by Greg Lilly
I looked up at him as he talked on the phone. Did his brother really think Valerie had an abortion at sixteen? The math ran through my head, making the room spin. “Daniel.” I shook his shoulder to get his attention.
He put his hand over the receiver and asked, “What?”
“I have to go.” I stumbled, almost knocking over a pile of papers. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“But…” he started as I ran for the stairs.
I DROVE TO Valerie’s condo off Park Road. Her parking space was empty. “She’s home every night of the week, except when I have to talk to her.” I gritted my teeth. Betrayal gnawed at my soul. Valerie. Ruby must have known, too; Walterene surely knew; probably the whole family kept the secret from me. I sat in the parking lot, staring at her brick townhouse, willing her to drive up. After about thirty minutes of waiting and turning over reasons in my mind, I pulled out and drove back to Ruby’s house.
I turned the corner at Sedgefield Road and saw Valerie’s white Honda Accord next to Ruby and Walterene’s American-made cars. Sweat broke out on my lip. I wasn’t prepared to see her. I had thought so, but now I knew I couldn’t face her, couldn’t face my fear. I didn’t really want to hear why. A thousand encounters with Bert Carter, or with Gladys the Bitch, seemed better than what truths Valerie held for me.
Chapter Twenty-six
THE TRUTH, A bitch who pulled no punches, needed to be confronted. The Truth would never let me back into the world I knew before, although that’s exactly where I wanted to be. Calming my breathing, I got out of the car and went into the house. Valerie and Ruby stirred pots and cut vegetables in the kitchen. The sight of them chilled my body; the Truth slid her icy fingers up my spine. I shivered. “Hey, I’m back,” I announced.
Valerie came into the den and hugged me. “Are you okay? Ruby told me what happened.”
My cold clammy hands shook as I pulled away from her embrace. “Yeah, it’s been a bitch of a day.” I reached behind me to find the chair and lowered myself into it. The sum of Kathleen finding me in Mark’s bedroom, being attacked by Bert Carter in the park, realizing Edwina and Roscoe were behind the harassment, and now this, didn’t add up to a red-letter day. My mind and body ached as if one more life-changing event would turn me inside out-and what I knew was inside, the betrayal and anger, would not please anyone.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You’re pale as a ghost.” Valerie wiped her hands on a dishtowel she had tucked in the waist of her jeans, then felt my forehead.
I jerked away from her touch. How could she have lied to me all these years?
“Maybe you need to lie down for a little while,” Ruby offered from the kitchen. “Have you eaten?”
“No,” I mumbled.
Valerie still stood in front of me, staring as if she didn’t recognize the person who sat before her. “Derek, what’s wrong?”
“Well, everything.” I said, the tension in me ready to explode. My head throbbed; my heartbeat felt like it rattled the walls of the house; what little food I had digested during the day tried to creep up my throat. I couldn’t play the game, now that I knew. “Valerie, why did you leave high school your sophomore year?”
The blood drained from her face as she cast her eyes toward the window, then stared at the floor. She didn’t seem to know what to do with herself; frozen intime, maybe memories flooding back, her body didn’tmove. Finally, the trance broke, and she reached for the remote control and clicked off the television, then, with trembling hands, sank into the chair next to mine.
In the kitchen, Ruby turned off the stove and covered a pot, then sneaked back toward her bedroom. Valerie and I settled into the silence and solitude of the den.
I watched Valerie wipe her eyes with the dishtowel. My breathing shuddered my whole body. Trying to calm myself again, I focused on the vase of roses on the coffee table and how the breeze from the ceiling fan fluttered their jagged leaves against the unforgiving thorns jutting from their stems.
A deep sigh signaled Valerie’s intent to say something to break the silence. Her reasons deserved to be heard; hopefully, they could make up for the hurt I felt. I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and dried my hands on my jeans, braced for what she had to say.
“Mother and I went to New York to stay with Uncle Earl,” she began. “You never met him, but he was the youngest of Grandma’s brothers. Our intent was to take care of my pregnancy.”
