What Mother Never Told Me (19 page)

It was smaller than she remembered, if that were possible, Emma thought, when she stepped out of the cab in the center of town. Many other things had changed as well. There were new businesses, the ice cream shop that she remembered on the corner of Huff Street was gone, replaced with an antique shop, and most striking of all was that whites and blacks walked along the same streets, stood out in front of store windows chatting like old friends, and mixed groups of teens shared unified laughter, iPods and the latest celebrity gossip.

This was not the same Rudell that she remembered growing up in, feeling isolated, the town divided by the Left Hand River, one side black and one side white. Divided by race and religion. This was not the same town that harbored the KKK—the night riders—who came under the cloak of darkness and set the house that her grandparents lived in on fire, killing them both to keep them from encouraging the blacks in town to fight for their rights. It was a town with a long, dark, ugly history that had been transformed by new cars, shiny storefronts and government mandates. Or had it? No one knew better than her about the power of illusion.

Emma crossed the busy street and walked to the corner, to
the one hotel in town, as the cab driver was very clear that he could not make a U-turn and that if she’d had her cross streets correct he would have dropped her off right in front of her destination. Rather than debate the customer always being right, she paid her fare, collected her luggage and got out. She inhaled the warm, moist air, the scent of the river in the distance. It had been more than three decades, nearly four, since she’d stood on these streets. The feeling was almost surreal, as if that life could not have happened in this picturesque town.

She pulled open the hotel door and walked the short distance to the front desk.

A young man, no more than twenty, in a starched white shirt and navy blue tie, glanced up. “Good afternoon, ma’am. How can I help you on this nice spring day?”

The words did a slow dance, winding their way to her in that sweet Southern cadence that she thought she’d forgotten. She realized with a pang in her chest how deeply she missed the sound.

“I called earlier. Emma Travanti.”

“Sure thing, ma’am. Let me just take a look here.” He focused on the computer screen in front of him on the desk. “You’re sure right. Here you are.” He pressed a button and her registration form spit out of the printer. She almost smiled. Rudell had come a long way. He handed her the form and showed her where to sign. “Will that be cash or credit?”

Fortunately, Michael had not cancelled her credit card, which she’d verified with the bank before she left France, and she had substantial savings of her own from the restaurant and several wise investments. Michael had always encouraged her to manage her own finances. She was glad she’d listened. “Credit.” She took out her card and handed it over.

Moments later she was being shown to her room on the second floor of the four-story hotel.

“We do have a small restaurant on premises for the convenience of our guests,” the bellhop mentioned as he opened the room door. “The hours of service are located on the nightstand. Unfortunately we don’t have room service but there are ice and soda pop machines on the first floor.”

“Thank you.” She glanced quickly around at her accommodations. Small, but clean and bright. She took her wallet from her purse and handed him five American dollars. His eyes widened.

“Thank you, ma’am. Thank you very much,” he said, backing out of the door as if he thought she may realize her mistake any minute and take the money back.

Emma locked the door behind him. She crossed the room to the window, pushed the curtain aside and looked out onto the busy street below. She was back, and the town that once shunned her seemed to welcome her home with open arms. She prayed that the man who helped raise her daughter would feel the same way.

I
t was Saturday and the townspeople of Rudell tumbled onto the streets and roads intent on weekend chores and errands. The population had grown since she was last here and the expanse of land had shrunk to accommodate the new housing and businesses. Many of the plywood farmhouses were gone now, replaced by sturdy-looking two-story brick homes with cement paths instead of dusty dirt roads. Satellite dishes sat at cocked angles on rooftops and the movie theater that had once relegated Negroes to the balcony now featured the latest Will Smith movie. There were more cars now, but it seemed that the people still preferred walking, as she had done. She wanted to see if she remembered.

Emerging from the center of town, Emma followed the path of the Left Hand River to where the houses stopped and the trees bloomed. She came to a dead halt, her heart pounding,
when she spotted the rock that she sat on many a day and cried, the rock where she sat that fateful night that altered the direction of her life. She stared at it for a few moments, lifted her chin and continued on her way. She came out into the clearing and much of what she’d remembered was the same. The houses were still separated by trees and land, still not as fancy as the houses in town, and the vibration in the air was that all was still slow and easy and everyone knew everyone’s first name and who your people were.

Her throat clenched as she walked and recalled the steamy bone-melting summer afternoons when she would run through the woods, stick her feet in the river and collect eggs from the henhouse. Her mother would make deviled eggs—her favorite snack. She blinked away the tears, secured her purse on her shoulder and kept walking.

And then there it was. Right in front of her, just the way she remembered. Her heart pounded. Heat raced through her body. She stood stock-still at the end of the path that led to the house that had once been her home, her prison. She wanted to go forward but she couldn’t move. Images played in front of her. She saw beyond the walls of the framed home into the recesses where she and Cora shared more than twenty years together in a war where the day-to-day casualty was another piece of your soul.

The front door opened and a woman and a young child emerged, turned and waved to the tall, dark and very handsome older man in the doorway. Emma gasped. She wanted to run but she was transfixed by the man in the door. She’d had many ideas of what he may look like, the man who’d loved her mother, the man who raised her daughter.

