There are the whispered conversations of powerful men. A grandfather who, for all his wealth and position, cannot save his tiny grandchild.
He is an important man…a congressman, perhaps?
He cannot rescue his daughter. Or can he?
I know of a woman in Memphis….
A desperate choice is made.
This is where the written story ends.
And where another story begins. The saga of a fair-haired infant girl who, if Georgia Tann’s sordid history is any indication, is taken from her mother immediately after birth. Falsified papers are signed, or perhaps the exhausted new mother is simply told that her child was stillborn. The baby is spirited away in Georgia’s arms, secretly delivered to a waiting family that will claim her as their own and bury their desperate secret.
The tiny girl becomes Judy Myers Stafford.
This is the truth my heart has been reaching for since the day I saw the faded photograph on May’s nightstand and was struck by the resemblance.
The photo in the nursing home is of Queenie and Briny. They aren’t just people from May Crandall’s remembrances. They are my great-grandparents. River gypsies.
I might’ve been one myself had fate not taken an unthinkable twist.
Bart’s mother moves to the space beside me. She sits on the arm of the wing chair, and rubs my back, and hands me a handkerchief as my tears flow. “Oh, honey. Oh, child. The best thing is to know. I always tell ’em, best to be who you is. What you is deep down inside. Ain’t no other good way of livin’. But it ain’t my decision to make.”
I’m not sure how long I sit there, the old woman patting and soothing while I contemplate all the things that kept the children of the Arcadia from one another. I think of the way May explained their choices: 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….
But the truth is, it wasn’t enough. Even the ramparts of reputation, and ambition, and social position couldn’t erase the love of sisters, their bond with one another. Suddenly, the barriers that created their need for hidden lives and secret meeting places seem almost as cruel as those of brokered adoptions, altered paperwork, and forced separations.
“You take your grandmother to see her sister.” A trembling hand squeezes mine. “They the only two left. The only two sisters. You tell them Hootsie say it’s time to be who they is.”
CHAPTER 24
Rill
The whippoorwill call tries to take me from my dream, but I push it away and hold on. In the dream, we’re all on board the Arcadia…Briny, and Lark, and Fern, and Gabion. We’re drifting down the wide Mississippi full out in the middle, just like we own the deed on the whole big river. The day is clear and fine, and there’s not a tugboat or a barge or a stern-wheeler in sight.
We’re free. We’re free, and we’re letting the river take us south. Far, far away from Mud Island and everything that happened there.
Silas and Zede are with us too. And Camellia and Queenie.
That’s how I know the whole thing isn’t true.
I open my eyes and toss off the blanket, and for a minute I’m sun-blind and lost. It’s the middle of the day, not nighttime. Then I realize I’m curled in the skiff with Fern, and we were squirreled up under the ragged canvas, not a blanket. The skiff is tied to the back of the Arcadia, heading nowhere. It’s the only place we can go to rest during the day and be sure Briny won’t sneak up on us.
The whippoorwill call comes again. It’s Silas, I know. I look for him in the brush, but he’s got himself hidden.
I wiggle from under the canvas, and Fern wakes up and grabs my ankle. Since we’ve come back to the Arcadia, she’s scared to be by herself even for a minute. She’s never sure whether Briny will push her away so hard she falls down or grab her up and hold her so tight she can’t breathe.
I answer the whippoorwill call, and Fern scrambles up trying to see into the woods.
“Ssshhhh,” I whisper. When we snuck out to the skiff this morning, Briny was rambling around with a bottle of whiskey. He’s probably asleep on the porch by now. I just can’t be sure. “We better not let Briny find out Silas is here.”
Fern nods and licks her lips. Her tummy rumbles. She probably knows that Silas’ll bring us something to eat. If it weren’t for Silas and Old Zede and Arney, we would’ve starved to death in the three weeks we’ve been back on the Arcadia. Briny hasn’t got much need for food. He mostly lives on whiskey now.
I lift the canvas up for Fern. “You go back under there a minute.” If Briny sees that Silas came over and starts into a fit about it, I don’t want Fern in the way.
I have to peel her off to put her back under the canvas, but she stays.
Silas is waiting in the brush. He hugs me hard, and I bite my lip to keep from crying. We move off a little farther together, but not so far that I can’t hear Fern if she needs me.
“You all right?” Silas asks when we sit down in the clear spot under a tree.
I nod. “Fishing wasn’t any good this morning, though.” I don’t want to ask for food, but I’m hoping that’s what’s in the little poke he’s carrying.
He hands over a bundle no bigger than two fists, but it means a lot. Zede’s supplies are running low, and he’s got Arney to feed too. She’s moved onto his boat, where she’ll be safe. Zede wanted Fern and me to go too, but I know Briny won’t hurt us.
“Some flapjacks and a little salt fish. An apple you can split up.” Silas leans back on his hands, pulls a breath, and looks through the brambles toward the river. “Briny any better today? He comin’ around at all?”
“A little.” I’m not sure if it’s true or if I just want it to be. Briny mostly wanders around the boat and drinks and yells at night. Then he sleeps it off during the day.
“Zede says we’ll have rain this evenin’.”
I’ve seen the rain signs too. It worries me. “Don’t come back and try to untie the lines again, all right? Not yet. Maybe in a few more days. A few more days, and I think Briny’ll be ready.”
For two weeks, we’ve stayed in at the bank across from Mud Island while the weather’s turned colder. Even though Silas and Zede warned Briny it’d be easy for the police to find us here if they come looking, Briny won’t let anybody unhitch the shore lines. He almost shot Silas’s hand off for trying. He nearly shot poor Arney too. I gave her some of Queenie’s clothes to use, and Briny decided she was Queenie, and he was mad at her for dying.
“Just a little longer,” I plead with Silas.
Silas rubs his ear like that’s not what he wants to hear. “You oughta bring Fern and come onto Zede’s boat with me. We’ll move her down into the main channel and see if Briny don’t come along.”
“Just a few more days. Briny’ll get better. He’s gone out of his head for a while, that’s all. It’ll pass.”
I hope I’m right, but the truth is that Briny doesn’t want to leave Queenie, and Queenie’s buried in the thick Mississippi soil not far from here. A Catholic priest said final words over her, Zede told me. I never even knew my mama was a Catholic. Until I lived with the Seviers, I didn’t even know what that meant. Zuma wore a little cross like the one on our shanty wall. She’d hold it and talk to it sometimes, just the way Queenie did, but not in Polish. The Seviers didn’t care for that too much, because they’re Baptists.
I figure, either way, it’s a comfort to know my mama was buried proper and a preacher was there to say prayers at her grave.
“Zede wants you to tell Briny that, in four days at the outside, he’s moving our boat, and if Briny don’t want to come along, he’s taking you and Fern off the Arcadia. You’re goin’ downwater with us.”