ADAM REALIZED, ONLY AFTER HE HAD QUIETLY DRESSED IN the darkness, only after he had plucked his mother’s letters from the metal box hidden on the bookshelf, and only after he had slipped down the stairs and was standing in the predawn quiet of Davis Avenue, that he had no idea where he was going. That is, he couldn’t recall the address of his so-called grandfather’s house from the times George had taken him there to visit. Adam had only a general sense that it was near a country club roughly north and west of the part of town where colored people lived.
So for two hours, he fumbled his way onto and off of buses crowded with sleepy-eyed rush hour travelers, with colored maids and chauffeurs, mechanics, schoolteachers, janitors, and cooks, going to work on a Friday morning. He asked awkward directions. Once, he transferred onto a bus going the wrong way. But eventually, he found his way to a neighborhood that looked familiar, a community of gated driveways and expansive lawns, of gently winding streets and of houses that sat back and looked down. He stepped off the bus and started walking.
Adam remembered Johan Simek’s house as a white mansion sitting at the apex of a horseshoe-shaped driveway, the front door flanked by beveled glass and recessed beneath a columned portico. So he walked the vaguely familiar streets, looking for a house that matched his memory.
He did this for an hour, trudging up and back down the quiet, elegant thruways, but he didn’t see what he was looking for. He kept walking. Soon he realized that he was passing some homes for the second time. By this time, it was after nine a.m. He was beginning to tire. He wished he had some water.
When he’d been walking for another half hour, Adam began to feel the sting of his own foolishness. He had run away from home in a fit of pique, run away like a seven-year-old child, and come here because he had some vague notion of confronting his hated uncle—or whatever Nick Simon was—and wringing the truth out of him. But instead, he had become lost in an alien maze of rich white homes, and he was even thirstier now and getting hungry as well.
Adam hated the thought of slinking back to the apartment above Youngblood’s Barbershop, of facing George and his uncle having accomplished exactly nothing except to make himself look stupid. He knew they would never say that to his face, but that wouldn’t stop them from feeling it. And they might even be right.
But what else could he have done?
Those words—Nigger, I’ve never even met your “dad”—had torn something loose inside him. In the detonation of those seven bombshell words, he had lost all foundation, all understanding of his own identity. And Dad’s—no, George’s—idea of a response was to go for catfish and watch Perry Mason?
Just thinking about it made him angry all over again. Adam took a seat on a sidewalk bench beneath the cool shade of an old oak. A black woman, heavyset and wearing a pink dress and white apron, trundled briskly past him, obviously late for work. He nodded a greeting. She gave him a strange look in response and he realized she had probably taken him for white and was now trying to figure out why some unknown white man was acknowledging her. People occasionally did that—even colored people—if they weren’t looking closely enough.
The woman went on. Adam leaned back and closed his eyes and let a minute pass, then two. The moment felt like grace.
And that’s when he heard the car approaching. Adam opened his eyes and was frustrated but not surprised to find a Mobile police car pulling abreast of him, bubble-top light flashing slowly. He realized belatedly that he should have expected this. He sat up straight and readied himself for the inevitable.
Two officers climbed out. The one on the passenger side approached; he was a tall, rangy man with a long neck and a prominent Adam’s apple. His partner, older and thickset, body going over to outright fat, hung back by the car, hand lingering near the weapon holstered on his hip.
The first cop got right to it. “You don’t live around here,” he said. An announcement, not a question.
Adam kept very still. All his mother’s stories about what it meant to be a Negro in the Deep South came rushing back. And the decision to leave the safety of Luther’s apartment to go foraging around this unknown city in this utterly foreign state began to seem even more foolish than it had just a moment ago.
“No, sir,” he said, confirming the statement that wasn’t a question, “I don’t.”
The driver peered closer. “And you ain’t white, neither,” he said. Another announcement.
“No, sir,” said Adam.
“Look almost white, though.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Mulatto, I’d say. Half nigra.”
“Yes.”
“What you doin’ here, half nigra?”
Adam considered his responses and decided the truth was the only one that made sense. “I got lost,” he said.
“Lost?” For the first time, the almost-fat cop spoke, hand still lingering near his weapon.
“Yes, sir.”
“Where you from, half nigra? Sure ain’t no place around here.”
