“They’re all racists.”
“Who?” Adia asked.
I had caught her before she went into school. It didn’t take much to get her to skip. We’d snuck back into her house while Marie was out teaching her morning class, and now we sat huddled together underneath the blankets in her room.
“The Toneybee Institute.” I slid the book toward her. “It says it right there.”
Adia flipped the pages and slid it back to me. “You’re gonna tell me what’s in it, or you’re just gonna sit here and watch me read it?”
“The lady who wrote this book. She came here and talked to the lady who made up that institute, the Toneybee Institute. She interviewed her.” I tapped the cover. “Miss Toneybee-Leroy. And she found out about it. They used to do experiments. In the 1930s. This doctor, Dr. Gardner, he did experiments on black people and chimps, and they did this one horrible, disgusting thing with this woman, this black woman who lived around here, and one of the chimps—”
“What happened?” Adia said, confused.
“It’s in the book,” I said again. “It’s there.”
“Are there, like, pictures if I don’t want to read the whole thing?”
I showed her the inset of photos: a black-and-white shot of the outside of the Toneybee; a hazy reproduction of Julia Toneybee-Leroy’s oil portrait; and then a few old pictures of what must have been Miss Toneybee-Leroy again, young and in a blouse and a pleated skirt and a cloche on her head, with a chimp riding her hip. The chimp wore an identical outfit, right down to the skirt and the hat.
“Those don’t look so bad,” Adia said faintly.
“Just wait.”
She turned the page.
“This is it?’
I nodded, gravely.
“I don’t get it. It’s a still life, right?”
I closed my eyes. “No.”
“Well, what is it?”
“It’s . . .” I thought I couldn’t say it. “It’s backsides. This one”—I pointed to the one on the left—“is the backside of a woman. They just know her name is Nymphadora. That’s all they could find in the archives. And this”—I pointed to the other one—“is the backside of a chimpanzee. A girl chimpanzee.”
Adia frowned. “Why?”
“Because,” I said, “they’re comparing.”
Adia was still looking at the drawings.
“They did the same thing to men,” I continued. “Not pictures or anything, but they did, like, brain tests on the black men who lived in Spring City and messed up their brains and then compared them to chimp brains. And they forced this woman to pose, they forced her to do it and then they made up a name for her so we can never find her. They’re evil, Adia. They’re all racists.”
She closed the book and I finally began to cry.
Adia and her mother warned me for weeks that the world was like this. Here was proof that it was worse. I wanted her to save me, to explain, to wax sharp and go hard.
I breathed in the balm of Adia and her mother and what I’d counted on as their superior knowledge. It smelled like flaking newspapers and the brown milky slip in its bucket.
“Don’t do that.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Adia’s hands fluttering helplessly. “Please don’t do that.” She pushed on my arm and then she said, with uncharacteristic optimism, a terrible miscalculation, “Charlotte, maybe it’s not that bad.”
I cried until I couldn’t breathe, could only choke out, “I don’t believe you.”
Adia leaned across and kissed me on the cheek. She bent her head, kissed my dumb hands clenched into fists. “I’m sorry,” she said.
IT WAS EARLY in the afternoon and we still hadn’t gone back to school. Beside the stereo system was a tall standing brass lamp with a piece of red gauze foolishly stretched close to the bulb. Adia and I sat in the dusty light, she was curled around my knees. I’d folded my hands, very primly, and set them on my lap and Adia rested her head on them. My fingers were beginning to go numb. Soon Adia would lift her head and my hands would feel weightless and light and electric again. She just had to lift her head. But she didn’t. Adia pulled at a bit of T-shirt wrenched up underneath her. Then she settled back down.
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, I mean, I guess that makes sense.” She was quiet again, but I could tell she was waiting. “Because,” she said carefully, “I’ve been thinking. And I think what you should do is, confront them. Confront them and shut it all down.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
Adia finally lifted her head, shocked. “They’re terrible people.”
“I have to tell my mother about it first.”
Adia lay back down. “Don’t you think she already knows?” she said carefully.
My mother had to know. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I understood it now and felt sick. “No,” I said, “of course she doesn’t.”
“So you give her the book and you show it to her and the two of you go out together and tell the Toneybee off. You stand up for what’s right. You stand up for your rights. You do it.”
“I don’t know.” I knew my mother would never do that, but it hurt too much to admit that to Adia.
Adia sat up. “How can you not know?”
“I should go home.”
She stretched.
“Wait till I tell Marie about this.”
WHEN MY MOTHER pulled up to Adia’s, she didn’t even park the car, just honked from the street. I’d waited for her outside the Breitlings’ front door. I didn’t trust Adia, was certain she would denounce my mother the moment she saw her face.
I buckled my seat belt. My mother said, to the windshield, “What is the matter with you? You can’t be skipping school like this. We thought something terrible happened to you.”
“Well, it didn’t.”
“Honestly, Charlotte, that’s all you can say?”
The whole car smelled like Charlie. His scent had become my mother’s: the whiff of animal, but something sharper as well, oniony and frantic, the stink of raw nerves.
“Well, you’re not even going to apologize?” She pulled out into the road.
I leaned over in the seat, unzipped my backpack and pulled out the book. I placed it on the dashboard between us.
“Charlotte, take that off, it’s just going to slide around and fall off and hurt somebody.”
I reached up and turned on the overhead light. She started to complain about the glare, but then she saw the book’s cover and she understood. She did not even glance in the rearview mirror—we were back on the turnpike by then—she simply swerved to the side of the road and turned off the car.
The only sound was the engine cooling into pops and the wind in the trees. The overhead light was still on, so bright it made outside the car black, no woods, no turnpike, no nothing.
My mother was calm. “Where did you get that?”
“I found it.”
“Where?”
“Nowhere.”
She tapped the cover of the book with her finger. She would not pick it up. She said very carefully, “How do you feel about it?”
I didn’t trust myself to answer.
“I bet you feel very angry with me right now,” she began. “And very confused. That’s right, isn’t it? You probably think you hate me and the Toneybee, and you’re confused.”
“It’s all here in the book. The Toneybee Institute is racist and they’re evil.”
“There’s a lot of things in that book that aren’t true.”
“There are pictures—” She shook her head, one brisk no at the word pictures. “There’s proof. I saw it.”
She was quiet for a minute. Then she began to argue with the glass in front of her again. “It was a long time ago, Charlotte. Over sixty years ago. A lot can change in sixty years.”
“Not that much,” I said. “You don’t even care.”
She turned to me, her eyes bright, her voice shaking. “You know what, Charlotte? You’re right. I don’t care. I don’t care what that book says. I don’t care about anything written in there.”
She saw my face and her own softened. “Look,” she continued, a little more slowly. “Charlotte, I love you. I love you and I love your sister. And I love Charlie. I love this experiment. You’re right,” she said. “I don’t care about anything that book has to say. We”—she took her hands off the steering wheel, formed a fist, and moved it across her chest to the left, to rest right above her heart, signing the word—“we, Charlotte, we’re bigger than all of this. What we’re doing with Charlie now? What we get to do? It’s realer than any history and it’s better than anything written in that book. It’s realer than anything this book”—she tapped it again with her finger—“could ever imagine. But us, you and me and Dad and Callie and Charlie? We’re bigger than this, Charlotte. We’re bigger than history.”
“So what are you saying? You’re telling me you knew about this all along?”
