Page 259 of The Sun Sister

‘Don’t we all?’ I rolled my eyes.

‘By the time Rosa was sixteen, I’d lost control of her completely – she wasn’t attending school, and spent most of her time hanging around downtown Brooklyn with her new friends. At first I just thought she was smoking dope when she came home high, but then she started to stay out all night. I had no idea where she went. I began to notice she was losing weight – this was when crack cocaine was beginning to appear on the streets. Electra, I swear, I did everything I possibly could to talk to her about drugs, but she just didn’t want to listen.’

‘I understand,’ I said quietly. ‘Look at me, I didn’t want to hear either.’

‘Anyway, she then got brought home by the cops a few times, and was finally charged with petty theft – she’d been shoplifting and selling the stuff on the streets for cash. I paid her bail, and found a lawyer to represent her in court. The threat of jail calmed her down for a while and she stayed home. She drank some, but I think for that time the drugs stopped. The court gave her a caution, with the threat of juvenile hall if she got herself back into trouble again. And then...’

I watched Stella as she paused, her hands clasped tightly together, her eyes full of pain as she remembered.

‘She disappeared. A week after the court hearing, she went out one night and just never came back. And that was the last time I ever saw her.’

‘Did you search for her?’

‘Of course I searched for her!’ Stella turned to me, her eyes blazing with anger. ‘I turned Brooklyn and Manhattan upside down looking for her! There wasn’t a precinct I didn’t visit with a photograph, a neighbourhood where I didn’t stick a poster on a lamp post. I went to all the ghettos, the crack dens, all the damned places I could find where the lowlifes of the city hung out. I went up to Boston to search for her there, thinking she may have gone back to one of her exes, but nothing. Absolutely nothing. She literally vanished. Over two years I searched for her, working at the UN by day and walking the streets by night. It sounds impossible that someone can truly vanish off the face of the earth, but that is exactly what your momma did. And I swear, Electra, there was no stone I knew of that I left unturned.’

‘It’s okay, Stella, I believe you. So’ – I knew we were heading for the denouement of the story and braced myself – ‘when did you find out she’d died?’

I watched Stella swallow hard. ‘In truth, only just over a year ago, when your father got in touch with me and asked to meet me in New York. He told me that he’d spent time trying to trace your blood family, because he knew he was dying and he wanted to be able to leave you a letter that would tell you where you’d come from. He’d gone back to Hale House where he’d found you, and spoken to the daughter of Clara Hale, who’d put him in touch with one of the women who’d worked there at the time. Turns out, it was her who took you in that night. She was able to find the register which documented your arrival. As always, there were no details left about your mama, but the woman apparently remembered the man who brought you in. She’d seen him around the neighbourhood and knew he was a junkie. So your father asked for his name, and the woman said she thought he’d been known as Mickey. Your father scoured the area and eventually, he managed to find him through the Abyssinian Baptist church in Harlem. He was apparently a reformed man who had found God and was a lay preacher at the church. You must remember, Electra, that I knew nothing of this at the time,’ Stella clarified. ‘Anyway, Michael, as he’s now called, was able to tell your father what he remembered of your momma.’

‘Was this Michael my father?’ I asked eagerly.

‘No, he just happened to live in the same crack den when your momma was pregnant with you. There were constant police raids so the junkies were always moving on to find different hiding places in abandoned buildings around Manhattan. He was there when she gave birth to you, admittedly out of his mind on crack, but he said that you were starting to scream the place down, which would have alerted the cops. So he scooped you up and took you to Hale House.’

‘And...’ – I swallowed – ‘what happened to my momma?’

‘I...’ My grandmother reached for my hand and held it fast. ‘Bear with me, Electra, and forgive me for what I have to tell you. Mickey said he came back to find Rosa bleeding out. It was obvious she was dying, so he and the others just...left. He said he went into a phone booth and made an anonymous call to 911, but that he guessed that Rosa would be dead before they found her. God forgive me for having to tell you this...and for not being there when I should have been for my beloved daughter.’

‘But you didn’t know where she was, Stella.’

‘Thank you, Electra, for saying that, but when your father told me the story, I swear, it nearly broke me. The thought of my little girl being left to die alone...’

‘Yeah.’ We both sat in silence for a while. So,’ I breathed eventually, ‘I guess there’s no happy ending to this story.’

‘Not for Rosa, no, but I hope – Ireallyhope – that the fact that you and I were able to meet because of it can bring us both some comfort. I’m just so sorry I’ve had to share this terrible story with you, at a time when it’s the last thing you need.’

‘But how did Pa find out you were my relative?’

‘Because of Michael. He’d lived with Rosa for a few weeks. For a start, he remembered her name, and he also remembered her talking about her momma, who had an important job at the United Nations. He thought that she was called Stella – he remembered because it was his favourite imported beer.’ She gave me a watery smile. ‘So, armed with that, your father began to do his research. He knew the year of your birth through Hale House, and contacted the UN in New York and asked them to look back through their records to find out if there had been a Stella working for them in 1982. I’ll thank Cecily forever for giving me a relatively unusual name – there were only two of us on the records, and one was dead. By this time, he had my surname, looked me up online and wrote me. The rest you know.’

‘I...’ There was one thing Ididn’tknow, but even though I could hardly bear to ask the question, I had to.

‘When she was found and...’ – I gulped – ‘taken to the place where they take dead people, they must have tried to search for relatives?’

‘At the time, Electra, there were bodies of young crack addicts being found all over Manhattan. And legally, the authorities only have to hold on to a body for forty-eight hours. If it’s left unclaimed, they can go ahead and bury it.’

‘Jeez, that’s fast,’ I breathed. ‘So wherewasshe buried?’

‘Your father and I visited the vital records office in Worth Street to find out. We had the date of Rosa’s death because it was the same day you were born, which was marked on the register at Hale House. Sure enough, the clerk was able to confirm that the body of an unidentified young black woman had been transferred to the city morgue that night. Since...since I was unable to claim her at the time, it’s New York state policy that unidentified bodies are buried on Hart Island in the Bronx. In truth, I haven’t been able to bring myself to go there.’

‘Right.’ I didn’t know whether I wanted to cry or vomit, but I knew I couldn’t take any more. ‘Stella, would you mind if I called for my car to take me home? I need...I just need some time to take all of this in.’

‘Of course,’ she said as I pulled out my cell and made the call. ‘Are you going to be okay?’

‘Yeah, I have to be, don’t I? At least now I know.’

‘Anything, anything I can do...please, tell me.’

‘I will. Just one last thing: you said you were in Africa when I was born and taken to Hale House?’