Chapter 8

“Come on Home”

Merline

Greenville, 1952–1953

The April 1952 edition of Ebony featured a quiz: “Which Is Negro? Which Is White?” Merline wasn’t much of a reader, but the colored grocery store stocked the magazine and she couldn’t resist picking it up and looking inside. It just didn’t make sense. Negroes weren’t white and whites weren’t Negroes. She opened to the quiz and studied the photos. The women had wavy or straight hair, thin lips and skin that, in the black and white photos, looked nearly colorless. The men had slim, straight noses and wore expensive-looking ties and jackets. Merline frowned and looked around the store, as though she expected the editors to walk up to her and explain themselves. All of these people looked white. There weren’t any colored people on the page as far as she could see.

She squinted at the small print at the bottom of the page and read the names of each person, none of which was familiar. She flipped to the next page for the quiz answers.

All the people pictured were Negroes, according to Ebony. She read the text of the article, which detailed the heritage and accomplishments of each person. Merline grew bored and flipped back to the photos. One woman looked familiar, and it took her several minutes to realize that the woman reminded her of Katherine. Certainly, her daughter was prettier than this woman, who had neither golden curls nor dark brown eyes like Katherine. But there was something familiar in the set of the woman’s jaw, the look of determination in her eyes. This woman, according to the article, had often been mistaken for white.

Merline chuckled to herself. She had never known Katherine to be mistaken for white. But she stopped laughing when she considered that this might be because Katherine only went out with her light-skinned but clearly colored mother. She wondered if the woman ever let people think she was white. She could imagine it being easier to do so, the same way she had let people think she had been raped by a white man and Katherine was the result. This made her damaged goods, and thus unappealing to any eligible colored bachelors. But it was easier for her to let people feel sorry for her than to reveal the truth about her and Kenny.

But it was hard on Katherine, who went to the local colored school, the same elementary school that Merline had attended. She was the palest of all the children, and they made fun of her.

“Half-breed,” they called her.

“High yellow.”

“White bitch.”

Nine-year-old Katherine had come home crying from school her first day of fourth grade. The girls had accused her of thinking she was better than everyone else. They said she “talked white,” said her yellow hair looked stringy, called her fair skin pasty.

Merline had assumed Katherine’s feelings were hurt and tried to comfort her.

“Kids sometimes say mean things to each other, Kat. Ignore them and they’ll stop,” she said, hugging her daughter close.

But Katherine pushed her mother away. “I wish I could go to the other school. I’m white, just like the girls who live across the street. Why can’t I go to school with them?”

Merline swallowed the lump in her throat. “Katherine, you’re not white. You’re colored, like me.”

Her face contorted into a grimace. “I’m not like you. I’m not!” she shouted, running to her room and slamming the door. Merline wanted to follow her, to try to explain how these things worked in Greenville, in the world. But she didn’t know how to explain something that was just an accepted part of what she had known her entire life. This was just the way it was, but she knew that wouldn’t satisfy Katherine. She turned to leave the room and saw Mrs. Banks standing there, watching her. Their eyes met for a long moment, and then Merline lowered hers, not wanting to seem impudent. But she wondered how much the woman had heard, and even after she excused herself to the kitchen to prepare for dinner, she couldn’t stop thinking about the small smile on Nancy Banks’s face.

It was that look she remembered as she put the Ebony magazine back on the rack and finished her shopping.

* * *

It wasn’t until she was twenty-seven years old that Merline realize just how lonely her life had become. Katherine was nine and no longer a baby. She didn’t need her mother for much anymore, and Merline found herself spending more and more time staring out of windows or in her small room, alone.

She didn’t have any girlfriends, something that wasn’t new but was suddenly unbearable. When Merline was a teenager, she was the kind of girl that boys liked and girls didn’t—for the same reasons. But back then she had Kenny, and the business of keeping their secrets had taken up much of her time. And then there was Katherine to worry about, and there wasn’t much time to think and wonder. But now, Merline’s chores around the Banks home seemed to take up less time, and there was more time to contemplate all the ways in which her life seemed like nothing much to brag about.

