By: Peter Aronson

Every Sunday morning, Paul rides the subway uptown from his place to visit his mom and dad in their Morningside Heights apartment.

Although he was forewarned by his older friends, he was struggling with what he was now observing: the steady decline of his parents, the minds wandering in both, the body deteriorating in his dad, and the declining functionality in the household. Whenever he visited now, his mom was hovering over a large pot of boiling cabbage, endlessly cooking for guests who no longer arrived.

The cabbage smell was borderline putrid, but not as bad as the stench in the hallway from his dad’s overflowing diaper hamper, unemptied since Paul did it the Sunday before.

Paul’s dad was dying. Paul knew it and the hospice nurse who visited twice a week knew it. Paul’s mom denied it, or at least pretended to deny it, hence endlessly cooking and freezing that foul cabbage, and serving TV dinners, mostly defrosted, for dinner almost every night.

The worst was Paul’s dad’s physical demise from dialysis: bedridden, with sunken eyes, increasingly bony shoulders under a white t-shirt, graying teeth and an ever-present white, pasty gook on his dad’s lips.

Paul cleaned his dad’s mouth with a tissue, intermittently holding his breath from the pervasive stench and thinking how sad it was that his mom hadn’t wiped his dad’s face, changed his diaper and emptied the diaper bin, as his dad withered away.

Seeing this made it that much harder for Paul, that much harder for him to cope with and wrap his head around what would unfold in the next week.

On this particular Sunday, a sunny Sunday in June, Paul followed his visit to his parents with what he now did every Sunday in the warm weather. He tended to his dad’s beloved rose garden, a rose garden located a few blocks from his parent’s apartment, in a small plot in the community garden on the corner of Amsterdam and 111th Street.

Paul’s parents didn’t have a pet. His dad’s sole outdoor hobby had been pruning, weeding and watering. Once a week his father clipped the healthiest few roses and put them in a small vase on the kitchen table.

Paul now did all that.

In the two years Paul had been taking care of the garden, Paul had managed to kill a few of the plants. Perhaps not enough water or not enough weeding, not sure which.

So, on this Sunday, Paul had some digging to do in the garden, to get rid of three dead plants and to move a few around to give them more space to flourish.

After about 10 minutes, Paul’s spade hit something hard and immovable, a rock presumably. He dug harder, shoveling deeper and wider, the metal spade scraping, clanking against something, causing the gardener three plots over to say, “Hey dude, either you got some hard roots, or golden treasure down there.”

After more digging, Paul extracted a metal box.

The box pulled loose was so filthy and rusty it was hard to tell what it was, but Paul thought it looked like one of those tins that once held those fancy butter cookies.

Paul pried the top off the box. He saw a letter – a single letter, discolored, curled, fraying at the edges and spotted with black mold.

Paul stared at the letter, dated April 11, 1968. He knew his dad didn’t have a sentimental bone in his body, never looked back, at anything. Saving a single solitary letter from decades ago – really?

Paul wondered if it was from a past secret girlfriend, some unknown affair, because who saves and hides a letter like that unless you don’t want someone else to find it but you don’t want to forget the memory?

Paul felt he had to read the letter immediately. He put down the spade, sat on a nearby bench and read. Then he read it a second, then a third time. He finished the gardening quickly, took the subway home, sat on the couch in his living room and read the letter one more time.

He was so shocked and disturbed by what he had read that he had to get out of his house. He went for a run south along the Hudson, trying to digest what he had just learned. This was not coming in a vacuum. Like much of America, Paul recently had been thinking a lot about the Black Lives Matter movement, and the tragedies of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others. Now, this letter, almost 50 years old, had upped the ante, pushing Paul’s thought process into an unimaginable space, one very personal and unthinkable. He was so deep in thought that he ran right into a texting teenager biking uptown on the same path. They both fell down. A few scrapes. A little shook up. They both apologized and moved on.

