The Swan House (3 page)

Of course, the Wellington girls spent nine months trying to figure out who had been named as the Raven. Sometimes someone guessed correctly, but since the Raven could not outright admit her identity, an aura of mystery surrounded the ritual right up to the time when the Raven was announced on the night of the Mardi Gras Festival, along with the fact of whether or not she had been successful in her quest. And, of course, the senior girls who had chosen the Raven had to keep their mouths shut.

It was the best of the school's rituals, and the motivation behind the Dare and the Mardi Gras Festival was not just class pride, but also philanthropy. Several of the major Atlanta companies pledged money to the charity of the junior class's choice if the Dare were met. Likewise, wealthy individuals also participated in the event. Daddy had offered a large amount of stock last year.

Wellington Prep School was a private Christian school for girls, starting with sixth grade and going through high school. It was considered one of the finest schools in the Southeast, and many wealthy Atlantans supported it. Graduating from Wellington almost always meant that the girl continued on to college, and if she was smart she had her pick of the top universities before her. Such was the reputation of Wellington.

Only once in the past ten years had a junior solved the Raven Dare. Rebecca Dewberry was the girl chosen to be the Raven in 1956. She was one of those really brainy types with drab dresses and pointed glasses. But as the story goes, when she solved the mystery, she was transformed into the school heroine. Her wardrobe was completely refurbished to the latest style, and she did away with those atrocious red cat-eye glasses. She applied for the Morehouse Scholarship to UNC and got it, but turned it down to go to Radcliffe and became a lawyer in the time before women did things like that.

I couldn't remember what her task had been, but I had heard that her grandmother, who had been one of the founders of Wellington back in the 1920s, had helped Rebecca, along with the drama teacher. Apparently, Rebecca had wisely chosen her two faithful assistants and had brought glory to her class.

But I was no Rebecca Dewberry. My grades were Bs at best. I just didn't have the time to study. I much preferred sketching in the woods or making up silly poems or riding my horse. But at least I had Rachel Abrams for a friend. We'd been practically inseparable since our first year at Wellington as sixth graders. Rachel was what I called book smart. Her dad was some brilliant physicist at Georgia Institute of Technology. Where I lacked confidence, Rachel had enough for the whole school. And whereas I tended toward the melodramatic, Rachel was blunt. She liked to call a spade a spade, as my granddaddy would say. And for as plain as I was, Rachel was a real knockout. Long, thick blond hair and crystal clear blue-gray eyes. She'd started puberty by age eleven. I was sixteen, and for me puberty had just begun three months ago. But we were best friends.

Why she had picked me out to befriend, I'm not sure, except that we both played the flute in the school orchestra—she much better than I. We also both loved horses and had mares of our own, which we kept at the barn behind Rachel's house. So just about every afternoon we'd be together riding or practicing flute or cleaning out stalls or something.

And Rachel made me think. She was always coming up with bizarre questions about the meaning of life. But thank goodness, on this particular night, with the prize of the Raven Dare safe in my hands, she chose simply to chat happily as we headed back to the gate, me limping and she skipping.

“Good going, Swannee. Good job. This is going to be a piece of cake.”

I wasn't so sure about that. My ankle was throbbing, and my hands were filthy with dirt and leaves. But I was excited. I had been chosen to be the Raven, and I had found the Dare!

If that task had been all I had to do in and of itself, then my story would not bear telling. But it seems to me now that the hand of God reached down in the midst of a harmless dare to alter my destiny and that of every other person I cared most about for so many years to come. It makes me shiver to consider it, but as I see it, the history of my family, and by and large of the city of Atlanta, is forever tied up in a schoolgirl's prank.

Chapter 1

Orly Airfield, Paris, France
June 3, 1962

I
n my mind, the nine months from the first of June 1962 until the end of February of the following year were what I afterward called “the year of death.” I suppose it was the worst year of my life in many ways, certainly the most painful. And yet, as I have so often seen since, it was a year of discovery and change, and ultimately of hope. And there were wonderful parts too—the first time I fell in love, the first time I learned to really see someone else, the first time I dared to venture outside myself. And most importantly, it was the year that I discovered the truth, and truth always sets us free. So maybe I should call it not the year of death, but the year of freedom.

