perfect as you left her.” I prayed that the whole of the Carter family would descend upon that little house on Peach Street bearing gifts, money, food, so much food I would have forgotten ever being hungry. And I’d see me in them, my face in theirs, my color on their skin.
I knocked so softly it was as if I didn’t want the person inside to hear. I listened for movement on the other side, just in case the door never opened. I’d never met Uncle Benny before, so he couldn’t have known who I was by looking through the peephole, but I believed he could recognize my father, Carl, in me. There was part of me that celebrated and feared that.
Momma had described nights of merriment between Uncle Benny and my father. They sang, played cards, told jokes late into the night. Later, as if the room and all of its occupants had been turned inside out, the merriment would vanish. Curses would be flung like horseshoes clanging around a pole. Fists would be thrown for insignificant reasons. It didn’t take much for the laughter and hugging to turn to screams and heads clamped in headlocks so restrictive they put everyone in the room to sleep. Momma said most arguments ended with either Uncle Benny or my daddy sprawled on the floor, nursing a busted lip or a bruised head. I prayed Uncle Benny wouldn’t recognize that part of my father in me.
I knocked again, a little harder the second time. Whichever Carl he saw, I had to see him. I heard a shuffle on the other side of the door, but no lock turned. “Who is that?” His voice cut through the wooden slab. I cleared my throat and plastered a smile across my face, in case he could see me through the peephole.
I spoke directly into it as if it were a microphone. “I’m Laurie, Carl and Lois Carter’s daughter. Their eldest girl.” There was silence on the other side of the door. I wondered how much of me could he see through that tiny hole. The lock turned. The door squeaked open. There stood a short man, with salt-and-pepper hair, and skin darker than Momma and all of my brothers and sister combined.
I leaned forward, ready to apologize for having the wrong house and the wrong person for so long.
“So, you Carl’s girl,” he said.
I fought to stand still as I stared into his yellowed eyes, swimming in cataracts. He looked nothing like the father in my mind, so much shorter, darker, and his hair held no hints of the red that streaked through my ends.
“I am Carl’s,” I replied.
“Girl,” he responded abruptly. “I ain’t seen your daddy.” My face burned with his gruffness. I hadn’t asked any questions and he’d already decided he had no answers. Still, I prodded. Maybe my father’s location would slip past his nonanswers.
“Have you talked to him lately?” I asked.
“No, I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He’s probably up to no good if he’s doing anything.” He stepped aside and waved me into the foyer with the flick of his hand.
The house smelled like hickory-smoked sausages mixed with the scent of decaying pine. I stood in the hallway, eyeing the rabbit ears of the floor model, wrapped in balls of aluminum foil. The carpet, like the lawn, was a sea of green, the color and consistency of a dirt-covered tennis ball. The walls where white, but under the haze of the room they looked like a roaring gray sky. I could only see two chairs, a sofa, and a lone armchair sitting in the middle of the room like a person with elbows pressed into knees, waiting for something to happen.
I had seen enough to know Uncle Benny wasn’t a man of money. In fact, I wondered if my family was better off than he was.
“Are you Carl’s uncle, my Uncle Benny?” I asked.
“Yep, but like I said, I don’t know where your daddy is.”
“Momma said you probably didn’t know where my daddy was, but that you could get me in touch with my grandma. I just want to meet her.”
He paused, peering at me through the sides of his eyes.
“How is your momma doing?” his voice softened.
“She’s good. She told me to see you because she wanted to see my grandma, to see how she was doing.” I could tell by the way he reversed to that lone chair that he had cared about Momma. He could shut me out, but Momma was already in.
I pried again. “Have you talked to my grandma lately?”
“Nah, I haven’t talked to her in a minute. She and your granddaddy up in Suffolk.” I turned my head toward the door, trying to hide my smile. I had another granddaddy. He would be a new person, a new life for me to imagine.
“Can I get their number?” I asked as he leaned back in his chair.
“Well, I think I have it somewhere in here.” He brought his hand up to his chin and tapped. Uncle Benny rose from the chair, like a mechanical hand was pressing him forward. I remained still, hands clasped in front of me, careful not to move as he made his way to a small dresser. He rummaged through drawers as if the number were hidden under years of mail. His hand surfaced holding a pen and piece of paper adorned in grayed wrinkles. He scribbled ten numbers, no name, no address, just numbers. With his crooked, gnarled fingers, he slid the paper toward me.
I wanted to hug him, to tell him I’d do the right thing and he wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore, but he didn’t look like he was up for hugging. I hadn’t said much as I’d stood in his home and he’d given no indication he wanted me to say more. I bounced home, anxious to dial those ten numbers.
That first day, after the first dialing, that number was a dead end. The phone hiccupped a busy signal from the time I put my quarter into the phone booth to late at night, when Momma said it wasn’t safe for me to go outside anymore.
I visited Uncle Benny several times after that. Each visit he stood guard over his foyer until he’d written ten new numbers. Each time, I either got a lady on the other end, singing, “This number has been disconnected,” or her twin chiming, “This number is not in service.”
There were those times the phone just rang and rang and rang or the busy signal’s broken chirp kept pace with my tears. Those were good days because there was the possibility someone would pick up the phone after I let it ring for the one-hundredth time, and there was the chance the busy signal would be silenced once they put the phone back on the receiver. As long as Uncle Benny lived on Peach Street, as long as there were ten numbers he could write, there was hope I could find the man that filled my imagination with the life we were supposed to be living.
One day Uncle Benny’s ten numbers silenced the incessant ringing in my mind. The voice of a girl, nasal, twisted in a southern drawl, breathed, “Hello.” I almost dropped the phone, almost ran from the booth when the ringing was replaced by a live person on the other end. I met my cousin, Tiffany, daughter of my uncle, Frank, Jr., who introduced me to my grandfather, Frank, Sr., whose laugh reached through the phone and poked a dimple into my cheek. He introduced me to my grandma, Ms. Mary, and she whispered, “Laurie? Carl’s girl?” so quietly I thought she didn’t mean for me to hear.
We became a family, in the span of minutes, me on one side of the phone, them on the other. I didn’t even ask where Carl was. If I got where they were, I was sure I’d find him.
They lived in Ivor, right outside of Suffolk, the same house my daddy was born in. Momma had been there many times, but she had never taken me there. I’d never thought to ask where my daddy had lived when she met him. The obvious can easily be overlooked when one’s search becomes blinding.
Momma agreed to take
