Stolen Grace (25 page)

For too long now, she had been reacting, instead of acting. Things, from now on, were damn well going to change.

Finally, Sylvia succumbed and took just one half of a Valium to get her through the night. She had thought that by reading poetry she could bring on sleep, but was suddenly horrified by her choice: Sylvia Plath. Why had she chosen her, of all people? Her namesake? A wave of sadness enveloped her when she envisioned the great poet’s suicide, wondering how she could have put herself through such a gruesome death; sticking her head in a gas oven with her two little children in the next room. Sylvia had the sensation that she was now re-living her father’s own desperation, the anxiety that must have plagued his mind. He took his own life! How could somebody actually go through with it? Would Sylvia take
her
own life if they never found Grace? She could never imagine doing such a thing but perhaps she would. It would take a lot of guts to pull it off. Were people who committed suicide brave, or cowards? Who was she to judge others? Desperation had a way of stamping on Hope. Hope . . . she mustn’t give up. Ever. She had to remain resilient. Strong. They
would
find Grace.

In a haze of sleep, she could hear noises. Was someone vacuuming downstairs? She got up and threw on her mother’s silky bathrobe and stood at the top of the sweeping staircase. It was already daylight. Someone was vacuuming, all right.

“Jacqueline?” Sylvia glided down the stairs, her mother’s robe trailing behind her like a wedding train.

Jacqueline was in the living room, standing on a chair, pointing and poking the long tube of the vacuum at the ceiling. She screamed. “Oh my Lord, Sylvia! You scared the living daylights out of me. What are you doing up when you need all the rest you can get?”

“Are you killing spiders?”

Jacqueline turned off the noisy machine. It was the same old sky-blue one from the 1970s. Still working, still faithful. Jacqueline, Sylvia knew, refused to allow a new one in the house.

“Not the spiders themselves, honey, just their mangled old webs.”

“You’re meant to be retired, Jacqueline. What are you doing standing on chairs?” Sylvia knew that the pension plan her father had set up for her was all in place and that the money had been sent that week. She’d checked with his lawyer.

“I know. But you think I can relax during the day knowing creepy crawlies are taking over this house with their webs and the kitchen ain’t been cleaned and—”

“That is
not
your problem. It’s mine, for being untidy. You should be playing with your grandchildren, not clambering about on furniture here.”

Jacqueline stepped down from the chair. She had on her special work outfit. Faded, red velvet slippers, shiny flesh-colored pantyhose, and a pinafore over her dress. She always wore her hair up, too. “I had a feeling you was up to no good, planning trips and plotting and scheming.”

“I’m going to Brazil. Today. To find Gracie. I was going to call and let you know.”

“Oh my Lord. I knew it! I just knew it! You have news?”

“Maybe. We’ll see. Don’t get too excited. Nothing’s sure. If we get good news you’ll be the first to know about it.”

The old marble clock on the mantelpiece said ten fifteen. She still hadn’t finished packing and had some important calls to make. She realized she didn’t have that much time to get ready for her trip. Her plane was leaving at three.

She raced upstairs to pack. Never mind taking a silly backpack—who was she kidding? She’d use a small suitcase with wheels. But then she did find a faded old backpack she’d once used for summer camp, at the back of the guestroom closet. Her parents seldom threw stuff out.

As she slung her clothing into the backpack, Sylvia felt appeased, knowing that she was about to take action to find Grace. She asked herself if LeRoy would have aided her—used his military skills—had he ended up being a soldier. She imagined the what-ifs and fantasies of what could have been. Sylvia had been spoiled as an only-child, never had to share her toys, was never passed hand-me-downs. Her parents had both helped her with her homework. LeRoy was raised by a single mother in a poor neighborhood. Jacqueline never mentioned a stepfather, nor did Loretta speak about another man in the letters. Had it been tough for LeRoy? Sylvia supposed so. She knew that being white and privileged was an alien world to so many. Would LeRoy have resented her had he lived? What if she’d met him and disliked him? Or perhaps he’d been the sweetest kid ever. Maybe he would have disliked
her.
Thought her snotty. Or they could have ended up being best friends. Who were his ancestors?