My mother took a deep breath. “I don’t care why the Toneybee brought us here. Maybe they hired us because we’re black, or maybe they hired us because we can sign, or maybe they hired us because they liked us, or maybe they hired us because we’re the best, or maybe they hired us because they think they’re using us to make them look good. I’m telling you, Charlotte, honey, please believe me, it’s the best lesson you’ll ever learn: none of that matters. It doesn’t matter why they think we’re here. What matters is we’re here.”
She reached up, turned off the overhead light. Without the glare, the woods came back, the fence for the turnpike, the soft street lamps of downtown Courtland behind us. She started the car now: she didn’t bother to take the book off the dashboard and neither did I. It just sat there for the rest of the ride, sliding back and forth across the vinyl between us.
When we got to the gates of the Toneybee she stopped the car and said, her voice low, “Just, please, don’t tell Callie.”
I started to laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m serious, Charlotte. Don’t tell her. She’s not going to understand. You don’t understand, either, but Callie’s just a little girl.”
“What about Dad?”
“He knows,” she said quickly. “He already knows everything. He’s not happy about it, but he knows this is important. As should you.”
“So,” I said, “I can’t talk about crazy racists and I can’t talk about you and Charlie, you know, Charlie feeding off of you. Is that it? Is that the whole list?”
“We can tell Callie. Eventually. And we can tell them about Charlie nursing eventually. Just not now, when we’re doing so well. It could ruin everything. It’s not just you who’s affected, you know. It’s the whole experiment. They’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on us already. Do you know how much money that is?”
“Sure. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Don’t get smart with me. If that number doesn’t mean anything to you, then I’m raising you wrong. Things like this don’t happen every day. There’s actually something to lose here. There’s a lot to lose here. The woman who wrote this book? People like that don’t even understand the concept of having something to lose.”
“Adia says we are all in this one struggle together. Her mother says that black people have to help one another and we start by knowing our history.”
“That’s bullshit,” my mother said. She saw the look on my face. “You want the truth from me and I’ll give it. Listen very carefully. The woman who wrote this book and your friend, Adia? People like that just love the trouble. They live for the breaking down. They don’t know anything about the building up. They can’t even conceive of the building up. They just move on to the next breaking down. Your life isn’t like theirs, Charlotte. You and me and your father and Callie, we have a lot to lose if this goes wrong. You start in on this, you decide to make a statement and play the victim on this and it’s not just you who ends up hurt. You’re being selfish if you think it’s just you.”
I was quiet for a long time. “Fine,” I said.
“And you have to stop talking to Adia.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No. I’m not going to do that. If you make me stop seeing Adia, this is all off. This whole thing. I tell everyone, and tell Dr. Paulsen and Dad, and I’m selfish. If you stop me from seeing Adia, I’ll be selfish.”
We were at the gates. We could see Lester Potter through the window of the guardhouse, peering at the car, curious about why we hadn’t moved. “Fine.” My mother flashed her lights at Lester, a signal that things were fine. “But not a word.”
I nodded and then I swung the car door open and stepped out on to the gravel drive.
“Charlotte,” my mother called, her voice finally panicked.
“I just want to walk up the drive by myself.”
I heard the passenger door slam and then the chug of the engine, the crunch of gravel as she maneuvered past me. In the dark, I walked up the drive and threw my head back. The elm trees scratched against the dark sky. It smelled like earth and trees and leaves somewhere, far away, burning.
When I got to the grand steps of the Toneybee, I stepped off the gravel drive onto the cold lawn, toward the heavy double doors that were the staff entrance. I made it through, but then instead of walking up the stairs to our apartment, I stopped and stood in front of the picture of Julia Toneybee-Leroy and her monkey.
I gazed up at her face, and at the bones beside her, shot through with sticks. I leaned close to the painting, pressed my nose against the canvas, kept my eyes wide open until the whole image dissolved, first into muddy colors, then into brushstrokes, into the pimpled skin of the canvas.
I breathed in deep the old oil and dust and my own tears. I pressed my forehead deeper into the canvas, opened my eyes wide to stop crying, let the colors in front of me swim out of focus.
“IN TIMES OF strife, revolutionaries must offer their homes to comrades in hiding,” Adia told me, days later, sitting on the floor of Marie’s studio.
“You think so?”
Adia looked at me gravely. “History is a weapon, Charlotte.”
We were in from the cold, listening to Marie work the wheel at the end of the room. Adia had just finished reading to Marie from a copy of Man or Beast? My mother had made me give Max’s copy back to him, and Adia had first tried to order another for Marie to see, but both the Courtland County Library and the bookstore in town claimed that the book was unattainable. Courtland County Community College claimed the same. Marie had finally asked a friend in Boston to send one. Adia and I read the book together, and after every chapter we finished she wrote a letter to the editor of the Courtland County Mercury, but none of these were ever printed. She was convinced that we were being censored and blocked by the Toneybee Institute at every turn.
Adia was winding herself up now. “We’re gonna fill you up with so much knowledge,” she told me, “so much consciousness, this experiment can’t bring you down. They wanna hide the truth from us? Well, you’re just going to stop participating. You’re going to disrupt the whole thing. But we need that book because you have to do it with knowledge and with style and with grace. Right, Marie? You’ve got to make a statement.”
But Marie, serene behind her wheel, called to us, “You cannot do anything.”
Adia turned to her, incredulous. “We have to do something.”
Marie only sat back and lit another cigarette, smiling maddeningly. She inhaled and when she spoke her voice was beautiful and deep and grave, “Doing anything is impossible.”
I felt my stomach dip. “But that’s the whole reason why I keep coming here,” I said.
Something flashed across Adia’s face, but she lowered her eyes before I could make it out. When she raised them again, she was merely angry. Marie was sketching out her argument of inaction.
“It’s not real. It’s psychological,” Marie went on. “That mess at the Toneybee, what your family is messed up in, that’s not a real problem. It’s the symptom of a larger metaphysical disease. It’s a metaphor, and as a metaphor it can only be fought metaphorically, not with actual actions.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Adia said, seething, and Marie laughed back at her.
“Of course it doesn’t make any sense,” she told us. “Nothing about racism makes sense. If it made sense, it would mean it was real, it was the truth. It’s ironic,” Marie pronounced, savoring the word. Despite this, it still sounded wrong to me.
“My family is real. I mean, I really live in the Toneybee and it’s really terrible.”
Marie only shook her head sadly. “Your family, your parents and sister and that chimp, you’re just as unreal as all of it. That’s why it’s not possible to ‘do anything,’ as Adia puts it.” Marie sat back and stubbed out her cigarette in a bucket full of potsherds.
Adia cried, “We need marches and signs and we need to write to the outside papers. We need to lie down in the street.”
Marie was quizzical. “That book will so be out in the world. It will embarrass the Toneybee, and they will care. And maybe some people in Courtland County will care. But it won’t shift anything monumental in our collective consciousness. There’s nothing more we can do here, Adia. And I’m sorry to tell you this, Charlotte. But I don’t understand why you girls are getting so upset about this one thing. It’s clear that here in Courtland County you can’t get a fair shake. They’ll suppress the book and anyone who speaks out against it, so why even try? The world is so much bigger and so much worse than this. You throw yourself into Courtland County and you’re just working on Charlotte’s family. That’s only four people—”
“Plus the chimp,” Adia added.
“All right, yes, and him. Think of the larger picture, both of you. I know it’s hard on you, Charlotte. Please think of my home as a safe space. But agitating against this one thing when your energies can go to something so much bigger—you’re young. You can do better. The book is enough. Just let time take care of it.”
Marie stood up from her stool, crossed over to the stereo, and put on a record. It was a song made up of just one creaking horn.
