She leaned forward in her chair and looked him in the eyes. “You know exactly what it means, boy,” she said softly, and kept watching him as he flushed. She looked away for a moment and then pinned him with her eyes again. “Why did you come here, Anton? What do you want?”
It was hard to answer that question honestly, but he did. “To get your word—your assurance—that you’re not going to the media with your story.”
She spat out a laugh. “And what story would that be, boy?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Don’t call you ‘boy’? Then why do you act like one? You find your mama after however many years, and all you think is that I want something from you? And you had to come before I go tell my ‘story’ to the papers?”
He slammed his hand on the side table. “Look. You’re the one who gave me away,” he said. “You’re the one who made a deal with the devil. What kind of woman locks a kid up for seven days in an apartment? What kind of mother—” His face contorted, and he wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“A bad mother.” Her voice shook, but it carried across the room. “The worst kind. A monster. Okay?” Her face crumbled. “But Anton. I was tryin’. All the time I was in prison, I was tryin’. I was clean. Did it cold turkey. You know how hard that is, son? But I did it. For you. But you couldn’t wait for me. You were angry at me. I get that. I’m not blaming you. You were just a kid. I know. And those rich white folk, they had so much to offer you. All those skiing trips and all. I had nothing in those days. I . . . I couldn’t . . . compete.”
His head was pounding. “What do you mean, I couldn’t wait? Wait for what? How?” All at once he felt sleepy, the activity of the day catching up with him, and he closed his eyes briefly. But then he was wide awake, his attention caught by something she’d just said. “The skiing trips. How would you know about those?”
She shrugged. “He told me. How else?”
“Who?”
“Who? Mr. Coleman. The man who wanted to be your daddy. When he came to see me.”
The world stopped; in that pause Anton heard the ticking of the clock, heard the song of an unknown bird in the yard. He sat still, his mouth dry. When he could speak, he said, “When?”
“I don’t remember the exact date. When you’re in prison, you know, the days just roll into one big mess of nothing.”
“He came to the prison? To see you?”
She looked as puzzled as he felt. “But you knew this, baby. You just forgot. You were so young.” She looked at a spot beyond Anton’s head for a minute and then collected herself. “No, not to the prison. They brought me to some, I dunno, office building, I think it was. At night, when there was nobody there but him and one other gentleman.”
This woman was more conniving than he’d ever imagined. To think that he’d almost fallen for her act a moment ago. Anton felt something akin to relief—she was just an ordinary con artist with a ridiculous cock-and-bull story. Let her go to the media with it; they would simply laugh her out of town. He felt triumphant, giddy, and also strangely let down. He fought down an urge to laugh. “My dad brought you to an empty office building?” he said mockingly. “Really? At night?”
She sat very erect in her chair and looked at him intently, the earlier girlishness having disappeared from her demeanor. He willed himself to stare back, not bothering to hide his disdain, his contempt, and, now that he was willing to acknowledge it, his fury. Hadn’t she mangled his life enough, all those years ago? Did she really have to appear in his life again, with her preposterous tales?
He stood up and took a step toward her. “Enough,” he said. “You’ve done enough damage. Don’t you dream of maligning my dad’s name ever again. You hear me? Ever.” He stood towering over her, idly noticing the single strand of white hair on the top of her head.
She raised her head slowly to meet his eyes. “You think I’m lying to you, Anton?” she said at last.
“You bet,” he said. “You bet I think you’re lying, you . . .”
She lifted her left eyebrow. “That’s how they teach you to talk to your elders up north?” she said.
He snorted. “Please. Let’s not go into the old parental routine . . .”
She got up quickly from her chair. “Wait here,” she said, and disappeared into what he assumed was the bedroom. He shuffled from foot to foot, anxious to get out of there. He stood in the middle of the room, his fists clenching and unclenching by his sides, debating whether to slip out into the yard and call Brad. He would know what to do, how to convince this woman that she’d better quit while she was ahead.
But before he could move, Juanita strode back into the room, clutching a manila folder in her hand. “Anton,” she said in an authoritative voice that made him bristle, “sit down.”
To his surprise, he lowered his body onto the rocker. She sat across from him, the folder in her lap. A sheet of paper flew out and onto the floor, and as he bent to pick it up, he saw that it was a cutout of the People magazine story from a few months ago. He handed it to her wordlessly, and she made a sheepish face. “I tore it out of the magazine at the dentist’s office,” she confessed. “I . . . I was so excited . . . It felt like a miracle when I saw your face.” She stared at the article, and when she looked up again, her eyes were red.
“All this time, I believed what he told me. Mr. Coleman. Your . . . the man you call your daddy. That you choose him and his wife over me. And so I think you’re pleased with me, Anton, for respecting your decision. That’s the only way I survived all these years. Thinking I gave you what you wanted.” Her face collapsed. “But now I see you’ve been mad at me. All these long years. For letting you go. Now I see I truly am what the world says I am—an ignorant black woman. Who got fooled by the white man with the oldest trick in the world. It’s slavery, what he done to me, Anton. Slavery.”
The tears rolled down her cheeks, and despite his confusion and a gathering sense of terror, Anton felt the urge to comfort her. He fought it down, unwilling to weaken, trying to figure out what game she was playing. After a few moments she stopped crying, rubbed her eyes on her sleeves, and continued rifling through the folder. She found what she wanted and held out a photograph to him. “Here,” she said simply. “He gave me this. To show me how happy you were with them.”
Anton recognized the picture immediately. The family trip to Vail. Him, posing at the top of the hill in his brand-new parka and skis, his hands on his hips, looking for all the world like a young prince. “How did you get this?” he started, and then caught himself. “Did they—did my parents—mail it to you? In prison?”