He was taller than she imagined. His close-cut hair was
totally white and set against skin that was as rich as molasses. The mother waved again. “Thanks, Dr. McKay.”

“You take care now.”

The mother and child passed Emma at the end of the path. David started to turn back toward the house when he saw her standing there, an apparition. He gripped the frame of the door. His chest heaved for air. He shook his head to clear the vision but it kept coming closer. Haunts didn’t walk by day. They came in your sleep and blew in your ear, opened cabinets and turned on faucets, chilled the air or simply sat at your bedside to let you know they were there.

How many nights since he’d lost his Cora had he prayed for one more time to see her face, hold her hand, hear her voice. Finally.

She climbed the one step, looked up at him and said, “I’m Emma.”

“Emma?”

She took a step closer. “Cora’s daughter.”

His posture faltered as he stared at Cora’s ghostly image. It was her and not her at the same time. When last he’d glimpsed Emma, it was many years ago. He had no idea until this moment how much she favored her mother. This was his Cora twenty years younger standing before him sure as day.

“I know I should have called,” she was saying, her drawl slowly returning, comforted by the lull of the Mississippi breeze. “I was afraid you wouldn’t see me.” She squeezed her hands into fists to stop the shaking.

A car roared down the road, spitting gravel. David blinked and focused on the woman standing in front of him. “You want to come inside?”

She nodded her head.

“Come on then.” He stepped aside to let her pass and shut the door behind them.

Emma grew light-headed the instant she stepped into the front room. She pressed her hand to her chest. It was exactly as she remembered it. She walked through in a dream state as the memories came flooding back, leaving her short of breath.

David walked quietly behind her as she moved from room to room, stopping finally in the kitchen. She pulled out a chair from beneath the old butcher-block table and sat down, remembering all the times she sat across from her mother, hoping and praying that she would look at her, really look at her, and quiet the turmoil that raged in her heart.

“Sweet tea?”

Emma looked up, those green eyes that sent him fleeing all those years ago staring back at him. “Sweet tea?” he asked again.

“Y-yes. Thank you.” She put her purse on the chair next to her.

David went to the cabinet over the sink and took out two glasses, got the pitcher of sweet tea from the refrigerator and placed them on the table. He poured hers then his own and sat down. He wrapped his hands around his cool glass and stared into its depths. “You favor your mother.”

Emma’s gaze snapped up. “Do I?”

“Spitting image.” He brought the glass toward his lips but his hands shook so badly he put it back down. “Thought you was her standing out there on the lane.” He steadied his hands and took a sip. “Parris came to see you, didn’t she?”

Emma’s throat knotted. “Yes.”

“Hmm.” David bobbed his head. “What brings you here after all this time?”

“Things…didn’t work right between me and Parris. I need to find her and I knew you’d know how. I have to tell her the things she ought to know. About me, about everything.”

David drew in a long breath. “A long time coming,” he murmured. “Your leaving, taking on the life of living as a white woman, near killed Cora. And your birth nearly killed me.”

Emma gripped the edge of the table as David stood, turning his back to her as he spoke. “We both blamed Cora. All those years, we blamed her for something that weren’t her fault.” He turned to face her. “I loved your mother from the time we were kids. But she had bigger dreams, bigger than Rudell. So she went off to Chicago. When she come back and agreed to marry me I was the happiest man in the world. She never told me what happened, what he done to her and then here you were, two months early.” He swallowed hard. “I brought you into the world right up there on that bed. All I did was take one look at you and I knew you wasn’t mine. Couldn’t be. ’Bout lost my mind, believing that she…Never gave her a chance to explain. Wouldn’t listen. Just packed up my things, walked out and didn’t come back for more’n twenty years.”

Emma’s eyes stung as she witnessed his anguish and regrets, knowing her own. “I know what happened,” she managed to say. “I met my father.”

David’s chest rose and fell in rapid succession. He came to the table, gripped the chair and slowly sat down. “What?”

“I met him…in New York. His name is William Rutherford. Or was, he might be dead by now.”

His brow creased into a tight single line. “But…how…how did you know?”

She told him about the letter she’d found addressed to her
mother from her friend in New York, how it talked about this Mr. Rutherford, how he wanted to know if she was all right, why she’d run off from her job with him and never came back.

“I sat right where you’re sitting, and I asked about the letter, about Mr. Rutherford, demanded to know why she’d left Chicago, who was he and why did he care?” She swallowed over the tightness in her throat. “She wouldn’t tell me.” She shook her head slowly. “But I knew. I just knew.” She sat up a bit straighter, pressed her palms down on the table. “I kept the article that mama’s friend Margaret had tucked inside the letter. It had his picture. It was a few months after I got to New York that there he was again on the front page of the newspaper. He was running for office.” She scoffed. “I found out where he lived. I got his phone number and I’d call his house whenever the mood hit me. Most times I’d get a servant on the phone, but one day I got him.” She paused as the jarring memory of that day rocked her once again. She tugged in a shallow breath. “I made up my mind I was going to meet him, force him to come face-to-face with what he’d done. I got my chance at the Plaza Hotel, just before Christmas. He was hosting a fund-raiser for his run for office. The lobby was teeming with celebrities, all kinds of movie stars. I found him in one of the banquet halls….”

