The diary ends. She did not record, and could not possibly know, what lay ahead as she fought to pick up the pieces of our lives.
* * *
—
I have no memory of the airplane trip to Philadelphia or the car trip back to Atlanta for the funeral service. I have no memory of the room in the chiropractic center, or of the yellow machine my grandfather held me up to see at Grady Hospital, or of the frail figure who lay inside it staring at my reversed image in a mirror.
I have only the version of events passed down through relatives, of my father’s valiant struggle against a fatal disease that cut short a promising career of Christian service. Seventeen years would pass before I picked up the newspaper article and came upon the story of the miracle that failed. Like every secret, it gained power as it lay hidden.
I have few actual proofs of my father’s existence. A handful of black-and-white photos, including a small booklet issued by the navy as a memento of his tour of duty. His Bible with a worn black cover, marked up with notes in his handwriting. Musty copies of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Two term papers from college days. A packet of letters he wrote my mother during their courtship.
There is also a tree: a mimosa tree with fernlike leaves and smooth bark that he planted as a sapling in front of his home. On visits to my grandparents, I would climb this tree, which now towered above their house, and sit in the crook of its branches amid the pink blossoms with their sweet scent, wondering about his life—until the ants and yellow jackets found me.
The Yancey relatives, and the house he shared with them, were living reminders of my father. When we arrived there, Marshall and I would dash to the school playground just down the street, where our father attended elementary school. “Your dad used to play on these very swings and monkey bars,” Grandpop reminded us, every time.
After his death, my grandparents had assured my mother, “Don’t worry. We’ll look after you.” And they did. Grandpop slipped Mother money on the side and gave Marshall and me a silver dollar at the end of every visit. My grandmother usually served two kinds of meat with each meal, and only later did I realize she did that just for us, knowing how poor we were.
Everything seemed strange and wonderful at my grandparents’ house: separate faucets for cold and hot water, the needle arm on the record player that automatically swung out to let the next LP platter drop down with a slapping sound, the private telephone not connected to a party line. Each morning we stepped out on the front porch to collect milk—chocolate milk—delivered in glass bottles covered in condensation.
Their house on Virginia Avenue became a refuge. Our horseplay, which might merit a spanking at home, my grandparents thought cute. When I left that house at the end of a visit, I left behind something warm and loving.
* * *
—
As a child, I didn’t miss my father. How could I? Barely a year old when he died, I never knew him. Two grainy photos helped me visualize him. One shows a thin, rakish sailor leaning against a rail fence, his navy cap worn at a jaunty angle. A more formal portrait shows him with wire-rim glasses and looking a bit older, even scholarly; he’s wearing a double-breasted suit with wide lapels and a wide tie, his curly hair parted on one side and piled in a heap on top.
“That’s your daddy,” Mother often said as she pointed to the photos, even before I could comprehend the words. She referred to him as “your daddy,” but I never called him anything. He died before I could talk.
My brother, three years old when our father died, retains his name (Marshall Watts Yancey Jr.) as well as three actual memories. Once, he ran out to meet our big black Pontiac in the driveway and our father reached over to fetch a Tootsie Pop from the glove compartment. Another time, he recalls, they climbed together what seemed to him an enormous hill of Georgia red clay. Our father pulled Marshall along with one arm while cradling a baby—me—in the other. Marshall returned home boasting, “I climbed a mountain! Philip can’t even walk.”
The third memory has always haunted him. That same man, now paralyzed and fighting for air, slowly turned his head on a hospital pillow and forced out the words, one or two at a time, between labored breaths. “Son…while I’m…in here…you’re the…man…of the…house. It’s up…to you…to take…care…of your…mother…and little…brother.” Marshall nodded and accepted the weight of that burden as solemnly as a three-year-old could do. He informed Mother that he should take charge of my spankings right away.
Years later I came across a photo taken of me when I was a few months old. I look like any baby: fat cheeked, half-bald, with a bright, unfocused look to my eyes. The photo is crumpled and mangled, as if a puppy had gotten hold of it. My mother explained its condition. “When your dad was in the iron lung, he asked for pictures of me and of you and Marshall. I had to jam them in between some metal knobs. That’s why it’s all crumpled.”
I felt a sudden contraction in my chest. For the first time ever, I sensed an emotional tie to my father. It seemed odd to imagine him, a virtual stranger, caring about me. During the last months of his life, my father spent his waking hours staring at those three images of his family, my family. There was nothing else in his field of view.
Did he pray for us? Yes, surely. Did he love us? Yes. But there was no way to express that love with his children banned from the room.
I have often thought of that crumpled photo, one of the few links connecting me to the stranger who is my father. Someone I have no memory of, no sensory knowledge of, spent every day thinking of me, devoting himself to me, loving me as well as he could. Then, before he could make much of a mark, he passed from this world.
My relationship with my father ended just when it began. From that point on, Mother was in charge.
