Caucasia

by Danzy Senna

  Her eyes blinked open, and she stared at me, terrified for a moment. I must have seemed to her the ghost of some child she once had known.

  “Grandma, it’s just me, Birdie.”

  She frowned and said, “What time is it?”

  “Late.”

  She maneuvered herself onto her elbows and stared at me. Her hair was still in a bun, though loosening, and the stray hairs made her seem younger, softer. She wore a flannel nightgown, and a few buttons at the top had come open so I could see her collarbone, the delicate frame.

  “What do you want? Why aren’t you asleep?” She clicked on the light beside her, and we both blinked at its harshness. She saw what I was wearing—her dead husband’s coat—and stiffened.

  I hacked into my hand. “Grandma, please, could you give me the money? For a ticket.”

  She was fully awake now and was fiddling with her hair, trying to get it back into a bun.

  “I’ve said no already, Birdie. This is outrageous. You waking me up like this. And why the hell have you got on Arthur’s coat? Good God. You’d think this was a madhouse.”

  I blinked, about to cry, though I knew I wouldn’t, couldn’t. That wasn’t part of my plan. I took a deep breath and said, “Listen, Grandma, I love you. But I don’t belong here. I have to go now.”

  “But where will you go?”

  “I need money to get to Oakland. Just enough to get there. One way. I know they’re there. And I know you have the money.” I paused and took a deep breath before saying it. “I’ll tell you where she is.”

  She knew what I was talking about. Immediately. She said, “Your mother.”

  I nodded. I had my hands in my pockets now and was crossing my fingers where she couldn’t see them. “Yes. If you’ll give me the money. And I promise I’ll be careful.”

  She sighed and looked out at the darkness beyond her lace curtains. Above her bed, she had a portrait, a sketch someone had done of Randall when he was in his twenties, when he was suavely handsome and had the world at his feet. He was sitting with a younger version of the family dog between his legs, a vague beach setting behind them.

  She was quiet for a while. She was staring at me, considering my offer. Finally she said, with a slight note of approval, “You’re a cold child.”

  We padded down to the study together. I remembered that she always kept cash handy in the safe, lots of it, ever since the Depression. I recalled how when I was little, my mother had told us to remember the combination, the birth year of Increase Mather, Cotton’s father. But now, standing before the safe, the date escaped me.

  My grandmother was quiet while she opened the safe, then pulled out the jewelry box. In it sat the family collection, a row of sparkling rings and necklaces and brooches. She had promised me something from that selection long ago. A ring, a pulsing red garnet. She had taken me, alone, into that little room on one of our afternoon visits, while my mother and sister played in the backyard. And she had whispered to me that it was our secret. That the ring was mine to keep someday. That it was worth a lot and was a Mather family heirloom. Something to be proud of. I remember feeling stung that she hadn’t brought Cole in as well, that she hadn’t had a ring for her.

  She was pulling the jewelry drawer out now, to reach a false bottom. There was more money in there than I had expected. Twenties and fifties and hundreds. Rolls of them. She counted out six hundred and handed it to me. Enough, she said, to get me to California and back.

  As she was packing up the jewels again, her eyes fixed on the garnet ring. She said, “That’s yours, you know. I’ve saved it for you.”

  I nodded. She picked it up and turned it over in her fingers. “It’s worth a lot. If I give it to you, you won’t sell it, will you? That would be foolish.”

  I shook my head no. Really, I wasn’t sure. It depended on what happened to me in Oakland.

  She handed it to me and said, “Good. You’re cold, but not foolish.” It was too big for my ring fingers, so I put it on my thumb, where it fit but looked gaudy and fake.

  She smiled weakly. “You can get it adjusted to fit. You’re thin. That’s good. Stay that way.”

  After she had locked everything away, she turned to me, and her expression had changed. She wanted her payback. Her tone was businesslike, formal. “Now, give me her address. And her phone number.”