“I’m from New York City.”
“Is that right?” With a low, appreciative whistle, the first cop thumbed his cap back off his forehead and glanced over at his partner. “You hear that, Charlie? We got us a half nigra boy here from New York City.”
The one called Charlie said, “Yeah, you weren’t kiddin’ when you said you was lost, were you? Well, I don’t know how it is in New York City, but down here in Mobile, Alabama, when a colored boy goes wandering through a rich white neighborhood, it makes the housewives nervous and they start to callin’ the police.”
“That they surely do,” said the first cop. “Why don’t you get on your feet for me, boy, and show me some ID.”
Adam had pushed up off the bench and was reaching for his wallet when a woman’s voice stopped him. “Officers, there’s no need for that.”
All three men turned in surprise. The woman who had come upon them unnoticed was slim and white. She was wearing powder blue pants with a white top. A straw hat and cat-eye sunglasses shielded her face. At her feet sat a collie, panting at the end of its leash. It took Adam a moment to realize that this was George’s sister, Cora.
“Ma’am?” said Charlie.
“I’m Cora Brockman,” she said. “I’ll vouch for this boy. I know him. In fact, I suspect he was looking for my house.”
“Ma’am?” Charlie repeated it. He seemed confused by this turn of events. The hand lingering near the gun had fallen. “You say you know him?”
Cora smiled sweetly. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I do. I’m afraid he’s my brother’s son.”
The two cops shared a look. “Yes, I know,” said Cora. “It was all quite the scandal twenty years ago. But as you said yourself, he’s obviously half nigra, so you can see I’m not foolin’.” Another sweet smile. “Go on, officers, I’ll take him with me. I live just around the corner.”
Charlie scowled as if he were being tricked and couldn’t quite figure out how. But the tall one looked from Adam to Cora and back again, then jerked his head toward the car as if disgusted by the whole business. “Let’s go, Charlie,” he said in a voice leaden with some unspoken judgment. “Apparently, this lady knows the boy.” And he got in the car.
The beefy cop’s bushy eyebrows knitted together into one. He regarded Adam and Cora with baleful suspicion. He touched his cap. “Y’all have a nice day,” he said, in a tone that wished them anything but.
“They really wanted you,” said Cora as she watched the car drive slowly off. “I think I spoiled their fun.” Her smile had become faint.
“Thank you,” said Adam. “You came along just in time.”
She turned to him. “Two blocks up,” she said. “Sparrow Lane. Make a left. Two blocks after that, a right on Oriole. You’ll see the house on your left.”
“Ma’am?” Adam was confused.
She lowered her glasses. “I can’t very well be seen walking with you, now can I?”
Adam absorbed this, wishing he had thought of it himself. He should have listened more closely to his mother’s stories. “Allow me to get a half block ahead,” Cora was saying, “and then you follow. If we’re fortunate, no one will think I am being stalked by a Negro brute and call the authorities again.”
She didn’t wait for an answer, making a kissing sound to the dog instead. “Come on, Punkin,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
The dog came obediently to its feet and led the way. Adam did as he had been told. When Cora reached the end of the block, he started after her. As he passed beneath the gaze of each big house, he tried not to wonder how many eyes were upon him, peering through curtains even now, marking his progress through the quiet neighborhood and maybe even calling the police again. It was hard not to look right or left. Adam made himself focus on just walking straight ahead.
After minutes that felt longer than they likely were, Adam finally saw the house he had spent all morning searching for. It sat as it had in memory, at the bend in a long drive shaped like an inverted U. He started up the drive, only to hear Cora’s voice call to him from a copse of trees on the lawn off to his right.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.
Adam stopped. “I was going to the house.”
“No, you’re not,” she said. She shook her head. “You really aren’t from around here, are you?”
Adam wondered how many times the South and its strange customs would catch him unawares, make him feel stupid and slow. Cora was seated on one end of a long stone bench secluded in the trees. She pointed to a spot at the other end. “Sit there,” she said.
She chuckled as Adam complied. “So, what was your plan?” she asked, taking off the sunglasses. “Were you going to go ring the doorbell and punch Nick in the nose for what he said?”