That evening Paul sat at his kitchen table and thought about what he knew and didn’t know. He was angry, but he wasn’t sure if that was a fair emotion. Confusion and uncertainty were part of the mental mix. Even though he was a kid back then, his memories were strikingly vivid, as if it was yesterday: the sadness, heavy on his chest, like a weight, making it difficult to breathe and talk. It was the evening of April 4, 1968. He sat in the downstairs den with his father, watching the TV news, seeing photos of Martin Luther King Jr., the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and mourners flash on the screen. Then his mother popped into the room with a tray of hot fudge sundaes, Paul remembered this, his mom handing them out like they were watching a football game on a Sunday afternoon.

His mom said something like, “It’s a terrible thing that happened.” But Paul, even though just 10 at the time, was thinking, this is not the time for ice cream. All those people crying on TV. Frozen in sadness, fear really, unable to think thoughts, make sense of any of this. He was just a kid. 

Paul recalled his dad’s silence, not saying anything, just shaking his head sadly, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing on TV. Paul was daddy’s boy, and Paul followed his dad’s words and actions, silence or not, like his personal gospel.

Glued to the TV, their ice cream mostly melted.

Then, suddenly, Paul’s dad got up.

“Dad, where you going?”

“Going to Bill’s, down the block. You stay here with mom.”

“Can’t I come?”

“No, son, stay put. Keep your mom company.”

Paul’s dad left. Came back a half hour later, carrying a large package and went right upstairs to their bedroom.

Paul got up and yelled up the staircase, “Hey dad, want to read with me before I go to sleep?”

Paul went to his parents’ bedroom. The door was slightly ajar, so he pushed it open further.

“No Paul, don’t come in.” He glimpsed his dad’s stern face through a crack, as his dad fussed with something in his closet, then he pushed the door shut.

“I’ll be in your room in a minute. Why don’t you brush your teeth and put on your PJs.”

***

The letter found in the metal box was dated a week after the assasination.

Paul had never confronted his father before about anything. Now was certainly not the time to start.

He decided to try to find Elizabeth. If he could find her … if she still lived in Harlem … if she was still alive … and if she would agree to talk with him, after what had transpired?

Paul remembered her last name. Cummings. Google searches. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. A daughter found. Back and forth texts.

Paul lied by omission, saying he just wanted to see Elizabeth after all these years.

Daughter: “She’s 92 and in a nursing home. Pretty darn sharp. Yeah, she remembers the Steins. That’s all she said.”

The next Saturday, Paul visited Elizabeth.

Paul had been in a nursing home only once before, many years ago, when his grandmother fell and broke her hip. She died a month later, and this cemented for Paul the horrible feeling that these places were death foretold on speed dial, a bevy of skin-and-bones-demented octogenarians-plus-plus just waiting their turn, body bags on order. 

So Paul was mighty surprised when he found Elizabeth sitting in a wheelchair that faced the door, sipping orange juice, as alert as ever.

“My, you’ve grown up, my gosh,” were the first words she said. “I don’t know how long it’s been, but I do remember you loved the scrambled eggs I made, with American cheese.”

Paul smiled. “Hi Elizabeth. Nice to see you. It’s been a very long time.” He bent down and gave her a hug and a kiss.

“What a respectful young man – well, not so young anymore – but awfully respectful.” She grabbed and held Paul’s hand for a second, then released it.

They caught up for the past half century. When Elizabeth asked if Paul’s parents were still alive, it seemed her lips tightened and curled a little, and the gentleness in her voice sharpened, became clipped.

“My daughter said you wanted to catch up – Is that why you’re really here?”

Paul swallowed hard.

“Well …”

“I thought so …”

They looked at each other for an awkward few seconds, Elizabeth’s alert eyes widening a notch.

“I’m here because of this.”

Paul removed the letter from his breast pocket and offered it to Elizabeth.

“I don’t need to see the letter,” Elizabeth said, any hint of a smile gone. “I recall the gist of what I wrote, because I never wrote a letter like that – before or after.”

She took a deep breath.

“Want me to tell you what I remember?”

