Death Doesn't Discriminate

“How much longer?” Kaylie groans, her finger absentmindedly swiping up on her phone, nothing loading despite the little icon at the top of the phone swearing it’s connected to the wifi. She tosses her phone aside, tired of watching the little circle spin around itself over and over again. 

Bennett moves a box from the far corner of the room to the landing just above the stairs. Kaylie huffs, no one paying her any attention. She hadn’t wanted to come in the first place, she was supposed to be at the pool with the girls, putting the finishing touch on their tans they had been working on all summer while watching the way the lifeguards muscles rippled, but instead she’d been dragged to her great aunt’s house that she’d only met once the Christmas before when her mom had dragged the whole family down South to see her entire extended family, suddenly gungho on rekindling that familial connection she’d discarded years before. Which is great, to each their own and all that, but Kaylie didn’t understand why she had to be dragged along for the ride. She had hated every minute of that trip, her mom parading her around like a prized show pony, spouting off every insignificant award and accolade she’d ever received since being born. Bennett hadn’t had it much easier, she’d forced him to wear his Letterman jacket every time they left the hotel, even in the packed church on Christmas Eve with no air conditioner. 

“You haven’t touched a single thing,” Bennett snaps as he picks up another box, setting it on top of the other by the stairs. 

While maintaining eye contact, Kaylie reaches over, dragging her finger across the top of the globe, most of it deep blue, with the white continents outlined in gold, next to her. “Happy?”

“If you don’t get off your fu-”

A loud stomping along with a stern yell from the floor below silences Bennett, “Language!” 

He turns back to Kaylie, mouthing the rest of his sentence, followed by mimicking a gun to the head. Lately the only thing that seems to unite the pair is the pain in the butt that is their own mother, their dad not around to act as the buffer. Kaylie wishes he’d been able to come down with them, but business insisted otherwise, leaving the three of them to journey down south to deal with the aftermath of Aunt Mary’s stroke and subsequent death after the unanimous decision to pull the plug on the wicked woman. Kaylie picks up her phone, shoving it in her back pocket. She stands up, grabbing the globe by the base, carrying it over to the edge of the stairs. Bennett comes up behind her, knocking into her as he sets the box on top of the growing pile. The wooden stand slips from her grip, hitting the carpeted stairs with a dull thud, the globe rolling on the base and tumbling down the stairs, landing at the base, shattering into a million little pieces.

Kaylie exclaims slamming her hands into Bennett’s back. “Nice going!” She moves around the boxes, racing down the stairs and jumping over the mess, Bennett hot on her trail. She leans over the mess of shattered glass, picking up some of the larger pieces, trying to minimize as much of the damage as possible.

Their mom runs around the corner, a painted ceramic casserole dish in her hands. “What happened?” she exclaims, her eyes surveying the damage.

Kaylie and Bennett both start talking, their voices growing increasingly louder, trying to speak over the other. Their mom raises her right hand, silencing the two. She steps closer, watching her step to avoid shards. “B, go get the broom from the garage, there’s no way we’re getting all this up with our hands,” she instructs, setting the dish down on the dining table. She squats down, helping Kaylie pick up some of the larger pieces, folding her apron up to hold them while she picks up more. 

“I’m sorry,” Kaylie murmurs, setting the pieces she’d picked up in her mom’s apron. Her mom shakes her head, standing up, careful to not let any of the pieces fall. She turns on her heels, moving out of the room, searching for the trashcan.

Kaylie reaches forward, withdrawing another large piece, a streak of light pink paper revealing itself, only noticeable because of the stark color contrast. She sets the shard aside, reaching for the piece of paper instead. The paper is thin under her fingertips, soft from age. She turns it over, her Aunt Mary’s address written in pretty script on the front of the envelope, but the name Margret Thompson just above it. She pushes around the pile, finding several more envelopes, gathering the growing pile on top of her leg, continuing to push it around, determined to find more. 

Footsteps behind Kaylie draw her attention from the pile in front of her. “Jeez, you were supposed to pack up the house, not destroy it,” Aunt Jamie jokes, dropping her purse to the floor and reaching over Kaylie to pick up the largest shard out of the pile, twirling it between her pointer fingers.

“Do you know who Margret Thompson is?” Kaylie questions, holding up the stack of envelopes to her aunt. 

She takes them, trading the shard for the stack. She flips through them, pausing on one. “No, but this one’s addressed to Mary Helven, that’s Aunt Mary’s married name, she changed it back after her husband died a few decades back,” she says, flipping through the rest of the envelopes, “Jesus, some of these are really old.”

“How do you know?”