The word hitme hard. I fished my pack of cigarettes out of my jeans, tapped out two, lit both, and handed one to Valerie. I inhaled deep, letting the smoke fill my lungs and the nicotine absorb into my system.
After a quick hit on her cigarette, she continued, “Uncle Earl took us to a doctor he knew, but in the waiting room, knowing what I was about to do, I couldn’t. Mother and I cried all night.” Valerie glanced up at me, tears spilling down her cheek. “We all knew adoption was out of the question, but a family member could raise the child. Walterene and Ruby popped into our minds first, but the questions from the neighbors and other family members would be too intrusive. Uncle Earl offered to help me with the baby; he always wanted children. The prospect of raising a family in the Village seemed appealing to me at the time. I imagined staying on with Uncle Earl, and together, teaching this child about art, music, life, but Earl was almost sixty and not in good health, and I knew I couldn’t manage the city and raise a child alone. That night, Mom decided she would take the baby and raise him as her own son.”
I noticed the long drooping ash at the end of my cigarette and tapped it into the ashtray between us. Avoiding direct eye contact, I nodded to keep her going.
“Afraid of the stigma, we decided to stay in New York until you were born.”
The finality of hearing her saying “you” brought tears to my eyes that I swiped away with my hand.
“And,” she continued, “tell everyone Mom was pregnant, not me.” She didn’t look up at me, but I saw the tears trickle down her face.
“Mother did come back to Charlotte for weeks at a time during my stay. She wore maternity clothes and had Dad prepare a nursery Tim never knew what was going on. I came home for Christmas starting to show, but covered my secret with bulky sweaters. I told my classmates I attended a private school focused on art, which I did. I can’t begin to tell you how scared and happy I was during that time, walking the city streets with Uncle Earl, the gallery visits, the lectures at NYU, the occasional dinner party, and the theatre every Saturday afternoon.”
I stole a glance at her faint smile of the memory.
She puffed on her cigarette in thought; the tears had stopped. “You were the most popular baby in the Village. Uncle Earl knew everyone, and they were so accepting of a pregnant teenager.” She slipped out of her chair and kneeled next to me, holding my hands in hers. “Derek,” her pleading eyes searched mine, “I’m sorry I never told you. A secret so covered with lies soon becomes the truth to everyone involved.”
Sorrow for the life I never knew, the life I didn’t have with my real mother, the possibility of how things might have been, teemed within me as if the grief would churn my heart into pieces. We held each other and cried. I wanted to say how proud I was that she kept me, how thankful I was for having her in my life, how I didn’t hold anything against her for her decisions. Tears streamed down my face. “I love you, Val.” I couldn’t say any more; sobs of pain for me and for her took over my body.
She stroked my hair. “I meant to tell you when you were old enough to understand, but the timing never seemed right. You left us before I had a chance.”
“Gladys sent me away. No evidence, no crime,” I said; resentment for the Bitch still harbored in my soul.
The words seemed to hit Valerie hard; she pulled back to her chair and wiped her eyes. “I think Mother was afraid you would find out and misunderstand. She wanted to shelter you from the truth. Send you out into the world to be your own person, not someone shaped by the secrets and lies of this family.”
That statement
didn’t hold reality for the person I knew as Gladys. “Who else knows?” I asked, wondering how many people kept the undisclosed truth.
“Walterene, Ruby, and Father,” she answered. “Ruby and Walterene confronted Mother with their suspicions, but held the secret safe. That’s why I worried when you found Walterene’s diaries. She mentions it and says how much she and Ruby wanted you as theirs; in fact, over the years, they helped raise you as much as I did, as much as Mother did.”
“I didn’t see anything about me in the diaries,” I said.
“I took them last Sunday before Edwina and Roscoe came over.” She rubbed her eyes, weary from the conversation.
