Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! (55 page)

Tears came to the old man’s eyes. Poor Theo. As if he could just forget about the boy he loved, the boy he had held as a baby. He folded the worn page.

It was not an unusual story. Thousands of people had buckled under the pressures of segregation and had quietly slipped into the white world, but it was not an easy life, either.

The minute Dena walked in the door, she called Dr. Diggers and told her about her mother.

Diggers sounded as surprised as Dena had been. “Well, I must say of all the things I suspected, this was not one of them, and I should have guessed.
Me
of all people! When I first started in practice, half of my patients were passing. Oh, yes, unfortunately I know all about it and I tell you, it was a bitch. I don’t care if you were a Jew passing for Gentile or black passing for white, it was a tricky business no matter how you slice it. The point is: How do you feel about it?”

“Betrayed, I guess. Confused. Lost, like I never really knew my mother.”

“Sweetie pie, there was a big part of her you didn’t know. But at least now we have a pretty good explanation of why she seemed so remote. No wonder you felt she wasn’t there for you. She was probably worried to death twenty-four hours a day. Passing is a complicated issue, with a lot of serious problems that go along with it. Guilt, confused identity, feelings of isolation, deception, abandonment. It’s very stressful; I’ve seen it drive people right out of their minds.”

“I understand all that, but I just can’t understand why she didn’t tell me. I could have helped her.”

“I can’t be sure of the exact reason, but I can tell you it wasn’t because she didn’t trust you; it was just plain fear. When you live a lie like that, people tend to start to get paranoid. She probably was afraid to trust anybody.”

“But I wasn’t anybody. I was her daughter.”

“Yes, but don’t forget you were the closest thing to her. She might have been afraid of losing you, afraid if you knew, you wouldn’t love her. I’ve seen it happen before. People push away the very ones they don’t want to lose trying to hold them. Listen, I’m not saying what your mother did was right, but in her defense, she had good reason to be afraid. You have to understand how things were back then; when she was a girl, there was no such thing as integration. Black and white were still two very different worlds.”

“I know, but it was 1959—couldn’t she see things were changing? New laws were being passed?”

“No, I don’t think so. From what you’ve told me about your mother, I suspect she was not able to see much of anything going on around her. People who are passing are too busy looking over their own shoulders, trying to cover their tracks, to notice much else. She was probably stuck in the same old fear, with the same old tape running around in her head, and couldn’t see past it.”

“Do you think it had anything to do with her just disappearing like that?”

“Maybe. People who have disappeared from one life often do it again.”

“But why
then
? Why at Christmas? Why couldn’t she have waited?”

“Oh, sweetie, it could have been one of a hundred different reasons. She may have met someone or she may have just reached a breaking point, living with that much stress every day. You know, everybody handles stress differently. But a good possibility is that it just built up over the years and she couldn’t take the pressure any longer and one day she had some sort of psychic break, lost touch with reality. In plain English, one day she may have just snapped and took off. You hear about it all the time. People leave for the store and never come back home, just disappearing off the face of the earth.”

“Is that what you think happened?”

“Well, that would be my guess, based on what we know. But the important thing is for you to finally come to terms with the fact that her problems had nothing to do with the way she felt about you. She gave you all the love she was capable of giving under the circumstances. It wasn’t as much as you needed but there it is; it’s unfair and it’s lousy but that’s life, and at least now we know the basic cause of your problems. The next thing for us to do is to try and get beyond them and get on with your life. All right, now, when are you coming back to New York?”

“I’m not sure, I haven’t thought about it yet.”

“No, you are probably still in a state of shock. Do me a favor and take some time before you make any decisions about anything, OK?”

That night Norma and Macky brought her a hot supper.

When Dena told them what Dr. Diggers thought had happened, a look of relief came over Norma’s face. “I am so glad to finally find out what was the matter. I was always afraid it was something that we had done, or maybe it was just us she didn’t like.”

For the next three days Dena still felt dazed. But a week later, as her mind began to clear, she woke in the middle of the night and sat straight up in bed. Something was wrong. Something did not add up. She was too good a reporter not to know when a piece was missing from a story. Dr. Diggers’s theory had sounded good at the time, but it was too simple, too pat.

Her mother had loved her, she knew that now; she would not have left unless there had been something terribly wrong. Her mother had been a strong woman. There must have been another reason beyond stress. Something else her mother was afraid of. But what? There were still too many unanswered questions.

Why had her mother left Elmwood Springs so abruptly in 1948? Who was the man who spoke German?

As soon as the sun came up she made her first call.

“Christine, it’s Dena.”

“Oh, hello. How are you!”

“I have a question for you. You mentioned that there had been something in the papers about my mother’s brother, Theo, and I was wondering if you could tell me what year that was and the name of the newspaper.”

“Oh, dear, it must have been in the early forties, but I don’t have any idea what the newspaper was. I know it was one of the big ones. But I do remember the name of the woman who wrote for it; would that be of any help to you?”

“Yes.”

“Ida Baily Chambless.”

“Who was she?”