Then there was the rest of the world, which seemed to be on the verge of some monumental shift. Greenville had been much the same for all her life, but things were changing. There had been so many lynchings when Merline was a small girl that colored people had resigned themselves to silence in order to avoid death.

But in 1952, there was a small but growing group of vocal citizens who held meetings and demanded to be called “Negro” instead of colored. Merline was never invited to any of these meetings, but she heard things when she shopped and on the rare occasions she went to church. Women gossiped about articles they had read in a new magazine called Ebony, and a black man had won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing some kind of work with the United Nations. She had learned this from watching the television news while the Banks family was on vacation one Christmas; she wasn’t allowed to watch the television otherwise, because it was in the living room where the family entertained.

Of course, Katherine was allowed to watch whenever she wanted, and this was one of the developments that made her mother jittery. Her daughter knew more about the world outside Greenville than she did.

“Senator McCarthy is going to make sure the communists don’t take over,” Katherine told Merline.

“Senator who?”

This was at the beginning of Katherine’s know-it-all phase, and Merline was not prepared for the look of disdain that passed over her daughter’s pale face.

“Miss Nancy says we might get a color television soon,” she told Merline the next year. By this time, she was afraid to reply to her daughter’s pronouncements because feeling dumber than a nine-year-old made her want to cry. So she nodded and wondered at Katherine’s use of “we,” as if she were a true part of the Banks family and Merline was an outsider. Technically, this was true, and the Bankses certainly treated her like family, but she was certain Katherine didn’t know just how truly a Banks she was.

In fact, Katherine had never even met Kenny, since he had not come home to Greenville during her lifetime. Merline knew better than to ask, but when Mr. Banks was feeling charitable, he passed along tidbits from Kenny’s life. Boarding school was followed by college at Yale, although Mr. Banks would have preferred his son to attend a fine Southern university.

“But that just wasn’t possible,” he would say, glancing at Merline as if it was her fault that Kenny was spending his time in the North instead of in Texas where he belonged. “We Banks men have always attended college in Texas, and I told Kenny not to bring home any Yankee nonsense.”

When he said this, Merline’s spirits had soared because his words seemed to imply that Kenny would come home. But he never did, and after a while, she learned to stop hoping because it hurt too much. She just took each day as it came until she was twenty-seven and it seemed that everything was changing.

That summer, Merline bought a small radio to keep in her room, to try to keep up with Katherine. She learned that a novel by a black man, Ralph Ellison, was one of the most popular books in the country. She listened to the soap opera The Guiding Light until it switched to television. She learned that Rocky Marciano was the best boxer in the world, and she heard jazz bebop for the first time. Soon, she no longer had to pretend to know the random facts her daughter threw at her to prove she was smarter than her mother. But this was small victory, since the girl spent most of her free time either reading books that Merline couldn’t understand or discussing those books with Nancy Banks.

But Merline found that listening to the radio kept her calm; if things were changing, she might at least know about those changes when they happened. The voices on the radio became her friends, and for a time, her loneliness abated.

* * *

Thanksgiving was colder than usual in 1953, the type of gray, windy day that chilled Merline to her bones and made her yearn for the near-100-degree days of a Texas August. She wore an old sweater that used to be her mother’s all day, taking time to shiver in between cooking for the Banks’s annual Thanksgiving party. They didn’t have a large extended family—Mr. Banks was an only child, and his parents had died young. Each year, he told his wife that he had no intention of dining with her hillbilly relatives from Arkansas.

Each year, Merline roasted an immense turkey under the close supervision of Mrs. Banks. Katherine sat at the kitchen table, watching with the sullen look that had become her default facial expression.

“You could help peel the potatoes,” Merline suggested, bending to baste the turkey.

“Oh, just let her rest. After all, she’s been working hard at school,” Nancy Banks said, taking a seat next to Katherine at the table. “We’re very proud of you for getting all A’s on your exams.”

