“Well, when Etta started talkin’ about Juilliard she showed me stuff about the school on their website. There was a picture that caught my eye.” Aunt Viv takes a long pause to inhale and to choose her words carefully. I’m not sure if she’s going to continue or if that’s the end of the story. “You know I hate those laptops. Print’s too small for an old lady like me. But after that night with Etta, I asked Ms. Gooding if she could get me a computer with a bigger screen. Said my eyes couldn’t read recipes on a laptop. Took me a while to convince her though, she thought after fifty years of cookin’ for Fairchild I don’t need recipes no more.” Aunt Viv gives me a tickled grin. “Which, between you and me and these hotel walls, is the truth, but she don’t need to know that.”
“Not sure if that was about the recipes or about Nan not wanting to part with money and her fucked-up power trips,” I shoot back.
“Watch your language, Josephine Bordelon. You may be hurtin’, but you’re still a lady. And either way, she ended up givin’ me her big screen thing that sits on her desk.”
“Her monitor?”
“Yeah, that. And she got a nice new one. And then I went to work trying to find out about the woman in the picture on the Juilliard website.”
“So how long did it take you to figure it out?” My real mother has been such a distant mirage in my life. Once I got my own life going in college and modeling and then back in San Francisco, it only occasionally crossed my mind to search for her online. It certainly wasnever something I mentioned to Aunt Viv since she spent my childhood dismissing such talk as a waste of time.
“Once I got that monitor I started going through every page of the Juilliard website. I’ve read every single word and I’ve studied every single picture. Then I got to admissions. There was a letter written by her to all the kids applying to the school. The letter was signed Ophelia Santos. Between the picture, the name Ophelia, and my sneaking suspicion that after your mama dropped you off with me she just might figure her way to New York to try to make it as a dancer I knew it had to be her. And, shore enough, I knew right.”
“Why didn’t you ask me if I wanted to meet her? It should have been my decision to make.”
“Well I did consider that, and maybe it should have been your choice, but once Etta got that audition, there was no decision to make. You were gonna have to meet your mother whether you wanted to or not. And for Etta’s sake, I couldn’t give you one more reason not to let her follow through on her dream of applying to Juilliard.” Fair point.
“She looks like you.” I roll on my side to look at Aunt Viv for the first time since the conversation started.
“Maybe. But she’s built like you and Etta. Ain’t no mistakin’ you all got the same blood.”
“So, I couldn’t make it as a model. And ended up working in school admissions. Ophelia couldn’t make it as a dancer and she ended up working in school admissions. Both of us leaving family thinkin’ New York City would make our dreams come true and then the city gave us anything but our dreams in return. The similarities are too much. See why I don’t want this life for Etta? There’s a strong Bordelon pull to New York to get your soul crushed and I don’t want that for my daughter. I want anything but that for her. I could handle the disappointment when it was mine, but I don’t think my heart has room for Etta’s broken dreams and disappointments, too. It wouldsnap me and I feel, like... like...” I’m stuttering now, trying to express years of anxiety, love, and deep concern all at once. “In the past few years, after being a young baby mama, barely making ends meet on an assistant’s salary and then Michael leaving us, I have finally healed the broken pieces and I’m whole again. I want to stay whole.”
Aunt Viv chews on my words for a moment and then continues, almost as if what I said washed past her ears. “I called Ophelia around late November, when I knew for sure Etta was going to apply to Juilliard. When Ophelia left you with me all those years ago I made her promise she would never try to get in contact with you or with me, again. That she would go on and live her life and leave us be. But I never said that I wouldn’t contact her.”
I sit up on the bed and look out over the city from the twenty-second floor. A weariness from the past forty-eight hours’ events overcomes me and I feel closer to fifty than forty.
“You know I’m a good bit older than your mama and growin’ up I liked to look after her like she was my own. Well, truth tell it, our own mama was so busy raisin’ all of us that we had to help raise each other. But your mama was my favorite. As a young girl she was so pretty. My grandfather, Joseph, who you’re named after, would heft Ophelia up in his arms and say ‘Oooooweee, yous pretty as a speckled pig.’ And Ophelia would squeal back like a baby hog. It was their own little show, those two.”
