“Dr. Swimsuit.”
“Dr. Jantzen.”
“Swimsuit,” Bessie said. “You had a red one.”
“I sure did! A red Jantzen swimsuit.”
Gail added some sugar to the coffee, and Bessie took a sip.
“Cold soup?” Gail picked up a spoon. “The nurse wants you to eat. So you can go home.”
Home? Bessie felt a buzzing, a vibration, like a storm coming, or a flash flood. Where was home?
And here came the nice nurse again. “Ready for a walk, Miz Madison?”
“Sophie?” Bessie said.
“No, ma’am.” The nurse pointed at a name tag.
Bessie couldn’t read the damn thing. No, ma’am, Not Sophie, she sure as hell couldn’t.
This gave her the giggles. She was standing there in her hospital gown and bare feet with tears running down her cheeks. Down her legs, too. The nurse who was Not Sophie guided her into the bathroom and helped her sit on the toilet.
And now, wearing slippers and a bright blue terrycloth robe, she was walking down a Pepto-Bismol-colored corridor, with Gail on one side of her and Not Sophie, no, ma’am, on the other.
People were staring, their faces a blur.
“I’m on my way home,” she tried to tell them.
But she had no words.
Where am I? she wished she could say. Where am I going?
First Stop: 6221 Osage
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1985
ON MAY 13, 1985, THE CITY of Philadelphia shut off water and electricity within a large area of the Cobbs Creek neighborhood. The mostly black, middle-class residents were ordered to leave. The mayor, who was also black, gave his approval for a makeshift bomb to be dropped, from a police helicopter, onto the roof of 6221 Osage Avenue.
Approximately five hundred police officers, with flak jackets, tear gas, SWAT gear, and machine guns, were on hand. The late-afternoon explosion and resulting fire, which the police commissioner allowed to burn itself out, destroyed sixty-one houses in the City of Brotherly Love and left 250 people homeless.
The occupants of 6221 Osage were members of MOVE. Most of MOVE’s members were black. They demonstrated for animal rights, ate raw food, and were rumored to be vegetarians and Rastafarians. Some of their neighbors were wary of the group, while others urged tolerance.
The police saw MOVE as armed and dangerous, a bunch of radicals with a fortified bunker on their roof. Back in 1978, at a different house, a confrontation with MOVE had led to an officer’s death.
When the police ordered MOVE to vacate 6221 Osage, shots were fired, and the police fired back. The situation escalated. MOVE would not move. Hence the bomb.
Eleven people died in the fire, including five children. A woman and a boy survived.
Hanna had read the news reports. She’d seen the conflagration on TV. Hard to watch, but she’d done it anyway.
Her parents’ house was a few miles northeast of 6221 Osage. Her father had been giving a piano lesson when the bomb went off, while her mother was putting away groceries she’d bought on the way home from work. The terrified piano student beat them both outside, where a cloud of thick black smoke darkened the western sky.
And now, six weeks later, armed police were guarding the burned-out blocks. The odor of smoke still lingered.
The officer in front of 6221 Osage told Hanna to move on. Ignoring him, she got down on her knees. The rubble-strewn street was surprisingly painful. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, daring him to confront a praying woman, a woman whose beloved son, her only child, was missing—due to a different explosion, a different fire, but Hanna didn’t plan on explaining to the cop, or anyone else, why she was there. Nor would her parents ever know, and certainly not Mel.
The explosion on the cargo boat, near Cuba, had surely been an accident. This one, in Philadelphia, was planned and sanctioned and allowed to burn by the government of an American city. Here, at least, there were known survivors. Two of them.
Wasn’t it possible that a nice Cuban family was caring for PJ? One of these days, they might call her. Better still, PJ himself would call.
A mother could hope. What was praying but hoping?
“Our Father,” she said, “who art in heaven . . .”
“Hey, you can’t do that,” the cop said. “You can’t be here.”
He was white. He had a gun.
“Hallow-ed be thy name,” Hanna said.