Elizabeth’s daughter was right. Her mom was not showing her age, not even close.

“Yes, please, if you don’t mind.” Paul pulled up a chair.

“Ok, let’s go way back, Paul. You were a kid then, for sure.” Elizabeth offered a reassuring nod, an elder about to tell a story, an important, serious story that needed to be told.

“I don’t blame anyone for what happened, not even your parents. Emotions just kind of took over, know what I mean?”

Elizabeth nodded again.

“After Dr. King was killed, I didn’t return to work for maybe three or four days. I don’t remember exactly, but I do remember your mom asking me if I was okay. She was always nice to me, but now she was being extra nice.

“When I finally returned to work, the first morning, I remember doing what I always did. A little vacuuming, some dusting, then I began tidying up the house, putting clothes away. Your dad was always a bit messy, leaving clothes on the chair in their bedroom. Like I did every day I worked in your house, I opened your dad’s closet to put a suit jacket on a hanger, and I see this long, brown canvas case sitting in the corner, resting against the closet wall. I had never seen this thing before. Sitting nearby on the shelf was a small, cardboard box. I couldn’t help it. I lifted the top of the box and looked inside.”

Elizabeth stopped talking and shook her head. Her eyes widened and her lips pinched, like when someone can’t believe what they’re looking at.

“What was your dad doing with a box of bullets? I mean, those things were big, shiny pieces of metal. I only knew they were bullets because I had seen them on TV.”

She was shaking her head again. “Then I touched the canvas bag, felt it up and down, the shape, tall and narrow … along with the bullets. I’m no dummy. I realized what your dad had in his closet.”

She nodded at Paul.

“Then I sat on the bed in your parent’s bedroom for a few long seconds, maybe even a few minutes, trying to think it through. I had never seen this gun before. And then I realized the last time I had looked in your dad’s closet was the day before Dr. King had been killed.

“Oh God, I knew your father was a good man, not a violent man. So I sat there a while longer, thinking.

“I didn’t say anything to your mother or father. Just went about my business, cleaning and cooking.”

Elizabeth nodded, a knowing solemn nod, the nod indicating there was still a lot more to the story.

“That night when I was home, after dinner, my son James. I think he was about 17 or 18 at the time, he told me he was going out.

“I asked him where he was going. He said he had things to do. It just so happened I had the TV news on at the time. And there was something about white people north of the city being afraid of black people from Harlem rioting, escalating.

“I asked my son what he was up to. He told me he had a right to protest and march, peacefully, and that was what he was gonna do.”

Elizabeth really smiled now. “Darn, he was a good boy. That’s right, my son James. He was a darn good boy. Then my mind went a little crazy. I got scared. I envisioned him marching through the streets of Harlem, the crowd getting riled up. Because I know how that can happen. I’d seen it on TV. With Dr. King, people chanting and then white folks throwing things at them, heckling, sometimes pushing and shoving, even police dogs and fire hoses. I thought about my son marching north, into neighborhoods he was not familiar with. Perhaps even into your town. Because it wasn’t that far away.”

She stopped and smiled.

“Well, it was far away, a different world, but not in miles. Not as the crow flies, that’s for sure.

“I imagined my James walking on your street. I must have been a fool or something, having those thoughts. My husband asked me what was upsetting me so, because he saw a look on my face that went beyond the murder of Dr. King. He saw something else.

“Because I had realized what that gun was for. Why your dad had all those bullets in his closet. Just in case.

“Just in case James and his friends marched north and got out of control. My James.”

Elizabeth threw off another knowing nod and took a sip of her orange juice.

“Can you imagine the thoughts I was having? It would happen by mistake of course. No way your father would know it was my James in that crowd. No way in God’s name he would know.

“Yeah. So I had a decision to make. How was I gonna handle this? You know, I’m a human being, too. I don’t know about you Paul, but I hate confrontation. I hate it.