A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.
—Edward de Bono, The Mechanism of Mind
CHAPTER 4
THE VOW
Growing up, I feel my father’s absence more like a presence. He’s a ghost figure, summoned like a genie by our mother at key moments. Your father is watching you. Your father would be so proud.
At school, not having a father makes me different, and I like that. Sometimes bullies take it easy on me. Other times they act even meaner, for I have no protector to march to their houses and confront their parents.
Some kids don’t know better than to ask Marshall or me, “How’d your dad die?” When we tell them polio, our status goes up. In the 1950s rabies or suicide wouldn’t have a more dramatic effect. On the walls of every school hang March of Dimes posters of children wearing metal braces on their legs, or lying in a scary-looking contraption. When we add that our father lived in one of those iron lungs, eyes widen like they do when kids don’t know what to say next.
Marshall and I get lots of attention at church. “You poor child,” women cluck to me as they tamp down a cowlick on my head. “You look just like your daddy, with that same mess of curls,” they say. Their husbands take a sudden interest in their fingernails or study their clothes for stray whiskers. I glow in the sympathy that my family’s plight coaxes out.
Sometimes church people say words meant to console us: “Your father finished his work on earth and God promoted him to Heaven.” Or, worse, “God must have needed him more than you boys did.” My brother shyly lowers his head when he hears such comments. Two years older than me, Marshall knows how to look sad, prompting more kind words from those who seek to comfort us.
People also try to comfort our mother, who has gained a following as a Bible teacher. “I declare, I’ve never met anybody like your husband. What a tragedy. Imagine the missionary couple you two would have made.” She nods, and her face shows a respectful, wounded-widow look. “There must be some reason God took him so soon,” some say, and that one lodges. We are the reason, she
has decided—Marshall and me.
Marshall knows what will help settle Mother when she suddenly leaves the dinner table and goes to her bedroom for a spell. Once, he sees her wiping her eyes on the dish towel, and says, “Dad’s aliver than we are.” Mother retells that story to people at church, or over the telephone, and little Marshall beams at his wisdom.
As for me, the only sure thing is that my father is gone. Although I want to act sad like Marshall, I don’t know how. I can see that death makes people cry, and somehow I grasp that what happened to my father is the greatest tragedy of our lives—but inside I feel nothing. My father isn’t even a memory, only a scar.
* * *
—
I notice that death is a big deal. Mother faithfully reads a small-print page in the newspaper called Obituaries. And whenever we’re driving somewhere and a funeral procession passes, we pull over and wait with the other cars, out of respect. Death is the one time when every nobody becomes a somebody.
I tag along with her to several funerals, which in the South usually have an open casket. Dead people look a lot like live people, only they don’t move and their eyes stay closed. I want to touch a dead person, to see what they feel like, but being short makes this a challenge. Whenever I try to sneak my arm into the casket, the metal buttons on my coat sleeve scrape along the side. I quickly draw my arm back, hoping no one has heard the noise.
My father lies in an old country graveyard tucked into the woods, and Mother often takes us there right after church. The Georgia sun blazes hot, and Marshall and I loosen our ties, shed our jackets, and step carefully around the mud puddles. We roam among the graves: the fancy monuments, the angel statues and poems carved in granite, the stone lambs and cherubim that mark the dead babies.
Some of the graves hold soldiers killed in the Civil War. One section, for the poor, has no markers, just two planks of wood nailed together in the shape of a cross. A few of the crosses have photos of the buried people tacked onto them. They’re covered with clear plastic, and ants crawl underneath it to drink the dew.
While we boys wander around, our mother stands beside the Yancey family plot, set inside a crumbling cement curb. Our father’s gravestone, provided by the navy, is one of the plainest, a simple marker level to the ground that records the dates of his birth and death. Mother tries to tell us about the other Yanceys buried there, though we have little interest. We’d rather hunt for snakes.
As we grow older, visiting the cemetery becomes a chore. Mother insists that we clean up the garbage, worn tires, and discarded underwear that rude people have thrown over the fence. If we stop to take a break, she starts repeating the same old stories about relatives we don’t even know.
One of those visits, however, is different. I can’t remember how old I was—maybe nine or ten—but my memory of that scene stands out as sharp as the present.
* * *
—
We have made our ritual Sunday visit, returned home, and cleaned up. For some reason Mother asks us to sit around the Formica table in the kitchen, where we eat our meals, even though it’s not eating time. Marshall and I look at each other, wondering what we’ve done wrong. Mother holds a white mug of coffee in her left hand, with a spoon handle sticking out of it. She stirs the coffee, though she doesn’t drink it. She seems unusually serious, dabbing at her eyes and swallowing a few times before she speaks.
She begins by reminding us of the story of Hannah in the book of 1 Samuel, which we already know from Sunday School. More than anything, Hannah wanted a baby. She would travel to the temple and pray so hard and so long that the priest thought she was drunk.
