Confusion filled her eyes. She looked at me intently for several minutes, and asked, “What do you know?”
“Everything... almost.” I tugged on my lower lip with my teeth.
Probing, questioning, her eyes held mine for several seconds before surrender etched itself into the years of lines creasing her face.
With her head lowered slightly, she continued to play nervously with her glasses while her eyes darted around the room.
“You should have left it alone, child. You should have left it alone.”
Bringing my fist down on the table, I cried, “No, Gram. No more lies.”
The thud of my hand brought her to an erect position, as she looked to me with wide eyes.
“Gram, I’m sorry.” Softening my tone, I said, “I need to know the truth, can’t you see? I can’t move forward until I know what’s behind me.”
I whirled around when I heard Gramp say, “Cybil, would you leave us alone?”
In a perfunctory fashion, Gram headed toward the living room, only slowing long enough to squeeze Gramp’s arm. He waited until he heard the bedroom door close behind her before he turned his attention toward me.
“If we’re going to do this, Sugar, we’re going to begin at the beginning so get yourself comfortable and plan on staying awhile.”
I watched as he poured us each a glass of iced tea, setting them on the table. Taking a seat across from me, he swiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shook his head.
“I should have told you. I know that now.”
My eyes were stinging from tears that would undoubtedly fall once he began to tell me what he’d kept from me all these years.
“I felt so many emotions I can’t even put into words. I found myself angry with you, afraid of you... why didn’t you tell me the truth instead of letting me think such horrible things about you for so long? Why was it so important to keep it hidden?”
He took in one long, relaxing breath before his expression became serious. Interlocking his fingers, he rested his arms on the table, cleared his throat and gave me his undivided attention.
“It was done with the best of intentions.”
I mumbled, “Lily white lies...”
He offered a half-laugh. “Your grandmother’s been rambling, I see.”
Knowing that Gram would be upset when she found out, I gave second thought to what I was about to say, but decided that if I was expecting the truth from him, he deserved the same from me.
“Gramp, I know about my mother.”
Expecting him to be upset, he took me by surprise when he calmly stated, “I know.”
“Another thing...” I hesitated, hoping for another calm reaction when I told him the next truth I had to get out. “I went to see Joker, too.”
My face wrinkled in confusion when again, he replied, “I know.”
I was mystified and sat silently, running everything through my head and trying to make sense of it.
“Your grandmother and I have no secrets, Sugar. She told me that she told you about Karen. As for Joker, I talked to him last night.”
“Then you’re friends?”
“No... Not exactly. Last night we exchanged the first words we’ve spoken to each other in almost thirty years. He told me you’d been there and that he sent you back here. Not much else.”
I buried my head in my hands.
“Joker and I were friends back when we didn’t know an Embry from an Ellis. One day I was told that I wasn’t allowed to play with him anymore. My daddy said Joker came from bad people.” He rose and began to pace. “I didn’t know nothing from nothing back then, so I stopped playing with him.” He hesitated briefly before continuing. “Once we got a little older it became more of a rival thing, always competing with each other over everything from who scored the most points to who had the best gal, but under the surface, the bond we formed as young boys was always there.” Using his hands to illustrate, he motioned, “I had nothing personal against him or him against me. We had my family over here and his family over there and neither of them could bring themselves to spit on the best part of the other.”
“What about after your father’s were gone? Why didn’t you end the feud then?”
“By then it was natural. It’s what people expected.” Returning to his seat, he looked me over carefully, and said, “Sugar, my family has always been more important to me than anything else in the world. That ancient feud was just days gone by and didn’t mean a thing.”
“Gramp,” looking past the pain in his eyes, I said, “I know most of what happened but I’d like to hear the whole story from you.”