Apocryphal Family Tree: The Rough Draft

Road Trip!

Either Bay or Sep is going to accuse me of this being a ruse. But it's 100% not a ruse. I really did get fired from my job in California. I really didn't want to drive from California to Massachusetts alone. But also while we're in Charleston, why not visit our estranged maternal family on the homestead? Curiosity may have killed the cat, but satisfaction brought them back.
We left on a Friday night. Sep, Bay, and I flew to CA. Sep and Bay hadn't been since they were kids, so the plan was to stay a couple days with some of Dad's family before heading back east in Bonnie the trusty Buick Skylark. Then we went to Las Vegas, family friends from church live there, and let us stay for a couple of nights. I was a terrible guest, looking back on it, but at the time I was so caught up in being wounded I forgot that I could also wound others with my flailing.
On our way to Flagstaff, AZ, we stopped at Oatman, AZ. Flagstaff was my favorite stop. Possibly because an older gentleman with a lady companion told me I looked gorgeous standing in the Wupatki ruins with my long dark wavy hair blowing against my face and I asked to take my picture. I should have gotten his email. I think the reason I loved Flagstaff so much is because I'd never met Native American ghosts and now I've met a bunch. We stayed in a hostel in Flagstaff.
Next stop was Santa Fe, NM. Again we stayed for two nights with family friends from church. Trust the Saints to have your back, even if you don't trust in saints. Or any deity for that matter. We went to church with them. Only person in our party that was actually interested was Bay.
Next stop was Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX. We have some kin of our mom's on the paternal side out here, but for some reason we've never connected with them either. Maybe Mom just wanted to break from everything that could remotely be called her mother's, any place where someone might be keep tabs. I don't know. Maybe the family just isn't that close. But I doubt it. The Black side of Dad's family would have family reunions on purpose. The white side had accidental family reunions at weddings, christenings, and funerals.
I didn't press the issue about maybe checking in with the Arnwines because that would one hundred percent ruin the big surprise I had planned for Charleston. Dropping the Little One off at college and visiting our dear old Grandmama Washington and the rest of our estranged family.
Sep and Bay don't talk about it at all anymore, but I still always wondering. Everything was fine until all of a sudden it wasn't and we moved so quickly. There was another eldest girl, about my age, I remember that much. Everyone called her Nor, I think. When everyone in your extended family names their first girl some version of Eleanor, things get weird in the nickname department. Lenny seems like the only thing I kept from that time.
I didn't tell them because our fights get nasty. Something about knowing all their shit and all their buttons and them knowing all your shit and all your buttons can be great and also can lead to the worst fights where things get said and punches maybe get thrown. Although it's been years since we've physically fought each other while angry. Play fighting and love taps are something else, you know?
This also meant that my overthinking mildly anxious older brother had considerably less time to think about it and have his confidence come undone with a fit of too much thought. When we all arrived in the doorstep of Washington Manor, I wanted us all to be there as our best selves. And more importantly I wanted us all to be there.
It was Sep and Bay. They both accused me of stacking the deck. But at the point I'd proposed it, we were all so close that it seemed like everyone was super okay with the idea. Not jazzed, not enthusiastic but will ing to at least see this through to the end.
Life has been good to the Washingstons. They were able to buy a plantation they'd traced their roots back to and slowly had set about buying up as much of the property around it as possible. They made affordable housing but didn't call it affordable housing. It was just housing, the way it should be. Rent was helping out around the homestead: that could mean childcare, working on the farm, working on the estate, or working as part of the museum staff. One of the reasons I wanted to come back home: I wanted to work in a museum. I'd studied African Diaspora history in college and was raring to make my mark on the larger, museum world and working at the Washington Manor was a great way to start again. They wouldn't care that I'd been fired from my last job, which had been my internship. They also wouldn't do me like my last job where I didn't make enough money to cover my bills, no health insurance, and the paid the white dude that preceded me with half the work $5000 more. So I might not drink most of my dinners and be depressed at my inability to make friends outside of work and also at work because there was no one I was regularly exposed to at work that was my speed and everyone outside of work was out of reach because hanging out with them meant spending money I knew I didn't have. And you can only do so much of that before the anxiety of being broke and homeless makes you stay inside.
I couldn't imagine what happened and how I was at the core of the rift between Mom and her mom, Mama Washington. As I drove up, I went through the various scenarios in my head again about how this could play out. I figured Sep was probably doing the same thing, so I started to verbalize my thoughts. We are surprisingly good and ratcheting up each other's anxiety. Bay doesn't get anxious but she can't keep a secret to save her life, so even if it wouldn't have led to bad fighting, she would have blabbed to Sep and the jig would have been up and she would have had to listen to this for days worth of miles.
———
"How come you've never checked in on the Charleston family?" I asked Bay.
We're about forty five minutes out from the Sentinel and I've clearly timed this.
"You've been waiting ten days to ask me this, haven't you?" She asks.
"Like a month. When we nailed down the plan. I've been waiting, patiently. To ask you this again."
"Lenny, you know why. We've gone over this. They rejected us. Mama Washington is a big meanie."
"Wow. Big meanie. Them's fighting words," Sep says.
Bay was so little when our family parted ways with the larger family. We were all so little. Sep was 7, I was 5, and Bay was 2. Mom and Mama Washington had words about me. I didn't know this until I was a teenager. Mom and Dad had always been very vague about what caused the rift. One day Sep and I bickering like teenagers do and I touched on a sore spot, though I now don't remember at all what I'd said to upset him. I say that because Sep pulled this doozy outta his back pocket like he'd been waiting for the right time to use it. "Well, at least I'm not the reason mom is fighting with her mom."
I ran to Mom and told her what Sep said and to her credit or fault, she didn't deny it. Her elaboration was simple and lacking to teenage me: "We disagreed about you seeing ghosts."
That was a topic we did not discuss, so it was now my turn to be shocked speechless. Mom forbade me to mention it right before we moved. I thought it was because she didn't believe me, but this new information made me reevaluate that thought. I never stopped seeing the ghosts and moving from South Carolina to Massachusetts didn't change the frequency, just what the ghosts look like. Fewer ghosts that look like me, more ghosts that look like my white family.
"All these years and you haven't even attempted to track them down?" I ask. I know the answer, but I need her to set me up for an out of the park barb.
"Why? What good will come of poking at old wounds?" Bay says.
I don't look at her when I say it but I'm talking to her and I don't lower my voice, "Gonna be a great soldier."
"You're right, I am." Bay says, her voice a mixture of contempt and sadness, mostly contempt though.
Sep hold his hands between us, as if to hold us off of one another. I'm driving, Bay's riding shotgun, and he's sitting in the back.
"Ah, you lenhead!" Bay says, "that's why you wanted to drive."
Side note: lenhead is an insult Bay made up when age was 6 because she was angry that I got to be an Eleanor. It means whatever she wants it to mean in the moment. This time it's probably close to duplicitous bitch.
"What? Why?" Sep says.
"It'll be fun! Meet the family and such." I say, "But I won't force either of you to come. But I'm going to see Mama Washington."
The car is quiet as we continue. The address in the map app is still Bay's dorm. That's where we are headed and where I'll drop off whoever isn't interested.
"That's a dirty trick." Bay says, "but I'll go."
Sep smiles and nods, "Sure, why not?"
"Please put Washington Manor into the map app, that pulls it up." I say with a smile.
"Of course, Miss One Thousand and One Plans." Bay says.