She wondered what Loretta’s and LeRoy’s roots had been. She supposed they’d suffered the racial segregation left over from the discriminatory housing policies. The problem was still rife. Saginaw’s river sliced the neighborhoods in two.

Sylvia went back into the living room, her mouth poised in an
O
, ready for more conversation. Yes, she had a lot of questions.

“I don’t want to retire,” Jacqueline grumbled. She had turned her attention to dusting. “There’s still life in me yet and this old house has been like my sanctuary. I find peace here. Even when your mama was hollering about this or about that, I still found my little corner of peace in this house.”

“Nobody’s forcing you to retire, Jacqueline. Tommy and I have been thinking about staying in Saginaw, at least for a while. Put Grace in school here. When we find her.”

“You will. Just keep praying—keep believing.”

“I do.”

Jacqueline stopped what she was doing and turned her head and gazed at Sylvia. Her almond-shaped eyes sparkled with hope. “You mean you ain’t going back to that mean and cold Crowheart house of yours?”

Sylvia felt as if she had betrayed Crowheart in some way, with all her complaining. “Oh, it’s not
all
mean. It’s beautiful in summer. And the winters in Michigan are just as severe as they are there. The cold is drier there. Here it’s damp and it creeps into your bones.”

“Maybe Sylvia, honey, but at least this old furnace is still working like a dream. You got friends here. People that care.”

“Very true. And we’re ready for a change, that’s for sure.”

Sylvia picked a small Spanish phrase book from the bookshelf and leaned against the fireplace, flicking through its thin pages. “Jacqueline, where did Loretta come from?”

“Why here, in Saginaw.”

“But where were her parents from?”

“Saginaw too, I think.”

“So LeRoy’s family went back a long way, then?”

“I don’t rightly know for absolute sure, but I think that family goes back a few generations. Saginaw through and through.”

Sylvia knew just a little about black history in Saginaw. She’d learned at school that some of the earliest African Americans settlers were the first freed slaves from the North and Canada. Many of them found work in the lumber business, and then later, to join the automobile industry in nearby Pontiac and Flint. General Motors was booming then. Perhaps that was when Loretta’s parents arrived. Although many were poorly educated, there was a strong middle class of entrepreneurs and professionals, even artists and doctors. Some blacks became extremely wealthy.

“What did they do for a living?” Sylvia asked.

Jacqueline swiped the feather duster over small crystal chandelier. “Well, Loretta was a secretary. Her father was . . . what was he now? I think he was a manager at one of them automobile plants. Her mother was a homemaker.”

Sylvia cleared her throat and said, “Now there’s something important I’d like to know.”

“Let me guess. You wanna know how your daddy and Loretta got involved in the first place?”

Sylvia nodded. Jacqueline knew her so well. It seemed she could read her mind.

“Loretta was mighty pretty in her day.”

“Yes, I saw that from her photo.”

Jacqueline got down from her stool. “She was your father’s family maid.”

“But I thought
Hyacinth
was. For forty years!”

“And Loretta was Hyacinth’s niece. She came to help one summer. And that’s when it happened.”

“When she got pregnant?”

“When they fell in love.”

“So my dad wasn’t just taking advantage of her, then?”

“Nuh-uh. He was crazy about her. She was a few years older than him and he thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on.”

“How do you know all this?” Sylvia asked.

“Loretta told me the story.”

“And then she got pregnant?”

“Nobody knew. But your grandparents did get wind of what was happening, that your daddy was fool crazy for Loretta, so they arranged for her to leave. Gave her double pay just to get her outta the house. But she kept that baby a secret. Kept her stomach hidden the whole time. She once told me she planned to give the baby up for adoption, but when he was born she couldn’t go through with it. She was mighty proud. Didn’t wanna ask for no help, no money.”

“Yes, I gathered. From her first letter to him.”

“By the time she gave birth, your daddy was already engaged to your mama. Lordy, Lordy,
that
was a quick marriage because he’d made your mama pregnant, too.”

“
What
?”

“When your parents got married, your mama was with child.”

“But not with me?”

