Finding Family Page 4

  Ambertine smiled a time or two, grunted some. Paused only once. When she had the picture of herself in her hand. “Sent this to my folks from Chicago,” she muttered. “To let them know I was still among the living. Never heard back.”

  Ambertine looked like a little girl, but as soon as she went back to rooting through the photographs she was fiery again.

  “Not one of your mama?”

  I shook my head. “Nor of Grandma Delia, Lucas and Lucinda, or Junior. Aunt Tilley said their pictures, along with ones of my mother … Grandpa buried all them with her. Wanted her to have some of family in Heaven.”

  I told Ambertine Aunt Tilley rarely spoke about my mother other than to say that she was an angel. “Said best I don’t bring her up around Grandpa, for that would bring on a storm of sorrowful memories more than he can bear. Might kill him. Visits to the graves were hard enough on him, Aunt Tilley said.”

  Ambertine sucked her teeth. “Come over here.”

  When I reached her, Ambertine held my head between her hands. She had me look straight into the mirror above my dresser.

  “When you see yourself, you see your mama.”

  I stared at myself, then at Ambertine’s reflection eyeballing me, then back at myself.

  Could this be why Grandpa didn’t put much time into me—I brought on a storm of sorrowful memories? Maybe he didn’t hate me.

  “Your mama had spirit, Delana. She had fire,” Ambertine said softly, making me wonder if I had some hidden spirit, a secret fire.

  “Joline could dream big and far and wide. Like if she saw in a catalog or shop window a glorious dress, she pictured herself in it. In a flash, she was conjuring a story about being up in New York City or across the ocean in Paris, France, strolling down a boulevard in that glorious dress, and with a glamorous hat and parasol to match. Head held high.”

  Ambertine struck a fancy-lady pose. Like Eula. Top boss of her world.

  “Same with a painting—be it mountains, forest, a seaside, it made no matter, Joline put herself in the scene. She dreamed herself a world.” Ambertine threw her head back and spread her arms out wide. “Joline liked what she liked—didn’t make no never mind what otherbodies thought. And Lord knows, she could take a liking to the most peculiar things. Purple maypops, I could understand. But box turtles? Oyster shells? And nothing topped her fancy for fish scales.”

  “Fish scales?” I frowned, recollecting times I watched Miss Ida out back clean walleye or other fish, their scales flicking and flying all over the place.

  “Not what you thinking.” Ambertine chuckled. “I’m talking about a coin, a three-cent silver piece. Tiny like some fish scales. Those little coins used to turn up in the back of drawers, linings, cracks in floorboards. So small I reckon more lost than spent. Your mama adored those little things. Where others saw scrap, Joline saw moons, stars—the whole of Heaven.” Ambertine was wonderlit.

  And we were face-to-face. Ambertine had me by the shoulders. “Then came the day,” she said, “when your mama met a man who became her world.”

  She was mind reading again. “Yes, Delana, your father, Jordan Burkett.”

  Aunt Tilley said his name was Lucifer and that he’d been too lazy to carry a surname.

  “Your mama loved him so. And he loved her.”

  Jordan Burkett.

  I said his name over and over again in my head. Fighting back tears, I told Ambertine the story I’d been raised on.

  That my father only took up with my mother because he saw this big house, knew about Grandpa having property and barbershops, but then he ran off for better pickings. “Right before I was born,” I sniffled. “Aunt Tilley said my mother used her last bit of strength to bring me into the world.”

  The story sounded worse—hurt worse—coming from my mouth. When Aunt Tilley told it, she was hugging me, and saying that in the end all was right with the world because I was now with her, safe and sound, and my mother was up in Heaven doing angel work.

  “Aunt Tilley lied, Delana.” Ambertine didn’t sound cruel, but like she really did have a hiding kindness.

  Ambertine, my room, everything—a blur. As I cried, Ambertine hugged me, rocked me, but I didn’t feel safe and sound. I felt confused. Scared. Upside down.

  “Truth, Delana. Him for her, her for him. Your folks had a powerful love both ways.”

  I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You saying my father wasn’t just a no-good—”

  “Your father is not no-good!”