At the sound of that horn Adia drew herself up, grabbed my hand, and took me upstairs to her room.
My mother was right. These people were useless.
ADIA RAGED AND cried, but she did not give up. A few weeks later, when I told her that Dr. Paulsen, excited by the progress of the experiment, had insisted on a Thanksgiving dinner with Julia Toneybee-Leroy herself, Adia became excited.
I was more mystified. Adia and I had talked about Julia Toneybee-Leroy and underlined every mention of her in Man or Beast? But still, it had been easy to forget that she was a person and that she was alive. It was as if Dr. Paulsen had pulled a ten-dollar bill from her pocket and pointed to the engraving of President Jackson and said, “Make him up a plate.”
Quick-thinking Adia coaxed me, “Now’s your chance. You get to look her in the face and confront her.”
“I’m not doing that.”
She moved away from me. We were in her room again, like always, lying side by side.
I was scared of looking like a fool in front of my father’s family. Dr. Paulsen insisted that they be invited, too. I’d gotten excited at the thought of maybe embarrassing my mother for once, but my uncle Lyle and aunt Ginny would only see rudeness, not protest.
Uncle Lyle and Aunt Ginny lived in a clapboard Victorian back in Cambridge, on one of the little streets that cramped up between Central Square and the banks of the Charles River.
When we lived in Dorchester, every Sunday afternoon we drove across the bridge and ate dinner on Chalk Street. Every meal there ended with the same lament. Right around dessert, right before the men, Kool cigarettes tucked between their knuckles, disappeared out the back door into a cloud of mentholated smoke, Uncle Lyle would lean back in his chair and say, “Laurel’s got you beat, boy. Who ever heard of living in a building with strangers when you could live with family? You think you’re better than us.” As if our apartment in Dorchester was impossibly chic and not stained with watermarks and seeded with lead paint. It was always that way with them—my father and Uncle Lyle passing some unknown jealousy back and forth, as easily as they traded loose cigarettes from pocket to pocket.
Beside me now, Adia dipped her head and kissed my arm, something she rarely did. I flushed. “I’m going to call you afterward to make sure you do it.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Just think of how good it will feel.” She rolled on to her side and flung one arm across my chest.
We lay like that for a long time, me breathing in the sharp acrid scent of Adia, she breathing into the hollow of my collarbone until I said, heady and overcome, “Okay, all right. I’ll do it.”
She kissed my neck. “I knew you would.”
LATE NOVEMBER WAS when Courtland County became truly beautiful. That busy, condescending green that greeted us a few months before softened and deepened until the whole world, despite the winds, despite our breath hanging frozen in the air, closed in around us and felt warm.
It was so beautiful it hurt. Even Adia felt it. The day before Thanksgiving, dismissed early from school, we walked to her house, both of us gathering up handfuls of red-and-orange ombred leaves and scattering the bouquets across her bedroom floor, until her sheets, her hair, her skin, smelled like seeded earth.
I took the early bus from Adia’s house and made it to the Toneybee just before dark. I pushed through the institute gates, past Lester Potter in his guard hut, and walked up the drive, watching the bricks in front of me turn from red to black.
THANKSGIVING MORNING HAD arrived and our whole family was running late. But Uncle Lyle and Aunt Ginny were early. Lester Potter sent word at noon that they were already coming up the drive.
My mother was struggling to get Charlie into a pair of pants, so it was me and my father and Callie who went to find them in the Toneybee lobby.
Callie walked ahead of me, a sweater tied around her waist, the belly of it trailing down the backs of her knees. She hadn’t been able to get the zipper on her dress closed all the way. She’d given up and let it sigh half open, so that the expanse of her back—from the tops of her white tights, rolling down below her hips, to the chubby wings of her shoulder blades—was exposed.
I caught up with her, reached out to tug on the zipper, but she shrugged off the touch of my hand and scowled at me.
Go away, she signed.
Your dress is open.
She angled her hand behind her, felt her bare skin there.
Leave me alone.
“What’s your problem?” I called after her, but she only walked faster. When she got to the end of the hall, she untied her sweater from her waist and, with a flourish, snapped it over her shoulders.
In the pocket of my own dress was a piece of notebook paper twisted and twirled around a pencil. In Adia’s room, the afternoon before, surrounded by broken leaves and bedsheets, we had written a long screed full of denunciations and pleas for the forgotten. The plan was that right after grace I would stand up. I would turn slowly to Miss Julia Toneybee-Leroy and I would recite the words on the paper. I would hold up my hand and sign out the most important ones so that Charlie could understand. “After all,” Adia reasoned, “he’s oppressed, too. Kind of.”
She underlined those words in red so that I would remember.
Lyle’s Jaguar idled in the Toneybee Institute’s front drive. It was a 1970s model, a discard that always lurked around Lyle’s garage, but Lyle and Ginny had made a point of driving it to Courtland County and showily parking it at the Toneybee’s front steps. When we found them, Ginny was still in the car, peering up at the building from her window, and Lyle was leaning against the hood, smoking.
My father and Uncle Lyle looked nothing alike. My father was better-looking, but Lyle was the sharper dresser. He spent most of the day in coveralls with oil and dirt beneath his nails, so when he was out of the garage, Lyle always dressed up. He wore a heavy gray cable sweater with a white dress shirt buttoned up underneath and discreetly checkered pants. On his feet, penny loafers, two fresh coins winking out of the leather slits. He was shorter than my father, he only came up to the middle of his chest, but that didn’t matter because Lyle’s voice was hoarse and booming.
Callie ran to him, and he pressed his hand to his chest, staggered back. “Cal, what happened to you?”
She wavered.
“Your hair,” he said.
“I like it,” Callie tried.
He reached out and gently crushed a stiff curl between his fingers.
“She likes it, Lyle,” my father said, a little sharper than Callie had.
“Gin, you see this?” Uncle Lyle called to his wife.
Ginny, still in the front seat of the car, let her gaze drift over the top of Callie’s head, then back to her husband. “It’s all right,” she said coolly. Ginny always wore her hair the same way: two heavy braids curled into ram’s horns on either side of her head, one resting above each ear. On her lap was a white casserole dish, the sides crusted over with trails of brown sugar, the whole thing wrapped up in a threadbare tea towel. Ginny seemed undecided on what to do with the dish: whether to stick it, ungracefully, between her two feet on the car floor and force herself out of the seat, or whether to hold on to it and somehow manage her way out of the car without the use of her hands. Unable to make up her mind, she stayed where she was, eyeing me and Callie.
She blinked at Callie’s widened face. She eyed my legs. I had sinned in her eyes and appeared outside without stockings. Ginny’s own skinny legs were wrapped up in white hose, the weave on it so thick I couldn’t even see the brown of her skin.
She raised her eyes from my legs to the front of my blouse, trying to gauge if it was too tight. I passed muster. I think the ruffles confused her. But still, she couldn’t resist saying pointedly, “You’ve grown, Charlotte.”
Inside, Lyle made a big show of inspecting all the brass and chandeliers. He touched the oak paneling and whistled theatrically. “Bet it’s a bitch with the humidity in the summer.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” my father smiled. “Laurel and I are here rent-free. We don’t have to worry about that stuff. Not even utilities.”
Lyle nodded grudgingly. “Good, good.”
In the hall, we stopped in front of Julia Toneybee-Leroy’s portrait. Callie pointed out the baby skeleton in the picture and Uncle Lyle began, with operatic overindulgence, to praise it. “Well, that’s something,” he said, “That’s really, really something. Baby brother, they make portraits of whole monkey skeletons here? They really do?”
