Silver Sparrow Read online

  Silver Sparrow

  Tayari Jones

  silver sparrow

  also by TAYARI JONES

  Leaving Atlanta

  The Untelling

  SILVER SPARROW

  a novel by

  Tayari Jones

  Published by

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hil , North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2011 by Tayari Jones.

  Al rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Al en & Son Limited.

  “A Daughter is a Colony,” on page vii, copyright © Natasha Trethewey.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in al fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, al names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jones, Tayari.

  Silver sparrow : a novel / by Tayari Jones. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-56512-990-0

  1. African American families — Fiction. 2. Polygamy — Fiction.

  3. African American teenage girls — Fiction. 4. Sisters — Fiction.

  5. Mothers and daughters — Fiction. 6. Fathers and daughters — Fiction.

  7. Atlanta (Ga.) — Fiction. 8. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PS3610 O63S56 2011

  813′.6 — dc22 2010048098

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  For my parents,

  Barbara and Mack Jones,

  who, to the best of my knowledge,

  are married only to each other

  A Daughter is a Colony

  a territory, a progeny,

  a spitting image

  like Athena sprung

  from her father’s head:

  chip off the old block,

  issue and spawn;

  a namesake, a wishbone—

  loyalist and traitor—

  a native, an other,

  a subject, a study,

  a history, a half blood,

  a continent dark and strange.

  —NATASHA TRETHEWEY

  silver sparrow

  PART I

  Dana Lynn Yarboro

  1

  THE SECRET

  MY FATHER, JAMES WITHERSPOON, is a bigamist. He was already married ten years when he first clamped eyes on my mother. In 1968, she was working at the gift-wrap counter at Davison’s downtown when my father asked her to wrap the carving knife he had bought his wife for their wedding anniversary. Mother said she knew that something wasn’t right between a man and a woman when the gift was a blade. I said that maybe it means there was a kind of trust between them. I love my mother, but we tend to see things a little bit differently. The point is that James’s marriage was never hidden from us. James is what I cal him. His other daughter, Chaurisse, the one who grew up in the house with him, she cal s him Daddy, even now.

  When most people think of bigamy, if they think of it at al , they imagine some primitive practice taking place on the pages of National Geographic. In Atlanta, we remember one sect of the back-to-Africa movement that used to run bakeries in the West End. Some people said it was a cult, others cal ed it a cultural movement. Whatever it was, it involved four wives for each husband. The bakeries have since closed down, but sometimes we stil see the women, resplendent in white, trailing six humble paces behind their mutual husband. Even in Baptist churches, ushers keep smel ing salts on the ready for the new widow confronted at the wake by the other grieving widow and her stair-step kids. Undertakers and judges know that it happens al the time, and not just between religious fanatics, traveling salesmen, handsome sociopaths, and desperate women.

  It’s a shame that there isn’t a true name for a woman like my mother, Gwendolyn. My father, James, is a bigamist. That is what he is. Laverne is his wife. She found him first and my mother has always respected the other woman’s squatter’s rights. But was my mother his wife, too? She has legal documents and even a single Polaroid proving that she stood with James Alexander Witherspoon Junior in front of a judge just over the state line in Alabama. However, to cal her only his “wifea” doesn’t real y explain the ful complexity of her position.

  There are other terms, I know, and when she is tipsy, angry, or sad, Mother uses them to describe herself: concubine, whore, mistress, consort.

  There are just so many, and none are fair. And there are nasty words, too, for a person like me, the child of a person like her, but these words were not al owed in the air of our home. “You are his daughter. End of story.” If this was ever true it was in the first four months of my life, before Chaurisse, his legitimate daughter, was born. My mother would curse at hearing me use that word, legitimate, but if she could hear the other word that formed in my head, she would close herself in her bedroom and cry. In my mind, Chaurisse is his real daughter. With wives, it only matters who gets there first. With daughters, the situation is a bit more complicated.

  IT MATTERS WHAT you cal ed things. Surveil was my mother’s word. If he knew, James would probably say spy, but that is too sinister. We didn’t do damage to anyone but ourselves as we trailed Chaurisse and Laverne while they wound their way through their easy lives. I had always imagined that we would eventual y be asked to explain ourselves, to press words forward in our own defense. On that day, my mother would be cal ed upon to do the talking. She is gifted with language and is able to layer difficult details in such a way that the result is smooth as water. She is a magician who can make the whole world feel like a dizzy il usion. The truth is a coin she pul s from behind your ear.

  Maybe mine was not a blissful girlhood. But is anyone’s? Even people whose parents are happily married to each other and no one else, even these people have their share of unhappiness. They spend plenty of time nursing old slights, rehashing squabbles. So you see, I have something in common with the whole world.

  Mother didn’t ruin my childhood or anyone’s marriage. She is a good person. She prepared me. Life, you see, is al about knowing things. That is why my mother and I shouldn’t be pitied. Yes, we have suffered, but we never doubted that we enjoyed at least one peculiar advantage when it came to what real y mattered: I knew about Chaurisse; she didn’t know about me. My mother knew about Laverne, but Laverne was under the impression that hers was an ordinary life. We never lost track of that basic and fundamental fact.