  I bit my nails and looked around the room, fixing my eyes on the picture of Cole and me. Then she handed me a pad and a pen and folded her arms across her chest, daring me to refuse her.

  I wrote an address. Not my mother’s address, but one I made up. It was in Woodstock, and we had driven through there only once. I had to make up a street and a house number. The phone number I gave her was for nobody I knew. I felt a little guilty, but figured I’d contact my grandmother later, explain myself when I was out of her reach.

  She held the slip of paper far from her face so she could read it, frowning at the words there. “Woodstock. Yes, I guess that’s the sort of place she would end up.”

  She went to the kitchen to call the airlines, but returned a few minutes later to announce that there were no seats available till the next day. I blinked, surprised, somehow, though I should have known. I had thought that if only I could get the money, I would magically be transported to my father’s doorstep. I had forgotten about the more practical matter of reservations.

  My grandmother said she didn’t mind keeping me another day; she said we’d call my mother together later, in the afternoon.

  “Of course, you should be the one to speak to her first, so I don’t scare her, calling her out of the blue.”

  I had to think fast. I had never flown before, but I knew enough about airports to be able to say I’d go standby. “I’ll just wait at the airport until I can get on a flight. I’ll wait all day if I have to,” I said, sounding a little too eager. “I want to go today. I have to go today.”

  My grandmother shook her head, beginning to protest. But she must have seen some flash of desperation on my face, because after a moment she just shrugged. “Well, then, I suppose I’d better call a car service. Lord only knows how long you’ll have to wait at that horrible place.”

  When everything was in order, she asked if she could fix me breakfast. “A crumpet and some tea? You look terribly weak, dear. You need something in your stomach.”

  I was hungry, but I told her I couldn’t linger. It was already past six o’clock, and if I was going to catch a flight today, I needed to go now. I was jittery, worried that she’d figure out my lie before I left and take all the money back. I told her I’d call her from California, so she’d know I was safe.

  When I came out of the study and into the hall, the cat, Delilah, sat on the steps, switching her tail, watching me with a playful stare, wondering why her mistress was up so early. She came to me and rubbed herself against my grandfather’s cashmere, purring loudly. My grandmother watched, grimly. She said, “She recognizes Arthur’s smell on the coat.”

  She seemed sad that I was leaving; her eyes were glistening. I didn’t expect Randall came to visit her much. I told her, holding her hand in mine, that I would be back. “Cole and I, we’ll come visit you this summer.” I sounded more sure of it than I was.

  She smiled a little. “You two were so close. You couldn’t be with one without the other. You must miss her terribly to be doing this.”

  Then the Boston Coach beeped outside, my chariot to the airport. I glimpsed the car out the window. A gleaming black sedan with a man in uniform in the driver’s seat. It looked a little like the Fed car my mother had described would come to get her someday.

  I kissed my grandmother on the cheek, lightly. She held me close to her for a moment and said, “Please, be careful.” There was a note of panic in her voice. I was surprised at how sad I was to be leaving her.

  Then I left, moved forward, pulling the heavy oak-paneled door closed behind me as I trudged down the steps and into the blue-white morning.

  wonders of the
invisible world

  Everything I had was in my shoe—a roll of my grandmother’s cash pressed into the sole of my flat foot, creating an arch where there had been none. My last words to Dot had been that I’d return in a few hours. The evening had come and gone, and the night had passed, and the day was half over. I had finally made it on to a three-o’clock flight.

  I’d spent most of the day loitering around the gate, eating junk food from the nearby vending machines, and watching strangers come and go. I’d also tried my father’s number—six times, collect—and each time there was no answer. It was a strange relief. I didn’t want to find out that he had moved, that this was the wrong address. If it was, I would have to go back, tail between my legs, to my grandmother. If she didn’t know by now, she would probably know soon enough that Woodstock was a lie.

  There were a few minutes left before boarding time. I had to call Dot. I had been avoiding it. I knew I should have contacted her earlier, that she would be worried sick that I had been missing since yesterday.

