And it caught her eye, that photo, because of the way her father was standing. He was smiling, maybe just about to laugh, and he held a cigarette a few inches from his mouth—about to take a puff or just having taken one, there was no way to tell—and his long frame was relaxed; his arm rested slightly on a smaller man to his left. That photo stayed in Coral’s mind. You wanted to look at Odell Dibb in that photo: something about his stance, that hint of a smile, even his fingers in the air. It was arresting.
There were lots of records to find, articles about El Capitan, donations to various charities, things he had said in response to one local issue or another. People thought highly of Del Dibb. He had been influential. He had treated his employees well. And yet Coral never felt much in these records; never got a sense of him from all the photos wearing black tie at galas, nothing like the way he leaped out of the photo in which he was not even identified.
Now that she was older, now that she’d had her own experiences of love and sex and the wrong choices one could make, Coral sometimes imagined Odell Dibb differently than Augusta had described him. What sort of man had he been? Why did his face leap out from that one photo? How had he ended up with a baby in a pink silk gown?
Still, the questions about her father didn’t burn in her as the questions about her mother did. She knew who he was, and years ago, she’d figured out that what really mattered to her about him was that he’d given her to Augusta Jackson. To Mama, who had allowed the rest of the world to believe whatever it would about her: to believe she had given birth to a mixed race child while married to a dark black man; to believe she had a secret life, a lover; to believe she was raped; to believe she had sold her body; to believe anything it wanted—any possibility at all—for how Coral had come to exist.
Augusta was proud. And she was a religious woman, a churchgoer; she stood for something. And still, to protect Coral, from the first instant—even without knowing anything about her, where she came from, who might have a claim to her—she had sacrificed that. She had given up being known for who she was. She had carried the secret by herself, she had done this for Coral.
That’s what Coral knew of her own origins. She knew what her existence must have cost Augusta, and she knew what Augusta’s choice had meant to her.
So if she got frustrated teaching at the school sometimes, if there were parents who thought music class was a waste, if there were children who showed up with bruises, if there was a little boy who kept stealing food from other kids’ lunches, if the local paper ran an editorial railing against the benefits given to teachers, if the principal could not find money for supplies, if some days being the only music teacher in a school with 654 children seemed Sisyphean, then Coral always had her own mother to inspirit her: she could live how she wanted, she could take the actions she believed in. It didn’t matter whether anyone else understood, it didn’t matter that others did not see the value in the choices she made. She was Augusta’s daughter, and this was Augusta’s legacy to her.
For Christmas, they all came to Coral’s. It took Ray Junior and Lynda fourteen hours to make the ten-hour trip from Fremont because Lynda’s morning sickness was so bad they had to stop every hour, and because four-year-old Trey had an ear infection that made him cry whenever the Tylenol started to wear off.
“Never again,” said Ray Junior.
“Do you promise, Daddy?” said Trey.
Althea wrapped her brother in a hug, while Coral took Lynda to the spare bedroom so she could change. Coral nearly twirled down the hallway; she was so excited to be hosting Christmas this year. They had always gone to Augusta’s, but her mama had asked if they could move it to Coral’s. Augusta said that four adult children, five grandchildren, but just one in-law (this with one eyebrow raised) was getting to be too much. Coral knew this wasn’t true. Moving Christmas to her house was Augusta’s way of anointing Coral’s home.
Coral had been buying and making gifts for weeks, and she and Althea had picked out one of the biggest trees on the lot. Malcolm insisted on colored bulbs, and Keisha had persuaded her aunt to buy a string of plastic lights in the shape of candles. It had taken seven strings of lights, and dozens of ornaments: all of the ones Coral remembered hanging on her childhood tree—including the green star with her second-grade face on it and the angel Ray Junior had carved one year when he went to Camp Lee Canyon—and some that the younger kids had made. When he was seven, Malcolm had carefully written “Mery Christmes Momy” and “Hapy New Yere Grandnan” on two cards that now hung at eye level.
In the middle of one night, Coral heard a loud bang and came downstairs to find the whole tree lying on the soaked carpet. She didn’t leave it for morning; she found a screwdriver, a hook, and some wire, and hung the whole thing from a beam in the ceiling. It was the first thing Ray Junior mentioned when he looked around her new house.
“Nice job with the tree, Coco.”
Coral laughed. “It fell over. In the middle of the night.”
“I could have guessed that.”
“Well, it won’t fall over now.”
“Nope.”
“Come on! You never had any trouble getting a tree to stand up?”
“Oh no, I always have trouble. I’ve tied trees to the wall, piled sandbags on the base; the year Trey was a baby, the tree fell over twice. I threw it away and bought a smaller one.”
Lynda grinned. “Yeah, and what was Trey’s first word that Christmas, Ray?”
“Darn. It was darn, right?”
Everybody laughed.
On Christmas night, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles strewn the length of the house, and Keisha’s talking bear Teddy Ruxpin put safely to bed—“If that thing tells me his name again, he and I are going to have some words,” said Ada—Coral and her siblings sat around drinking rum brandy punch. Lynda had fallen asleep with Trey, and Augusta had taken the three older kids to see Home Alone.
“What was it that Ray used to say when he got dressed up?”
“Ain’t I trassy!”
“Yeah, ain’t you trassy, Ray?”
“I have always been a classy guy.”
“You is trassy, brother. You is definitely a trassy guy.” Ada and Ray clinked glasses.
“Remember when Althea said a boy was going to come over to study with her?”
“And Ray went in her room and pulled all the underwear out of her drawers, and hung her bras from the bedposts?”
Their brother snorted. “Mama took a belt to me for that. I got one belt for going in her room, one belt for embarrassing her, and one belt because I better not be looking at any girl’s underwear.”
They all laughed.
“Hell, I lived with three sisters. How was I supposed to not see any girl’s underwear?”
Ada stood up. “Remember when Ray murdered my doll for his Halloween house?”
“Oh yeah, I remember.”
“I walked in the garage, and LilyBelle was covered in ketchup with a knife stuck in her chest. I had nightmares about that for years. I might still have nightmares about that.”
“I was nine years old. I didn’t know you’d be so upset.”
“Yeah, and I never told Mama. Which was lucky for you.”
“I kept so many secrets for you,” Ray retorted. “If I hadn’t messed up that doll, you’d probably have a whole different life. Mama would have figured you out and set you straight when you were young.”