Mitch explained that he was in costume for a Christmas pageant he and Mercy had presented that afternoon for the kids in his neighborhood. He said they’d been doing it for three years, and he was proud to be the only black Santa Claus in St. Louis.
I asked Jack about the DeSoto. It was a beautiful car and looked and smelled brand-new. Jack was driving and he laughed and shook his head. He verified that it was new and told me the car was Carolina’s idea. He said as soon as he told her I was coming back, her mood elevated and she insisted on purchasing a new automobile. When Jack asked her the reason why, she smiled and said Solomon had come to her in a dream and told her, “Zis is good business.” I laughed to myself and remembered Carolina barreling through traffic behind the wheel of her first automobile, the huge, bright yellow Stanley Steamer. I stared out the window at the passing cars — so many more than before. I felt excited and anxious to see Carolina, see the gold flecks dancing in her blue-gray eyes and hear her laugh. I especially wanted to hear her laugh. That was all I wanted. She was now eighty-eight years old, and I couldn’t wait to hear her laugh again.
Jack pulled into the long driveway of Carolina’s house just after the sun had set. Every window in the big house was glowing with burning candles and a string of Christmas lights — blues, reds, greens, and golds — circled the doors and stretched across the roofline, finally fanning out and around the stone archway all the way to the ground. It looked like Fort Christmas.
“My, oh, my,” Ray said.
Jack didn’t wait for me to comment. He brought the DeSoto to a stop under the archway and said, “We sort of went crazy because of Georgie.”
“Georgie?” Nova asked.
“
I never said a word, but I did walk inside with a wide grin on my face. Santa Claus stepped out of the car and simply said, “Merrrrry Christmas!”
We entered through the kitchen door, as always, and were welcomed by Star, Mercy, Antoinette, and Caine. They were in the middle of preparing dinner, and the kitchen smelled like a dozen wonderful things. Star, now in her late fifties, looked radiant. She was dressed in a sweater and slacks and wore little makeup or jewelry — a touch of red lipstick and two small gold loop earrings. Her hair was a mix of strawberry blond and silver. It was cut short and brushed back from her face. Time had been good to Star. When she smiled, she was still the same eighteen-year- old I had escorted out of Africa. Mercy was also in her fifties. Her close-cropped, reddish-brown hair had turned mostly white. Nevertheless, she looked extremely healthy and happy. She was dressed in a sweatshirt and huge, puffed-out brown woolen pants, which were actually part of her costume from the Christmas pageant earlier that afternoon. She had played Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I gave her a long embrace, and Star as well, then turned to Antoinette, who was making dinner rolls from scratch. Her hands were covered with dough and flour, so I leaned in and kissed her on both cheeks. She was a thirty-one-year-old mother now. Her dark hair hung down past her shoulders, and her dark eyes were shining. She was in the prime of her life. Caine sat at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. At forty years old, he was a tenured college professor at Washington University and looked the part. He’d grown a neatly trimmed beard and wore wire-rimmed glasses.
Mitch went to kiss Mercy, Jack poured a cup of coffee, and Nova sat down next to Caine. Ray jumped up and sat on the kitchen counter, letting his legs dangle while he closed his eyes and breathed in every one of the mingling scents and aromas. “Ah, home cookin’,” he sighed, “there ain’t nothin’ like it.”
I asked Star, “Where’s Willie?”
“Rockford, Illinois,” she answered. “He’s meeting with some other men from Wisconsin. They’re planning an air show for next summer with experimental and vintage aircraft. He should be back in a couple of days.”
“Where’s Carolina?” I asked. “And where’s Georgia, or should I say Georgie?”
“She’s in the living room with Gran-gran,” Antoinette said. “She loves to play around the Christmas tree.”
“That’s what Georgie calls Carolina,” Caine added. “It’s her version of Great-grandma.” He paused and smiled. “Why don’t you go surprise her, Z? And I bet you a Budweiser beer you fall in love.”
“A Budweiser?”
“Two!” Caine said with a laugh, waving me out of the room.
I turned and crept through the dining room into the long and wide living room. A fire crackled in the fireplace at the far end of the room. Candles burned on every table and in every window, and several pieces of Carolina’s furniture had been removed to clear the way for a nine-foot Christmas tree, fully decorated and adorned with lights, ornaments, and tinsel. Gifts and presents of all sizes surrounded the tree. A few feet away, Carolina and a four- year-old girl sat on the floor playing. Carolina was wearing a turtleneck sweater and denim overalls, complete with shoulder straps. Her white hair was cut short and brushed back, like Star’s. She was listening intently to Georgie, who also wore overalls. Georgie seemed to be instructing and slightly scolding Carolina about something. There was a big three-story dollhouse sitting between them; however, there were no dolls in the dollhouse. Instead, Georgie was filling the dollhouse with farm animals and she was making sure Carolina put the pig in his proper room. For a few seconds I watched them play without being seen, then Georgie looked up.
“Who are you?” she asked, but she didn’t look surprised or confused, just … curious.
I looked down at her. She had the biggest, most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen, like milk chocolate, and they gazed right into mine. She was staring at me, waiting for me to answer. I glanced at Carolina and she winked.
“My name is Zianno,” I said and paused, leaning over. “You, Georgie, may call me Z.”
“Z, Z, Z,” she repeated several times, saying it fast and slow, as if she was trying it out, getting used to it. Finally, she said, “That’s a funny name.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I said, then whispered, “but it’s my name.”
“Will you play with us?”
“All right. Sure. Where should I sit?”
“There,” she answered, pointing to my spot. “Sit there.” As I was sitting down, she added, “You’re a boy.”
“Yes, yes I am,” I said, trying to keep from laughing. I smiled at Carolina and glanced again at this little girl, and something happened. I looked into her eyes and saw all the faces of the people inside her, inside her blood, her genes, and it was amazing. I saw her mama and papa, Caine and Antoinette. I saw Antoine and Emme, and I saw PoPo, and I saw Captain Antoine Boutrain, the elder, and I saw the madness of Isabelle, Antoine’s mother. I saw Star and the tragic Jisil al-Sadi, and I saw Nicholas and Carolina, and I saw Carolina’s father, the “Whirling Dervish,” Billy Covington. How did it happen? How did all those people find their way inside this little girl? I looked at Georgie and thought of the unlikely trail of time, circumstance, love, and dumb luck that it took. I thought of my own family and my own mama and papa. I still missed them. I thought of the Meq and the others and their families. I looked past Georgie at the Christmas tree and followed it up to its top, nine feet in the air. The great tree was crowned with a cone, and attached to the top of the cone was a bright red sphere, sparkling with glitter in the light. And I thought of the Gogorati, the Remembering, and I knew instinctively and with certainty that the sphere I was searching for had everything to do with the Remembering. There was no doubt — I had to find it and I had to read it, or there would be no Remembering for us.
“You are the sheep,” a voice said.
I blinked. “What?”
It was Georgie who spoke. “Z, you are the sheep. Here,” she said, handing me the sheep. “Gran-gran, you are the cow. Okay?” She handed Carolina the cow and glanced back and forth at both of us. “Well …” she said, annoyed that we were hesitating.
Carolina glanced at me and laughed. “Moo!” she said. “Moo!”
“Baa! Baa!” I said. I laughed and looked at Georgie and I knew immediately I owed Caine two Budweisers.
Inside Carolina’s house, the holiday season of 1958 was nothing but joy. Every day was filled with feasting, drinking, laughing, singing, and sharing memories and stories, many of them told by Carolina, and they usually involved Solomon in one way or another. Her stories were always hilarious and somehow heroic. On Christmas Day,
