Before We Were Yours(82)

“Was my grandmother involved with the Tennessee Children’s Home Society? Was my family involved?” If I don’t find out today, I have a feeling I never will.

“You’d have to ask her about that.” May presses into the pillows, draws an exaggerated breath.

“I can’t. I told you that. She isn’t able to remember things. Please, whatever it is, just give me the truth. Arcadia. Does it have anything to do with this?” My grip tightens around the bed rails.

Trent reaches across and lays a hand over mine. “Maybe it’s better if we quit here for today.”

But I can see May withdrawing into herself, the story vanishing like chalk art on a rainy day.

I scramble after the running colors. “I just want to know if my family was…responsible in some way. Why did my grandmother have such an intense interest in this?”

May pats along the railing until she finds my fingers. She squeezes them reassuringly. “No, of course not, dear. Don’t fret. At one time, Judy was helping me to write my story. That’s all. But I thought better of it. I’ve found in life that bygones are a bit like collard greens. They tend to taste bitter. It’s best not to chew on them overly long. Your grandmother was a fine writer, but it was so difficult for her to hear about our time in the home. Her talent was meant for happier tales, I believe.”

“She was helping you write your story? That’s all?” Could this really be the sum total of it? No big family secret, just Grandma Judy using her abilities to help a friend, to shed light on an old injustice, the effects of which still lingered? A sense of relief washes through me.

It all makes perfect sense.

“That’s everything there is,” May confirms. “I wish I could tell you more.”

That last part tickles my senses like a stray puff of smoke from a fire that’s supposedly been put out. Witnesses who aren’t telling the truth have a hard time stopping on an absolute yes or no.

What does she wish she could tell me? Is there more?

May finds Trent’s hand, squeezes it, then lets go. “I’m so sorry about your grandfather. He was a godsend to many of us. Before the state’s adoption records were opened in ’96, we had little means of discovering where our relatives might be—who we really were. But your grandfather had his ways. Without him, Fern and I would never have found our sister. They’re both gone now, of course—Lark and Fern. I would appreciate it if you’d refrain from disturbing their families, even so…or mine, for that matter. We were young women with lives and husbands and children by the time we were brought together again. We chose not to interfere with one another. It was enough for each of us to know that the others were well. Your grandfather understood that. I hope you will respect our wishes.” She opens her eyes and turns my way. “Both of you.” Suddenly, all signs of exhaustion have faded. The look she gives me is intense, demanding.

“Of course,” Trent says. But I can tell it’s not Trent’s answer she’s after.

“I didn’t set out to bother anyone.” Now I’m the one tap-dancing around the issue…which is that I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep. “I just wanted to know how my grandmother was involved.”

“And now you do, so all’s well.” She punctuates this with a resolute nod. I’m not sure which one of us she’s trying to sell on this—me or herself. “I have made peace with my past. It is a story I hope never to tell again. As I said earlier, I thought better of sharing the whole thing with your grandmother even. Why release such ugliness into the present? We all have difficulties. Mine may be different than some, but I have come through them, as did Lark and Fern and, I would assume, though we were never able to find him, my brother as well. I prefer to hope it was so. He was my one true reason for wanting to have the story written, years ago when I coaxed your grandmother into helping me with the project. I suppose I thought a book or a newspaper article might somehow reach him if he was still out there, and if he was one of the many who’d simply vanished under the care of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, it would provide a memorial for him. Perhaps for my birth parents as well. There are no stones to lay flowers upon. None that I would know how to find, in any case.”

“I’m so…I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through.”

Nodding, she closes her eyes again, shutting me out. “I should rest now. Soon enough, they’ll come around to poke me, or prod me, or haul me off to that infernal physical therapy room. Honestly, I’m almost ninety years old. What do I need with muscle tone?”

Trent chuckles. “Now you sound like my grandfather. If he’d had his way, we would’ve put him in a jon boat and let him drift off down the Edisto River.”

“That seems perfectly lovely. Would you be so kind as to arrange the boat? And then I’ll find my way home to Augusta and float away down the Savannah.” She closes her eyes, smiling a bit. Within moments, her breaths lengthen, and her eyelids flutter in their pleated frames. The smile remains. I wonder if she is once again that little girl drifting on the muddy waters of the Mississippi aboard the shantyboat her father built.

I try to imagine having a history like hers, having lived two lives, having been, effectively, two different people. I can’t. I’ve never known anything but the stalwart stronghold of the Stafford name and a family who supported me, nurtured me, loved me. What was May’s life really like with her adoptive parents? I realize now, she never really told that part of the story. She only said that, after a heartbreaking stay in the children’s home, she and her sister had been given to a family.