The Color of Family (11 page)

Agnes was left with nothing to say, and as she looked off to the side, she wasn't sure if she was gathering thoughts or tears, or both. And then her mind wandered back to New Orleans, and the oppressively hot summer days when the air was as thick as Louisiana swamp water. She thought of the front porch of Antonia's and Emeril's house where Antonia would sit in the summer afternoons, drinking lemonade and patching clothes with one eye
and watching her suspiciously with the other, as she passed by from any one of her rendezvous with Emeril. The most bizarre and out-of-the-blue thought she had, though, was of the little half-wit from next door to the Dupreses' who, on his daily journeys from yard to yard to eat spoonfuls of dirt, almost caught her many times sneaking behind the house.

“But he's not your kin, Antonia,” Agnes finally said, nervously, but strongly, as if her lapse into silence hadn't happened. And even though she was just barely able to look Antonia in the eye as she said it, she had to look away when she continued, “I would have loved to have been left with a part of Emeril when he died and I would love nothing more than for Clayton to be Emeril's boy, but he's not, Antonia.”

“Agnes,” Antonia replied while she wrung her hands furiously, “don't you think I know that you have every reason in the world to lie to me. Look, Agnes, I don't want to make trouble. I just want you two to do right by my brother's name and memory. Now, something drew Clayton back here to Baltimore. I never did anything in the way of trying to contact him when he was in school down at Peabody, mostly because he would have considered my words to be the ranting of a lunatic after everything you've filled his mind with. He wouldn't have believed me, and honestly, I just might have made him more resistant to the truth when it did come. But let me tell you, hardly a day went by when I didn't want to just get in my car and go down there and tell him straight out what I thought. So now, if you don't do something to set this right, Agnes, I'll have to, because right is right, and blood is blood. Now, I guess you figured you lucked out when my brother died. You were able to have your little walk on the wild side, then settle into a well-to-do life with your own kind who was none the wiser that you had laid with a black man. Well, that's fine, but your lies have caught up to you, Agnes. You've got to come clean.”

Agnes sputtered incredulously. “Don't you dare make it seem like that, Antonia Racine! I loved your brother. Still do. I went to our special place behind the Dupreses' house for days, just waitin' for him to come, but he never came. When I found out he was dead, it was like to kill me. And you could have told me, Antonia. You saw me the day after he died and you never said a word. The
worst part of it all is that I couldn't even grieve right for the only man I ever loved.”

“You got over him fast enough. A month and a half later you were marrying Douglas Cannon.”

“A man I didn't love, but the times were what they were, Antonia, and livin' the way I was livin' a girl like me wouldn't have stood a chance to get married. I thought Douglas was gonna be the best I could ever hope to do after Emeril died. And you know, I never remarried after Douglas died. Antonia, why are you doin' this? And what if what you're saying is right, that Clayton is Emeril's son and therefore a black man? Can't you see that he has done more than Emeril could have ever hoped for himself? So what if the world was unaware that he was black? He would know it. I would know it.
You
would know it. Even Emeril himself would tell you that bein' a black man never got him anywhere. Bein' a black man is why the ambulance took so long and why he died. I only came here to ask that you stop this and stop doing more harm to your brother's name by saying these things about Clayton being his son, because it's just not true.”

“I'm sorry, but I won't leave this alone until you admit the truth. Emeril was the only brother I had. For God's sake, he was my twin! We shared a womb together and a life together until the rules of bigotry took him from me. It was just the two of us and now he's gone. I want the world to know the kind of man that Emeril Racine produced.”

Agnes sat for a moment before saying, “Antonia.” Hesitating for a few seconds, she wrestled with the decision whether or not to speak her thoughts, then she continued. “Antonia, is it money you want? Because if it is, I can try to help you out.”

Antonia's face fell so far in what seemed to be a concoction of disbelief and pure fury that she looked as if she could have exhaled fire. Slowly and regally, as was her way, she leaned forward in her chair in a gesture that was so menacing and unpredictable that it made Agnes draw in what could have been her last breath. Shaking with angry tremors, Antonia said, “If I were less than the lady my mother raised me to be, I would drop-kick your wrinkled white-cracker butt back to New Orleans this very instant. This is not about money. Never has been. I have money, probably more than you. This is about love and pride for my
brother, something it seems you never had. Now, I would like you to leave my home.”

