“Laurie and I thought long and hard about it. But ultimately, it was her decision. It’s all her handwriting, except for a few entries.” Lucy pointed. “Like Cora’s last entry.”
Cora Rivers disappeared from LA at the end of 1965, with a new name and a marriage on the horizon. She told her political king her real name was Janie Crawford and that Cora Rivers had been her stage name. All of these details, including his name, were listed.
“Janie Crawford is the heroine in Zora Neale Hurston’s book, Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Lucy said.
“I know; it’s my favorite,” Noele said. “Seems a little risky, no?”
“Or cheeky,” Giovanni smirked.
“That’s Cora. We didn’t know until she updated her record in the ledger.”
“I don’t think it’s risky—how many Black people, let alone White people, even know of the book?”
“Funny,” Maude said with a smile, “that’s what she said.”
“And apparently she was right,” Lucy said. Her fiancé easily accepted the lie, eager for her acting days to be behind them. “She changed her name again when they married.”
Cora stayed away from the camera during her husband’s presidential run; the possibility of her being recognized as a former actress, his advisors said, would threaten his reputation as a serious politician. He lost, but they remained in Washington, D.C., where he enjoyed a long career behind a desk in the White House, privy to the influence and respect their name afforded. Cora worked just across the street. They had two sons. Revealing her identity now, as with Kitty’s, would be publicly disruptive. She was an icon in her own right, and still White. She looked different now—some plastic surgery and ninety-two years of age disguised her—but the truth was in ink, her handwriting in the ledger. She had been the center of the case, something that could be proven not just by the records but by Jasper’s grandfather’s photos.
Elise laid out the ones she had brought. They all saw themselves; many of the images matched moments Lucy and the others remembered.
“Did he know they were all passing?” Noele asked Elise.
“There’s no record of that. Just Kitty.”
“I guess what we’re saying is, it’s whatever you all want to do. Tell or don’t tell. It’s your decision to make,” Maude said.
Elise closed the ledger and pushed it across the table to Lucy. “Let’s pretend we never saw this.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said.
After the Golden Girls left, the sisters resettled in the South Wing’s den with Kitty’s box.
“We really need to donate everything. If something illegal did happen, if we’re not in possession of the documents, I would think there’s no crime?” Noele said. “I have to research that.”
“I think we should give the money toward reparations.”
“For slavery?” Giovanni’s doubtful tone matched Noele’s expression.
“And everything that’s happened since.”
“For Black people? You know that’ll never happen.”
“We don’t need permission.” Elise looked at her sisters. “We have the funds to start a trend. We could get others to contribute.”
Noele started to speak, but Elise stopped her.
“Noele, relax. We’re not going to threaten anyone. We can privately share their history with them and ask. If they say no, they say no.”
“We have to show how interconnected the American social fabric really is,” Giovanni said. “Show them how it affects them to get them to care. That’s always been the missing piece. We’re the other side of the family.”
“What time period are the reparations for? Is it enough? How Black do people have to be?”
“The rule is one drop.”
“Well, then there’s a whole lot of Black White people.”
“What about the homeless? How do we make it equal?”
The who, what, when questions continued. Elise held up her hands. “I don’t have all the answers.”
“You better…” Giovanni said.
“She’s right. This is crazy—”
“Not just crazy, it’s stupid.” Sarah walked into the den. “The FBI will be back; it will fuel their suspicions.”
“But we didn’t do anything.”
“At the height of the FBI’s power,” Sarah began, “J. Edgar Hoover said that the biggest threat to national security was Black unity. They killed a sympathetic president, Martin, and Malcolm; dismantled the Black Panthers, labeled them as enemies of the United States; and then flooded our communities with drugs and guns and sent in more police for more arrests to fill up prisons. And that’s just in my lifetime. So, if money is power, giving people this money makes them a threat.” Sarah spoke like she knew from experience.
“We don’t have to say what it’s for, or even list our names,” Noele said.
“True,” Giovanni said.
“But Kitty wanted to die a legend. And she deserves that. She pulled off one of the greatest tricks in history, and saying it, however dangerous, not only honors her, it honors the struggle and makes it damned hard to ignore.”
“It’s still the truth if people don’t know,” Sarah said. “Wanting people to know is your ego.”
“The story isn’t about Kitty being Black, it’s about what being White got her.” Elise painted a scene. “And about all she lost.”
“She’s right, Sarah.” James appeared in the doorway.
“What?” She looked at her husband in complete disbelief. “We didn’t raise her to be a crusader—”
“Hear me out.” James sat on the couch. “I’m the one who told Kitty to do it this way.”
“What?”
He reached for Sarah’s hand. “You weren’t talking to her, so she talked to me.” Aside from the nurses, James had been Kitty’s only other regular visitor. She had stopped letting her doctor beau visit when she became bedridden.
He looked at Elise. “I knew you’d understand what you were called to do.” They shared a beat before he continued. “But I didn’t account for all this other business, and I agree with your mother.” At this, Sarah softened and sat next to James.
“Donate the money—but quietly, anonymously.”
“Does it matter then?”
“Will the impact be the same? Probably.”
Elise didn’t want to hear this. What else was she going to use her platform for? She wanted to quit anyway, after the Oscars. She felt obligated to speak, pushed to because she hadn’t before.
Elise had lost her voice just before she turned six. She and her father were on their way to the airport to visit his family in North Carolina. Raised in the segregated South, he hadn’t gone to school with White people until Juilliard. Terrified of his children growing inflated with the air he had breathed into their celebrity bubble, they went back to North Carolina every year. That year her mother was pregnant with Noele and filming a movie, and Giovanni, the perpetual whiner, wasn’t invited.
Elise was riding high in one of the rear jump seats of her dad’s Porsche, where there was just enough room for her and her Beauty and the Beast backpack, looking at the sky through the sunroof, enjoying the force of the wind as her curly ponytail whipped across her face. She was excited for the trip; she loved how hot it stayed at night, catching lightning bugs, and playing with her cousins in the sprinklers. She loved the food and the choir at her grandmother’s church. Their voices made her feel something in her body, like the voice of Smokey Robinson, who was playing on the radio. Her father sang to her as he exited the 405 freeway. I would do anything, I would go anywhere.
Century Boulevard, the street that provided the most direct access to the airport, was blocked with police cars. Her father made a quick turn down a side street to avoid the holdup. He sped some; they were cutting it close for their first-class flight. Seconds later, two police cars were after them. Her father pulled over, and as he was reaching for his registration, four cops surrounded the car with their guns drawn. Get your Black ass out of the car. Already a successful producer but unidentifiable among the masses, James St. John’s name carried no weight with them; and he, as they reminded him, was about to be a dead nigger, regardless.