The Blanks in Black Family History

“Originally, your mother’s last name was Blanche and she was the peach of Zion Beehive,” says Keinar, true to her word, filling the Bee in on the blanks in Black family history. “Although she was the daughter of the Prophet’s Bookkeeper, Jeremiah, and seemed a model of piety and feminine virtue, in private she was a freethinker, building a library of poetry, art books, and humanist essays. When she was seventeen she had a secret love affair with your father. He was no Cornie Duke the Third, but an underdog, a mixed breed, part white, part black, part brave, part coyote, a free spirit named Corn Dog.”

“Corn Dog! That name can’t be real!” Gloria laughs, but when she sees Laudette smirk knowingly and her mother’s eyes deepen with tears, she quickly understands that it is.

“When your mother revealed to her father that she was pregnant and by whom, her father threatened to get a lynch mob on Corn Dog for corrupting her. Corn Dog had to make a hasty exit from Zion. Your mother, frightened and pregnant, promised to meet him in the City by the Bay in the spring after you were born. She stayed behind to absorb your grandfather’s wrath. Jeremiah didn’t chase the buck but burned her books and put her on the blacklist. When you came, you went on the blacklist right beneath her. When she could, your mother packed you up, changed her name to Black and left for the coast, but she got sidetracked and spent all summer working as a model, posing for men with money.”

“You mean—?”

“Yes. Now, now, she did what she had to do to take care of you.”

Gloria is quite surprised, but not unpleasantly. Unorthodox to the core, she is actually quite impressed that her mother was once a professional woman.

“Your mother finally did go to the Bay Area, but your father, a child of nature, had run afoul of the city life. He had no choice but to leave town for a while. She had no choice but to go into the only business she knew.”

“Mummy!”

“Then one day, months and months later, out of the blue, your father showed up, while your mother had her hands full with a customer. He entered the apartment, dressed up in an ice cream man’s suit and said ‘Here I am!’ Certainly, a very confusing situation for a young lady on her own to be in. At first she took him in, but then the police came. Your father was an incorrigible romantic and had stolen an ice cream truck just because he was sentimental about ice cream. For your mother, business was business. She made the mistake of letting it come first. She threw him out. The police took him into custody and your mother denied knowing him when they came to question her.

“Of course she soon had a change of heart. But not before the authorities had taken your father away. What happened next, whether he was trying to escape, resisting arrest, or was railroaded, are things we’ll never know for certain, but we suspect the latter. He never made it to the station. He was struck dead somewhere en route by a cable car.”

So there it is, out at last, the bitter pill.

Sarah now begins to cry freely, but she raises her head and lets her teary eyes meet Gloria’s. The Bee, remembering her Daddy-o, knows the feeling of loss death can inflict on the living. Her own eyes, too, brim with tears. Sharing grief is the only reason for other people. “Oh, Mummy!”

“Needless to say,” says Keinar, “your mother has been miserable about it ever since. She couldn’t help but think that had she protected him to begin with, or, when the police had him under arrest and brought him back to her to identify, admitted she knew him, and went with him to the station with money to bail him out, your father would probably still be alive today.

“The Bay Area police and the Golden Gate security force might have something to hide,” the medium concludes, “but now no longer does anyone in this house. It’s no sugar-coating to say that what your mother did was an accident. After all, she was not much older than you are now, spinning her heels on the wheel of fortune.”

Gloria had suspected for some time that the black widow’s link to her father’s death was more tangible, easier to point a finger at than her connection to her stepfather’s. She feels more sorry for her mother than ever, and at the same time, contrary to Sarah’s worst fears, Gloria has no inclination to judge her harshly. “Of course, you should have stood by him, Mummy, but he should have had enough sense not to go around stealing trucks to show he loved you. The way I see it, life is a play. Is that the way my father saw it? It’s what Daddy-o believed. If I were you, I wouldn’t be too hard on myself.”

“That’s easier said than done, Gloria dear,” Sarah says. “I betrayed the man I loved, and it was the last thing that ever happened between us.”

“Yes, Mummy,” Gloria says, putting her tan arm around the white goddess, “and I’ve know what hell you’ve gone through. But don’t torture yourself anymore on my account. I loved Daddy-o so much, I couldn’t have loved my real father more.”

Sarah smiles thinly and takes Gloria’s other hand, grateful her daughter understands.

Three weeks later, on the eve of Xmas Sarah gives Kitty and Shepp the night off and in a rare appearance in the kitchen prepares the Feast of Light dinner for her family. She slices the loaves and fixes the fishes of tradition and passes them around to Gloria and Laudette.

And after the sugarplum pudding, the three, mother, daughter, and Laudette Lord, each calling herself accountable to a separate higher power, join in a hug to say goodbye to life as they know it.