Harlem Redux (9 page)

David’s dismay deepened.

She sighed. The tightness around her eyes softened. “It was sad, so sad, how Miss Lilian changed toward the end. Forgetting things and all. Her hair turned white. She was scared of her own shadow. She’d have fits. Tear all her clothes outta her closet. One time she couldn’t find a frock she wanted. Mr. Jameson suggested she wear sumptin’ else. She got so angry she grabbed up the shears, started ripping her clothes up. Said she hated her clothes, hated her life. Then she looked at
him.
Ran at him with the shears. He caught her just in time. Shook her. Her eyes cleared and she broke down. Started weeping like a baby.”

David was by nature a silent man, so he had listened to Annie’s account for the most part without interrupting. Now he continued to regard her for some time without speaking. The more she told him, the less he understood. The babble of inner voices seeking answers had only intensified, their questions multiplied. A sliver of pain darted through his head. He rubbed his temples. He was so terribly hung over. He turned his gaze to the window. Vaguely, he noted a rumble of thunder in the distance, like the faint rolling of drums. It was hard to believe what he was hearing about Lilian.

“But what caused it all?”

“Coulda been Miss Gem’s up-and-going like that. Mr. Jameson sure didn’t seem to know what to do. He said nobody, but nobody, could figure it out. Not none of the doctors, anyway.”

“Was she taking medicine?”

“Yes, but I don’t r’member no names. Just sumptin’ to calm her nerves.”

The rain fell suddenly. Fat drops beat a hard ratta-tat-tat against the windowpanes. The only light in the kitchen came from the soft pearl gray of the storm clouds outside. They could have been sitting in a small, shadowed cave.

Inwardly, he shuddered.
Lilian, dear Lilian. How was it possible?
Leaning on the table, he rubbed his eyes.
A lot’s done happened since you been gone.
He groaned.
Yes, it had.

Some two years ago, in April 1924, Lilian had impetuously married a virtual stranger, moving with amazing alacrity. That same year, Gem returned. She was at the house for roughly five months, before suddenly, inexplicably, taking off again. Lilian had written him for a whole year without once mentioning either her new husband or Gem’s return. She had lied to him by omission, and betrayed Annie’s trust by trying to fire her.

That wasn’t Lilian’s way. It wasn’t her way at all.

He’d been so grateful for the bits of news she was sending him that he hadn’t noticed what she was leaving out.

Now that’s a lie.

The truth was, he’d sensed that something was wrong. Sensed it. And when the letters stopped, he could’ve asked why—

But I was too busy hiding my own damn secret.

He raised his head. Now he knew that Lilian had had her secrets, too.

But why hide her marriage and Gem’s return? Why not write and say she was ill? It was unlike her to be so secretive. Perhaps she didn’t want me to worry.

That would have been like her: self-sacrificing, determined to resolve her problems alone. Only Lilian had remained loyal to herself, to her home, to their father’s vision of what it meant to be a David. Only she had really tried. He had more in common with Gem than he wanted to admit. They’d both become wanderers. Both had rejected their upbringing and tried to reinvent themselves.

But he was ashamed of his new identity. He lived in a personal hell of his own creation—and from what Annie said, he suspected that Gem did, too.

He could imagine Lilian’s shock when she opened the door and found Gem standing on the family doorstep. They hadn’t heard anything from Gem since December of’21, when she’d sent a postcard from Paris after six months of silence. At the time, they’d wondered whether she was paving the way toward asking for more funds, but as far as he knew, nothing more had been heard from her. Not before that Halloween night.

Gem’s return meant that her money was gone. She had set sail for home and the one sure touch for easy cash. But someone had gotten to the till before her: a watchful husband. Gem might have figured that it would be difficult to manipulate Lilian, but easy to seduce Sweet. She had never had to do more than crook her finger to make a man come running. But Sweet was different. He had refused to budge. For once, Lilian had it all: the man and the money.

Sister Gem was down on her luck. Is that why she hightailed it back to Europe?

Perhaps. But it was unlike Gem to give up easily. Especially when it came to men and money. He would’ve expected her to make another play for Sweet. Instead, she had reconciled with Lilian. That was surprising.

But then she left, although she knew that Lilian was ill. Now that was not surprising, not surprising at all. And her silence since Lilian’s death, it fit her pattern also.

He resented Gem’s absence, but he was relieved by it, too. He preferred to handle this matter alone. She might have been able to help him, but he doubted she would have been willing to. She might have been the only one, other than Annie and Sweet, who could help him understand why Lilian died. But Gem knew how to set his teeth on edge and enjoyed doing so. She was fickle and unreliable, two qualities he despised. She had an easy charm he found suspect. She had never once thought about pleasing anyone but herself. And she had nothing but contempt for her family.

Had Lilian given Gem money to go away? Not exactly paid her off, but ... Gem must’ve gotten the money from someone. From whom else, but Lilian?

