X. ON THE INSIDE, EVERYBODY HAS A SOUND
Philadelphia, 1971
100. THEY LEAVE MARIE in their sunny suite at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. She has come to see some universities but can’t yet shake the party scene. She waves goodbye with her foot, stomach-first on the couch, hungover from a night at a hot New York nightclub. Bonnie had been invited by a rock artist she represents, but Bonnie and Mansour sent Marie instead. Marie finds them still snoring face down on either side of their chunky baby girl when she returns. She calls them The Baby Slaves.
This morning, they turn down her offer to watch their mistress for extra cash and take the Amtrak to Philly, baby in tow. It’s the one day that Mansour doesn’t have any shows or press lined up.
The baby screams the whole train ride down, and they take turns walking her up and down the train car, terrorizing business class. Bonnie says over and over that it’s a sign, that they should get off on the next stop and go back to New York, but he wins the argument each time. And just as they step off the train into Philly’s sticky summer air, the child falls asleep, dissolving the tension between her parents.
Bonnie watches Philly from the cab window, gripping Mansour’s hand tightly, the baby’s bassinet balanced between them. His bracelets rattle on her wrist as the car dips in and out of potholes. She grips the seat in front of her with her free hand, trying to steady herself along the bouncy ride.
“Why did you give me all these bracelets anyway? In Brazil.”
“Are you familiar with the periodic table?” he asks her.
She’s peering at him curiously. “Why are we discussing the periodic table?”
He tugs at some bracelet on her wrist. “Le cuivre, le fer. La vie.” Copper, iron. Life.
“It seeps into the skin?” she asks, turning the bracelets on her wrist.
She gathers the few on her wrist that are not this. “These are Mama’s,” she says with a smile.
“Toppatoo na leen bu baax?” Did she take good care of y’all?
He asks Bonnie, looking away, out at the city.
“I told you … she really did, Mansee,” she replies in English, gently, running a hand over his hair.
He notices the shortness of her breaths, feels the clamminess of her hand. He kisses her forehead, assuaging her fears until the driver interrupts, remarking on the sweetness of their romance.
“You’re making me miss my wife.”
He is from Spain. He knows Mansour’s music. He saw Mansour and his band a while ago … in Spain. An accidental sighting, but he’d loved his performance. Bonnie and Mansour groan at this detail, and the driver perks up, wanting to know what the songs are about. But they tell him it’s too long of a story, that he wouldn’t believe it anyway.
The conversation is a great distraction. Bonnie’s full of dread as the street numbers ascend, indicating that they are closing in on their destination. The man invites them to dinner that night, and Bonnie seriously considers switching plans.
He drops them at the corner of the block. “Oh wow, you sure this is it?” he says, as Mansour closes the back door.
It is a sprawling brownstone mansion that takes up half the square block. The other half is taken up by its guesthouse and carriage house. Bonnie stands on the sidewalk, taking it in. It is exactly what she described to her mother as her dream home so many years ago: the lush flower gardens spilling over from both sides of the house, the gargoyles and lions etched on either side of the front steps. They are detailed, down to the gaps in the gargoyles’ teeth; one is smiling, the other menacing.
She walks up the marble steps slowly, one by one. The iron knocker, heavy in her hand, is shaped like a bird. She knocks, waits. Hears nothing. She turns around, ready to leave. But Mansour is there, the baby’s bassinet in one hand. He shrugs, doing her thing, gives her a wink. She’s teary-eyed.
“No one’s coming.”
As soon as she speaks, she hears rustling with latches and keys. And the large mahogany door opens.
Before her is a smiling, attractive man around her age. She’s relieved to have another moment to gather herself.
“You must be Bonnie,” he says. “Come inside, please.” He steps back, ushering her in with a hand on her back.
And there, down the hall, is the same woman Bonnie was reaching for on the Paris airport tarmac. For a few breaths, she can’t move, can’t speak. And then the shock gives way to a freedom, from herself, from the twelve years she’s been waiting and running, and she feels that jumping over her fear and pride is all of her love bursting out.
