Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! (52 page)

Dena spoke as calmly as possible. “You’re not surprised?”

“No. From the very beginning, she was scared to death somebody might find out who she was. That you might be disgraced or thrown out of school.” Dena’s heart began to pound. Christine folded and refolded the Kleenex. “A lot of them just disappeared like that, just dropped out of sight, couldn’t stand the pressure. Always looking over their shoulders, never trusting anybody.” She looked at Dena. “But to leave your child …” She started to cry again. “Oh, that poor girl, what she must have been going through.”

Dena’s face became chalk white and she felt as if she might faint. This was not what was supposed to be happening; it was a strange sensation. The worst things that people imagine almost never come true, but her worst nightmare was unfolding before her eyes. She was surprised to hear her own voice saying, “But she trusted you.”

Christine blew her nose. “Oh, yes, she knew I would never have told anybody. Listen, how she wanted to live her life was her business but there were a lot of people who didn’t feel that way, couldn’t wait to hound you down and expose you.”

Dena, who was now on automatic pilot, nodded as if she had a clue as to what Christine was talking about.

“And after all that mess about Theo hit the papers, she almost went crazy, she was so scared. She was convinced she was next.” Christine looked away. “I think she may have even been afraid of me after that.”

Dena was pulled back into reality. “Theo? Who is Theo?”

“Her brother Theo,” Christine said, matter-of-factly, as if Dena should know.

Dena stopped her. “Wait a minute. My mother had a brother who was also a Nazi?”

Christine frowned at Dena. “A Nazi? Theo wasn’t a Nazi, he was a violinist. Where did you hear that?”

“Well, isn’t that what you said?”

“What?”

“Didn’t you just say my mother was a Nazi spy?”

Christine was completely taken aback. “A spy? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Your mother was not a Nazi spy; who told you such a thing?”

“Didn’t my mother work for a woman named Lili Steiner, who had a dress shop in New York?”

“I remember when your mother first got to New York, she worked for some woman named Lili something. But what does that have to do with anybody spying?”

“Lili Steiner was convicted for spying and spent ten years in jail.”

Christine said emphatically, “Well, I don’t
care
what that woman was convicted of, your mother was not a Nazi. My Lord, I’ve known your family almost all my life. Whoever told you that must have been pulling your leg. Your mother was no more of a Nazi than I am.”

The phone in the kitchen rang again. Christine stood up. “No, she hated the Nazis. Your poor grandfather had to get out of Vienna, leave everything he owned just to get away from them.” The phone rang again. “Let me run and get this. She’s expecting a call from the furnace people.” She called back over her shoulder. “Not only that, if they hadn’t gotten out of Europe when they did, you might not be sitting here talking to me today.”

Dena’s mind was reeling. She felt as if she had just been pulled by the hair through a knothole at a hundred miles an hour. So that was it—her mother was Jewish! That’s why she changed her name, why no such person as Marion Chapman existed. This was the last thing in the world she had expected to hear … but what was the big deal about that? Why had her mother not told her? Why was she so afraid? Something was still not right. It didn’t make any sense; there had to be something else. Her mind raced in a hundred different directions. If she had not been a German spy, who was she running from? Then, another thought … maybe her mother had something to do with the
arrest
of Lili Steiner. Maybe the reverse was true, maybe her mother was an American spy! Maybe the postwar Nazis were after her for revenge. Maybe that’s why she had to change her name; perhaps she had been in a government protection program.

Christine walked to the top of the basement stairs. “Lucille, he said he’d be here in half an hour.”

Lucille called, “Thank you.” Christine said, “Are you sure I can’t get you some coffee or tea?”

Dena was so distracted that she did not respond. “I don’t understand. Why did she change her name?”

“A lot of people did. I did.”

“But why? It just doesn’t make any sense to me. I mean, to change your name and your entire life over something like that …”

“I know, but you have to remember, things were very different back then. It was not easy for any of us. I know.”

Dena looked at Christine, now that she knew. She did look somewhat Jewish.

