So now here she was, up in the air again, heading for Friendship International, the airport serving both Baltimore and Washington.
I was on my way, she would tell her mother.
All mothers were zonbis. They haunted you.
First thing that man will do is get you pregnant, her mother had warned. Next thing he’ll do is abandon you. Last thing he’ll ever do is marry you. You’ll have given up your scholarship for nothing.
Mothers haunted you with dire predictions that came true. What had Josephine LeCompte seen in her son’s future?
Who was Pierre with right now? What was he doing? Hanna hadn’t yet let herself cry. She refused to start leaking tears while speeding through the night to a place called Friendship.
The tiny address book in her wallet contained her friend Margaret’s address and phone number in DC. After a night on Margaret’s lumpy sofa, Hanna planned to walk over to Howard University and meet with the head of the math department and possibly the registrar, then phone Philadelphia with the news: she’d returned from Haiti to finish her degree.
She also had Gail’s phone number in Baltimore. Gail was a college graduate now, with a good job and even a husband. The sort of daughter a mother, even Miss Bessie, could be proud of.
Yes, the two of them had been close as children. Still, Hanna had been surprised when a letter from Gail had arrived in Port-au-Prince.
“Your mother gave me your address,” the letter began. And then the stunner: Gail was getting married, in Knoxville, and wanted Hanna to be her maid of honor.
Nick Ranier was his name. He’d come up to Gail in a grocery store, waving an ear of corn around, and asked how he should cook it. Gail had taken this complete stranger home with her and demonstrated. “You could say Sophie introduced us,” Gail wrote. “I’ve already thanked her.”
Nick was a graduate student in neuropsychology. His parents were coming down from Michigan for the wedding. Gail hoped Hanna would be able to make the trip, too.
Hanna had written back and declined, without telling Pierre, who didn’t like Gail, the very idea of her. The night Gail had spent with them in DC, Pierre had barely spoken to her.
But then Hanna had felt so guilty about turning Gail down that, without telling Pierre, she’d sent the happy couple a wedding present—an oil painting she’d considered buying for herself. She knew the artist, who worked at her favorite gallery.
L’Arbre de la Médecine had ferny, fingerlike leaves. Its feathery blossoms resembled fuchsia fright wigs. Gail’s parents had a similar tree in their yard in Knoxville, a mimosa.
Gail’s thank-you note said they’d hung the painting of the “Haitian mimosa” over their sofa. Hanna wrote back saying Gail and Nick should come to Haiti. The hotels were inexpensive, the beaches lovely. Tourists were safe—Papa Doc’s son-in-law was the minister of tourism. What she didn’t say was, If you come, I could be tempted to fly back with you.
After landing at Friendship, Hanna used her only dime to dial Margaret’s number. But a phone call to DC turned out to be long-distance. The dime was returned to her. Too tired to go looking for quarters, she tried Gail’s number. The line was busy, meaning the newlyweds were home.
Baltimore would be a much shorter cab ride. Gail wouldn’t mind an old friend showing up out of the blue and needing a place to stay. Gail was the welcoming type, Southern hospitality all the way. There might even be a guest room with a comfortable bed.
In the privacy of a bathroom stall, Hanna moved the $100 bills from her purse to the zippered pockets of her one and only sweater. Then, finally, after two days of planes and airports, she was outside, breathing the fresh night air of the good ol’ US of A.
There were so many lights, so many cars, and not a single checkpoint along the way, no armed soldier to stick his head in the taxi’s window and ask who she was or where she was going. But when the cab stopped on a dark street lined with row houses, she became alarmed. It looked like her parents’ neighborhood in Philly.
“You sure this is the right place?” she asked the driver.
“Been driving a cab here for twenty-five years,” he said. “This is it.”
So Hanna paid him and got out with her suitcase.
No one answered the buzzer for apartment 3B. Third floor, rear. Wasn’t that what Gail had said in one of her letters?
The cabbie had sped away. It was after eleven. Hanna wouldn’t feel safe waiting on her parents’ steps this late at night, and she didn’t feel safe here.
