Dirty Genes

CHAPTER 5

  Beth and Abra popped out of bed at 6 AM, much as they had done during their four years at Jackson. With a quick shower and a cursory comb through her matted hair, Beth was out the door and in her car by 6:30 eager to drive home to Richmond to her beloved Tim and Clay. Beth checked out by 7:30 and waited in front of the hotel for Pete Nelson to pick her up. She breathed in the sweet humid morning air as she eyed the still sleeping streets of Charleston littered with Saturday night’s debris.

  During her years in South Carolina Abra mastered her profession. In her three years of grad school in Columbia, she learned the content of psychology and during her year internship in Charleston, she applied what she had learned to the real world. She enjoyed her time in Columbia doing what she did best, school. She had a limited social life, except for four months in her second year of grad school when she took a course in sex education from a neighbor. One afternoon as she was studying in her apartment, she responded to a knock at the door to find the guy who lived next door.

  “Hi, I’m Drew Ellis. I live next door. I forgot my keys and my roommates are out. Can I use your balcony to get to my place?”

  Although Drew looked like 90% of the guys on campus, Abra had noticed him because he always wore a baseball cap backwards. In fact, she silently referred to him as Backwards. He was one of the many college students who wore the college uniform of a tee shirt on a warm day or a sweat shirt on a cold day, jeans, and sloppy sneakers or flip flops.

  “Sure, just don’t fall. I can’t afford to be sued.”

  Like a trapeze artist, he agilely leaped from her balcony to his and disappeared into his apartment. A few minutes later, he came to her door with two beers as a thank you gift. In the next few hours he told her his whole life story. All he really wanted to do was explore the world, but he promised his mother he would graduate from college so he was biding his time until he graduated in May. After high school, he spent a year backpacking through South America and after his sophomore year, he took a year off to travel through Eastern Europe. He was a journalism major with aspirations of being a foreign correspondent or a travel writer. Over the following three weeks, he shared his writings of his travels with Abra, who vicariously visited Machu Pichu and canoed up the Amazon. When Drew talked of his adventures, Abra listened to him as if he were Marco Polo sharing his travels in China. One day several weeks after his balcony stunt, he said, “Abra, I really like you. Let’s have sex.”

  She laughed. “Just like that? Drew, I like you too, but I’m not sure that we should do it just because we like each other. There are a lot of people I like but I don’t sleep with them. Anyhow, would you believe that this 23 year old only had sex once and it was a fiasco so I’m a bit leery of a second try.”

  “Abra, I’m no great lover. I just enjoy sex. Give me a chance and maybe I can get you to enjoy it too.” And he did. For four months before he graduated, they had enjoyable sex. Drew was not planning on attending graduation so when he finished his last final, he came to say good-bye to Abra. He was off to China for another adventure and she was back to her usual life of studying. She would miss his sweetness and the comfort of no-ties sex. He was a true free spirit. She had never known anyone like him before or since. Everyone she met in school and after school was focused on a career and eventual marriage and kids. He had an open-ended future. Over the years, she googled his name to see if he had become a travel writer or a journalist, but she never found any reference to him. He disappeared into the world.

  Her year in Charleston was different from her time in Columbia. It was less cerebral and more action filled as she began work as a psychologist, and it was fulfilling as she came to the realization that she had selected the right career. And the year brought deep friendships, with Martha, Pete, and her roommate, Judy.

  As Director of Psychological Services for the Wando Schools, Martha Nelson supervised Abra’s school psych internship. She expertly molded Abra’s skills in designing and applying treatment plans for troubled kids and administering and interpreting tests to arrive at diagnoses linked to appropriate services. Pete was an art teacher at Wando High School where Abra was based. Although she would have loved Pete for being Martha’s husband, she learned to love him for being an all-giving husband, father, and friend. It was her first experience having a man, and a married man at that, as a friend.