“Antonia, please. I didn't mean to insult you, cher. I'm so truly sorry. It's just that this is very hard for me, these accusations you've been writing me with. I just don't know how else to handle this.”

Antonia said not one word. She went to the door, opened it, and stood. Stiffly she stood, not blinking, not moving.

With a humiliated shuffle, her head lowered, Agnes submitted to Antonia's demand and left. And when Antonia closed the door determinedly, Agnes was left with nothing else to do but descend the porch steps and walk the long path made longer in her mind with the heartbreaking feeling that she was losing Emeril all over again.

A
fter Agnes left, Antonia spent most of the evening and the better balance of the next day dissecting every word, facial expression, and eye movement of Agnes's visit. Antonia was more convinced than ever that she finally had proof to take to Aaron that would convince him. And as she took her sink-bath in the middle of the afternoon preparing to take him the evidence of things he could not see and therefore not believe, she remembered that he had always been a doubter. Aaron was the child who always needed proof that anything was real. Even his belief in Santa Claus, Antonia recalled with a faint smile as she lifted her arm and smeared on deodorant, lasted only until he was six. Yet for three years after he'd let Santa go for lack of proof, Aaron let her hang on to the miracle that he still believed. It amazed her that he could even believe in God, she thought as she slipped on her trousers and zipped herself into them. Or was he biding his time, she wondered, before telling her that the missing physical proof could not stretch his belief to a place like heaven? And that was fine, she thought, because she remembered those months after Emeril died when heaven, that place where life is lived after death, was an abstraction that was no soothing balm for her heartache; and so she couldn't believe. She couldn't believe until Emeril's son was born, and so she could again look beyond the physical world to the place that would always ease her sick soul. The birth of one man's son had fanned that which had been diminished by death to a mere flicker of faith, into a burning
bush. So now she was dressed and going out the door, hell-bound for the television station, ready to save her son from his cynicism.

Antonia was walking through the doors of Channel Eleven by 4:15. She went to the young lady behind the desk and smiled until the woman ended her call. Ordinarily, Antonia knew her name well enough, but with everything swirling in her head the way it was, she simply said, “Hello, young lady, do you remember me?”

“I certainly do, Mrs. Jackson. How've you been?”

“I've been just wonderful, and getting better by the minute,” Antonia said with the slyest grin. “But right now I'm here to see my son. Is he around?”

“He sure is. Does he know you're coming? Because he usually tells me when he's expecting someone, and he didn't tell me you were coming.”

“Oh no, he doesn't. This is a surprise.”

“Well, how nice. Just have a seat and I'll get him. He's around the newsroom somewhere, I'm sure.”

Antonia went to the comfortable-looking chair that had been deceptive in its appearance, which she discovered once she sat. Firm and bouncy. No comfort in that. She shifted this way and that, slouchy then straight-backed, trying to settle into some semblance of ease, but it was not to be, not in this chair. So she sat upright and crossed her right leg over her left, then dangled her board-flat shoe on her toes. She glanced over at the receptionist, for no particular reason, unintentionally prompting the woman to give Antonia an update.

“He'll be right out, Mrs. Jackson.”

“Oh, thank you. It's really no rush at all.” And just as Antonia said that, her attention was snatched away from the woman by the opening of a door.

Aaron let the door drift closed behind him as he moved toward Antonia with all the verve of a doomed man. When he got to where she sat, all he could do was stare blankly at her, seemingly unable to breathe or blink or move hurriedly. Quietly, with his rightful perturbation and a barely perceptible low-grade fear amazingly under control, he said, “Ma, why are you here?”

Antonia stood so as to be as close to eye to eye with her son as she could. She clutched the bottom of her bag in her hand as if it
had some heft to it, then said, “I finally got it, baby. I finally got the proof you've been telling me I don't have.”

Aaron looked suspiciously around before whispering, “Ma, come on. How could you come to my job with this? This is where I work, Ma, please.” His voice cracked with desperation.

“How could I come here?” Antonia said incredulously. “I came here to help you. You have a chance to break a story in which you are directly involved. I came here to give you the opportunity of your career. You could put this on the five o'clock news tonight!”