This is how it happened, as best I can piece those first days together from what I've been told and from what I lived.

John Jason Middleton, my forty-year-old father, lifted his arm and waved happily to his wife and my mother, Sheila, as she headed to the large aircraft. Then, on an impulse, he ran out of the glass doors and caught her in a tight embrace, kissed her on the lips, and pressed his hand against her fine silken hair. She laughed at him, her jade eyes twinkling and her wide, delicious mouth painted bright pink. “See you tomorrow, sweetheart.”

He watched as his wife and many of their friends boarded the Boeing 707 bound from Paris to Atlanta. The three-week trip with over a hundred other Atlantans had been perfect in every way. A dozen different scenes flashed through his mind. Dancing with Sheila. Sheila on the Champs-Elyse ées. Sheila, arms piled high with packages from Galéries Lafayette. And of course Sheila weeping in front of a Rembrandt . . . a da Vinci . . . a Raphael.

Ah, Sheila! At thirty-eight, she was already called one of Atlanta's premier artists, and the contacts she'd made in Paris could almost assure a noteworthy exhibition there next spring. He squinted to get another look at his wife as she disappeared into the huge jet. The other members of the tour were tucked safely inside the plane as it taxied for takeoff.

But he and Mama had agreed two nights before to fly home on separate planes. Daddy, ever the cautious one, had preferred not to be on the same flight going home—for me and my brother Jimmy's sake. The others on the trip thought him silly, but I'm sure he must have had a premonition of what was to come. And several business options had presented themselves on Friday, so he had a good excuse to stay another day.

“Of course, Jason darling! It's a marvelous idea.” Mama had sung the words in her slow, smooth Southern accent. Then she had pouted. “But what a bore to be on the plane all those hours without you!”

To which he had guffawed and playfully pinched her. “Yes, you'll be bored stiff, I'll bet. Nothing to do but chat with Rosalind Williams and Anne Berry and Elizabeth Bull.”

“But you, dear Jason?” she said in mock sadness. “I'm thinking of you.”

He laughed again hearing her words, both of them knowing how he relished the thought of a few hours alone to catch up on business before he got back to Atlanta.

The jet sped down the runway of Orly Airfield with the bright Paris sky at midday shining down on it, sending gleaming reflections from its sleek metal exterior. Daddy felt the familiar jump in his stomach as the plane accelerated, then an immediate sense of relief to see it poised, ready to pierce the sky, nose pointing confidently upward.

Then, as he was about to turn away, he saw the silver bird hurtle forward without leaving the ground, heavy streams of white smoke trailing behind it. The plane screeched to the left, wobbling horribly for what seemed an eternity as the white smoke turned black. Daddy watched, horrified, screaming out loud as the nose of the plane struck the runway with the force of an earthquake, splitting the pavement apart. There was the sound of an explosion and then the airplane burst into fierce, lapping orange and blue flames.

He ran toward the glass doors with a dozen other dumbstruck eyewitnesses, tripping over himself, and made it onto the field before a man in an Air France uniform stopped him, warning, “You can't go out there!”

“My wife's on that plane,” Daddy cried hysterically.

“I'm sorry,” the Air France official told him. “My brother's on it too.”

Daddy stood there in shock, imagining the excruciating heat, hearing somewhere on a distant runway the scream of sirens. Hearing his own anguished voice, weeping and calling out, “Sheila, Sheila . . .”

Atlanta, Georgia
June 3, 1962

The way I always heard it afterward was that Ella Mae was sitting in church on the morning of June third, fanning herself the way she always did, her big straw hat covering the coarse black hair that was beginning to be laced with gray. She was a large woman, strong, sturdy, and jovial. When she would smile and show her white teeth amidst her ebony face, ah, to me, it was such a simple and profound picture of contrast. Dark and light that blended into one of the most beautiful faces that my young eyes had ever seen. Ella Mae was my family's maid in the year 1962. I lived on the northwest side of Atlanta in a big house. I had no idea where Ella Mae lived when she wasn't at my house. She was as much a part of my family as my mother and father and my thirteen-year-old brother, Jimmy. I loved Ella Mae, and even though the tides of racial change were sweeping through our country, and her skin was black and mine was white, I had never seen the difference between us in all of my sixteen years.