“My husband, may he rest in peace, told me to go to work and talk to your parents.  Explain how I felt. I didn’t think I could do that without getting very emotional and angry. He said that’s ok, nothing wrong with emotion. But I was still a relatively young woman at the time, and sometimes my emotions got the best of me.

“I called in the next day and said Dr. King’s death made me too sad. Your mom understood. She told me to take as much time as I needed. Then a day or two later I wrote that letter. I recall what I said in that letter. And I recall I gave your father a tongue lashing. One thing led to another. I said a lot. That gun unlocked thoughts, thoughts and feelings I was having for sometime. Things I needed to express. It was like a flood unleashed. That’s what that letter was.” A solemn Elizabeth nodded affirmatively, Paul listening intently.

Paul was still holding that letter in his hand, a single, lined piece of paper, almost 50 years old now, worn, deteriorating, torn at the folds, yet words giving it the heft and wallop of a heavyweight’s punch, a punch Paul’s father had received and carried with him over the years, decades, potent enough that he had hidden it, a secret he never wanted revealed, but something he never wanted forgotten, either. To stop it from haunting him, he buried it as deep as he could in the ground, but never too deep where he couldn’t retrieve it. So he could retrieve that memory. So as not to forget.

“I never saw your parents again,” Elizabeth said. “I never called them and they never called me. We left it just like that.”

***

The day after Paul visited Elizabeth, he made his regular Sunday visit to his parents. He never dreaded a visit before, but this one he did.

“Dad’s not doing so well today. Dialysis really wiped him out,” Paul’s mom said, as she hovered over the boiling cabbage, as if her life depended on it.

“Sorry to hear that mom,” Paul said, distracted but still with sense enough to say, “Hey mom, how about if you lower the flame under that pot?”

She stirred and said, “Dad might sleep through your visit.”

Paul kissed his mother on the cheek, and without his mom knowing, managed to turn down the flame.

Before going into the bedroom, he dumped the plastic bag filled with used diapers in the building’s garbage room.

Once in the bedroom, he closed the door behind him, because he didn’t want his mom to hear what was said.

Paul’s dad was asleep, curled in a fetal position under a white sheet, taking up maybe a third of the bed, a grown man shrinking by day in size and stature. When Paul wiped the gook off his dad’s lips, he did it with enough force to try to stir him.

“Dad.”

“Hey, dad.”

Paul’s stomach felt hollow and sour, a burning sensation, similar agita he felt years ago when he told his parents his wife – a woman his mother adored – had up and left him.

“Dad!”

His dad didn’t move. Paul looked at his dad’s face, then his chest to make sure he was breathing.

He went into the bathroom and came out with a damp washcloth.

He touched it to his dad’s forehead.

“That’s cold!” His father jolted awake, his eyes shooting open. After a moment, he gathered his senses and saw his son sitting in a chair, next to the bed.

“Hi dad.” Paul smiled softly.

“Huh.”

“It’s Sunday morning, dad. How are you doing today?”

“Hm … not …” He took a labored breath, wheezed, “… not … no … not … not … so … good.”

“OK dad, I’m sorry. Just take it easy.”

Paul reached across and took hold of his dad’s left hand, the one closest to him. His dad clenched back, as best he could. They were holding hands.

“Knocks … the … the … the shit out of me.”

“The dialysis?”

“Yeah … uhuh.”

“I’m sorry, dad, I’m really sorry.”

Paul paused for a few long seconds.

“Dad … dad – there is something I need to talk to you about.”

His father tilted his head a shade towards Paul.

“What? … What?  … About what?”

Paul took a fortifying breath, unzipped his backpack and removed the letter. His father strained to look at what Paul was doing.

“Dad, I weeded your rose garden. There were a lot of weeds.”

His dad’s eyes narrowed. Paul could see his dad thinking, trying to connect what Paul was holding …

“My roses?”

“Yes, dad, your roses. I weeded. And I found the box.”

His dad’s eyes narrowed again … processing. “What? … What box?”

“Dad, the metal box, the one buried under the rose garden. You know, the one holding this letter.”

