P. G. County

by Connie Briscoe

  “Mama, get real, I’d take that car in any color.”

  Jolene chuckled and put her arm around Juliette. At the last minute Patrick had said he would be late for Thanksgiving dinner with the family and that he would meet them at her mother’s house. It had something to do with David Manley’s campaign for the P.G. County executive seat. But Jolene couldn’t be bothered with the details. She despised politics and was still hoping that Patrick would soon come to his senses.

  Jolene’s mother answered the door wearing a white lace apron over a tailored cranberry-colored coat dress. It was the perfect outfit for Thanksgiving Day.

  “Here they are,” Mama said cheerfully. She kissed Jolene and Juliette both on the cheek as they stepped into the foyer. Mama was hanging up their coats when Jackie came out of the kitchen looking immaculate in a smart navy suit and heels, with her naturally long hair swept up in a neat French twist.

  Jolene smoothed the skirt to her own red silk cocktail dress after they all embraced. She had spent hours trying to pick the perfect outfit and fussing with her hair weave, and still it felt all wrong. It was too dressy. She should have worn one of her simple, chic St. John knits instead of this stupid thing. Oh hell. She could never do anything right when it came to this family.

  “Where’s Patrick?” Mama asked.

  “He’s coming later,” Jolene replied. “He had a conference call.”

  “On Thanksgiving Day?” Jackie asked, her eyebrows raised in surprise. “He sounds awfully busy.”

  “Daddy’s into politics now,” Juliette said with pride. That was OK, Jolene thought. Even if she didn’t like the idea, it was the kind of thing Jackie would approve of.

  Jackie raised an eyebrow. “Oh? That’s interesting. What’s he doing?”

  “He’s working on David Manley’s campaign for county executive,” Jolene said casually. “I don’t know much more than that. You’ll have to ask him to fill you in when he gets here. I’m focusing on the house we’re building in Maryland.”

  Jackie’s eyes lit up. “Mama had just mentioned that when you rang the doorbell. Where is it? In Montgomery County?”

  “No. It’s in P.G.,” Mama said before Jolene could open her mouth.

  “Oh. So you’re going to stay over there in P.G. County?” Jackie murmured.

  Jolene twisted her lips. The way Jackie said it, you would have thought someone had farted. Some people thought all of Prince George’s County was the dumps simply because a lot of blacks lived there. Many whites avoided it like the plague, but worse than that to her mind, some uppity blacks did, too. Like her folks. They didn’t understand that the county was full of contrasts—from the upscale communities like Silver Lake to the depressed areas inside the beltway. Jolene wanted others to realize that she didn’t live in the hood, but more than that she didn’t want her daughter to be ashamed of where they lived.

  “In the community where we’re building,” Jolene said haughtily, “some of the homes go for a million or more. It’s very nice there.”

  Jackie and her mother exchanged glances full of doubt.

  “Mama, you’ve seen them,” Jolene said. “Some of the houses are very nice, especially on the northern side of Silver Lake, aren’t they?”

  Mama twisted her lips. “There are some beautiful homes in Silver Lake, but it’s still P.G. County. It changes the minute you drive out of the gate.”

  Jolene sighed hopelessly.

  “Well, you’ll have to tell me all about it,” Jackie said. “We’re thinking of building outside Atlanta. How many square feet will it be?”

  “Um, about seven thousand.” A small exaggeration of about a thousand, but absolutely necessary around these folks as far as Jolene was concerned.

  “Oh,” Jackie said excitedly. “That’s about the size we’re living in now. How many bathrooms?”

  A hundred fifty, bitch. That’s what Jolene was tempted to say. Instead she smiled sweetly and lied again. “Six.”

  Mama shooed them out of the foyer as if she sensed that a bit too much tension was building in the air. “Go on in and see your father, Jolene. He’s waiting in the living room.”

  Mama led them into the room where Daddy and Paul sat in stuffed armchairs sipping red wine and smoking fat cigars. They both stood when the ladies entered, and there were more hugs and kisses all around. Jolene sat on the couch near her father, and Juliette left to play games with her twin cousins in the recreation room as Mama and Jackie went back into the kitchen.