Aaron said nothing as he took her by the arm and directed her through the door and into the newsroom. They went down a long narrow walkway that meandered past a number of cubicles and in every single one sat a woman, except for two with men, who all talked on the phone with the urgency of news. And when Antonia and Aaron came to the end of the line of all those pseudo-offices, Aaron led her into a room with a long table and chairs twisted haphazardly around them, as if the last people in the room had had to evacuate in haste. As he closed the door, he said, “Ma, sit down, please.”

Antonia went to the head of the table and sat. Only when Aaron closed the door and came to sit beside her did she say, “I'm going to show you exactly what I have and shut your doubts up once and for all.” She dug in her purse and pulled out the small rectangular box. “Just wait till you hear what I have here.”

Aaron looked questioningly at the thing, then at her and asked, “Ma, is that a tape recorder?”

“Well, it sure isn't a Victrola,” she said as she looked to make certain the tape was cued up.

“Ma, where did you get that?”

“I bought it, and that is, as the young kids say,
so
not the point,” she said with a mockingly arrogant throw of her head. “The point is what I have on this tape recorder.”

“Ma,” Aaron shrieked, twisting where he sat in agitation. “I don't want to hear this! I can't imagine what it is you think you have here, but I swear I don't want to be party to this!”

Antonia turned on the tape recorder and Agnes Cannon's voice, nasally and drawling nearly every word, floated from it in its one dimension. And Antonia watched with an intense smile as
her son stared intently at the recorder as if he were looking directly into Agnes Cannon's mouth, waiting for the moment when she'd say it. “Just wait, it's coming,” Antonia whispered to him. She sat in anticipation herself, until the electronic version of Agnes said all that Antonia would ever need to confirm that she'd been right all these years. “You hear! Did you hear that? She's admitting it in her sly old way,” she said excitedly.

Aaron looked at her with squinted eyes, then said, “No, Ma. I didn't hear anything. I heard her talking about the supposition of Clayton Cannon being your brother's son. But—”

“Here, let me rewind it. And this time really listen,” she said as the high-pitch squeak of Agnes's voice going fast and in reverse took over.

But Aaron spoke up urgently. “No, Ma, I don't want to hear it again.” He stood up and walked to the other end of the table, rubbing the back of his neck like a man filled to his capacity with frustration before continuing, “Look, Ma, about the only thing I'm willing to believe right now is that, okay, you knew Agnes Cannon down in New Orleans where she had a love affair with your brother, and yes, okay, I do believe that somehow you got the woman over to your house. But there was nothing that she said on this tape that even comes close to her admitting what you're saying about Clayton Cannon being Uncle Emeril's son. Now I want you to be reasonable, Ma, and tell me what you really hear that woman saying on that tape, because I swear to God, I don't see how you hear anything she said as an admission of anything other than the fact that she loved Uncle Emeril.”

Antonia, her face fallen to the floor, put the recorder back into her purse. She blew out a long defeated breath and said in the smallest voice she'd ever known, “You had to have seen her eyes. Her eyes said it all, and just her whole spirit told me.” She slumped back in the oversized, boss's chair, knowing that she couldn't begin to conquer the heft of Aaron's skepticism. Then she continued in a deflated tone, “I'm not making this up, Aaron, and I'm not crazy enough to be imagining this, either.”

Aaron's demeanor softened as he went back to where his mother was and sat beside her again, saying, “All right, Ma, I agree with you. Half of what is truth is visual. But you've got to admit that she didn't say anything on this tape about Clayton
Cannon being Uncle Emeril's son. I mean, what am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to believe? Nothing in what she said there on that tape incriminated her in the way you're suggesting it did. I'm sorry, Ma, but it just didn't.” He drew in a considerable breath that brought with it the nerve to say, “Yeah, Ma, it's clear that she and Uncle Emeril were gettin' it on, but from where I sit, she came there to see you because of all those letters you sent her harassing her to death.”

“Harassing her!” Antonia said, pumped up with angry breath.

Just then, the door opened with an immediacy that, along with the thin face of a man with a shock of white hair streaking toward the back of his head, was enough to startle Antonia into a small quiver and shake of her head. She regarded the man's creamy brown face for a few seconds, trying to decide if he was bona fide handsome or if he was one of those rare, unfortunate few people born with such exotic beauty that he had actually gone the next step, becoming positively odd-looking. So, since she'd always known that staring was ill-mannered, she said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” the man said. “Aaron, I thought I saw you come in here. Listen, we've got a story breaking out in Randallstown. A hostage situation and shootout with the police. All the information is pretty sketchy at this point, but the word is that it's a domestic thing. I just sent Keith out there to set up for a live feed. Anyway, I need you in the studio at the desk, ready to roll with it if we need to break into
Oprah
before five. Maggie's already in there waiting for you, so I really need you to move your—” He regarded Antonia with a half, insincere smile, as if he were holding back the salt at the tip of his tongue for the benefit of this elder woman. Then he continued with no less urgency, “I need you to hustle.”