“I can arrest you, and I will,” the cop said. “Get up and go home. Now.”
“Thy kingdom come . . .” Hanna opened her eyes. She could see the cop’s irregular shadow on the torn-up street. His right hand was on his holster.
Now he was on his walkie-talkie. “I got a black woman on her knees here. She’s praying.”
Hanna heard static. She continued to pray.
“Yes, sir,” the cop said. “Did that already.”
“Deliver us from evil,” she was saying when a car drove up.
Soon, a different voice was telling her to get to her feet, please.
“Forever and ever,” she said. “Amen.”
“Ma’am,” the new cop pleaded, “I have to ask you to leave.”
Hanna looked up. The black cop also had a gun, but his hands, palms facing outward, were in front of his chest.
She stood. Nodded to this man who was only doing his duty. He hadn’t even asked for her name, didn’t care who she was or where she was from or why she was here. Not yet. He just wanted her to go.
“The two who escaped,” she said. “Are they okay? Do you know where they are?”
He shook his head. “Go now,” he said gently.
“Are they being cared for?”
“Go now,” the cop said.
Hanna walked north, to Spruce Street, but then she could not find her car. Back and forth she went, looking for a black Buick, until, feeling like a fool, she remembered. Mel had traded in their Buick for a yellow Subaru.
Parked in front of the Subaru was an Oldsmobile with New Jersey license plates. A good omen. Jeremiah lived in New Jersey. Hanna would see him tonight, along with his three little boys, her nephews, the youngest of whom she had yet to meet.
On this very strange Saturday in June, she would celebrate her birthday a few days early. She was almost forty-two.
Needing a restroom, she stopped at a Chinese restaurant and ordered chicken fried rice, her mother’s favorite. After a few bites, she apologized, said she was in a hurry, and asked to take the rest of it with her.
The Chestnut Street Bridge transported her across the Schuylkill River to Center City. One more stop to make, and then she’d go home.
Was her parents’ house home? Had she ever really had a home?
Hanna had last been inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art on a high school field trip, back when she was young enough not to mind having to climb so many steps. Hundreds of steps, seemed like, and weren’t there even more inside?
The only painting she remembered from her visit as a teenager was one she hadn’t seen that day. She had no idea who the artist was. Still, she was determined to find it.
The museum was freezing cold. Bare-legged, in a denim skirt and a short-sleeved top, Hanna wandered over to a painting of women dressed like her but from another century, their long skirts billowing as they danced around a fire in a field. There were several fires, and torches, but everything seemed purposeful and under control.
Feast of St. John, she read. By Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton. French, 1875.
So many great French painters.
Noticing a narrow stairway, she felt a twinge. Hadn’t she fled down similar steps that day? When the guide said the painting was known as The Rape, Hanna had turned and run.
At the top of the stairs was a painting by Edgar Degas. The Interior. Hanna studied it. A woman, slumped in a chair, was wearing a slip, or maybe a nightgown. The left shoulder strap had fallen halfway to her elbow. Her right arm, on the back of the chair, supported her right cheek. The w
oman looked desolate, but Hanna couldn’t see enough of her face to tell whether she was crying.
The woman was partially illuminated by a light hanging above a table in the center of the painting. On the table was an open box. To the right of the table, against the wall, was a single bed. The bed was neatly made, not recently slept in.
What was going on? Why was this woman so very, very sad?
Then Hanna saw him. Standing in the shadows, at the end of the bed, was a fully dressed man. Suit coat, vest, slacks—the entire ensemble. Better dressed than Boo Radley, and far more frightening. What was he doing in this woman’s room? What had he said to her to make her turn away in such obvious despair?
Degas, with his subtle use of light, was prompting precisely these questions, in precisely this order. First you saw the woman. Then you wondered what had gone so wrong in her life. You looked around for an answer, and there he was, this impeccably dressed man, hiding in the shadows.