“No, not with you. She lost the first baby. Miscarried after a few months. But they were good ‘n married by the time he found out about LeRoy.”

Sylvia stood there, open mouthed. “I had no idea he was . . . like that.”

“He was mighty handsome in his day. A little bit of a ladies’ man, I guess.”

“Well did he
love
my mother?”

“Yes, siree. You know he did.”

“Well I knew how dependent he was on her. But dependency isn’t always about love.” She pictured Tommy. Was he dependent on her? Was
their
union about love? “So then what happened to Loretta?”

Jacqueline finally sat down. “You got the gist of it from them letters, didn’t you?”

Sylvia took her position on the floor. “You read them too?”

“I may be able to keep a secret, Sylvia, honey, but if you think I was able to contain my curiosity and not look into that box, I’m sorry, but your expectations of me are too elevated. I’m made of flesh also. I had to know what I was dealing with, but I kept that box good and hidden all those years in the garage so your mama wouldn’t find it. It was me who put it in his closet for you to find after he passed.”

Sylvia shuddered. LeRoy didn’t have a clue who his real father was. He had a phantom in his mind, the soldier who died in Vietnam, a hero, perhaps. A man who had joined the forces for idealistic reasons. Maybe LeRoy had also wanted to join the military as a way of getting close to him: the father that never existed.

The theme tune to Jacqueline’s soap rang loudly through the living room. “My show’s just started so it’s eleven. Sylvia, honey, you better get a move on or you’ll miss your plane.”

Excitement and hope suffused Sylvia’s bloodstream. She was on her way to find Grace!

Grace

G
race was feeling lonely. She sat on the beach with Hideous Teddy, counting the seventh wave. Once, her dad had told her how the biggest wave often came every seven times. Seven was her lucky number. Maybe because her birthday was the seventh. The 7th of September. She knew she was five and three-quarters. Well,
almost
five and three-quarters.

She was bored. She played the Great Bird Ziz with Hideous Teddy but he didn’t find it funny—there was no expression in his big, black, plastic eyes. She didn’t find it funny, either. It wasn’t the same playing the Great Bird Ziz without her dad. He could make it swoop down from a great height and bite her bottom, or suddenly flip up into the sky again, snapping its beak (her dad’s long scary fingers and thumb), and then eat a big chunk right out of her thigh! Or her foot. Or even her big toe. The Great Bird Ziz liked juicy toes. But Hideous Teddy just sat there, dumb, not laughing at all, sand all over his shiny yellow fur. She brought him to the beach so he would lose his Factory Farmed look.
Poor
Hideous Teddy, she’d even taken him swimming. He tried surfing, too.

Even though Hideous was ugly, she loved him. It wasn’t his fault. She’d love him double to make up for it. And he was only Hideous because she liked the word. He wasn’t really hideous—how could he be when he was her true friend?
Unlike some people
with names beginning with
L
.

Lucho wouldn’t let her go in the water when he was
busy
. Busy = surfing. All he did was
surf, surf, surf
! The whole day long. Even when it was pouring with rain! When he wasn’t surfing, he was sleeping. And there was no way to wake him in a million years once his head hit the pillow.

She had nobody to play with. There were no other children nearby. Just surfers. Some of them were American and they had a funny language that even she couldn’t understand, like “dude” and “bitchin” and “bogus.” She heard one of them say “touries with mouries,” and found out they were talking about tourists doing body surfing and getting in the way of the
real
surfers.

She knew that Lucho thought she was getting in the way, too. He spent all his time with a French girl now. Grace heard him talk to her about going down to Peru to “catch some waves.” Where was Peru? Grace had caught waves with Lucho. At night. They went swimming by the moon, and the ocean lit up with little green sparkles like emeralds and diamonds. When you splashed they landed on your shoulders and hair like jewels as if someone had waved a magic wand. Every time a wave whooshed over them, the sparkles flew in the air like butterflies with lights on their wings. It was the prettiest thing she had ever, ever seen. Like sea fairies. Lucho said it was the microscopic creatures that the whales lived on that lit up only at night. He said they were called
Fósforo
and
Plancton
, and were lit up by the moon.