“I wasn’t in the house when she did it,” Annie was saying. “She told me she was going to stay with friends for the weekend. Said she’d be back Monday afternoon. That’s when Mr. Jameson was supposed to be back, too. So I went and visited my nephew. I’ll wish to the day I die that I’d stayed here. She musta done it sitting on her bed. The mattress was soaked. Blood everywhere. On the walls, the bed canopy, the floor. Pools of blood. Dried hard, dried black. I don’t remember much more. She was wearing a white gown, I think. Or it had been white. And she was sitting under the window, looking up to Heaven. Her eyes, those beautiful sweet eyes, was wide open. And she had these deep cuts, one in each wrist. I’ll never forget that. All it took was them two wounds, just them two wounds, and Miss Lilian’s life poured out.”

4.
    
Lilian’s Grave

She was buried in a municipal cemetery at least an hour’s drive away in Brooklyn, amid a sea of white and gray headstones. Standing at Lilian’s graveside, David gazed out over the memorial park.

She was never fond of Brooklyn
.
Except for Coney Island, she had no use for the place. That she should end up here, of all places, here …

“It was the only place Mr. Jameson could find for her,” Annie had told him. “It’s a shame Miss Lilian couldna been buried in consecrated ground, closer to home.”

It’s a shame she’s here at all.

Crouching down by the grave, he reached out to touch the hard mound of earth. Slowly, his hands balled into fists. It was such a struggle to believe that Lilian—gentle, proud, and deeply religious—would take her own life.
What brought you down, little sister? What brought you down?

A breeze, unseasonably warm and gentle, caressed his hair. His nostrils caught a faint whiff of perfume, lightly sweet and powdery. He imagined he heard her voice.

Remember me,
she seemed to say.
Forget what others tell you. Remember me, as you knew me.

He’d been five years old when Lilian was born. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he’d given her his heart. His parents were touched and amused, but perplexed by his singular affection for Lilian. She was a twin. Why did he love her more than Gem, who was as sweet and huggable as her sister? How could he, as small as he was, even tell the two tiny girls apart? He shrugged— he didn’t know. He simply never mistook one for the other.

Snatches of memories floated to the surface of his mind. Images of life with Lilian: holding her up in the shallow end of the public swimming pool as she splashed about; stealing chocolate chip cookies for her from Annie’s kitchen; standing side-by-side at their mother’s graveside. They had been so close. How could he have let four years go by without seeing her?

The last time he
had
seen her, she had been conscientiously teaching English to bored high school students. It was her way of living up to their parents’ edict of giving back to the community. He had visited her classroom one day and, quite honestly, found her a tedious, uninspiring teacher. He had come away wondering whom he should feel sorrier for, Lilian or her students. He thought her effort misdirected, but he admired her for it just the same. During summer breaks, Lilian would escape to Provence. She had friends there who rented her a small cottage. She wrote during those summers, but she seemed to have given up any hopes of a serious literary career.

Then her situation changed.

From Lilian’s letters, he knew that she had met Helga Bennett during one of those summers in southern France. Bennett was just launching the
Black Arrow,
which was to be not only a literary journal, but also the official voice of the Movement. Bennett was so impressed with Lilian that she invited her to join the staff. She became Lilian’s mentor, but was herself inspired by Lilian’s enthusiasm and vision. They both dreamed of a day when Harlem artists would receive the same recognition, prizes, and contracts that white writers did. Lilian wanted to read books about her people, written by her people. By that she meant books about well-bred, refined colored people. There was, she said, enough being written about the downside of Negro life, about the crime and the poverty. Someone had to tell the story of the educated colored people, too. Someone had to speak up for the Negroes who were doctors, lawyers, philosophers, professors.

“We live as a minority within a minority,” she once wrote him. “It’s time our voice was heard. That would advance the cause of the entire race.”

By the time of her death, Lilian was a senior staffer at the
Black Arrow
and making her own mark as an author. The Nubian Art Players had performed her unstructured play,
Shadowlands,
the year before. She had written one novel and was working on another when death claimed her. Her first book,
Lucifer’s Parlor,
was a social statement about Irish and Negro life in the Tenderloin. Her second work,
Lyrics of a Blackbird,
dealt with betrayal in a genteel Harlem family. Her first book was well received. He was confident her second one would have been, too.

Someone had placed fresh roses near her headstone. The flowers were a pleasing soft shade of pink. He brushed them with his fingertips. The blooms were stiff in the cold air. They would discolor and shrivel soon. He closed his eyes. The pain in his head had become a steady pulse. There was again that breeze from nowhere. He blinked and looked up at the sky, but saw nothing there. No miraculous face in the clouds, not even a sudden ray of sunshine to ease the bleakness of the day. What had he hoped for? Leaning forward, he examined the farewell on Lilian’s gravestone, mouthing the words.

“Lilian McKay Sweet, 1897-1926. To my Lilian, I will miss you.”

He assumed that Lilian’s husband had written the words. Sitting back on his heels, he wondered.
Who indeed was Jameson Sweet?

5.
    
The Book of Rachel

When David returned home, he found Annie sitting at the kitchen table. She had a nearly empty bag of string beans to the left and a big pot of beans and water to the right. She grabbed up several beans from the bag, lined their ends up, and snapped their tips off with a smooth twist of her wrist—
blat-blat-blat.
She tossed the last of the beans into the pot and dropped the tips onto some newspaper sheets.