  WHEN DID I first discover that although I was an only child, my father was not my father and mine alone? I real y can’t say. It’s something that I’ve known for as long as I’ve known that I had a father. I can only say for sure when I learned that this type of double-duty daddy wasn’t ordinary.

  I was about five years old, in kindergarten, when the art teacher, Miss Russel , asked us to draw pictures of our families. While al the other children scribbled with their crayons or soft-leaded pencils, I used a blue-ink pen and drew James, Chaurisse, and Laverne. In the background was Raleigh, my father’s best friend, the only person we knew from his other life. I drew him with the crayon labeled “Flesh” because he is real y light-skinned. This was years and years ago, but I stil remember. I hung a necklace around the wife’s neck. I gave the girl a big smile, stuffed with square teeth. Near the left margin, I drew my mother and me standing by ourselves. With a marker, I blacked in Mother’s long hair and curving lashes. On my own face, I drew only a pair of wide eyes. Above, a friendly sun winked at al six of us.

  The ar
t teacher approached me from behind. “Now, who are these people you’ve drawn so beautiful y?”

  Charmed, I smiled up at her. “My family. My daddy has two wifes and two girls.”

  Cocking her head, she said, “I see.”

  I didn’t think much more about it. I was stil enjoying the memory of the way she pronounced beautifully. To this day, when I hear anyone say that word, I feel loved. At the end of the month, I brought al of my drawings home in a cardboard folder. James opened up his wal et, which he kept plump with two-dol ar bil s to reward me for my schoolwork. I saved the portrait, my masterpiece, for last, being as it was so beautiful y drawn and everything.

  My father picked the page up from the table and held it close to his face like he was looking for a coded message. Mother stood behind me, crossed her arms over my chest, and bent to place a kiss on the top of my head. “It’s okay,” she said.

  “Did you tel your teacher who was in the picture?” James said.

  I nodded slowly, the whole time thinking that I probably should lie, although I wasn’t quite sure why.

  “James,” Mother said, “let’s not make a molehil into a mountain. She’s just a child.”

  “Gwen,” he said, “this is important. Don’t look so scared. I’m not going to take her out behind the woodshed.” Then he chuckled, but my mother didn’t laugh.

  “Al she did was draw a picture. Kids draw pictures.”

  “Go on in the kitchen, Gwen,” James said. “Let me talk to my daughter.”

  My mother said, “Why can’t I stay in here? She’s my daughter, too.”

  “You are with her al the time. You tel me I don’t spend enough time talking to her. So now let me talk.”

  Mother hesitated and then released me. “She’s just a little kid, James. She doesn’t even know the ins and outs yet.”

  “Trust me,” James said.

  She left the room, but I don’t know that she trusted him not to say something that would leave me wounded and broken-winged for life. I could see it in her face. When she was upset she moved her jaw around invisible gum. At night, I could hear her in her room, grinding her teeth in her sleep.

  The sound was like gravel under car wheels.

  “Dana, come here.” James was wearing a navy chauffeur’s uniform. His hat must have been in the car, but I could see the ridged mark across his forehead where the hatband usual y rested. “Come closer,” he said.

  I hesitated, looking to the space in the doorway where Mother had disappeared.

  “Dana,” he said, “you’re not afraid of me, are you? You’re not scared of your own father, are you?”

  His voice sounded mournful, but I took it as a dare. “No, sir,” I said, taking a bold step forward.

  “Don’t cal me sir, Dana. I’m not your boss. When you say that, it makes me feel like an overseer.”

  I shrugged. Mother told me that I should always cal him sir. With a sudden motion, he reached out for me and lifted me up on his lap. He spoke to me with both of our faces looking outward, so I couldn’t see his expression.

  “Dana, I can’t have you making drawings like the one you made for your art class. I can’t have you doing things like that. What goes on in this house between your mother and me is grown people’s business. I love you. You are my baby girl, and I love you, and I love your mama. But what we do in this house has to be a secret, okay?”

  “I didn’t even draw this house.”

  James sighed and bounced me on his lap a little bit. “What happens in my life, in my world, doesn’t have anything to do with you. You can’t tel your teacher that your daddy has another wife. You can’t tel your teacher that my name is James Witherspoon. Atlanta ain’t nothing but a country town, and everyone knows everybody.”

  “Your other wife and your other girl is a secret?” I asked him.

  He put me down from his lap, so we could look each other in the face. “No. You’ve got it the wrong way around. Dana, you are the one that’s a secret.”

  Then he patted me on the head and tugged one of my braids. With a wink he pul ed out his bil fold and separated three two-dol ar bil s from the stack. He handed them over to me and I clamped them in my palm.

  “Aren’t you going to put them in your pocket?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And for once, he didn’t tel me not to cal him that.

