Table of Contents
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Part I: Macon, Georgia
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part II: He Is Born
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part III: Harlem
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Part IV: Coming to America
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Part V: The World's Fair
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Part VI: The Future Has a Past
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Part VII: Montmartre
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Part VIII: The Bitch of Buchenwald
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Part IX: Home
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Part X: The Summer of Love
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Part XI: A Murder in Brooklyn
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Part XII: Emancipation Day
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Abbreviated List of Historical Characters
Ancestral Cast of Characters
Gratitude
E-Book Extras
Excerpt: Gathering of Waters
Also by Bernice L. McFadden
About Bernice L. McFadden
Copyright & Credits
About Akashic Books
For the Ancestors
I am the man, I suffered, I was there.
—Walt Whitman
PART I
Macon, Georgia
Chapter 1
No matter what you may have heard about Macon, Georgia—the majestic magnolias, gracious antebellum homes, the bright stars it produced that went on to dazzle the world—if you were Emma Robinson, bubbling with teenage angst and lucid dreaming about silver-winged sparrows gliding over a perfumed ocean, well then, Macon felt less like the promised land and more like a noose.
Emma, the lone girl, the last child behind three brothers, was born on June 19. Juneteenth—one of the most revered days on the Negro calendar. Triply blessed with a straight nose, milky-brown complexion, and soft hair that would never have to endure the smoldering teeth of a hot comb.
Emma Robinson lived with her family in a mint-green and white L-shaped Victorian cottage located in the highfalutin colored section of Macon known as Pleasant Hill—a district peopled with doctors, lawyers, ministers, and teachers. Not a maid or ditch digger amongst them.
In her home, she had many pets: a brown mutt called Peter, a calico named Samantha, and Adam and Eve, a pair of lovebirds that lived in a cage so ornate, it resembled a crown.
The Robinson family traveled the city in a shiny black buggy, pulled by not one but two horses.
Emma should have been christened Riley because that’s whose life she was living. Not only that, she was a natural-born pianist who took to the classics as easily as flame to paper. Emma could listen to a piece of music once and replicate it perfectly. She was so skilled that at the age of seven her minister father installed her as the lead organist in his church.
Reverend Tenant M. Robinson was a dark-skinned, rotund man whose spirited sermons at the Cotton Way Baptist Church attracted a large and dedicated following. On Sunday mornings, those parishioners who did not have the good sense to arrive early enough to claim a seat found themselves standing in the vestibule or shoulder to shoulder against a wall.
Emma’s mother, Louisa Robinson, was a beautiful, soft-spoken woman who had come to God late in life, but now walked in his light with grace and humility.
On the outside, Emma didn’t seem to want for anything, but let’s be clear—she was starving on the inside. Not the coal-burning-belly type of hunger of the destitute, but the agonizing longing of a free spirit, caged.
Emma’s best friend was Lucille Nelson, who’d been singing in the church choir for as long as Emma had been playing the organ. Their renditions of “Steal Away to Jesus,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Go Down Moses” rattled the wood-slated church and brought the congregation to their feet.
While they loved singing about the Lord, whenever the girls could escape their parents’ watchful eyes, they headed down to the juke joint on Ocmulgee River. There, hidden in the tall grass, they spied on those shaking, shimmying sinners who raised glasses of gut liquor to the very music Emma’s father vehemently railed against.
“The blues promotes the devil’s glee,” he growled from the pulpit, “encouraging infidelity and lawlessness!”
Sometimes, when Lucille was washing dishes and passing them off to her mother Minnie to dry, those sinful songs found there way onto her tongue.
Minnie would cock her head and ask, “Where’d you hear that from?”
And Lucille would just laugh, grab Minnie’s soapy hands, and dance her around the kitchen.
Chapter 2
In 1915, when the girls were still just teenagers, Lucille went out for and won a bit part in a local musical. On opening night, she walked onto the stage of the Douglass Theatre, barely whispered her one line—“I see a rainbow”—and then belted out a song that brought the house down.
Leonard Harper, the founder of the Leonard Harper Minstrel Stock Company, happened to be there that night. By the time Lucille joined the other actors onstage for a final bow, Harper had already located her parents. When the curtain fell, the ink on the contract he had them sign was still damp.
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p; Weeks later, Harper whisked Lucille off on a seven-month tour of the American South. When she returned home to Macon, the old year was dead, and Lucille was a brand-new woman.