My father ignored him. Lyle moved farther down the hall, eager to discover more to flatter into contempt. He was walking so quickly he nearly matched Ginny’s long-legged stride. She pressed her casserole dish close to her chest. She waved off my father and Lyle when each of them offered to carry it.
“What did Laurel make?” she said. “I called her about the sweet potatoes, but she didn’t call back. I guess she was too busy?”
My father let the dig slide.
“I made them anyway,” Ginny continued, “but I don’t know if there’s enough. She didn’t tell us how many guests.”
“That’s our fault.” Then, trying to repair it, “Don’t worry, Gin. The menu is on us.”
Ginny shifted the casserole dish under her arm.
We reached the apartment door. I watched Uncle Lyle’s face as he walked inside. His eyes brightened, his mouth opened slightly wider. All his jealousy left him when he saw Charlie.
There was my mother in a peach chiffon dress, her hair dampened with activator spray and glistening in the overhead light. There was Dr. Paulsen, who’d dispensed with the lab coat for the day, in a tweed skirt and a shirt with a collar.
And there was Charlie, in the green pants my mother had wrestled with. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but he was so calm, his bare chest and round belly appeared dignified. Charlie’s hands hung in his lap, and when we came through the door, he didn’t screech or grasp at my mother or even grin. He merely tilted his head back and flared his nostrils.
“Ha,” Ginny said behind us, dryly.
Max hustled his way toward us, made for the corner of the living room where he’d set out the camcorder. He eased it on to his shoulder and pointed the lens and the mounted dirty, fuzzy mic at us. He said, “Just pretend I’m not here,” but nobody responded.
Lyle moved toward my mother to kiss her on the cheek. Charlie eyed him warily. “Just wave for now, please,” she said.
Uncle Lyle frowned.
“He doesn’t know you all yet. It’s just going to take a while for him to get used to you.”
As she spoke, Charlie got down off the couch. He stood awkwardly, expectantly, arms stretching forward. Then he dropped to his knuckles and loped across the room. He ignored my father. He ignored Callie. He hesitated near the tops of my Mary Janes and I felt certain he was going to spit on them. But he kept going. He made it all the way to Aunt Ginny, who still held the casserole dish in her hand.
He reached out a finger and ran it up against the thick white nylon of her stockings. Ginny shivered. Charlie peered at her knees. Then he reached out his finger and did it again.
“Oh.” My mother was embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Ginny.”
“It’s all right.” Ginny’s voice was strained. She held the casserole dish a little higher.
Charlie touched her leg a few more times. Then he held his fingers to his nose and took a loud sniff.
“Your monkey’s coming on to my wife?” Uncle Lyle said to my father, and this made nearly everyone—Max, Dr. Paulsen, my father—laugh. The only ones who didn’t were my mother and Ginny. My mother said, “He’s just investigating his environment.”
“Is that what they call it?” Uncle Lyle said.
Ginny still hadn’t moved. Charlie touched her legs again, his fingers quick. He swept them as far as the tops of Ginny’s calves. He stopped at the hem of her skirt. He did this until he collected enough of whatever he needed on his fingertips, and then he crammed his fingers into his nose and sniffed them again, hard. Ginny half closed her eyes.
My mother, alarmed, got up and took the casserole dish. “I think it’s your perfume, Gin.”
It was the scent Ginny wore, her one concession to fashion—rose oil that she rubbed on the back of her neck and her bony wrists several times a day, until the very essence of Ginny was the rank breath of dead flowers.
Ginny nodded shyly. “Yes.”
“Gin, I told you you were going a little overboard this morning, didn’t I?” Lyle pinched her elbow, still amused.
Ginny, her hands free now, reached up, uncertain, and rubbed the back of her neck, at the spot where her two heavy braids met. “It’s not bad, is it?”
“It’s fine, Gin, it really is,” my mother answered. “He’s just not used to it. I don’t use any perfume and neither does Dr. Paulsen. I don’t even think Max uses aftershave.”
“I don’t, it’s true.” Max leaned his head back from the viewfinder.
Ginny nodded. Charlie was sitting at her feet now, very gently stroking the fronts of her brown leather pumps. He looked up at her, through his thick lashes. Ginny crooned, “Oh, but he’s beautiful.”
My mother beamed. “I think so, too.”
We were interrupted by a knock at the door. Dr. Paulsen sprang to her feet, dropped her chalk in her pocket. “It’s Miss Toneybee-Leroy,” she said.
Julia Toneybee-Leroy arrived with an attendant, a black nurse nearly as old as she was, who creaked slowly beside her. I could not see Julia Toneybee-Leroy clearly until she sat down, regally, on the couch, and then the room went quiet as we all stared at the woman from the painting, brought to overwhelming life.
She was the oldest person I had ever seen. Her skin lay in great folds over her ropy muscles and tapered bones. Her hair was an ancient blond, colorless until the light hit it a certain way and then it gave off dying blinks of color.
Of course, she was not wearing the gown from the oil portrait. Instead she wore a baggy sweatshirt, slightly stained and printed with apples, and bright blue stirrup pants. The casualness of her outfit was strange, but as she watched each of us it was clear she was not put out by our finery. She did not seem to think it the least bit odd to be wearing leisurewear for a Thanksgiving dinner when everyone else was in hose and dress pants. She took it in as her due.
The nurse was dressed similarly to Julia Toneybee-Leroy: the same cheap cotton pants, the same bilious sweatshirt. Her gray hair was pressed and slicked close to her head.
My father shook the nurse’s hand first. He asked her name and she replied in a gruff voice, avoiding his eye, “Nadine Morton.”
“Nurse Morton has worked with me at the institute for over sixty years.” Julia Toneybee-Leroy interrupted before he could ask the nurse any more questions.
Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s eyes were more unnerving than her hair or her skin. Her eyes flitted between all of us, with the tip of her tongue resting between her half-parted lips, her expression less like an old woman’s and more like a very wrinkled little girl’s. She looked at us all as if she already knew us.
I watched her watching my family and I tried to steel myself, like Adia told me to. “She’s the cause of everything,” Adia had coached the night before. But I could hear the breath leave her lungs from across the room. And it was hard to hate a woman who gazed at my sister with such affection.
I put my hand in my pocket, just to remind myself of the speech there, when Miss Toneybee-Leroy raised her arms above her head and suddenly began to making a harsh, high hiss from the back of her throat.
We all stared at her. Only Nadine Morton was undisturbed—she sat back, arms folded, unimpressed.
Julia Toneybee-Leroy was calling for Charlie. When she started making the noise, he came and stood beside her, almost against his will. She sunk her fingers into his hair, and began to forcefully pet him behind the ears. Charlie closed his eyes.
My mother watched as Charlie caved, until she couldn’t stand it anymore and brusquely turned to Ginny.
“Give me that, Gin,” she said, taking the casserole dish. She retreated to the kitchen, giving up Charlie to Miss Toneybee-Leroy, for now.
When Miss Toneybee-Leroy had petted Charlie into submission, Lyle sidled up to her.
“So, ma’am, such a lovely young ma’am as yourself.” Lyle took her papery hand in his and pressed it.
“Why’ve you got my lovely only nieces in the world, my only flesh and blood, with that there monkey?” He said it to make her laugh, and it worked.
“Your only flesh and blood—they’re going to be famous.” Her eyes flashed. “You should be proud.”
She said it so certainly. She did not seem embarrassed or guilty of any past crime. Adia had said she wouldn’t feel any guilt. “She doesn’t even know she should.” I stopped tearing up the paper.
