CHAPTER 2

Shocked silence reigned in the summer house. Then Leigh
squealed, “Grandma, we can go together! This is so cool!”
She leaped to her feet and ran to hug Chloe.
“Mother,” Bette opened her mouth and babbled, “have you lost
your mind?”
“Bette, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to worry you.”
Chloe let Leigh hug her and then pushed her to go back to her seat.
“But your stepfather and I discussed it, and we’ve decided to go and
show our support for civil rights. You know we’ve been hoping and
praying for the end of Jim Crow since before you were born.”
“But to actually attend a march, Mother.” Bette stared at her, her
mouth still open.
“You can’t stop me from going now,” Leigh declared. “Not if
Grandma and Grandpa are going.”
Bette’s gaze went from her mother to her daughter’s, and then
sharpened. “You are still my daughter,” she stated firmly. “And you
will not —”
The sound of a car horn blaring from the drive interrupted the
conversation.
Chloe stood up, joy flashing over her face. “They’re here!” She
hurried out of the summer house, nearly running toward the front of
the house, calling, “Minnie! Minnie!”
With open arms, an older Negro woman met Chloe in the drive.
They crashed together—hugging, laughing, weeping. Leigh stood
back, wondering who this woman was and why she was so special to
her grandmother. And did any of this have anything to do with
Wednesday’s march?
LEIGH COULDN’T TAKE it all in. That evening, the white-linen-covered
dining room table at Carlyle Place was crowded with family—her
own, including her stepfather (who’d arrived just as they sat down),
her grandparents, and three strangers. At least strangers Leigh had
heard of but never met. These were Mrs. Minnie Dawson (whose
stage name was Mimi Carlyle), her husband, Frank Dawson, and
their grandson, Frank Dawson III, who had been away in college. In
her late eighties, Minnie’s frail mother, Jerusha—who’d still been the
housekeeper at Carlyle Place when Leigh was a little girl—had also
joined them.
Minnie was very attractive for her age—she had a nice figure and
was well-dressed, with only a touch of gray in her hair. Her husband
matched her in good looks and fashionable clothing, as did their
grandson.
While this wasn’t the first time Leigh had seen Negroes sit at her
grandmother’s table, Leigh sensed these strangers were different. . .
special. Chloe and Minnie kept touching hands, grinning at each
other and wiping away tears with embroidered hankies. From their
conversation, Leigh understood this wasn’t a reunion of two friends
long separated. Her grandmother and Minnie talked of visits over the
years. But the visits had apparently been in New York City rather
than at Carlyle Place. The tears, the auspicious quality of the
moment, came from Minnie’s long-awaited homecoming—after
having spent nearly fifty years away.
Leigh listened with avid interest to Chloe’s explanation that
Minnie and she had grown up together and had gone off to New
York City in 1917. Minnie had ended up as an actress there. It
sounded like a story from a book, but the truth was sitting here right
in front of her.
Delighting in the history lesson, Leigh asked several questions.
After a while, though, she noticed Minnie’s grandson, whom they
called “Frank Three,” glancing her way a few times, looking amused.
Something about his looks made her feel very young and even
gawky. Embarrassed, she curtailed her comments, answering just
yes and no to questions sent her way. This was not like herself at all,
especially here.
After a dinner that passed with laughter and much banter (some
of which Leigh didn’t fully understand), she was sent upstairs to put
Dory to bed. She kept the door to the hallway open as she tucked
her sister into the trundle bed for the night. Snatches of
conversation floated up to her.
“I’ll never forget the first time we saw you on the stage.” That
from her grandfather Roarke, she assumed, to Minnie.
“Oh Bette, I loved picking out your prom dress.” That from
Minnie. Why did Minnie pick my mother’s prom dress?
“I can’t believe I’m really here.” That from Minnie, repeated one
more time. “And sitting at the dining room table.” She chuckled.
“Chloe, what would your parents say if they could see us now?”
Leigh heard her grandmother laugh amid the sounds of everyone
rising to go sit out in the summer house. But she missed the rest of
Chloe’s response because Dory interrupted Leigh’s eavesdropping,
reminding her primly she hadn’t said her prayers. Leigh performed
the nightly ritual, concluded with hugs and kisses, and then left her
sister. She knew the younger girl would get right up and sit at the
window watching and listening to the night sounds and the
conversation below. She didn’t blame her. The day had turned out so
much differently than Leigh could have predicted.
She walked down the front hallway stairs. With everyone outside,
the house felt empty and silent. Leigh decided to use the front door
and strolled outside, somehow hesitant to join the adults. Although
she’d enjoyed the dinner conversation, hearing facts she’d never
known about her grandmother’s life and from strangers had struck
her as . . . odd. It pressed her to change how she’d thought of her
grandmother, as a woman without a past. Why hadn’t she ever
thought of Grandma Chloe as young?