  Martha and Peter looked like they stepped off a page of an ad for living the good life in Sweden, with their thin blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin, and lanky builds. At school, Martha dressed conservatively, but at home she reverted to the hippie garb of her youth. She wore gauzy off-the-shoulder blouses, without a bra, and long multicolored skirts and, of course, Birkenstocks. She held her hair up with amber sticks which stuck out at steep angles and were hazardous to anyone getting too close. Ironically, she was always hugging people who had to avoid being impaled by the sticks. Initially, Abra was intimidated by their Nordic looks and her expectation that they would personify the stereotypical aloof personalities of Scandinavians. But she quickly revised her expectations as she found them to be outgoing and warm.

  Martha and Pete were transplants from Iowa. They met in college during their hippie phase. Upon graduating, they married and then spent six months driving through the states, thanks to a small inheritance from Martha’s grandmother. When they visited Charleston, they instantly knew they found the place they wanted to call home. So they moved to Columbia where Martha enrolled in the psych program at the University of South Carolina and Pete entered the master of fine arts program. After they finished grad school, they moved to the Charleston area where Martha became a psychologist for the Wando Schools and Pete an art teacher at Wando High School.

  While they were in grad school, they often visited Charleston and discovered nearby Sullivan Island, a tiny island that bravely faced the powerful Atlantic Ocean on the east, while being backed up by the calm intracoastal waterway on the west. Coming from the land-locked Midwest, they were enchanted by the expanse of the ocean, the never ending horizon, the fine whiteness of the sand, and the swooping pelicans. All of their spare time was spent exploring the beach that was deserted when the tourists weren’t around, and semi-deserted even when the tourists were.

  Their love of Sullivan Island was fed not only by its beauty, but its morbid history. The palm-lined streets of Sullivan Island belied its sinister past. This was the drop-off point for slaves on their voyages from Africa to the markets in Charleston. Strewn on the beaches were memories of America’s ugly past as despoilers of black lives. To add even more spice to the island’s history was the fact that Edgar Allen Poe had been based at an army post there when he was young. He may have even used the island as the prototype for the island in his book, The Gold Bug. Edgar Allen Poe, the master of the macabre, cast diabolical shadows on sunny Sullivan Island. And then there was the haunting of the island by the eight crew members of the Hunley, the only submarine used in the Civil War, which sank off the island on its maiden voyage.

  Abra was glad to be spending the day with the Nelsons. She wanted to purge herself from last night’s painful disclosure to Beth. She knew that eventually she would tell the Nelsons, but today she wanted to forget herself and think only about them and their wonderful shared past. She was disappointed that she wouldn’t see their twins who were away at college. Eric was at the University of South Carolina majoring in fraternity and business, while Lisa was at the Savannah School of Art following in her father’s footsteps majoring in art.

  As Abra waited at the hotel for Pete to pick her up, she thought back to how her life intersected with the Nelson’s. Abra and Judy had both obtained internships in the Charleston area, Abra with the Wando Schools and Judy with the Charleston City Schools. They decided that since they had lived together amiably for three years of grad school, they would continue for another year. After her interview with Martha about her responsibilities as an intern, Abra asked if she knew of an apartment that she and Judy might rent. She mention
ed that Judy was black and asked if that would be a problem since Abra was well aware of housing discrimination against blacks in the South, as well as in the North. Martha said, “I own an old house on Sullivan Island not far from my house. It’s not in the best condition, but it’s near the beach and you both could get to work easily. Come see it. And if you don’t like it, it won’t hurt my feelings. And best of all, it’s cheap! And I don’t care if Judy is black or purple as long as she pays the rent. She’s a psychologist so she must be a good person.”

  Abra replied, “We’re grad students who’ve lived in a slum the past three years. Anything will be an improvement. And you did say the magic word – cheap.”

  The next day Abra and Judy met Martha at the house and they saw that it was a fixer-upper and not much of an improvement over where they had been living for the past three years, but it had one asset – it was one block from the beach. Martha and Peter bought the house for Martha’s father after her mother died. They wanted him near them, but he didn’t like being away from Iowa and his friends. He spent most of his time traveling back to Iowa and never got around to making any of the desperately needed repairs on the house. After a few years, he moved back to Iowa permanently so they had this house which because of its cheap price, they easily rented to tourists in the summers, but was vacant the rest of the year and was perfect for Abra and Judy’s needs.

