ROSEWOOD'S ASHES

by Aileen Schumacher

PROLOGUE

Blood ties.

Tory Travers gripped the bathroom sink and resolutely confronted her reflection in the mirror.

Blood ties.

Those were the words that kept going through her mind--not any words having to do with the unexpected gut-wrenching news from a mere thirty minutes ago, or the devastating phone call that had immediately followed. Not even any words for how wretched she felt--the damp sheen on her pale skin and the dark circles under her eyes were witness enough to that.

Blood ties.

If you spent a whole life time learning that you could never be totally free of such ties, the least you could do was avoid making more of them.

But wait.

That kind of reasoning would cancel out Cody. Cody--her pride and joy, her soul mate, the person Tory would give her life for without a second thought. But inevitably, other thoughts followed hard on the heels of that rosy image of her only son. Cody, the teenager rapidly turning into a man. Cody, who insisted on testing the mother-son ties by getting himself a girlfriend.

Tory sighed to herself in the mirror. Nothing was ever simple, and as an engineer, Tory liked her answers simple.

Well, future decisions were going to have to remain just that—-decisions to be made in the future. For now, Tory had to pull herself together and face the fact that she must return to Florida, go back to the place and the people she left at age eighteen, so eager to put it all behind her that she had never looked back. Never, until the past seemed to hold the key to a threat to everything she held dear. Never, until the father she hadn’t seen for eighteen years decided to forge a bridge to the future via her son.

Tory leaned her forehead against the cool, flat, solid surface of the mirror. She envied all those people who thought of Florida as Disney World and endless sandy beaches. She knew only too well that Florida was still deeply steeped in the Old South, as removed from high rise resorts and amusement parks as gumbo and turnip greens are removed from lobster and caviar. Just step off the beach or out of the gates of the theme park and you could be there, suddenly wondering how you would ever find your way back. Just take a tiny step into her own family history and you would be confronted with as many versions of the truth as a revisionist historian.

Get a grip. With an effort, Tory used that phrase to replace the endless chant of "blood ties" going round and round in her head. Throughout her entire life, logic had been her saving grace. Tory knew logically that she needed to walk out of the bathroom, go into her bedroom, and simply open the phone book to the listing for airline reservations. It was just the cumulative shock and stress getting to her, making her think that that one action would be like opening a Bermuda Triangle window into the past, an opening that would consume her and everything that she considered to be her future.

She shook herself into action, ignoring the echo still rattling around in her head. All her work, all her independence, all the years, miles, states, and cultures between her and her birth place, and it still came down to this.

Blood ties.

CHAPTER 1
The Visitors

November, 1994, Lake City, Florida

When the gawky young white woman first started coming around, hesitantly asking about other survivors, Lissy Hodden Garner had no more intention of talking to her than she had of talking to those other people. Those ones who came earlier had been full of themselves. There was a passel of black people Lissy had never seen before, excitedly claiming some kind of connection simply because their father or mother or aunt or uncle supposedly knew Lissy a lifetime ago, and there were still others, black and white both, with their degrees and their book learning and their all-important mission, crowding into her room with tape recorders and notebooks and cameras.

It had sure set them all back some, the fact that she had nothing to say to them. What did they expect, when they’d come looking for her, not the other way around? When they started talking about the money for her maybe down the line, Lissy would have laughed--except for the fact she wanted them to remember her with lips clenched tight together, solemnly shaking her head, refusing to say a word.

The money, now that was a hoot, them thinking that the money would mean something to a shriveled up old black woman in a nursing home, with not one single blood relative left alive. She still had Sam's railroad pension, bless the man, and it was more than enough to keep her in this place more days than she was interested in being there. Mind you, this place wasn't fancy, but at least here she could afford a room to herself.

But those other ones hadn't given up easy, she had to give them that. When they saw that the talk of money had no effect in prying open her old clenched lips, they fell silent for a few moments, blinking and staring at one another as though some trusted family recipe had failed to produce a tasty meal.

Then one of them took a deep breath and started talking about justice and retribution, and soon the others were clamoring along like a congregation switching hymns mid-song. So it went, from talk of money to talk of justice and retribution. Well, those were two words that Lissy Hodden Garner knew something about. She sure was looking forward to some of each in the next world, and she had no intention of tainting her chance of getting a peek at them by believing that justice and retribution could be granted by living, breathing people. At least not the kind of justice and retribution that Lissy had in mind.

