“What?!” Jerome jumped to his feet. Beside him, Hippolyta stirred and rose up as well. “How? Where are they?”
Carl related the story that Warren had told him—how Van Owen had taken Terry into a car and was holding him at a Hell’s Kitchen stable—adding at the end, “But you’re not going with me. No one’s home watching Willa and Regina. I kept trying your phone, but you didn’t answer. So I had to come here to get you.”
“Damn! I had my phone off for school and then forgot…”
“I know. Now go home and watch over your family.”
“No. You go watch them,” Jerome argued. “I’m younger than you. I’m stronger than you. He can’t hurt me. You’ve spent years training me. Nothing hurts me, you know that. Let me go. I can take him.”
“No, you can’t. I’ve prepared you to face him in a physical fight because that’s the only thing I can prepare you for, but that’s not how he’s going to come at you. Once he sees that he can’t hurt you with strength, he’ll come at your mind, and you won’t be able to stop him. Now get in the car and go protect your family. That’s your responsibility now.” He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Van Owen wants me. First, he came at me through my wife; now he’s taken my son. He’s gone after two people who couldn’t defend themselves against him, two people who didn’t have any power to fight him. I’ve got to end this now. Your sister and your grandmother need you.”
“Pop…”
“You heard me. If I don’t come back,” he said more softly, “you take the family and leave. Go somewhere far away. Just fade away, change your names, and don’t do anything to attract attention to yourself. That’s what the Merlante did. And that’s what our family has done in this country, and that’s why we’re still around. Take the pickup. Macomb is packed solid because of the game, so take the 145th Street Bridge.”
Jerome lowered his head. He was done arguing. “Be strong, Pop,” he said as he embraced his father.
The hug was uncomfortable for Carl. He’d had so little human contact for so long. Nevertheless, he raised his arms and patted Jerome’s back awkwardly, marveling at how much larger the boy was than the last time he’d held him. “Go on now,” he said. “We’ve lost enough time already.”
Jerome stepped away, nodding, and then he ran outside and jumped in the pickup truck. Carl watched with pride as his son peeled out and headed home to guard the family.
Then Carl ran back to his own car. But as he reached for the door handle, his mind immediately returned to the traffic. How would he make it to Manhattan? “No,” he said aloud, “there’s a way to get there.”
Twenty-Six
The first days and months of motherhood are so very hard. I was blessed with both foresight and eyesight, but now that I have lost the latter, the former has fled as well. The visions are gone. Sometimes over the years, I treated them as a curse, but now I yearn for them. There are times when I wish I could see even my most recurrent one—my wedding—even though I would have to watch my father die yet again. Without the visions, I feel I have lost my connection with my past and my future. My link to my family. Is this how it feels then to be human?
I try not to allow myself to fall into self-pity, though. I have a daughter to raise. Ray gave his life to protect us, and I must honor that sacrifice.
Refusing to live in the dark, I find a way to see again. I learn to use my daughter Rolanda’s eyes as my own. When she is only two, I discover that if I listen to her voice and focus hard enough, I can join with her mind and see—through her eyes. The sensation is strange—going from complete darkness to sight again—and the world looks different from how I remember it. The colors seem brighter somehow, less ominous, making me wonder how the horrors I’ve seen have colored everything about how I view the world.
For much of her youth, I rarely leave Rolanda’s side. Where I go, she goes. This trick makes daily life easier in the short-term, for it is almost as if I’m not blind at all. I have her eyes. But then Rolanda goes to sleep, and once again I can barely make my way through our tiny St. Louis apartment without stumbling into something. Still, I refuse to show my vulnerability by asking anyone for help—or by going to a school for the blind. I must maintain minimal contact with others, for Van Owen could be anywhere. I need money to live on, though, so once Ray’s savings run out, I finally reenter society at large. I train myself to walk with a white stick like any other blind person. And I make a living selling tapestries and quilts that I create myself. Sewing, like so many things, comes easy for me, as if I’ve always known how to do it. I could almost do it blind, but Rolanda’s eyes are always there to assist me. My work is so good that I’m sometimes able to convince tailor shops to send me seamstress work when they have too much on their plates.
I support us like this for years. I even save money. We move often just to be careful—multiple cities in Missouri, West Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana—always using different last names. Rolanda seems content most of the time. She should resent me for sheltering her so, schooling her myself, keeping her home with me perpetually. But she understands about Van Owen. She doesn’t remember him in the hospital room, but she trusts me that he is a threat, that he will return, that he will come after us again. And her trust is enough to keep her at my side.
She trains with me, strengthening her powers, learning how to expand her shield so that it doesn’t cover only her or only us—as it did in the hospital room—but a much larger area, even an entire house. Her power isn’t like mine. It’s not invasive. It doesn’t involve using her mind in the way that I use mine. Still, I worry that Van Owen will sense her if she uses her power too often or too grandly.
By the time she’s in her twenties and has relegated herself to a life as a seamstress at her mother’s side, I finally realize what a disservice I’ve done her. Yes, I’ve kept her safe by sheltering her at home with her old, blind mother, but I’ve also secluded her far too much from the world. Alone with me, she talks a blue streak, but in public, she is silent. I wonder if I’ve been blinder than I realize, if I’ve hidden her so much from life that she doesn’t know how to have one.
