Gail hadn’t seen this side of Patrik before. She asked him to slow down, and he did.
“Was there an accident?” she asked.
“Can we please not talk about my family? Tell me about Hanna.”
“You frightened me,” Gail said.
“Won’t happen again. You got Hanna’s phone number from one of the Philly Five?”
“The piano player.”
“Is she Jewish?” Patrik asked.
Wasn’t he the least bit curious about how the piano player knew Hanna?
“Hanna’s a Jewish name,” he persisted. “Isn’t it?”
Susquehanna was an American Indian name, as Patrik surely knew, but Gail refused to reveal that it was also Hanna’s. One rainy afternoon, two little girls named Abigail and Susquehanna had sworn, on an open Bible, never to tell the deep dark secret of their names to anyone, ever.
“Would it matter?” Gail said.
“So she is Jewish.”
“Not that I know of.” She was perilously close to tears. “Hanna’s my oldest and dearest friend. I haven’t seen her for six years.”
Patrik reached over and patted her knee. “You will soon.”
He sounded so certain. Gail relaxed. The jeep was chugging along at a safe forty miles per hour. This was the calm, dependable Patrik she’d been attracted to, the one with the wry sense of humor.
Kissing Patrik had been easy from the beginning. Maybe, with a little practice, they could get the hang of having a conversation.
“Hanna and I are both in college, both waiting tables,” she ventured. “In a way, we’ve been leading parallel lives.”
“Parallel lives would never meet.”
Hadn’t he just said she and Hanna would meet soon? Didn’t he know how keyed up she was about the very prospect? She should never have asked Patrik for a ride.
“There must be a bus station in Salisbury,” she said. “Just drop me off there.”
“Here we are.” Patrik pointed at a weathered, hand-lettered sign. “Crab cakes for the crabby.” He downshifted, made the turn into a dirt parking lot, and stopped beside a small building with one service window.
Route 50 took them back across the Chesapeake Bay and eventually became, in DC, New York Avenue. It was an ugly way to enter the city. Where were the monuments? The Capitol?
From a gas station pay phone, Gail called Casey’s. A sleepy male voice gave her an address on Sixteenth Street, Northwest.
“Is Hanna working today?” she asked.
“It’s Sunday, isn’t it?” And he hung up.
“This town doesn’t know shit from Shinola,” Patrik said, after they’d crossed two different First Streets.
But they seemed to be going in the right direction. Eleventh Street, Twelfth Street, Thirteenth Street. Then, somehow, they were on Pennsylvania Avenue. To their left, beyond a fountain, was a large white house. The White House! They hadn’t even been looking for Lyndon and Lady Bird. Surely they could find Hanna.
Not in a coffee shop, though. The address on Sixteenth Street was indeed a hotel. Casey’s Irish Pub occupied one street-level corner of it.
It was a little after three on a hazy, hot, and humid afternoon. “No need to come in,” Gail said, worried Patrik might inadvertently spoil things. “I know you have to get back to Port Deposit.”
“Not till zero six hundred,” he said. “Anyway, I’m thirsty.”
The interior was dark and cool, with a bar along one wall. The opposite wall featured wood paneling above a long bench and a row of tables. At the back, under an arch, was a small stage.
A dark-haired man in a white shirt and green cummerbund came toward them, carrying menus. Patrik, determined to keep an eye on the jeep, asked to be seated by the front window.
“Is Hanna here yet?” Gail asked the waiter.
“Hanna? I think she’ll be in around six.”
“Are you Irish?” Patrik asked him.
The waiter replied, politely, that he was Peruvian.
“But Casey must be Irish,” Patrik said.
“The owner’s Greek. His name is Lou. Ready to order?”
All Gail wanted was a Coke to settle her churning stomach. Patrik ordered a Guinness. Without asking for an ID, the waiter left.
“I love this town,” Patrik said.
At five thirty, Gail began scrutinizing each person who came through the door. Customers, every last one of them.
Patrik, on his third Guinness, barely noticed when she excused herself. As she started down the stairs to the ladies’ room, a young woman in a white blouse and green cummerbund was coming up.