We just want you to tell us your story, they kept at her. Tell us your story before it's too late, before it's lost forever. Well, for all their book learning and degrees, and for all the claims of connection and community, those ignorant people didn't realize that was the whole point. It was enough to make Lissy wonder whether they had been taught any common-sense manners while being so all-fired busy getting ahead in the world.

It was pure audacity, them thinking she would share her story with strangers. It was pure audacity to think she would share it with anyone. Lissy’s story was the one unquestionable thing that belonged to her alone and to no one else. She hadn't chosen to share it with her parents or her sister, or with the real acquaintances from that other time, who years ago would sometimes seek her out and wish to start conversations in low, furtive tones.

Lissy always hated any chance encounters with those previous acquaintances, and not just because they were always after her, badgering her to tell them what she'd seen. They all had the same rolling, seeking eyes, as if they were always on the lookout for someone following close behind them. Some of them out-and-out claimed they were being stalked, that they had to move constantly, changing their names and occupations as often as the season. They talked about fearing for their lives--claimed that they had to whisper and talk behind their hands to avoid being sought out and punished.

Lissy was always devoutly grateful that regardless of whatever else had transpired, she hadn't turned into a ghost-person with rolling, seeking eyes. Lissy didn't have to whisper and talk behind her hand, because she had nothing to say. More than that, she had nothing to fear. She had been to Hell and back again, and it had burnt the fear right out of her for a lifetime.

Tell us your story, they kept prodding her. Didn't they realize her parents had spent years of prodding before going to early deaths, and it had never made a difference? Lissy’s sister Garland had prodded until it became an obstacle between them, a barrier neither one could reach over. When little Homer Marshall grew up and went off to fight Hitler, returning a ruined shell of a man, there was nothing left to bind the sisters. They lived out the rest of their lives with minimal contact. Not minimal enough, thought Lissy, for had she known that Garland would provide a trail to the people who crowded into her room, she would have foregone even the annual Christmas card.

No use fretting--it was all water under the bridge now, for Garland had been dead these past few years. Lissy heard that she had slipped away with no family member at her side to ease the journey from this world to the next. Well, there were worse things than dying alone, and one of them was a lack of peace.

That was the one thing that Lissy dreaded after they found her, because although she had all the resolve in the world, all the resolve of an eighty three year old woman worn out by a lifetime of hard work might not have been sufficient to the task. Tell us your story, they kept asking. Lord, she had more visitors in a week than the rest of the nursing home residents had in a month of Sundays.

Tell us your story, tell us your story--to Lissy's ears it started to sound like a chant. One single soul knew Lissy Hodden's story, and that was sweet Samuel Garner, who had now been resting in his grave for nigh onto twenty years. There wasn't a day came and went that Lissy didn't miss Sam, that sweet man-boy who held her night after night and wiped away her tears, but it was almost enough to make her glad he'd passed, so these prodding ones couldn't badger him along with her.

In the end, it was big, strapping Tazzy they didn't count on. Tazzy, with her pierced nose and tongue and Heaven-only-knew what else, Tazzy with her kinky hair dyed blond and her coffee-colored skin crawling with snake tattoos. Tazzy might not be a nurse, she might not have a fancy title, and she might not have much book learning, but Tazzy sure did have something. Tazzy called it street smarts; Lissy called it gumption. Tazzy stood up to all those people and told them to leave an old woman alone. When one man asked if maybe Lissy was senile, and if that was the reason she wouldn't talk to them, Tazzy showered him with language that made his lips turn whitish, all the while tugging on his sleeve, ushering him out of the room with the rest.