I try to convince her to learn another trade, for she isn’t handicapped like I am; she can do more than sew; she need not sit at home with needles and threads and her mother.
“But I like sewing,” she tells me, “and I like being home with you.”
“There’s more to discover, Rolanda.”
“I don’t need more.”
It goes like this for many years. We move, we change our names, we find new buyers for our quilts, new tailors to give us work, and then we move again. Never more than a few years in the same city. Never enough time to let anyone know us too well. Never long enough to leave an impression anywhere.
The Great War comes. I already know how it will end for Americans—hollers of victory even as they stand over scores of graves. I also know it won’t be the last war.
I can feel that odd mixture of fear and euphoria that permeates the minds of men at wartime. I lived through it once already. For Rolanda, though, it is difficult to bear. She has trouble comprehending this senseless urge for battle that puts into question the lofty evolution that man believes he has attained. To combat Rolanda’s sadness, I try anew to convince her to build a life apart from me.
“You should find somebody. A partner.” The words ring hollow, so reminiscent of what my employers told me during the years that I wandered alone across the South.
“I don’t need a partner, Mother.” Her tone is serene, confident even. “You don’t have a partner, and you’re doing fine.”
“I had my partner. I’m an old woman now. You’re still young. You shouldn’t spend your life alone.”
“I’m not alone. I have you.”
“You need more than me. You need to live.” How can I get through to her?
“Mother, let me show you what I’ve learned from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let me show you what I�
�ve gained by staying with you.” She closes her eyes for a moment and then opens them again, her expression strangely empty. “Tell me what I’m thinking.”
I reach out to her mind. Nothing. I take a step toward her. Still nothing. I hold out my hand and take hers. I can feel her palm, her fingers, her warmth, but nothing else. I can’t hear her thoughts. I can’t join my mind to hers.
“Rolanda, how are you doing this? How are you blocking me out?”
“By willing myself to do it. By willing myself to be strong.” There is a giddiness in her voice. “You’re right, mother—you are getting old. Soon you may not be able to protect yourself against him if he comes again.” She doesn’t say his name. She doesn’t need to. “So I’m making myself stronger. I’m going to be so strong that we can go anywhere we want, be anything we want, use our powers any way we want, and he won’t even be able to sense us.”
I want to tell her that she’s wrong. I want to tell her what I know from visions I saw years ago, but I don’t. She needs to live unencumbered by what I know, unencumbered by the knowledge that no matter how hard she trains, no matter how strong she becomes, it won’t be enough.
A few months before her thirtieth birthday, Rolanda makes me promise that we will celebrate by going anywhere she wants. I promise, not guessing what she has in mind. But, as our train heads southward, I know we are headed even before the conductor announces our destination. I want to deny her, but Rolanda has asked so many times about about Van Owen, about the plantation, about slavery. She deserves to see it. Of course, I don’t realize that she has brought us here not for her but for me.
The train ride is interminable. The colored car is hot and packed and airless. I find myself think of my people piled into Van Owen’s ship like cargo, but I don’t tell Rolanda. We don’t speak much during the ride. My thoughts dwell not on what is before us but what happened so long ago. Finally, we reach Raleigh and board a carriage to the coastline—to a town called Cresswell, the closest one I remember. That takes almost another seven hours. Another scorching ride, this time outside, for we have to sit with the coachman. I hold Rolanda’s hand and watch through her eyes as we pass by fields that have become roads, outposts that have become towns, until I see a faded path and I call for the coachman to stop. I can imagine the astonishment on his face, as Rolanda assures him that this is our destination. Then it’s a two-mile walk across lands dry and marsh-like until we are standing in front of what used to be the Van Owen plantation. After the North’s victory in the Civil War, it became a Union army base for a time. It’s a paint factory now, surrounded by a fence, so we can’t even get close. The fields have been paved over with cement, but I can still smell the remnants of what was there once. Perhaps just a sense memory, the sweet aroma of the tobacco leaves wafts through the Southern summer air, bewitching me, and I think about all of it: teenaged Amara climbing half-naked from the carriage, Sam on his knees with Van Owen’s gun pressed to his temple, Harry swinging from the oak tree, his old, swollen hands tied in supplication behind his back. Then I get careless. I forget that while I am connected to Rolanda’s mind, using her eyes to see, my mind is open to her. My memories are unguarded, free for her to see them. I think of that day at the end of the war: Outside, the church is aflame. In the distance, the Union Army is approaching. Inside, Van Owen is on top of me, tearing at my clothing, struggling desperately to take me, to rape me, but failing, forever failing. My victory.
Rolanda gasps. I feel her recoil, breaking her link with me. I stand there, one hand on the hard steel fence, the other on my white stick. Blind again.
“That’s why,” Rolanda says. “That’s why he came after me when I was born. That’s why he’ll keep hunting this family, especially the children.”
I tell her I don’t understand.
