I have a few other things to report. One of them is that I have finally heard from my relation in Scotland. Her letter was open, though I would not go so far as to say it was warm. I’ve written her back. The principal of Broadneck High School reached out to me to ask if I would speak on a political science panel they arehosting in conjunction with other local high schools, and that would be in the spring. I said I probably would not, but I am considering it. Mick Watts: I did enjoy the week we spent together in Texas. While I was there he suggested a swap and he come to Annapolis to stay with me, so I’m mulling that over, but the fact of the matter is that Mick is really rather a lot. I’ve lived a quiet life for so long I’ve gotten out of practice with the way people can be, I own, but my goodness he’s loud and with some massive opinions. I will say, I fully expected him to be homophobic, but when I mentioned you and Stewart, he didn’t bat an eye. Goes to show, again, people can surprise you.
Warmest regards from your loving sister,
Sybil
Sybil Van Antwerp
17 Farney Rd.
Arnold, MD 21012
21 October 2017
To Ms. Van Antwerp,
I couldn’t see how you knew it was me writing when I never left my information. I thought about it for a long time, it drove me crazy, and then I see it’s simple. You remembered. You expected hearing from me. That surprised me really.
I have letters you sent my father, Enzo Martinelli, when he was in prison after sentencing in 1981 by Judge Guy Donnelly in Frederick Maryland. I found the letters years ago in my early twenties pressed in back of a drawer in a bureau and I could not understand, who was this woman writing to him in prison, and did he write back? When I read the obituary for Judge Donnelly in 2012 your name was there and I was dazed because I remembered you. You know some memories you have you wonder was it a dream? I googled you and saw your face and the horrible thing I wondered was maybe a memory of a bad dream, thisturnedcleared up. My mother was dragging my brother and me on the bus down to the courthouse when she knew the judgeiswould be out—she told us this. Her name is Florencia. She said he is at his lunchtime. How did she know that? It was a hot, sunny day. I remember the long desk and a painting of a carnivale behind you. I was embarrassed with my mother crying. I had not seen this before then and I didn’t see her cry again for many years later. We were learning English. My mother had a difficult time. It embarrassed me she tripped over her words mixing Italian and English, begging you and crying. She admitted my fathermade a wrongdoinghad done wrong! I was proud of the bread truck he drove Pepperidge Farm Bread written along the side and his clothes always smelled like yeast. He went out again after wewent to bed—my brother and me shared a small bed in the corner of our apartment with roaches and mice, and he filled the bread truck with other things for men who paid more money for his service. Of course it was against his contract, of course some things he put in the truck were against the law. My mother knew this—she is keen, she admitted this wrong, and she begged you. We hadnothing–my parents coming from Italy with nothing, and my fatherwantedwas ambitious. He tried to make a life for us, pay for school uniforms and tutors, to take us to college, wear fine clothes, go to a good school, these things. My father was full of dreams. What he did to use the truck was not good, but there was no harm to anyone and those things he delivered they would be delivered with him or someone else if it was not him, this is what my mother was pleading. My father was notchoosing thethe big man. She told you if my father went to prison our family would not survive.
Your eyes were cold and dead. Cruel. But I saw a photograph of children on your desk. I did not understand—were you a mother? I thought you were an evil witch. I remember. But maybe I see now you remember too, and that surprised me. You said for me say what I needed to say. For my life I have hated you. You grew into an enormous thing in my mind. It surprised me driving to your home. It is a pretty house and you look out to the water. It is not very large but must be expensive. I know about real estate. I saw you in the window sitting at a desk. I was watching you for a long time. How tiny you are, and you had a mailbox in the shape of a fish and a wreath on the door, these nice things. I hated you for such a long time, but you were just a small old woman and I was lost. I didn’t know what to do so I cut the flowers. This didn’t help.