Lissy and Tazzy didn't have one single thing in common other than their distant African heritage. Lissy didn't approve of Tazzy's appearance or her language—with certain exceptions. Lissy didn't approve of the way Tazzy went through men like hair colors and had no ambition to settle down, and Lissy could only marvel at Tazzy's stories of growing up in the Bronx--it seemed to her to be a foreign land. It deeply pained Lissy that Tazzy claimed not to believe in God. On top of all of this, Lissy couldn't fathom what it must be like to have a name like Tazzy--it sure didn't come from the Bible or any book Lissy had ever read, and it didn't stand for something else, like Lissy stood for Little Sister, one time long ago. But despite their differences, one thing that Lissy and Tazzy had was an understanding, and that understanding included the fact that if a grown woman achieved the ripe old age of eighty three, she certainly had the right to decide whether she wanted to talk to people or not.

After Tazzy showed those others out three days in a row, they stopped coming around. A reporter would call up now and then, but since there was no one else who would be calling Lissy, Tazzy could be counted on to tell the caller that Mrs. Garner wasn't available. When Tazzy wasn't on duty and someone else brought the phone around, Lissy would hold it to her ear, shake her head in a puzzled fashion and then hang up, remarking with surprise how there was no one on the other end of the line.

Well, that was the truth. It just wasn't the complete truth. There was no one on the other end of the line that Lissy wanted to talk to.

So it was no wonder that when young Chloe Pitts showed up pale and awkward as a new-born calf almost a year later, Tazzy was in fighting form to show her out the door. But the homely white woman was quiet and respectful, and she came bringing flowers, which caught Lissy's interest right off the bat. She had always been a sucker for flowers, ever since Samuel Garner first came courting her, clenching a bunch of wilted lilies in his huge sweaty fist. Lissy told Tazzy that she would call if she needed her, then she told Chloe Pitts that she could sit and visit a spell if she was so inclined.

It was the very awkwardness of the woman that disarmed Lissy. Chloe haltingly explained how she was a graduate student in history at the university in Tallahassee, and how she worked for one of those others who had come around earlier. Lissy never knew exactly which one, and she never wanted to know. She liked to think it was the man that Tazzy gave a talking to. Chloe explained nice and respectful-like that she was working independently, checking facts and stories and names before the sunsetting.

The talk of sunsetting confused Lissy. She didn't know how much fact and story checking the young woman was going to get done in one out-of-the way nursing home before the sun set that afternoon, especially with the days getting so short.

But then Chloe explained that she was talking about the sunsetting on the mission of those people looking for survivors. And sunsetting didn't mean what Lissy thought it meant--it meant that there was a deadline. If all the survivors weren't identified by December 31, then those who hadn't been found wouldn't be survivors. Lissy would have laughed out loud at this if the other woman hadn't been so serious and solemn. The very idea, that if someone's name wasn't on a list by a certain date, it meant they weren't who they were. That sounded just like something white folk and government would cook up together.

Chloe was polite and Chloe brought flowers, and Chloe didn't ask one single time for Lissy to tell her story. She just showed Lissy her list and asked her if she knew of anyone who should be added. Lissy didn't even put on her glasses on to look at the list or to find her own name. She just pretended to study it for a while and then handed it back, saying she would think on it. Then she asked Chloe about her family and her upbringing, and the young woman answered shyly, but thoughtfully and in detail, not just as though she were humoring an old woman. After listening for a while, Lissy thought that despite their age difference, Chloe's story of growing up poor and white in Micanopy, the offspring of two alcoholic parents, almost sounded similar to growing up poor and black in a Florida timber town.

Almost.

When Tazzy stuck her head in to say that supper was coming, Lissy was surprised that the afternoon had passed so quickly. She told Chloe Pitts that she could come back and visit again some time, and that Lissy sure did like flowers. Chloe came back five times during the next three weeks, always bringing flowers, always willing to talk about whatever subjects struck Lissy's fancy. But she always asked at some point during her visit if Lissy knew of anyone who should be added to the list, and Lissy always told her that she would think on it.

But Lissy wasn't senile and she wasn't stupid, and she knew the visits wouldn't last forever. It was getting on to being Christmas, and after that would come the sunset, the sunset that a group of lawmakers had declared, as though they thought they could rival God. So Lissy thought on the matter, and at the end of the third week she decided that there were certain things she could tell Chloe Pitts that wouldn't compromise sweet Samuel Garner’s role as the sole recipient of her story.

Lissy decided to tell Chloe Pitts about the Marshall boy, and the consequences be damned.

© 2001 Aileen Schumacher. All Rights Reserved.