  Abra and Judy spent several weekends cleaning the house, but it really needed a year for the job to be completed. Still they loved the house: its dank smell which resisted all attempts at being neutralized by incense, scented candles, and room deodorizers; its screened porch dotted with holes for free admission of mosquitoes eager to feast on human blood; and its endless parade of cockroaches, or more euphemistically, palmetto bugs, marching through the kitchen, the bathroom, and every spot in the house where they ruled supreme despite constant barrages of bug spray. But most of all they loved the beach which they walked or jogged whenever their tight schedules allowed.

  The strong bond between Abra and Martha started with Ella, a student Martha assigned to Abra for counseling. Ella, a Wando High School sophomore, proved to be the most difficult student Abra would work with during her internship. Ella, known as the school slut willing and eager to sleep with anyone, defied authority figures, refused to do school work, was truant, and engaged in self-abusive behavior. Most troubling, she was a cutter.

  Abra was surprised when she met Ella. She had read her file and expected a large, loud teen-ager. Instead, she found a tiny, rail-thin girl who looked as if she were in elementary school except for her breast buds which she proudly showed off by not wearing a bra under her tight short tee shirts. She had a pretty face with perfect features, but it appeared clown-like because of the heavy make-up Ella haphazardly applied. Her long, stringy hair covered the multitude of earrings lining both ears. She used her twig-like arms as dart boards for all types of sharp objects. She seemed proud of this self-mutilation and never attempted to cover her arms. When she spoke, her voice was sweet and childlike, but the words she spoke were those of a jaded woman who had seen the worst of life.

  Ella came from a poor, dysfunctional home so there was no money for psychiatric help, although there was money for alcohol and drugs. Ella’s father was a small time drug dealer and her mother an occasional hooker, but because of her meth addiction she had lost her teeth and was skeletal, making her appealing to only the most sexually desperate. Surprisingly Ella didn’t drink or do drugs, perhaps because she knew first-hand the damage these insidious killers wreaked on her parents. Over the last 10 years, Ella had periodically been removed from the home when a parent was arrested or came to the attention of the authorities. She was placed in foster homes that were as dysfunctional as her home and returned to her parents because there was no place else for her.

  Abra’s newly emerging counseling skills were all that Ella was going to get in the way of psychological help. They met twice a week for talk therapy. No one had ever been interested in Ella before, especially a pretty young woman so Ella lapped up the attention from Abra and opened up about her drug addicted parents and their long history of dependence on welfare and criminal activities. She freely talked about her need for sex and her belief that it would provide a way out of her life with her parents. She said that she was a great fuck and that was why all the guys in school loved her. She bragged that she would do as many as three guys at one time. It was hard to believe that she really thought that these boys loved her, but she had to believe this or she would have to recognize that she was a throw-away sex object. Abra was taken aback by the vivid description of sex that Ella proudly offered, but she was careful to mask her shock and abhorrence. This was her first experience with a kid who was acting out sexually and it was enlightening for Abra who up to this point had “conventional” sex with only Rick and Drew. In their follow-up meeting after Abra’s first session with Ella, Martha advised Abra to set limits on the topics and language she allowed Ella to use in their sessions because they were in the school setting. Ella enjoyed describing the one thing she thought she was good at – sex, but reluctantly agreed not to talk about it. She also agreed that she would not use the words, fuck or shit, the most frequently used words in her limited vocabulary.

  At their second session, Ella methodically described each of the self inflicted wounds on her arms. “Sticking things in my arms hurts only a little. It’s enough to make me not want to hurt myself a lot. Actually, it keeps me from killing myself. Sometimes I think of stabbing a knife into my chest, but instead stick it into my arm It’s like I’m a balloon full of air and when I cut myself I let a little of the air out. I don’t feel so wound up and tight anymore.” She pointed to sores that she made with pins, knives, and needles indicating the different patterns they made. Because she was right handed, her left arm was a patchwork of sores at various stages of scabbing. Abra and Martha had decided that this would be the first area that Abra should focus on. Ella agreed to stop the cutting and signed a contract formalizing her decision. They developed a list of behaviors that Ella would use whenever she felt like hurting herself. The behavior that Ella liked best was screaming all the dirty words she could think of, but only if she was in a private place. If she was in a public place, like school, she was to write these words down using big letters. Abra told Ella’s teachers about this so they would not punish Ella if they found the written profanity. Even if they saw many of the words Ella wrote, they probably wouldn’t have been able to read them because of Ella’s poor spelling and handwriting, although fuck and shit were always spelled correctly. Abra marveled as the sores on Ella’s arm began to fade. Abra and Martha were encouraged at this change in Ella’s behavior. They decided to next focus on improving her attendance. Since Abra and Ella had started meeting on Tuesdays and Thursday, Ella had not missed these days of school. Now they targeted the other three days of the week.