  “Then why’d he run off?”

  “He didn’t run off! He faced a hard choice.”

  Stair steps creaked.

  We both flinched.

  Ambertine put a pointer finger to her lips, then jumped, jackrabbit, into my wardrobe. And a pistol hit the floor.

  I jumped. Not into the wardrobe but back up against my bed. Then, more panicky over the footsteps coming down the hall than over the pistol, I kicked it under my bed. Next, I slipped the envelope under my pillow.

  I knew by the knock who was there.

  “Yes, Grandpa.” I wiped my face.

  “You decent?”

  “Yessir.” I opened the door.

  Grandpa bit his lip, frowned. “You all right?”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry, Grandpa, I’m being strong.”

  “Well, that’s good. … And for now, I need for you to come say good night to Miss Ida.”

  I followed him down the back stairs and into the kitchen, where Miss Ida was packing up dishes and pans of hers.

  “Thank you, Miss Ida, for everything.”

  She patted my cheek. “You more than welcome.”

  Grandpa grabbed the heaviest pile of pots. “Going to help Miss Ida home. Won’t be long.”

  I hoped otherwise. Maybe she’d invite Grandpa in for pie or coffee.

  As soon as those two were down the back porch stairs, I hurried up to my room.

  Do you have a picture of my mother?

  Of my father?

  And did I hear you right?—“Your father is not no-good!”

  He’s still alive?

  Aunt Tilley said he was dead.

  I couldn’t get up to my room fast enough.

  When I did, my window was wide open. My curtains, giving salutes.

  I checked my wardrobe. No Ambertine.

  I looked under my bed. No pistol.

  The envelope was still under my pillow. I read the note again.

  Keep watch over my baby girl.

  As I closed my window, I saw something new about the elm tree. Bare as it was, with just a few leaves waving back at the breeze, what I saw was a sturdy black hand surging up from the earth, ready to be a rescue.

  Then a little silver something on my bureau caught my eye. Only when I had the coin in my hand did I delight at the stars, did I smile at the moons.

  I wanted to dream myself a world.

  Seven

  Your mother was an angel. Make her proud.” That was the message on the postcard from Cousin Clare.

  I had made lots of visits to that funeral guest book so I could write kinfolk. Telling them how good it was to meet even if the occasion was sorrowful. Telling them I thought maybe they would like to know some things about me, like my favorite color (yellow), favorite flower (yellow-faced pansies), and how well I do at needlework.

  After I figured I’d done enough polite talk, I got down to what I really cared about. Asking for memories of my folks.

  Most of my letters took up two sheets.

  Postcards. That’s all I got back.

  Could have been worse. Nobody could have written back at all. And this was the first time I’d gotten any kind of mail in my whole life. Postcards were better than nothing.

  Cousin Clare’s was of Market Street in Parkersburg.

  Make her proud.

  Her message was a little something to latch on to. I’d make my mother proud by doing like Ambertine said she did. I put myself in the scene.

  I pictured myself w
alking down Market Street, looking in all the shop windows. When I saw something I liked, I walked right in the store—head held high—and I bought it, no matter what otherbodies thought. Only thing was I couldn’t imagine what “it” was.

  The postcard from Uncle Matthias was a wonder. It wasn’t of somewhere in Madison, but in Owego, New York.

  I reckoned he’d collected thousands of postcards from all the cities his railroad job took him to. The scene from Owego was of railroad track by a riverbank and facing a mountain bend up ahead.

  I put myself in this scene, too.

  I imagined myself on a train traveling that track. Suddenly, I was holding my breath for fear the train was going too fast—might not slow in time to take the curve. And if we made it safe to the other side, what would I see? A village? A valley? More mountains?

  An abyss? Like Reverend Curtis preached about a few weeks back? A place for the Devil and his demons. A blacker-than-midnight bottomless pit.

  “Hope you enjoy this scene.” That’s what Uncle Matthias scrawled.

