,” Aunt Tilley said of Wade.

  He sure looked like he was bound and determined to make the family—the whole world—proud, but what I most liked about his picture was seeing “Charleston” printed so pretty at the bottom. When I was younger, I hadn’t been able to make out the word on the other side.

  “Gates,” Aunt Tilley had said. “That’s the name of the photographer. Down on Capitol Street.”

  No telling where Ambert
ine’s picture was taken. The more I looked at her, the more I wondered if she truly was nothing but trash and trouble. Up close, she looked a little lonely and like she might have a hiding kindness.

  Maybe Ambertine had changed, turned from her wild ways. For all I knew, she could have given the Devil back his filthy lucre, whatever that was.

  - - - - -

  Seemed I’d never find out, though. Ambertine didn’t come to Aunt Tilley’s funeral. Neither did Mahala or Rachel. No Emma who I hoped wasn’t Eula, either. But Cousin Clare came, mostly gray and still looking weepy.

  Uncle Matthias was all gray. Stooped, too. Only when he called me to him—“Who you?” Then I knew. He still had the wily eye.

  His dog, I guessed, had died.

  Cousin Clare and Uncle Matthias were just the first family I met. Others came from Bluefield, Cucumber, and other places I could only wonder about. I’d never been nowhere.

  Some kin who lived far or were feeble sent telegrams and cards. Miss Ida made a nice display of them on the hall table. That’s where she also laid the guest book for relatives and townsfolk to sign.

  Of all who came, the biggest surprise was Aunt Viney, the woman who walked the world.

  I recognized her long cross right off, but not the rest of her. Face so shriveled. Hair white-white, but she still had a bit of bangs. And though she must have been a hundred years old, Aunt Viney wasn’t decrepit. That I could see clear from up on the landing. She stood soldier-straight in the front doorway and had a tight grip on a beat-up leather bag like doctors carry.

  But how did she know?

  A whipping wind swept in as Aunt Viney told how she came to be on our doorstep the night before Aunt Tilley’s funeral.

  “Was up in Ohio, Ashtabula County, tilting toward Maine. The Holy Spirit said, ‘Go south, Viney, go south.’ At the West Virginia border, same thing—‘Go south, Viney, go south.’ Soon as I set foot in Hebron, it wasn’t no longer the Holy Spirit speaking. ’Twas Tilley. ‘Come see me, Viney, come see me.’”

  A shiver went through me. But it wasn’t the cold. Aunt Viney was all the way inside by then. Grandpa had closed the door. Miss Ida had taken her bag.

  I wondered if the shiver was some of the Holy Spirit sparking off Aunt Viney. She sure looked like the holiest person in the world. Still so much yonder in her eyes.

  And there was so much kindness in Cousin Richard’s—in all of him. What with the other bedrooms spoken for, like the cots set out in the sitting room, Cousin Richard insisted Aunt Viney have the room he was in. Said he’d be just fine with a pallet in the library.

  Cousin Richard was so nice to me, too. From one of his trips to Capitol Street, he brought me back a huge bag of candy! Brittle and jelly beans, Hershey bars, lots of lollipops, Tootsie Rolls. Lemon drops, too. I’d never seen so much candy.

  “This all for me?”

  “Yes, my dear Delana.” He smiled. “All for you!”

  Aunt Tilley had only let me have candy once in a blue moon. Said too much would curdle my mind. Cousin Richard didn’t think candy was bad for me—or him, I learned when I helped him tote his things down to the library. I held my candy bag open to him, and he took a whole handful.

  He popped jelly bean after jelly bean into his mouth as he swiveled in the chair before the roll-top desk. He was smiling at everything in the library, from the little table and chair by the window to the tiny maypops dotting the wallpaper. Scanning the bookshelves, he smiled even more. “I can still see her in here, curled up in the chair, nose in a book, lost in some adventure.”

  Lost in memory—that’s what Cousin Richard was. Like I wasn’t even in the room. “Never knew anybody to read more books than her.”

  “Aunt Tilley?”

  He went solemn, shook his head. “Your mother.”

  I lowered my eyes.

  He lifted my chin. “What do you say, let’s not be sad right now. We’ll have plenty of that tomorrow.” Then he eyed the candy bag. “Can we split the last Hershey bar?” He was smiling again.

  I said “Yes!” to Cousin Richard right there. And later, again and again in my head.

  - - - - -

  During all this time, Cousin Richard was one of the few people who didn’t give me that awful pity look.

  Pity looks from the townsfolk. Pity looks from kin. And, oh, how I hated that awful waiting in most everybody’s eyes. Like they were longing to see me cry.

  Cousin Clare said as much. “No need to put up a brave front, my dear. Don’t hold back. Let it out. Let it out,” she whimpered, dabbing her eyes with a black hankie.

  But I had no more tears.

  I hadn’t been able to stay strong the day Aunt Tilley died after all. That night, when I was in bed, I couldn’t control myself. I had a big, long cry, with the sheet stuffed in my mouth for fear my sobs might carry down to The Traveler’s Room and wake up Grandpa.

