Cabin at the Lake Ch. 10

"I watched you play football, baseball. I could tell you specific instances, prove to you I was watching real events but I don't need to, do I?"

They both shake their head.

"And you watched me play college hockey in your dreams, didn't you?" I look at them, all of them, Jewel included. "I saw you. I was driving for the net, a power play, and the four of you were sitting with my parents. There is no way I could have seen you. When I played hockey nothing existed except the ice, the puck, and where I needed to move it. But I saw you, sitting with my parents." I look at Donna. "I would be willing to wager a large sum of money you can describe my parents, though you've never met them. Am I right? You were chatting away with them. You were telling them I was a wonderful doctor and ..."

"And an even better person and they must be very, very proud of you," Donna finishes for me. I nod.

"I saw you, Jewel," I continue. "You were in junior high. I've never heard of junior high, back east, we call grades six through eight middle school. But you were in seventh grade. You were crying because you had not made the drill team. That was bad enough but that wasn't why you were crying. You were crying because you knew what the teachers who were selecting the team were saying to each other. 'We can't..."

"Do anything about letting the niggers into class but we can keep them off the squad," Julie whispers, eyes dry, voice steady. "I've taken care of those women, as patients. There all 'honey' this and 'you're the best' and they mean it but I still hear their voices saying that word. They don't say it anymore but they still think it. What they are really thinking is, 'Julie honey, you're the best nurse, for a nigger' and I know it and it takes so much energy not to hate them."

Donna's hand is over her mouth once more. The boys stare straight ahead, eyes hard, jaws clenched. The shimmer in Julie's eyes threatens to choke my voice.

"I never knew what was going on inside those ignorant old fools' heads," I tell my love, feeling utterly incapable of making up for the stupidity of the humankind but feeling I must try. "I'm not sure how or if I'll be able to handle this," I confess with a shake of my head. "How will I be able to take care of people if I'm able to see how ugly and rotten some of them are at their core?"

Julie pats my hand. "You won't be able to help yourself. Sugar, you must have learned by now you can take care of people even though you don't like them all that much, some of 'em you may even hate. It's not much fun but you can do it."

I shrug, not as reassured by her words as I'd like to.

The others are staring at their feet. Donna has tears on her cheeks.

Julie starts to laugh.

"All ya'll just knock it off, ya bunch of pussies. You want to feel less guilty? I'll take you to hang around more black folks. Get a whiff or two of what's floating around in their heads and you'll understand that people are people, some are sweet, some are turds and most are a bit of both. So, suck it up, fools."

-----

I feel a half a dozen kinds of shitty about what Mark is telling us about Julie. As soon as he spoke, every detail unfolded in my mind, gymnastics, baseball, hockey, all of it. And he's right, it's more than a dream. The impossible details are there. How could we have been in the stands watching Mark play hockey? Not as kids, as he was, but adults as we are today? Impossible. Yet, I have no doubt what we saw actually happened. Every flash of his blades, every thrown arc of shaved ice sparkling under the lights, had happened, exactly as we had seen.

Gary and my sister turn to look at me before I begin to speak. They all do.

"We had dinner with Julie's grandmother, Granny Thibideau. Julie called her Granny T because she could make her three year-old mouth say 'Thibideau'. She had snow white hair, wrapped up in a bun at the back of her neck."

"And an ash walking stick, worn to a honey gold by her hands," Gary adds. The others nod.

"Your mother was there," Julie adds.

I had not recalled that until the moment she opened her mouth. Before I can speak, Mark begins again.

"Your mother and Granny traced it all back, my parents and grandparents and great-great-great-how many every greats back, grandparents, and yours," he nods at us. "And yours," he tells Julie, squeezing her hand. "We're all related, distantly, but closer than a supposedly random gathering of people ought to be."

I nod. "We all spring from a mulatto couple, from the part of Africa that becomes Liberia. Mark's ancestors encountered them in the Caribbean before immigrating to Massachusetts, a century before the Revolution."

"They, our common ancestors, were slaves," Julie picks up the thread.

"Yes," Mark agrees. "And they were brother and sister."

I try to be surprised but as before, as soon as his lips began to form the words I knew what he was going to say and that it was true.

"The trader, kept the mother of the children and the daughter, the son he sold. When the mother died, he sold her daughter. She was his daughter, too," I say, shuddering at the thought that I share, even slightly, the man's genes. "They met in what would become Haiti. They had several children but one, the youngest daughter, was very fair. They smuggled her off the plantation. She was raised as white and married a Scot who took her and their children to Boston."

We look at each other.

"It would appear," I continue. "That, whether they knew it or not, mostly not I imagine, the offspring of that mulatto couple seem to have kept seeking each other out over the generations. They married each other at rates far above what can be explained by chance. We're all related." I smile at my sister and brother. "Some of us more closely than others but we're all related."

"That's right," our mother snaps. "I very succinct summation, counselor. Now would somebody help me with my bags?"

We all jerk around to stare. This is no astral projection bullshit. This is my mom, tanned, fit, tired, and standing in the door as real as anything else in this world.