No. You talked about it. I just went along.
“I know, Nana.”
“Is that all you have to say for yourself? Do I need to remind you that there are five generations of physicians in the Garfield family, going back to the nineteenth century?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Ailey, how many times must I remind you about that servant talk? My God!”
When I didn’t respond, she stretched out a coral-painted thumb and forefinger. I prepared myself; my grandmother didn’t hit, but on rare occasions she could be an expert pincher. I was saved when Miss Delores knocked on the open door of the antechamber. Her large, rectangular glasses sat near the tip of her nose.
“Mrs. Garfield, there’s somebody downstairs asking for you.”
“Could you perhaps be more specific? Somebody such as whom?”
“I really can’t say.” Miss Delores tilted her head to the side. Her lips were clamped together.
My grandmother placed her cup on the saucer. She placed her hands on both arms of her wing chair, braced herself, and stood. As she left, she closed the anteroom door behind her. I waited a few seconds, then stood, walked to the door, and opened it in careful inches, listening to the voices downstairs. Nana was upset, her voice wavering, and there was another voice at shouting volume. It was my sister Lydia.
Letting go of the doorknob, I took off my shoes and stepped into the hallway in my socks. My sister’s voice was even louder now, as she told my grandmother how Gandee had been a monster. A dirty old man who gave her nasty magazines to look at while he played in her panties. That he put his thing in her mouth and made her suck on it. How he’d told her if she said anything to anybody he’d kill everyone she loved, including her younger sisters.
“And you’re worse than he is!” Lydia shouted. “Leaving me with him, and I was nothing but a child! You and your goddamned shopping trips! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
“Oh, Lydia, I swear, I didn’t know! Oh God! Oh, please forgive me!”
“You owe me! Now I want to see my baby sister! I know she’s here!”
As Lydia screamed my name, I crept further down the hall, but my collar was pulled from behind. When I jerked out of Miss Delores’s grasp, my hand hit her shoulder.
“So you’re going to beat me up now, Ailey?”
“I’m sorry, Miss Delores, but you can’t grab on me! You’re not my mama.”
“You’re right, but I do have your mama’s phone number.”
“I don’t care. Call her all you want.”
“All right, then. And when I do, I’ll tell her your sister showed up high as a kite and telling lies on a dead man. And then her baby girl hit me. The one I used to change diapers for.”
Tears leaked from my eyes, but Miss Delores was relentless.
“You’re standing there crying, but what about your mama? Don’t you think she’s been through enough with Lydia? How many more tears does she have to shed?”
I watched her walk down the hallway toward the stairs, before I turned and went back inside the anteroom, leaving the door open. Downstairs, my grandmother sobbed loudly, but her cries couldn’t cover Lydia’s rage. She called Nana a color-struck, mean old bitch. She called her a pimp for little girls, and then there was another raised voice: Miss Delores, who told my sister she needed to leave right now. Leave this house, and if Lydia didn’t, she could wait and shout at the police all she wanted.
The noise stopped.
For an hour, I waited for my grandmother, but when a shadow appeared in the anteroom’s door, it was Miss Delores again. She told me my grandmother had gone out shopping. I should get my things; she would drop me off at home.
For days after that, I called Nana’s house. Maybe she knew where my sister was. Several times a day, I left messages with Miss Delores, but my grandmother never returned my calls. I didn’t sleep well, thinking about what my sister had screamed that day. What it meant: Gandee had lied to us both. He’d hurt Lydia, and then he’d hurt me. We both had kept Gandee’s secret, kept our pain inside to protect everyone else in the family. And now I couldn’t even tell Lydia how sorry I was about what had happened to her. I didn’t even know how to make myself feel better.
*
On Christmas morning, Nana arrived at our house by taxi looking fresh and blameless, wearing the Chanel suit she’d bought in Paris on a family trip overseas, back when my father and uncle were teenagers. She handed me her purse and a platter of Creole cookies, then plucked at the tips of her gloves, like an actress in an old movie, and criticized my outfit.