“Where do you get all these chimps, anyway?” Lyle said, still smiling. “A catalog?”
Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s voice was clear and strong, “Leopoldville, originally. The Belgian Congo. Or just Zaire. I went there and bought our very first chimp in 1929.”
“The bones in the picture,” Callie exclaimed.
Miss Toneybee-Leroy faltered. “Yes,” she said. “The bones in the picture.”
She cleared her throat. “My first time in Leopoldville, I was there on safari. I danced at a rumba club. The Leopoldvilliens, black and white, were crazy for rumba back then.”
“A rumba club, huh?” Lyle was amused. “You cut a rug, did you, ma’am?”
“I did, Mr. Freeman. The Congo was beautiful,” she said very deliberately as if she were relaying a secret message.
Ginny pursed her lips. “Sounds like it.”
“You look lovely today, Callie. I love your dress,” Miss Toneybee-Leroy called.
“Doesn’t she, though?” Dr. Paulsen agreed, relieved at the change of subject. “She really looks fantastic.”
“You look great,” Lyle said, not to be outdone in noticing things about his own family.
Confused by the sudden flurry of attention, Callie stared down at her shoes and mumbled, “Thank you.”
My mother returned from the kitchen with a plate of lettuce leaves, each rolled up carefully into a cigar. Charlie’s favorite snack, a blatant play for his affections.
She held out a piece of lettuce to him, but Miss Toneybee-Leroy took it before he could.
“Thank you, my dear,” she said. “I can help him if you’d like. I remember.”
I don’t think she meant to be condescending. But my mother burned with humiliation. She tried to recover. “Of course.” She passed the leafy cigar off to Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s pinched fingers.
“What about the rest of us?” my father tried to help her recover. “Charlie gets some hospitality and we don’t?”
“I thought Lyle and Ginny might like to try it,” my mother said.
Ginny snorted. Lyle put a hand on her knee. He kept his hand there while he leaned over and reached for a lettuce cigar himself.
Charlie studied the hand on Ginny’s knee. He beaded his head down and raised his shoulders. We all recognized that move immediately. It was Miss Toneybee-Leroy who broke the tension.
“I hate to impose,” she said, turning toward my mother, “but really, my dear, don’t you think we should go straight to dinner?”
It took a while for all of us to reassemble in the dining room. Charlie began shouting as soon as he smelled the food, and he got louder the longer he sat with an empty plate in front of him, while the rest of us filed around the table. My mother tried to pass a cloth napkin to Miss Toneybee-Leroy, but Nurse Morton languidly intercepted it. Charlie began rocking back and forth in his chair.
“Should we say grace?” my father asked.
“Yes,” Dr. Paulsen said.
My mother hurried back to her place beside Charlie and grasped his hand in her own. “Make it quick, please, Lyle,” she said.
Dr. Paulsen reached for Charlie’s other hand and he was defeated into quiet.
I took Callie’s sticky hand in mine and Callie gingerly placed her free hand in Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s.
The only one not holding anyone’s hand was Max, who stood near my father’s end of the table, the video camera perched on his shoulder, trying to get everyone in the picture.
We bowed our heads.
This was my chance. I waited a moment, then looked up, ready to speak. I found only Charlie and the eye of the camera staring back at me. I decided I would let Lyle finish. I would tear them all down after Lyle had just graced them up.
Lyle began, “Lord of our hearts, make us truly thankful for what we are about to receive. Thank you to Charles and Laurel and the girls and, sorry, miss”—he raised his head and gave Dr. Paulsen’s hand a shake—“didn’t catch your name . . .”
“Marietta,” Dr. Paulsen replied, too anxious to give him her correct title.
“Miss Marietta,” Lyle continued, “thank you for inviting us. Gin and I are just grateful to share this day with you. And of course, a thanks to the lady who made it all possible, the lovely Miss Toneybee-Leroy.”
Everyone raised their heads and said “Amen.”
Lyle winked first at Dr. Paulsen, who dipped her head in confusion. He winked at Miss Toneybee-Leroy, too, but she only smiled serenely back. Wanting a bigger reaction, he raised her hand, which he still held in his own, from the table and gave it a theatrical squeeze for everyone to see. But still, Miss Toneybee-Leroy was oblivious. She gave us all a gummy smile and shook their clasped hands in kind.
Now, I told myself. Speak now. I cleared my throat, but no sound came.
Ginny reached to the center of the table for her dish. “Can Charlie eat these?”
My mother shook her head swiftly. “I’m sorry, Ginny. Too sweet.”
“Well.” Dr. Paulsen gave a quick, placating glance to Lyle at her left. “It can’t hurt him to try a little. I’m sure he’d like it.” After Lyle’s grace, there was no doubt for Dr. Paulsen. She knew he was a troublemaker.
My mother handed Charlie’s plate over to Ginny. When Charlie got it back, he stuck his finger in the middle of the potatoes, then brought it to his mouth and sucked on it. He blinked in Aunt Ginny’s direction and made a kiss.
Lyle cocked his head. “I can’t get over that monkey being in love with my wife.”
“He does seem smitten,” Miss Toneybee-Leroy agreed. “I’d hoped to charm him myself, but I see your wife is already first in his affections.”
“What’s not to like about Gin?” Lyle agreed. “That monkey’s got great taste.”
“He certainly does.” Miss Toneybee-Leroy turned slightly away from him. Nadine Morton leaned down between Lyle and Miss Toneybee-Leroy and began shredding the turkey on her plate.
While Nurse Morton worked, Miss Toneybee-Leroy gazed serenely in front of her, patently unembarrassed. Following her lead, everyone else pretended not to see Nadine Morton’s black arthritic fingers shredding the pale turkey meat, except for Lyle and Callie, who stared openly. Lyle glanced across the table at my father and gestured to Nadine Morton with his fork. My father turned to pass the stuffing to Ginny.
“You know,” Lyle said to Miss Toneybee-Leroy, in a loud imitation of a confidential tone, “my wife, she does everything for me, too. We’ve been married twenty years and she still makes me coffee before I wake up. Still wakes up a half hour before I do to put on makeup, to put on her face, she says. Twenty years and I’ve never seen Gin without makeup. I tell you, that monkey knows what’s what.”
“It appears he does.” Miss Toneybee-Leroy wasn’t smiling at all anymore.
Ginny blushed. She kept her eyes on her plate as they spoke.
I think it was to stop the flow of praise, to take attention off herself, that made Ginny stand up slightly in her chair. “Pass your plates up, please,” she commanded the table, and began serving out the food to everyone.
“Marietta,” Ginny pitched her voice to be heard over Charlie’s shouts, “what do you do here?”
“Well,” Dr. Paulsen began. But she didn’t finish, allowed herself to be drowned out by Charlie.
My mother was annoyed at Dr. Paulsen’s hesitation. “She runs the place, Ginny.”
Lyle reached for the platter of ham. “That’s right?”
“Yes,” Dr. Paulsen said.
“And how’d you get into that line of work?”
“Well,” she began. But I cut her off. Lyle, had begun to fork pieces of ham on my plate, unasked.
“No thanks,” I said suddenly. I’d found a place for my contrariness at last. I felt the spirit of revolution swell inside me. “I don’t eat pork anymore.” Lyle raised his eyebrows in surprise, then tilted my plate and let the meat slide back on the platter.
Ginny’s eyes widened at all of this. My mother very slightly shook her head, letting Ginny know I should be ignored.
“What’s this about?”
