“What do you mean again,” Emery replied after a drawn-out pause.
“Ever since you were a little girl, Emery when all the other children were outside running around, you would go missing. The first time it happened, your father and I, your aunts and uncles, Nana, and Big Mama got all nervous because we couldn’t find you. When I think back on it, you couldn’t have been more than four or five years old.”
Emery stopped rummaging in the box and listened to her mother’s story. She’d heard it a time or two before, but the story never got old.
“Boy did we look for you. Even the children got involved, calling and searching. Big Mama was just as concerned. But she was also concerned about the kids running through and tearing up her house. In between calling your name, she was shouting, ‘don’t you dare mess nothing up!’ It was funny once the whole situation was over.” Felicia rocked back in the chair, laughing at the memory. Emery reluctantly laughed with her. She could hear her great-grandmother now, fussing about messing up her things.
“I don’t know what made me come to the attic to look for you. I didn’t even know you knew it existed. When I came up the stairs, much like I did a few minutes ago, there you were, sitting just about where you’re sitting now, with one of momma’s photo albums spread across your lap. You didn’t have a care in the world. You had no idea we were all going crazy looking for you.”
“I didn’t at first,” Emery replied. “But you all sure let me know once we were all back together.”
The laugh that danced on Felicia’s lips faded as she considered the current state of things.
“I think I have an idea of why you’re up here today,” Felicia suggested.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Emery said flatly.
“Just because we don’t talk doesn’t mean it will go away, Emery. I understand why you’re upset.”
“No, you don’t,” Emery muttered, averting her mother’s eyes. “You have no idea.”
Although there were eight daughters in the Moore clan, Felicia made it a point of making sure that she and all her daughters had a special relationship. Emery moved away from home after finishing her juris doctorate. She was a successful corporate attorney and had been living in Washington D. C. for the past five years. It wasn’t often that she returned home to Atlanta, and Felicia was always glad when her girls were back together. Emery had success in so many facets of her life, but she hadn’t been as lucky in love. Her most recent relationship with long-time beau, Tristan Summers, an attorney himself, had ended badly. Tristan may have been a fantastic prosecuting attorney, but he wasn’t a great boyfriend. Felicia knew Emery was ready for more; more from her relationship than just girlfriend status. But, her brave daughter wouldn’t readily admit she was ready for real love. And although that may have been the overriding issue, that’s not what upset her daughter now.
“Mom, I’m fine,” Emery replied, doing her best to be convincing. Felicia could see the sadness tinged with frustration in her daughter’s eyes; the emotion her words couldn’t gloss over. Felicia was grateful Emery hadn’t stormed out or turned her back on her completely. Introducing Samantha was risky. Felicia thought she calculated all the risks. Unfortunately, Felicia underestimated the impact Samantha’s presence would have on her oldest child.
“It wasn’t easy, keeping her from you all,” Felicia began; broaching the tenuous subject. “But Samantha deserves to know her family and you all needed to know she existed.”
“And you thought having her crash a family dinner, without so much as a whisper that something was going on, something this big, was a good idea?”
Emery found it harder to hold back how she really felt. “She’s your family, not mine.” Tears threatened to spill onto Emery’s tightly clenched jaw. Emery turned the box she held in her hand.
The truth of Emery’s heart bruised her mother.
“You could have told us another way.”
“What way would have made it easier, Emery?”
“I don’t know!” Emery barked.
“Emery, I did what I thought was right. I am not proud of what happened in the past. I have agonized over my decision for years, honey. I tormented myself, questioned myself, tried to pray through it, try to make peace and forgive myself. It wasn’t easy. Telling you girls wasn’t easy.”
Emery couldn’t deny hearing the crack in her mother’s voice. She hated to see her mother cry and even without turning to face Felicia, Emery knew tears stained her mother’s cheeks.
“What does it mean for me?”
