“Your father never meant for this to happen. He is a good man at his very heart. When we got married, he came forward on his own. There were a dozen wrong things he could have done and only one right thing. We were just children. Chaurisse, when I was your age, I was three years married, had buried a child. Wel , that’s not ful y true. There’s nothing under that headstone in the churchyard next to your Grandma Bunny. By the time I got two feet on the floor, the people at the hospital had already put his little body through the furnace. Nothing was left. No ashes, no nothing. He was so teensy that he just evaporated. Al this happened before I was your age now, and your daddy wasn’t much older. And that was his baby, too, turned into nothing but smoke and air.
“Nobody turned me away. No matter what is happening in this house today, I can’t forget that. Your daddy married me because I was having his baby, and even when I didn’t have no baby to show for myself, he al owed me to stay and be part of his family. That’s history. That’s solid, and there is no changing that. No matter how mad I am, how hurt, no matter what may be going on in your head, there’s no undoing that kindness.”
“But what about me,” I asked her, feeling smal even to ask.
“What about you, honey?”
“What about what I want?”
“This is al about you, baby. We are a family. This is about making our family whole. Isn’t that what everybody wants?” She smiled at me. “This is the third time the world tried to make an orphan of me. The first was when I got pregnant and my mama put me out. But then Miss Bunny saved me.
After that, your brother died, but you saved my marriage. This is the third time. God didn’t mean for us to be alone. Can’t you see that?”
I crossed my arms and made a nest for my head on the kitchen table. I breathed in my own smel . Life was turning into a quiz show, ful of trick questions, and wagers. “I don’t know what I see,” I said to her.
“You just have to trust,” my mother said. “Trust and believe.”
EPILOGUE
Dana Lynn Yarboro
MY DAUGHTER, FLORA, looks just like me and I am sorry for this. It’s not that I have any quarrel with my own appearance, but I would have liked to give her a face of her own. In so many ways, you can’t choose what you give to your daughter, you just give her what you have.
Flora is four years old, born in 1996, the year that Atlanta hosted the Olympics and the whole world came to our country town. I was in labor during the opening ceremonies, but I heard the fireworks as my bones shifted to make way for this new life. My mother was beside me, speaking my name. Flora’s father was there, too, but we are not together as couple. He’s not married to me, but he’s not married to anyone else, either, so I suppose that counts as progress. She doesn’t have his last name, but he picks her up on some Sundays and he loves her in public.
She and I live in a town house on Cascade Road, across from John A. White Park. You can’t say it’s a far cry from Continental Colony, but it’s my own home. I pay the mortgage each month and it feels good even without covered parking. It also feels good to send her to the same kindergarten where I first saw Chaurisse so many years ago. My daughter is smart. The teachers love her.
THIS IS THE YEAR 2000. In high school, Ronalda and I were convinced that the world was going to end at the start of the new mil ennium. Part of it was the round number, 2000, and the other part of it was that I couldn’t imagine having survived to be thirty-one, but here I am. I don’t have much hair these days, I keep it Caesar shorn and brushed flat, but there are silver strands there. I’m not aging as beautiful y as my mother, but she works a lot harder at it than I do.
On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Flora’s school lets the children out early. I was there even earlier — I never want her to wonder where I am. She and I were headed toward the car, when I noticed a blue Lincoln in the space beside mine. I held Flora’s hand tighter and ignored the itching in my throat. My mother and I joke that there should be a medical term for the condition we have, the irrational fear of Town Cars.
As I got closer to my car, the driver’s door of the Lincoln opened, and Chaurisse Witherspoon stepped out wearing a uniform that was tailored for a man. It had been twelve years, but I would have known my sister anywhere. She looked like her mother from her dul figure to the sil y mop of fake hair.
“Hey, Dana,” she said.
I suppose the real question was what was she doing here, but I have always known I would see her again.
“Hey, Chaurisse,” I said. “What’s up?”
She shrugged. “I just wanted to see you. I was driving by the other day and I saw your daughter playing outside. She looks just like you.”
Flora liked it when people talked abut her, so she smiled.
“What’s her name,” Chaurisse wanted to know.
“Flora,” my daughter piped up.
The smal parking lot was busy with parents and little children. Al the kids carried cardboard cutouts of their hands decorated to look like turkeys.
I waved at some of the mothers. I hoped I looked normal, wel adjusted, and happy. I leaned against the side of my car. “Wel ? Is somebody dying?” I said it with a sort of flippant attitude, but I real y wanted to know. Al these years later my mother stil scanned the obituary page every Sunday. If James Witherspoon died, she would be there in widow’s black.
“Nobody’s dying,” she said. “I just saw your girl and I wanted to say hel o and see how you are.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “How are you?”
She sighed and leaned on the car next to me. As we talked, we watched the cars fly down Cascade Road. “I’m okay.”
“How are your parents?” I asked.
“Stil together,” she said.
“Figures.”
She shifted her weight to her other side and took a real y deliberate breath. “You ever see him?”
I could have laughed at her. After al these years, she couldn’t quite believe that she and her mother had won.
I hadn’t seen my father since the day he and Laverne renewed their vows at the big party at the Hilton twelve years ago. I had gone on my own and spent most of my time riding the glass elevator al the way to the twenty-third floor and then back down again. Looking at the city lights, I wondered if James had other children like me. I had gone to the soiree, not looking for my father, not trying to spoil anything, but hoping to see Chaurisse. I was going to ask her if maybe we could be sisters. It wasn’t our fault what our parents had done to each other.