  Abra was desperate to find something, besides sex, that made Ella feel good. She found that Ella liked only one class - her art class with Pete. Abra talked to Pete and Martha about how they might use art to help Ella. Pete guided Ella as she created watercolor beach scenes. Ella was transformed when she drew. She expressed the passion and pain in her soul with strong bold brush strokes. As she painted, she talked and ranted against her parents and the unfairness of her life. “Why is there such ugliness in my life when there’s such beauty in the world? Why can’t my life be like the beach – beautiful and quiet? Instead of filthy and disgusting and screwed up. Just like me.” Her paintings were fairly good artistically, but what made them special was the emotion she expressed with harsh, vibrant colors.

  After eight weeks of counseling, Martha invited Ella and Abra to her home for a Sunday lunch followed by a painting session at the beach with Pete. The house, a block from the beach, was gray shingled and had a wrap-around porch with rockers, Abra’s favorite kind of chair. At Jackson, she had rocked on her dorm porch so often she was sure that she h
ad etched permanent ruts on the porch floorboards. In the living room, a ceiling fan constantly circulated overhead blowing the sheer curtains out the windows onto the porch rockers. The living room walls were covered with Pete’s oil paintings of the beach and the twins at various stages of their childhood. The private collection of nude drawings of Martha was kept in Martha and Pete’s bedroom, away from the eyes of casual visitors.

  The breeze from the fan carried the smell of shrimp and pasta that Martha had cooked along with strawberry cobbler made from berries the kids had picked. That mingled with the smell of ground coffee beans made Abra salivate like Pavlov’s dog every time she recalled that first meal at the Nelson’s.

  Abra and Ella were both won over by these warm people and their mushy animals. Here was an example of a loving marriage and happy kids, something Abra hadn’t seen in her first 18 years of life or in the families she worked with in her professional training. For the first time, Ella witnessed a happy family. Seeing a happy family in the movies or TV didn’t count. That was make-believe. This was real.

  After lunch, Pete and Ella took their painting supplies to the beach. Abra and Martha took a long walk while the kids and dogs romped in the ocean. The wet dogs rolled in the sand and covered everyone within five feet with sticky sand that refused to wash off even in the salty ocean. Ella stopped painting and wildly chased the dogs as they ran in circles. Then she rolled in the sand as she laughed from the depths of her soul, something Abra had never seen her do and maybe she had never done before. After an hour, the artists packed up their supplies and went back to the house so that they could show the others what they had produced. Ella painted a serene ocean with two distant figures walking along the beach, Abra and Martha. She presented it to Abra as a gift for helping her. “Miss Berg, I want you to have this picture because you’ve helped me so much. Thanks for making me feel better.” Abra was overcome with emotion and happiness that she had made a difference in Ella’s life. Here was proof that she had picked the right profession. She was meant to be a helper, a supporter, a nurturer.

  Later when Abra drove Ella home, Ella mournfully cried. “That’s the life I want. Miss Berg. I wanna house like Dr. Nelson’s. I want nice furniture. I wanna be with nice people. Help me get away from my family. I need to escape and live a normal life or I’ll die. Can I come and live with you? I could be your kid. You could adopt me. Or I could be your little sister. Please. Please. I’m going to die if I have to stay with those shits. I hate my life. I want a life like those people have.”