Jamie turns them around, holding them out for Kaylie to see, taping her index finger to the left corner, just above the stamp, the image almost completely faded and fraying around the edges.

Bennett enters the room, broom in hand. He nods his head in a greeting, getting started on sweeping up the farthest pieces, building a small pile against the wall.

Jamie moves around the mess, pulling out of the chairs at the dining table. Kaylie trails behind, taking a seat next to her. Jamie spreads out the envelopes, moving them around. “I almost don’t want to open them,” she mutters to herself, silently questioning how many rules of privacy this was breaking. She weighs the odds, counting backwards to figure out if anyone involved in these letters had the chance of still being alive. 

“I will,” Kaylie says, reaching for the closest one. She drags her nail under the seal, the worn down adhesive releasing with ease. 

Kaylie clears her throat, raising the letter higher, mimicking the way her ancient history professor holds all his notes, wishing she had glasses to tie it all together. “The date is October 19th, 1866,” she says, reading off the smudged writing in the top left corner. “My dearest Thomas, I hope this letter finds you with great joy and happiness. I want to start by thanking you for the reading and writing lessons you gave me in secret all those years ago, for without them, this letter among other things would not even be possible. I am writing to let you know of my whereabouts now that I’m settled, and of my new name,” Kaylie reads, her eyes skimming the remaining words. Her voice catches slightly, “I regret to inform you that my brother has passed, he came down with the fever and couldn’t shake it. Your friend, Elizabeth Williams,” Kaylie finishes, quickly silently rereads the letter. She hands it over to Jamie, her eyes rapidly moving as she reads the letter for herself. Kaylie grabs another letter, glancing at the stamp covering the majority of the front of the envelope. “This one was sent back to sender, the recipient couldn’t be found,” she says, tracing her finger over the raised red ink, distorting the words below it. “December 13th, 1966,” she reads off, squinting slightly to make out the cursive, as compared to Elizabeth’s simple printing. “This must be Thomas’ response, but she never got it,” she murmurs, her eyes skimming over the writing. “Dear Elizabeth, thank you for letting me know about your brother, he has never left my heart even if he left my home years ago. I hope truly all is well with you, I know for a fact that my sister would’ve been proud to share a name with you, you never ceased to amaze her, despite our parents’ efforts,” Kaylie reads. She skims through the rest of the letter, Thomas rambling about the weather and local news. “Why wouldn’t they have delivered this? It’s just congratulating her on her marriage and sympathy for the loss of her brother,” Kaylie muses, already reaching for the next letter. 

Jamie stops her, taking the letter from in front of her, scanning the letter, her eyes sticking on certain phrases, raising her eyebrows. She sighs deeply, setting the letter down, her fingers coming up to pinch at the bridge of her nose. “She didn’t get married, she was a slave, this is him congratulating her on her official freedom, and I sounds like he had an affair with her brother at some point.”

Kaylie picks the letter back up, rereading it. “Wasn’t that just how they talked back then?”

“It obviously raised enough suspicions to get flagged by the post office, although back then, just a black woman writing to a white man could’ve been enough,” Jamie sighs, retrieving another letter with her name on it. “March 25th, 1867. Dear Elizabeth, I waited to hear from you, knowing our postal system still has it’s errors, but I digress and write to you. Since I wrote to you last, both of my parents have passed courtesy of an unusually cruel winter, although I do not expect any sympathy from you, I know they were anything, but kind, but I will keep my promise I made before you and God all those years ago, to be better, to work for a better future. I do hope you can visit soon now that circumstances have changed, I miss your kind smile and your bright mind. Sincerely yours, Thomas.”

“Kaylie, do not leave your brother to clean up your mess,” their mom scolds from the edge of the room, barely even acknowledging her sister.

Kaylie rolls her eyes, “He’s the one who made me drop it,” she says, shooting him a glance over her shoulder. “Look at these,” she says, holding up the opened letters for her mom to grab.

Her eyes scan over them then over the arrangement of paper in front of them, her jaw locking. “I’ll be in the kitchen,” she says, turning around and disappearing back into the room she’d come from.

“Nice to see you too, sis,” Jamie calls after her. 

