Page 163 of The High Tide Club
“Not really. Why?”
Lizzie thrust the report at Brooke, stabbing at it with her finger. “Check out this part right there.”
Brooke squinted at the print, reading it once, and then again, and finally a third time.
“Holy shit.”
“Right? Are you sure you want to give the whole report to him? Maybe you should just tell him there’s no match and leave it at that.”
“No. He’s got a right to know. He’s waited his whole life for this. This report might not have the answers he wanted, but he deserves to know something.”
“Do you have to go see C. D. right this minute?” Lizzie asked.
“No. He doesn’t even know I’m coming.”
“Good. I know Varina’s going to want to see you.”
71
Felicia was taking a cake from the oven, a dishtowel tied around her waist for an apron and a scarf wrapped turban-style around her short-cropped hair. Varina sat at the kitchen table, chopping pecans. Both the women’s faces were shiny with perspiration.
“Oh, Brooke girl!” Varina cried. “Come here and let me see what that rascal did to you.”
Brooke and Lizzie sat at the table on either side of Varina, who gingerly touched the bandage on Brooke’s cheek. “I’ve got some salve I want you to start putting on that thing,” she said. “You do that every night, and you won’t ever have a scar on that pretty face of yours.”
Felicia mopped her own face with her apron. “Auntie has become a conjure woman since moving back to Oyster Bluff. You watch out, or she’ll bury some chicken bones at midnight and put a spell on your enemies.”
Varina took a playful swipe at her great-niece’s hand. “This one here thinks because she has a PhD, she’s smarter than her elders.”
“Varina,” Lizzie said, her voice unexpectedly serious. “You know I’ve been going through Josephine’s old papers, working on a magazine article. I foundsomething I don’t understand, and I wanted to ask you some questions, if that would be okay.”
Felicia shot her friend an inquisitive look, but Lizzie brushed it off.
“I’ll try,” Varina said cheerfully. “I might be an old, old lady, but I still remember a lot of things. What can I help you with, baby?”
“I found an old letter from the fall of 1942 to Josephine from a Catholic priest in Savannah. His name was Charles Ryan. The letter is sort of a progress report for a baby boy named Charlie. It says the couple who took the baby can’t continue to care for him anymore, so he’s decided to take the baby to the nuns at St. Joseph’s. That was an orphanage in Savannah. It closed a long time ago.”
“Oh?” Varina said with interest. “Well, I know Josephine used to give money to those orphans. She had a good heart, and she did a lot of good things, but she didn’t want people to find out because then they’d think she was weak or silly.” Varina set her knife on the cutting board. “But now, if this is about that crazy C. D. saying Josephine is his mother, you just need to stop with that foolishness. Josephine never had no baby. And I’d know, because I was living with her and working for her back then.”
“I believe you,” Lizzie said, her voice soothing. “But I think, maybe, the person who had a baby was you. Can that be true, Varina? Were you the one who had a baby?”
72
Varina
The first year after the war started, Josephine went to my daddy and asked could she take me with her to Savannah so I could go to a real school. Josephine told him I was so smart, I should go to a school in Savannah so I could make something of myself. But the real reason was that I had a big secret I couldn’t tell anybody about.
Josephine was the only person in the world who knew. And I only told her because I was scared. And ashamed. So ashamed.
My mama died right after I was born, and I never had any sisters, so there wasn’t anybody to explain women’s things to me. The first time I had my monthly, when I was thirteen, I thought I was bleeding to death. That’s when Josephine sat me down and explained things. She was the one who taught me how to take care of myself when I got my monthly.
Josephine was the only person I’d told about that bad man grabbing me at the party for Millie. And I never would have told her at all, except that night when it happened, afterward, when everybody was asleep or gone, I came creeping up into the house as quiet as I could to try to wash him off me because I couldn’t go home and let my daddy and brothers know what that man had done to me. When I came out of the bathroom, Josephine was standing there.And after I told her, she took me upstairs to her bathroom and let me take a hot bath. My beautiful new pink dress was torn and dirty, so she gave me some clean clothes to put on and she took that dress and burned it in the fireplace. And then she drove me home in her daddy’s Packard. And I promised not to tell nobody.
And Josephine was the one I went to, right after Christmas that year, when I figured out that I had missed my monthly three times.
“Sweet Jesus!” she said. We went up to her bedroom and she locked the door and she looked at me and said, “Well, Varina. This is my fault. And I feel awful about it, and I will help you the best way I know how, if you trust me.” And then we both cried and cried.
And that’s how I came to move off the island.