  “So, how’s your portfolio these days?” Paul asked Jolene.

  Portfolio? Did he mean as in stocks and bonds? Puhleeze. Nearly every dime that belonged to the Brown name, and then some, was going into the house they were building. She had managed to hold on to a few thousand in a mutual fund, and she was thinking seriously of pouring that into the house, too.

  She turned and stared at Paul, with his receding hairline, rimless glasses and smug smile. He was so light-complexioned he practically blended into the tan chair he sat in. One good thing about Patrick, at least he wasn’t a nerd. “It’s fine,” Jolene said.

  “You own stocks, Jolene?” Daddy asked, clearly surprised.

  “A couple of mutual funds.”

  “That’s great,” Paul said, pushing his eyeglasses back up on his nose. “I was just explaining to your father that a friend and I lost a small bundle last year on an IPO.”

  “Really?” Jolene muttered, trying to sound knowledgeable. She had no fucking idea what an IPO was. And didn’t care.

  “You talking five figures or six?” Daddy asked as if he had this kind of conversation daily.

  Paul let out a big sigh. “Low six, unfortunately.”

  Daddy whistled.

  Damn, Jolene thought. She and Patrick should have six figures to lose.

  Daddy shook his head. “Those new things are too risky for me. I’ll stick with IBM and P&G.”

  Paul chuckled. “That’s appropriate for you, since you’re both retired. You don’t really want to stick your neck out there with IPOs at this point in your life.”

  “I wouldn’t have done it before I retired,” Daddy said, laughing.

  Jolene cleared her throat. All of this was way over her head. And frankly, it was also depressing to listen to folks talk about losing big sums of money with less concern than she would have if she lost her wallet.

  “The roof finally went up on the house last week,” she said as soon as there was a lull in all the money talk.

  “You don’t say?” Daddy said, blowing a puff of smoke to the ceiling. “Will you still be able to move in before Christmas?”

  Jolene twisted her lips. “No, they’re backed up.”

  “That always happens when you build a custom house,” Paul said. “Where are you building?”

  “Silver Lake,” Jolene said.

  “Is that a new development over in Potomac?” Paul asked.

  Jolene almost gasped. Potomac was one of the most exclusive areas in the state of Maryland—and also one of the whitest. The only blacks living over there were, well, like Paul and Jackie—very well off and very snooty.

  “No.”

  “They’re over there in P.G. County,” Daddy explained.

  “Oh,” Paul said. “I’ve heard of it. It’s the wealthiest majority-black county in the country, isn’t it?”

  Jolene smiled. “Yes, it is. And Silver Lake is very—”

  Daddy scoffed. “That’s what they say. But don’t let that fool you. P.G. County has its problems—crime and the school system.” Daddy shook his head woefully.

  “Really?” Paul said.

  “I don’t get over there much myself,” Daddy said. “So tell me, Paul, what would you recommend for this market other than IPOs? Stocks? Bonds?”

  Paul cleared his throat, and Jolene stood quickly, before he could launch into another one of his lectures. If her father would rather talk to Paul about stocks and bonds than to his daughter about their new house, she didn’t want to be in the room. T
he way her father brushed her off was plain cold in her opinion, although nothing new.

  “Excuse me. I think I’ll go and help Mama and Jackie.” She made her way to the kitchen door.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Mama was saying. “I don’t know why they stay over there.”

  “Obviously, they like it,” Jackie said.

  “But there’s so much crime over there,” Mama said with concern. “I worry about them all the time, especially Juliette.”

  “What about the schools?” Jackie asked. “How are they?”

  Mama scoffed. “They’re sending her to a private school, thank goodness. The public schools in P.G. County leave much to be desired.”

  “And she’s doing just fine,” Jolene said coolly as she stepped into the kitchen. “Most of the crime in Prince George’s County is inside the beltway in places like Seat Pleasant and Landover, not out where we live. People fail to realize that, and it gives the whole county a bad rap.”