“Well, it’s not right for us to eat pork. I mean, we didn’t used to eat pork. Black people, I mean. I mean, like a long time ago.” I felt the Breitlings’ rules wither away. I couldn’t remember the logic. “It’s not right.” I tried once more. “It’s not right as African Americans.”
Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s whole face went soft in sympathy. I had not expected that.
“Well, what do you know, Charles. Even all the way out here, Charlotte’s gone political,” Lyle said approvingly. He lifted his own piece of ham to his mouth and took a bite. As he chewed, he said, “I could never get behind that nonsense the first time it came around, Charlotte, when I was young. It’s just an animal. It don’t mean nothing.”
“She should eat whatever she wishes,” Miss Toneybee-Leroy said.
I was confused by this, and annoyed. Julia Toneybee-Leroy was the only person at the table attempting to take my declaration seriously, but I realized, with a sting, that she did it out of pity.
That sting helped. I resolved to remember the bits and pieces of Marie’s lectures. “Pork,” I began, my voice getting surer as I followed the argument to its conclusion, “is full of all kinds of trash, Uncle Lyle. It’s got, like, parasites and toxins, because of the way the animals are raised. Pigs are really unclean. They’re some really unclean animals, even worse than Charlie—”
“He’s not an animal,” Callie blurted. Everyone at the table laughed, relieved. Callie looked at me searchingly, hurt.
I ignored her. “All right, Callie,” I said, playing up for the others, “an individual like Charlie.”
We all turned to Charlie who was signing at Ginny, catcalling her with his hands.
“Compare Charlie to the general pigs they breed to eat. Do you know how they breed those pigs?” It was a leap, but I took it, to try to get to the crimes of the Toneybee. “They breed pigs the same way they used to breed us—”
“That’s enough, Charlotte.” My mother knew exactly where I was going.
“Ha,” Lyle goaded. “Go on. Let’s hear it to the end.”
I looked at Miss Toneybee-Leroy who still looked at me pityingly. Keep going, her eyes said. And please stop. She wished for both, I saw, and this confused me.
It was the pity, though, that was galling. She was embarrassed for me, though everything in the book said she should be embarrassed for herself. The pity in her eyes made me want to cringe and apologize and stop talking and agree. But Adia’s voice in my ear told me I couldn’t.
My voice, I thought, was ready.
But I was stopped again by Lyle, this time needling Max. “This must be weird for you, man.”
Max jerked his head back from the eyepiece slightly. “What do you mean?”
“Well, it must be a little bit of a study for you, too. To see how black folks act at a family dinner. Our theories and stuff.”
Max smiled slightly, unsure what to say next. The room was slipping away from me. I realized I didn’t want to hurt her, couldn’t hurt her, not while she was in the room beside me.
My mother, across the table, signed to me now, not caring if Dr. Paulsen or anyone else saw, Charlotte, stop.
“My brother’s worried I’m gonna say something off,” Lyle spoke patiently to the camera lens. “But don’t worry, Charles. I’m not going to say a word.”
“Does the not saying a word start now or after dinner?” my father said. “Because you aren’t doing a very good job of it now.”
“I’m just curious.” Lyle stretched back, directed his grin to Miss Toneybee-Leroy. I stood up slightly in my chair, gripped my fork. I know, without a doubt, if Lyle were sitting beside me I would have stabbed the back of his hand with it. He was canceling me out.
“You strike me as an intelligent lady,” he continued. “A smart female such as you are, ma’am.”
Miss Toneybee-Leroy reached for her water glass. “I don’t like it when men call human women females.”
Lyle clucked. “All right, a woman such as yourself. Can I ask you, as an intelligent woman, doesn’t this all feel a little weird to you?”
“I’m not so sure that I understand what you mean,” Miss Toneybee-Leroy said distinctly. Nadine Morton put a hand on her shoulder. “And honestly, Mr. Freeman, I’m not so sure I like you so much anymore.” She flashed her gums at him. “I am sorry to be rude.”
Lyle was not intimidated.
“Well, I assure you, I like you, ma’am.” He laughed. “All I was trying to say before I offended you, and I am truly sorry to offend you, ma’am, that was not my intention, what I was trying to say is, don’t you think it’s odd you white folks, no offense to yourself or Miss Marietta, of course, no offense to the young man with the camera, I’ve forgotten your name . . .”
“Max,” Max said.
“All right, okay. Yeah. You. Don’t you think it’s odd to watch my baby brother and his family as hard as you watch Charlie? With that nice young man’s video camera and all?” Lyle said.
I gouged the tablecloth with my fork, praying for Lyle to shut up and cede the floor. I felt my heart beat fast in my throat. It was almost too late. If I yelled over him, my voice would sound flat, the speech itself would disappear, leaving behind something thin and flat and headache inducing, like a whiff of spilled gasoline.
“Don’t you think, Miss Toneybee-Leroy,” Lyle continued, “that we’re all, me and my wife and my brother and his family, don’t you think we’re just as much of a specimen at this dinner as that monkey over there?”
Dr. Paulsen stood up. “Miss Toneybee, if I may?” she said, but did not wait for approval. “Mr. Freeman, that was never our intention. And I do not like what you’re insinuating. And frankly, what you are implying is insulting to everyone at this table. We are all working extremely hard. We would do this with any family, really. Your family just happens to be black.”
Lyle snorted at this.
“It’s a descriptor of your family who is participating in this experiment. Not an identity,” Dr. Paulsen said, firmly.
“Like how Charlie just happens to be a chimpanzee?”
I’m not sure whether Lyle knew exactly what he meant by this, but even Dr. Paulsen knew enough not to challenge that one. She sat down. Lyle took a swig from his water glass.
“You’re making a fool out of yourself,” my father said quietly.
“I’m pointing out the truth.”
“Since when have you cared about any of this?” my father said. “Since when have you ever cared about being conscious or whatever you want to call it? You’re wearing a cravat, for Christ sake.”
Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s head was high and her eyes were burning.
“I’m just saying what I happen to see in this room,” Lyle retorted. “A whole bunch of black folks eating dinner provided by white folks, interacting with a monkey, so that this nice white lady,” he gestured to Miss Toneybee-Leroy, “and that young man behind the camera, I’m sorry, son, what is your name again?”
“Max,” Max said miserably.
“Max over there, can film it all. And take some notes. And it isn’t exactly clear where these notes end up. I’m just speculating here.”
“It is odd,” Ginny began. My mother shot her a look and she stopped her from going further.
“Yeah,” Lyle said, “like, is this a Tuskegee-type situation or—”
“That’s enough, Lyle,” my father said, more forcefully.
Ginny gasped. Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s eyes shot open. During this whole exchange, Charlie had taken the opportunity to reach one of his long arms behind my mother’s chair and begin inching his fingers closer to Ginny. With everyone preoccupied, Charlie took his chance. He swiped forward and yanked down hard on Ginny’s sleeve, tore free a good piece of silk. He snatched it back to his side of the table, to hold over his nose, the fabric delicately shuddering with each breath. Then he opened his mouth and began tonguing the rag. As we all watched, before any of us could stop him, he stuffed the whole bolt of cloth between his teeth and began lolling it around with his tongue.
“Oh my,” Miss Toneybee-Leroy gasped out with a laugh.
“That’s disgusting,” Callie said.
Poor Ginny touched her ripped sleeve, her newly bare arm. She gazed up at all of us wonderingly. Charlie hadn’t taken his eyes off her the whole time, and when she looked at him, he brought his free hand to his nose and sniffed his fingers, then opened his mouth to show us all the spit-dampened silk. He pressed his lips closed and ran his fingertips around their edges.