And hustle he did. Aaron jumped up, leaving the chair haphazardly twisted from the table. “I'm there, Mark,” he said. Then he turned to his mother quickly and said, “Come on, Ma.”

“Oh, this is your mother?” Mark asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Aaron said. He paused before doing what would be natural under most circumstances, as if too hurried for an introduction, or possibly too doubtful about it. Then he continued, “Ma, this is our new news director here, Mark Allen. Mark, this is my mother, Antonia Jackson.”

“Mrs. Jackson, it's a pleasure to meet you,” Mark said.

Antonia passed by Aaron and quickly studied the chair he'd just let fly willy-nilly, thinking that this must be the way chairs end up in newsrooms, with breaking stories and all. Then she got to Mark and took the hand he offered her and said with enough smiling charm to warm a newsman's guarded heart, “The pleasure's all mine.”

As Aaron brushed past the two, he was stopped when he heard Mark say, “Mrs. Jackson, would you like to sit inside the studio and watch Aaron do the show?”

“Oh, I'd love that!” Antonia chirped giddily. “All these years he's been working here and he's never, ever asked me to come in and watch him work live. I would just love to.”

Well, even with a story breaking and Baltimore's need to know about it, Aaron could not move from where he'd stopped in mid-stride. He looked absolutely stricken with his eyes shocked into a widened stare and his mouth open. And at first, what came out were unintelligible words that seemed to be garbled by some kind of dense filter just inside his mouth that would not let his thoughts free. Then as if he'd just spit the filter out like a man with the sheer desperation to save his own life, he said, “Oh no, Mark, I don't think that's such a good idea. I don't like having anyone in the studio other than the people who have to be there. Besides, I'm not sure if it's such a good idea with that story breaking and everything.”

“Oh, come on, Aaron,” Mark said, slapping Aaron on his back and leading the way toward the studio. “What could happen? Let's just get on in there. I need you on that desk ready to go right now, and there's no time to debate something this trivial. Your mother's a sensible lady. She's not going to interrupt the newscast in any way. You won't, will you, Mrs. Jackson?”

“No, of course I won't,” Antonia said, staring daggers into the side of Aaron's face, trying to get him to look at her and take them directly like a man.

“Okay then, it's all settled. Your mother will sit in and you'll give her the thrill of her life—to watch her son do what he does best.”

Aaron picked up his pace as if he were trying to lose his mother in the newsroom. He said over his shoulder, “Besides, Ma, don't you need to get home and feed Tippy the Fourth?”

“Since when have you been so concerned about Tippy the Fourth? You hardly know she's alive,” Antonia said in a whisper to hide the snippiness of her agitation from Mark. Then, she said a little louder, but no less acerbically, “Tippy the Fourth will be just fine till I get home, and you know that.”

So, with that resolved, Mark said to a large rugged man in dungarees and a faded well-worn shirt who looked more like he'd be ready to fell a tree than work in a news studio, “That's Aaron's mom. She's going to sit in the studio and watch the newscast. Can you get her settled in there?”

“Sure can, boss,” the man said, smiling at Antonia who was just past Aaron's shoulder.

“Terrific,” Mark said in the way men accustomed to always having their commands obeyed speak. “Josh here's the floor director, Mrs. Jackson. He'll take care of you. Enjoy the show, Mrs. Jackson.” And then he walked away with a swagger that wreaked of his authority.

Josh led Antonia into the studio as she watched Aaron, out of the corner of her eye, go through another door for his makeup. Once inside the studio where it seemed as if the space above her head went on forever in infinite darkness, she looked all around, amazed by everything, and knowing what absolutely nothing was called. And she never would have imagined that one side of the studio would be so brightly lit in such striking comparison to the other half, which was in stark darkness. So as she marveled at it all like a tourist dumbfounded by newness, she was suddenly aware of more than the presence of just herself and Josh.