“Oh, just some stupid woman who set herself up as a society columnist of sorts. I never read it. But Daddy said she was nothing but a Georgia nobody who thought she should be invited everywhere. She had some run-in with your grandfather years before and she just went after poor Theo with a vengeance. Pretended she was on some crusade but she was just jealous. If she couldn’t pass, by God, nobody was going to pass. Honey, I was lucky she didn’t come after me.”

“Is she still alive?”

“No, thank heavens. Daddy said she finally got herself murdered.”

Dena’s heart skipped a beat. “Murdered … when?”

“Oh, a long time ago. I was still living in New York. It must have been 1948, somewhere around then.”

Dena’s heart skipped two beats. 1948 was the same year she and her mother had left Elmwood Springs in such a hurry.

Mrs. Ida Baily Chambless, the sixth child of a laundress in Smyrna, Georgia, had always had a way with words. Her writing skills were considered “almost poetic,” as a teacher wrote on one of her reports, “Plucked from Mother Africa’s Bosom and Thrown Asunder.” Over the years she had worked her way up until she wound up writing for one of Washington’s leading Negro newspapers.

She enjoyed her power and found herself catered to by people desperate to see their names under her newspaper column’s banner,
SOCIETY SLANTS … SLAPS FOR ENEMIES, KISSES FOR FRIENDS.

When Dr. Le Guarde and his family moved to Washington, Mrs. Chambless was chomping at the bit to get to know them. But she had not received an invitation to their home, a fact that she sought to remedy by several glowing mentions of the Le Guardes in her column. Surely they would see that of all the people in Washington, she should be included at their affairs. However, after a year and a half no invitation had arrived, and she was dying to get inside the Le Guarde house. Although the exterior of the big brick four-story was rather plain, she imagined that what she would find inside would be spectacular. She was kept apprised of many social happenings by a certain florist who informed her, among other things, whenever Mrs. Le Guarde ordered floral arrangements for a party.

Eventually, Mrs. Chambless got wind of a musical evening that was planned and she could wait no longer. She decided that, after all, it was her right and her duty to her readers to report on the social life of such a distinguished Negro doctor. She would simply forgive them the obvious oversight of an invitation and attend anyway. And so, on the evening of the party, Ida Chambless, a large, brown woman with a flat, round face, dressed to the nines, complete with ostrich feathers in her hair, waltzed in the door uninvited, and proceeded to take notes. As she floated from room to room she was sorely disappointed. The house was dull, the clothes were dull; as a matter of fact, as the evening went on, even though everyone had been perfectly nice, she began to think this was one of the dullest parties she had ever been to. Only the art and the music were impressive. It was clear these poor people needed her help. In her column the next day she described the Le Guarde home in generous terms. The clothes the women had worn the night before, pale and muted, suddenly became magenta, lime, purple, royal blue, and red. According to Mrs. Chambless, the ladies at the party had been shimmering with jewels and diamond tiaras. Mrs. Le Guarde’s single strand of pearls suddenly became twelve strands. Brahms and Strauss were described as lively and toe tapping. She informed her readers that gold-plated dinnerware and polished silver heirlooms from Dr. Le Guarde’s family were in evidence everywhere, as were precious art and tapestries hanging on each wall. Mrs. Chambless thought, If that doesn’t make them realize how much they need me in their lives, I don’t know what will. Several days later a letter arrived from Dr. Le Guarde. Ah, here was that thank-you note and, probably, an open invitation to all their future entertainments. She sliced open the engraved stationery and began to read with a satisfied smile on her face that slowly faded.

Mrs. Chambless felt as if someone has just slapped her in the face. She had been slapped in the face by a white girl when she was nine and the effect was the same; however, this time she had recourse and could slap back with a mighty blow that would flatten any man. He was telling
her
, Ida Baily Chambless, that
she
was not good enough to be in his home? That
she
was not welcome? Ida Baily Chambless, who had carte blanche in the homes of richer men than he? Who did he think he was dealing with? Did he think he could insult her and humiliate her and tell her she was not good enough? Oh, he would rue this day. She had power and would turn it full force on this man and his puny, pink-blooded, lily-white family. How dare this pseudo-, ginger-cake, yellow-pine-codfish, self-proclaimed negrocrat think he was better than she was? In one moment that letter brought back every insult, every hurt, every slight, every humiliation she had ever been made to suffer. She was in a blind rage and literally ran upstairs to her typewriter, and wrote another column.

Soon Dr. Le Guarde had groups of young men walking by his home yelling and making catcalls and a few, who had had several drinks too many, poured black paint down his front doorstep.

Good. She would never let him forget that he had insulted Ida Baily Chambless for as long as he lived. She would hound him and his family to their graves and beyond!

From the moment Carlos began to play, Joseph Hoffman knew at once that the young man before him was one of the most extraordinarily gifted violinists he had ever heard. Hoffman immediately took him under his wing and in less than six months Carlos Montenegro had been named first violinist of the San Francisco Symphony.

Of the millions of musicians in the world, only a handful soar beyond what is written on the page, transcend what seems humanly possible, and Carlos was one such musician. His teacher knew that Carlos was destined to become one of the greats, perhaps to take his place beside Heifetz and Menuhin. All he needed was the right person to guide his career, and Joseph was it. If handled correctly, this boy could change the face of classical music. He had the looks of a matinee idol and the talent of an angel.