“You couldn’t get a job, you couldn’t even get in most places. Your mother wasn’t the only one. There were thousands of people doing the same thing. I did it myself for a while. Whitenow was not my real name. If anybody looked at me funny I used to tell people my mother was Spanish. During the Depression, when people were desperate for jobs, you’d be surprised how many Spaniards and Cubans showed up looking for work.”

“Do you think my father knew?”

“No,” she said. “I know for a fact he didn’t.”

“Would it have made a difference to him?”

“You never knew if it would or not. No, I think your mother just wanted to get married, have a baby, and forget it. It just broke poor Dr. Le Guarde’s heart, first Theo, and then your mother—”

“Who’s Dr. Le Guarde?”

“Your grandfather.”

Dena tried to recover. “Oh, I knew about my grandfather, but I didn’t know he had been a doctor.”

“Yes,” Christine said, almost reverently, “your grandfather was one of the most respected doctors in Washington.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, he was chief of staff at Freeman Hospital right over here and head of the medical school at Howard College for years. He was very well known.”

Another “Really” was all that Dena could manage.

“That’s what made it so sad for him, to lose both children like that.”

Dena was half listening; this was the first time she had ever heard her mother’s real name and she kept repeating it in her head.

“Your grandfather was a good-looking man. Of course, so was Theo.”

Dena looked at Christine. “Le Guarde. That doesn’t sound like a Jewish name to me. Why would they have to change it?”

Christine was puzzled. “Jewish?”

“Yes, why would they change it? It sounds more French than anything.”

“Jewish?” Christine said with an even more puzzled expression. “Dr. Le Guarde was not Jewish.”

“He wasn’t? Was it my grandmother?”

“No, neither one. Where did you get the idea that they were Jewish?”

Dena felt herself getting ready to be pulled through that knothole again. Either she had completely lost her mind or Christine was purposely trying to confuse her. “Didn’t you just get through telling me that my grandfather had to leave Vienna to escape the Nazis or am I crazy?”

“Yes, I said they had to leave but not because they were Jewish.”

“What are you talking about, then?”

Now it was Christine’s turn to be confused. “Didn’t you tell me you knew about your grandfather?”

“I said, I knew I
had
a grandfather. But all my mother ever told me about her family was that they all burned to death in a fire.”

“A fire? What fire?”

“Was that not true?”

All of a sudden Christine realized what had just happened and a look of near-horror came to her face. She put her hand over her mouth and gasped, “Oh, my God in heaven, I thought you knew.”

“Knew what? I think we must be having two conversations at
the same time. I thought you told me that you and my mother were Jewish. Isn’t that what you just told me?”

Christine shook her head. “No.”

“Then you’re not Jewish either.”

“No.”

“You’re not.” Dena scanned her face once more, looking for some answer. “Are you Italian? Is that why you changed your name?” Christine did not answer her but Dena reacted to the word
Italian
. “Is that it? Does it have something to do with the Mafia? Was my mother involved with the Mafia, is that why she was afraid? Were she and her brother criminals or something? Look, I’m completely lost here; you’ve got to help me. I’m not trying to pry but I need to know. It’s not just for me, there’s somebody out there that’s trying to blackmail me. I’m not trying to put you or my mother at risk, I just need to know for myself. What happened to her … why she left.”

Christine was clearly torn. “Dena, please don’t ask me anything else. I promised your mother.”

Dena’s eyes got big. “Then she
was
in the Mafia!”

“No, your mother was not in the Mafia.”

Dena’s head began to throb. “Then what is it? I can’t imagine what it was that was so terrible … that she would just leave like that.… What didn’t she want me to know that—”

Dena suddenly stopped talking. Slowly, it began to dawn on her, what Christine had assumed she knew all along. What had been right before her eyes, and had been so obvious from the start. Something she had missed completely until this very second. All at once everything began to clear and things started to fall into place one by one, like pool balls dropping into pockets … and everything began to make sense: the neighbor, the odd photographs she had seen around the house. Christine was not Italian or Greek or anything else. Christine was a light-skinned black woman. Dena was in a black neighborhood, and had not even suspected it.