It was, in fact, the events of the next nine months that forced me out of my cocoon. But I am getting ahead of myself.

At nine in the morning on June third at the Mount Carmel Church in southeast Atlanta, the pews were filled, the singing loud and joyous. The black bodies were swaying to and fro, as Ella Mae loved to describe it, and a young soloist in the choir stepped forward to belt out the last verse of “Oh, Happy Day.” It was a modest church of red brick and white woodwork that needed painting, and the pews had worn gray cushions. But it had ten breathtakingly beautiful stained-glass windows, and the piano was in tune, and the choir, my, could they sing! So caught up were they all in singing and praising the Lord that no one seemed to notice that Pastor James was awfully late getting to his place. When he finally did step into the sanctuary and up to the pulpit, the singing stopped abruptly with one look at his stricken face.

“My brotha's and sista's in Je-, in Jesus,” he said, stumbling over his words, something Ella Mae said he had never done before. His eyes were glistening as though he was trying to blink back tears. “Our hope is in the Lawd.” The usual amens were suppressed. Every member of the congregation waited, hearts beating hard.

“I have jus' received the tragic news of a plane crash in Paris. A charter plane carryin' some of Atlanta's citizens crashed early this mornin' in Paris.” There was a gasp throughout the congregation. “That plane carried on it many of Atlanta's most prominent citizens. The pain I feel for these people . . .”

But Ella Mae never heard the rest of Pastor James's eulogy or his sermon. She let out a loud wail of “Lawd Jesus!” and abruptly got to her feet. “I gotta git to Mary Swan and Jimmy,” she cried out loud, but really talking to herself, and she left the church in a blur, barely noticing the others who reached out to her or asked, “Ella Mae. . . ?”

They figured it out later, and it made perfect sense that Ella Mae would be thinking about us, her chil'un, as she liked to say. Thinking about me asleep in that big house, oblivious to the fact that my whole life had just come to a screeching halt.

When I came downstairs that morning, the house was uncommonly quiet. My little brother, Jimmy, was still asleep, and I was still dreaming about the great Raven adventure and nursing my tender ankle. It was Sunday, and Grandmom and Granddad Middleton, Daddy's parents who were staying with us while Mama and Daddy were away, had already left for church. If Mama and Daddy had been home, we would've been at church too. But Grandmom had told us the night before that we could “slee-eep eyan,” as she pronounced it in her dignified Southern way, and we had not argued. Later in the afternoon, Grandmom and Granddad would take Jimmy and me to the airport to pick up our parents. I could hardly wait. They'd been gone for three long weeks, and I was anxious to hear about their travels.

Ella Mae, the maid who had worked for us for as long as I'd been alive, was always there on weekdays. I could imagine the sound of her vacuum in one of the bedrooms and the smell of her fried chicken permeating the air and whetting my appetite. Sometimes, when I got home from school, I'd sneak into the kitchen and steal a chicken leg, devour it, and toss the bone into the trash can before Ella Mae could discover it. She knew, of course, and fried several extra pieces for my brother and me to enjoy after school.

But today there was no smell of chicken or soft, distant zooming of the vacuum. Today was Sunday, the third of June, and Mama and Daddy were already on the plane en route to Atlanta from Paris. I glanced at the grandfather clock in the entranceway as I came down the long, winding marble staircase. Nine thirty-two. Only six more hours.

My mother was a well-known painter in Atlanta and the South, often absent traveling to what I considered exotic places for art exhibitions. I'd grown up in the ample lap of Ella Mae, loving the smell of her soft black skin against mine as she read to me from
Uncle Remus
or sang songs about Jesus loving me, this I know. She was like a second mother to me.

Ella Mae's black hair was short at the time, but I remember when I was little I used to run my fingers through it and love the coarse feel and the way she let me twist it around my fingers and braid it. She never put on makeup that I could tell. Her eyes weren't that big, but she would lift her eyebrows and somehow show the whites of the eyes when she was mad. Her nose was straight and wide, which I thought was absolutely perfect because mine was so little and turned-uppish, and I always wanted to sketch her face. It was the most real face I had ever seen.