Hearing herself, Emery sounded like a wounded child, unsure of who she was. But that was how she felt. At the end of the day, Samantha displaced Emery from her position as the oldest Moore girl. What did that make her now? That’s the question that no longer teetered on Emery’s lips but hung like stagnant air in the attic. Emery speaking the question aloud made it unavoidable for Felicia.
The rocking chair stopped rocking when Felicia lifted herself from it and held onto the arm as she lowered herself to the floor where her daughter sat. She tried to gain her daughter’s gaze, but Emery refused to look at her. The tears on her lids couldn’t be held back much longer and Emery hated it when she cried; not because she was sad, but because she was so angry.
“Emery,” Felicia uttered as warm tears flowed from her eyes. “You are my daughter. That hasn’t changed. The position of birth doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Yes mom, it does,” Emery said, finally turning and facing her mother. “It matters. It’s been my identity, the oldest Moore girl. My sisters look up to me because I was the eldest. It was my birthright. It helped me figure out who I was and what I meant to this family. Now what? She’s taken my place.”
Emery swiped harshly at the tears that rolled down her cheeks. This was painful even to admit but now that she’d started down the path, Emery couldn’t hold back. She took a moment and tried to calm the plethora of emotions that stirred within her.
“I framed my thoughts on love and relationships based on the example that was set before me. My idea of a loving relationship was founded on the truth of what I saw and knew between you and dad. Yeah, it hurts that Samantha has taken my place as your first-born child. But it hurts worse that everything I believed about love, and truth, and the foundation of a meaningful relationship were all a lie. You took that from me with your confession, and your other daughter.”
Emery couldn’t stay there anymore. Holding on to the box she had in her hand, Emery got up and left the attic, leaving her mother where she sat. She could hear the women of her family enjoying each other; unaware of the tense conversation that had just taken place. Midway the stairs, Emery wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and tried to pull herself together before descending the rest of the way. She didn’t want anyone else to know she had been crying. Emery forced a smile on her face as she entered the kitchen.
“So, where did you sneak off to,” Charity, the fifth of the Moore sisters inquired.
“Where else would Emery be, for real,” Aubrey, the sixth in line chimed in.
“The attic!” Charity, Kennedy, Daphne, Trinity, and Ivory chorused. Emery rolled her eyes at her younger sisters. They could be so annoying at times.
There were bellows of laughter at Emery’s expense. She popped her lips and then put a sarcastic hand on her full hip.
“I won’t have ya’ll teasing my great grand,” Big Mama corrected. Mary Elizabeth was the undisputed matriarch of the Moore clan, and her word was incontrovertible. Her great-granddaughters immediately fell in line; well most of them. Ivory, the baby of the bunch, had a hard time gaining and keeping a straight face.
Some of the girls nudged each other, of course out of the sight of the matriarchs who would get them told in a heartbeat.
“Big Mama,” Emery began. “I found this upstairs,” she said, presenting the alabaster box to her great-grandmother. “I didn’t want to open it without permission. I can tell it’s special.”
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��It’s special alright,” Margaret, the girls’ grandmother replied as she walked into the large kitchen. “I haven’t seen that treasure chest in years.”
“Oh, what a treasure you have found, today,” her great-grandmother, Mary Elizabeth said accepting the box from Emery. Mary Elizabeth saw the masked smile on Emery’s face and the pain behind Emery’s smiling eyes. Just seeing the box flooded Mary Elizabeth’s with a plethora of memories, both good and bad. Her cheeks warmed as Emery removed the alabaster box
“Treasure chest,” Charity asked? Unlike her older sister Emery, Charity never ventured far from the parental home. Charity was an esteemed neurosurgeon in Grady Hospital’s renowned trauma unit. Charity didn’t feel the need to leave Atlanta when one of the preeminent hospitals for trauma care was right in her backyard.
“Yes, my treasure chest,” Big Mama replied as she tenderly held the box. All the women in the kitchen turned to watch GG Mary as she lovingly stroked the alabaster.
