Pride of Family by Carole Ione

Author:Carole Ione
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307419194
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

AN ALBUM OF THE HEART

On November 19, 1979, Frances Anne Rollin would have been 134 years old. In her honor I had oysters and coffee in Boston. But I saw hardly any black people downtown; Boston’s reputation among blacks as a seat of freedom and enlightenment had faded long ago. The Blossom Grove house Frank had lived in had recently been torn down.

I had never been to Boston before and was traveling with my friend James, who knew it well. He and I had spent the summer of 1978 making a transcription of Frank’s diary. Salvatore was in another relationship, and he and I were hardly speaking anymore. Thoughts of Frank eased my pain. It was wonderful to have someone to share Frank with, someone who seemed to respond to her. We relived her indignation and exasperation with Ludie, her earnest young suitor, and sympathized with her reaction to Boston’s cold weather. I liked to think of the day she sewed herself a new calico dress, or leaned out the window and spoke with a passerby. I could feel the windowsill as if I were leaning on it too. And there were the dreams she had—mostly of Phil—which intrigued and touched me, as they were even more ephemeral than Frank herself.

That autumn, my father had agreed to help my research by treating me to train tickets to Washington. My grandfather had mentioned a scrapbook that I might find there; perhaps a picture of Frank would turn up. I took Alessandro, ten years old by then, with me to meet his Washington cousins, whom I hadn’t seen in more than fifteen years, ever since my father’s brother, Uncle Harry, died.

We stayed with my father’s sister, Aunt Elsie, who began to tell me about the Lewis family. I learned about her mother’s mother, Louisa Smith, who had developed a hair pomade in Philadelphia that she cooked in a big iron pot and sold from door to door. And there was Sarah (nicknamed Muff), the mysterious part Native American woman who was my paternal great-grandmother. But though I took notes, it was hard to focus on these other stories. I was trying to get closer to Frank.

Aunt Elsie dropped me off at Howard University, where I found Frank’s book in the library, The Life and Times of Martin Robeson Delany, first published in 1868 by Lee and Shepard. It was listed in the card catalogue under Frank A. Rollin, with no mention that Frances Anne Rollin was the true name of the author. Among the papers that Uncle Billy had bequeathed to the library were several items relating to his father’s law practice and several family photographs, but there was no photograph of his mother.

The librarian directed me to another special collection, where a notebook of some sort had been left by my grandfather. She said she thought there was a family Bible. I sat in a small room by myself and thought: Perhaps this is it. Perhaps I’ll find the Rollin sisters,

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