Speaking of Summer. Kalisha Buckhanon
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with too much possibility. And, compassion fatigue set in often.
I put the sad pile of tragedy down and walked to the bathroom. I used bleaching toothpaste against wine and coffee stains. Then I boiled water for instant coffee as I ate two cherry Jell-O cups. The water bubbled to sizzling drops on the stove, breaking me out of imagining all the Jaylyn Stewarts out there waiting on women like Summer (and me) to waltz down any street on any night.
WHEN MAMA CAME TO LIVE with us on Thanksgiving 2013, we sisters put our fears of unsafety at bay. So many long weekends Summer and I alternated had added up: in plane fare and missed work. What a team we were, together. When I could not get away, Summer went alone to mitigate my guilt and I gladly did the same for her. Mama’s brother was never around to help. One of her sisters was dead. The sister left behind, my Aunt Mae, had her hands full. My in-town cousins were lazy. Other nieces and nephews were distant. The Illinois winters were aggressive. The house was too big. The money was too tight. The days were too numbered. The Trummel Lane home sale was worth its weight in health insurance deductibles.
So Mama and her Medicare finally came to New York. Her first visit was her last.
By the time we departed our Amtrak sleeper cars, too exhausted for a restaurant dinner to mark the occasion, Mama was answering to her oldest daughter, far above Summer and me. Her name was Virginia Slims. But only we were there to manage the combination stomach and lung cancer their lifelong bond brought. By Christmas, it came out of her every few hours as a light green stream. Penny, her hospice helper, was a modern nun. Penny gathered the pan for us to measure the output. Sometimes Summer and I helped Penny hold the measuring stick. Always, we expected the sturdier and better-funded New York City doctors to phone, their lab results a reversal of fortune.
That call never came. But Chase phoned Summer, all of us, often. His ticket to live decently in New York was SWAG Marketing: his college buddy’s multicultural branding firm. He was the token Golden Negro there. So his excuse to bail on our ordeal many nights was convenient, but true. We all struggled to manage. Summer was interrupted in painting and making things, stuck home rather than at street festivals and tiny gallery openings. She lost money on postcards and print-on-demand T-shirts and totes she sold in online stores. I myself was delayed from heading back to graduate school. Or coding bootcamp, if only I could save up enough money for it. The value of my bachelor’s had expired and I had to learn how to use a different language if I was going to make it in the world.
It was a nice time, more time than I had spent with Mama since I was a child.
IT WILL SOON BE SPRING.
Over three months past Summer’s disappearance now . . .
An investigation is “ongoing.”
No arrests have been made.
With no body, my sister’s disappearance could not be ruled a homicide and thus graduated on to the manpower and attention we deserved, as we held no fame or prominence or money to command it otherwise.
So it is ruled something else: Women of color don’t matter in America unless we are rich or famous.
Summer’s detective is “doing all I can.”
The mailbox broke my heart every day. Nothing ever came from Summer. I feared the ink-smudged cards from names, addresses, and signatures across my networks instead. They had hearts scribbled by the names or fancy insignias pasted on back of the envelopes’ seals, making me have to do more work to open them. Address labels showed off the senders’ donations to the Easterseals, Sierra Club, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. But I did not have to go out or move too much for the most wretched automatic habit of all: checking voicemail. Those who were privy to my cell phone number got a clue and finally kept their distance. They adapted to the reality—efforts to dial Autumn Spencer got them nowhere. A few left messages on the home phone, whose number I gave only to the most tolerable relatives and high-paying clients. Their spoken notes ranged from perfunctory to pathetically un-hilarious to disciplinarian, to plain shocked and confused . . .
“Hey. This is your cousin Sandy. I’m just giving you a call to see how you are. We put some fresh flowers on Mama’s headstone just the other day. Love you!”
“Hey, baby. This your Auntie Mae. I need to know what’s going on.”
“Autumn . . . Oh my goodness. I ran into Jonathan Parks at the NAJMBAX conference in Houston about a week or two ago. And, well, we weren’t at all gossiping, but your name came up, since it’s been way too long since we’ve gotten together for drinks or anything like that and . . . Well, I won’t repeat it here. Just gimme a call, girlie.”
“Autumn, this is the second time I’ve left you a message this week. I know all that’s going on, but I can’t believe you won’t call me back. Call me back. Please.”
The most promising were the upbeat ones reeking of avoidance.
“Sooo . . . I was Uptown the other day. Just wanted to go to that one great vegan spot over there by your place, to stock up on their version of crab cakes and gluten-free muffins. My son loves those! Anyway, I wound up on 1-2-5 spending all my money on clothes for the new baby. My goodness, when that bill hits. Well, anyway, enough about me. I hope you’re well. Just thinking about you.”
I figured this must be my college buddy Cathy. Messages like these were left by the people most likely to succeed a relational breach preceded by tragedy, extreme life change, or estrangement for a prolonged time. Such largely anecdotal communications and nonjudgmental, non-assignment-oriented messages revealed characters who yearn for connection with the individuals they seek, but who also display comfort with rejection or relational impossibility until the offending and triggering separator dissolves. Such successful overcomers of life’s relational ebbs and flows are characterized by the rich variety of their friendships, social activities, spiritual practices, and superior physical health levels. Such personalities are most likely to forgive a self-separated or alienating individual.
Or so it said in a book I happened upon at the Strand, when I went searching for a classic I had yet to read. Instead I bought a manual about bouncing back from grief.
“Autumn, it’s Noel Montgomery returning your call. I’ll be away from the desk all afternoon, but you can contact me in the morning.”
Now this was a message I could use.
He was brief, unrevealing, and undetailed. He didn’t just check off the task to return my call. He told me where he would be, and when I should call him next. He had to have something new to tell me. Messages stacked up so high I did not know where he belonged in the queue. Should I have called him yesterday or today? Or should I call him tomorrow? Was I prepared for whatever he had to tell me?
I couldn’t figure out if an accident or a murder was more palatable than an unsolvable disappearance. The first one was consolation that something was fated or meant to be, no matter what. It was more proper to bring up in normal conversation, a better interlude to reminisce about the good times, a normal event to give sympathy to. The second option would silence me for life. Nobody would want to hear it. This fact of my sister’s life would always have the pall of controversy and violence, a repellant to any mind outside of a movie. But an unsolvable disappearance was unspeakable. All loved ones are blamed and viewed as apathetic assholes. I could never cry enough tears to convince anybody I really cared for her, advocated for her safety, and didn’t let her slip away.
I dialed Montgomery’s direct line. He did not answer. I hung up, not knowing what to say or how I would wait to call him again.
My “no wine before dark” rule lapsed into just a little wine before noon. The tinkling downpour into a glass ignited me like caffeine. I returned to bed, the only place I sensed a semblance of naïveté to staple to my soul. I froze under Summer’s duvet, feeling her beside me. I manipulated the remote to put Virginia Rodrigues on surround sound, so at least I would not understand the Afro-samba beyond its joyous drums and up-tempo. I settled in to read the arrest affidavit and search warrants made public from Jaylyn Stewart’s case today.
Most women have imagined