“Edwina and Roscoe are talking to the police about the man who hurt Ruby and threatened me.” I briefly explained how the phone calls and attacks focused on getting me out of town to avoid hurting Vernon ‘s campaign. I wanted to get back to us, not allowing the stupid antics of family business politics to swerve the discussion away from the words we had avoided for twenty-five years.
“I hate them,” Valerie stated with a flat tone. She looked back to me. “If you didn’t see the diaries, how did you find out?”
I tried to explain as simply as possible. “I read about Mr. Sams. Walterene thought Papa Ernest and Vernon had been part of the lynching.”
Valerie rubbed her forehead and stared at the floor as I talked.
“Daniel didn’t know what I wanted to research at the Observer archives, but thought it had something to do with the family. He did some digging, talked to a few people-specifically, to his brother who was a year behind you in school. I saw Daniel’s notes saying you left school the year I was born.” The pain I saw in her face almost kept me from venturing the next question. “I wasn’t a child of a high school sweetheart, was I?”
“No,” she mumbled.
Fear seized my mind. The truth and shock of who my mother was led to the dread of discovering the identity of my father, and from the secrecy and pain of Valerie’s pregnancy, I could only assume I was a product of rape. Brutality, cruelty, violence, and aggression resulted in my creation. My eyes watched her, posing the question of who the fiend had been.
“No.” She shook her head. “Derek, you know enough.”
Anger stirred in me again. “Val, we got this far; there’s no going back. You owe me the truth. Was it rape?”
She bowed her head letting her dark hair hide her face; her thin body slumped in the chair. For the first time I considered how much we resembled each other; as brother and sister, the fact seemed natural, but as mother and son, I wanted to know why my genes coded me so much a Harris. Papa Ernest had raped his daughter, producing Vernon; could Dad have done the same to his daughter? The thought struck me as ridiculous as soon as it snapped within my brain; the gentleness and kindness of the man I called my father, and Valerie’s devotion to him, cleared him in my mind. But Dad wasn’t my father, he was my grandfather; the question of my biological father persisted. “Val, who?” I couldn’t call the man “my father.” The phrase evoked love, tenderness; this man was a rapist, a child molester; he had raped a fifteen-year-old girl. “Who did it?”
Sobs shook her shoulders. She mumbled something.
I kneeled at her feet, holding her hands in mine as she had done to me a few minutes before. “It’s all right. He can’t hurt you now. Who was it?”
She said the name again.
I couldn’t believe it. “No!”
“Yes,” she cried, ” Vernon, Uncle Vernon raped me!”
Hate boiled in me. “Why is he not in jail? Did the Bitch cover for him? I can’t believe she can even look him in the eyes.”
Valerie cried, “No one knows. I never told anyone. Mother never knew.” She gasped for air between sobs and words. “She thought it was some boy from school. I couldn’t tell her the truth. I was too ashamed.”
“You never confronted him?” Anger tore at my soul, but I tried to be compassionate, to consider her feelings. Surprised she had kept me and not gone through with the abortion, I couldn’t imagine the fear and loathing she must have for the entire family. Gladys supported Vernon ‘s every decision, in the company and for the whole Harris clan. The star and head of the family, he commanded everyone. How could she have pointed to him? No one would have believed her.
“Derek, please! I want this to stay buried,” she pleaded. “It’s history. Nothing can be done now.”
I glanced at the clock: eight fifteen. “Let’s go.” I pulled her hand to help her out of the chair. A movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention; Ruby stood in the doorway crying. She had heard it all. “We’re going to see Gladys,” I told Ruby.
I PULLED UP to the door of the Dilworth house; Valerie sat unmoving beside me. The front porch lights were on, and Dad, Gladys, and Grandma sat in rockers under the breeze of ceiling fans sipping their after-dinner coffee. Gladys stood when she saw me.
Opening the car door for Valerie, I helped her out. The worried look on Gladys’ face as she watched Valerie’s stumbling steps told me she knew the secret was gone. “Gladys, we need to talk,” I said as I climbed the stairs with Valerie.
