Josephine’s Bangles

To the hundreds of people who attended her irreverently festive funeral, “Aunt Josephine” was not just the life of every party she attended; she WAS the party! I knew this already since she raised me. I called her “Ant Momma,” she called me Robbie, short for Roberta. At her music-filled funerary fête, no one shed tears of sadness. Instead, those gathered at the cemetery laughed themselves into tears at the many Vegas-style one-liner eulogies from a string of colorful personalities who had shared different wild adventures with my Ant Momma. I stood there listening and missing her as I absently touched the gold bangle she had given me as a present. Finally, it hit me like an emotional sledgehammer that I was on my own. I did not realize then that I might not be as alone as I feared.

I followed Grand Ant Momma’s meticulous and demanding instructions about her “sending off” celebration at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. According to the records, she had been gifted that beautiful and scenic plateau at the highest viewpoint in the cemetery almost seventy years ago by a very powerful U.S. Senator! That was typical of Ant Momma’s exciting life; for mysterious reasons, her army of friends always opened doors for her. When I asked for explanations, she smiled and said nothing. Aside from the various musical interludes, her funeral demands called for a Rabbi, an AME pastor, a priest, and a spirit leader from the Assiniboine Tribe in Montana, who would each give Ant Momma a blessing.

After the program finished at noon on that blue-skyed, warm, breezy June day, the friendly locust swarm of good-natured mourners began to leave for the deluxe repast prepared at our family mansion in southeast Washington near the historic home of Fredrick Douglass. Lines of people approached me to hug me and throw colorful rose petals at her outrageously gaudy coffin before moving toward their cars. For some unknown reason, my mind shifted to one woman at the back of the crowd wearing a sharp black suit like mine and a stylish veil-covered hat (also like mine) who seemed to be tiptoeing tentatively in my direction.

My mind snapped away from the woman and focused on the casket in front of me. My unapologetically bodacious, haute-couture Grand Ant was my mother’s aunt. She was a twin sister to my long-deceased grandmother. She adopted me as an infant nearly thirty years ago after her daughter, my unmarried mother, died in a car accident in Montana. There is no father listed on my birth certificate. In my earliest memories, Grand Ant Momma was a dazzling lightning rod for flamboyance, unexpected comments, hilarious jokes, and unconditional love. And now, when she was ninety-five years old, the lightning storm had ended. As I stood there, I had no idea that even from her grave, the indomitable Mrs. Josephine Williams Haas Toussaint O’Sullivan had yet another life-changing shock in store for me.

I am Roberta Louise Williams, a proud librarian, but my thrill-seeking Ant ridiculed my profession regularly. She said my job was as exciting as watching grass grow. And yet, I knew she was proud of me. Six years ago, when I received my PhD in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Maryland, she bought us matching fifty thousand dollar emerald tiaras for the graduation ceremony, and she wore hers with style; I declined to wear mine.

My eternally beautiful Ant Momma had died in her own antique king-sized bed. As always, she was naked under her exclusive Belgian Linen bedding, and she wore the forty-carat diamond choker gift from her favorite deceased husband. When I found her body, her waist-length wavy silver hair was cascading over her multitudes of bed pillows, and there was a contented smile on her relatively smooth cinnamon-brown face. Her death surprised me because she hadn’t been ailing other than the usual nonagenarian aches and pains, and she smoked Jamaican cake bomb marijuana to manage those.

Her death certificate stated that she died of “aging-associated biological decline in intrinsic capacity” or old age. Her autopsy showed nothing that should have ended her life at that particular time. As usual, my Grand Ant left baffled people in her wake. She always did the opposite of what people told her she should do for “a long life.” She drank her favorite Zacapa rum every day, smoked various things, stayed up late, ate fatty foods and outrageous desserts, and never exercised. She sassed the doctors, who urged her to slow down. She told them, “I’ll outlive you and your quinoa, tofu, and health club memberships!” And she did.

A week ago, I went to my Grand Ant’s third-floor bedroom because, even though she was never an early riser, I was determined to rouse her and speak with her before I left for work. Out of the blue, she had left twenty handwritten pages of funeral and burial instructions on my dressing table. But I knew she never did anything without a reason, and I wanted to know her real game this time. But finding her dead stopped my queries.

As I stood at the grave site, I could only shake my head in bemusement at her gleaming white casket with bawdy, shining gold decorations all over it. The casket’s numerous golden bells chimed in the breeze, depictions of buff archangels who could pass as Chippendale dancers and a huge gold bas-relief rendition of Duke Ellington playing his piano covered the entire coffin. She had chosen to be buried naked, covered only in rose petals, and instructed one of her eulogists to announce this.

