Take My Hand(87)

Before I go on any further, I have to say there are some things I’ve forgotten to tell you about India and Erica. They were tall for their age. This was probably part of the reason Mrs. Seager had misjudged them. When I met them they were my height, but by fall, Erica was at least an inch taller. Though they weren’t the healthiest girls, neither of them was skinny. Mrs. Williams had always been a cook, able to turn most anything into a meal. She kept meat on their bones.

Their hair and skin were a mess. The combination of puberty and poor hygiene had wrecked those girls’ faces. In the first few weeks, I spent a lot of time grooming. After I cut off the dead ends, their hair grew into long enough Afros for me to part and make cornrows. I bought them Ivory soap and Vaseline.

In the Dixie Court apartment, the girls took regular baths and kept their bathroom stocked with feminine products. They used deodorant, and though I had never shaved my armpits and didn’t teach them to do it, Erica picked up the habit somewhere. After their baths at night, they would go in their room, close the door, and lotion down. I used to joke they kept Jergens in business.

By the time of the verdict, they looked like the other kids in their schools, having lost the telltale signs of kids in deep poverty. Erica had dark freckles on her forehead and sneezed a lot in springtime. She loved to wear lip gloss and dance to soul music. Whenever she visited my house, she went straight for the records. I was a Stax girl—Carla and Rufus Thomas, mainly—with some occasional James Carr thrown in, but Erica gravitated toward the smoother Motown sounds. She was captivated by the lyrics of Stevie Wonder and had listened to Music of My Mind so much that I told her she was wearing a hole in the record.

The fungus on India’s neck finally cleared. She had a mole in the crook of her nose, and her favorite food was peanut butter. She ate it straight from the jar. And the girl had never met a dog she didn’t like. She would feed the strays wandering around Dixie Court pieces of stale sandwich bread, a day-old biscuit, crackers. I remember this white German shepherd that followed her everywhere. When India mounted the swing, the dog would sit nearby and watch her, as if to make sure she didn’t fall. India didn’t have the language to give the dog a name, but she could whistle. It wasn’t a loud whistle, but the dog could somehow hear it and would come crawling out from underneath one of the buildings. It took me a while to realize that those mangy dogs on the farm had been tolerated by the family because they soothed India. After moving to Dixie Court, Mrs. Williams swore never to allow a dog in the house again, but India cared for this shepherd outside, drawing comfort when the dog lay at her feet as she scratched its back with her fingernails. Her other passion was dolls. She owned six of them and propped them against the pillow on her bed.

Erica: left-handed. Stubborn. Polite. Made her bed every day. Slept in her socks. Lover of chocolate ice cream, Motown music, and her little sister.

India: right-handed. Tender. Dog lover. Mother of dolls. Peanut butter addict. Climber of fences. Rider of carousels.

Their names always had the ring of twins to me. Erica and India. India and Erica. Though very different, there was no mistaking it: The sisters were soulfully connected.

The Williams sisters. Two of the greatest loves of my life. And two of my greatest heartbreaks. They are both the reason I never had biological children and the reason I found it in my heart to love and mother you. I never had confidence in my ability to mother, but my love for them has endured over the years.





FORTY-FIVE




Montgomery

1973


Erica had been missing three days. She knew my home phone number, but with Mama in Memphis and Daddy working, she wouldn’t be able to reach us even if she did have access to a phone. We didn’t have an answering machine back then, and I couldn’t just stay at home and wait for her call. The family didn’t have a phone, so Mrs. Williams held twenty-four-hour watch at the apartment. People in Dixie Court brought her groceries because they knew cooking soothed her nerves. But she did not cook, and one of those days I found India eating slices of bread and government cheese when I stopped by.

Mace’s boss gave him time off to help with the search without fear of losing his job. He didn’t get paid for those days, so my church set up a fund to help his family. I worked the telephone, calling everyone in my parents’ telephone book to inform them about the meeting places and times of the search parties. Ty led the morning searches. Mace went all day, stopping only to eat and catch an hour of sleep here and there.

India was inconsolable. Recently, she had started to communicate more—pointing, grunting, tilting her head—but when Erica went missing, she became silent again. No facial expressions. No sounds. Nothing. Thinking it would help take her mind off things, Mrs. Williams allowed India to come sleep at my house. I didn’t plan to take her to school, but Sister LaTarsha called me and said she thought it would do India some good to get back into her routine. When I asked India, she didn’t nod or make any response whatsoever. She just sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the floor.

I moved her into the den, where I planted her in front of the television. That seemed to ignite a flicker of light in her eyes. I let her watch Sanford and Son while she munched on Funyuns.

I sat beside her on the sofa, thinking about Erica and trying not to imagine the worst. But the worst still crept into my thoughts. Kidnapping. Murder. Rape. Please, Lord, I prayed, have mercy. The school wasn’t within walking distance to anywhere. It had been built on the outskirts of the county, a desegregation decision that didn’t make sense because that meant everyone in town had to take a bus or a car to get there. Erica didn’t have any money, so she had to be eating somebody else’s food. If she was stealing, I prayed she wouldn’t get caught. If she had found food, I prayed it was enough.