Hanna knew exactly what conversation this couple was having. Of course they were a couple—that was the artist’s point. The woman had just told the man she was pregnant. His response? C’est dommage. Tant pis.
Would the man in the shadows give this distraught woman money for an abortion? Was that even an option for her?
Hanna had come to the museum looking for her mother. Instead, she’d found herself.
“Sometimes this painting is referred to as The Rape,” a voice said.
Startled, Hanna turned around. A woman in a blue dress had snuck up behind her. The dress matched the woman’s eyes; her purse and her pearl necklace matched her fluffy white hair.
It just came out. “My mother was raped. Nine months before I was born.”
The woman didn’t bat a blue eye. Her lipstick was very pink. “I don’t think that’s what’s going on here. Do you?”
“No,” Hanna said. “I think a better title would be The Illumination. This painting is all about the artist’s use of light.”
“Brilliant,” the woman said. “Are you an artist?”
Hanna shook her head. “Are you?”
“I used to paint.”
“I used to sing,” Hanna said.
“Please don’t be offended, but you have beautiful skin.”
“Thank you. Please don’t be offended, but are you Main Line or Rittenhouse Square?”
The woman smiled. “A little of both.”
“My parents live in Stanton,” Hanna said.
The woman nodded. “Near Temple University.” She held out her hand. “I do hope we’ll meet again.”
Hanna shook the woman’s hand and watched her walk away.
After the chilly museum, the wide stone steps seemed to radiate warmth. Hanna descended slowly, trying to convince herself that if she could find that painting again, after all these years, then surely she could find her car.
And there it was, the chicken fried rice on the passenger seat, still warm. She took a few bites with the thoughtfully provided plastic fork, then extracted a fortune from the cookie: “Sorrow casts shadows of joy.”
Hanna cast this ridiculous idea out the window, into traffic, and headed east on Spring Garden, then north on Broad.
Her parents’ row house, with its peeling green paint, sat between a house painted bright crimson and one displaying the original, dark red brick. The window air conditioner she’d given them had been moved upstairs. Through the downstairs window drifted a familiar sound. Her father was playing the piano.
Pop’s only income these days came from piano lessons. Now that arthritis had crippled his hands, he could no longer repair cars. Today, though, the fingers seemed to be cooperating. Hanna recognized his very own, syncopated version of “Down in the Valley.”
She tried the door, which was locked, and then knocked softly.
“Well, it’s about time,” her father said.
“I told Mama three o’clock.” The leftovers in one hand, a small suitcase in the other, Hanna stepped inside. “I’m not late.”
“Mel called.”
About PJ? Hanna’s heart did a double flip.
And here came her mother, looking worried. “Mel said you left early this morning. What took so long?”
“I stopped at the art museum. Haven’t been there in years.”
She set her suitcase down on the bottom stair. Her first night away from Reston since PJ had left and look where she’d be spending it. In the very house where she’d nursed him and cuddled him, all the while wishing Pierre could see what a beautiful son they had.
Hanna straightened her shoulders, turned around. She knew her parents were glad to see her. Still, neither one had given her a hug. Did they think she was too fragile?
“Brought you some chicken fried rice, Mama,” she said. “Still warm.”
“Half-eaten?”
“Not quite half,” Hanna said.
“Smells good.” Her mother accepted the white plastic bag. “Mel said he’s taking the train up.”
The husband who could not take a hint. Ever. Hanna had left him behind for a reason. Her first night away was precisely when PJ would call. Her rational mind knew a phone call was unlikely. The other part of her brain was the problem, always gaming the possibilities.
“So, I’ll have to go back downtown to get Mel?”
“Said he’d take a cab from the station.” Her mother carried the fried rice into the kitchen.
“Will you keep playing, Pop?” Hanna said.
He turned his hands into claws.
“I heard how good you sound,” she said. “C’mon. I’ll sing along.”
“Drown me out, you mean.”
But he was pleased, she could tell. The fact that he’d stayed married to her mother meant more to Hanna than what one of those new DNA tests might reveal. He repositioned the piano bench, and they both sat down.