Kaylie rolls her eyes at the fact that not even growing old could change the fact that siblings bicker. She starts reading through the next letter. “December 1st, 1867, Elizabeth, perhaps I should take the clue that you must have dropped that I seemed to have missed and leave you be. I wish I could see you again, but I think perhaps it is too painful, and that you would prefer to move on, destroy all remnants of the life that was forced upon you. I will not write to you again, and leave it up to you, if you ever wish to speak again. I will be at this address until I die. Yours, Thomas.” --- “There aren’t any more,”

Jamie shuffles through the remaining envelopes, pulling two out. “All these have Thomas as the recipient, same type of stamp,” she says, scratching at the red to unveil more writing underneath. “April 10th, 1867, Dearest Thomas, I never heard from you after my first letter, but I shall remain hopeful and believe it is an error of the system, not you. I will briefly recount what I wrote in my original letter. I hope this letter does find you in good health and happiness. I use the skills you taught me in the reading and writing lessons you gave me in secret all those years ago, and without them, I doubt I’d even be in a position to be writing to you from across the country. I have made a home here in New York, the city that promises to be great, and have officially completed all the paperwork necessary to be none other than Elizabeth Willaims, but regret to inform you that I have made this accomplishment alone for William died at the start of winter, the season rather cruel up here. I do despise to end this letter on bad news, but I am afraid I must. I hope to hear from you soon, Yours, Elizabeth,” she barely finishes reading the letter before peeling the next one of it’s envelope. “If I am anything, it is stubborn. I write to you again, more for myself than you this time. I need to tell someone who knew me before, to compare to who I am now. I have recently wed in secret to Charles Davis of Massachusetts, a kind merchant who fought for our cause and now runs his own shop down by the pier. I shall be keeping Williams as my second name, to keep the last bit of my brother alive. We make do, he is fairly dark in skin where as you know I have always been lighter than my fellow freedom fighters, but now I help him in the morning, and cook during the day, taking fresh biscuits down to the pier where we have lunch and watch the birds scavenge for food. I truly hope all is well with you and those you care about. Please write if you please. Yours, Elizabeth Williams Davis.”

“There no more from either of them,”

She grabs an envelope, the paper significantly less worn than the others they’ve already inspected. “The last name on this one is Davis,” she says, breaking the seal. “Dated 1951, Dear Emily, you do not know me, and I do not know you, but my great grandmother knew your great grandfather, I believe they were close friends when they were younger, despite being on opposite sides of the division of the country, later surely separated by trials and tribulations of life. I discovered this information while working on a family tree project that got out of hand and led me to discovering the letters I have included in this packet. I have made copies, but would greatly appreciate the return of the original as they may very well be the key to a great untold story of history, although a part that will have to remain untold until a later time when society, and my own family, has progressed past archaical values, Sincerely, Katherine Davis,” she says, letting the last words hang in the air, the name sounding vaguely familiar to Kaylie. “Katherine is Elizabeth and Charles’ great granddaughter, your grandmother, my and your mother’s mother, Davis was her maiden name.”

“There has to be more,” Kaylie says, rechecking the letters. She moves away from the table, sidestepping the remaining broken pieces. She starts digging through the attic, checking every nook and cranny, finally finding answers in a forgotten box under a tattered blanket. She calls out to Jamie. She makes her way of the stairs, careful of the boxes that remain in front of the landing. Kaylie pulls out album after album, handing them off to Jamie. The pair sits down right there on the dusty floor, digging through the pages one at a time. “Aunt Mary tracked it all, look at this,” she murmurs, dragging her finger along the lines, stopping on her own name, then tracing it back up to the top.

“I didn’t even know anyone in our family was black,” Kaylie says, feeling the sudden urge to check her own skin as if it would’ve darkened from the new discovery.

Jamie tilts her head, thinking of the best way to state it without being overly blunt. “Most families, especially ones from the south back then, kept it secret,” she says, taking the book from Kaylie and looking at the family tree for herself, the next page filled with notes on each person.

“Do you think anyone knows about this?” Kaylie asks, picking up another book, more notes scribbled in it.

“They don’t,” her mom says, leaning against the stair rail, a glass in her other.

Kaylie and Jamie turn around, the words leaving their lips at the same time. “You knew?”

“So much for a secret between them,” she mutters, tilting her glass just enough so the amber liquid touches her lip, but doesn’t pass them. “When I was little, before you were born, she’d tell me stories, didn’t occur to me until last month to figure out if there was any truth to them,” she says, finally taking a sip of her drink. “I packed that box,” she says, gesturing to the unpacked one in front of them, “Had no idea about the letters.” She steps forward, taking a seat in front of them and places one of the books in her lap, her glass discarded behind her. She traces the cover of the album, an intricate tree engraved on the stiff leather. “I think it’s time to help mom and Aunt Mary finish what they started,” she says after a moment. She sets the book back down, standing up and offering her hands to the two still sitting. “I’ve already contacted the historical society,” she says, shocking the both of them. She retrieves her glass, finishing off the bitter drink. “Now let’s go see what a bunch of stuck up conservatives our family is shall we?”