Before We Were Yours(72)

“The truth always comes out sooner or later. I’m of the belief that you’re better off knowing about it first.” But even as I say it, I wonder. My entire life, I’ve been so certain that we were above reproach. That our family was an open book. Maybe that was na?ve of me. What if, all these years, I’ve been wrong?

Trent looks down at his shoes, kicks a loose shell off the porch decking. It bounces against a red toy tractor that looks particularly poignant at this moment. “I’m afraid what I’m going to find out in here is that my grandfather’s adoption was something like the ones in that article where it mentions giving kids to government officials to keep them quiet. My granddad’s adoptive father was a Memphis police sergeant. They weren’t the kind of people who would’ve had a bunch of money to fund an expensive adoption….” He trails off as if he doesn’t want to put any more words to the story, but in his eyes there’s a mirror of my own fear. Do we carry the guilt from the sins of past generations? If so, can we bear the weight of that burden?

Trent opens the door and, perhaps, the mystery.

Inside, the cottage is low-roofed and shadow-filled. The white plank walls are crackled and faded, and window glass hangs crooked in the wooden frames. The air smells of dust and mildew and something else that takes a moment to register. Pipe tobacco. The odor instantly reminds me of my Grandpa Stafford. His office at the Lagniappe house always held this scent and still does.

Trent flips on the light, and the bulb flickers stubbornly in a Deco-era fixture that is out of step with the rest of the place.

We move into the tiny one-room structure. It contains a large desk that looks as if it could have been bought at a library sale, two file cabinets, a small wooden table, and a couple odd chairs. An old, black rotary phone still sits on the desktop. There’s a canister of wooden pencils, a stapler, a three-hole punch, an ashtray that hasn’t been cleaned, a gooseneck desk lamp, an electric typewriter in faded olive green. Shelves along the back wall sag under their load of stacked file folders, aging binders, loose papers, magazines, and books.

Trent sighs, running a hand through his hair. He seems too big for this small space. His head is only about six inches from the rafters, which I see now are hand-hewn with notches in them, most likely salvaged shipwreck timbers.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

He shakes his head, then shrugs, indicating a hat, a vintage umbrella with a dragon carved into the handle, and a pair of blue boat shoes. All three wait by the coat hooks, seemingly in hopes of their owner returning. “It feels like he’s here, you know? He smelled like this place most of the time.”

Trent opens the blinds, illuminating the bulletin boards that line the walls.

“Look,” I whisper, dust catching in my throat.

There are literally dozens of photos, some bearing the bold colors of modern photography, some in the washed-out hues of old Polaroids, some in shades of black and gray with white frames around the edges bearing dates: July 1941, December 1936, April 1952…

Trent and I stand side by side, staring at the wall, each lost in our own thoughts, awed and horrified at once. I take in images—children’s faces juxtaposed with adult faces. The resemblances are evident. These are mothers and fathers and kids, presumably birth families who were separated from one another. The children’s pictures now hang next to more recent photos of the adults they became.

I look into the eyes of a beautiful woman, her smile vibrant, her hip jutting out as she rests a baby on it. An oversized dress and an apron hang loose on her frame, making her seem like a child playing dress-up. She couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen.

What could you tell me? I wonder. What happened to you?

Beside me, Trent thumbs a few of the photos. There are even more underneath them, images layered over images. Trent Senior was thorough in his work.

“There’s nothing on the backs,” Trent observes. “I guess that’s why he didn’t worry about asking me to take care of these. You wouldn’t be able to tell who they were unless you knew already.”

Sadness tinges my thoughts, but it’s a vague feeling. My attention is focused on a photo of four women, standing arm in arm on a beach. Even though the picture is black-and-white, I imagine the bright colors of their sixties-era sundresses and broad-brimmed hats. I can see the golden glint of sunlight on their long blond curls.

One of the women is my grandmother. She’s holding her hat in place. The dragonfly bracelet dangles from her wrist.

The other three women bear a resemblance to my grandmother. Same blond curls, same pale eyes, probably blue. They could easily be relatives, yet I don’t recognize any of them.

Each wears a dragonfly bracelet that matches my grandmother’s.

In the background, just out of focus, little boys squat by the tide line, their knees poking upward as they labor over buckets and sand towers.

Is one of them my father?

I reach for the photo, and Trent stretches up to take it down for me. When he pulls the thumbtack, something small and white falls, drifting like a kite losing the wind. It’s familiar even before I bend to pick it up.

A larger version of it rests in a pearlescent frame in May Crandall’s nursing home room.

A voice disturbs the air, but I’m so focused I almost don’t realize I’m the one who’s speaking. “I’ve seen this photo before.”