Mutual recognition, as instantaneous as lightning.
Hanna gripped the railing. She was even prettier now, her intense eyes slightly more wary. “Gail?” She did not look pleased. “What’re you doing here?”
“I never got your letters.”
Gail’s heart was beating in her throat. Already she’d botched this. Shouldn’t they hug each other?
She took a deep breath and started over. “I talked to Sophie last night. That’s how I knew where to find you.” She explained about Club Neptune and Del, about the phone calls to Philadelphia, about Patrik and his jeep. Hanna, standing four steps below her, took it all in without enthusiasm.
“Guess I should’ve called you first.”
“That would’ve been difficult,” Hanna said.
“You must’ve hated me when I didn’t write back.”
“After a while, I forgot all about it.”
“I didn’t forget,” Gail said. “Not for one minute.”
Hanna’s eyes softened a bit. “No, you wouldn’t.”
“Sophie thinks Mother confiscated your letters.”
“So, you really never got them?”
“Hanna! This is me, Gail. I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“I thought you’d finally figured out I was black.”
“What a hateful thing to say.”
“Well,” Hanna said, “what was I supposed to think?”
“You could’ve called me,” Gail said. “You knew my phone number.”
“And your parents knew mine. Plus the address.”
“Well, they sure as hell didn’t tell me,” Gail said. “I was afraid you’d died, all of you, in some terrible car crash on the way up to Philadelphia.”
Hanna, her hand still on the railing, moved up a step. “Mama told me I should give up on you,” she said softly. “Said it was time for the friendship to end.”
“Sophie said that? So our mothers were in cahoots?”
The dimples were still there. “Ca-hoots? Those two?” In a casual motion that meant far more than a hug would have, Hanna took Gail’s arm and led her down to a landing so they wouldn’t block the stairs.
“I’m furious,” Gail said. “I don’t know whether to call my parents or write them an ugly letter. They knew how worried I was.”
“Nothing you can do about it now,” Hanna said with a shrug.
Her level-headedness took Gail by surprise. As children, they’d counted on each other to commiserate when things went wrong. “You had your ears pierced,” she said, noticing.
“My aunt did it, soon as we moved to Philadelphia. Pop was furious.”
There was so much Gail didn’t know. Had Hanna’s relationship with Del improved? Where was her older brother, Jeremiah? Was she happy at Howard?
But Hanna turned away. “I need to get to work.”
“Can I spend the night with you?”
This seemed to alarm Hanna. “What about your sailor?”
“He has to get back. He’s stationed up in Maryland, on the Susquehanna River.”
Hanna cocked her head in disbelief. “The thing is.” She took a breath, let it out. “Pierre doesn’t know about you.”
Pierre. No wonder Sophie had only a work number for her daughter.
“You’d have to sleep on the couch,” Hanna warned. “I don’t get off till twelve.”
Gail could take a hint. “
I’ll go to the bus station, then. Patrik can take me.”
A dismissive snort from Hanna. “You crazier than you look. No time like the present.”
One of Sophie’s favorite expressions, followed by one of the history professor’s. Two very different women, whose daughters had shared a childhood.
Hanna raised a shoulder. “Just don’t be surprised if Pierre’s not too friendly.”
Patrik’s chair was empty. Gail sank into her own seat, too numb to wonder where he was. What mattered was that she’d found Hanna. Roosevelt, she thought, would be pleased when she told him. As for her parents, maybe she should sit on her victory for a while. Savor it.
She gazed dreamily out the window, and there was Patrik, leaning against the jeep. He waved to her but then lost his balance and fell back against the fender. Soon, arms outstretched, as if balancing on a tightrope, he made his way to Casey’s door.
The waiter had just brought them coffee when Hanna sat down beside Gail. “Won’t you get fired?” Gail said to her.
“Sunday nights, the boss has dinner with his senator.” Hanna glanced at Patrik, who raised his cup, as if toasting her. “That’s what he tells us. But Lou lives in the District. Therefore, he has no senator. We think what he has is a Sunday-night mistress.” She extended her right hand to Patrik. “I’m Hanna.”