Her hair is salt and pepper now, as big and long as Bonnie’s, but nothing else is different. Even though they are the same height, Claudine seems taller still. Bonnie’s trembling, but she manages to walk forward; Claudine is trembling and moving closer too. They rush until they are in each other’s arms.
They sit on the floor of the mansion’s foyer. Bonnie can see that one of the rooms has been converted into a studio, and her heart is happy that Claudine’s love for dance never died. A Japanese tea set emits steam on the tray beside them.
They are in disbelief, digesting the presence of each other, but the sun has already merged their shadows on the hardwood floor.
“Can I tell you a story?” Claudine says.
Bonnie nods. Claudine begins.
Claudine birthed Bonnie alone, at some time in the evening. She’d wailed, her deep bellow swallowed by the glass and bricks between the front door and the entrance to the emergency room. It was only some years after the war, and the local hospitals were still unreliable. No one saw her come in, except for a woman who’d locked herself in the bathroom to drink whiskey, and no one came to help.
The delivery was fast. The child took total possession of her body. Her skin crawled and her spine burned, her legs stretched out before her and unable to move. Claudine was paralyzed. To tame her racing mind, she watched moths brawling at the light bulb above her head, every muscle in her body erect. Bones protruded from the tops of her feet and her neck; every breath was sharp and shallow. She turned hot enough to sweat and then turned cold again, convulsing so deeply that her teeth slammed together, and she nearly swallowed her tongue. She weathered the wave of pain that she desperately hoped would not end in death. In the final contractions, she’d become deaf. The child slid out of her onto the stone floor and didn’t cry.
Claudine walked the two blocks home up a windy hill as the sound came back to her ears. Her legs were stiff and heavy, but the cold air helped push her along. Bonnie was swaddled close to her skin, the uncut umbilical cord pressed between them, her beaver coat hardly covering the wetness that still rolled down her legs. Bonnie had purred when they’d gotten out into the cold morning but had fallen asleep by the time they made it into the apartment building. Claudine took the three flights step by step, taking a moment to sit on the cold marble at every landing.
The sun was rising then. The sky started off blue all over, with one line of fire that sent waves of gold in every direction. With bloodstained hands, Claudine lit a fire. She laid the sleeping baby on the kitchen counter and stretched the umbilical cord across the wooden chopping block. She broke it with a dull knife she’d been cutting onions with earlier that day. Onion skins still scattered across the countertop. She tossed the cord and onions into the trash can. She wiped down the child’s body with a warm dish towel.
Over the days, before the fire and on the living room couch, she looked at the child’s face from different angles. From every angle, with every beam of light the sun made, it was the face of someone she loved. From the left side, Claudine saw Sylvia in the elegance of Bonnie’s features, the ease and looseness of their arrangement. The generous nose was that of her own grandmother (Julia); the cheekbones, formed early, mild and round, were her those of her father (Solomon); and the chin somehow looked just like the chin of her best friend (Sophie), a French girl from the ballet troupe who’d died in her youth.
With every breath she took, Bonnie’s small body curled in deeper.
In her deepest sleep, she resembled a snail.
Bonnie would never know these people, but they lived on in her.
“Is there more?” Bonnie asks, breathless.
“There is so much more,” Claudine says, and then her tears begin to fall.
“I want to know it all.”
“I’ll tell it to you.” Claudine slides closer, gesturing for her daughter’s hands. Bonnie gives them to her. “You tell me your story, and I’ll tell you mine.”
Bonnie nods, her tears starting again too. She and her mother are truly meeting for the first time.
They can hear Mansour singing to the baby in Wolof, the sound carrying from the dining room across the hall.
“What’s her name?” Claudine asks.
“Kiné,” Bonnie responds.
Kiné is imitating her father, trying to hit higher and higher notes, her spirited coos echoing loudly around the house.
Mother and grandmother listen.
They beam at the sound.