She tried to match her words to his timing. “Hang . . . your head over. Hear . . . the wind blow.”
Tears filled her eyes. She struggled to keep them out of her voice. “Roses . . . love sunshine, violets . . . love dew. Angels . . . in heaven know . . . I love you.”
She had to stop. Her father stopped, too. He put his arm around her. “We all miss him.”
“Keep on playing,” she whispered. “I don’t want Mama to know.”
“Write . . . me a letter,” he sang. “Send . . . it by mail. Put it . . . in care of . . . the old Knoxville jail.”
Hanna tried to dry her eyes on her sleeve. “Do you ever see Solomon? Is he still here in Philly?”
“Last I heard, he was playing at some bar over near Penn. Just him and his guitar. You ever play yours?”
Hanna shook her head.
“She’s baking you a birthday cake,” he said softly. “Worried you won’t like it. Went out and bought real butter.”
Hanna stood up. “Keep playing. Please.”
On the counter beside the kitchen sink, a cake was cooling. Her mother was at the stove. “Hope you still like pound cake,” she said, without turning around.
“With chocolate fudge frosting?”
Her mother lifted a wooden spoon, trailing a sheet of liquid brown. She then took down a bottle of vanilla, measured out a teaspoon, and stirred the dark liquid into the frosting.
“Yum.” Hanna leaned against the sink.
“I dreamed about PJ last night.”
“Really? Where was he?” Hanna never dreamed about her son. Did this mean there was something wrong with her? Did PJ’s grandmother love him more than his very own mother did?
“Doing cannonballs off the Madisons’ diving board.”
“Trespassing, you mean.”
Hanna could tell, from the slight tilting of the head, the lifting of a shoulder, that she had made her mother smile. “Here’s some news. I got a birthday card from Gail. Miss Bessie had a stroke.”
Her mother set the pan aside and turned around. “Is she going to be okay?”
“I guess. She was already in the hospital, so they dealt w
ith it immediately.”
“Miss Bessie must be in her seventies now.”
“I don’t think I’ve told you . . .” Hanna hesitated. “Gail’s older daughter, Sandy, knew PJ was planning to leave. I could’ve stopped him, if she’d just let me know.”
“Oh, honey.” And here it came, the motherly hug she’d been waiting for. “You can’t blame Sandy. Can’t blame yourself, either. PJ was always going to do what he was going to do—wasn’t no way of stopping him. That boy had a stubborn streak a mile wide.”
Had?
“He asked me to take him,” Hanna blubbered into her mother’s shoulder. “To Haiti. To meet his father. I didn’t want to.”
“’Course you didn’t. That man was nothing but trouble.”
“But I should have.” A father could change. Del Norris was the living proof. “A boy has a right to know his own father.”
The phone rang. The hug ended.
“Jeremiah,” her mother said, after hanging up.
“I could tell.”
“The two older boys have sore throats and runny noses, so Alicia’s going to stay home with them. It’ll be just Jeremiah and Baby Newton.”
“The Fig.” Better this way, Hanna reasoned. Just one little boy to remind her.
“Don’t you dare call him that.”
And it was fine, really it was. By the time Jeremiah arrived with the baby, Mel was there, too, dressed for the family picnic in a white shirt and a striped tie.
Jeremiah, her Sunday brother when they were growing up, got all teary-eyed the minute he saw her. Hanna was hoping for one of his bear hugs, and he didn’t disappoint.
Her father went out back and lit the coals in the hibachi. “When was the last time you had chili dogs?” he said.
Miami Airport, April 1968. But Hanna was able to smile. “I can’t even remember.”
She helped Jeremiah carry chairs down from the back porch. Beside the gate to the alley, her mother’s rhododendron was blooming. This was where Jeremiah had parked the baby, fast asleep in an infant seat.
The Fig was seven months old. Best thing about him? He didn’t look a bit like PJ.
Beginning with Cannonballs Page 11
