This is what I k ept to myself. After my two meetings with Miss Welty, I did some research on my lunch hour at the library. I looked through old copies of the Clarion-Ledger, looking for stories about Mama. I could have done this when I first came to Jackson, but I didn’t. I guess I just wasn’t ready then. I worked my way through each massive index of the newspaper for the time frame Mama lived in Jackson, checking for her name year after year until I found three s eparate news stories in which she was said to be mentioned. I filled out a microfilm request, trying to look nonchalant while the staff at the research desk went to look for them. The rolls of microfilm, once they were retrieved, had to be threaded into a machine in order to read them, a difficult task when your hands are trembling. I scrolled too fast and had to back up the machine to see the first news story. Suddenly there she was, Miss Callie Francine Atwater, along with Miss Eudora Welty, in a news photograph of the two of them sharing a prize for a spelling bee. Miss Welty hadn’t mentioned that. Perhaps it wasn’t important. More shocking was seeing Mama in the social pages as a debutante at a cotillion, looking fancy in a special gown ordered from a store in New York City called Bergdorf Goodman’s, according to the article. I stared at the photograph. No question about it. This was my mama. The same person who never spent money on clothes and hadn’t seemed to care about fashion one bit. Then I found the wedding announcement. MISS ATWATER TO MARRY MR. JENKINS TODAY IN GREENWOOD, said the headline. I could scarcely breathe as I read the story. “Miss Callie Francine Atwater, daughter of local bank president James T. Atwater and his wife, Jane, is to be married at 11 o’clock today to Mr. Harold Jenkins of Lake Charles, Louisiana . . .” How strange to be reading the announcement of a wedding that never came to be. The article went on to describe her dress and mentioned a bridesmaid, Miss Alice B. Johnson. I felt someone’s presence behind me, a little shadow over my right shoulder. It was the head librarian, Mrs. La Croix. “I see you’re digging up the past,” she said, trying, but failing, to sound lighthearted. She spoke in a soft, hushed tone out of respect for the silence-only rule which librarians alone were allowed to break, and only in the quietest murmurs. “I wondered how long before you’d start looking in these old newspapers. Ah,” she added, “I see you’ve found the society pages.” “Did you know my mother?” I asked pointedly—and a little too loud. When I’d been interviewed for my job, I’d mentioned that Mama grew up in Jackson. When I said Mama’s name at the time, several of the librarians —including Mrs. La Croix—had acted a little funny but I wasn’t sure if it meant anything. “Everyone knew your mother, dear,” she whispered. “She was the star of her generation around here.” “And do you know what happened to her?” Mrs. La Croix looked at me, surprised. “Don’t you?” “I only know that she didn’t marry this man,” I said, trying to ke ep my voice low and pointing to the microfilm page with the account of the wedding. “On that same day she married my daddy, whose name was Montgomery Witherspoon, and they went to Florida, where Daddy was from, and they had me.” My mind was spinning like a little wind-up toy Mama had given me as a child and which I still had, despite the fact that it was broken. “What has happened to Mr. Harold Jenkins?” I asked. “Do you know?” Mrs. La Croix pulled up a chair and sat next to me. “He died in the war,” she said. “After what happened—with your mama and all—he had a broken heart and went back to Louisiana. That’s what I’ve heard for years. And even though he was a little old to serve in World War Two, he enlisted. And he was killed. I’m not sure when or where. We could look that up if you want to. Or I could write to the librarian in Lake Charles . . . ” “It seems like everyone is dead,” I said sadly. “Everyone who could give me real answers, anyway.”
“Not everyone has passed away,” Mrs. La Croix said. “The bridesmaid. She’s sitting right over there.” I jerked my head in the direction Mrs. La Croix was pointing. A grayhaired lady sat half hidden behind a broadsheet newspaper. I had noticed her before. She was what we called a “regular.” The next thing I knew I was being introduced, in library-appropriate hushed tones, to my mother’s long-ago bridesmaid. While I could not have been more surprised, she seemed to have been expecting this moment to occur. Perhaps, I realized, even waiting for the right moment to speak to me, these last several months. • • • MISS ALICE B. JOHNSON WAS a lifelong Jackson resident from a neighborhood I recognized as a poor white part of town. She had never married, she said, and still lived at home with her mother. To support herself, she worked nights as a tel ephone operator. “Call me Miss Alice,” she said warmly. Aware that we were creating a small disruption, and that we had definitely abused the silence-only rule, we agreed to duck outside for a little stroll. My lunch hour had elapsed, but Mrs. La Croix nodded her approval and smiled encouragingly. The sidewalk was sun dappled and welcoming but too crowded with children walking home from school to hold a private conversation. I did not want to miss a word. Miss Alice gestured to a side street that was blessedly empty of activity exc ept for a small dog sniffing at the base of a magnolia tree. We found a little bench where we could talk quietly. “Your mama wanted to be just like us,” Miss Alice said. “Like who?” I asked. Miss Alice surprised me by chuckling. “Like down-to-earth folks. Ordinary people who didn’t put on airs. She and I met over at the Salvation Army. The only difference was, she was a volunteer and I was a client. But we were the same age and we became friends. She confided in me. When she asked me to be her only bridesmaid, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t afford the dress. But she said, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll pay for it.’ Then I started worrying that maybe her parents wouldn’t want me in the wedding. It was during the D epression, but your grandpa was still a wealthy man or at least that’s the impression he gave. And your grandma was active in the Episcopal Church, which is for upper-class folk, you know. But your mama said, ‘Oh, don’t worry. It’s my wedding, and I want you in it.’ ” “Did you know that Mama was going to run off with someone else?” The words were painful to say. “I knew she was in love with someone else but I wasn’t privy to her plans,” Miss Alice said tactfully. “Or maybe there were no plans. Maybe she just up and did it.” I was having a hard time picturing Mama being so impulsive, and Miss Alice read my mind. “She was young,” she said. “We were all very young. People do things they’d never do when they’re older. And sometimes it’s impossible to look back and understand. “What your mama really wanted,” she added, “was to be just plain folk. She didn’t want nothin’ to do with the highfalutin family she was born into. She even learned to talk like me. And she surely didn’t want to marry that fellow from Louisiana. That wasn’t her dream. Her dream was to be a nurse among the downtrodden. She was going to give up all her fancy airs. And then somehow—maybe at the Salvation Army—she ran into your daddy, Montgomery Witherspoon. Oh, he was a bad boy. Had been in jail and everything. But I think she saw in him a way for all of her dreams to come true: A simple life. Helping others.” She thought for a moment and added, “He was her way out.” “Daddy had been in jail?” I choked on the word. “Yes’m, but I don’t know what for. Nothing too terrible or I’d remember that. Where is he, do you know?” “No,” I said, “I don’t know what happened to him. All I know is Mama said there was a big fuss when I was a baby, and Daddy up and left. I believe he’s dead. When I was growing up, Mama gave folks the impression she was a widow but come to think of it, I never actually heard her use that word. Maybe implying
that he was dead was her way of ke eping up appearances. It’s a lot easier to be a widow than a divorcée in this world, that’s for sure. Anyway, whatever happened between them didn’t end well. I always had the feeling she was embarrassed by him, or something he’d done.” “Maybe he was prone to drinkin’,” Miss Alice said sympathetically. “Lots of menfolk are.” “Miss Alice,” I said, desperate to put more pieces together. “Have you been watching me? Or is it a coincidence that you come to the library all the time? How did you know who I am?” She smiled a little mischievously. “A little bird told me that a gal calling herself Eudora Welty Witherspoon was in town, and that her mama had been Miss Callie Atwater. And I thought, Now that’s mighty peculiar. I thought maybe the Lord hisself wants me to find out what this is all about. Maybe to help you in some way since your mama and I were friends back in the day.” “But how—” “Child, Jackson may seem like a big city to you but it’s a small town at heart. My mother took a Bible study class with your landlady, Mrs. Conroy. And one day Mrs. Conroy mentioned she had a gal staying with her, and she said your name and that you were working at the library. My mother told me, and that’s all I needed to know.” “Well, I am grateful to you,” I said. “I thank you for telling me what you know.” It was the wrong thing to say. She looked away, and a de ep uneasiness sw ept through me. “There’s something else,” she said finally. When she glanced back at me, her smile was gone and her face sagged, making her look much older. “What your mama really wanted most was a child, but I was pretty sure she couldn’t have one.” She looked at me closely, as if studying my features, then said, “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you all this, but it seems wrong that you don’t know. The fact is your mama had some kind of fever that almost killed her when she was, oh, maybe sixteen. And after that, she was told she’d never be able to have children.” “So you’re saying I was a surprise?” I said, but the second the words left my lips I realized she meant something else entirely. “Do you think . . . ? Are you saying—?” “—that you might have been adopted?” Miss Alice said softly. “Could be.” She paused a moment, then added, “Then again, maybe you’re some kind of miracle baby.” She tried her best to smile brightly, but I don’t think she was convinced. And neither was I. Finding out that you might be adopted is one thing. Finding out at the age of thirty-two, and from a person you’ve known for exactly ten minutes, is a tough row to hoe. “Mama always said I was born in Naples, at home,” I said quietly. “I suppose that might not be true.” “Well, what does your birth certificate say?” “I don’t have one.” “Everyone has one.” “No, Mama said she never got around to registering me. I found that out when I got married. Before we could get the marriage license, Mama had to swear in an affidavit that she was my mama and that I was born at home in Naples.” “I see,” Miss Alice said. What she could see, and so could I, was that it might all have been lies. And the worst part was not being able to ask Mama because she was dead. Just ask her; that’s all I wanted. I would have acc epted the idea of being adopted, if only she had told me herself. I told Miss Alice a little about my life, what Naples was like, and about my failed marriage to Darryl. She asked what had led me to come to Jackson to find out about Mama, and I told her about the Collier County Women’s Literary Society and how the founder, a newcomer to Naples named Jackie Hart, had encouraged me to get out in the world, ask questions, and experience life. I had known immediately that I should go to Jackson, if for no other reason than to see where Mama had come from. And then I told Miss Alice what Mama’s life had been like in Naples, and how she’d gotten sick. And how she died. Miss Alice listened carefully. “Well,” she said finally, “I’m just glad she had you with her when she got sick.” Then she turned directly to face me. There were tears in her eyes, but she smiled as she added, “I hope you realize that you must have
meant the world to her, Dora. She was truly blessed. And so are you.”