  I expected no answer. It was two-thirty, and she was supposed to be at work, but she picked up the phone on the first ring and there was a thickness in her voice as she said, “Yes?”

  I began to talk in a rush of words, an attempt to keep the conversation on an up note, as I explained to her all that I had learned since I’d last seen her. I relayed to her the news Ronnie had told me, and then, when she didn’t respond, I attempted a laugh and told her I had tricked my grandmother.

  “Do you do this to all the people you love?” It was a voice she had never used with me before. “Just like your father. Don’t even bother to say good-bye.”

  “I’m sorry, Dot. I didn’t mean to make you worry. I’m sorry I didn’t call. But I’ve got his address now. I know where to find them.”

  She seemed only vaguely interested in my father’s whereabouts, even less so in my encounter with my grandmother, and said only, “Birdie, why are you chasing ghosts?”

  I was quiet and played with the metal phone cord. I watched the people milling about, businessmen on this flight west. They wore coats similar to mine, similar to my grandfather’s, which I still hadn’t taken off, despite the fact that I was beginning to sweat underneath.

  When I didn’t answer, she said in a whisper, so quietly that I barely heard it: “What possible excuse could Deck have for this?”

  I had no answer. I hadn’t dared to ask myself that, and could say only, “I don’t know, I’m going to find out.”

  She said, authoritative now, “Listen. Come home. We’ll work something out here. You can baby-sit for Taj, help me out around the house. We’re your family, girl. Don’t you know that?”

  These were the words I had wanted her to speak over the past few weeks. But I was learning that people didn’t invite you to stay until you were gone. And hearing her ask me now, from the other end of a pay phone while I waited for the announcement of US Air flight 237, I knew it was too late. The comfort of Dot’s home, Taj’s fingers in my hair in the morning, the familiarity of that old city of Boston, were not enough. I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut so tightly I saw spots. I had started in motion, would stay in motion until I hit the truth or a wall, whichever came first.

  “I know you’re family, Dot. But I gotta go. Find them. Find out why. You know?”

  She sighed then, resigned to my foolishness, not angry anymore, just dubious. “You call me when you get there, now. And your little ass better be careful.” A sigh of something held back. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

  Later, up in the sky, strapped down, a sweating plastic cup of Coke in front of me, I wondered, not for the first time since I left my grandmother’s house, if I was, as Dot would say, “acting the fool.” The fact that my father had been back in America since 1977 and had not seemed to want to find me was something that would be difficult to explain. Dot’s question kept returning to me, even as I tried to block it out: What possible excuse?

  But something told me to keep moving in this direction. It was partly the knowledge that there was no other direction in which to go. It was also a memory that kept coming back to me now. A memory of something that had never happened, something I could see all the same. My sister, wet-faced but dry sobs coming from deep within her chest as she grieved for her mother, for her sister. I could see her on a night in Brazil, foreign words—Portuguese, not Elemeno—filling the warm dark air around her, while she wondered where we were, why we had let the split happen. I saw her looking at Carmen one morning over breakfast and saying to herself, “You’re not my mother. I want my mother.” She wanted hard-boiled eggs out of chipped Lodge teacups and to sit in our mother’s lap, which she imagined still to be wide and soft. She wanted to have my mother read her favorite book aloud, Stuart Little, while I pranced around in front of their twin serious solid forms, trying to get their attention. They had been mother and daughter once. I was not the only one who had been left behind.

  The man next to me looked Indian. He was reading a book and occasionally sipping the water in front of him, clearing his throat. He wore a business suit with expensive cufflinks, and his hair was neat and shimmering black. He smelled strongly of cologne. For the first hour of the trip, he kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. When I’d feel him watching me, I’d frown at him and he would look away, nervously. He was in his thirties, and I doubted he was hitting on me, but I wasn’t sure. I wished my mother were with me, that I could take her hand and lean in to her and say, “Mum, that guy next to me, he’s creeping me out.” And she wouldn’t even need to do much. Her expression would be enough to scare him. She’d just lean forward and say, “Listen, man, you looking at my daughter?” She’d done it before. And the man would see something in her expression, something he knew he’d better not mess with. Something he didn’t think fit with her blond hair and blue eyes and slender shape and aquiline features. And he would back off.