She knew it was him as soon as she saw him. He was no longer the grainy, black-and-white image, flat and one-dimensional. He was flesh. Her flesh. He stood there all proud and handsome, laughing with that big smile…and then all of a sudden he turned in Emma’s direction. All the air rushed out of her lungs. Brilliant jade-green eyes, her eyes, stared back at her. The resemblance was extraordinary. If there was ever any doubt in her mind, it was gone.

“Good evening, Mr. Rutherford.”

Ever the aristocratic gentleman, Rutherford tilted his head to the right
side and regarded her with a dispassionate glance. “You…look oddly familiar. Have we met?”

“I’m sure you’re thinking of my mother…Cora Harvey, at the time. She cleaned your house, cooked your meals.” Her voice rose in both pitch and tenor, emotion warring with reason as the long-awaited confrontation of her dreams unfolded rapidly before her eyes. “Picked up after you and your wife. Do you remember her now?”

One of his aides moved swiftly and expertly to Rutherford’s side, cupped Emma’s elbow and whispered harshly in her ear. “Let’s go, miss. We won’t have a scene.”

Emma didn’t move, she couldn’t. She stared Rutherford directly in the eye, saw his pupils widen in alarm, watched his face turn a dangerous crimson, stopping at the line of his thick salt-and-pepper hair. “I’m Emma.” She stepped a bit closer, lowered her voice an octave then leaned toward him with her face just inches from his. “The resemblance is shocking…isn’t it…Dad?”

A tremor of remembrance fluttered along Emma’s spine. She blinked, shook her head to dispel the images of that night and settled on David’s astonished expression. She glanced away. “After I threatened to go downstairs and address the media with my story he had one of his assistants escort me to his private suite in the hotel. I blackmailed him. I told him I wanted two hundred thousand dollars to keep my mouth shut, to disappear for good. Something I must have heard on a television show. He agreed to meet me and give me what I’d asked for. I went to his apartment on Park Avenue the following day….”

“You’re early.”

The well-modulated voice came from the recesses of the room. Emma turned toward the sound, momentarily startled.

Rutherford appeared like an apparition from behind a door she hadn’t noticed upon her arrival. His dark suit elegantly covered his long,
still lean body. He purposefully crossed the room in measured strides to stand behind his desk. He pulled open the drawer and extracted a brown envelope, then dropped it with a thud on the desktop.

Cautiously Emma moved forward, back straight, head held proudly aloft. She stood directly in front of him. It was then that she noticed his haggard appearance, nothing like the well-groomed, self-assured man of the night before, even clothed in what was obviously an expensive, handsome suit. His eyes were red-rimmed with half-moon shadows underscoring them, and there was a faint outline of stubble coating his angular jaw. The smooth control he’d previously exhibited was replaced by short, almost stilted movements, like a person forced to concentrate on every action.

“There’s your money. Take it and go. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I want the truth. I want answers.”

“You want money. You want to ruin my life, my reputation, with your lies and accusations. If that money will make you go away, then so be it.”

“Ruin your life?” she stammered incredulously. “Your life? Do you have any idea how you’ve ruined my life?” She stepped closer. “Look at me. Take a good look at me. What do you see? A woman who has spent all of her life not knowing where she belonged, not fitting in, having everyone around her whispering things about her—her mother. Do you know what it feels like to not to know who you are—why you are? Do you know what it feels like to have your own mother look at you with emptiness and shame, the one person in the world who is supposed to love you without question? Look at me, damn you to hell! This is what you’ve done.” She pounded her finger at her chest. “You’ve ruined my life!”

Emma pressed her lips together, drew herself up and took the damning envelope from the desk. Without another word or a backward glance, she walked stiffly toward the door.

“I never meant…to hurt your mother. Never.”

Her steps faltered then settled. Her head rose a notch and her shoulders straightened. For the beat of a heart, she stood there, let his words reach down to that dark tortured place in her soul, and finally there was light. She dropped the envelope at her feet, opened the door and walked out….

Emma’s soft sobs brought David to her side. He pulled his chair next her hers and drew her against his chest, rocking her gently as her cries shook her petite body. He let her cry as his own tears of regret and loss burned his eyes and scorched his cheek.

“She was a wonderful child,” he said to Emma much later as they sat together on the porch, dusk gathering around them. “Always had a smile and was the joy of our lives. Voice as beautiful as her grandmother’s.” He smiled at the memory. “We both wronged Cora, me and you both. I spent the rest of her life trying to make it up to her. You have the same chance with Parris before it’s too late.” He dug in his pocket and took out a slip of paper. “This is where she’s staying in New York, with that young fella that came here for her when Cora passed.” He handed it to her.

She took it from him, her gaze thankful. “They were lucky to have you in their life.” She stood up slowly.