Mother reads parts of the story to us from her King James Bible. “ ‘Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken? Put away thy wine from thee. And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord.’ ”
Marshall and I sneak a sideways glance. Mother’s tone of voice warns us this is no time to giggle about the drinking.
She continues. “Hannah was barren, you see. That means she couldn’t have any children. But God heard her prayer: ‘For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him: Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord.’ ”
Mother pauses for a moment, and I silently puzzle over the idea of being lent like that, borrowed by God.
“God answered Hannah’s prayer with a child she named Samuel. So as soon as Samuel was weaned, probably around the age of three—your age, Marshall, when your daddy died—she took him to the temple and gave him to God.” Marshall’s face shows something between surprise and unease. Where is this going? Still, we say nothing.
Mother hesitates, as if unsure what to say next. “You boys don’t know this, but before I got married I had to have an operation to fix some problems that women have. The doctor told me that probably I would never have children. Well, your dad and I prayed, and almost exactly a year after our wedding, you, Marshall, were born. It was a difficult pregnancy, and I almost died. And then two years later, Philip, you came along.”
She stops to wipe her nose with a Kleenex, and then she wipes her eyes. My heart sounds very loud, and I wonder if she can hear it.
“Just a year after that, your daddy died. I didn’t know what to do. All my dreams were dashed. I believed God had called me to Africa as a missionary. We had all these people lined up to support us and pray for us over there, and suddenly everything fell apart.
“I had promised your daddy not to move back to Philadelphia, so here I was in a new part of the country, with you two boys to look after. I had no husband and no job. My old church in Pennsylvania agreed to send us fifty dollars a month, but our rent alone was fifty-three dollars. I didn’t know if we could make it.”
She moves the spoon around in the coffee cup for a while before resuming. “I went to the cemetery, to the grave you just visited, a fresh grave then, still mounded with dirt that hadn’t settled. I threw myself facedown on the dirt, prostrate, my arms stretched out across that mound, and sobbed and cried out to God. Like Hannah. This is the story that God gave me. Right then and there, I dedicated you both to God. I asked him to use you boys to fulfill the dream that your dad and I had—to replace us in Africa as missionaries. And for the first time I finally had some peace about his death.”
Marshall and I do not move. My stomach is fluttering, and I am afraid even to breathe. We have never seen Mother like this. To cry, usually she goes into another room. She sniffles some, then adds one thing more.
“I made a decision to never remarry. My job was to take care of you two. Both of you had health problems when you were younger. Marshall, in Arizona you caught a desert fever that doctors said was like rheumatic fever. Several times I had to rush you to the hospital with a high temperature, almost convulsing. Philip, you had asthma and pneumonia. You would cough your lungs out. A couple of times I had to drive you, too, to the emergency room. Each time, before putting both of you in the car, I would kneel down and pray, ‘Lord, if you don’t want them to fill their father’s place as missionaries in Africa, go ahead and take them now. They’re yours. I’ve given them to you.’ ”
We sit there for a minute that seems to contain an hour, not knowing how to react. I want to say something, but my tongue has swelled up and my mouth has gone dry. I put my hand on her arm as she cries. Marshall hugs her. And that is how we first collide against the awful power of our mother’s vow.
I leave the table feeling special, like a chosen one. I have no clue how cruelly that vow will eventually work itself out. Hannah gave her son to God as a thank offering. But Marshall and I have been offered out of something different—guilt, perhaps, or betrayal.
In time, Hannah’s story will become my least favorite story in the Bible.
BOYHOOD
Life, being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.
—Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
CHAPTER 5
AWAKENINGS
My earliest memories all involve fear.
When I was three years old, my brother fell from the top bunk of our bed. His startled face, yellow in the glow of a night lamp, passed my own in slow motion just before crashing into the sharp edge of a table. Screams, splashes of blood, a call to the neighbor to look after me as Mother rushed Marshall to the hospital. He returned after midnight with a gauze patch covering the stitches on his forehead.
Another memory begins with a loud knock on the door. Mother moves to answer it. “Must be one of Miz O’Brien’s kids. She’s about due to have her baby.”
Instead, as the door opens, a woman with funny-smelling breath staggers in. “Lock the door!” she says in a blubbery voice as she lurches toward a chair. She is pressing a rag to her right arm, which leaks blood.
Mother steers Marshall and me to our bedroom. We stand just inside the doorway, straining to hear the muffled words from the living room.
Soon the woman’s boyfriend shows up, pounding first on the door and then on the windows. “Don’t let him in!” she cries. “He’s after me. I tried to get in my mom’s house for protection, and that’s how I busted my arm—breakin’ the damn window.” The forbidden word, damn, echoes like a gunshot in our home.
After a while the woman leaves, begging our mother not to lock the door behind her. Shouts from the courtyard, doors slamming, police sirens, flashing red lights.
Where the Light Fell Page 3
