Page 26 of Meet Me on Greenwood

"I'll have breakfast ready by seven."

I nodded, reaching for the handle to pull the door partially closed, and stopped.

"Lettie." I kept my voice low. "She was calling out for her sister earlier. If she wakes in the night, singing to her seemed to help calm her—let her know she isn't alone."

Lettie looked at me with those unreadable eyes. "You want me to sing to her like a newborn babe?"

I shook my head and kissed her cheek. "Never mind, Lettie."

I pulled the door closed and walked the length of the hall, past the rooms that still needed restoring, past the east wing where the floorboards creaked from age, past the portraits of people I had never met who watched me from the walls like the imposter I was.

The night air was cold and clean after the rain. I stood on the front steps for a moment, looking out at the grounds and the tree line where my property dissolved into darkness.

Perry was right about all of it. The optics. Sarah. The timing.

I turned my collar up against the wind and started toward the barn. As I pulled the door open, I made the decision to stop thinking about Gema Cross entirely, but I only managed to hold on to that resolution for approximately four minutes before I gave up. It was a lost cause.

11

Gema

Oklahoma Honored with Presence of the World’s Greatest Living Negro

Iwas not okay. I stared at my phone the way I used to when I first woke up, scrolling mindlessly for the latest headlines, especially in research. But today, my screen was pitch black—it may as well have been a paperweight.

I lay back, staring up at the intricate crown molding on the ceiling. It had the kind of detail you didn’t see anymore, unless you happened to own an old home, but this looked brand new.

I tested my arm. I was physically sore, which made me question how my body was feeling back in my time? Was I lying crumpled on the rooftop? Had Bri found her way off it? Surely, she had, though she may not know what was wrong with me. I wasn’t entirely sure myself, other than I’d somehow triggered the ORI.

Without power to my phone, I couldn’t get home. And if I couldn’t get home, that meant that I was trapped in 1920 Tulsa, Oklahoma, a year before the massacre.

Lettie seemed kind and genuine. She reminded me of my mother, but without the staring into space bit. Houston, I wasn’t sure about. He had saved me, but I didn’t know what he wanted with me. As far as I knew, I was in a time where Tulsa was heavily segregated and it didn’t make much sense why a white man would have cared enough to stop and save me in the first place.

I’d asked Lettie about it, and she’d just shrugged it off. She spoke highly of him, which was something at least. She said she’d known him since he was very young.

I looked at my phone once more like it was a puzzle I needed to solve, but I was too disoriented figure it out. Just then, Lettie knocked on the door and entered with a bowl of something that smelled delicious.

"You ate so well yesterday, I made you some chopped beef and cabbage."

I looked at the full plate, surely filled with loads of butter and fats, and yet, my mouth watered. "Thank you," I said, peeling myself out of bed to sit at the small table in the room.

Lettie reached to help as I worked to regain the strength in my legs. "Slow now," she said until I sat in the chair. She watched as I surveyed the meal and took my first bite. I smiled at her, and she nodded in satisfaction that I was eating. "I almost forgot," she said, laying a newspaper down.

"The Black Star is our local newspaper, but I suppose you know that since you live in Maple Ridge."

The way she said it made me realize she didn’t believe me and that was probably because during this time, Black people didn’t live in Maple Ridge yet.

I took another bite. "I don’t know why I said that. Truthfully, I don’t remember where I live. I’m not even entirely sure I’m from Tulsa." I hoped that would be more believable than explaining I was from the future.

Lettie’s disposition changed immediately. "Oh, you poor dear. I should have thought of that. Does that mean you are also not a doctor?"

"No, I am," I said too quickly, wishing I could take it back. Being a doctor in the 1920s as a Black woman wasn’t easy to explain. "I went to a northern school."

"Which one?"

I hoped I wouldn’t live to regret this. "Johns Hopkins."

"Oh, well that is very impressive. I sure wish we were more progressive down here. These White folks would never. But that makes sense. You’re a northerner."