Bram holds me close. “He can’t reveal the surprise, right? Then I won’t be surprised.”
“Maud, I-I’m sorry,” I stammer. “But I’m scared. For us. But mostly, for you. I don’t want you making a target out of yourself. I—I want you here. With us. Safe.”
“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Maud says sadly. “Just go.”
“Maud, let me discuss it with Oliver,” Bram says firmly. “Just give us some time.”
I turn to Lily desperately. “Lily, you must see my point.”
Lily nods. “Go on your trip, Oliver. You already asked me for permission. Come back tomorrow. It will be a new day.”
“But that’s exactly what I’m worried about,” I argue. “I don’t want a new day. I want yesterday back. When we were all happy. Nothing has happened. Yet.”
Maud throws her hands up into the air. “And that is exactly the problem.Nothingsaid. Ever. It’s time we said it.”
“Lily, she’s your responsibility,” I implore. “Tell her it’s not safe for her to be out protesting. They’ll arrest her. Everything will change.”
Lily sighs. Closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she’s a different Lily. The warmth of her sunshine has been replacedby a cold edge. She speaks with controlled precision, unwilling to let herself break. “Children, I suppose it’s time I told you a piece of my boo-hoo backstory.” A brief pause, a caesura in the concerto that is Lily Summers. “I moved to London when I was twelve to live with my Uncle Alton.” I can see she’s haunting the past, as Mother used to say. She speaks to us, but her spirit time travels. “Uncle Alton was...” She laughs. “He was a tornado. He drank too much. Danced too hard. Loved too many. Worked just as hard as he played. For me. So he could buy me the sewing machine I begged for. If he ever managed to sleep with a posh girl, he’d steal her scarves and bring them home so I could make something out of them. Never told me to go into the streets like the other—”
She stops herself. She’s journeyed back to a time we’ve never talked about. A time before she had introduced the world to the Lily we know and love.
“He loved music. The music that reminded him of home. And the music that let him dream of America. Ray Charles. Chuck Berry. Little Richard. But he never judged me if I cried in my room listening to Joan Baez. I would lie in bed at night, repeating her song ‘Girl of Constant Sorrow,’ until he came home from whatever trouble he was causing and tucked me in bed with a prayer. The other kids said I wasn’t Black enough, which was code for not being man enough. Uncle Alton never cared. He took care of me. Just like he promised my parents he would.”
Another silence. Longer. Not a caesura. A fermata. A full stop as Lily prepares for the next movement.
“When I go to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on Sundays, I’m really going to visit him in prison.”
“Wait, what?” Maud asks softly. “Lily... I’m...”
“I do go to meetings on other days. But on Sundays, I give him back the love and the gifts and the devotion he gave me.”
“But... why was he arrested?” Bram asks.
“Why?” she asks. “Fornothing. Three of them were arrested fleeing a house party. The police said the party was illegal. It was. But what were they supposed to do when pubs wouldn’t serve them? They said Uncle Alton was selling drugs. He wasn’t. They piled one accusation after another on him. He couldn’t afford no fancy barrister. The first time I visited him after he was put away for life—”
“Forlife?” Maud echoes.
I look around at the grown-ups. Azalea, Poppy, Blossom, Archie. They all look unsurprised. They know all this already.
Maud paces across the sliver of free floor space in the kitchen. “How can you just accept that he’s in some cell— How can you— How can you live without talking about him all the time—”
Lily puts her hands on Maud’s shoulders, stopping her from nervously wandering the area. “I don’t tell you about it because...”
She doesn’t finish so I say it for her. “Because it’s too painful,” I whisper. I’m thinking of Mother now. Of how warm and wonderful she was. Of how rarely I bring her up to my new friends and family. “Because anything you might say would diminish the magnitude of what he means to you.”
Lily’s gaze freezes on me. I know she’s wondering who I’m talking about. “Exactly,” she says. Her eyes burn with contemplation. Like speaking about this aloud has helped her see it differently. “I do want to protect you children from the horrors of the world. But maybe, well, maybe I also want to protect myself from living in that sadness and anger. If we live in sadness and anger, they’ve won.”
Maud looks up at her. “So you’re saying we shouldn’t go out into the streets? Shouldn’t fight?”
“No, child, not at all. Protest isn’t giving in to sadness and anger. It’s rising up as a community. It’s connection and hope. It’s exactly what we must do. But maybe... The truth is I don’t like thinking of myself as a victim. That’s why I don’t talk about the things that hurt me most. Why I don’t like boo-hoo backstories.”
Hearing Lily open up like this, allowing her powerful facade to melt into vulnerability, shifts the energy in the room. It fills me with a longing for the person who loved me into being. The woman I’ll never see again, no matter how long I’ll live. Time only marches forward. I wish it could also bring me back. Just one more sonata played by her side. Just one more taste of her cookies.
Lily hoists herself up onto the kitchen counter. Crosses her legs. “I want to tell you what he said to me that first time I visited him.” Lily rubs her lips against each other, then she speaks in a different voice. Her uncle’s voice. “If dem arrest me fi stealing fabric from posh girls fi you. Well, mi would hold mi head up high. Serve mi time proud. But dem yah charges is lies. I’m... living a lie now. Look at me. You know wah dat means? Means you haff tah live true enough fi both of us, child.”
“Live true enough for both of us,” Maud repeats, almost to herself. Then she sighs out, “Fuck me.”
Lily wipes a tear from her cheek. She’s not done. “I don’t like wallowing. And I didn’t want to tell you kids about Alton because I want you to carry hope with you always. Not sadness. Not regret. Not the realization that this world is full of people like him, sentenced for crimes they didn’t commit.” Lily turns to Maud. “I’m telling you this now because you need to understand that what happened to him can happen to you. If I’m protective of you, it’sbecause I’m scared of losing someone else to a jail cell. But I won’t stop you from rising up either. In fact, I’ll join you. Because that’s living true, isn’t it?”
