Page 83 of Meet Me in the Garden

“No, honey,” I say, and he starts to cry.

Nathalie’s voice now, saying, “We only have two more weeks.”

“I know, my love. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to find him.”

And I make another round of calls. And another visit to the library for the papers. And the men finish my studio—a spacious empty room, wide and light with a deck off one of its sides and a high, flat ceiling. I lie down at the center of the floor and close my eyes.

Just a week before the children come back, Adele comes over unannounced, calling to me from the street.

“You’ve been crying,” I say when I open the gate. “What’s wrong?”

She hands me the new issue ofJetmagazine. Bright olive cover, Beverly Weathersby smiling in a barely-there white dress. “Page six,” Adele says. It’s an article about Emmett Till. I know about him from the newspaper and the radio broadcasts, but here’s a photograph that blurs my vision. Sends my ears ringing. Monstrous, to do that to another human being. Beyond what I had imagined.

“His mother asked the magazine to print the photo,” Adele says. “I can’t stop seeing it. He was only two years older than Rudy. A child.”

I take her inside. I make us cups of tea even though it’s hot out.

She says tonight is the summer soiree, hosted by Les Dames Amis. She says it doesn’t feel right to go anymore. How could she dress up and celebrate, and what does it even mean anyway, to be Creole in Los Angeles? To make that distinction. “When Rudy walks down the street, he walks down the street as a colored person in America. Same as Titter and Bobby and Al and Lionel. Andus—if people know what to look for. Why am I holding on to some idea that we’re different? I won’t do it anymore. I’m going to call Claire and tell her I’m not going. There are better ways to use my time than pageantry.”

She leaves the magazine on my sofa, drives away. I don’t touch it, and yet I can’t stop seeing the photograph in my mind. Fourteen years old and gone.

And then I’m sick with worry, needing the children to come home. Rudy and Nathalie and Clément and Titter and Bobby. Little Sebastian, still practically a baby. I want them back in Los Angeles. I want them tucked into their beds. I call the Laurent house, teary at the sound of Mama Laurent’s voice. “The kids are over at Hattie’s,” she says. “Eating crawfish and playing cards. We’re all trying to keep their minds off wondering if Felix will call.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I can’t find him. I’ve tried.”

A pause. And then, “Cyril would have loved every moment of this. Being a father. To the both of them.”

“I know he would have,” I say, but only to please her, because how do I know if it’s true? How do any of us know what a person will do, or how they might surprise us. “The kids are having fun, though? Being safe? Sometimes Rudy thinks of himself as more grown up than he is. When you have all the cousins with you, will you be sure to keep a close watch on him especially?”

“Oh, baby,” she says. “Is that sweet Emmett boy on your mind? He’s all anyone’s talking about these days. Enough tears to drown in. You’re worried?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“They’re safe. We’re with them all the time.”

I nod even though she can’t see me.

“You did the right thing, going out to California,” she says. “I wish the family could have stayed together, but Lord knows you all did the right thing for your children.” But poor Emmett Till’s mother did the right thing, too. She moved her family to Chicago, only to have the South kill her child anyway, while he was on a visit back home.

A week later, I pick Nathalie and Clément up from the train station. Search them for heartbreak over Felix, wonder if they’re feeling thesame finality that I am, as though our chance of reuniting extended only through the summer, and now that summer’s ending, it’s time for hope to end, too. I splurge on a second record player and we lie on our backs in the studio, listening to music. We hang the banner my sisters made for me.Listen Your Heart Out.I set us up a still life and we each paint it, the windows and doors open wide. And I think about Delphine, cutting me out, giving me no choice. At least she was honest with me. At least she didn’t keep me hoping. And the school year starts again. And we gather for a late autumn picnic in Brookside Park with families from church, from Our Lady of Victory, from Les Dames Amis. I’m helping to set out the salads with my sisters at a table, glancing over at Nathalie now and then. She’s sitting in a little circle with Titter and Bobby, listening to them intently. Clément approaches and she scoots to invite him in. I dish potato salad onto plates. Lionel comes through the line, cigarette dangling from his lips, smiling at me.

While we’re eating, clustered in groups on picnic blankets and benches, Nathalie calls out to get our attention. “My cousins have something important that they would like to share with all of you. It’s about something that matters to them, so I hope you’ll really listen. Okay, stand up,” she says, looking at Titter and Bobby.

We’re all watching them. They look as though they’ve been placed at a strange dinner table in a strange living room, and they have no clue as to who they are or why they’re here.

“Go on,” Nathalie says.

Titter looks at Bobby. “You start,” she says.

Bobby scratches the back of his neck. “Okay. My sister and I would like to ask you to call us by our real names.”

Titter stands straighter. “I don’tlikebeing called Titter. It’s a baby name. My real name is Elizabeth.”

Bobby drops his hand, blinks. “And my name is Paul.”

No one says anything at first so Nathalie steps forward again. “Thank you, Elizabeth and Paul. That was very brave.”

From the corner of a bench Lionel claps, and I clap from my blanket, and soon we’re divided, those of us who agree that it’s brave andthe others, rolling their eyes or stiffening at being told what to do by children. The mother of one of Nathalie’s classmates taps me on the shoulder, asks for a word. “I should tell you. The sisters are concerned about your daughter. She has a defiant streak, they say. I know she’s been through a lot, poor girl—and pooryou, with your husband leaving… But I’d hate to see Nathalie get into worse trouble. Or pass her ideas on to the other children.” She squeezes my arm, disappears before I know what to say. Claire shoots me a questioning look over a pitcher of lemonade. I shake my head, scan the field, and there’s Nathalie, cross-legged in the grass, braiding Titter’s hair.Elizabeth’s hair. Strange, how the change of her name puts her into sharper focus. Elizabeth is talking earnestly, spinning a daisy between two fingers while Nathalie listens.