The door to the row house was locked. When she tried the buzzer again, a man called to her from the sidewalk. “Lost your keys, hon? I got just what you need.”
After he’d finally wandered off, she descended the steps and looked up at the four-story building. Lights were on in what must be 3A.
It was never this cold in Haiti. Under her colorful cotton dress, her bare legs were freezing.
Again she rang the buzzer for 3B. No answer, so she tried 3A. A fuzzy voice said, “We’re not home.”
“Trying to reach Gail Ranier,” she said, but she’d been cut off.
So down the steps she went. Cars parked bumper to bumper formed a wall between the sidewalk and the street. She turned right and, lugging the suitcase containing all her worldly belongings, tried to look like she knew exactly where she was going and was in a hurry to get there.
Why oh why hadn’t she gone to DC? She had plenty of cash to pay for a long cab ride and even a hotel, if necessary.
Gail and Nick’s row house was the fourth one from the corner. At the corner, Hanna turned right. In Philly, there would be an alley halfway down the block.
She was in luck.
More good luck. She was able to push the alley’s fourth gate on the right open. A floodlight at the back of the row house showed that there was even some grass to sleep on. She unzipped her suitcase and pulled on both pairs of slacks.
Had she slept? All Hanna knew for certain was that she was going to throw up. She struggled to her feet and aimed at a bed of tulips, surprisingly colorful in the early-morning light, then wiped her mouth with the hem of her dress.
A white woman in a lime-green raincoat stepped out onto the first-floor patio. “I already called the police,” she yelled. “Go directly to jail. Do not pass go.”
The woman continued to rant while Hanna redecorated the orange and red tulips with yellow bile. Then another woman—hair uncombed, nightgown visible under a trench coat—came sailing out a gray metal door. “I knew that was you,” Gail sang out. “I’m so glad to see you!”
Hanna backed away from a hug. “Where’s a barf bag when you really need one?”
“I’ve known her all my life,” Gail said to the woman on the patio.
“She’s a tramp, ruined my tulips. Police will take her away.” The woman went back inside and slammed the door.
“Just ignore her,” Gail said. “The police always do.” She patted her coat pockets. “Forgot my keys. Feel up to a short walk?”
Hanna nodded. Her teeth were chattering.
“Did you sleep out here?” Gail said. “Why didn’t you ring the buzzer?”
“I did. Several times. Around eleven o’clock.”
“Oh.” Gail’s cheeks turned pink. “Guess we’d already gone to bed.” She picked up Hanna’s suitcase and opened the gate to the alley.
“Wish I’d seen that last night.” Hanna pointed to a mattress leaning against a garage.
“Probably a rat hotel by now. Welcome to Baltimore, by the way.”
This time, someone heard the buzzer. They climbed the stairs up to the third floor, where Nick was waiting for them. Like Gail, he had light brown hair and hazel eyes. They could’ve been fraternal twins.
“It was Hanna!” Gail said to him. “My oldest and dearest friend. Hanna Norris.”
“Nick Ranier,” he said, extending his hand calmly, as if Gail often met friends before breakfast.
Nick was wearing a bathrobe over pajamas. Pierre never wore anything in
bed.
After a hot shower, Hanna put on the flannel nightgown and argyle knee socks Gail had left warming on the bathroom radiator. Knees exposed—she’d always been taller than Gail—she padded into the living room.
Above the sofa, in an oval frame of dark wood, hung a black-and-white photo of a bearded gentleman. “Nick’s grandfather?” Hanna asked.
“In a way,” Gail said. “That’s Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of neuroanatomy. Nick worships him. How about a cup of tea?”
“Got any Coca-Cola?”
This made Gail smile. “I even have Ritz crackers.” The combo had seen the girls through many a childhood illness. “Please. Make yourself comfy.”
Hanna sat down on the sofa and looked around. There didn’t seem to be a guest room. The apartment was even smaller than her friend Margaret’s in DC.
Above the dining table hung L’Arbre de la Médecine. Dust bunnies clung to its frame, as if, very recently, the painting had been dragged out from under a bed.