  James took me by the hand and we walked down the hal way to the kitchen for dinner. I closed my eyes on the short walk because I didn’t like the wal paper in the hal way. It was beige with a burgundy pattern. When it had started peeling at the edges, I was accused of picking at the seams. I denied it over and over again, but Mother reported me to James on his weekly visit. He took off his belt and swatted me around the legs and up on my backside, which seemed to satisfy something in my mother.

  In the kitchen my mother placed the bowls and plates on the glass table in silence. She wore her favorite apron that James brought back from New Orleans. On the front was a drawing of a crawfish holding a spatula aloft and a caption: DON’T MAKE ME POISON YOUR FOOD! James took his place at the head of the table and polished the water spots from his fork with his napkin. “I didn’t lay a hand on her; I didn’t even raise my voice. Did I?”

  “No, sir.” And this was entirely the truth, but I felt different than I had just a few minutes before when I’d pul ed my drawing out of its sleeve. My skin stayed the same while this difference snuck in through a pore and attached itself to whatever brittle part forms my center. You are the secret. He’d said it with a smile, touching the tip of my nose with the pad of his finger.

  My mother came around and picked me up under my arms and sat me on the stack of phone books in my chair. She kissed my cheek and fixed a plate with salmon croquettes, a spoon of green beans, and corn.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded.

  James ate his meal, spooning honey onto a dinner rol when my mother said there would be no dessert. He drank a big glass of Coke.

  “Don’t eat too much,” my mother said. “You’l have to eat again in a little while.”

  “I’m always happy to eat your food, Gwen. I’m always happy to sit at your table.”

  I don’t know how I decided that my missing teeth were the problem, but I devised a plan to slide a folded piece of paper behind my top teeth to camouflage the pink space in the center of my smile. I was inspired by James, actual y, who once told me how he put cardboard in his shoes when he was little to make up for the holes in the soles. The paper was soggy and the blue lines ran with my saliva.

  Mother caught me in the middle of this process. She walked into my room and lay across my twin bed with its purple checked spread. She liked to do this, just lie across my bed while I played with my toys or colored in my notebooks, watching me like I was a television show. She always smel ed good, like flowery perfume, and sometimes like my father’s cigarettes.

  “What are you doing, Petunia?”

  “Don’t cal me Petunia,” I said, partial y because I didn’t like the name and partial y because I wanted to see if I could talk with the paper in my mouth. “Petunia is the name of a pig.”

  “Petunia is a flower,” my mother said. “A pretty one.”

  “It’s Porky Pig’s girlfriend.”

  “That’s meant to be a joke, a pretty name for a pig, you see?”

  “A joke is supposed to be funny.”

  “It is funny. You are just in a bad mood. What’re you doing with the paper?”

  “I’m trying to put my teeth back,” I said, while trying to rearrange the sodden wad.

  “How come?”

  This seemed obvious as I took in my own reflection along with my mother’s in the narrow mirror attached to the top of my chest of drawers. Of course James wanted to keep me a secret. Who would love a girl with a gaping pink hole in the middle of her mouth? None of the other children in my kindergarten reading circle looked like I did. Surely my mother could understand this. She spent half an hour each night squ
inting at her skin before a magnifying mirror, applying swipes of heavy creams from Mary Kay. When I asked her what she was doing, she said, “I am improving my appearance. Wives can afford to let themselves go. Concubines must be vigilant.”

  Recal ing it now, I know that she must have been drinking. Although I can’t remember the moment so wel , I know that just outside the frame was her glass of Asti Spumante, golden and busy with bubbles.

  “I am improving my appearance.” I hoped she would smile.

  “Your appearance is perfect, Dana. You’re five; you have beautiful skin, shiny eyes, and pretty hair.”

  “But no teeth,” I said.

  “You’re a little girl. You don’t need teeth.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said quietly. “Yes, I do.”

  “Why? To eat corn on the cob? Your teeth wil grow back. There is lots of corn in your future, I promise.”

  “I want to be like that other girl,” I said final y.

  Mother had been lying across my bed, like a goddess on a chaise lounge, but when I said that she snapped up. “What other girl?”

  “James’s other girl.”

  “You can say her name,” Mother said.

  I shook my head. “Can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Just say it. Her name is Chaurisse.”

  “Stop it,” I said, afraid that just saying my sister’s name would unleash some terrible magic the way that saying “Bloody Mary” while staring into a pan of water would turn the liquid red and thick.

  Mother rose from the bed and got down on her knees so we were the same height. As she pressed her hands down on my shoulders, traces of cigarette smoke lingered in her tumbly hair. I reached out for it.

  “Her name is Chaurisse,” my mother said again. “She’s a little girl, just like you are.”

  “Please stop saying it,” I begged her. “Stop it before something happens.”

  My mother hugged me to her chest. “What did your daddy say to you the other day? Tel me what he said.”

  “Nothing,” I whispered.

  “Dana, you can’t lie to me, okay? I tel you everything and you tel me everything. That’s the only way we can pul this off, baby. We have to keep the information moving between us.” She shook me a little bit. Not enough to scare me, just enough to get my attention.