She wrinkled her brow. “What book do you have?”
“It’s Treasure Island, Sister.” I didn’t tell her that Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson’s book was my favorite one so far, even better than Jane Eyre.
She hesitated, looking down at me, and that’s when I saw her eyes get all watery. “You keep it, Varina. Keep reading. Keep learning, no matter what.”
“I’ll try,” I whispered.
“Take care of yourself, Varina. And the baby.”
75
“And you never told anybody?” Felicia asked.
“He told me he’d kill me if I told anybody what he’d done. And he took my pretty pearl pin that Millie gave me, because he said I’d stolen it,” Varina said. “I couldn’t go home the way he left me, so I snuck back here, to try to clean up, and that’s when Josephine found me. She guessed, just as soon as she saw me, what had happened, and she made me tell her everything.”
“That bastard,” Felicia said, the color rising in her cheeks. “Raping a child. I wish you had killed him, Auntie. I wish he were still alive so I could kill him for you.”
“No need,” Varina said. “He’s dead and gone. Everybody, all my family, all my friends, they’re all gone. Josephine was the last one, and now she’s gone too.”
76
Varina
March 1942
After I got kicked out of that school, there wasn’t much for me to do. Josephine thought I shouldn’t go out, because nice people would see me and figure out I was going to have a baby, so I stayed in her house and I did laundry and some cooking and listened to the war news on the radio.
We didn’t really talk much about what would happen next. Just the one time, really.
One night, Josephine came home from a party and she came up to my bedroom on the third floor of that town house her daddy owned. I was reading Treasure Island again, thinking about pirates and buried treasure and such.
She knocked on the door and then came in and sat on the little chair. “Varina, we need to talk about what will happen when your baby comes.”
“I know that,” I said, struggling to sit up in the bed.
“It’s going to be very hard on you, trying to raise a baby as young as you are. And there are going to be people saying terrible things about you, because that baby is going to be half-white,” Josephine said. “Your family might not want to take you back once they find out.”
“I don’t want to go back home,” I said, because I’d been thinking a lot about that. “I want to finish high school and then get me a job.”
“All right,” she said. She looked tired. “We still have a couple of months to figure things out. I know lots of people here, and maybe somebody will be looking for a maid or a live-in babysitter.”
The first thing I thought of when she said that was Jane Eyre.
I couldn’t tell Josephine I didn’t want to do the kind of work Geechee ladies on the island did, cooking or cleaning or watching other people’s children, because that would make me seem ungrateful for all she’d done for me. I really wanted a real job, like in an office. The nuns taught us what they called vocational skills, and I could type fast as anything.
I didn’t tell her I dreamed of going to college and someday maybe being a teacher like Sister Helen. It sounds bad to say this, but I was all mixed up inside. Nothing that had happened to me since that night at the party seemed real to me. Not any of it. Not even after the baby started kicking so hard I woke up in the middle of the night. Not even when I had to go to the bathroom every hour and my back hurt every time I went up and down all those stairs at her house.
It didn’t start seeming real to me until that very next day. We were in the kitchen, listening to The Romance of Helen Trent, our favorite radio program, and all of a sudden I got this awful cramp in my belly—like a lightning bolt or a live wire. It hurt so bad I doubled over. When I looked down, I saw all this warm water running down my legs.
“Josephine!” I screamed.
77
Felicia buried her head in her arms and wept. Her sobs echoed in the big kitchen.
Varina patted her back and tried to soothe her. “Now, honey, that was a long, long time ago. You don’t need to be crying for me. I cried all the tears a long time ago.”
“How can you say that?” Tears ran down Felicia’s anguished face. “After everything that happened to you?”
“Hush now,” Varina said, handing her a paper towel to wipe her eyes. “You’re getting yourself all worked up about something that’s in the past. You think I do that? Look back at those bad times? No, ma’am. Every morning when I wake up, I think, Thank you, Lord, for giving me one more day in this beautiful place you made for me.”
“You amaze me, Varina,” Brooke said.
Felicia got up and poured four glasses of iced tea. She brought them back to the table and handed a glass to each woman.
When she sat down again, Felicia took a deep breath. “What happened to your baby, Auntie Vee?”
Varina’s face clouded over. “The baby came too early. I was only seven months along. Josephine got the doctor over to the house as soon as she could, but there wasn’t anything he could do. My baby was too little and too weak. Jesus took my baby home. And I never even got to hold him.”
Lizzie and Brooke looked away, each hating the burden of the secret that they shared.
“Oh, Auntie, I’m so sorry,” Felicia said.
“Don’t be. It’s like Josephine said—maybe that was just a blessing. You know, I was just a baby myself when all that happened. And I don’t know what my daddy or brothers would have said if I’d come home with a baby from a white man. Josephine took real good care of me. I was sick with a fever after I lost the baby, but she got me medicine and looked after me just like I was her own little sister. Then, when I was better, she found me a new school to go to. I finished high school, and I went to business school and learned to take dictation, and then she helped me get a good job in a real office.”
“Good old Josephine,” Felicia said bitterly.
“You don’t realize it now, but that was a real hard thing for a little black girl like me,” Varina said proudly. “Back then, not many colored girls in the South worked in offices. I worked at the shipyard in Savannah, and then, after the war, I went down to Jacksonville, where one of my brothers worked, and I got a job at the railroad.”
Brooke’s throat felt dry. She sipped her iced tea and tried to ignore the laser stare Lizzie was giving her. “Varina,” she said finally. “You know Josephine had all these secrets she kept all those years. And that’s why she hired me and brought me over here to Talisa. Those secrets were eating away at her. She knew she didn’t have long to live, so before she died, she wanted to make things right with the people she’d hurt.”
“Josephine always did play things close to the vest,” Varina agreed. “When Felicia told me about your mama being Josephine’s niece, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I never would have known that sweet Millie had a baby with Mr. Gardiner—and then that baby was your mama!”
“How does Marie feel about Josephine keeping that little tidbit to herself all these years?” Felicia asked.
“She was pretty angry,” Brooke said. “But then, Millie kept it a secret too. All these years, my mom had no clue that her pops wasn’t her biological father. She’s slowly getting used to the idea, but it’s going to take some time.”
“Didn’t Josephine tell you that Millie and Ruth and Varina were her best friends? All that High Tide Club stuff, that was just a bunch of crap,” Felicia said.