Gail set the Coke and crackers on the coffee table and turned around a ladder-back chair for herself. “Uh-oh,” she said, picking up a pair of sunglasses. “The absent-minded graduate student went off without his shades.”
Watch out when the man you love starts wearing those things, Hanna wanted to say. “Don’t you have to go to work?”
“I called in sick.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“It seemed a whole lot better than telling them I have a sick friend.”
“A little indigestion, that’s all.” Hanna touched her tummy. “Last night I slept in the Miami airport. Night before last, I mean. Guess I ate too many chili dogs.”
Gail leaned forward, her eyes as eager and trusting as ever. “Tell me about Haiti.”
“Papa Doc doesn’t like mulattoes,” Hanna surprised herself by saying. “That’s what I am in Haiti. Mulatto. You’d think a country where blacks have been in charge since 1804 would have got past that sort of thing.”
“So you’re home for good?”
“He’s into vodou, Papa Doc. People die. They get hacked to death with machetes.” What was wrong with her?
Blinking back tears, Hanna took a sip of Coke. “I won’t stay long.” Her voice seemed steady enough to continue. “I need to go down to DC and try to get back in at Howard.”
“You can stay as long as you want,” Gail said, “if you don’t mind sleeping on the sofa. This was all I could afford on a social worker’s salary. It’s close to campus, so Nick moved in after we got married.”
A mysterious breeze seemed to be stirring the delicate leaves of L’Arbre de la Médecine. Had Gail noticed the small snake slithering up the tree trunk toward a barely visible bird’s nest? Both the snake and the nest were so well camouflaged that they were difficult to detect unless you knew they were there. And the faint shadow in the lower right corner? Could be an airplane. Could be the mama bird soaring back to protect her little ones.
“I’m so tired.” Hanna bent her knees and curled up on the sofa. Fetal position. “Go on to work if you want.”
She woke with a pillow under her head and a blanket draped over her. A note on the coffee table said, “Back before six. G.”
The apartment was eerily silent, the bathroom radiator stone cold. Her soiled dress, which she’d rinsed out and left hanging on the shower curtain rod, was gone, as were both pairs of slacks. She put on her sweater over Gail’s nightgown and patted the pockets.
In the refrigerator she found the makings for a hamand-cheese sandwich. Hold the ham, her stomach told her; hold the bread. She peeled off a square slice of cheese and carefully nibbled its corners, leaving tooth marks. Cheese doilies, she and Gail had called these creations as children.
Planning to rid L’Arbre de la Médecine of its dust and cobwebs, Hanna took a dish towel into the dining area, then discovered that someone had beaten her to it. The painting needed straightening. She did this and stepped back.
The blue-gray shadow was a bird, all right. Hard to tell whether it was heading toward the nest or flying away. Maybe the mother bird was protecting herself.
At the sound of a key in the front door, Hanna hid the dish towel on a chair. Gail came in with a bag of groceries in one arm and a laundry bag in the other.
“You didn’t have to do my laundry,” Hanna said.
“No, but I had to do ours.”
After putting the groceries away, Gail joined Hanna by the painting. “There’s a snake on that tree trunk,” Gail said. “Did you know? And look here.” She pointed. “A child’s pinwheel. Remember those?”
Hanna didn’t argue. That shadow could be anything. A plane, a bird, a pinwheel. Maybe the nest was empty, the mama bird long gone. “I did have chili dogs in Miami,” she said. “But that’s not why I was throwing up this morning.”
“I think I know.”
“Guess I don’t have to tell you, then.”
“No, but it’d sure mean a lot to me if you did,” Gail said.
“Don’t you just hate it when your mother’s right?”
“Mine rarely is.”
The radiator under the window began clanking.
“Heat’s on the way. Our next apartment will have a thermostat.” Gail was still staring at the painting. “Mother kept those letters you sent me after you moved to Philadelphia. I found them hidden in an old girdle in her dresser. She hadn’t even opened them.”
“Did you read them?”