Ginny covered her face with her hands and began to cry. My mother at first ignored her, reaching for Charlie, but Dr. Paulsen was already beside him. “Go to her,” she told my mother. “I can handle him.”
Lyle also decided on laughter. He got up grinning and stood by Ginny. “Oh God, Gin, I’m sorry.” He tried to sober himself, put his hand on the back of her chair. “I’m sorry, baby. You okay?”
She jerked away from him, pushed her chair back from the table. “Come with me.” My mother caught her elbow. “We’ll find you something new to wear.”
Ginny followed her down the unfamiliar hallway. We heard the click as the lights turned on for them.
“Max,” Dr. Paulsen called, “a little help, please.”
Max put the camera down on the floor. Charlie was now slowly pulling the piece of cloth out of his mouth like a magician pulling scarves.
Miss Toneybee-Leroy called out, “There’s no way you’ll calm him down now. He’s far too excited.” She caught Lyle’s gaze. “And this night, perhaps, has been too much for me. Marietta, calm him down. To the rest of you, I’ll have to take my leave.”
We stood up and filed out, leaving Dr. Paulsen and Max crouched around Charlie’s chair.
In the living room, Nadine Morton brushed off my father’s attempts to help and put a dingy down overcoat first across Miss Toneybee-Leroy’s shoulders, then an identical one across her own.
My father offered, bravely, “I’m sorry for this.”
Miss Toneybee-Leroy replied evenly, “I’ve had worse directed my way.”
Finally, Lester Potter was at the door, ready to take them to their car. Miss Toneybee-Leroy gazed at me and Callie with damp, avid eyes. “Good-bye, girls,” she called, and then she was gone, taking any hope of retribution with her.
When they were gone, my father crossed to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a glass of brandy.
Lyle sat down on the couch, rubbed his hand against the deflated cushions. “I can’t get one of those?”
“Not after all that.” But my father poured a second glass anyway.
Lyle swirled his brandy before he took a sip. “You know I’m right, Charles. I may have been obnoxious about it, but you know I’m right.”
“We’re not gonna talk about it now,” my father said.
“This is a ridiculous situation,” Lyle said. “I don’t care how much they’re paying you. You have to understand my point of view. You’re my own flesh and blood—”
“Lyle.” My father cut him off, gestured with his glass to where Callie and I stood. “Girls,” he called, “go find somewhere else to play.”
“But,” I began, my insides raging. I took the tattered speech from my pocket and cleared my throat. It could still count if I read it now, I told myself. The important part was the action, the action had to be made. The audience was gone, but I could still make the action.
“When in the course of human events . . .”
It had been Adia’s idea to crib the opening lines from the Declaration of Independence. We’d been studying it in history anyway, and Adia liked the roll of the words. “They won’t even know,” she’d said. “At the very least, the old lady will get it.”
“When in the course of human events,” I began grandly, my voice only breaking a little in anticipation.
“Charlotte, so help me God, get out of this room right now,” my father breathed and pointed to the door.
I made a show of following Callie out of the room, but once we closed the door, we turned around and leaned against it, listening.
“All right, Lyle,” I heard my father say. “You’ve caused enough trouble.”
We heard a scattershot of clinks as they set their brandy glasses down on the coffee table, readying for the next round.
We heard Lyle say, more loudly now, “No amount of money in the world is worth this. Look at Callie. I mean, my God, look at that girl. She was always a little bit bigger, but she’s getting obese out here. That can’t be good.”
Beside me, Callie blinked, rolled back on her heels, took the hit.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” my father said.
“And Charlotte. She’s older, so she’s probably handling it better. But how long is this experiment supposed to last?”
“What’s that got to do with Charlotte?”
“I mean, she’s a young woman. Learning how to be a young lady. She’s a freshman in high school. How is she supposed to have any sort of a life, an adult life, if she’s the only one out here?”
“You can stop your grandstanding,” my father said. “That old white lady can’t even hear you anymore. You can stop performing.”
“That’s just it,” Lyle said, “You’re proving my point. Their every move is watched. They’re always performing. They’ve got twenty-year-old white boys who don’t know their heads from their asses taking notes on them.”
“It’s not for you to decide,” my father said.
“It’s not for you, either.” A glass coming down again on the coffee table. “This isn’t your house. It’s that damn monkey’s house and you know it.”
“You know what you are.” My father’s voice was cold and deliberate. “You are jealous. Laurel always thought you were, and I said you weren’t, but now I see it.”
We heard the springs of the Toneybee sofa squeal. Then Lyle’s voice.
“I know you don’t mean that, little brother. I know tomorrow morning you’re gonna wake up and you’re gonna want to call me and make a joke and tell me you were tired and Laurel’s sorry and that monkey really meant well. But you know what? I’m not going to pick up the phone.”
“Fine,” my father nearly shouted. “Don’t pick up the phone. Don’t talk to us. Don’t come back.”
We heard the stomp of Lyle’s penny loafers. Then the hallway door swung open. The movement made the overhead light click on, and Lyle started for a moment, startled by the sudden sight of me and Callie.
He leaned his hand against the side. “One of you go and get Gin for me.” He caught at Callie, held her close to his middle. “Charlotte, you go get my wife.”
I walked to my parents’ bedroom. When I got there, I found Ginny sitting on the bed, staring steadily into space. My mother stood at the open closet door, trying to pick out a blouse for her. There were a few already discarded on the carpet. My mother held up a dark green silk one with brass buttons. Ginny turned dully and shook her head.
My mother pursed her lips, annoyed.
Ginny rubbed at the bare flesh on her arm, where the sleeve was torn away. “What I can’t understand,” she announced, “is why did he tear up my sleeve? I would have given it to him. I would have let him kiss my hand if he wanted to. He didn’t have to get nasty about it.”
My mother held up another shirt. Ginny shook her head.
“It’s like he didn’t really care about me at all,” Ginny said. And then she started crying again.
My mother shot her a pitying glance. Then she caught me in the doorway. “What is it now?”
“Uncle Lyle says he’s ready to go.”
“We don’t have anything for Ginny yet.”
“I think that’s really okay.”
“Can you tell him she needs some more time?” She saw my face and misunderstood. “Don’t be scared. She’s just in shock, that’s all. It’s okay.”
“I’m not scared.”
My mother studied my face, still didn’t understand. “Fine,” she said with a sigh, giving up. She knelt by the pile of clothes on the floor.
“Mom.”
My mother looked up at me.
It’s Lyle, I signed.
“What did he do?”
Ginny was now toeing at a few of the discarded shirts on the ground.
They had a fight. It’s bad. They yelled about Charlie. I don’t think Uncle Lyle’s coming back here anymore.
My mother’s hands fell to her sides. She looked at Ginny one more time. Then she went over and helped her to her feet. “Gin . . .”
“Ginny,” Ginny corrected her. “I don’t like it when you call me Gin, Laurel. You know that.”
“Ginny, I’m going to have to ask you to pull yourself together, please.”
Ginny lowered, wounded. “I am together, Laurel.”
“Good. I need you to pick one of these shirts and put it on. And then I need you to walk with me down the hallway and we are going to go into the living room and figure out what’s going on.” My mother spoke in the same clear, bright tones she used when directing Charlie.
Ginny stiffened, offended.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll take the green one you just showed me. The garish one.”
My mother ignored the insult, picked up the blouse and handed it to Ginny.
“A little privacy, please.”
My mother stood beside me at the threshold, ready to close the door.