In my early years, I worried that my wild Grand Ant would “un-adopt” me because I was her exact opposite; I was a happy introvert, socially hesitant, and soft-spoken. While Ant Momma literally carved notches into her bed’s headboard, I had only two relationships with guys who Ant Momma dismissed as “silly, sweaty boys with pimples and sausage links rather than healthy, horny men with muscles and kielbasa.” She made that comment to me in front of her cocktail party guests one evening, and my boyfriend was standing next to me. I remember tapping my shoulder and begging Scotty to “beam me up.”

My Ant was a millionaire’s widow three times over and had made profitable investments for many decades. She left a significant inheritance for me even after her generous bequests to many institutions and individuals. A substantial bequest was to a “Florine Trust” in Switzerland. I would have to look into these places later when I reviewed her estate. There were three safe deposit boxes full of her “red hot” diaries (as she termed them) and vaults in our various homes. I supposed I would find mountains of jewelry when I reviewed everything. God knows my Ant loved jewelry. She gave me an expensive piece for my birthday, and Christmas presents each year. Those jewelry gifts were so ostentatious that I never wore them. But on my eighteenth birthday, I was pleasantly surprised to receive the simple yet beautifully made wavy golden bangle with thin grape vines artfully engraved all over it. It had a security chain at the clasp and fit my small wrist perfectly. I rarely took it off.

An emotional storm raged within me as the casket was being carefully rigged with elastic belts for its descent into the ground. I was numb as I watched the men slowly lowering the gleaming casket with Ant Momma inside. Still, I was aware of the slowly approaching strange blonde woman who was beginning to look familiar. The cemetery work crew chose to use shovels instead of a backhoe to put the dirt in her grave. They told me it seemed sacrilegious to cover that amazing coffin using a machine instead of “good ‘ol elbow grease.”

As per my Ant’s meticulous instructions for her fête, I wore her vintage 1960s Coco Chanel black suit, matching black veiled hat and handbag, and black Louboutin pumps. I broke my reverie and looked directly at the strange blonde woman standing next to me, and I noticed with shock that her entire outfit wasn’t just “like mine.” It was another complete 1960s Chanel funeral ensemble! We both wore the dainty black gloves with pearl buttons women wore in yesteryear. Now I went on red alert. Something a bit scary was happening here.

Thud-thud, tinkling bells, and sweet birdsong were the sounds on the plateau as the shovel loads of dirt continued to fill the grave and hit the casket. But the thuds I heard the loudest were coming from my pounding heart. I looked down and saw a simple yet beautifully made wavy golden bangle on the woman’s wrist with grape vines meticulously and artfully engraved all over it. It had a security chain at the clasp and fit her small wrist perfectly. I looked at my bangle and then stared at hers; they seemed to be identical!

The bodacious spirit of Ant Momma must have possessed me because I stepped to the woman and blurted out, “Who are you?” The blonde woman raised her black veil, turned, smiled with tears in her eyes, and looked at me, and I gasped in shock.

I took a deep breath and got myself under control. With my free hand, I raised my black veil and looked into the blonde woman’s ice-blue eyes, which were shaped just like mine. She had my perky little nose, oval face, small ears, full lips, high cheekbones, and a thin neck. We both were pretty women and wore the same size six as Grand Ant Momma. My hair was pecan brown, and hers was golden blonde, but our lengths and textures were the same. Other than eye color, the stark difference between us was that I had cinnamon-brown skin, and hers was ivory white.

Finally, the blonde woman spoke in a voice that reminded me of my own and said, “Sister, let’s sit on that bench and talk. There are things I just found out from our grandmother’s lawyers and I have to share them with you.”

I was stunned by her words: “sister” and “our grandmother.” I felt dizzy and let myself be led to the sturdy granite bench that Grand Ant Momma had installed on her burial plateau. We sat, and the strange blonde woman removed her bracelet, and without another word, I removed mine. We fit them snuggly into one another like puzzle pieces; they were a matched set. We each replaced our bangles and interlocked our trembling hands. Tears rolled slowly down our cheeks.

She said, “I am Louise Roberta Rochford or Bobbie, your twin sister. My birthday, like yours, is September 8, 1994. Your birth certificate and other documents say that you are Roberta Louise Williams, but actually, you are Roberta Louise Rochford. We were born at the Clinique des Grangettes, a private hospital in Chêne-Bougeries, Switzerland. The lawyers warned me that your personal papers were purposefully falsified decades ago. Grandmother’s ten-page, handwritten letter said that one of her red hot diaries would explain more about everything I am about to say. Our Grandmother Josephine, which is how she named herself in her letter, was our mother’s mother, not her aunt, as you were told. Grandmother Josephine Marion Williams was a twin with our Grand Aunt Florine Phyliss Williams, who still lives in a chateau in Switzerland near the maternity hospital where we were born.