She beamed at Katherine, who smiled shyly. Merline turned her back and rolled her eyes. Those two were always grinning at each other while she did all the work. She resented Nancy’s interference with Katherine, and although she tried to dismiss the feeling, she was hurt that her daughter seemed to prefer the white woman to her own mother.

“Did you baste the turkey yet? Last year it was a little dry.”

Merline kept her back turned, giving a noncommittal “mmm-hmm” in response. Couldn’t the woman see that she was basting the damned bird right now? But she wasn’t allowed to talk back, to show anger, to stand up for herself. She had made a deal with the devil, she sometimes thought. In exchange for a place to live and work, she was to always be indebted to Nancy Banks. Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she had given up her own life so that Kenny’s daughter would have a roof over her head. She glanced over at Katherine and Nancy, who flipped through a fashion magazine, giggling and exclaiming over dresses and hairstyles. Merline wiped her brow and remembered a time when she had been the kind of girl who cared about dresses and makeup.

“I’ll start working on those potatoes,” she announced, as if anyone cared. Nancy waved a hand at her and Katherine didn’t even bother to look up.

Later, while Nancy and Kendall Banks entertained their guests in the dining room, Merline and Katherine ate their meal at the kitchen table. Katherine, dour and sullen, rebuffed her mother’s attempts at conversation or muttered one-word replies that made Merline feel sad and irritated at the same time. She had resigned herself to eating in silence when Katherine spoke.

“Who is my father?”

Merline stopped chewing, the mashed potatoes turning to sour mash in her mouth. She swallowed with some difficulty. When Katherine was a small child, she had often asked about her family, in particular her father. In that relentless way of children, she had asked the question so many times and in so many ways that Merline had run out of evasions and half-truths. She had wanted to tell Katherine about Kenny, about how much in love they had been, about how much she resented his parents for sending him away to boarding school.

Of course, it was impossible to say any of this. So she had crafted a complete lie, something that had satiated Katherine until this moment.

“He was a soldier, Kevin Brown. He died in the war. I told you all of this, remember?” Merline tried to keep her voice from shaking.

Katherine frowned. “But I want to know more about him. I must look like him, right? Do you have a picture of him? Why isn’t your last name Brown? Where is his family? Why don’t we ever see them?”

Her daughter’s stare was unwavering, as if she was searching Merline’s face for the slightest hint of dishonesty. Merline kept her features neutral, giving nothing away.

“Why are you suddenly so interested in him? He’s gone and it’s just us. That’s just the way it is.”

Katherine slammed her fork down on the table. “Why won’t you answer any of my questions?” She paused, waiting for a response. In the silence, they could hear the remote sound of laughter coming from the other side of the house.

“I’m going upstairs to read,” Katherine announced, pushing her half-eaten dinner away.

“You should finish your food. You’ll be hungry later.” Instantly, she wished she could take the words back.

“Miss Nancy says a lady never cleans her plate. She said it’s uncouth to eat so much,” Katherine sneered, pointedly looking at Merline’s empty plate.

Merline wasn’t exactly sure what “uncouth” meant, but she got the idea. She stood and began clearing the table, crashing plates together loudly, not caring if they broke.

“You know what, Katherine? Miss Nancy is not your mother. I am. And no matter what you think of me, you will not speak to me that way.” She stopped, glaring at her impudent, ungrateful, beautiful daughter. “Do you understand?”

Without another word, Katherine stalked out of the room. As she left, Merline thought she saw a look of shame flash in her daughter’s eyes, but it came and went so quickly that she couldn’t be sure.

Merline looked at her watch. It was time to serve dessert. She took off her sweater and put on the apron Mrs. Banks liked her to wear when company came over. She threw back her shoulders and pasted a professional smile on her face.

In the dining room, she took away the dinner dishes and brought back plates of pumpkin, lemon, and apple pies on a rolling serving cart. She stood still by the door, waiting for the signal to begin serving. Merline had been in this room hundreds, maybe thousands of times before, dusting the shelves of the glass-fronted china cabinet, polishing the surface of the rectangular table that seated twenty-four when fully extended. Before this holiday, she had spent hours polishing the silver to a high shine.