Dezi Martinelli
Sybil Van Antwerp
17 Farney Road
Arnold, MD 21012
USA
22 October 2017
Dear Sybil,
Thank you for sending along the paperwork regarding our DNA match. I hope you won’t mind, but I went and called up to my friend who is a geneticist in London and told him the whole story. I sent the paperwork to him, and he gave it a good looking over, and then I had some chats with my brothers. I suppose there’s not a way to be entirely sure about the testing, but the friend of mine said the labs used by Kindred are aboveboard, as they say, and there isn’t really any reason to think the report wouldn’t be accurate. All of that was rather my doing a bit of stalling, and between it there is work and life. Declan, the pub-owning brother I believe I mentioned, is the keeper of the family history. He keeps the boxes of photos and paperwork, so of course when we received your letters it was to the boxes and looking through. Dec is a skeptic as well as possessive, so his first response to the whole thing was unenthusiastic. The fact is I knew Mum had a daughter before I was born, but Dec thought she’d delivered stillborn. Mum always told me the baby had died in the first few days, and I’d not had any reason to second-guess a thing like that, but it was something else you said in your first letter, which was that your DNA showed Native American parentage. My father was half Crow. It seemed too odd a coincidence to ignore.
There is an old photograph we found in the mix of my mother and father (my father’s name was Charlie Thorne and it was his mother who was Crow; his father was of Spanish descent from the state of Oregon) and in it my mother is pregnant. I wouldhave assumed it was myself in utero, but Dec and I sat with the photos for some time and there are some indicators the photo is from an earlier time, some letters (Mum was always writing and receiving letters) that indicate pregnancy at an earlier time, so I suppose, well, I suppose it might be you she’s got inside. This is a very long way of going round and round to say that if what you are suggesting by reaching out to me is that we are, as strange as it is to write, sisters, then I think you must be (unless I’ve missed something obvious and you’re quite a savvy crook) correct.
After sitting with this information these months I wish I had some way of knowing more for you. After I was born my father abandoned us. He had lived a hard going life on the drink, always gambling, and he only had one leg because of something that had happened to him in his teenage years and it’d been removed. He was meaner than a provoked snake is what I was always told, but I have no memories of him. Anyway, my mother—I suppose, it’s still hard to imagine,ourmother,ourfather—left America to return to Scotland, where she was born. Gleason is her surname, and she gave it to me rather than Thorne. She married a Welshman here in Scotland and together they had Declan, John, and Douglas. He stood in as a father for me and I was nary the wiser until when I went to university and Mum told me the truth, and that did explain a great deal because I have very dark features and the rest of them are freckled and fair haired. Mum died in 1998 with lung cancer (she was a smoker), and I wouldn’t say she told me very much about her life outside Scotland, between her early teenage years to her late twenties. When I did a few months with the Kindred website it was because I had an itch to find some information on my father, and I dug up his obituary from out somewhere in Montana and it was something brief and impersonal from a local paper, but here is what I learned. His name was Charles Broderick Thorne, eldest of two children to David and Mildred Thorne, born 1 September 1917 in Portland, Oregon. Hedied in a strange way, and that was being stampeded by a herd of cattle. I read that and it’s stuck in my mind these years. Terribly gruesome. I don’t think if Mum ever had another point of contact with him after we’d left for Scotland.
One doesn’t know how to bring a letter of this sort to a close. There isn’t a template for such a thing. I’ve sat here for quite some time, and I don’t know what else to say other than you get to be seventy-four and you think it’ll be a nice easy coast to the end, and then you find out all along you had a sister living in Washington, DC. I guess I would like to know about you. What has come to pass in your life?
Enclosed is the photo I mentioned of Mum pregnant with you. Have I said—would you know, I guess you wouldn’t know—her name was Louisa. I have also enclosed a photo of myself and Dec, Douggie, and John from Christmas a year or two ago. I very much look forward to your reply,
Hattie
Sybil Van Antwerp
17 Farney Rd.
Arnold, MD 21012
USA
November 15, 2017
Syb,
