Page 243 of The Sun Sister

‘Because I thought you guys were in touch...Anyway, let’s just hope he turns up in the next few days. Right, I need to take a shower, grab some lunch and then head off to Granny’s.’ I smiled at Mariam, whose back was turned to me as she replaced the first aid kit in the cupboard.

‘Okay, there’s some sushi in the fridge. I’ll take it out for you.’

‘Thanks.’

As I crossed the Brooklyn Bridge on the way to Stella’s apartment, I thought again about Mariam and how there was definitely a subtle shift in her usual calm, composed demeanour. Something was going on with her, I just knew it instinctively, and I decided that tonight I’d ask her what the problem was. If it was me, I really needed to know, because I couldn’t bear to lose her.

Arriving at Sidney Place, I stepped out and saw neat brownstones and newer redbricks. The sidewalk was tree-lined and had a calm atmosphere of understated wealth. Walking up the steps of a brownstone with pretty flowerboxes in the windows, I pressed the bell that said ‘Jackson’, and within a few seconds, my grandmother was standing at the door.

‘Welcome, Electra,’ she said as she ushered me into an entrance hall and then right into a large and airy space, with double-aspect windows that looked out at the front onto the houses opposite and at the back, down onto a garden below. I noted the dated furniture: there was a couch covered with chintz and two battered leather easy chairs that sat opposite a large fireplace.

‘This is lovely,’ I said and meant it, even if I did feel I’d just stepped back into a different century. There was something comforting about the fact that it looked like everything had been here forever.

‘Excuse the decor, I’ve never been one for interior design,’ Stella said as she moved a pile of papers from the couch and onto a coffee table already piled high with files. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’

‘A Coke would be great if you’ve got one.’

‘I sure do. Want to follow me and see the rest of the apartment?’

‘Okay,’ I agreed as she opened the door at the back of the room and we took some steps down to the lower ground floor and entered the kitchen. It had double doors leading to the pretty garden beyond it. The walls were a weird yellow colour which I guessed had just gone that way with age, and cracks zigzagged across the ceiling. There was a big old-fashioned pine table, again covered with papers and folders, and the kind of stove I’d seen recently in a movie set in the 1950s. A dresser sat along the side of one wall with shelves full of colourful earthenware pottery.

‘It’s pretty much as it was when I was a living here as a kid.’

‘Did my mom live here with you?’

I watched her pause for a few seconds before she answered.

‘Yes. Cecily bought the apartment with Kiki’s legacy for next to nothing when the area was still cheap. When we first moved in, it was real rough around here, but over the years, she made it into a home for us all and now, well, the area is called “desirable” by the realtors. There was a bedroom upstairs for Cecily, one for me, and the other for Lankenua, until she moved out to her own place with her husband. You want to go sit in the garden? At this time of day, it catches the sun.’

‘Sure,’ I said as Stella led me out onto the terrace, on which sat an old-fashioned wrought-iron table and two chairs that had once been painted white, but were now chipped and turning green from moss.

‘I do my best to maintain this,’ she said, indicating the garden, which was awash with all kinds of flowering plants I couldn’t name. ‘When Cecily was looking after it, it was her pride and joy. She had cuttings shipped over from her friend Katherine in Kenya, but after it fell to me to care for it, the weeds have taken over. I’m away so often and I simply don’t have the time or the inclination.’

‘Did Cecily ever go back to Africa? Did you?’ I asked.

‘That’s a yes to both questions. I understand you have a hundred of them, Electra, but I was thinking before you arrived that it’s best to keep telling you the story in chronological order.’

‘Okay, but just one thing I need to ask you, Stella – is my mom alive? I mean, she can’t be that old and—’

‘I’m so sorry, Electra, but no, she isn’t. She died many years ago.’

‘Oh...okay.’

Stella put out a tentative hand and placed it on mine. ‘Do you need some time before I tell you what happened after we left the house on Fifth Avenue?’

‘No. I mean, you can’t really mourn someone that you never knew, can you? I just needed to know.’

‘You can mourn the thought of her.’

I swallowed hard, because my grandmother was right. It was the end of any kind of fantasy I’d ever had of meeting my birth mother. I’d thought about her a lot when I was little and in trouble with Ma for doing something naughty. I’d imagine her (as I was sure most adopted kids did) as an angelic presence who would float in from the skies, wrap her arms around me and tell me that she loved me unconditionally, however bad I’d been.

‘I’m fine,’ I nodded, ‘I just want to know everything now, so I can move on. When did you find out that Lankenua wasn’t your real mother?’

‘It was when she wanted to get married. Lankenua was moving on to start a new life and I wasn’t going with her, so the two of them told me together.’

‘Were you upset when you knew the truth?’

‘No, because even though I was loved by her, she’d always played a secondary role to Cecily. I suppose you could say she was my nursemaid. It was Kuyia – Cecily – who had brought me up, and who I’d always looked to as my mother. The problem was, Cecily suddenly realised that Lankenua and I had come into the United States on a visa which had never been renewed. So we were both technically illegal aliens. Lankenua was okay as she was marrying a US citizen, and in those days, she automatically became one herself. But that left the problem of me. Cecily wanted to adopt me legally, but back then, it wasn’t just unheard of but impossible for a white woman to adopt a Negro child. As Lankenua was moving on, it was eventually decided that Rosalind would officially adopt me. Her husband Terrence was a lawyer and through their activism, they had friends in high places. At the time, it was the simplest thing to do. So I became Stella Jackson in name and eventually got my citizenship and a US passport, even though I continued to live here with Cecily.’