  I had liked the scene. Until I put myself in it, that is. Besides, I wanted more than a scene from Uncle Matthias. I wanted information and news. Along with memories of my folks, I’d asked him where Ambertine lives. I explained how I knew she was kin and maybe she didn’t know Aunt Tilley had gone to be with the Lord. Given he used to be a human telegraph, I figured if Uncle Matthias didn’t know where Ambertine was, he could find out.

  - - - - -

  “Write him again.”

  That was Adena. School had just let out. On other days, I’d told her all about Aunt Tilley’s funeral and everything about Ambertine’s secret visit. I had even let Adena see my mother’s note. The three-cent silver, too.

  “When I go to sleep, they’re under my mattress. When I’m awake, on me.” I showed her how I slip-stitched pockets on the underside of my skirts and dresses.

  I knew Adena wouldn’t tell a soul and that she’d also help me think, but her idea about writing Uncle Matthias a second time didn’t sit well. “He might think me impudent—and I don’t want him casting no wily eye on me. Not even from a distance.”

  “Then just wait. You said Ambertine seemed like one on a mission. I say she’s not done with you. If she been watching over you all these years, don’t make sense for her to stop now.”

  Adena sounded so sure. And maybe she was right. Ambertine wasn’t done with me. But where was she now? “I don’t want to wait, Adena. I have to find Ambertine—I have to know if my pa is alive and about the hard choice she said he faced. Why he left me.”

  There was something else.

  “I also want to know if Ambertine is … well, maybe she can watch over me and come and go by windows because—”

  I came to a standstill and looked at Adena.

  She stopped walking, too, and looked at me.

  “Adena, what if Ambertine is a witch?”

  “Why would a witch need a pistol?” Adena frowned. “Could be like with your aunt Viney. That the Holy Spirit speaks to Ambertine.”

  “But Ambertine’s a sinner.”

  “That don’t mean God didn’t give her gifts.”

  Then Adena asked about Cousin Richard.

  “Like everybody else … a postcard,” I told her. “Some Pennsylvania pastureland with cows, chewing the cud, I suppose. ‘Thinking of you,’ he wrote. Might could be he already gave me his best memory of my mother, about how she loved books. And maybe he never knew my father. Or …”

  That telegram asking me to be their daughter would never arrive, I feared. Cousin Richard wouldn’t be coming to get me. We’d never sit side by side on a train to Pennsylvania. I’d never set foot in their house and say to Cousin Cora, “Hello, it’s so nice to meet you,” and have her smile and say, “Oh, Delana, you are my child of promise! You must call me Ma!” Then Cousin Richard would say, “And you must call me Pa!” They’d hug me hard and tell me I was mighty dear to them.

  I didn’t say all that to Adena, only “Could be Cousin Richard done left me, too.”

  Adena didn’t think so. “Could be the baby came the same day as your letter and he’s running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He’s got to be plenty worn with one life leaving him and another coming.”

  Maybe, I thought. And anyways, if my father was still alive he was the one I wanted to call Pa.

  A few seconds later, Adena added, “You know who could tell you how to find Ambertine—and maybe your pa, too?”

  “I know. Aunt Viney. But all she wrote in the guest book was her name. But I’ve prayed, Adena. I asked the Holy Spirit to tap Aunt Viney on the shoulder wherever she is, spirit-speak to her—tell her to tilt back to me.”

  Adena stopped and looked at me. “Why not ask your grandpa about your pa?”

  “I can’t do that! Aunt Tilley said I must never bring him up, especially not to Grandpa.”

  “Any harm bringing up Ambertine? Can’t you just ask him where she stay? Say to him what you told your uncle Matthias. Don’t let on you know more about her than he thinks you know.”

  Adena made good sense now. When she went her way and I mine, I started summoning up the courage to ask Grandpa about Ambertine.

  Eight

  Miss Ida wasn’t in the kitchen. Not in the dining room.

  I checked the sitting room. Next, the parlor.

  I hollered up the stairs. “Miss Ida!”

  Strange. She was always there when I came home. There were times I ached all over to ask Grandpa if Miss Ida could live with us—tell him how awful nights were for me. Upstairs all by myself. Worse, after that dragonfly nightmare came back.

  Sewing up my lids.

  Stitching shut my lips.