Gail held her breath.
Patrik, looking bewildered, squeezed Hanna’s fingers and let go. He turned to Gail. “So, this is who I drove you all the way up here to see?”
“It wasn’t that far out of your way,” Gail said.
“Your best friend’s a Negress?” He sloshed coffee on the table. “Isn’t anyone who works here Irish?”
“This is Patrik.” Gail tried to kick him, so he’d stop staring at Hanna, but hit a table leg instead. “Please excuse him. He’s had a little too much to drink.”
“I’ve been called worse.” Hanna stood up. “You should’ve told him. Poor boy’s in shock.”
“She told me all I need to know,” Patrik retorted. “You’re her oldest and dearest friend. She told me that, and I remember it, so how drunk can I be?”
“It’s true,” Gail said with relief. “Word for word.”
“Here’s the problem I’m having.” Patrik treated Hanna to one of his I-just-can’t-help-myself smiles. “You’re a lot younger than I thought you’d be.”
“Nice try, sailor.” But Hanna was smiling, too. “Come sit in my section, you two. It’s closer to the stage.”
When the stage lights came on, Patrik, fortified with a corned beef sandwich, was asleep on the bench along the paneled wall. He looked angelic, innocent. Still a teenager, Gail reminded herself. A long way from an unhappy home and scared of dying on a nuclear sub. She turned her chair around to watch the show.
The alcohol-fueled crowd grew quiet with anticipation, then clapped and cheered as Hanna appeared under the arch—the star of the show, in a green satin vest, but too modest to have let on ahead of time.
Gail felt a surge of pride. Six years later and look at Hanna now!
She strummed a chord on her guitar, and the applause died down. “Don’t much feel like ‘Danny Boy’ tonight,” she said, eliciting a few “awwws.” “So I’ll open with something else. You do know, don’t you, that Ray Charles is Irish?”
More cheers from the crowd. Her crowd. This was why they were still here so late on a Sunday night. They just wanted Hanna to sing.
And sing she did, her voice silky and sad. Del’s daughter, all right, and he must know it by now.
Not once did Hanna glance in her direction. Still, Gail got the message. Made popular again by Ray Charles, they were Eddy Arnold’s words: “You don’t know me.”
Fair enough. She and Hanna were no longer children. It had been foolish to think they could simply pick up where they had left off.
Again, Hanna tamed the applause, and Gail braced herself for yet another clever warning that the friendship wasn’t what it used to be. But this time, while looking directly at Gail, Hanna belted out a familiar question: “What’ll we do with a drunken sailor?”
A peace offering? The impulse to stand up and cheer came and went. Instead, Gail joined the crowd in rhythmic clapping.
Patrik slept on.
The Medicine Tree
En Route, 1968
PAPA DOC DOESN’T LIKE MULATTOES, was what Hanna planned on telling her mother. But not yet. Not until she absolutely had to.
Outside the small oval window to her left were various shades of blue. Sky above, ocean below? Having just spent three years in Haiti, she knew to assume nothing. Planes might’ve begun flying upside down. Maybe this one would crash-land on a tiny island with no telephones and she’d never have to tell her mother anything at all.
The tray table contained a tiny bottle of Bacardi (empty), a bottle of Coke (half gone), and a glass full of their amber mixture. The business end of the plastic stirrer consisted of two sharp red claws.
Next to her, in the aisle seat, dozed a white man with a European air and an ugly bruise on his left cheek. His white linen suit was rumpled, his black patent leather loafers scuffed.
Hanna wasn’t sorry to be leaving Haiti—a poor country, ruled by a cruel dictator. Papa Doc, everyone called him.
Leaving Pierre, though, was tearing her apart. His refusal to come with her was like a knife in her chest, buried so deeply she could barely breathe.
Papa Doc doesn’t like pregnant mulatto American students at his university, was how Pierre had put it, taking a wad of $100 bills from his pocket and giving her twenty of them. Go home, he’d said. It’ll be safe there.
