Annie waited for a while then cautiously asked, “Why is Mama crying?”
Ida looked down with a smile. “Because she’s happy that you’re both going to be staying here with me for a good long time.”
“I’m happy too, but I’m not crying.”
“Only grown-ups cry when they’re happy.”
Ida laughed, then Suzanna pushed back the last of her tears and laughed with her.
——————
THAT NIGHT WHEN SUZANNA TUCKED Annie into bed, she sat beside her and told the biggest lie of her life. A lie she swore was truth.
“You really are Annie Parker,” she said. “Duff was Earl’s name, and he wanted us to use it while we were living with him.”
“But, Mama, he never called you Darla Jean, how come?”
Suzanna forced a thin splintery laugh. “You know how I sometimes call you nicknames like Pumpkin or Sweet Potato?”
Annie nodded.
“Well, Suzanna was Earl’s nickname for me.”
Making up the story as she went along, Suzanna told of an old guitar Earl had long before Annie was born.
“He didn’t know how to play a lot of songs, but he knew this one called Oh Susanna, so he used to play it all the time and sing along. He said I was his Suzanna.”
“I never heard—”
“It was before you were born. He sold that guitar when you were just a baby, so you couldn’t possibly remember. And now that we’re not living with Earl anymore, you’re big enough to understand the truth, so I thought you should know.”
“Can you sing it for me, Mama?”
Suzanna leaned over, kissed Annie’s cheek, and tucked the lightweight blanket around her shoulders. “Okay, just this one time, but then like Grandma said, you’re never to talk of it again. Now that we’re here I’m going back to using Darla Jean, my real name, and you are Annie Parker, period. No questions asked. Nothing more to discuss. Get it?”
Annie gave a sleepy nod. “Sing the song, Mama.”
Before Suzanna finished the first verse, Annie was fast asleep.
That night Suzanna tossed and turned for hours, thinking of how she’d lied to her own child, lied about the very truth of who she was. As despicable as that might be, there’d been no alternative. If she and Annie were to live a life of lies, then Suzanna alone had to carry the burden of guilt.
Annie could never know of it. She would grow up believing she was a true Parker. She would be free to both give and take Ida’s love. She could walk tall and be proud of who she was, and that above all else was what Suzanna wanted for her daughter.
A sliver of light was edging its way onto the horizon when Suzanna finally climbed from the bed and knelt beside it.
“Please, God,” she prayed. “Let me do this one thing for my daughter. Up until now, Annie’s life has been filled with anger and resentment and I have stood aside, unable to make a change. Lord, let me no longer be powerless. Let me give her a grandmother to love and a life unlike the one I knew. I ask nothing for myself, Lord, only that You allow me to do this one thing for my child.”
Suzanna
Becoming Darla Jean
DAYS TURNED INTO WEEKS, AND they never finished cleaning out a single closet. Suzanna pruned the hydrangeas, cut the grass, and painted the back porch while Ida sat at the sewing machine making dresses for Annie’s new doll.
At first, Suzanna lived in constant fear of being discovered. She jumped when the telephone rang, peeked from behind the curtains before answering a knock on the door, and looked over her shoulder as she moved through the aisles of Piggly Wiggly. When the fear swelled to the size of a melon and felt as though it would cause her chest to split open, she went in search of something that needed to be done. In time that busyness pushed the fear back. Although it remained a part of her, it ceased to be the whole of who she was.
The change was something she neither saw nor felt. As the days grew longer and the evenings warmer, little pieces of Suzanna began to disappear and were replaced by pieces of Darla Jean. Since there was little to go by, she crafted the image as she went. Hours were spent browsing through the old family album, lingering over the photos of Tommy and Caroline, searching for similarities between them and her parents.
With her daddy, it was the slicked-back hair and the sneer, the right edge of his lip hiked up as if he were about to lay into someone. But Caroline was far more difficult; she had the soft blond curls Suzanna remembered her own mama having, but it had been over fifteen years and the memory of her mama’s features had faded. Sometimes she could find the edge of a smile or the sound of her laughter, but that was it. Without realizing it, Suzanna had begun to remake herself into the woman who was Caroline’s daughter.
Mornings when they sat at the breakfast table, Ida would tell of the grandfather Suzanna had never known, of how he so often spoke of her, wondering where she was and if she was happy. On a day that was drizzling rain and not well-suited for sitting on the porch or running errands, they stayed at the kitchen table sipping a third cup of coffee.
“Did you know that you’re your granddaddy’s namesake?” Ida asked.
Suzanna shook her head. “I don’t see how.”
“Bill’s middle name was Gene, spelled with a G, not a J.” Ida hesitated a moment, gave a soulful sigh, then added, “It was one of the few nice things Tommy did for his daddy; that was before he found out we were planning to be married.”
She went on to tell of how, early on, William had plans to build a playhouse in the back yard and buy a canopied