  Abra was so overcome by this outburst, she couldn’t drive. She pulled over to the side of the road frantically groping for the right words that a good psychologist would use. Here was Ella asking Abra to be her Miss Benjamin. But she couldn’t. She didn’t have the money or the legal support to take Ella. And Ella didn’t have anything that would make her successful even if she did get away. She hadn’t benefited from school so she was poorly educated. She could barely read and write. She probably would have difficulty making it at a community college even if she eventually finished high school. And she didn’t have any job skills. It wouldn’t work even if Abra wanted to do it. But Abra knew where the uncrossable line between being a professional and being a friend began and ended. She also knew the reality of Ella – she couldn’t climb out of her quagmire no matter what Abra might do.

  In a quavering voice, Abra said, “Ella, you know I want to help you, but I can’t take you in. I’ll have social services take you away from your parents. They’ll find a good foster home for you. I promise.”

  Ella’s voice reeked of bitterness, “Oh yeah, that would really help. Who would want me as a foster child? I’ve been in foster homes a million times since I was a kid. I’ve been screwed and beaten by weirdos and perverts. Forget it. They’d send me to an institution where I’d learn to whore and deal. No, thanks. That’s not what I had in mind. I wish I’d never met you or Nelson. I don’t want to know what’s out there that I can’t have. I don’t want to see you anymore. Let’s go. Take me back to my shithole to see my parents shooting up and fucking. Maybe my father will want to do me. I might be ready for that now.”

  Abra was desperate. She couldn’t think of what to do. Frantically, she said, “Wait. Wait. Wait. Let’s talk to Dr. Nelson about this. Let’s see what she can do to help. Ella, I’m just starting out as a psychologist. I don’t know all the options for you. Please let me help you.”

  Ella fiercely yelled, “How will you help me? Put me back in the system? Put me on the streets? Take me home or I’ll walk.”

  Abra drove the rest of the way to Ella’s trailer silently crying while Ella jiggled up and down as if she were going to explode. Her right hand began gouging her left arm marking the cancellation of the self-mutilation contract. As soon as she stopped at Ella’s trailer, Ella grabbed the painting she had given Abra and tore it up. She glared at Abra as she threw the pieces at her. Then she ran out of Abra’s life forever.

  Abra slowly drove back to the Nelsons afraid she would crash because of her blinding tears. When she got to their house, she sat in the car and cried uncontrollably. Cried because she couldn’t help Ella. Cried because of the life Ella was doomed to. Cried because she doubted if she was really going to be a good psychologist after all.

  Eric was shooting baskets in the driveway when he noticed Abra. He approached the car and cautiously asked, “Abra, what’s the matter? Come in the house.” Abra couldn’t stop crying so Eric ran into the house for Martha.

  Martha came out to the car and got in. “Cry all you want. When you’re finished tell me what happened.”

  Abra babbled incoherently, but gradually Martha was able to piece together what had happened in the 30 minutes since she had left. Thirty minutes that changed Abra in so many ways. Martha took Abra’s hand and said, “You’re learning a lesson that I have to keep learning myself. We can’t save the world by ourselves. We can’t give kids like Ella a taste of what life should be like and expect them to change on their own. We need to get a kid like her earlier and get social services involved. She should have been taken from that hellhole permanently a long time ago. She needed special education, therapy, and most of all a supportive home with affection. We gave her a glimpse of what life could be like and she wanted it. Were we foolish to involve her in our lives? Were we right to let her hope? I don’t know. I thought it would help her, especially after you stopped her self-abusive behavior. We’re both do-gooders at heart. We think we can save the world. But we can’t do it alone. We can only do a little bit and if there are enough people who do their little bits together maybe we can save more kids. But Abra, don’t question your ability to be a good psychologist. I’ve worked with so many interns and you’re one of the best. One day you’ll be an outstanding psychologist, but you’ll still lose kids like Ella. It’ll break your heart, but you have to keep going for the kids you can help.”