  He was staring at my face, hard, as if he knew me. I turned to him and tried to assume my mother’s hardest expression. He didn’t turn away this time. Instead, he began to chatter to me in what sounded like Elemeno. It took a second for me to realize he was speaking his own language. And he was fully convinced that I would understand. He was asking me the same question, repeating it, with an expectant, friendly smile.

  “Sorry, mister,” I finally said. “I don’t speak it. I speak English.” Not only did I not speak his language—whatever it was—but I didn’t speak Spanish or French either. My mother had left that out of our lessons.

  The man raised his eyebrows, and said, “Oh, pardon me. I thought you were Pakistani. Indian?”

  “Nope, neither,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, I’m American.”

  He laughed. “No, but where are you really from? Your ancestors. Where are they from?”

  “Everywhere. I mean, before they got here, I guess they were from England and Africa. My mom’s white. Dad’s black.”

  His expression changed slightly. I had disappointed him, deeply. He had been homesick and had seen his home in my face. Now he turned away, no longer interested.

  As I looked out the window and waited to land, it struck me that in all our wanderings, my mother had stayed fairly close to home. The farthest we had ever traveled was to Quebec for a few months when she claimed she could feel the FBI closing in on her and needed to make herself disappear. Mostly, we had kept to the eastern seaboard. We had never been to California, despite the fact that so many of her friends had gone there “after the drop.” She said the West was where people went to make themselves over, to transform. But she hadn’t taken us that far. She had New England in her blood and was like a child who runs away to the backyard of her very own home. I wondered if my father had come to the West to transform himself. Or simply to avoid me and my mother.

  I slept fitfully for the rest of the plane trip. I dreamed that I was in India, wading in a river, pregnant, and that I knew I was supposed to be happy, being so far from the mess of Americ
a, but that I wasn’t. Really, I missed someone, though I wasn’t sure who, exactly, it was. My tears fell into the river, flowing away to the ocean. The dream deteriorated into a series of disconnected images. My flower-print underwear that I had worn the first day I got my period at Aurora, the faint brown stain in the crotch that I couldn’t remove no matter how many times I washed it. Me walking across my father’s back, trying to push the air out of his lungs. Bernadette smoking a cigar on the porch of the big commune house, while my mother, cross-legged a few feet away, tried to cornrow her own hair. The smell of someone’s neck—I couldn’t tell if it was Ali or Alexis or Nicholas—but it smelled good.

  I woke up with the businessman beside me staring at me with a furrowed brow. He said, “You were talking in your sleep.” I couldn’t tell from his expression if he had understood what I had said. I hoped I hadn’t given anything away.

  I looked beyond his face, out the window. From behind the puff of clouds, something green and brown and expansive was emerging. We were dropping in altitude. The stewardess spoke in a pleasant drawl over the intercom, telling us to fasten our seat belts, straighten our chairs, put up our tray tables, to prepare for landing.

  I NEVER ACTUALLY SAW the cabdriver’s face head-on, only a sliver of it in the rearview mirror. There was a wall of plastic separating us. I stuck the address on the napkin into the change box and pushed it through to him. I half-expected him to tell me that the address didn’t exist, but instead he winked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “Sure thing.” And then we were off. I had decided not even to try my father’s number again. There seemed to be no point.

  The sky was the color of smoke without fire—charcoal, billowing, full. The rain was just a mist against the windshield, something that barely needed wiping. I recalled something my mother had once said as we had driven along an empty highway that took us away from Maine. It had been past midnight, and Carly Simon had been playing on the tape player. I had been half-asleep beside her but had heard her say, “America’s a good place to get lost.” She had said it wistfully.