We talk ourselves breathless. We recall the time their grandmother had walked around the house with flour on the tip of her nose and no one had told her, and that one day we went to Kmart and I spent a small fortune in quarters letting India ride that horse, and how once India brought the white German shepherd into the apartment and Mrs. Williams ran him out with a broom, and how funny it looked when Mace walked into the ocean in his socks. They remember.
I put the empty saucer on the coffee table, and thank her again.
“Don’t thank me no more, alright? Now, Dr. Civil. Tell me something. I’m glad to see you and all. Your visit means the world to us. But why are you here after all these years? I’m not trying to be rude or nothing. But when I heard you was coming, I wondered if everything is okay with you? You not bringing us no bad news, is you?”
I shake my head and sip my coffee. The woman thinks I’m here on a last-rites trip. Still, I don’t quite know how to answer. The question is the same one I faced with Alicia, and it is time for me to come clean. I have tried carefully to consider my intentions. It is not easy to sort everything out. Apologizing to the women after all these years seems demeaning somehow. It works on the assumption that I have been the center of their lives. I also do not want to imply they are people to be pitied. They have passed through this hardship and lived full lives, finding meaning in sisterhood and family, making this beautiful home. And they have won a court case against the US government. They are so much more than little girls wronged by the system.
I speak softly, and, despite my better intentions, it is an apology that comes out. “I wanted to tell you that I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Erica. I wish, I wish—”
“Miss Civil, there ain’t no need for all that. You hear me? No need.”
Before I can respond, India begins to make a noise. Erica takes her sister’s empty plate.
“Let me get her some more cake. And when I come back in here, we got to watch my talk show because it’ll be on in a minute. You take off your shoes and make yourself comfortable, hear?”
As she smiles at me before leaving the room, I lean back in my chair. I have not seen them in decades, but these women are my family and I am theirs. I was struggling with how I would make up for lost time, but now I know the time was not lost at all. It is just passed. Thankfully, there is more of it. Not as much as I would have liked. But more.
FIFTY
Montgomery
1973
The week after Thanksgiving, Aunt Ros left, and Mama returned to her studio, but only in the mornings. She went out for lunch in the afternoons. She advertised to teach a watercolor class and got three people to sign up the first day. She unwrapped dinner and placed it in porcelain serving dishes, setting the table as if the food had been cooked by her own hands. The three of us sat down to dinner each evening as we had not done in a while.
At night after my parents went to their room, I sat lonely in my bed. Winter had picked up, and it grew cold outside. Lou’s wife had recently given birth and I dared not call him. But as the year neared its end, I couldn’t help myself. I drove downtown around midday and circled the block where his office was located. On the third round, Pamela, his secretary, spied me as she walked down the steps. I leaned over and rolled down the passenger-side window.
“How you doing, Civil?” She waved.
“Just fine. How about you?”
“Busy.”
“Lou around?”
“Yeah, he’s up there.”
“Alright. I’ll stop in and say hello.”
“You do that. Take care, now!”
When Lou opened up, I said, “When y’all start locking the door?”
“Somebody vandalized my car. Might have been random, but you can never be too careful.” He locked the door behind me. I followed him up the stairs.
“When?”
“Right after the trial ended. I didn’t tell you because we were all too busy looking for Erica.”
The papers were gone. The desks were clear. Four file boxes lined the wall. He opened a bag of Lay’s chips and held it out to me.
“No, thanks. Don’t tell me you still eating junk for lunch.”
He stuffed his mouth. “Pamela went to go get me something. But these chips keep me going.”
“You got a new case? I thought you’d be home with the baby.”
“Oh, I’m kissing that baby every chance I get. Besides, my wife is pushing me to take this one. Two women applied to be Alabama State Troopers. Both were denied.”
“And you’ve accepted the case?”
“You think I should?”
“I think you’re crazy.”
He laughed. I missed hearing his strange laugh. Right before my eyes Lou had acquired a way of knowing in the world, what the folks used to call an old spirit. At Thanksgiving, Aunt Ros had said, That Lou Feldman been here before. She was right. It was hard not to feel the light of his presence. I wanted nothing more than to roll up my sleeves, take the notepad from him, and begin making some notes about this state trooper case. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be a lawyer, more that I was energized by Lou’s moral compass.
“What about you, Civil?” He spoke softly. I didn’t like his tone. Everyone had such high expectations of me. I wished they would leave me alone.
“I don’t know what I want.” I could go work for my daddy, but I was unsure.
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Can I see that pad?”
“No, you may not.”
“Are the women who want to be state troopers Black?”
“None of your business.”
“You ain’t right, Louis Feldman.”
I had not sat down. My purse hung from my shoulder. I knew it was time to leave, but I also knew that walking out that door would have a finality that it had not had before. I didn’t want to do it. If he had tried to push me out the door, I would have resisted. But he didn’t. He just sat there munching on his chips.
“I’ll be seeing you,” I said at last.
“You take care, now, Civil Townsend.”
I walked out of his office wondering if I was the only one of us who’d been feeling this emptiness since the trial ended. I was so lost in my thoughts that I did not see Mrs. Seager pass right in front of me. By the time I recognized her big red hair, she was halfway down the block. I lingered at my car, the wind biting my neck, as I watched her and listened to the click of heels on the pavement. I wanted to call out to her, to see if she would turn around and speak or if she still held a grudge against me. I needed to talk to her, to tell her I understood how a person could get so caught up in doing good that they forgot that the people they served had lives of their own.
FIFTY-ONE
I went to work for Daddy at the start of 1974. It was the week after the holiday and Daddy’s waiting room was full. And as I walked through the room, a room filled with people I’d known since childhood, I began to think of the connectedness of us all. Mother Cooper from church. Mr. Jones from the post office. Dena from the hardware store. They were all waiting to see my father, a man they trusted with their pain. It had not been what I wanted, but it made sense. He needed help in the office, and it gave me something to do. Besides, I enjoyed the work. I got along fine with his new junior doctor, and, contrary to my expectation that the patients would treat me differently because I was his daughter, it seemed as if they trusted me more. Sometimes, while I was taking someone’s blood pressure, they would just start talking to me. I would listen, write it down on the chart, and discuss with Daddy afterward. He would nod and say, “He told you that?” Even he was impressed with how readily they opened up to me. There was joy in this caretaking. A simplicity coupled with a stretching of my mental powers.