When Emma heard that Lucille was back in town, she immediately rushed over to see her, sweeping into the parlor like a gale. But Emma lost all her bluster when her eyes collided with Lucille’s rouged cheeks, shiny marcelled hair, and painted lips.
“Lu-Lucille?”
“Hey, Em.” Lucille strolled toward her with newly unshackled hips swaying like the screen door of a whorehouse.
“Lucille?” Emma muttered again as she took a cautious backward step.
Lucille wrapped her arms around Emma’s shoulders, smothering her in cinnamon-and-rose-scented perfume. “I missed you so much.”
“Me . . . me too,” Emma stammered in response, as she broke the embrace. “You look different.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Lucille shrugged. “How you been?”
Emma couldn’t stop staring. “Okay.”
“That’s good.” Lucille sauntered over to the piano, sat down, and skipped her fingers over the black and white keys. “You still go down to the river on Saturday afternoons?”
“Nah. They closed that juke joint down.”
Lucille’s eyebrows arched. “Was that your daddy’s doing?”
Now it was Emma’s turn to shrug her shoulders.
“Oh, that’s awful,” Lucille huffed. “That place was the one good thing about this town.”
The statement stabbed at Emma’s heart. They were best friends so shouldn’t she be the one good thing about this town?
Lucille scratched her cheek. “So you just gonna stand there gawking at me?”
“Oh, please,” Emma smirked, “like you something to look at.” She plopped down onto the bench beside Lucille. With her ponytail and plain cotton frock, Emma felt dull and dreary next to the shiny new Lucille. “I swear,” she started out of nowhere, “if I have to listen to one more rag, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Lucille chuckled. “Ragtime ain’t so bad.”
“It is when that’s all there is.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Emma’s fingers joined Lucille’s, and together they tapped out a tune.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Emma said coolly. “Tell me all about it.”
Lucille happily shared about the hypnotic roll of the bus, the mystery of falling asleep under a moon in one town and waking to the sun in another, and the thrill of standing before an audience of strangers shouting her name, begging her to sing just one more song.
“Now,” she concluded with a blushing smile, “he say he wanna give me all the time of day and night.”
Emma nearly choked on the bile of jealousy rising in her throat.
Chapter 3
In 1916, Sam Elliott arrived in Macon on the heels of Lucille’s triumphant return. Born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky; the color of a newly minted penny; lean and easy on the eyes with a mouthful of strong white teeth that never failed to startle a smile out of women and even some men—Sam was a carpenter by trade, quiet and inconspicuous. He could be in a room filled with people, and the next day, not one person could recall him having been there, which was why it took a minute before Emma even noticed him.
The first time Sam saw Emma Robinson he was sitting in the barbershop with his back to the glass-pane window, staring at his reflection in the wall of mirrors, trying to decide whether or not to get his shoes shined before the barber called him to the chair. Sam lowered his eyes, slipped his hand into the pocket of his coat, and thoughtfully fingered the loose coins inside.
When he looked up again, Emma’s reflection appeared in the mirror, sheathed in yellow sunlight, glowing like an apparition.
“Pssst,” Sam hissed at the barber.
“Yeah, boss?”
He tilted his chin at the reflection. “You see that girl?”
The barber’s head swiveled from the mirror to the window and then back to Sam. “Yeah, I see her,” he replied, and then added with a chuckle and a wink: “Wouldn’t mind seeing more of her though.”
Sam grimaced at the barber’s off-color remark.
“You know that’s the reverend’s daughter, don’t you?”
“Is it?” Sam replied.
“Yep. So you ain’t got a chance in hell.”
* * *
Sam thought about Emma for the rest of that Thursday, but by Friday afternoon his mind had moved on to more immediate concerns, like work and food and rent.
But just as quickly as Emma was crowded out of Sam’s memory, she was thrust back in when she passed him in the street on Saturday morning and then again the following Tuesday. The encounters continued with increased frequency until Sam became convinced that God was trying to tell him something, which was funny in and of itself because Sam wasn’t quite sure if he even believed in the Almighty.
That aside, Sam had become undeniably smitten with the pretty Emma Robinson and decided that he’d better develop a personal relationship with God if he wanted to get acquainted with her. So the following Sunday, Sam walked into the Cotton Way Baptist Church smack in the middle of Reverend Robinson’s fiery sermon.
