“I’m sorry to come without calling. I was going to call your son, Marshall.”
She knows Marshall.
“But . . . but I . . . I didn’t do it.”
Is this about Marshall? Is he okay? How does she know Marshall?
“I mean, I will call him. I’m happy to call him and tell him that I want to visit you. I just . . . I was nearby. I just stopped.”
I wish she would sing again. I try. “Would you like to swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar?”
Something about my singing bothers her. I see her lip tremble, and her forehead crease. She looks down at her hands.
“My mother is Augusta Jackson.”
It’s a familiar name. But, of course, there could be a lot of Augusta Jacksons. Who was Augusta?
“She worked for your husband a long time ago.”
Augusta Jackson! Of course. Ray’s wife.
“No, no, no,” I say, nodding my head and smiling.
“You remember her?”
She understands that I meant yes. This is Augusta’s daughter. She’s coming to say thank you. All those years that Del took care of that family. And Leo kept it up after, whatever it was that Del had arranged.
“My mother told me a story.”
It’s nice of her to come and see me, an old woman. I wonder if Augusta’s still alive. She was about my age. A little older, maybe.
“She told me a story about your husband.”
Are those tears? There are tears running down Coral Jackson’s face. But she keeps talking, as if they aren’t even there.
“It was 1960.”
So Augusta’s daughter is a teacher. She dresses nicely for a teacher. It’s great to think that Del helped her somehow. He loved Ray so much. This must be Ray’s youngest, the one that was the same age as Marshall.
The woman is looking down at her lap. She seems to be having trouble speaking. I want to pat her on the knee, tell her it was really so little. That money. She shouldn’t feel a debt, because her father had been so important to Del. Del would have given Ray much more than that if he’d lived. And also, nobody had ever really known what happened when Ray died.
I don’t like to think of those days. How na?ve I was. How little I understood. I sing to stop thinking.
“Ol’ man river. That old man river. He just keeps rolling. He just keeps rolling along.”
She doesn’t join me this time.
She keeps looking down, and I can hear the teakettle whistling, and I know Helen is making some tea for us.
“I get weary, and sick of trying. I’m tired of living, and feared of dying.”
I hear Helen pick it up in the kitchen. She can sing too, though she almost never sings with me. “And ol’ man river, he just keeps rolling along.”
The woman looks up. She is clearly crying; she seems really upset. I feel bad for her, and I want so much to tell her that it is okay. That things will be okay. Whatever is wrong. Things will work out. I really believe that. If you just get lucky and stay alive, a lot of things work out.
“Augusta wasn’t really my mother.”
I wish I could nod my head, look like I’m listening to her. I am listening, but for some reason, I have decided to do a little bebop rhythm in my chair. My shoulders are shaking, and my head is bobbing, and I feel lucky just to be able to see her face out of the corner of my eye.
“Odell Dibb brought me to her as a baby. When I was just a few days old.”
What?
“He didn’t tell my mother . . . Augusta . . . where I came from. He just asked her to take care of me.”
I have flung myself out of the chair, and I am banging my head against the fireplace. Helen comes running.
“What’s going on here? Miss June, stop! What did you say to her?”
Coral Jackson is on her feet, and she is trying to capture me in her arms, she is trying to keep me from banging my head—pound, pound—on the wall. My head really hurts, and my stomach is sick, and I can’t get my body to stop convulsing, but I am trying to look at her, I am trying to look at Coral Jackson. Coral! Of course. Coral!
Helen comes and pushes Coral out of the way.
“You need to leave. You need to leave this house right away!”
And I can hear Coral trying to catch her breath, crying, and saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just had to see you. I’ve been looking—”
And at that, I wrench myself away from Helen, and just by accident, I am facing Coral, I am looking at my daughter, at the person I never once stopped dreaming about, at the person I did not think I would ever see, and I can’t say anything I want to say, I can’t control my expression, I can’t tell her in any way how fervently I hunted for her, how I didn’t know where to look, how Del died, how she wasn’t in Alabama, how there was no one to ask. How I hoped. Until there was nothing left to hope for. Until I could not imagine any wild, serendipitous, impossible way that I could find her. How had she found me? And really, how could it be that I would never be able to tell her how much I had wanted to find her?
Tears stream down her face, and I can see that she is about to leave. That she doesn’t know what else to do. That it is all too much. And I think of Eddie, her father, and how she looks more like me than like him. But her voice. It’s beautiful. She has Eddie’s voice.
“In this world of hope, in this world of fear.”
Just like that, the song comes to me.
“I’ll be your rock. And you’ll be my cheer. Every moment with you is so dear.”
Eddie’s song.
She knows it.
I see it on her face. She knows the song. She knows why I am singing it. She knows that I know.
And like that, my daughter steps forward and takes my wayward, truculent, unruly body into her arms.
So that we can dance.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The correct answer to who made it possible to write ’Round Midnight is everyone I ever loved, and everyone who ever loved me. My editor, wise soul, suggests I make the list a bit shorter.
So I’ll start at the top of the marquee. My husband, Bill Yaffe, for his great stores of patience, kindness, and humor (I noticed). And my editor, Trish Todd, for her counsel, her insight, and her commitment. Without her, no dream comes true.