“Of course I did. They were addressed to me.”
“Did you tell her?”
Gail shook her head. “I’ll never forgive her. Ever.”
Mothers haunted you, all right.
“Did something happen with Pierre?” Gail said.
“His mother died four years ago.”
“But I thought she was in prison.”
A familiar popping sound sent chills up Hanna’s spine. In Haiti a gunshot meant someone had been killed. Multiple gunshots meant a firing squad.
She followed Gail into the bedroom and out onto the balcony. The gunfire sounded celebratory, like fireworks. Sirens began to wail.
Hanna pointed at dark stains on the balcony’s floorboards. More stains dotted the wooden railing.
“We had a would-be burglar,” Gail said, “while we were at a movie one night. He broke the glass in the door but must’ve cut himself so badly that he changed his mind. That’s why, when I heard noises this morning, I came outside to see what was going on.”
“Just some tramp upchucking on the tulips,” Hanna said.
The gunfire grew louder, closer. They went back inside.
Nick came home then with the news. Martin Luther King had been shot. He was in critical condition in a Memphis hospital.
“Our home state.” Hanna sank down onto the sofa. She’d been there, on the Mall, when Dr. King had told everyone about his dream.
No longer able to hold back tears, Hanna hugged the pillow to her face. It wasn’t just Martin Luther King. Or Pierre not wanting the baby. Not wanting her, either. What seemed equally upsetting was that she was in a strange room in a strange city, wearing someone else’s scratchy socks, while that someone else’s husband calmly set the table for dinner.
Gail sat down beside her. “I’m so sorry. What can I do?”
“You can leave me alone,” Hanna muttered. “I should never have come here.”
“But I’m so glad you did.”
“I’m not your sister. I know you think I am, but I’m not. Look at me. I’m Jeremiah’s sister, but I don’t even know where he is. Jeremiah would understand, but you can’t possibly. You have no idea what it’s like to be me.” She shouldn’t be sharing this tragic night with white people. She didn’t belong here. Didn’t belong anywhere. In Haiti she hadn’t been noir enough. Back home, she was black no matter what.
“Let’s phone your mother,” Gail said. “Sophie will want to know where you are.”
“No, she won’t.” Hanna set the pillow on her lap and
gave it a good punch. “She thinks I’m in Haiti.”
“Then may I give you a hug?”
“Oh, Gail. For once in your life, could you please, please just let me be?”
“Sure thing.” Gail stood up. “I need to get dinner started. Won’t take long.”
“I’m not your responsibility.”
“No,” Gail said. “You’re my friend. Tonight, you’re also my guest. Around here, we feed our guests.” She turned away.
Hanna could’ve called her back, could’ve apologized, could even have offered to help with dinner. But she didn’t. Not even when she could tell what was cooking.
Chork pops and eyed frapples, they’d called what her mother prepared on the nights Gail’s parents went out. With no rude buzzer summoning the maid to the dining room, the three of them had been able to enjoy a peaceful meal in the kitchen. Hanna had loved those nights, never guessing Gail might’ve loved them, too.
The apartment was dark. Gail and Nick had gone to bed.
Curled up on the sofa, Hanna was kept awake not so much by the sporadic gunfire as by what was ticking in her head. Had Pierre heard the terrible news, that Martin Luther King had been assassinated? Was he wondering where she was on this awful night, thinking she could be in Philadelphia with her parents?
She could be in Philly, but she wasn’t. Nor was she in DC, looking for a way to finish college.
No, Hanna was somewhere in between, trying to do the math.
On one side of the equation: a man who didn’t want his own baby.
On the other side: her father, who, in vastly different circumstances, hadn’t wanted her.
Factor in an admittedly courageous mother.
Hanna turned on a light and tiptoed over to L’Arbre de la Médecine. Not a leaf was stirring.
In the kitchen, she worked up her courage. Dialed her parents’ number.
A familiar voice answered.
“Jeremiah?” Hanna said softly. “Is it really you?”
“Hanna? Where are you?”
Beginning with Cannonballs Page 6