Dena and Christine sat there for a moment staring at each other, both in shock but for different reasons. After a time, Dena went outside
and motioned to Gerry to roll his window down. “Gerry, I think you’d better come in.”

Gerry got out of the car quickly. “Did she tell you anything?”

“Oh, yes. You’re not going to believe this—”

“What?”

“Wait.”

When they got back to the hotel late that afternoon, Dena was worn out. She felt as if she had been riding a giant Tilt-A-Whirl at the carnival for the past five hours, whipped first one way and then the other. Even after she had taken a hot bath and was lying in bed, her mind was still spinning. Gerry registered them under his name but had gotten a suite with two bedrooms. At eight-thirty he called her from his bedroom. “How are you doing? Sure you don’t want me to order you some dinner?”

“No, I just want to sleep.” Then she asked, for the twentieth time, “Do you
believe
this?”

“Well … it’s different from what we expected.”

Later, Gerry was rereading
What’s Doing in Washington
magazine when the phone rang. He jumped up and ran into the bathroom and picked it up as fast as he could, so it would not wake Dena. It was Macky Warren, wanting to know how things were going. Dena had said he might be calling and to let them know what was going on. Gerry whispered, “Well, we found the woman we were looking for.”

“Great. What did she say?”

“Mr. Warren, could you hold on a moment?” He went into his bedroom, closed the door, and picked up the phone. “She told Dena that her mother was a black woman.”

“A what?” Macky was quite sure he had not heard right.

“A black—you know, like Lena Horne. Light but black. She didn’t know what happened to her, but at least now we know the mother’s real name; that’s a start. Dena’s asleep in the other room but I’m sure she’ll call you when we know more.”

Macky walked slowly back into the living room, where he had left Norma and Aunt Elner cracking pecans. Norma sat, waiting for news like a bird waiting for a worm.

“Well?” she asked, her eyes wide.

Macky sat down in his BarcaLounger and picked up the paper, hoping to avoid conversation.

“What did she say?”

“I didn’t talk to her, I talked to her friend. She was asleep.”

“Yes … and?”

“And he said they found the woman.”

“They found the woman. Yes—and?”

“And what?”

“What did she say about her mother?”

Macky tried to sound casual. “She said that Dena’s mother was a black woman.”

She looked at him incredulously. “What?”

“Black.”

Norma closed her eyes. “Macky, why do you do this? You know I’m a wreck over this thing. Now tell me what she really said.”

“I told you.”

“Macky, you are not funny. What did she
say
?”

“Norma, I am not trying to be funny. She said her mother was black.”

Norma squinted at him. “What do you mean, black?”

“Just like I said. Black.”

“You mean Amos and Andy black?”

“No, he said more like Lena Horne black.”

Norma waved him off. “Oh, you are making this up. You probably didn’t even talk to him.”

He looked over the top of the paper at her. “I’m telling you, he said she was black. That’s what the woman said. I’m just repeating.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, she was no more black than I am!”
Norma cracked a pecan to make her point and threw the shell in the green bowl in her lap.

“Norma, you asked and I told you.”

“Well, he’s wrong. Don’t you think somebody would have noticed if Gene had married a colored girl? Don’t you think one person would have looked at her when she got off the train and commented, ‘Oh, look, Gene married a colored girl’? Not one person said that, did they, Aunt Elner?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Of course they didn’t, she was a white person, for God’s sake. That woman has her mixed up with somebody else. How can you be black if you are a white person? It makes no sense at all, I’ve never heard of such a crazy thing. Lena Horne, my foot.”

Aunt Elner looked up, confused. “How did Lena Horne get in this? Was she there?”

“Oh, she’s not in it, Aunt Elner,” said Norma. “He’s making it up just to get my goat. He is determined to drive me insane. Keep it up, Macky, and when I’m down at the state hospital foaming at the mouth, then you’ll finally get your wish.”

Macky heaved a sigh. “Have it your own way, Norma. I’ve told you the truth and you don’t believe me, so forget it.”

A few minutes passed. Norma cracked two more pecans. “The very idea of saying a white person is black. I knew her, you didn’t.”