  They talked for two hours. Martha switched from mentor to friend and back again. By the time Abra left, she was calmer, but she still couldn’t accept that there was nothing they could do for Ella. Abra went back to the cottage and told Judy about what had happened and they talked until bedtime. After that, Abra lay in bed and talked to herself. She compared her home to Ella’s. She knew her home was bad, but not compared to Ella’s. There were no drugs or booze or sex in her house. She knew she was so lucky that she had the means to escape, her brains and Miss Benjamin. She felt an overwhelming sadness knowing that Ella would never escape. She kept whispering into her pillow. “Forgive me Ella. I wanted to help you. I couldn’t take you. Please, please forgive me”

  Ella never returned to school. She ran away from home with a boy, also a high school drop-out, who had been in trouble with the law. They moved to Myrtle Beach to live in a cramped trailer with his family. The boy worked construction off and on, not a job that would move Ella out of the poverty she knew so well. Later in the year she had a baby girl. She named her Abra. To the question of why th
at unusual name, Ella would respond, “It was my friend’s name. My only friend.” Ella was doomed to continue the life of hopelessness that her family had known for generations, but maybe she had dreams for her daughter. Maybe her Abra would make a successful escape.

  Abra couldn’t believe the sight before her eyes. Pete drove up in the same Jeep he had for at least 20 years. She threw her suitcase in the back and hugged him tightly. It was so good to see this Viking who was still handsome despite his thinning hair and sprouting potbelly.

  Abra opened up with “You still have this death trap”

  “I wouldn’t give my beloved Jeep up even if I was offered a million bucks. Well, maybe a million, but not a half million. I thought you’d enjoy being in this since it brings back so many happy memories.”

  They drove over the clunky, ancient bridge to Mount Pleasant and then the older, clunkier draw bridge to Sullivan Island. Abra always feared the teetering, creaking bridges from Charleston, but whatever was on the other side made the white knuckle drive worth it.

  Before they drove to the house, Pete drove past the cottage where Abra and Judy had lived. The Nelsons had fixed it up and sold it for a sizeable profit. It didn’t look like the same house, it was transformed with new shingles, bright paint, and landscaping. But the memories of that house remained and most of the memories were of Judy. Although Abra and Judy had lived together for three years in grad school, they had not been close. They shared classes and went out together with their school friends. Most of their lives were concentrated on mastering their profession. But that changed in that house on Sullivan Island. They became friends across racial lines, something neither had ever experienced before.

  Growing up in a Jewish ghetto in Queens and going to a white school in Virginia, Abra had little contact with blacks. Judy had grown up having little contact with whites, living in the South side black ghetto of Chicago and going to all black elementary and secondary schools. Her mother was a single parent working two jobs to support Judy who attended the University of Illinois at Chicago, her first experience in an integrated school setting. She graduated with a 3.8 GPA and got an assistantship to USC for the graduate psych program. In Columbia, Judy straddled two lives. She was part of the primarily white world of graduate school and life with white Abra. But she found a new black world of well educated people who also went back and forth from white to black. For the first time, she dated white guys. She had never been interested in white guys, but found that many were interested in her honey skin, uncontrollable bush of kinky hair reluctantly pulled tight in a pony tail, and thin figure accentuated by a protruding butt.

  In their year in Charleston, Abra and Judy bonded, in part because they didn’t have time for anyone or anything other than work. Walks on the beach were the settings for many conversations on race and identity and dreams. Abra didn’t feel any identity problems because of being Jewish, probably because she wasn’t religious. Her feelings of being different were based on being from a loveless, dysfunctional home. However, she learned of the tribulations of being black from Judy’s descriptions of her students’ lives. Abra worked in a predominantly white, middle class school while Judy worked in a totally black, poor, inner city school. Although the schools were only a few miles apart physically, they were continents apart educationally and socially. They contrasted the lives of their students, each learning from the other. They witnessed how race and social class played out in the schools. Although Ella was white, she shared many of the overwhelming problems of blacks, especially generational poverty, the root of much of the evil they saw in their students’ lives.

  Abra also learned from Judy about a relationship that was totally alien to her, passionate mother-daughter love. Adoring, selfless mother love was something Abra had only read about, but now she witnessed it first-hand. Over their year together, Judy described how her mother, Gale, dedicated her life to making it possible for Judy to realize her dreams There was no sacrifice Gale wouldn’t make for her Judy.