  Mama and sister both fell silent, with guilty looks on their faces.

  “C’mon,” Jolene said, a smile toying around her lips. “You don’t have to clam up on account of me. I know you both hate Prince George’s.”

  “We just think you’d be so much better off here in Northwest D.C. or in Montgomery County.”

  “We wanted land and you get more for your money out there. And frankly, we like living in a suburban community with a lot of other middle-class black people.”

  “You have a daughter to think about,” Mama said softly.

  “Yes, there are better places to raise children,” Jackie added.

  “And the shopping over there is horrible from what I’ve heard,” Mama said.

  Jolene realized that she felt almost as much out of place here in the kitchen as she did in the living room as Mama and Jackie went on and on about the horrors of Prince George’s County and the virtues of living just about anywhere else on earth. She got tired of defending the county and gave up.

  Then Jackie got into the thousands of dollars they were spending on private schools for Paul and Pamela, on Paul and Pamela’s activities in Jack and Jill, the snooty social group for black children, and on their plans to remodel their old McMansion or build a new one. Yakety-yak.

  Jolene was ready to bolt within about five minutes of listening to all this bull. Nothing made her feel so cheap as a visit to her childhood home.

  It didn’t get any better when Patrick arrived. Unlike Paul, Mister Perfect, Patrick had all the wrong credentials. He didn’t belong to the right male social groups like the Boule. He hadn’t attended Morehouse or Howard or Harvard, and his father wasn’t a doctor or a judge. Patrick went to the University of D.C., and his daddy was a high school dropout. Patrick was the ultimate outsider.

  Years ago, she consoled herself whenever she thought of these dismal facts by reminding herself that Patrick’s heart was bigger than Paul’s. He had saved her when she was young and dumb and pregnant, and she would always be thankful to him for that.

  Her folks were always polite to Patrick, but they would never accept him as they had Paul. She and her husband could suddenly strike it filthy rich, and still Patrick would never be one of them. New money didn’t get you into the black elite. Take Bradford and Barbara Bentley. Even with all that dough and a multimillion-dollar home, they wouldn’t be accepted by her snooty family.

  But money like the Bentleys’ could make you feel a hell of a lot better about not being accepted. With that kind of money, you could thumb your nose at the snooty old-guard blacks with style.

  The minute they got back home tonight she was going to invite the Bentleys over for dinner. Instead of getting involved in politics, Patrick should be busting his ass trying to get Bradford to give him a raise. He should be working overtime instead of going to political meetings. He should be sucking up to the Bentleys any way he could. Politics? Please. Money was the key, honey.

  Candice stepped out of the doors of the train and onto the platform at the Archives-Navy Memorial metro stop in Washington, D.C. She hated coming downtown. There was too much traffic and too many people, and parking was a nightmare. But this trip to the National Archives had suddenly become urgent. Her daughters had no respect for their heritage, and she had to change that.

  She went through security, signed in and was issued a visitor’s badge with a chain to wear around her neck. She took the elevator up to the fourth floor, signed in again and was handed a long sheet of paper with guidelines and her seat number at the top.

  She entered a dimly lit room with high ceilings, an industrial-grade blue carpet and row after row of microfilm readers, most with folks sitting at them, their eyes glued to the screens. It was her understanding that she could look up her ancestors in the census reports here and learn the names of other family members who lived in their households. It seemed amazing when she thought about it. The building might be old and dingy but the records went back hundreds of years and contained valuable information about her ancestors.

  She found her assigned table and hung her jacket on the back of the chair.

  Candice squinted through her glasses at the microfilm. The scribbling on the 1860 census report was so faint she thought she would go blind trying to read it. But it looked like she had finally found George’s father. The name of the head of the household was right—Andrew Blair—and his age—thirty-six—seemed about right, too.

  Oddly, there was no mention of Andrew’s wife, Sara. Three young girls were listed in the household along with a woman named Caroline. Who were these people? And where was George’s mother, Sara?