She didn’t say a word, but rushed to Valerie’s side to help her into the house. Dad and Grandma began to follow, but she said something to make them stay outside. She led Valerie into the back sunroom, away from the presence of Grandma and Dad. “What have you done?” Her accusing eyes slashed into me.
Valerie between us on the couch, I shot back, “Found the truth. The truth you hid. Lies you made up to save yourself embarrassment. You’re a bigger bitch than I ever thought possible.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Gladys seethed. “Leave Valerie here and go.”
“Stop it!” Valerie woke from her daze. “Stop it, both of you.” She got up and grabbed onto a chair from the table to support her weight, then dropped into it. “We’re all we have. I’m sick of the snide remarks and digs you take at each other.” She focused on Gladys. “Mom, Derek knows.”
“What?” She jerked to attention so fast I thought her thin body would snap like a twig. “Knows what?”
Valerie took a deep breath and braced her hands on the table. “And he knows who his father is.”
Gladys looked to me, then back to Valerie; her body still stiff and alert. “Some no-account boy from Myers Park,” she turned to me, “that your sister couldn’t say ‘no’ to.”
I watched Valerie as she shook her head from side to side.
“What do you mean?” Gladys asked. “I thought it was that Watkins boy who played football with Tim. That’s what you told me.”
“I never said who it was. You assumed.” Valerie’s arm trembled from the stress of pressing her hands on the table. She released her grip on the tabletop and crossed her arms in front of her as if to help protect herself from what she was about to say. “One night, when I stayed over at Margaret’s, Uncle Vernon told us we were making too much noise, so he made us sleep in separate bedrooms.”
“Mike?” Gladys jumped to the conclusion it was Margaret and Mark’s brother.
Valerie ignored her and continued, “It happened only once. At first, I hoped and prayed it had been a nightmare.” She watched Gladys perched on the edge of the cushion. ” Vernon,” she began, but Gladys jumped to her feet.
I thought she was going to smack Valerie, so I lunged forward to grab her arm, but Gladys slipped away from me and wrapped herself around Valerie. She held her daughter and rocked back and forth as if Valerie were still a little girl. They both cried. Never having seen this kind of emotion from Gladys, I held my seat, stunned, wondering what they had gone through together: mother and daughter guarding a secret, Gladys not knowing the whole truth, and Valerie too afraid to confide in anyone.
For several minutes, I stayed quiet while they held each other and cried, then I noticed Gladys’ body straighten and return to her normal stiff posture. She guided Valerie back into the chair and then turned to me. “He won’t get away with this.”
<
br /> My spine tingled at the sight of a woman I’d thought I knew. I had expected her to deny it, to cover scandal, to blame me, but her eyes flashed with blue fire, and I knew her anger wasn’t directed at me. Gladys turned back to Valerie and touched her face as if she stroked fine silk. “Stay here,” she commanded with such gentleness it sounded like a question.
I jumped up. “I’m going with you.”
Her eyes flashed at me, then the fire receded. “Take care of your mother. I’ll take care of Vernon.”
“But, I want to be there,” I almost pleaded. “I’m not a child anymore. This is about Valerie and me. I have a right-”
“Okay,” she conceded before I could finish. “But you must control your temper. I know how to deal with him.” She thought for a moment. “Yes, you should be there. He will face what he did to my daughter and me, and to my grandson.”
I smiled at her, glad that she was on my side. We walked out to my car, and I waited while Gladys said a few words to Dad, then I opened the passenger side door. She smiled at my newfound manners for her. The short drive to Vernon ‘s home on Queens Road allowed Gladys time to remind me to let her do the talking and to stay calm no matter what he said. Along the way, I thought about the arguments and tension between us; she had wanted to protect me from this secret, to keep Valerie safe from the rumors and accusing stares of the self-righteous in Charlotte ‘s society. Maybe telling her I was gay years ago had given her the opportunity to force me to leave, have my own life without the shadow of being the bastard child of the Harris family. I glanced at her, hoping she would spill the reasons for our years of discontent, but her own silent thoughts stilled her as we neared Vernon ‘s house.