I was fairly certain I couldn’t handle hearing any more. This seemed enough for the last two days if not my last almost forty years.
“By the time I was plannin’ my own path outta the wards of Nawlins I was worried sick ’bout your mama’s future. I could see dem hook-headed boys from aroun’ de way lookin’ at her sideways. I knew down deep tellin’ her to keep her dress down wasn’t going to be enough.”
I turn to look at Aunt Viv, surprised by how thoroughly she’sslipped into home speak. Her mind is no longer focused on me. Aunt Viv’s lost in memories long, long past.
“You know the whole family, including me, wanted the best for your mama. But I don’t think any of us stopped to check on what your mama wanted. Her being so pretty and all, we thought our only job was to keep them boys at arms distance. No one bothered to find out much else about her. In the end, Josie, I think, just like me, your mama wanted out, she wanted the chance to become who she was meant to become. We didn’t know any better back then that life could be bigger and fuller, Josie, and we lost your mama because of it. But you and I, we know better, don’t we? We really do. So, we gotta let Etta go to Juilliard because we can’t risk losin’ Etta like the family lost your mama. And like I lost you for a bit of time, too. Those were the hardest six years of my life and it can’t happen to our family again, Josie. It just can’t.”
I reluctantly nod my head yes. Not because I agree that Etta should go to Juilliard, but because I agree we can’t lose her. Witnessing decades of pain surface in Aunt Viv, I know we would not survive Etta abandoning our family in search of her future.
“And there is a happy ending to this story, too. I have to give it to Ophelia; she did make her dreams come true in New York. She didn’t come here just to dance, she told me on the phone. Ever since she was a young girl she dreamed of being a dancer and a teacher. She came to New York to do both and that’s exactly what she made happen. For twenty-two years she taught dance at Juilliard, first as an assistant teacher and then moving up to master teacher. Time caught up to her, like it does for everyone, and her body needed a break from dance. By that time she was married, a true New Yorker, and a respected member of the Juilliard community. So, she was offered a job in admissions. One she says she loves since she gets to make dreams come true for young, talented artists like Etta.”
“You know my next question, don’t you?” Water pooled again in my eyes, threatening to rain down.
“I imagine so, but I’m not one to go thinkin’ for you, Josie. There are so many questions you must have, baby.”
“Does Ophelia have other children?” I can barely give the question voice. I have to reach deep in my diaphragm to push it out.
“That was the second part of our agreement when you came to live with me. If I were to raise you, Ophelia had to promise me she wanted no children. It wasn’t that she just didn’t want you. And maybe I was being selfish, but I couldn’t see peepin’ out the window my whole life wonderin’ if she was going to bring me more kids to raise.” Aunt Viv places her hand over my heart. “For what it’s worth, she kept that promise to me and to you.”
I nod.
“She has a nice-sounding husband, but you still her only child.”
“But Aunt Viv, you let your sister drop me on your doorstep and turn your life upside down. You’ve never had financial security, you’ve never had a great love. You gave all that up for Ophelia and for me. Why?”
“I didn’t give up nothin’, Josie, I got somethin’. I got you. But to answer your question, black women in our family have been raisin’ babies on their own for quite some time for all sorts of reasons we don’t need to go into tonight. And we’ve tried hard to do it as best as we could with what we were workin’ with. For me, I just couldn’t see bringin’ a man into our world and risk you feelin’ abandoned for a second time. That was my choice, Josie, and I think I made the right one. But right now I want you to hear me loud as church bells. Etta ain’t known nothin’ but love and security from the day she was born. She has a solid foundation and she’s ready to fly right. That means there’s plenty of room for new love in your life. For even more love than the full cup you already got.”
There it is, the whole story. Or as much of it as I’m able tostomach for one day. I thank Aunt Viv for her honesty but tell her that’s enough for now.