Cora read the answer from his face before he could speak it, and it made her laugh airily. “My God, you were, weren’t you? Well, you should be thankful I stopped you. Nick is a marine who’s been in combat and you’re a child who looks as if he might be bowled over by a strong wind. I’m afraid it would not go well for you.”
Adam’s cheeks flushed. She didn’t notice. Or pretended not to.
“Not that I blame you for being angry,” she said, leaning down to scratch behind the ears of the panting dog sitting placidly at her feet. “Nick had no call to say what he said. That was cruel. It was downright mean. And believe you me, I told him so.”
“Yes,” said Adam, “it was cruel and it was mean, but was it true?”
“That’s something you’ll have to ask Georgie,” she said. A realization came into her eyes. “Does he even know where you are? Does he know you’re here?”
Whatever she saw in Adam’s face answered the question. “He’s going to be very worried about you. I hope you’ll at least call him to let him know you’re all right.”
When Adam still didn’t answer, she shook her head. “You really should call him,” she repeated.
“He lied to me,” said Adam.
“He wanted what’s best for you,” countered Cora. “That’s what my poor brother has always wanted for everybody, ever since we were kids.”
She turned a contemplative gaze upon the big white house. “I really do miss him, you know? It’s amazing how fast twenty years can go by. Nick misses him, too, though you’ll never hear him say it. But they were as close as two brothers can be.”
Cora regarded him for a moment. Then she asked, “Do you have any siblings?”
Adam shook his head. “No,” he said. Then he thought about it and added, “Not that I know of, at least.”
“You should count yourself lucky,” she told him. “I’m not saying I don’t love my brothers. I do, very much. But nobody can hurt you like a sibling. Nobody else is close enough, nobody else knows all your secrets and your soft spots. If you want to know why Nick did what he did, that’s why: it wasn’t to hurt you so much as it was to hurt Georgie.”
Adam, remembering George’s nervous prattling the night before, thought maybe it had hurt them both. He didn’t say anything.
“Nick and I,” she went on, “grew up idolizing Georgie. He was that big brother every little kid should have. He was capable and sure and knew how to do things. Best of all is that, unlike many big brothers, he didn’t mind having a pair of runts like us tagging after him. Other fellows, they didn’t want anything to do with their younger siblings, but Georgie was never too busy for us.”
Her expression was wistful and distant. “He was a good person, you know. Smart, good-looking, even-tempered. Very serious from a young age, though—especially about the Lord.” She rolled her eyes, gave a little laugh. “Nick and I, we went to church because that’s what you do in Mobile on a Sunday. But Georgie looked forward to it.”
Cora gave him a serious look. “Maybe you’re thinking to yourself that I just see him through rose-colored lenses, being his little sister. You might be right on that. I may tend to romanticize, but so be it. As far as I was concerned, my big brother was just about perfect.”
She didn’t speak for a moment. Adam let her have the silence. He glanced up at the house, looming and silent.
Nigger, I’ve never even met your “dad.”
He wondered who his real father was. He wondered why he had never been told.
After a moment, Cora said, “So what is it that brings you and Georgie down here, anyway? Was it just to see Papa?”
Adam shook his head. “We came down for the voting rights campaign.”
She started at the news. “He’s involved in that foolishness up in Selma?” Then she chuckled. “Actually, I don’t know why I should be surprised. It sounds just like something Georgie would do. He probably thinks that Martin Luther King is the cat’s pajamas.”
She seemed to realize all at once who she was talking to. A faint guilt stole across her face. “I suppose you do, too,” she said.
“I admire him,” said Adam.
Her expression turned rueful. “It’s a brave new world,” she said. “I don’t mind telling you, that’s difficult for some of us to accept. But Georgie, he saw it coming twenty years ago.” A pause. Then she said again, softly, “I really miss my big brother.”
“He’s not dead,” said Adam.
Her head came up sharply, but he didn’t care. Adam was tired of her talking about George as if he were no longer among the living, speaking about him in the past tense just because he had married a colored woman and moved away. It was a moment before her features composed themselves into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “No,” she finally said, “I suppose he isn’t. But it’s been so many years.”
“Twenty,” said Adam, who had just turned twenty-one. He had always supposed that he was born out of wedlock, that his folks had fooled around before George shipped out, then got married as soon as George got back. They had always been vague on the timing, though, and now he understood why.