Grandmother Josephine told me that she finally had a baby girl after two decades of trying when she was married to the New Orleans Rice Company owner and multi-millionaire Philippe Henri Toussaint. Philippe, our grandfather, died in an airplane accident, and their baby daughter, our mother, Evangeline Antoinette Toussaint, grew up in New Orleans with our lively Grandmother Josephine on the old Toussaint estate. Time passed, and while at Tulane, our mother met, fell in love, and married a rebellious Robert Louis Rochford, Junior. But the powerful Rochfords of Pittsburgh were outraged at his marriage to a black woman and sought legal advice to annul it. And they had grounds to do so.

“Our mother was seventeen and had our grandmother’s happy permission to marry, but our father was only twenty and had spent some time in a mental health facility, leaving his parents as his legal guardians. Because of that, arguably, he needed his parent’s written consent to marry. Time had passed since the controversial nuptials, and our mother was already pregnant with us. But our mother’s pregnancy was diagnosed as high risk. Our father, Grandmother Josephine, and Grand Aunt Florine whisked us away from New Orleans to a top maternity clinic in Switzerland to give us the best chance of living.

The Rochfords, with a nasty public fight against the annulment on the docket, decided to temporarily back off the case. I saw an ugly letter from our Grandfather Rochford to the team of lawyers where he wished that the worst would happen to his son’s “black wife” and “mongrel kids” so the problem would be solved naturally.

“I assure you, Robbie, that I knew nothing about any of this until a week ago when I received my bangle and these clothes from grandmother’s lawyers, and I am sickened to learn about the cruel hearts of people I thought were human beings.

“Our sweet young mother, Evangeline, died in childbirth, but we were born, premature and jaundiced, but alive. A rare twist in biology made you brown skinned with hazel eyes and wavy brown hair like our mother and I was born white skinned with ice blue eyes and curly blonde hair like our father, though we came from the same womb.”

Bobbie continued speaking, barely choking the words out, “But evil never rests. The Rochford patriarch and his wife, our paternal grandparents, had flown to Switzerland to bring their son home but saw both of us in the hospital. And within an hour of our mother’s burial, they called a meeting of all those involved. Our Rochford grandparents told their emotionally broken firstborn son, our father, that they would pay all the medical bills (which were substantial). Also, they said they would no longer fight to annul the marriage, but ONLY if the Rochford family raised his “white” daughter and gave up the “black” one. I hope there is a particularly nasty place in hell for people who are so cruel.

“We will never know what was on our father’s mind, but he submitted to the demonic bargain. Hopefully, we can speak with Grand Aunt Florine, who was present through all of it, and have some of our questions answered. By the way, Grandmother’s letter said that the bangle I wear was Florine’s and the bangle you wear belonged to her. The bangles were once eighteenth-birthday gifts from their parents.

“In my story, at one-month-old, I was released from the Swiss hospital and taken back to Pittsburgh and into the bosom of the Rochford family with the correct birth certificate listing my mother and my father and the death certificate stating that his wife had died in childbirth. Our mother is buried on the grounds of Grand Aunt Florine’s chateau.

“Your situation was not as smooth. Of course, Grandmother Josephine immediately stepped up to become your mother. The records of your birth were fabricated somehow, and your birth certificate says you were born on the O’Sullivan cattle ranch in Bozeman, Montana. Robbie, you know the rest of the fake story. The lawyers say that whatever was done in Montana with the legal documentation thirty years ago was done perfectly. Grandmother maintained the false story to avoid questions from you as you grew up and squash legal entanglements so she could adopt you despite her age at the time.

“Sister, our father died of stomach cancer ten years ago. I will tell you all I can about him later. He never remarried and refused to tell me anything about my mother; I never saw a photo of her until last week. I was a direct heir of the family scion, so I inherited his shares in the Rochford Steel Company and his place on the board of directors. Grandfather Rochford began grooming me as his heir as soon as I could walk and talk. Now, I am chairperson of the board since our Grandfather Rochford died a few years ago and left me his shares in the company. I married one of our more distant Rochford cousins and have four-year-old twin boys, Zac and Mac.

“Robbie, I came here today after confronting my Rochford relatives with the truth. They were shocked and furious about the lie and wanted to meet you. However, a few of the older family members, including our paternal grandmother, cursed Grandmother Josephine for revealing the truth. Everything I believed about people who claimed to love me was wrong.

“My existence has rocked your world; I see it in your face and I feel it in my heart. Nothing will ever be the same for either of us.” Bobbie continued, “I want to know my twin sister and I want you to know my sons. I want to hear all about our amazing Grandmother Josephine and I cannot wait to meet our Grand Aunt Florine and see our mother’s grave. The lawyers told me that you believed you were alone in the world with no family. But now we have each other.”

We returned to the foot of the grave, and the workers were cementing the headstone in place as we watched. We held hands and let our gold bangles clank together as we swung our clasped hands back and forth like little girls sometimes do. We agreed to leave the next morning to see Grand Aunt Florine. We would join our lives slowly in time.

After thirty years, we were no longer strangers; we were sisters and finally together again.

THE END