  George was supposedly born around 1862, so Candice wasn’t expecting to find him in the 1860 census. But she had assumed that his mother would be listed. She decided to go back further, to the census for 1850.

  As her eyes scanned this new piece of microfilm, she grew more baffled by the minute. In 1850, still no one named Sara was living in the Blair household, but the woman named Caroline was there.

  Could Caroline have been the first wife of Andrew? Maybe Caroline died, and then Andrew met Sara and started a second family sometime after 1860. Candice had never heard of Andrew having another wife and children before Sara. But it was possible. And it was the only thing that made sense. If that was the case, then Sara might be listed in the 1870 census.

  She moved up to the later census and found Andrew again, but still no Sara, or Rose or George, who had been born by this time. Candice removed her reading glasses and sat back in her chair. This was getting weirder by the minute.

  She put her glasses back on. There was no way she was going to figure all this out here and now. She decided to put Andrew aside for the moment and focus on George and his first wife in Richmond, Virginia.

  Candice spent more than two hours searching back and forth through the censuses for Virginia. But she found no George Blair who seemed a match for her greatgrandfather.

  She leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. This was so disappointing, but her eyes couldn’t take any more of this today. She had hoped this trip would answer some long-standing questions. Instead it seemed only to raise new ones. If anything, her past was even more murky now than before.

  “Learn anything interesting at the National Archives?” Ashley asked from the doorway of her mother’s bedroom.

  “Oh, so you’re back?” Candice peered over her glasses and placed the genealogy book she was reading facedown on her bed. “How was the movie?”

  “Great. Kenyatta’s downstairs talking to Jim. I came up ’cause I wanted to hear what happened at the archives. What did you find out?”

  Candice shrugged. “Not as much as I hoped, that’s for sure. It turned up more questions than answers.”

  “Really?”

  Candice nodded and held up the genealogy book. “I found this at the local library on my way back. I was just reading up on some other places to search.”

  Ashley came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Sounds like you’re
totally into this ancestry stuff now.”

  Candice smiled. “I admit I’m hooked.”

  “So. C’mon. I’m curious. What kind of questions did you turn up?”

  “What kind of questions did I not turn up would be a shorter answer,” she replied. “Well, let’s see. I may have found Andrew, your great-great-great-grandfather, in the census.”

  Ashley’s green eyes lit up. “Really? You found him? That’s amazing.”

  Candice smiled thinly. “Don’t get too excited. I hit a brick wall on his wife, Sara. She may have married Andrew and died between censuses. I don’t know. People died young then.”

  Ashley frowned. “What about George? Did you find out anything about him?”

  Candice sighed in frustration. “I’m drawing a complete blank with him, and his sister, Rose, too. I did find a woman who may have been Andrew’s first wife.”

  Ashley’s frown deepened. “You mean Andrew was married twice? I never knew that.”

  “Neither did I, but if this is the right family, it looks that way. We’ll see. I still have a lot of work to do.”

  “What does Grandma have to say about all this?”

  “Not much. I called Mom when I got back, but she wasn’t much help.”

  “This sounds so weird, don’t you think?” Ashley asked.

  “Well, it was a long time ago. It’s going to take a while to straighten it all out. It’s possible that the census taker made a mistake. From what I’ve been reading, they went around from house to house back then and wrote down the names and ages of the people they found there. That doesn’t sound very reliable. Maybe they overlooked Sara somehow.”

  Ashley squinted doubtfully. “And George and his sister, too? That doesn’t sound right, Mom. Maybe it’s something else.”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe something got twisted over the years when the stories were being handed down, like some of the names and ages.”

  “Mom seems pretty certain about the few details we have.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ashley twisted a lock of her hair between her fingers. “I always wondered about something. Where’s that cardboard box of old photos?”

  Candice frowned. “It’s right under the bed.” What on earth was Ashley cooking up now? Candice wondered as her daughter kneeled and reached for the box. Ashley sat back on the bed and placed the box between them, then picked out the photo of George and studied it as she twisted her hair. Candice wanted to tell her to stop all the twisting. It was getting on her nerves. “What is it, Ashley?”