“Yes,” she said. “It will be twenty years as of Christmas Day. I’ll never forget when he told us about wanting to marry your mother. In a lot of ways, that was the last Christmas I ever had—the last one we ever had as a family, I mean. There was this huge row and things were said that could never be unsaid—especially after Papa took Georgie’s side and Mama looked at him as if she no longer recognized her own husband.”
Cora gave Adam a direct look. “It broke our family, you know. I suppose it created your family in the same instant, but it broke mine. We were never the same again. We were never even together again, unless you count Mama’s funeral. That’s what I mean when I say that I miss my brother. I miss my family. I miss the way we all used to be, here in this house.”
“And you blame my mother for that.” Adam didn’t bother making it a question. He felt the heat rising in him. He fanned at a bug that buzzed near his face.
Her expression turned contemplative. “I suppose I do,” she said. “I know that isn’t quite fair. It takes two to tango and Georgie is the one who asked her. You can hardly blame her for saying yes.”
“She said yes because she loved him,” said Adam.
Cora pursed her lips as if turning over a thought that had never occurred to her. “I suppose she did,” she conceded. “I suppose it’s unfair to impute any other motive. But when you’re in pain, you don’t always think about what’s fair.”
“You think you’re the only ones in pain?” Adam’s voice had turned sharp, but he couldn’t make himself stop. “My mother, she can’t even set foot in this damn state. Can’t make herself do it. That’s how much pain she carries. She and my uncle, they saw their parents—my grandparents—burned alive at their own front door by some mob of crazy ass white people. Burned alive, you hear me? I just saw my uncle—he’s a combat veteran—keel over crying just from talking about it, and it’s been forty-two years. And you want to talk about pain?”
He stood, suddenly unable to stay on the same bench with her. The dog’s head came up off its forepaws. Cora regarded him in silence. After a moment, she said, “I’ll get the car and take you down to the bus stop, so you can get back home. As you’ve already seen, you don’t want to be caught wandering around in this neighborhood.”
She stood without another word, made kissing sounds so the dog would follow, and hiked up the driveway. Her gait was stiff and Adam knew he had struck a nerve, knew there was fury caged within that her genteel manners would not allow her to express. She was probably thinking that this strange nigra boy had a hell of a nerve. And maybe he did. But he didn’t care. The self-absorption and nerve of her had rubbed his patience raw.
Why did white people think they were the only ones who felt pain? Why did they think their pain was the only pain that mattered?
“I miss my brother,” she had said.
Well, hell, give him a call. Write him a letter. That was certainly more than Luther could ever do for missing his parents.
Adam sat there waiting out his own anger.
After a time, the Cadillac came down the driveway. Adam went to the passenger side. He spent a brief moment deliberating whether he should sit in the front or the back—what were the rules, according to the arcane customs of the South? Finally, he said to hell with it and got in the front seat. He was sick and tired of the damned South.
As the car pulled off, he glanced back at the house. Somehow, he was not surprised to see Nick standing under the portico watching him go, hands on his hips. Adam fought down an absurd urge to give the white man the finger.
“I want to call my brother,” Cora was saying, “and let him know you’re all right and will be home soon.” She rummaged blindly in her purse and brought up a small notepad and pen, which she handed to him. “Would you write down the number, please?”
Adam did as she had asked and put the notepad and pen on the seat between them. When she paused at a stop sign, she glanced down and said in surprise, “You’ve written two numbers.”
Adam nodded. “One is for my uncle’s house here. The other is back home in New York. You know, in case you ever need it.”
She seemed surprised. Her taut features softened almost imperceptibly. “Thank you,” she said.
Moments later, they pulled up at a bus bench. “I don’t know the buses very well,” she said, “as we never rode them, but I’m pretty certain that if you stay on this line, it will take you downtown. From there, you can ask around and someone should be able to direct you back to your uncle’s house.”
She paused, then took the notepad, flipped to a fresh sheet, and wrote two telephone numbers. Adam questioned her with a look. “My numbers here and in Huntsville,” she explained. Something like a smile tugged at her lips. “In case you ever need it.”
