Page 75 of The Lost Hours
“I bet Odella has a copy. I’d love to listen to it.” Helen raised her eyebrow as we turned our attention back to Alicia, who’d reentered the room with a tea tray.
“Your house is lovely,” I said as I poured milk and sugar into a cup of tea for Helen and handed it to her. “I was admiring your piano. Are you musical, too?”
Alicia smiled. “Not like my mama, no. I can’t hardly sing a note. But I teach piano. I figured out early on that I was a better teacher than musician, so I made the best of both worlds.” She took a sip of her tea and gave Helen and me a considering look. “I’ll admit to being a bit surprised to hear from you after all these years. After my mama died, I wrote letters to both of your grandmothers, to let them know that she’d passed. She talked about them a lot in those last days—it was the cancer that got her—and I was surprised because she’d never mentioned those names before. That’s when she gave me my angel charm and told me all about Lola.” She shook her head. “I would have sworn that she’d had no past before coming to New York and singing in the Harlem Opera House because she never talked about any of that before she was dying.”
Gently, I placed my teacup in its saucer. “Did either one of them respond?”
Alicia shook her head. “No. Neither one. I didn’t know if Annabelle was still alive or not, but I saw Lillian in the papers all the time, so I knew she was alive and well. I had half a mind to just show up on her doorstep and ask her what’s what.”
A half smile twitched at the corner of Helen’s mouth. “I’ve heard of that happening before.”
Alicia pursed her lips. “Yes, well, I thought it just rude. Especially since my mama left something for her. And I explained that in my letter to her, too, but I guess she wasn’t interested.”
Both Helen and I gave her our full attention. Helen choked down a cookie so she could speak. “Was it her scrapbook pages?”
“Oh, no. She had my grandmama Justine burn those before I was born. I know because my grandmama told me. Said she regretted it until the day she died, seeing as my mama’s story will never be shared. See, I wasn’t the only one who believed Mama’s story started at the Harlem Opera House. She came from Savannah—I knew that much, but you never would have known it to hear her talk. It was like she just wiped the Georgia clay from her feet and never looked back. That’s why I’m here. Wanted to return to where we came from. I raised my children here.” She indicated the piano and its collection of frames. “Three boys and one girl. They all still live here except for my youngest son. He’s in Germany right now in the Army.”
I slid my teacup and saucer onto the coffee table, not sure I could hold it without it rattling. “The thing you were supposed to give to Lillian—do you still have it?”
“Sure do. Figured I’d hold on to it for a while longer. Maybe write her again. She must be getting old though, hmm?”
Helen nodded. “Yes. She’s ninety. But still relatively healthy, except for her arthritis.”
Alicia stood and walked to a dark-stained footed bookshelf tucked between the two long front windows. With both hands, she pulled out a thick, leather-bound Bible, then withdrew a yellowed envelope from between the pages. “I figured if I kept it here, I wouldn’t forget about it.”
She handed it to Helen. “I figure you can give it to your grandmother. See what she wants to do with it.”
Helen nodded and slipped the envelope into her purse after a brief hesitation. She turned back to Alicia. “Did Josie ever say anything about her brother, Freddie?”
Alicia sat down again across from us and poured more tea into all three cups. “She had pictures of him. He was a fine-looking man, that’s for sure. My middle son, Jeremy, favors him a great deal. And my oldest son, Frederick, is named after him.” She straightened her shoulders. “I do know that he was one of the founding members of the NAACP chapter here in Savannah. My mama always said that’s what got him killed. That and him marrying a white woman.”
Helen grabbed my hand. “He married a white woman? Here in Savannah?”
Alicia nodded. “Not that they advertised the fact, of course. My mama said that the reverend who married them got raided, and his church burned because they found out he was marrying couples of mixed races. It was illegal here until nineteen sixty-seven, but there were some ministers who felt God was on their side in joining a man and a woman in holy matrimony, regardless of the color of their skin or what the law books said.” Her dark fingers played absently with the angel charm around her neck. “Anyway, when he got raided, they took the marriage records. Found my uncle’s name and decided to teach him a lesson. It was too late, of course.”
“Too late? How?” I felt Helen’s hand in mine again, squeezing my fingers.
“They were expecting a baby.”
Helen’s fingers squeezed mine tighter. “Who was the woman—his wife? What was her name?”
Alicia shook her head. “Mama never said her name. Everything associated with her brother’s death was too painful for her. She never did talk about it. She only mentioned about his being married because of that big Supreme Court case back in sixty-seven that said people of color could marry who they wanted to and that the states had nothing to say about it. Made my mama cry, remembering her brother, who died because he loved the wrong woman.”
“But you don’t know her name?” I asked, but not because I didn’t think I knew the answer. I said it only to fill the empty places in my head that kept knocking against the parts of the truth I still didn’t know.
“No, I’m sorry. Like I said, it wasn’t something she ever talked about. My grandmama always called that part of my mama’s life the ‘great sadness.’ She said it was what made her music so poignant, but I think that’s a horrible price to pay.”
“And her scrapbook pages,” Helen said, “all of them were burned?”
“All of them. I wish she hadn’t done it, but my mama was a force to be reckoned with. If she said she wanted something done, you didn’t go against her.”
Alicia smiled, and I smiled, too, thinking of the three friends who’d lived in different times but had tried to be stronger than they were allowed.
“There’s another reason why I wanted to meet with you today. We—you and I—are related. We found the birth certificates at the historical center. My great-grandfather was your mother’s father. Leonard O’Hare was Josie and Freddie’s father.”
Alicia closed her eyes and nodded. “Well, praise the Lord. It’s always a good day when a family gets expanded.”
We stood and hugged and Alicia smiled in my face. “Although I can’t rightly say we look like we’re kin.”