“Have you ever seen it before,” Felicity, the fourth oldest girl asked Trinity who stood next to her.
“No, Trinity replied. “I don’t rummage around in dark places, and that attic has always been too spooky for me.” Trinity was the second to the last daughter born to Cecil and Felicia. Trinity had the pleasure of being the baby girl for three years before the last and final Moore daughter, Ivory, was born.
Mary Elizabeth, sitting in her favorite chair, loved at the box for a moment longer. It had been a while since she’d seen it; choosing to store it away with other memories. But seeing it again after all this time, flooded the great-grandmother with so many emotions, it took her a minute to get herself and her thoughts together. Only her daughter, Margaret, knew how truly extraordinary this trinket was.
Emery watched her great-grandmother with intent, as she saw Mary Elizabeth’s eyes mist over. Initially, Emery was worried that the box was a bad thing and bringing it to Big Mama may not have been a good idea. Emery felt bad enough. She didn’t want her great grand to feel bad, too. But then, Mary Elizabeth smiled and looked around the room at her descendants.
“I never knew what real love was until I met him,” Mary Elizabeth began. The room fell quiet as the women around her listened in. Everyone knew exactly who she was referring to, Mary Elizabeth’s husband of nearly 60 years, Wesley. Several of the girls leaned further in; their interest piqued by what Big Mama had to say. Of course, over the course of their lives, they’d witnessed the interaction between their great-grandparents, but many didn’t know the backstory of how the two got together and stayed together all those many years. What they knew of their great-grandfather was that he was a quiet man; never one to say a lot of words, but the few words he did share seemed to leave an indelible impression on whomever he spoke with.
“Eww, I was such a young thang when I met, Wes,” Mary Elizabeth said fondly; the broad smile on her face taking on a whole new level of revealed happiness.
“I may have been twelve or thirteen when we first crossed paths… whew, so many years ago.” There was a glint in Mary Elizabeth’s eyes that only thoughts of her husband could bring. Daphne smiled at Emery. They recognized the Wesley glow. This was just what Emery needed to take her mind off her woes with her mother and think about something else.
“You still young, Big Mama,” Margaret chimed in. As the eldest daughter of the six children Mary and Wesley had, Margaret had practically grown up with her parents and witnessed their union firsthand. She was grateful to still have both of her parents with her. So many, much younger than Margaret was, did not.
“I know that’s right,” Big Mama agreed, giving her daughter a high-five. “My husband keeps me that way,” she added for good measure.
There were nods of agreement all around from what the women witnessed firsthand.
“You have to remember, back in the good old days as you all call it, we didn’t have much, not in the way of material things. And, we courted; not like the new-fangled dating, ya’ll do now. I had a feeling Wesley liked me because suddenly, I started seeing him around more and more. But, he knew not to approach me directly. No sir, that was a no-no and completely disrespectful to the man of my household who was my father,” Mary Elizabeth continued. “Wesley knew that if he wanted me as his wife, he had to first convince my father that he was worthy. And my daddy wasn’t an easy way. Earl had a way about him that frightened most and scared away weak men. He didn’t play about his family; especially his daughters.”
Many of the girls only knew their great-great-grandfather from pictures and stories much like this one. Earl passed away not long before Felicia was born. She too knew him most from repeated memories. Felicia never got the chance to meet him, but she made sure her children were aware of Big Poppa Earl.
“But that Wesley of mine, he knew just what to do,” Mary Elizabeth went on. “When he first started to come around, he would make sure that my father was outside. Dad would be tinkering with his old truck or working in the yard, and Wesley would strike up a conversation with him, see if there was anything he could do to help. At first, dad wasn’t having any parts of it. He knew why Wesley was coming, and of course, dad thought I was much too young for courting.”