  After that, though I missed Aunt Tilley so awful much, I never felt tears on the rise.

  I didn’t know how to tell Cousin Clare that I wasn’t holding back from crying. I couldn’t tell her much of anything. I certainly couldn’t tell her how much I dreaded looking into her eyes.

  Worse were the eyes I couldn’t see.

  Somebody staring at me.

  Those mystery eyes were like red-hot burning coals.

  I first felt them when we left the church. Felt them longest at the burial. During Reverend Curtis’s final prayer, when all heads were bowed, I did a quick look around.

  Just a scrawny peddler passing by. His slouch hat a little loose on his head.

  - - - - -

  “Amen.”

  After we tossed flowers on the coffin and the crowd began to ease away, Miss Ida handed me a basket with the silk flowers Grandpa had Adena’s mother make. Then, Grandpa held my hand just as he had in church.

  Made me remember times when I was little. How he rode me around the sitting room on his back. And the time I fell off the porch and got a big ole knot on my head, Grandpa had fussed over me so. Like I was all that mattered in the world.

  I prayed Grandpa was going back to being gentle as just him and me stepped, hand in hand, over to four old graves. Each to get silk flowers.

  Grandpa laid a ring of daisies on the first:

  IN MEMORY OF LUCAS AND LUCINDA HANNIBAL

  BELOVED SON AND DAUGHTER

  OF SAMUEL AND DELIA HANNIBAL

  DECEMBER 21, 1866–DECEMBER 24, 1866

  Golden mums on the next:

  IN MEMORY OF SAMUEL HANNIBAL, JR.

  BELOVED SON

  OF SAMUEL AND DELIA HANNIBAL

  FEBRUARY 19, 1868–SEPTEMBER 18, 1887

  For my grandma’s grave, it was a red rose bouquet:

  IN MEMORY OF DELIA HANNIBAL

  BELOVED WIFE

  OF SAMUEL HANNIBAL

  FEBRUARY 15, 1841–JANUARY 17, 1888

  And for my mother, purple maypops:

  IN MEMORY OF JOLINE HANNIBAL

  BELOVED DAUGHTER

  OF SAMUEL AND DELIA HANNIBAL

  APRIL 3, 1875–MARCH 7, 1893

  - - - - -

  I didn’t feel those red-hot coals eyeing me again till we were back at the house. I was sitting on the red velvet settee between two old people. I’d picked that spot because I didn’t have to deal with their eyes. They were closed.

  On one side of me, Aunt Viney. On the other side, Uncle Matthias. She was praying, I believed. He, I knew, was asleep. His mouth was open.

  That’s when I felt Mystery Eyes again.

  I looked to the front window, then to the side. Nothing but daylight.

  Then Aunt Viney whispered, “Somebody out back for you.”

  I knew better than to doubt Aunt Viney. I made haste—thinking at last I’d find out who was Mystery Eyes.

  Five

  Somebody was out back for me, but it wasn’t Mystery Eyes. It was Adena with an apple stack cake.

  “From our family to yours with sympathy,” she said.

  When
I asked Adena to come in and have some punch—

  “Can’t,” she said and smiled, then made her way down the back walk, her braids swinging in perfect rhythm with her wide-legged walk.

  “Got more errands,” Adena hollered over her shoulder, “then chores at home.”

  The first time I saw where home was for Adena was that day Viola got all vicious about her toes. When Miss Tolliver dismissed us, Adena dashed away quick. Viola and a bunch of other kids followed fast, shouting “Lousy Lungin!”

  Miss Tolliver looked so disgusted.

  I was still in the classroom because it was my turn to be helper. I was about to wash the chalkboard when Miss Tolliver sighed. “Oh, dear, Adena left her satchel. Delana, would you do a good turn?”

  I nodded.

  I was always to go directly home after school, but I didn’t know how to tell Miss Tolliver no. Besides, I owed Adena a kindness for even letting myself be tempted to do Viola’s bidding.

  Only problem, I didn’t know where Adena lived.

  When Miss Tolliver told me it was in the Hollow, I panicked. Aunt Tilley had told me the Hollow was full of people living a danger-life and ragamuffins running wild. But as I’d given my word, off I went, reminding myself to walk quick-quick and stay eagle-eyed.

  As it turned out, I didn’t see any wild and raggedy children in the Hollow. A few were barefoot, but none looked hungry. The danger-life people must’ve been asleep.

  At Adena’s house, the man out front fixing the porch railing didn’t look dangerous at all. Just different. He was dark but not like me or any other colored person I’d ever seen. His hair was coal black and straight, like Cherokee or Chinese. His eyes were blue. Melungin, I guessed.

  “Hello there.” He smiled.

  “Mr. Mullins?”

  “Sure enough.”

  “I go to school with Adena. She left her things.”

  “Adena, my dear, you have a visitor!” he called into the house.

  From the doorway, Adena looked to the left of me, then to the right before coming out to get her satchel.

  “Thank you, Delana.”

  After “Welcome,” I hurried on my way. Seconds later, I heard, “Delana, wait!”