She looked as if she wanted to say more, then seemed to realize there was nothing more to say. Adam nodded his thank you and stepped out of the car. As the Cadillac pulled away, he sat on the bus bench. Frustration chewed at him. He had wasted a morning and accomplished almost nothing. Yes, the idea of confronting Nick Simon had been a childish one that had made sense only in his outrage. But it would have been good to at least get an answer to the basic question: if George Simon was not his father, then who was?
Which is when Adam remembered the bundle of letters he carried in the breast pocket of his windbreaker. He fished them out, but didn’t immediately open them. Instead, he tapped them absently against the palm of his left hand as he argued with himself. The idea of violating his mother’s privacy—more, even, than Luther’s privacy, his mother’s privacy—still did not sit well with him. It made him feel sneaky and low.
But she had lied to him. They had all lied to him. For twenty-one years, they had denied him the simple dignity of knowing the truth about his own self, of knowing who he was. So, what did he owe any of them, really? What did he owe even her? They had not respected him. Why should he treat them any differently?
Thus decided, Adam stopped tapping the letters. He thumbed through until he found those that were postmarked from the time of his birth, and he began reading.
He was quickly confused. He did not exist on these pages. There was not a peep or a hint of him. Instead, Mom chattered in her graceful script about doings in the neighborhood, about her grandfather’s ongoing feud with the widow woman across the street, about rationing meat and saving used cooking oil, about working at the shipyard on Pinto Island, about sermons heard in church. But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, that suggested she had given birth to a son.
Adam lowered the letters and scratched his head. He couldn’t figure it out.
Maybe, as George wasn’t actually his father, Mom wasn’t really his mother? Maybe he was adopted? It would certainly explain those rare and perfunctory hugs and the brisk, businesslike way she spoke to him. But why would she adopt him if she didn’t want him?
Adam felt like a vessel drifting slowly nowhere on a restless sea, anchored to nothing. Who was he? Where did he come from? It seemed the more he asked the questions, the less he understood. Over the course of a day, he had lost everything he had ever known about himself. Why had the truth, whatever that was, been kept from him all these years?
He almost didn’t read the last letter. It was dated March 30, 1945—thirteen months after his birth—and it occurred to him that if he hadn’t appeared in any letter before this one, there was no reason to believe he would appear now. He was quite sure that if he read this letter, he was only letting himself in for another tedious compendium of things happening to people he didn’t care about in a neighborhood where he had never been.
But on the other hand, it was the last letter. And he had come this far. So he unfolded it and began to read. His breath snagged almost at once. The letter said:
My dear brother:
I have started this letter five times now and each time I have wound up tearing it up and throwing it away. I think the problem is, I keep looking for some way to tell you the things I need to tell you that won’t hurt you. There are so many things I need to say to you, some of them things I should have told you a long time ago, but I was too afraid. But I have come to realize that there is no way I can do this without causing you pain. Even though I don’t want to, I have to. You have a right to know.
I guess the first bad thing I should tell you is that our grandfather has passed away. Gramp died just a little over a week ago. I just got back from his funeral, in fact. It was a beautiful service. Everyone from our street was there. Mrs. Foster cried and cried, the poor thing. The minister gave a lovely eulogy, talking about how Gramp was born when our people were in chains and lived to see us find freedom and how the old ones never gave up, either.
I know the thought of Gramp’s death will grieve you, but keep in mind that he was blessed to live a very long life and that none of us gets to stay here forever. You should be happy to know that he was healthy right up until the end and that he did not suffer. His body just finally gave out on him, is all. I can report to you that he died sitting in his favorite chair, with a smile in his face, holding his great-grandson in his arms.
That’s right, Luther, you are an uncle now. I have a son. His name is Adam Mason Hayes and he is 13 months old. He is just beginning to walk and jabber. I will send you a picture in my next letter.
I can imagine what a shock this news will be to you. Or maybe I can’t.
I’m sure you will have noticed from the baby’s last name that I didn’t go and get married behind your back (smile!). So maybe you think your little sister has turned into a woman of loose morals. Well, it’s nothing like that, Luther dear. I would give anything in the world not to have to tell you this, but the truth is, your sister was raped.
I have hardly ever said that word or written that word or even thought that word since it happened. I think I felt that if I never used the word, I could fool myself into believing it didn’t happen. But it did. And here is the part I truly fear to tell you, the part that has kept me up nights trying to think of a way to break it to you: the man who did it was a white man.