That was yesterday, April Fools’ Day, 1968, but he wasn’t kidding. She’d missed two periods. Thrown up a few times, in the morning. That she really might be pregnant was an excuse for Pierre to send her away, an excuse for her to go.
Their first year in Haiti, she’d tried not to mind spending so much time alone. They were on a humanitarian mission, after all. Pierre needed to find out which prison his mother was in, how many people he would have to bribe to get her out.
But Hanna began to wonder. How many prisons could there possibly be in such a small country?
She signed up for classes at the university, not far from their apartment in Port-au-Prince, and found a part-time job in the library to help with the tuition. One day she confided in a librarian, an older woman who’d befriended her. A few days later, the librarian handed her a Photostat of a newspaper death notice from 1964.
“No one gave this to you,” the librarian said softly. “You came across it on your own. Understand?”
Hanna nodded. What was going on?
When she finally worked up the courage to show Pierre the Photostat, he was furious. “Where the hell did this come from?” he demanded.
“The library,” she told him. “I like to practice my French by reading old newspapers.” Both statements were true.
“Josephine LeCompte is a very common name here.” He crumpled the Photostat and threw it in the trash, then switched to Creole. “Tou sa ou we, se pa sa.” Don’t believe everything you see.
But Hanna did believe it. What was Pierre up to? She was afraid to ask.
When he began wearing the same sunglasses as the Tonton Macoutes, members of Papa Doc’s secret police, she became even more frightened. The scariest thing of all was that, despite everything, she still loved him.
As a college sophomore in DC, she’d been enthralled by Pierre. Never before had she known a man with his suaveness, his savoir-faire. Everything about him was smooth, right down to his skin, his lips, his fingers.
In Haiti, though, he could turn into someone else entirely. She never knew which Pierre would come home at night, if he came home at all.
She had no idea where his money came from. When they’d met, he’d been a graduate student in economics at American University. He’d given that up, just as he’d asked her to give up her scholarship at Howard, so that, together, they could rescue his m
other.
Who was dead. Possibly a zonbi flitting from prison to prison, always one step ahead of her son.
I told you so, Hanna’s own mother would say. I told you not to run off with that man.
“More rum, please,” Hanna said to the stewardess. Haitian rum was far superior to Bacardi. Why didn’t the airline know this?
The man next to her stirred in his sleep. “He never loved you,” he mumbled.
Hanna turned toward him. His eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open. She’d been in Haiti long enough not to wonder how he knew.
The person she most wanted to see was her brother. Jeremiah was out of the army now and working at a hotel in New Orleans. He’d gladly take her in, help her figure out what to do. But the only way to get his phone number was from their parents in Philadelphia—a call Hanna was not yet ready to make.
Pierre had been horrified when she’d told him about her childhood, how she and her mother had lived in the Madisons’ basement. “House slaves,” he’d disparagingly termed the arrangement.
But Pierre’s own mother had been a servant, to mulatto families in Pétion-Ville. That was before Josephine LeCompte became a communist. Before she died.
Papa Doc didn’t like communists, either. This was why the United States kept sending him money.
The man who’d talked in his sleep was gone. After a precarious trip to the restroom, Hanna ordered more rum and Coke.
The other kind of coke was one way to get rich in Haiti. A drug dealer might keep a wad of $100 bills in his pocket, peel off a few, and send his lady friend home for an abortion.
“You’re American?” the stewardess asked, accepting $3 dollars for a miniature bottle of rum.
Hanna nodded. She knew how lucky she was to be on her way to Miami by plane. Haitians usually escaped in small boats.
“Where is he?” Hanna pointed to the empty seat.
“Who?” The stewardess looked confused.
“The blan in the white suit.” Had she imagined him?
“Oh, him. I think he’s up in the cockpit. He said he was friends with the pilot.”
After going through customs at Miami International, Hanna found a pay phone. The information operator in New Orleans gave her the number for a J. Norris. J for Jeremiah? Hanna called the number all night long, but no one ever answered.
Beginning with Cannonballs Page 5