  Gale married Marlin, an immigrant from Jamaica who worked two jobs to support his wife and newborn daughter. One night coming home from his second job as a dishwasher in an upscale downtown Chicago restaurant, he was mugged. He was shot dead for the $10 in his wallet. Judy was 18 months old. She had no memories of her father. She had only her mother’s memories of a warm, loving family man and a few pictures of a smiling light skinned man with a head of kinky hair just like Judy’s, During the day, Gale worked as a nurse’s aide at the University of Chicago hospital and at night she baby sat with children whose mothers worked night jobs. There were always two kids sleeping in Gale’s bed and another on a cot, while Gale slept on the couch. She didn’t want to work nights because she didn’t want to be away from Judy and she was afraid to be out at night. The memory of Marlin being shot as he walked home from the bus haunted her whenever she was out after dark.

  Gale was Judy’s Miss Benjamin, but more. Gale always said, “You can do anything in this world. You have the brains and the will. I’ll do whatever I can to make you the star I know you can be. You are the best!” Over and over Judy heard these words and she absorbed them, knowing her dreams were attainable. As Judy grew, she dreamed of becoming a lawyer and having her mother live with her for the rest of her life so she wouldn’t have to work. Judy didn’t become a lawyer, but she did become a psychologist and her mother did live with her for the rest of her life.

  Abra had never known someone who had lost a loved one to murder. This type of violence was what she saw on TV, but to know someone who was a victim was frightening. Judy talked about the inner city kids she worked with who knew murder on a daily basis. Murder was in the streets and in the houses where bullets were randomly fired into houses killing innocent children watching TV or mothers nursing their babies. This was a world that Abra could only see through Judy’s eyes. The kids in Abra’s school were involved in some violence at home or with gangs, but never this random mayhem victimizing the black community. They did not live in a state of perpetual fear of being killed for no reason.

  Abra and Judy’s relationship was capped by the graduation ceremony when they got their doctorates. Neither Abra nor Judy cared much about going to the graduation, but they knew that Miss Benjamin and Gale needed to see the culmination of their years of support and love. On a sweltering day in Columbia, Abra became Dr. Berg and Judy became Dr. Hurley. Miss Benjamin and Gale cheered loudly as their girls received their hoods. They spent an entire afternoon in a coldly air conditioned restaurant reminiscing about the past five years and wondering about their futures, Abra working as a school psychologist and Judy teaching in the psychology department at a state university in Illinois. Both Miss Benjamin and Mrs. Hurley glowed with pride at the finished products they helped mold. Abra and Judy overflowed with gratitude for having such loving people who made their dreams reality. The two older women used Dr. Berg and Dr. Hurley throughout the afternoon. “Pass the salt, Dr. Berg…Dr. Hurley, do you want to order some dessert now?”

  Abra ordered wine for everyone so that she could communicate her feelings through toasts. Abra raised her glass and as she looked from Miss Benjamin to Mrs. Hurley, she said, “To two of the greatest ladies who ever lived. To two of the most unselfish women in the world. To the true heroines of life – Edith Benjamin and Gale Hurley.”

  Abra and Judy had only seen each other three times since graduation, twice at psych conventions and once at Judy’s wedding two years after they graduated. Judy had fallen in love with Harold, a geology professor at the university where she was teaching. The fact that Harold was Jamaican like her father was a plus. Judy asked Abra to be her maid of honor and Abra proudly accepted. This was her second time as maid of honor, the first at Beth and Tom’s big church wedding in Richmond. This wedding was small with only Mrs. Hurley, Harold’s parents from Jamaica, and a few friends they had made at the university. They were married at the university chapel and had a champagne brunch at a nearby outdoor restaurant. It wa
s a glorious day for Judy. All her dreams had been realized – a doctorate, a university teaching job, and a wonderful husband. Two years later they moved to a university in California and the year after that Judy had a baby boy, named Marlin. Her mother moved to California to care for the baby while Judy continued working. Abra kept promising to visit them, but had not gotten around to it yet. Maybe one day. She did want to see another happy family, especially for someone who so deserved happiness. Judy had realized the American dream that was inconceivable to her black ancestors who were dragged onto Sullivan Island soil hundreds of years ago. Her escape was made possible by a selfless, loving mother.