Outside, twilight had taken over the sky in blazing pink and
bronze layers and a watermelon-red sun hung suspended just
behind the silhouetted tree tops. As she walked down the side of the
house, she glimpsed Frank Three standing near the line of poplars
along the drive. His skin was the color of coffee with cream; he was
tall, lean, and good-looking. He’d shed his sports coat, and his
starched white shirt glowed in the dusky light. Her own casual shorts
and blouse made her feel at a disadvantage. Wishing she were
wearing something more elegant, like his grandmother’s white
Chanel sheath, she halted, uncertain of approaching him, uncertain
of her welcome.
With a nod, he acknowledged her. In fact, he appeared to have
been waiting for her and now he motioned her to come to him.
She sucked in a breath. Anywhere but here, a conversation
between Frank and her would be dangerous, especially to him. But
here he was a welcomed guest, the grandson of her grandmother’s
oldest friend. Leigh considered this, gathering her courage. Then she
tossed her head, shaking off her fears. This wasn’t 1917. Her hands
clasped behind her, through the growing shadows, she sauntered
toward him and onto shaky ground. “Hi,” she murmured with what
she hoped was the right amount of friendliness.
“Hi.” He grinned. Then he nodded toward the summer house,
where conversation and light laughter continued. “I don’t feel up to
any more ‘do-you-remembers.’ Why don’t we take a walk? There’s a
river near here, isn’t there?”
Leigh tingled with uneasiness. In spite of the twin protections
here of privacy and family, speaking to Frank challenged her to cross
more than one line. He was older than she, and she’d never talked
to a Negro boy alone before. But then, attending an all-girls school
meant that she rarely spoke to white boys either, and also never
alone. It was his color, though, that heightened her reaction to him,
to the situation. She felt awkward and yet she also felt daring.
Speaking to a Negro boy carried many possible consequences. Or
was she just prejudiced?
This thought struck her then with blinding force. She’d wanted to
go to Dr. King’s march on Wednesday, but she realized now she’d
intended to go only as an observer, not a participant. Until this
moment, civil rights had been abstract to her. It hadn’t been to her
grandmother. She and Minnie had grown up here together; they’d
helped each other break away from Carlyle Place. And now they
were planning to march together on Wednesday as they had back in
1917 down Fifth Avenue.
What did this Negro college boy think of the reunion between
their grandmothers? Why was he daring her to step out of her place
and his?
“Meeting you, your family . . . This is really weird,” he murmured.
“Isn’t it?” He glanced in the direction of the voices. “Maybe we
should just go to the summer house?”
His uncertainty matching hers made the difference. She felt the
tension inside her loosen. She straightened. “You got that right,” she
whispered and sent him a genuine smile, suddenly feeling more like
herself. “The creek’s this way.” She led him down the rutted dirt lane
toward the nearby wide creek that fed the Patuxent River farther
downstream.
As they walked, she realized that until that moment she’d
thought of him as just a boy. But he wasn’t like the other boys she
met. For the first time, she realized, she was alone in the company
of a young “man.” This was unusual enough without anything else
added. Waves of reaction to his alien masculinity flowed through her.
She hoped she wouldn’t do or say anything stupid and embarrass
herself.
“I had planned to attend King’s civil rights march with a couple of
college buddies,” Frank spoke casually as if they weren’t really
strangers, “but then my grandmother said no, to come with them.
And then one buddy got drafted and the other got a job.”
Frank’s easy conversation helped Leigh get a feel for him, helped
her relax more. “You’re in college?” she asked.
“Just graduated. I completed a B.S. in mechanical engineering
from NYU.”
Frank was even older than she’d thought. “Congratulations,” she
said automatically.
“Where are you drudging away?” Frank kicked a stone with the
polished toe of his brown shoe.
Leigh hated to admit to still being in high school, but he’d know
she was younger than he. “I’m a junior at St. Agnes, a girl’s school
in the D.C. area.”
“Really? I thought you’d be starting college by now.”
Leigh flushed with pleasure.
“So you want to go to the march, but your parents, especially
your mother, don’t want you to?” he asked lightly.
“How did you guess that?” Leigh stared up at him as they passed
under the tall, tangled oaks, stretching over the lane. The argument
over the march had not been referred to at the dinner table.
“Your mother has a very expressive face.” He chuckled. “Every
time the march was mentioned she frowned—usually at you.”
“Oh.” Leigh didn’t want him to get the wrong impression. “Mother
isn’t against civil rights. She just doesn’t —”
“Doesn’t want her daughter in a march,” Frank cut in. “My father
was the same way when I decided to go south and join a sit-in at a
lunch counter in South Carolina.”
Leigh took in her next breath sharply. Stark black-and- white
newspaper photographs of the incidents flooded her. “You did that?”
How did he have the courage?
“Yeah, two summers ago, right after my sophomore year. My
father, Frank Two, was afraid I’d get arrested and have that blot on
my record to dog me the rest of my life.”
As they neared the creek, she picked her way over the ruts,
patches of grass, and tree roots with care and chose her words the
same way. “Did you get arrested?”
“Yes, twice.” He shrugged. “But it was just a misdemeanor
charge, like a parking ticket. No big deal.”
He must think the controversy over whether she could go to the
march as lame. Although she was impressed by his courage, Leigh
didn’t think she should remark about it. His casual attitude had set
up the way he expected her to react. “You’re lucky,” she said. “You’r