“In the hospital, he told you he was angry because he can’t make a woman pregnant. He told you he came after me because he doesn’t want anyone born who’s strong enough to challenge him.” She breathes in sharply as if she has just gleaned something new. “I think there’s more. You gave him this amazing gift—this ability to see into other people’s minds, to make them listen to him, to make them do whatever he wants them to. He needs to tell himself that he despises you. You’re a savage, after all. But I think he loves you for what you gave him.” I am nodding no, opening my mouth to protest, but Rolanda goes on. “He wanted you, Mother. He craved you. He wanted to possess you…to have you—in every way. I could see it in that memory. It was more than desire or lust. It was a hunger.” She pauses, and I hope she’s done, but she isn’t. “I think he hates you for it too, though. I think it tears him up inside that a woman—an African woman—was the one who gave him his power. I think he wants to hurt you because he can’t stand feeling indebted to you. He wants to take and hurt everything that is yours and everything you’ve created.”
We hardly say another word for the remainder of the trip. As she leads me in a circle around the gate, we face due north, and I remember my first carriage ride here along the un-hewed roads, me in the back discovering the scent of the tobacco crop, climbing from the carriage in the tattered garb of a chieftain’s daughter on her wedding day, staring for the first time into the faces of African-Americans.
It’s not until Rolanda is forty-four years old that I sense a change in her. It’s 1930, and I’m eighty-seven years old. We have returned to Georgia so I can show her the apartment where we lived and her father’s store and the hospital where she was born—and where her father died. She likes it here, so we settle down in a small house just outside of Atlanta. We make the rounds to the local tailors to drum up business. For a while, things go on as they always have. We spend most of our time at home alone. We do our sewing; Rolanda delivers our work to the tailor shops. Then it happens finally—she starts spending more time away from the house. I don’t mention that I notice. I pretend that nothing has changed, but I can feel it in her manner: she is lighter, more energetic, more content, elated even. When she tells me, I have to struggle to contain my knowing smile.
“I’ve met someone. His name is William. He’s the tailor at the shop on James Street…”
William. A fine man. I remember him from the visions. “You haven’t told him, have you? About us…about what we can do?”
She doesn’t answer. She hasn’t told him. How could she? Rolanda has spent most of her life cooped up alone with her mother. Now that she has finally fallen in love, why would she take the chance of telling this decent man about our cursed history and our unnatural talents?
Rolanda and William marry at his parents’ home in Savannah in July 1931. I don’t see the ceremony, but I listen. When she says, “I do,” her voice breaks. She cries, and I cry with her. For a moment, a vision comes to me—my first one since the blindness. I feel as if I’ll crumble to the ground, so I clutch the armrests of my chair as I watch: I am in a cabin in the mountains somewhere. Rolanda is pregnant, lying on the bed, writhing in pain. She shouldn’t be hurting this much. Something is wrong.
“Mother,” Rolanda says in the present, her hand on my shoulder. “Would you like to dance with your son-in-law?”
“I won’t take no for an answer,” says William.
His arms are strong, and I have grown smaller. He practically carries me across the dance floor like a child. He’s talking, but I can’t hear him over the vision, which plays again and again in my mind.
Rolanda is seven months pregnant when the news comes. I grab her hand as she goes for the door. I have already read the thoughts of the policeman who stands on the other side. “Are you Rolanda Harris?” he asks. She tells him yes. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I have bad news for you. Your husband, William Harris, was killed earlier this evening. He was struck by a delivery wagon on his way home…”
Rolanda doesn’t make a sound, but I can feel that she is no longer standing beside me. She is on the floor. When I kneel to her, she is on her side, shaking, rocking, trying to speak.
<
br /> I lie down beside her. I hold her. I place her head on my lap and stroke it for hours without saying a word. And I hope that she won’t ask the question. Finally, of course, she does.
“Did you…did you…?” She doesn’t finish, but I know what she was trying to ask.
I don’t answer. She doesn’t need me to. She knows the answer. She also knows that her child will endure what she did—growing up without ever knowing her father. And Rolanda will endure what I did—growing old without a partner. Somehow this shared loss allows her to recover her senses. Her breathing grows steadier. The tears stop coming. And she asks, “Where do we go next?”
We don’t sleep that night. We begin packing. We will stay in Atlanta for the funeral, but not another day afterward. We won’t live in this place where we lost our husbands. I convince her to let us go somewhere secluded, somewhere that the child can be born safely. We choose South Carolina. We rent a one-room cabin in a town called Shady, far from civilization, near the state’s southern border. On the road there, in William’s Model-T, Rolanda, who has taken care never to ask me about the future, finishes the question. “How much did you know?”
I think carefully before I respond, as I don’t want my answer to lead to more questions, ones that I will not answer. “I suspected it. I had seen things. At your wedding, I had a vision of your child being born, but William wasn’t there. Knowing how much he loved you, I knew he wouldn’t have missed that moment for anything.”
“The baby? Will everything be okay?”
“The baby will be fine,” I tell her, not lying. “I’ve seen her. She’s beautiful.”
“Her? It’s a girl?” I nod. “Then I’d like to name her after William. She’ll be Willa.”
“Yes, that’s a lovely name.” A name I’ve known for some time.
“Where was she? In your vision, where was she?”
Chains of Time Page 19
