It was in this atmosphere that Rodney found himself in the middle of Saigon, with Ho Chi Minh, the communist president of North Vietnam, pressing down from the North and the Viet Cong leading the rebels from the South.
Feb 1, 1975
Dear Susie,
I've been attached to the embassy in Saigon. It looks like we might be coming home before the year is out. At least I hope so. It's hot and rainy here, but I'm in a building with electricity and running water. That's something. I can't tell you anything about what we do every day. It's top secret.
My dad says Jeffrey is doing well. He's been recuperating at home and is even shooting some hoops with the neighborhood gang. Dad says he improves every day. We are all hoping he will be normal when his recovery is complete. I know he wants to return to Southern University and finish law school.
I've been thinking about us a lot since I've been here. I miss you more than anything. There has to be a way for us. I love you. You must still love me. Please give me some hope that, when I return from this godforsaken place, you'll give me another chance.
I hope you are doing well in New York, loving your job, making lots of friends. I want you to be happy. That would make me happy.
I look forward to your letters.
Yours, forever,
Rod
I didn't know how to respond. There had been some positive changes in south Louisiana with the election of a new sheriff, but not enough change that a black man could marry a white woman and get away with it. I felt Rodney must have lost his mind on another continent and had forgotten about the danger to his family, and the fact that he had chosen their safety over our love.
February 13, 1975
Dear Rod,
Thank you for your newsy letter. I enjoy hearing from you.
I crumpled that letter up and threw it in the trashcan and started over.
Dear Rod,
Top secret sounds intriguing. I'm happy Jeffrey is doing well. I am well and like my job in publishing. I continue to work on the Catfish stories and hope to find a publisher this year.
I'm not sure about hope or happiness; I gave up on both when I lost you.
Always,
S
February 21, 1975
Dear Susie,
Surely you haven't given up on us. I haven't. I never will. Once this war is over and I'm back stateside, I'm coming to see you. I know we can make it work. We still love each other and that's all that counts.
I miss you every day.
Yours forever,
Rod
March 1, 1975
Dear Rodney,
I'm sorry I can't bring myself to believe your promises that things have changed enough for a colored guy and a white girl to be married, or to even have any kind of relationship. Love is not everything. If we've learned nothing over the past nine years, it's that.
I hope you are safe and that you are able to get back to the US soon.
Always,
Susie
March 18, 1975
Dear Susie,
This war will end and I will show up on your doorstep. We can't be kept apart.
Yours forever,
Rod
April 1, 1975
Dear Rod,
There's more than a war keeping us apart. When you get home, you'll come to your senses and realize that.
Always,
Susie
In April, I read in the newspaper that a helicopter operation to transport more than 2,000 orphans and others out of Vietnam had been successful, but that one of the helicopters crashed killing 155 people. I panicked, wondering if Rodney was on that chopper. A few days later, the news reported that more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees had been evacuated to US ships in the South China Sea. Surely they'd send Rodney home if everyone was leaving the country.
I didn't receive any letters from Rodney for several weeks, then, the second week of May, there were three in my mailbox. He said he was on a ship called the USS Blue Ridge and that he'd been one of the last to get out of Saigon. He had evacuated with the Ambassador, Graham Martin, who was technically the field officer in charge after the US ground troops were gone.
"Brave man, that Martin," Rodney said in his letter. "He was one of the last to evacuate and only did so under orders from President Ford. The pilot of the helicopter, Gerry Berry, had the orders written in grease pencil on his kneepads. It was surreal."
Rodney said it was five o'clock in the morning when they boarded the last helicopter to leave Saigon. "We left more than four hundred people, Vietnamese and South Koreans, in the embassy. We don't know what will happen to them. Ambassador Martin is bereft with grief and was pleading with the helicopter pilots to return to the embassy to pick up the few hundred remaining hopefuls waiting to be evacuated.
"I don't know whether they'll send me back to the States or somewhere else while they wrap this thing up. I technically still have another year to serve."
His letters all ended with this:
I want to see you when I get home. Say you'll let me come to New York for a visit. I miss you.
Yours forever,
Rod
I wrote to him to say how happy I was that he made it out of Vietnam alive. And I was happy. But I couldn't let myself get pulled back into hope. Hope was a useless emotion.
May 15, 1975
Dear Susie,
I'm stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, where, of all things, they are training troops to fight in Vietnam. I wonder about the Army sometimes.
I wonder about you, too. I've put off taking the two weeks leave I've accumulated. I want to come to New York to see you if you will tell me what dates will work.
I miss you and love you. I hope you still love me.
Yours forever,
Rod
I was in the park with Rodney's letter on my lap trying to decide how to respond when Josh appeared out of nowhere. I hadn't seen or talked to him since he gave me Lilly's address.
"Hi." He sat next to me, but far enough away that we weren't touching.
"Are you stalking me?" I looked at him and he was staring at the letter opened on my lap. I quickly folded it and put it in my pocket.
