Tucked into Thea’s bed, we stare at the frilly lace and ribbon canopy. Thea takes my hand. It’s about Tilly, she whispers, the slave that haunts our house. She comes at night and stands at the side of the bed that you’re on and waits for me to wake up. She stopped growing the day she gave birth to a daughter here in this room. She was thirteen and hadn’t looked pregnant. When her baby came out more white than black, the midwife knew if she didn’t kill it Tilly would have been sold as a field hand and sent away. She told her to rest, that she would wash and swaddle the baby, but instead she drowned her. When Tilly found out, she ran from the house wandering the fields, not remembering her name or who owned her. Now she comes back because she is still looking for where the baby is buried. I have been trying to help her but I can’t find anything. In here, she pulls a composition book out from under a stack of comics, I keep a map of the places I’ve searched.
How can you tell?
By temperature. If the soil isn’t warm it means the bones can’t be there. Once you practice, I will show you tomorrow, you get the feel of it.
I hear Helen other nights. Like Tilly, she doesn’t rest.
Usually I am able to get back to sleep, but on one night Mother and Father are speaking loudly. Father tells Mother to shut up, which is something we have been forbidden to say, especially now that we live in the South where manners and rules are important.
In the morning Mother isn’t in their bedroom, and the heavy blanket from her side of the bed is strewn across the length of the couch. Father has already left, which explains why Mother doesn’t wake Helen. He is the one who insists we don’t miss a day of school even when we are sick. Mother hasn’t put our juice and toast on the table.
I call to Mother. What happened last night? Why was everyone awake?
You must have dreamed it.
She doesn’t say goodbye to Jake or to me, and she doesn’t remind us to take our lunches.
Why does Helen get the day off?
Hurry, Mother says, I hear the bus.
Father’s father—the one Helen and I refer to as the rich one because he has a personal maid who dresses him in silk, manicures his nails, and sprays him evenly at morning and at night across his neck with French perfume—takes the family photographs.
We are standing on his balcony, overlooking the ocean in Miami Beach. Mother is off to the side wearing her fall and headband, brown pumps, pleated skirt, a pink lace blouse and pillbox hat. Father’s arm is around Helen. He tries to draw her close but I can see her feet are resisting, like a tree in a strong wind, the way it must bend in order to survive. No one has noticed me, or if they have, they don’t mind that I am wearing a tee shirt and a pair of crumpled pink and white shorts.
Click.
Father’s father doesn’t know about composition. His job is to make us look our best. The column looks as if it is growing out of Mother’s head.
Say Cheese.
Click.
Then to Jake, stay still.
Click.
And to me, hold the dog or she can’t be in the photographs.
Click.
Something, maybe the light of the flash or the noise, frightens Coco and she runs.
In the room adjacent to the terrace is a life-size painting of Father’s father seated in a leather chair, even though he does not own a leather chair, and on his finger is a ring with a blue stone, which I have also never seen. In life he doesn’t wear jewelry, not even a wedding band. But the artist drew his lips the way they are—thin and long. The nose, too, is accurate and to scale. His oily skin glistens. It is the sort of painting that might hang in a castle or government building, a portrait of a king or president.
Mother’s father and mother live directly across the street with a view of a multi-level parking garage. Because we are the only grandchildren, we are required to spend half our vacation on one side of the street before switching to the other. Each one keeps track of the time, but Mother’s mother, Mama, which she insists we call her because Grandmother dates her, makes the most trouble.
I go where they tell me but I am not the one they fight over. Jake’s presence is worth more than my sister’s or mine. I prefer to go across the street with Mother, my brother and sister, but a cousin of my Father, whom I have never met, is in Miami. The cousin’s girlfriend has a son who is also thirteen. Father tells me I will be spending the day with them at Sea World.
It is always tense, the leaving of one grandparent’s apartment for the other, and my parents begin to argue. I hope Mother is taking my side because today I’m supposed to be with her parents, not at Sea World.
I open the bedroom door and call out: Please don’t make me go. Then I stand with my back against the closed door. Even with my fingers in my ears I have no luck blocking them out. Father tells Mother when I return from Sea World he will bring me across the street, or if it is too late, first thing in the morning.
The front door slams. Mother leaves.
I stare out the living room window onto Collins Avenue and count the cars going in the direction of the city. Mother stands on the median with my sister and brother and her American Tourister suitcase, color red. Had I run after them, she would have sent me back.
Father calls to me from the kitchen. I don’t make him wait. On the table is a stack of recent photographs from his parents’ anniversary. Because Father wanted pictures of both his parents, he took these. One is cut in half. Father sees me looking at it.
Your Mother, he says, should make sure she never looks this way again.
In the half he is discarding, Mother’s eyes look like doll’s eyes and the front of her dress is stained with red wine.
I want to know how long I have to be at Sea World but hesitate to ask, not wanting to remind him.
They will be picking you up in less than an hour, he says, go get pretty. He crumples the half of the picture that is Mother and throws it in the garbage.
My cousin keeps kissing his girlfriend’s lips and biting her ear while his hand holds her ass that is wrapped in a tight red skirt. We sit on wooden bleachers and watch a show of dolphins. The sun is in my eyes. When the camera pans the crowd I cover my face. I do not want anyone to see me here, for there to be a record.
The ride home takes a very long time and the motion of the car, especially the starting and stopping, makes me feel sick. When they drop me at Father’s parents’, I am not feeling well and in the course of the night I develop a fever. By morning, Grandmother, who never speaks until after Grandfather has spoken, determines I have the flu.
Mother, my sister and brother must know I am sick, otherwise Father would have brought me across Collins Avenue according to plan. But Mother hasn’t called to ask if I need medicine or to see a doctor.
Father’s mother gives me a box of pink, scented tissues. Your father will get you lunch, she says. And here is mentholated chest rub in case your cough gets worse. Grandfather and I will be back in a few hours. You need to keep the window closed.
But it’s so hot. I protest.
And I am going to keep the curtains drawn. Maybe you can sleep.
The television in the bedroom glows from its faux wood console. It is the winter of one of the Apollo missions and the news is on every channel. I keep seeing the same craters while I hear the deep voice of the newscaster, who isn’t saying anything of interest. Father is also watching, but in the other room. Later, when he and Jake are together, they will talk about what they have seen, especially the spacecraft, the men in the blow-up suits and how everything, including the men, floats and drifts without reason.
I get out of bed and go into the bathroom where I spend