Paul held up the letter, moving it towards his dad, so he could see it clearly.

He strained a look, looking more closely. He squinted at the letter for a good many seconds, thinking, processing.

Finally, he said, “Oh … oh … ok.” His dad’s lips clenched and he had shifted his look away from Paul, towards the ceiling. 

“Elizabeth told me about the gun. She told me.”

“Huh … Elizabeth?”

“Yeah dad, remember Elizabeth? She worked for us a long time ago, remember? She was my nanny. She also cleaned the house. Then she wrote you this letter.” Paul held the letter up again, waved it a little, to make sure his dad could see it.

This conversation had woken his father up. He was now more alert.

He lay there quietly for a few seconds, thinking, laying on his back, looking up.

“Dad, remember?”

After a few more moments of silence. “Yeah … yeah … I remember. So what?”

His voice was stronger now, like from a few months ago, before dialysis had zapped his strength.

“Why … why … why are you bringing this up now?”

“Dad, I don’t want to upset you.”

“You don’t want to upset me?”

“I’m sorry, dad. No, I don’t want to upset you, but I feel I need to know what happened.”

“Know what? What do you need to know, Paul, what?”

This discussion had raised his consciousness, and his ire.

His face was now flush.

“Dad, what happened? I think I have a right to know, with Black Life Matters and all.”

Paul wasn’t sure he should have said that, but he did.

“What? What is that? Because I’m dying you want to know.”

Paul didn’t know what to say. He took a measured breath.

“Dad … dad – I love you. I just … I just want to know what happened. This letter raised a lot of questions?”

Paul could hear his father’s breath, his chest noticeably rising and falling under the sheet.

“I never … I never … would have shot anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking. Never. The gun didn’t leave my closet until the day I returned it to … uhm … uhm … what’s his name?”
  “Bill.”

“Yeah, Bill. Good guy. Too bad he’s long dead. I returned the gun to Bill – good riddance.”

“But you got Elizabeth’s letter.”

“Yeah, of course, I already told you. God, I never would have shot her son. Never!”

Now Paul’s father was getting emotional. “What’s his name? I don’t remember.”

“James … James, dad. Elizabeth says he’s a fine man, a grown man with a family. A good family man.”

“Good God, I felt terrible. I just assume not talk about this anymore. I’m tired. You should leave Paul. I’m tired.”

He sighed and turned his head away from Paul, towards the other side.

Paul wondered if what he was doing was wrong, cruel even, whether enough was enough, whether he should just forget about the letter now.

His dad was lying in bed, half a person. Paul could see this.

Paul thought perhaps he should leave, or just sit there a while longer and hold his dad’s hand and comfort him.

But Paul was having trouble with that thought, because the letter and what he now knew was gnawing at him. Questions lingered, fueled by what Paul knew to be white man’s guilt.

“Dad, did you return the gun right away, or did you keep it just in case?”

“What?”

“Dad, just wondering if you loaded that gun and kept it around?”

“Jeez.”

“I’m sorry, dad. I just wanna know.”

“You wanna know, you really wanna know?”

“Yeah, dad, I do.”

“We lost everything because of what I did. That’s what happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I returned that gun and bullets the next day. And then when the protests or rallies began in New York City, I unlocked the front door and went to sleep. I never told your mother. I never told anyone, but I unlocked the door. I decided, whoever wanted to come into our house – whoever – they could. It didn’t matter to me anymore. Didn’t matter.”

“I never knew that dad.”

“How could you, you were a young child. You wouldn’t have understood anyway, but I decided not to tell you anything. We hid the truth. All of it.

“If you remember, I used to travel a lot. I used to travel a lot down South, to places like Richmond and Birmingham, Charlotte, Louisville … even Memphis, where Martin Luther King was killed. I was a salesman. My territory was the South. I sold shirts there. I made a good living. It paid for our house in the suburbs, our swimming pool, a very nice life. And then I got that letter from Elizabeth and got all shook up. Maybe awakened is a better word.”