His name was Earl Ray Hodges and his wife was a friend of mine. She was a very good friend, actually, in spite of her being white. Feeling the way you do about white people, I know you will find that difficult to believe, but it is true. In fact, she was such a good friend that when she found out what her husband had done to me, she killed him—shot him dead. So there is no reason for you to be thinking of ways to retaliate for what this man did. That’s already been taken care of and he will never trouble anyone but Satan again.
As you might probably guess, there is much more to tell, and I can imagine you have many questions. I will try to answer them as best I can, but I have to beg you to be patient with me and let me tell you these things at my own pace. I hope you understand that none of this is easy for me to talk about.
And yes, I know you will be angry with me for keeping this from you for two years. I feel bad for writing you all those letters filled with gossip about the neighborhood, but never telling you anything about any of this. I hope you can forgive me.
But you have to understand, dear, that I couldn’t think of a way to tell you these things. It would be hard enough under any circumstances for a sister to say things like this to a brother, but it was even harder for me, Luther, because like I said, I know how you feel about white people. And I also know you have your reasons. No child should ever have to see what we saw. I’m blessed that I can’t really remember it, and I guess you’ve been cursed that you can’t really forget. I almost didn’t have the baby because of that. I went to a woman who was going to help me get rid of it, but at the last second, I changed my mind.
What I realized, Luther, is that, yes, I know what it is to be angry at white people. Lord knows I do, especially after what that man did to me. But I’m not like you. I don’t want to have to hate them all just for being white. I know they hate us, most of them. But I don’t want to have to hate them back. I don’t see how that makes things better. It seems to me there’s enough hate going around. It seems to me that’s why the whole world is fighting right now.
That’s why I started to get rid of the baby, Luther, because I thought I was going to hate it. I didn’t think I could find a way to love it, but I did. It wasn’t easy; I admit I had to work at it, but I did. I’m hoping you will, too. That’s what frightens me most, Luther, the idea that you won’t be able to love him. I hope you’ll be able to. I hope you’ll at least try.
I know I’ve given you a lot to think about, so I’ll let you get to it. I trust this letter finds you safe and in good health. Take care of yourself and Godspeed the day you make it back home safe and all of this is over. I love you, big brother. Please don’t ever forget that.
Your sister,
Thelma
When Adam lowered the letter, he could barely breathe.
He had wanted to know. Well, now he knew.
He had wanted to know, but he had never once thought about what knowing might cost him. What it might do to him.
And now, knowing, he felt … soiled. He felt grubby and small.
“I didn’t think I could find a way to love it,” she had said, “but I did. It wasn’t easy.”
And how could he blame her? God bless her for trying. But how could he really blame her even if she had not?
He was not her child, born of love or even lust. No, he was something that had been done to her. He was the product of an emission, the evidence of a crime. And if she had borne the woe stoically and heroically, did that make the woe itself any less?
Now he understood why George had been the hands-on parent, the one down on the floor with him playing trains or race cars, the one to help with homework or college applications. Mom, on the other hand, had been the one to watch, smiling encouragement or offering ideas as needed, her head wreathed in cigarette smoke, caring, yet also remote, as visible yet unknowable as a mountain peak.
Small wonder. It made Adam want to know who this Earl Ray person was and why he had chosen her. And what must she have felt?
Adam thought it a miracle that he was even here to ask the questions. He could not have blamed her if she had abandoned him altogether, left him on a doorstep, left him in a trash can. What was he to her, after all, but a living reminder of her cruelest day? He was the rapist’s son.
The bus came grumbling to a stop in front of him then. People climbed off. Then people climbed on. Dazedly stuffing the letters back into his jacket pocket, Adam followed them. When he got on, he patted his pants pockets, belatedly realizing he had no coins. He opened his wallet and gave the driver a single. The man made change from the nickel-plated dispenser hooked to his belt.
“Transfer?” he asked.
“What?” Adam had been thinking of his mother.
“I said, ‘Do you need a transfer?’”
Adam nodded dumbly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”
The rapist’s son. That’s who he was. The realization had its teeth in him.
Adam accepted the transfer. The bus rolled into traffic. He took a seat. The streets blurred past him. He had no idea where he was going. He only knew that there was no going home.
He had no home to go to.