"Still holding on to that guy from Louisiana?"
"No. And answer me—did you follow me here?"
"I come here often to feed the gulls. I've seen you here a number of times and didn't speak to you. So, no. I'm not stalking you or following you." We sat silently for several minutes and Josh started to feed the black-backed gulls. He stood and scattered popcorn on the concrete and they gathered around the white kernels near his feet.
I watched, mesmerized for a while. He returned to the bench and put both his arms on the back, one of his hands grazing my shoulder.
"Would you go to dinner with me sometime?" He didn't look at me, just spoke to the breeze that was blowing the leaves softly against the sky.
"I guess so." I remembered how safe I always felt with Josh, with no pressure.
"You don't have to be so enthusiastic." He was laughing, and that made me laugh, too. We made a date for the following Saturday evening and he left the park.
When I got home, I re-read Rodney's letter that ended with:
I want to come to New York to see you if you will tell me what dates will work.
Yours forever,
Rod
I sat at my desk and tried to put into words what I was feeling.
May 25, 1975
Dear Rod,
I can't see you again. The last time was too painful. It's still painful, losing you. I can't to do it again. This has been a pattern—you saying we can make it work, then something happens to blow our world apart. One thing maturity has taught me is to learn from the past; it repeats itself.
Use your leave to visit your family. Start a new life. It will never work out for us.
I’m trying to move on. Please let me…
Always,
S
Having Josh back in my life helped me to move on from Rodney, to be brave and smart, not to let him come back then leave me again.
A door opened just a crack in my heart and I began to be honest with Josh. I told him about Rodney going to Vietnam and wanting to come to see me.
"Are you going to see him?" Josh was stirring cream into his coffee a few days later when we met near the hospital where he worked.
"No." I explained why our relationship had ended, how the Ku Klux Klan and my dad did everything they could to keep Rodney and me apart. I told Josh how Rodney and I were able to see each other when I was at LSU when I was a freshman, and Rodney was at Southern University, both colleges in Baton Rouge. I told Josh that my dad sensed something was going on and sent me to Sarah Lawrence after my first semester.
"Rodney and I didn't see each other for a long time, almost two years, then he showed up in New York the fall of my junior year." I spoke softly as if by whispering my words would go unheard.
"Does he know about Lilly?"
"No. Of course not."
"You never told him?" Josh looked at me like I was lying, but I just shook my head side to side.
"It happened when he was here in New York that fall. I had just turned eighteen. He was twenty. We didn't see each other again until after college graduation, another three years."
"Why didn't you tell him?"
"It's too complicated." We didn't talk any more that day, but Josh didn't run away after he heard my story. It didn't bother him that Rodney was colored. He glazed over that.
A month or so later, we were at a restaurant near the park and he asked about my dad. Our conversation became very strained because I was evasive about my relationship with my father.
"I don't know what to tell you. He's very controlling and he was determined that I not be involved with a Negro."
"He found out about Rodney?"
"I don't know what he knew, but he found out I went to the Quarters to see Catfish, and he beat me."
"Beat you? How bad?""
"Bad." It took a number of conversations over several months before I was able to tell Josh everything about how my dad beat me, sometimes so badly I had to be hospitalized. And that once, I'd almost died. Those stories came out in spurts. I would start to tell him about a time Daddy barged into my room in the middle of the night, then I couldn't say any more. A few weeks later, we'd pick up on a story like that and I'd go a little further. I thought that once Josh found out how I was raised, abused, beaten, he'd desert me. I felt like that would be more than he could stomach.
"I didn't leave you when you were pregnant by some unnamed guy. I didn't leave you when I discovered he was colored. Why would I leave you now?"
"Everyone leaves at some point."
"Not this person. Not Josh Ryan." He reached across the table and took both of my hands and looked directly into my eyes. His pupils were small and the green surrounding them was almost emerald when the light from the pendant lamp above the table bounced off them. A soft, brown curl fell on his forehead above his left eyebrow and gave him a rakish look. I thought, if I'd let myself, I could fall for this guy, but I couldn't take the chance of being hurt again. "I'm in this for the long haul," he said in his most sincere voice.
"Even after you know all the gory details of my life?"
"Even after all that. And more. Try me."
"You walked out on me once."
"You were in love with someone else. I couldn't compete."
"How do you know I'm not still in love with him?" I think I was asking myself that question, too.
"I think I know. The question is, do you know?"
"I'm not sure. It's been a long time."
"And you've changed, right? Grown?"
"Yes, I think so. I don't know whether the person I am today would still love the person he is."
"Maybe you should find out."
"How?"
"See him."
That made me stop to think. How long had it been since I'd seen Rodney? More than a year; May 1974. And before that it had been three years. Should I write to Rodney and agree to see him, or should I continue to try to forget him, to let myself fall for Josh Ryan?
