I reluctantly pulled myself out of his arms. “We should get in there. I want to… I want to say goodbye, I guess.”
It was the last thing I wanted to do.
And now we’re here, about to bury Gigi at sundown, and again it’s the last thing I want to do.
I glance down at my watch. It’s 11 a.m. If I leave now, I’ll still arrive in plenty of time for the service. I can spare an hour to visit the memorial. And the man had a point: I’m here, I might as well. When else am I going to be in Montgomery?
By the time Tiffany hands me the packet of papers and keys to my economy rental, I’ve decided to make the detour. I shoot a text to Shaun, letting the family know I’ll be a little later than expected. I want to be with my family, but the pull of the memorial is stronger, a need I can’t explain or ignore. Jimmy.
Turning into the parking lot itself brings on a sense of reverence and dread, as if this patch of asphalt is already hallowed ground. My breath grows shallow as I approach the entrance, almost like I’m afraid, which I am: afraid of how this place might affect me. I already feel fragile, like I’m walking around with an open wound.
Don’t fight the tears. I haven’t cried once since Gigi died, even though crying may be exactly what I need. Maybe that explains this weight I’ve been carrying around with me, all the unshed tears.
I arrive at a sign near the entrance and stand next to a heavyset white woman who reads it with one hand over her mouth, an apprehensive grimace on her face. I need to move past her before she makes eye contact or looks to me for some sort of reassurance or says something like, God it’s so awful, and I’ll be forced to comfort her. The words on the sign have hit me hard too.
For the hanged and beaten.
For the shot, drowned, and burned.
For the tortured, tormented, and terrorized.
For those abandoned by the rule of law.
We will remember.
A little boy, maybe four or five, runs toward me, wearing a shirt that reads, “I Am My Ancestors’ Wildest Dream.”—— His giggles carry through the air, both welcome and out of place. Otherwise, the small crowd dotting the grounds is quiet, reverent.
I make my way toward the pavilion, where enormous red stones hang from the ceiling. Each is engraved with the names of victims, thousands and thousands of lynching victims, county by county. The crushing weight of the stones, of history, the pain of my ancestors, feels like grief. A group of people—probably a tour—huddles together, but no one speaks, as if they’re all stunned into silence, reckoning with the atrocities, presented as they are with such unflinching honesty.
I spot Willie standing with his head bowed, chin to his chest. I move closer and see two wet streaks down both of his cheeks. Before I can stop myself, I walk over to him, so we’re shoulder to shoulder, in wordless communion. Something about this man’s presence, about not being alone here, comforts me.
“My granddaddy,” he says finally. “William Franklin. That was his name.” He points a long finger at the etching in the burnt-red stone. There are four other names too. Five men tortured and killed.
I whisper the names to myself, adding another: Jimmy. I have no idea if Willie has more to say and decide to wait as long as it takes. When he finally speaks, I have to move closer to hear him.
“It was ’44. Granddad just back from the war. Fought with the Ninety-Second over in Italy. He’d opened up a little shop in town, was doing well for himself. The war gave him a sense of dignity, you know? But the white boys didn’t like that too much. Especially when he was cutting into their business. A posse of them came one night. Hit my grandma Thelma on the head when she asked what they wanted with her husband. She was pregnant with my moms. Grandpa didn’t even know yet. She was waiting until she was sure. They left her there bleeding on the floor while they ransacked the place. Grandpa had a few bottles of hooch that they drank, and then they dragged Willie out the house. Grandma says they talked about how they were going to rough him up, but he started fighting back. So they shot him. Shot him like a dog in his own yard.” He takes a quick inhale, almost like he’s catching a sob, before he gets to the last part. “He never even knew he was going to have a daughter.”
I’m not sure when I grab Willie’s hand, but I’m holding it when he stops talking. Much to my surprise, it feels like the most natural thing in the world.
There’s a part of me that wants to tell him about Jimmy. But I can’t. It’s too much. This air, already heavy around us, doesn’t need any more tragic stories. He squeezes my fingers like he knows there’s meaning here for me too. Without speaking, we make our way over to the pristine grounds, the grass a neon green, the sun a radiant yellow ball against a sea of blue, all of it incongruous to the bloody history all around us. It’s hard to imagine that people were lynched on bright, beautiful days like this, but surely they were.
“Willie. You have the same name as him.” I make the connection.
“Yeah, quite the legacy, I guess.” His tone, bittersweet. “What about you? You never told me your name.”
“Riley. Riley Wilson.” I could tell him I was named after a relative too, but it would require too much explaining.
“Well, it was nice to meet you, Riley. You were good to keep me company today, sweetheart.” A smile touches my lips for the first time all day. This man reminds me of my dad, someone who calls every woman under the age of forty “sweetheart” and can’t seem to understand when I try to explain that it’s just not cool anymore.
His defense: “Get outta here. People need to stop being so sensitive. It’s a term of endearment.” And it does feel that way when this man says it, as comforting as a warm bath.
Willie pulls a yellowed handkerchief from deep in the recesses of his coat pocket and blows his nose. “I came here today for my moms, you know. Felt like something I needed to do for her. She wanted to come herself and never made it.”
I understand completely. We’re both here for someone else and for ourselves and, strangely, now for each other. Willie looks to the ground. There’s a sense of panic that I’ll never see this stranger again, our brief friendship as sweet and fleeting as a summer rainstorm.
“Could I give you a hug, young lady?”
By way of answering, I open my arms wide, and the two of us embrace. We’re standing in front of an iron statue of human beings chained together. When we part, Willie takes a minute to look at the sculpture; his gaze settles on a figure of a woman with a heavy iron chain around her neck, a baby in her arms.
“What a world.” He shakes his head and ambles down the path; his words echo even as he recedes. What a world.
I don’t have much time, and I’m already emotionally depleted, but I decide to make a quick stop down the road at the Legacy Museum too. I need to see the jars of dirt I’ve read about, each one filled with the soil from all the locations in America where there was a known lynching, emblazoned with a name and date, commemorations of the victims lost to history. It’s such a simple, powerful tribute, a way to honor their lives and ensure that people aren’t allowed to forget this particular legacy of violence, the toll it took.