THEY CALLED IT a “recommitment ceremony” and held it in the Magnolia Room, the same space where Ruth Nicole Elizabeth had her Sweet Sixteen. When the elevator stopped at the twenty-third floor, I was too afraid to step out. The ceremony was under way behind a pair of closed doors decorated with bunting. I could imagine Mrs. Grant, silently applauding with her satin gloved hands as Chaurisse pranced down the aisle clutching a bouquet of cal a lilies. Behind her would be Raleigh and Laverne in her almond-meat dress. I could see Raleigh bending to kiss her cheek before handing her over to James.
My mother had taken to her bed and I didn’t like leaving her alone, but I al owed myself an hour more. I took the elevator underground and walked the aisles of the parking ramp until I found the Lincoln. I sat on the hood as the engine beneath me ticked like a patient bomb.
My father approached the car at quarter after eight. He had to smoke. I may not have been his “legitimate” daughter, but I knew him wel enough to anticipate his cravings.
I said, “Hey, James.”
He said, “You can’t be here.”
I said, “I know.”
“Then how c-c-come y-y-you’re out here.”
I told him the truth, that I wasn’t sure. I think I wanted him to hug me and tel me that I was stil his daughter, that blood meant something. Yes, he could walk away from my mother, but could he walk away from me? My mother could find another man, but there wasn’t any way for me to replace my father.
“Don’t you love me?” I asked him.
“It’s not about loving people,” he said. “You have to go home now. I’ve m-m-made my choice, just like you made your choice when you went bothering Ch-Chaurisse. You almost took my whole life away from me.”
“What did you think was going to happen?” I asked him. Did he think that I could live my entire life tucked away a dirty photograph? “I’m your daughter.”
“Everybody knows that now,” James said. “That’s what you wanted. You got it.”
EVEN NOW, I cringe to remember it. I fought him. I threw myself at my father, fighting like a girl, al windmil ing arms and shrieking. My voice bounced off the concrete wal s, but no one came to stop us. No one helped even when he shoved me away like I was a grown man. I didn’t fal . I didn’t crumple. And I am proud of this smal moment of dignity.
“You made me do that,” he said. “You and Gwen have turned me into an animal.”
“NO,” I SAID to my sister. “I haven’t seen him.”
“Would you lie to me?” she asked.
“You only lie to people you love,” I said.
CHAURISSE LEFT THEN and Flora and I walked toward my car. I was shaken, but I hid this from my daughter. She recited her -
at
words, then sang a song in French. I gripped the steering wheel hard to keep my hands steady. I spoke my daughter’s name over and over in my head to keep my soul from shattering. Final y, I pul ed the car into the parking lot of a large church. I went to the backseat and unhooked Flora from her safety seat. I knelt beside her and hugged her tight, the way my mother used to hug me, the way that I promised that I would never grip my child. I used to swear that I would never be a desperate mother, that I would always respect the line between Flora and me. But I squeezed her hard and asked more than once, “Do you love your mommy? Do you love me, baby?”
After some minutes, the moment passed. I put my girl back in her seat and drove in the direction of home.
PEOPLE SAY, THAT which doesn’t kil you makes you stronger. But they are wrong. What doesn’t kil you, doesn’t kil you. That’s al you get.
Sometimes, you just have to hope that’s enough.
acknowledgments
Thanks first to Team T, who read this story before it was a book, back when I was stil afraid of it: Sarah Schulman, Nichel e Tramble, Al ison Clark, Joy Castro, Renee Simms, Bryn Chancel or, Alesia Parker, and Virginia Fowler. My sister, Maxine Kennedy, is my whole entire heart.
The United States Artists Foundation and the Col ins Family came through when I was just about ready to give up. The family of Jenny McKean Moore and George Washington University granted me a year to write and to work with DC’s finest writers. Rutgers-Newark University, the MacDowel Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center, and the Virginia Center for the Arts provided generous support. Thanks, as wel , to Dianne Marie Pinderhughes, who sheltered me during the home stretch.
My aces: Rigoberto, Natasha, Kiyana Sakena, Jafari, Nichel e, Jeree, Lauren, Jaci, Alice, Jim, Evie, Anne, Deborah, Jayne Anne, Cozbi, Dolen, Aisha, and Uncle Ricky held me down when I was in real danger of flying away. Dr. June MacDonald Aldridge taught me how to keep it classy, and Pearl Cleage showed me how to keep it real.
For my fairy godmother, Judy Blume, I have astonished gratitude. My agents Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich are the very best in the business.
Algonquin Books and I have been making eyes at each other for a decade. Thank you, Elisabeth Scharlatt, for making it happen. My editor, Andra Mil er, cares about this story as much as I do. You wil see her careful attention on every page.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
A Daughter is a Colony
PART I Dana Lynn Yarboro
1 THE SECRET
2 A SORT OF CREEPING LOVE
3 NOTES ON PRECOCITY
4 GRAND GESTURE
5 HEART DREAMS
6 THINK ABOUT IT
7 I DARE YOU
8 FIG LEAF
9 NO QUARREL
10 UNCLE RALEIGH
11 THE PRIZEWINNER
PART I Bunny Chaurisse Witherspoon
12 A PECULIAR START
13 ONE HUNDRED PERCENT DRIVEN SNOW
14 A SILVER GIRL
15 GIRLS ARE TOO MESSY
16 THE REST, LIKE THEY SAY, IS HISTORY
17 TIME AND A HALF
18 LOVE AND HAPPINESS
19 UP A NOTCH
20 BLOWOUT
21 THE MEN ALL PAUSED
22 SKIN PAIN
23 TARA
24 A MIGHTY POOR RAT
25 QUIZ SHOW
26 EPITHALAMIUM
EPILOGUE
acknowledgments
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