The Coach House (19 page)
Marie called Fred Jefferson, now living with his sister in North Carolina, and asked him about it. “Did she ever mention having anyone special in her life, Fred? Please try to remember. Did she go out much? Do you know where she went besides work?” Fred, whose health and memory were failing according to his sister, offered nothing.
She visited the bank that had coordinated her college scholarship. After retrieving her file from the back room, the bank officer said he was sorry, but the information was tagged confidential. “Could you contact my benefactor and let him know I am interested in meeting him?”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to do that, Miss.”
“What if it was an emergency?” she pleaded.
“I’m afraid I still wouldn’t be able to do that.”
Birth certificate in hand, Marie went to the hospital where she was born. “Can you
please
help me?”
“I’m sorry, but we wouldn’t have anything more in our files than what’s on your birth certificate,” was the response.
“Can you tell me who paid the hospital bill?”
The woman looked at Marie’s birth certificate. “Honey, that was over twenty years ago. We don’t keep accounting records that long, and even if by some miracle we did have it, it would be impossible to find.”
She went to her grade school and asked if she could see her file. “Sorry… we don’t keep records that long.”
She went to her high school and asked the same thing. “All the archived files are in the basement. You’re welcome to look through them, but I have to tell you, they’re not in very good order, and it’s hot as Hades down there,” the clerk told her.
“I don’t care. Can you show me where they are?”
“Follow me. All I can say is it must be darn important to you, ’cause no one in their right mind would want to spend any amount of time down here,” she mumbled as she led Marie down a desolate stairwell and into a hot dirty boiler room with stacks of boxes everywhere. “Good luck.”
Marie spent the next two hours going through boxes of old records looking for 1942 student files. When she had only a few boxes to go, she found what she was looking for. “Calloway, Cooper, Costa. Found it!” She pulled out her file, sat on one of the dilapidated boxes, and went through every page looking for clues.
On the registration form, in the Father’s Name box, someone had written a capital “J” but then crossed it out. At the bottom of the form, in a different color ink, someone had written PAID CASH. A copy of her grades revealed no useful information. The only other records in her file were three notes from her mother explaining absences. Marie put her head in her hands and sighed.
* * *
In the weeks that followed, Marie buried herself in her work in an effort to alleviate the trepidation. Richard was so engrossed in the Fiefield project he either didn’t suspect anything was wrong anymore or forgot about it.
Marie tried to keep the dubious issue tucked way in the back of her mind, but when her menstrual period was eleven days late, she panicked. She couldn’t possibly be pregnant; he had used protection every time they had sex. She had heard sometimes they fail, but wouldn’t she have had felt that? She agonized over the potential pregnancy and even more unnerving, what to tell Richard. She practiced different ways to approach the subject with him, but none sounded fitting, even to her.
I’m pregnant, honey, and guess what. The baby may be colored.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to tell him anything when she realized she wasn’t pregnant after all. It was merely a late period.
Determined there would be no more scares, Marie took advantage of Richard’s next absence to visit a medical clinic in Hammond, Indiana, where she was fitted for a diaphragm, a new controversial method of birth control and, according to the doctor who fitted her, one that couldn’t be detected by a woman’s partner. It pained her to take such an action—holding back the truth from Richard was as bad as lying.
Meanwhile Marie’s responsibilities at Marshall Field’s seemed to be multiplying daily. The more she took on, the more she was given, resulting in long work hours. At the same time, Richard’s Fiefield project was in full force, and he began spending two to three days in Milwaukee each week.
“Don’t you miss him when you’re apart so much?” Esther asked her one day.
“Sure, I do. But you know, I also like the alone time. I like the balance of work, my marriage, and alone time. The only thing I miss is family.”
“I think it’s interesting that you like your alone time. I hate being alone.”
On one of Marie’s “alone days,” she pulled out the Bonwit Teller hatbox containing her mother’s things. She opened the photo album and went straight to the picture of her mother and the five men in front of the bar. She looked on the back. April 1924. A little more than a year before she was born. She dug into the box and retrieved the matchbook from the Central Union Club.
Same place?
Marie studied their faces, especially the colored man on the end.
She smiled at the last picture in the album, the one of her mother and three other young women in front of a dance hall. Her mother was wearing the very dress that was in the box, the black and white flapper dress with heavy beading on the bodice and three-inch fringe on the hemline. She tried it on in the bedroom. Her mother was smaller than she, so she couldn’t zip it all the way up. Marie looked at her reflection, remembering her mother.
God, I wish she was alive.
Marie slipped out of her clothes, put on her robe, poured herself a glass of wine, and curled up on the sofa to read
My Shameful Past.
It read like a journal. Winston Patterson’s mother was a slave, his father the white master of the house on a large Virginia plantation. The author recollected childhood incidents in the “big house.”