  Abra looked at the Nelson house – it had a fresh coat of paint and a new roof, but it still was the welcoming haven from seven years ago. As Abra entered the front door, Martha ran into her arms. They hugged for a long time, just savoring each other’s presence.

  Martha said: “Before we start talking and talking, let’s eat. Everything is ready to be devoured.” Martha had always been a great cook. She believed that cooking was a creative art just like painting and acting. Abra had never been able to develop an interest in cooking, it was just something you did so that you didn’t eat TV dinners all the time.

  Martha made an egg/cheese casserole, blueberry muffins, home-made strawberry preserves, and delicious strong coffee. The first time Abra had eaten muffins and preserves that Martha made from scratch, she was dumbfounded. How did people get the time to do this? Where did they get the ingredients? Martha didn’t even follow recipes. How did she know what to use and how much? Was this some sort of inborn talent, like perfect pitch?

  They ate breakfast, cleaned up, and then headed to the beach with the dogs. Abra took off her shoes and walked in the wet sand savoring the feel of the firm and yet soft, shifting sand. Pete walked off with the dogs as he threw sticks for them to fetch. Martha and Abra sat on straw mats holding hands and watching Pete, the dogs, and the ocean.

  Abra’s plan not to tell Martha about her family dissolved as soon as Abra opened her mouth. She needed to confess to Martha especially, after thinking back to Ella. She used the same words that she had used with Beth the day before. This was going to be her canned speech recited the same way as she made her confession to more and more people.

  “Martha, I want to tell you about my secrets. You’ve always known that I harbored lots of secrets and you’ve never asked.” She started with seeing the newspaper article at National Airport and ended with coming to Charleston a day late.

  When she finished, Martha said, “I’m so glad you told me. It puts a lot of things into perspective.” She tightly squeezed Abra’s hand.

  “Are you surprised about my family?”

  “No. I knew they weren’t dead but I had no idea you had siblings. When you came to my house after the incident with Ella, you said things that made me suspect that they were alive. You’re probably not even aware of what you said. You were in such a distraught state. You talked about all the things that Ella would have to do if she ran away. It was obvious you had been through this yourself. You provided too much detail for this to have been a spur of the moment analysis. I was tempted to challenge you, but it wasn’t the right time and it never was after that. I knew that someday you’d tell me the truth. But honestly, I’m absolutely shocked by your family. You have such a sharp mind. It’s hard to picture you coming from a family of limited intelligence. Pete and I thought that you probably came from a well educated, intellectual family and that you had been abused or there was some trauma in the family that pushed you away. Other than the incident with Ella, you always were in control and seemed to have so much strength, but maybe not. Maybe there’s still a child inside you needing to be nurtured. You never did have a childhood. You were an adult when you should have been taking piano lessons and going to Girls Scouts and sitting on your dad’s lap hearing stories about his dreams for you. You missed a lot of life. Maybe that’s why you always had a certain expression on your face when I’d see you staring intently at my kids. I suppose it was envy. You wanted a childhood like they were having and you knew that would never happen. Or maybe you were sending them a silent message that they were so lucky to have a loving family, something that was denied you.”

  As Abra sobbed, she said, “I thought I was so good at covering my past, but obviously not since you and Beth both knew. But you were both so good not to make me tell you until you knew I was ready. And now I’m ready although I have to admit not willingly, only because I have to. I hate for people to know my past. I want to only be Abra Berg, not Abra Ginzberg.”

  “But you’ll always be Abra Ginzberg. You can’t make her go away. She’ll always be there inside you. You have to learn to build on her, not cover her up.”

  Pete came back with the dogs and knew that he had missed something significant, but he also knew that Martha would share all with him later. “We’d better move fast or you’re going to miss your plane. Let’s de-beach and get moving.”

  They went back to house for a wash-up and then drove to the airport. She hugged each of them closely and said to Martha, “I wish we had more time to talk. I always feel cleansed after I’ve talked with you. Please email me or call me as you think about what I’ve told you. I need your thoughts. I need your wisdom.”

  “I’ll be in contact. I’m your friend and always will be. Come back again at Christmas when the kids are here.”

  “I’ll be back.”