But she had seldom seen the formal dining room lit by long, tapered candles or heard the murmured conversation of moneyed guests. She had seldom smelled the potent mixture of expensive perfumes and Cuban cigars, or watched amber liquors being sipped from heavy crystal goblets that she would later hand-wash in the kitchen sink.

Nancy Banks sat at the far end of the table, and Kendall Banks held court at the near end. He wore his own custom-tailored tuxedo, and her gown was made of dark red satin that made her pale skin seem sallow in the dim light. She wore her golden hair waved softly away from her face and pulled up into a coil at the back of her head. Merline had often thought that Nancy Banks might have been pretty once, but now the pinched, suspicious look perpetually on her face made her unattractive. There was little doubt that life with Mr. Banks had made that expression a permanent feature of her face. He was casually dominant, leaving his wife to run the house, but interjecting and overruling whenever he saw fit. He made comments about her humble upbringing, making it clear to everyone in earshot that she had married up and he was nothing short of a saint for having saved her.

Mrs. Banks never protested or defended herself. She had always had household workers to do any manual labor, and now, she had her ten-year-old granddaughter to love. The only time the sour look left her face was when Katherine was in the room.

Seated between the Bankses were five couples, their bellies full of turkey and buttery side dishes that Merline had spent all day cooking. These were the people who controlled Greenville and other small towns like it around northeast Texas. Like Mr. Banks, many of them had made money in Dallas. Once their fortunes were secure, they had “retired” to smaller towns to control them like royalty in small kingdoms. They chose places like Greenville, invested their money in local causes, bought property and small businesses, and then slowly took over.

Merline watched them surreptitiously and thought to herself that as smart as Katherine was, there were still things about Greenville that Merline knew more about than her daughter did.

Mrs. Banks nodded, the signal for Merline to begin serving. She had just set down the final dessert plate when Kendall Banks cleared his throat and silenced the room.

“I have an announcement to make,” he began, looking around the table into the eyes of each guest and smiling broadly. “As you know, it has been ten years since my only child, Kendall Junior, left for school back east.”

Merline stood still and silent, looking down at the floor. No one ever mentioned Kenny in her presence. No one gave her updates about him or indicated in any way that he would be coming back home. Part of her had always hoped that he would, hoped that when he was a man and no longer a boy, he would come back for her. She wanted to take a deep breath, but didn’t for fear of making a sound. It was pure luck that she was in the room at the moment of Mr. Banks’s announcement, and she didn’t want to ruin it by drawing attention to herself.

“Like any good Texas boy, my son has realized that there’s no place like home. Kendall will be coming home to help me run the family business.”

The guests clapped and began talking and eating, asking for details of Kenny’s return and wondering whether he’d find Greenville changed after his experiences back East. Merline smiled. Kenny was coming home.

She looked up and found Kendall Banks staring into her eyes. He was no longer smiling, and his eyes held a warning that Merline had no trouble understanding. He held the gaze for a moment, and then his face changed. His features twitched and his mouth opened as if he wanted to cry out in pain. He made no sound. Merline winced at the brief look of agony that crossed his face just before his eyes went blank, as if a light inside his brain had been extinguished. His body fell back into his chair, then rolled over onto the floor.

Someone screamed. Someone else ran out of the room to find a telephone. The guests milled around the room, their voices a low rumble, asking if he would be okay, wondering why it took the ambulance so long, crying softly.

At first, Merline did not move. Then she began to move toward her room, followed by the sounds of Nancy Banks’s sobs. Standing before the mirror, she felt as if she were looking at a stranger. She saw wavy black hair brushed back into a single braid that hung down her back. She saw skin the color of honey and cheekbones that gave her face an angular look. She saw a small waist, round hips, breasts that were fuller than they had been ten years ago. She slowly applied lipstick, watching the way her heart-shaped lips smoothed and shone under the color. She finally looked into her eyes and saw the fear there. She suddenly realized her entire body was shaking.

She was shocked by having watched a man die.

She was shocked because, at this moment, all she could think of was Kenny.

He was coming home.