“Well, you were,” Margaret chimed in. Big Mama shot her a look that quieted her daughter down. “If you compare it to today’s standards then, yes, I would have been considered young. But you must remember your history, chile. They didn’t expect black folks to live to ripe old ages like I am now. Coming out of slavery and Jim Crow, we were older even when we were younger, we saw and took so much. So, a girl of thirteen or fourteen back in my time was the equivalent of a girl in her twenties or so nowadays. It was the living that matured us. It was the need to procreate and recreate that compelled our encounters. There had to be the preservation of our people, and the only way to replenish what they were constantly trying to kill was to marry and procreate. Be fruitful and multiply, as the good book suggests. You don’t have the same kinds of overt tests and trials that we had back then. You girls have more opportunities for living and doing so quite naturally; you embark on things of the heart much later. Being married, in my day, was as much about survival as it was about love.”
Emery contemplated what her grand said. She’d never considered the context of any of her relationships in the same way. It was as much about survival as it was about love. Then, she thought about her mother and what she said about having to make the decision regarding Samantha. Felicia talked about survival, in a way; not just for herself but for her child. Emery tried to shake the empathetic notion. Her eyes trailed to her mother who stood in the furthest corner of the room near the attic stairs. When their eyes connected, Felicia’s were sorrowful and pleading. Emery couldn’t hold her mother’s gaze and so she turned her attention back to her great-grandmother.
“Eventually, though, my dad started to lighten up and let Wesley work with him. It was slow going at first because my dad was watchful of everything Wesley did. He figured, how a man worked, his focus and dedication told the story of who he really was. If the man were slothful, then he would be lazy in all pursuits, even matters of the heart. Father’s took their responsibilities to their children seriously. My father knew that if he relinquished his responsibility for me to another, that man would have to care for me better than he could. Mind you I said better, not the same and definitely not less than. See, beloveds, every generation that came behind was supposed to do better than the last. Marriage is as much a financial partnership for building up and doing better as it is about the heart stuff.”
“You teaching now, mama,” Margaret agreed. This was a lesson she’d heard before, but the profoundness of the message never got old.
“I know you young girls don’t like to hear that part,” Mary Elizabeth added. “Because you make your own money, and all independent and stuff, you bring your finances to the table. And that’s all well and good, but don’t miss the message. He is supposed to bring the increase. And before you go shaking you
r heads and thinking it’s just about money, it’s not. The increase should be in all areas; emotional, spiritual, psychological, soulful, and yes, financial. So that collectively, the two of you are better in the partnership.”
Aubrey smiled on the outside, but the words hit particularly hard for her. She had always been one to lead with her heart and not necessarily her head, which cost her in the long run. For a minute, Aubrey thought this part of grandma’s lecture was directed at her. However, as she looked around the room, she saw conviction with some others. The looks on some of her sister’s faces, Aubrey expected, as they shared their stories of love and loss with her. But the look on Emery’s face was somewhat of a surprise. There was a light in Emery’s eyes Aubrey had never seen in her oldest sister. She would find out what that was all about. Seeing Emery smile, when the subjects of love and relationships came up was new. Aubrey had to know what that was all about. Emery turned, seeing Aubrey eyeing her. Emery turned up the corner of her lips and rolled her neck, challenging her younger sisters stare. Aubrey used her finger to draw a question mark, wanting to know what the grin was all about. Emery saw her and threw her hand dismissively in Aubrey’s direction. Aubrey snickered. She would get to the bottom of it, one way or the other. But for the moment, Aubrey continued to pay attention as Big Mama went on.
“My dad was hard on Wesley, not because he didn’t like him, but because my father took responsibility seriously. That was the true mark of manhood; not this foolishness we see nowadays. But that story is for another day,” Mary Elizabeth replied. “Emery, you asked about this box, didn’t you?”
“Yes ma’am, I did.”
Once again, Mary regarded the box fondly. “My mother, Iola, gave me this box when she saw Wesley took a shine to me.”
I Am Moore Page 8