“You know what your problem is, Laurel?” Ginny called as the door swung shut. “Your voice. It’s too proud.”
In the light of the hallway, my mother suddenly looked very tired. Her curls lay dried and scattered around her face. She brought one hand up to her forehead, pressed her wrist there.
I caught her other hand and signed into her palm, It will be over soon.
From behind the closed door we heard a muffled shriek. “Lord, what is it with that woman this time?” my mother said through her breath.
Ginny had worked the blouse over her shoulders, but she hadn’t buttoned it up all the way. She pinched the lapels between her fingers, turning the front of the shirt inside out to show its cotton lining.
“There’s blood in this shirt, Laurel. Here, in the lining.”
“Now, Ginny, calm down.” My mother took a step closer. She hesitated only slightly, only for a moment.
“I don’t see any blood.”
“Quit lying, Laurel. It’s there, plain as day. Right here, see it?”
“I don’t.”
Ginny rubbed the cotton lining between her fingers. “See. It’s smudging when I touch it.” She held up a finger to my mother, who jerked her head away, disgusted. Ginny faltered. Then she turned to me.
“Charlotte,” she called. “Come over here. Do you see it?”
I stood between her and my mother and looked at the shirt lining. There were two small full blooms of blood, right where the tip of a breast would press up against the fabric. Ginny’s fingers were shiny with faint traces of the blood and something else, something translucent. I realized, with a lurch, that it was the grease from the cold cream my mother rubbed into her chest, to keep her skin from chapping after Charlie fed there.
I glanced at my mother, but she was looking steadily down at the dress. I started to speak.
“It’s a trick of the light,” my mother said firmly.
“It’s blood and you know it,” Ginny said.
My mother still wouldn’t meet her eye. Ginny’s face softened. “What is it, Laurel? You in trouble?”
My mother drew herself straighter. “I think we’re all just getting overheated right now. I’ll find you something else. Give me back the shirt.”
Ginny watched my mother a little longer, waiting for her to break. Then she shrugged the shirt off and balled it up. She stood there, unembarrassed in her underclothes, the heavy beige bra that started somewhere just above the ends of her ribs and reached up nearly to her collarbone, her skirt and stockings still on right and proper.
My mother took the shirt and tossed it in the corner. She went back to the closet and took out another. Ginny ran her fingers again along its lining, watching my mother the whole time, then pulled it over her head.
“It really is time to go now, Ginny,” my mother said in those same patient tones. Ginny nodded, slipped on her brown leather pumps and followed her out the door.
In the hall, we came across Dr. Paulsen and Max. Dr. Paulsen cradled Charlie in her arms. She had just gotten him to calm down. He was not asleep, only sedate. When he saw my mother, he stretched out his hands. She went to him immediately, she couldn’t help it, even over Dr. Paulsen’s protests, “We just got him to stop.”
“We’re just saying good night,” my mother insisted, and Dr. Paulsen stepped back.
Charlie draped his arms around my mother’s shoulders and rested his forehead against hers. She closed her eyes. Then her expression changed. Her eyes flew open, her lips parted as Charlie had worked his fingers down the front of her shirt, reached for her breast, and curved his lips into a nursing ripple.
“Oh my,” Dr. Paulsen said. “He’s really misbehaving tonight.” She and Max both reached for him.
Charlie tried to angle his head into the right position. He felt the hands of Dr. Paulsen and Max on him, and in desperation he tried to grab for the ends of my mother’s hair. But they got him off in time, so his fingers grasped at nothing. He began to twist and shake in their arms. It took both Dr. Paulsen and Max, holding on as hard as they could, to still his body. They shuffled him back into the dining room, Charlie shouting his objections.
The front of my mother’s blouse was askew, the hem of a buttonhole caught on the edge of her bra. Ginny and I could see the swell of her left breast. My mother was so stunned, she didn’t even notice. She touched her hand to the back of her hair, patting it down in place.
“Laurel,” Ginny said, gesturing to the front of my mother’s shirt, “he got you.”
My mother stuck her hand into the cup of her bra, fished around so the flesh set right, then pulled the blouse the right way around.
Ginny figured it out. I guess it was how my mother did it without thinking, her finger run through the inside of the bra. Ginny’s face fell. She looked down at the front of her own shirt. Then she took off down the hall, my mother and I hurrying after her.
We got to the living room just behind her, just in time to hear her shout, with her eyes squeezed shut, “She’s feeding him with her titties.”
Everyone looked up at Ginny, and then at the doorway, where my mother and I stood.
“She’s lost her mind,” my mother said. “She’s in shock.”
Ginny shook her head furiously. She turned to my father. “Charles, she’s got bloodstains on the inside of her dress, where the—” Here Ginny paused. She was taken, for a moment, with the audacity of what she was saying. My mother glared at her. Her hostility gave Ginny courage. She took a deep breath. “Where the breast”—this word she hissed under her breath—“goes. And just now in the hall. He lunged at her. And tried to eat from her. Like a baby would. She’s feeding him. She’s sick,” Ginny finished, triumphant.
As Ginny spoke, my mother’s shoulders slumped and her jaw went slack. I couldn’t bear to see her headed for defeat. When Ginny called my mother sick, I couldn’t help it. I declared, “She’s only trying to help him.”
They all turned toward me. My father put his glass down slowly. “I think, Lyle,” he said, “you and Ginny have done enough”—he searched for the right word—“accusing here tonight.”
Uncle Lyle, though, was not going to let this chance pass. He got up, put his arm around Ginny. “Accuse?” He said. “You calling my Gin a liar?”
Ginny shrugged at the weight of his hand, but Lyle only gripped tighter.
“I think your wife doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Your own daughter confirmed it—”
“I’m going,” my father said very carefully, “to ask you both to leave right now. I’ll walk you to your car.”
My mother had not lifted her head the whole time. My father didn’t look at her. I kept my eyes on the ground. Then I heard the door close behind them.
Callie sat up suddenly. Is it true? she signed.
My mother didn’t move her hands.
“Yes,” I said.
Callie’s hand began to shake. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
My mother crossed to Callie, tried to hold her. “There’s nothing to tell.”
Callie shrugged her off. “You told Charlotte,” she managed to say. She blinked wildly, trying to stop tears. “Why didn’t Charlie tell me?”
My mother tried to catch Callie up again, but she kept twisting away. Finally she stopped trying.
“You know I love you,” she said, her arms at her sides.
Callie took a ragged breath. “No, you don’t.”
And she ran from the room.
My mother walked over to the couch, sat back on the cushions. The springs squealed. She was not a drinker, but she picked up my father’s glass of brandy and drained it.
“Clearly,” Dr. Paulsen said when she had finished, “there is much to discuss. But I don’t think we can make any headway at the moment.” She crossed to the door, Max following her.
“Laurel. We’ll speak in the morning.”
My mother held the door open for them. When they were gone and we were alone together, I turned to the wall so I wouldn’t have to look at her.
“Charlotte—” she started to say.
But I couldn’t listen anymore. I got up and walked out the door.
I took the staircase to the left and I climbed all the way up to the top floor, to the practice rooms. I found the broken bass drum and I tried to roll it over me. But my legs were too long and my trunk too broad to fit inside the tear. I curled my hands over my shoulders and began to slap the skin there, first the right one, then the left. I tried to pretend it was Adia’s skin I was arguing with. But it was no use, it was my own. I did this over and over again, warming to the sting, until my skin felt thin and hot and watery and my fingers burned. I lay under that drum the whole night and my hands would not be quiet.