One day when I was five or so, somebudys white pappy was playin with the house childens on the side yard when I come round to join em. “Hey dirty little nigger boy. Get back in the basement where you belong,” he yelled at me. Well, I was never told bout stayin in the basement, but I went there anyhow. When Mamma couldn’t find me, well she paniked and before long everones lookin for me, even the white folks. Lord a mercy, Mamma dint let me outa her sight afta that.
He told about how he couldn’t go to school because of the color of his skin and how a few of the nicer white children living in the big house taught him to read and write, even though it was against the law for them to do so. He listed all the cruel names he had been called over the years—mongrel, half-breed, white nigger, and others. He described what it was like to watch a cross burn on someone’s lawn, the cruel work of the KKK.
When I was ten, all the slaves were freed. I remember it like it was yestaday. You wudda thot we’d be dancing in the streets. But that wusn’t the case. No one knew what to do or where to go. What was a bunch of colored folk gonna do? So we jes stayd there and kept workin the way we always did. Mamma got paid, but not much.
He talked about being a teenager and, finally figuring out he was different, that he didn’t belong to either side.
I am both, but yet neither.
Marie had to stop reading and think about his poignant words. She didn’t know how anyone could accept being both, but yet neither, let alone deal with all the consequences. But, apparently, this man did.
He talked about the shame, how it suppressed all his other emotions, especially the positive ones, how he used to hang his head when he walked by white people, embarrassed by his skin color.
It wasunt til I was a growned man that I figered out the shame I was feelin was inflicted upon me. I had nothing to do with it. But I was the only one who could stop it. And that’s what I did. I stopped the shame. Jus like that.
The author’s last words inspired her.
Ive been asked many times if I wished I was born white or jus a Negro and evry time I say I wouldn’t have it any uther way but to be me, jes like I am. How else could I wrote this book?
She didn’t put the manuscript down until she reached the end, and when she did, she sobbed with it clutched to her chest. The author’s raw emotion and crude style of writing touched her in a way like no other book ever had. He said he was ten when the slaves were freed. If she correctly remembered what she had learned in her high school history class, the Emancipation Proclamation was in the 1860s, which would make him in his late forties, early fifties when he wrote the manuscript.
Marie put everything back in the hatbox and slowly sipped her wine.
He talked about the KKK.
The Ku Klux Klan.
She hadn’t thought much about them, had never seen one, but she remembered Fred and Flora mentioning they had relatives in St. Louis where there had been many cross burnings by the Klan. She knew their members were white males who promoted white supremacy and that they hid their identity behind white hoods. After reading Patterson’s description of the aftermath of a cross burning, Marie had a whole different perspective of the group’s despicable ways and felt guilty she hadn’t given it more thought in the past.
I’m as bad as they are.
Marie drifted to sleep on the sofa with thoughts of remorse that anyone had to grow up under those conditions and shameful that it was at the hand of white people. The next thing she knew, Richard was waking her from her curled up position on the sofa.
“Wake up, sleepyhead.” He touched her shoulder.
Marie jumped up, not fully awake.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he whispered. He gave her a smile, which disappeared as soon as he saw her face. “What’s wrong? You’ve been crying.”
Marie rubbed her eyes. “No, I haven’t.”
Richard gently grasped her shoulders and looked deeper into her eyes. “Yes, you have. What’s wrong, hon?”
She shook her head. “I think I’m coming down with a cold or something. I’m fine…really”
His kiss was gentle. “Okay, if you say so. Can I get you anything?”
“What time is it?”
“Nine fifteen.”
“Shoot. I’m late for work.” She rubbed her eyes and blinked several times trying to get them into focus.
“You’re not going anywhere, except to bed. I’ll call in for you and tell them you’re sick.”
Too spent to argue, Marie agreed.
He brought her chicken soup for lunch and sat next to the bed as she ate it. “You want to talk about it?”
She didn’t look up from her tray. “About what? My cold?”
His voice was soft, his demeanor of a concerned spouse. “No. About whatever it’s been that’s bothering you.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.”
“Marie?”
“Hmm?”
“Look at me and tell me nothing’s bothering you.”
Her gaze was slow in meeting his, and when it did, she lost it.
He took the tray from her lap and put it aside. Then he sat close to her and held her while she cried. When she stopped, he held her at arm’s length and said, “Whatever it is, you can tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll handle together.”
“It’s just that…well, ugh, I should have told you sooner, but I thought I was pregnant, so I made an appointment with my doctor, but last night I got my period and so…”
Richard took her back into his arms. “Don’t cry, hon. We’ll have plenty of opportunities to have children, dozens of them if that’s what you want.”
She didn’t feel good about lying to him, but she didn’t feel comfortable telling him what was really bothering her, either. At least not yet.
With the holidays nearing, Marie asked Richard what he wanted to do for Thanksgiving. “We haven’t seen your family in a year. We really should go there,” she offered.
“No. That long drive in the snow is just too much. Let’s visit them next spring.”
“Okay. Do you just want to stay home then?”
“We’ll see.” He paused. “I might have to be in Milwaukee.”
“On Thanksgiving?”
