MY FATHER DIED WHEN I WAS TEN. MY MOTHER WAS a night auditor for a hotel in Chattanooga, so I got used to being alone at night at an early age. Getting used to it’s not the same as liking it, though. My father was gone for good; sometimes it seemed like my mother was, too.
The Christmas I was thirteen, Mother took me to New York on the train. My Aunt Rachel and Uncle Isaac lived there—Aunt Rachel was my father’s sister—and Mother said she wanted to visit them and show me the sights of New York for Christmas. We changed trains in Raleigh about lunchtime on a Friday, and we rode all night to get to New York. We shared a bunk in a sleeper car, and I remember falling asleep with my mother’s arms wrapped around me, which was something that hadn’t happened in years.
We got to Penn Station—this was Old Penn Station, mind you, which was spectacular, a lot grander than Grand Central—late in the afternoon on Christmas Day. From there we took a cab across town to Rockefeller Center. The outdoor ice-skating rink there had just opened, that very day. It was December 25, 1936. It was so beautiful it made my heart ache—all those Christmas decorations and lights, and everybody dressed up in their best winter clothes.
The country had just begun to crawl up out of the Great Depression, and that Christmas night in Rockefeller Square, I think people weren’t just celebrating the birth of Jesus, they were celebrating the rebirth of America. Mother and I waited in line for hours to skate, dragging our battered little suitcases with us. I didn’t mind the wait; I was giddy with the sights and sounds and glamour of it all. Finally, when we got up to the front of the line, Mother told me that she wasn’t going to skate; she would stay with our suitcases and just watch me. She asked a boy in line behind us if he’d help me get the hang of it. He was about my age, maybe a year or two older. Old enough to be interesting to me; not so old as to be scary. He held my hand and pulled me along, wobbling and shrieking and laughing. Every time we made a lap past the place where Mother was standing beside the rail, she’d wave and yell something encouraging.
And then the boy let go of my hand, and I was skating by myself. It was terrifying and thrilling—I’m sure I was just inching along, but it felt so daring and grown-up, and I couldn’t wait to circle back around and see Mother’s face when she realized I was doing it without any help. But her face wasn’t there. The fat man in the red scarf, who had been standing right beside her, was still there; so was the nun who had been on the other side. But she was gone, and the space where she had been standing was already closing up behind her.
I slid past the fat man and the nun—I was confused, and I also didn’t know how to stop—and went around the rink once more. The second time I came around, I ran into the rail to stop. I was still a few feet away from the two faces I recognized, so I pulled myself along the rail, my feet sliding out from under me again and again. I remember people laughing and pointing every time I caught myself on the rail and then hauled myself back up. By the time I got to the fat man and the nun, my heart had turned to ice, and I could feel tears running down my face—not because people were laughing at me, but because I knew something was wrong.
Our suitcases were both still there, wedged up against the railing right where she’d been standing. The nun told me my mother had needed to run to the restroom, and would be back in a few minutes. But somehow I knew she wouldn’t be.
After I’d stood at the railing crying for half an hour, the nun helped me change out of the skates and back into my shoes, then she took me over to a policeman who was standing near the entrance to the rink. I told him what had happened, and I could see him sizing me up—a scrawny girl from the sticks, with a tear-streaked face and a dripping nose and a cheap cardboard suitcase. He got this sad, weary look on his face, and that’s when I knew I’d never see my mother again.
On the cab ride up from Penn Station, Mother had tucked a big envelope into my coat pocket. She’d made a big production about how Aunt Rachel’s address and phone number were in the envelope, along with a five-dollar bill and a Christmas card for Rachel and Uncle Isaac. “You hang on to this for me,” she’d said. “You’re such a big girl now, and you know how I lose things. This way, when we get in the taxi for Brooklyn, the address and the cab fare will be right there, safe in your pocket.” As she said it, she patted the pocket.
When I told the policeman about Aunt Rachel and the envelope, he had me take it out and open it up. The Christmas card contained two letters. One was to Aunt Rachel, explaining how Mother had met a man she loved and wanted to be with, but the man—she didn’t even say what his name was—just couldn’t take on a thirteen-year-old. She was going away with him to South America, she said, where he would be working on a big construction project. She apologized for the unexpected Christmas present—me—and asked Rachel to please be kind to me.