Her attention wanders again, her mind seeming to travel with it. I shift the photo of the four women just a bit, make a few inferences. In court, this would be leading the witness, but here it’s just helping to uncover the story. “Are these your sisters in the photo with you and my grandmother?”
I know the three women on the left must be sisters or cousins. It’s obvious enough, even with the hats shading their faces. I’m still troubled by their similarities to my grandmother. The hair color. The pale eyes that seem to reach beyond the photo. But the facial structures, at least as much as I can see of them, are different. The features of the three sisters are substantial, perfectly chiseled. They have wide, square chins, and ski-slope noses, and almond-shaped eyes that slant upward slightly at the edges. They are beautiful. My grandmother is lovely as well, but her features are thin and birdlike, her blue eyes almost too large for her face. They are luminous, even in black-and-white.
May takes the photo and holds it in her shaky hands. Her study seems endless. I have to force myself not to prod. What’s going on in her mind? What is she thinking of? What is she remembering?
“Yes. The three of us—Lark, Fern, and me. Bathing beauties.” She gives a quick, wicked giggle and taps Trent’s hand. “I think your grandmother worried a bit whenever we came around. But she needn’t have. Trent loved her dearly. We were so grateful to him for helping us to find one another. Edisto was a special place for us. It was where we were first reunited.”
“Was that where you met my grandmother?” I crave a simple answer to all of this. One I can live with. I don’t want to find out that my grandmother was somehow paying penance for our family’s involvement with the Tennessee Children’s Home Society—that my grandfathers were among the many politicians who protected Georgia Tann and her network, who turned a blind eye to atrocities because powerful families did not want her crimes revealed or their own adoptions nullified. “Was that where the two of you became friends?”
Her finger traces the white frame on the photo. She’s looking at my grandmother. If only I could climb inside her mind or, better yet, inside the picture. “Yes, yes it was. We’d crossed paths at society events before I ever knew her, though I will say, I had a completely wrong impression of her prior to making her acquaintance. She grew to be a dear friend. And she was so very generous to loan my sisters and me the cottage on Edisto from time to time, so we could get away together. That photo was taken during one of our trips. Your grandmother joined us there. It was a lovely late-summer day on the beach.”
The explanation soothes me, and I’d like to stop there, but it doesn’t explain why the words Tennessee Children’s Home Society were on the typewriter ribbon in my grandmother’s cottage…or why Trent Turner, Sr., was in communication with my grandmother.
“Trent’s grandfather left an envelope for my Grandma Judy,” I say. “Judging by her daybook, I think she was making plans to pick it up before she got so sick. Inside the envelope, there were documents from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Health assessments and surrender papers for a baby boy named Shad Arthur Foss. Why would she have wanted those?”
I’ve caught May off guard now. There is more to this story, but she’s biting down hard on it.
Her eyelids flutter and descend. “I’m so very…so very…tired all of a sudden. All this…this talking. It’s more than I usually…do…in a week.”
“Was my grandmother involved with the Tennessee Children’s Home Society? Was my family involved?” If I don’t find out today, I have a feeling I never will.
“You’d have to ask her about that.” May presses into the pillows, draws an exaggerated breath.
“I can’t. I told you that. She isn’t able to remember things. Please, whatever it is, just give me the truth. Arcadia. Does it have anything to do with this?” My grip tightens around the bed rails.
Trent reaches across and lays a hand over mine. “Maybe it’s better if we quit here for today.”
But I can see May withdrawing into herself, the story vanishing like chalk art on a rainy day.
I scramble after the running colors. “I just want to know if my family was…responsible in some way. Why did my grandmother have such an intense interest in this?”
May pats along the railing until she finds my fingers. She squeezes them reassuringly. “No, of course not, dear. Don’t fret. At one time, Judy was helping me to write my story. That’s all. But I thought better of it. I’ve found in life that bygones are a bit like collard greens. They tend to taste bitter. It’s best not to chew on them overly long. Your grandmother was a fine writer, but it was so difficult for her to hear about our time in the home. Her talent was meant for happier tales, I believe.”
“She was helping you write your story? That’s all?” Could this really be the sum total of it? No big family secret, just Grandma Judy using her abilities to help a friend, to shed light on an old injustice, the effects of which still lingered? A sense of relief washes through me.
It all makes perfect sense.
“That’s everything there is,” May confirms. “I wish I could tell you more.”
That last part tickles my senses like a stray puff of smoke from a fire that’s supposedly been put out. Witnesses who aren’t telling the truth have a hard time stopping on an absolute yes or no.
What does she wish she could tell me? Is there more?
May finds Trent’s hand, squeezes it, then lets go. “I’m so sorry about your grandfather. He was a godsend to many of us. Before the state’s adoption records were opened in ’96, we had little means of discovering where our relatives might be—who we really were. But your grandfather had his ways. Without him, Fern and I would never have found our sister. They’re both gone now, of course—Lark and Fern. I would appreciate it if you’d refrain from disturbing their families, even so…or mine, for that matter. We were young women with lives and husbands and children by the time we were brought together again. We chose not to interfere with one another. It was enough for each of us to know that the others were well. Your grandfather understood that. I hope you will respect our wishes.” She opens her eyes and turns my way. “Both of you.” Suddenly, all signs of exhaustion have faded. The look she gives me is intense, demanding.
“Of course,” Trent says. But I can tell it’s not Trent’s answer she’s after.
“I didn’t set out to bother anyone.” Now I’m the one tap-dancing around the issue…which is that I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep. “I just wanted to know how my grandmother was involved.”
“And now you do, so all’s well.” She punctuates this with a resolute nod. I’m not sure which one of us she’s trying to sell on this—me or herself. “I have made peace with my past. It is a story I hope never to tell again. As I said earlier, I thought better of sharing the whole thing with your grandmother even. Why release such ugliness into the present? We all have difficulties. Mine may be different than some, but I have come through them, as did Lark and Fern and, I would assume, though we were never able to find him, my brother as well. I prefer to hope it was so. He was my one true reason for wanting to have the story written, years ago when I coaxed your grandmother into helping me with the project. I suppose I thought a book or a newspaper article might somehow reach him if he was still out there, and if he was one of the many who’d simply vanished under the care of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, it would provide a memorial for him. Perhaps for my birth parents as well. There are no stones to lay flowers upon. None that I would know how to find, in any case.”
“I’m so…I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through.”
Nodding, she closes her eyes again, shutting me out. “I should rest now. Soon enough, they’ll come around to poke me, or prod me, or haul me off to that infernal physical therapy room. Honestly, I’m almost ninety years old. What do I need with muscle tone?”