That question was answered for me when I wrote to Rodney and told him he could come to New York at Thanksgiving. He wrote back to say he was sorry, but he had taken his leave and gone to Jean Ville. It would be another six months before he could take an extended vacation.
"Why don't you come to Kansas? You can stay in a hotel and I can see you in the evenings," he wrote.
I tore up his letter and threw it in the trashcan. I didn't write back.
Chapter Ten
***
Josh
Josh and I saw each other once or twice a week and talked on the phone almost every day. I'd forgotten how comfortable and easy it was to be with him.
I told Emma that I was seeing a man named Josh Ryan, and asked her if it would be all right if Lilly met him. I explained how he had been with me during my pregnancy and had been the doctor who delivered Lilly.
"Oh, he's that good-looking white doctor with the longish hair who came into the waiting room to tell us that the baby was a healthy girl. Of course I remember him."
"I didn't know he did that. But, yes, he's the one."
"Sure. You can introduce Lilly to Josh."
Josh met Lilly and me in the park one Wednesday afternoon. He was dressed in jeans and an aqua polo shirt with a black windbreaker over the top. It was windy and his hair blew over his collar. The waves fell on his forehead, making him look like a little boy. He bent to kiss me on the cheek then got down on one knee so he could be eye-level with Lilly. She threw her arms around his neck and said, "Uncle Josh!" I watched the exchange with utter disbelief.
They played chase for a while and Josh handed her a bag of popcorn so she could feed the black-backed gulls. While Lilly was occupied, Josh sat next to me. I turned with a jerk.
"You and Lilly know each other? All this time we've talked about her and you never told me. What?"
"Emma, Joe, and I thought we'd keep it under wraps until you suggested we meet. How do you think I've kept up with you?"
"You know Emalene and Joe?"
"After Lilly was born we kept in touch. I'd lost you but I didn't want to lose the baby, too. I felt like I had nurtured her in the womb and was like a surrogate father."
"I feel betrayed. Lied to."
"No one has lied to you. Yes, there were things we didn't tell you—that Emalene, Joe, Lilly, and I have been friends for almost five years. After all, you are the one who refused to respond to the pictures I sent you. Then, six months ago you just decided to waltz into their lives and now you are angry with me, with Emma and Joe?"
"So this is a set-up?" I felt the same way I'd felt years before when I discovered that my dad had been fooling around with Tootsie since before I was born and that nobody—not Tootsie, not Catfish, not even Marianne—had told me. When I shared my feelings about that situation with Rodney, he told me that no one meant to betray me; it was about them protecting themselves and had nothing to do with me personally.
"I don't want to think about him," Marianne had said. That's when I realized why she was so light-skinned and had wavy hair and hazel eyes. Her dad was white. Her dad was my dad. I had felt betrayed because everyone in the Quarters knew about the affair between Tootsie and my dad, and kept it from me.
I wondered whether this was similar, whether I was taking it as a personal affront when it had nothing to do with me.
I sat and sulked while Josh and Lilly laughed and played. Every now and then Lilly would grab my hand and try to get me to join in their fun, but I'd say, "I'm tired right now. You go on and play with Uncle Josh."
The three of us got burgers and fries at McDonald’s—Lilly's favorite place—then she and I rode the bus to Springfield Gardens. Joe put Lilly to bed while Emma and I had a cu
p of tea in the kitchen.
"You didn't tell me about Josh," I said.
"What was there to tell? He started coming around soon after we brought Lilly home. He's been a dear friend all these years."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"You never asked."
"Emma. That's not fair. You told Josh where to find me."
"After I realized it was over between you and Rodney, I mentioned to Josh that I felt you might need a friend. He took it from there."
"I feel betrayed. By you. By Josh. By Joe. I'm hurt."
"I'm really sorry you're hurt. None of us meant for that to happen. We didn't know what to expect from you, really. For four years Josh sent you pictures of Lilly and none of us heard from you. Then you showed up six months ago. We decided to trust you. Trust that you won't walk out on Lilly. Trust that you are sincere. But Josh… well he has been with us day in and day out since Lilly was born. I'm not sure how we are supposed to divide our loyalties."
I didn't spend the night with Lilly that Wednesday like I had from time to time. I wanted to be alone, to think.
The next morning, after very little sleep, I called Josh. "Are you working today?"
"I'm off all weekend."
"Can we talk?"
Josh picked me up and we went to a café close to my apartment.
"She's something," he said after we sat across from each other in a booth. The smell of frying onions and burgers filled the air and we didn't say much while we waited for the waitress to bring our drinks.
"Yes, she is, isn't she?"
"I can tell you're smitten."
"Does it show?" I laughed, knowing Josh could see right through me and was teasing me. I watched him sip his beer and it hit me, suddenly, how much I'd come to rely on having him in my life again. I thought about how easy it was with Joe and Emma, who were now like family to me, and how Josh fit right in. I'd had a long talk with myself about not being defensive and making everything about me.
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