  When I told Miss Ida about the dream, she said it was just something I ate kicking up a ruckus. Dragonflies were nothing to fear, she insisted. “They are one of God’s joys to the world. Sign of a better day coming! Of new beginnings!”

  “Miss Ida!” I hollered up the stairs again, then went back into the sitting room, through the dining room, and into the kitchen.

  “Grandpa?”

  I tiptoed past the pantry to The Traveler’s Room. Maybe he was taking a nap.

  I knocked.

  No answer.

  I eased the door open.

  No Grandpa.

  I ran a finger over the door’s plaque that read “The Traveler’s Room,” recalling the day I asked Aunt Tilley about Grandpa’s room.

  Just her and me in the kitchen. She doing up shuck beans. Me watching.

  I had just learned to read.

  “Grandpa’s real name The Traveler?”

  “No, baby.” Aunt Tilley laughed. “It’s Sam, like you always hear me call him. Short for Samuel.” She then told me how The Traveler’s Room came to be.

  “A long, long time ago, long before you were born, when Sam was making his way to Charleston, sleeping in the woods, or in a barn if a farmer was kind …” Aunt Tilley’s eyes went wide. “Well, one night when the rain was a-lashin’ and the wind was a-whippin’—Lawdamercy, what a wretched, wretched night! And your grandpa so bone-weary when he knocked on the door of a farmhouse down around New River. He asked the Mister could he take a rest in his barn. And guess what?”

  “What?” I was wide-eyed, too.

  “Glory to Father God! It was a house where mercy abounded! Mercy abounded!”

  Aunt Tilley cleared her throat, getting ready to playact.

  “Traveler.” Her voice was deep. “Traveler, I wouldn’t let a dog sleep in the barn on such a night as this.” In her own voice, Aunt Tilley continued. “That’s what the man of the house said when he invited your grandpa in. Then the Mister and the Missus give your grandpa a change of clothes so his could dry by the fire, warmed his insides with a big bowl of soup. Time come to turn in, they led him to a little room off the pantry. Simple room—narrow iron bed, pine chest of drawers, pine wardrobe, cane chair. Best sleep he’d had in days. Next morning, he lit out early, not wantin
g to wear out his welcome. Left a silver dollar on the bed.”

  Aunt Tilley soon had on her whisper voice. “That good night’s sleep wasn’t the end of the blessing, oh, no! After Sam got hisself settled here in Charleston, he went back to that house where mercy abounded. Wanted to thank that kind couple, proper, with a tin of fancy tea. When he did, he met the sons and daughters he’d not seen on that nasty night. One daughter caught his eye. Can you guess her name?”

  “The Traveler?” I replied in my whisper-voice.

  “No, no, no! Her name was Delia!”

  “Grandma in Heaven?” I beamed.

  “That’s right!” Pointing to The Traveler’s Room, Aunt Tilley then explained that when Grandpa was building this house, he had planned for a small room behind the pantry. “Had one of the carpenters make that plaque. Furnished the room just like his room of refuge, ready should wretched weather bring a stranger to his door.”

  Years later, when I asked why Grandpa slept in The Traveler’s Room instead of in a bedroom upstairs with fine furniture, Aunt Tilley told me to add “a curious cat” to The Book of Bewares.

  Now, as I made my way up the back stairs, I wondered if Aunt Tilley’s story about The Traveler’s Room and every other story she told me was true. If she had lied about my ma and pa—

  I froze when I saw an envelope on my pillow.

  “Delana” was the only thing written on the envelope. Inside it, wrapped up in a letter, was a tintype.

  Three pretty ladies.

  The one standing on the left looked sassy. The one on the right, serene. Seated between them, looking so strong, staring straight at me—

  Dear Delana,

  Your mama had this picture taken years ago when she was up in Wheeling for the yearly Tri-State Emancipation Celebration. She called it her first “on my own.” She’d never been out of Charleston.

  To the left of her is Bethany Rice. To the right is Bethany’s sister, Miriam. Summer before, they come from Wheeling to Charleston to visit an uncle. Your mama met them at a tea. Hit it off right away. They begged her to come visit them during the freedom festivities coming up that September.