Paul’s father took a breath, a thoughtful, pensive breath – a pause in his confessional. 

“I was told we moved because you wanted to change careers and live in the city.”

“Not true, Paul, not true. Paul, hand me the letter.”

Paul’s father was now a new person, enlivened by this unburdening. Paul unfolded the letter and handed it gently to his father.

“I need my reading glasses, find my reading glasses Paul.”

Paul found them on the table surrounded by pillboxes.

Paul’s dad read the letter silently for a few minutes, reminding himself of what Elizabeth had written all those years ago, harsh words that stuck in his memory. Then he began to talk.

“I know you read this letter, Paul. This is the part that really hit me. Like a truck running me over. She wrote:

“Mr. Stein, there’s something else on my mind, something that has bothered me for a long time. For the many years I’ve been working for you and Mrs. Stein, it’s been locked up inside of me, like a steel trap, waiting to burst out. So now it’s coming out. My grandparents and their parents before them were slaves in the South. This shouldn’t be a surprise to you, but maybe it is. My family were slaves, whipped and shackled and raped by white folks in the South, places where you go on your business trips. These terrible stories were passed down to me. My momma told me. For me and my family, Mr. Stein, for me and my family, that is haunted land, forbidden land, not a land to pay a visit to on a business trip, not a land to visit to make money, no sir, no sir, that is God-awful haunted land with the ghosts of my family bleeding in that dirt. Mrs. Stein used to tell me where you were going, what cities, day after day, and I was thinking but not saying, How could Mr. Stein be doing that, in that haunted land? But you didn’t know. But now you do. Now you know, my family’s blood, along with the blood of millions of others, is soaked into that land. I needed to tell you that now. I was afraid to tell you before, but I’m not afraid anymore.”

Paul’s dad stopped reading and looked up. He put down his hands, let the letter rest on his chest. Paul could see his father’s chest, and the letter, rising with every breath. After a few moments of silence …

“A few weeks later I had to go on a business trip down South. I remember I was in Richmond, sitting in a fancy store restaurant, trying to sell shirts to the vice president. We were having a working lunch and this young waitress, a young Black woman, kept staring at me. Staring at me as if I was doing something wrong. As if she knew something, something about me. So help me God, as if she was carrying Elizabeth’s message to me in the South through her young soul.

“I couldn’t finish my lunch. I told the vice president I had to leave. I took the train back to New York and the next day, I told my boss I quit, I was done selling down South. I didn’t tell him why. I doubt he would have understood. Your mother thought I was crazy.

“And then the bank came calling on the house. We had to move. The only place we could afford was this small apartment in Morningside Heights. I eventually got that job in the shoe store where I worked for years. I don’t regret anything I did, Paul. I don’t regret it. What I do regret is, I never told Elizabeth. I never called her. I never went to her home. I thought about it. I was afraid. I was afraid what she might say to me. I was afraid to tell her what happened. I was ashamed.”

Now Paul’s father looked deflated, worn out. His breathing was steady, but the spark that compelled him to tell that story was gone.

Paul felt badly about what he had forced his father to reveal, badly that he had pushed his sick father to the limit. But did he really have a choice? It was now or never, and once Paul read that letter, he felt he had to know the truth.

Then Paul’s mother walked into the room.

“Paul, you’ve been in here a long time. How’s your father doing?”

Paul reached across the bed, took the letter, folded it and placed it in his pocket.

“We’re just talking mom. Just talking.”

He smiled at his mother.

“I told dad his roses are doing great. And that I’m going to head over to the garden now and clip a few red and pink roses for him and put them in a vase. I think he’ll like that.”

Paul nodded. They both watched his dad in repose, looking up at the ceiling blankly, not sure what he really saw. Not sure what he was thinking.

###

Peter Aronson is a former journalist and former practicing attorney and now he writes short stories, children’s books (peteraronsonbooks.com) and is the founder and editor of The Practical Altruism Project (practicalaltruism.com).