An usher planted herself squarely in Sam’s path and aimed her white-gloved index finger at a space along the wall.
“I see a free seat up front,” Sam whispered.
The grim-faced usher shook her head and again pointed at the wall.
Sam didn’t budge. He and the old woman glared at one another until Sam feigned submission. When the usher dropped her guard, he faked left and then right, swiftly maneuvered around the woman, and trotted noisily up the center aisle. He had to climb over a mother and her three small children to get to the vacant seat. In the process, his heel came down on the woman’s big toe and she cried out, “Lawd, Jesus!”
Sam apologized profusely, but the woman’s godliness had sailed out the window. She swatted his arm with her fan and called him a fool under her breath.
When the service was over, the hoodwinked usher cornered Sam in the pew and gave him a good tongue-lashing. By the time she was done, the reverend and his family were standing on the church steps shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the parishioners.
Sam thought of joining the line of congregants, but decided against it. The time didn’t seem quite right, and besides, the barber’s discouraging words had rattled his confidence. Sam would have to repair it before he moved forward.
That night, unable to sleep, Sam went down to the Ocmulgee. The river had teeth, so he hung back amongst the saplings, a safe enough distance between him and the alligators trolling the riverbanks for food. Overhead, a family of bats swooped and screeched in the milky glow of the quarter moon; the blanket of leaves on the ground crackled with foraging insects and snakes.
He stood for hours pondering the murky waters. In time, his mother’s words echoed in his mind: Son, if you take your problems to the water, she will solve them for you.
His mother had never told a lie. Within minutes, Sam felt able.
Chapter 4
The following Sunday, Sam marched confidently into the church and took a seat in the pew directly behind Emma’s mother and brothers. When the reverend directed the congregation to greet their church family, Louisa’s eyebrows climbed at Sam’s strong grip and too-wide grin.
After service, he went to stand beneath a flourishing hickory tree as Emma and her parents said their Sunday farewells.
When Emma started down the church steps, leaving her family behind, he straightened his back and walked boldly toward her.
“Good morning to you, Miss Emma.”
Emma blushed. “And to y
ou, Mr. . . . um.”
“Sam. Sam Elliott.” He extended his hand.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Elliott.”
“Likewise,” Sam said. “Have a blessed day.” And with that, he turned and abruptly walked off, leaving Emma frowning.
“Now that was strange,” she mumbled to herself.
* * *
Strange, but deliberate.
Sam knew he couldn’t come at Emma full-on. He had to plant a seed and wait for it to sprout.
The following Sunday, when service was over, Sam joined the line of congregants. When he reached Emma, he barely glanced at her as he took her hand into his, wished her a blessed day, and then fled. Sam did this for three consecutive weeks. The fourth week, he didn’t attend church service at all.
By Tuesday, word reached him that the reverend’s daughter was asking around town about him.
“Yeah, what she asking?”
“Who your people. Where you live. What you do.”
“Is that right?”
On the fifth Sunday, Sam arrived at the church early enough to snag a seat in the front pew. When Emma looked up from the organ keys and spotted his smiling face, she became all thumbs. Flustered, she stumbled clumsily through the last scale of “All God’s Chillun Got Wings,” garnering annoyed glances from Lucille and other members of the choir.
After service, Emma took her place in the receiving line alongside her mother, distractedly greeting parishioners as she searched for Sam’s brown face.
But that Sunday, Sam wasn’t in the line. He was across the street, secretly watching her.
Afterward, he trailed Emma and Lucille to Schlesinger’s Confectionary, a place popular with the young after-church crowd. When Emma and Lucille exited the store, each holding a waffle cone piled high with vanilla ice cream, Sam finally made himself known by sidling up alongside the pair and offering a sunny, “Good day, ladies.”
Emma’s face brightened. “Good day to you too,” she called back to him as he passed.
“He the one?” Lucille asked.
Emma’s face warmed. “Yes!”
Chapter 5
Emma couldn’t be seen keeping time with a man who wasn’t her father or one of her three brothers. It wasn’t proper behavior for a Christian girl, especially the daughter of a minister.
Since Lucille’s character had already been sullied—what with the low-down music she sang and the paint she wore on her face—she had nothing to lose and so volunteered to play decoy for Sam and Emma.