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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. I am six

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Speaker 1: years old and standing next to a gravestone with my

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Speaker 1: name on it. The little girl with my name is

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Speaker 1: buried here, along with her mom, who was my father's sister,

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Speaker 1: and her dad. There were others who died in the

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Speaker 1: wreck too, some who were buried here and some who

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Speaker 1: are buried at the other cemetery that looks just like

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Speaker 1: this one. I cannot keep up with all the dead people.

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Speaker 1: I am not sure how many there are, because I

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Speaker 1: have never heard anyone list all of their names at once,

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Speaker 1: or tick them off on their fingers, one by one.

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Speaker 1: I do not ask what happened to the girl, because

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Speaker 1: I already know what my father will say, the same

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Speaker 1: thing he said when I ask why I have just

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Speaker 1: one grandmother the wreck.

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Speaker 2: That's Cassandra Jackson, professor of English at the College of

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Speaker 2: New Jersey, where she teaches classes about African American literature

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Speaker 2: and visual culture. She's the author of several books, most

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Speaker 2: recently The Wreck, a Daughter's Memoir of Becoming a Mother.

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Speaker 2: Cassandra's is a story of a tragedy that happened before

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Speaker 2: she was born, a loss so profound that it seeped

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Speaker 2: into every corner of her childhood and her family's life,

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Speaker 2: until finally, in the fullness of time, she was able

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Speaker 2: to lay it to rest. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this

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Speaker 2: is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,

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Speaker 2: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we

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Speaker 2: keep from ourselves.

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Speaker 1: I grew up and were class black family.

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Speaker 3: Everybody in my family.

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Speaker 1: The most part it spent their entire lives in Alabama.

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Speaker 1: It was a really, in some ways, a really tough

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Speaker 1: way for place to grow up in that it felt

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Speaker 1: like history was all around us, like we were always

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Speaker 1: walking on hallow ground, in part because even though I

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Speaker 1: was born after the Civil Rights Movement, the world just

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Speaker 1: hadn't changed that much in that space. So I remember

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Speaker 1: it as being incredibly oppressive. I remember being very aware

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Speaker 1: of what it meant to be black in that space

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Speaker 1: where the people who had the power, who had the

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Speaker 1: most prestigious jobs, who ran the town were almost exclusively

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Speaker 1: white men. And in some ways, it creates this really

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Speaker 1: sort of strange idea of what home is when the

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Speaker 1: first place that you grow up in is one where

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Speaker 1: you are very alien to that place, even though it's

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Speaker 1: the place that you're from.

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Speaker 2: And you grew up with your mother, your father, and

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Speaker 2: a much older sister and brother.

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Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah, So I was a very late baby with

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Speaker 1: siblings that were already in their teens, so I didn't

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Speaker 1: have a chance to get to know them as children.

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Speaker 1: They were already sort of like many adults by the

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Speaker 1: time I could remember them. My sister did a lot

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Speaker 1: of stuff with me when I was a kid, and

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Speaker 1: a lot of the things that people sometimes expect moms

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Speaker 1: to do, Like she was the one who did my hair,

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Speaker 1: the one who, you know, would make a little picnic

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Speaker 1: and we'd take it outside in the backyard fresh peaches.

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Speaker 3: She was that person.

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Speaker 1: And my brother was gone a lot when I was

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Speaker 1: a kid, Like he sort of started moving into adulthood,

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Speaker 1: I think, at a different rate from my sister, which

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Speaker 1: I think is not uncommon, particularly in the part of.

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Speaker 3: The stuff that we grew up in.

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Speaker 1: So he was already sort of moving out into the

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Speaker 1: world even as a teenager. I felt like he was

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Speaker 1: like sort of gone in his car all the time.

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Speaker 1: You know, my sister, my mother, and my father were

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Speaker 1: the people who were present the most in the household.

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Speaker 2: Did you feel in any way like an only child,

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Speaker 2: given that your sister was how many years older?

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Speaker 3: Thirteen years older.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I did feel very much like an only child

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Speaker 1: because they moved out before I was even you know,

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Speaker 1: in the fifth grade. It was incredibly lonely. I played

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Speaker 1: by myself a lot. I played with some of the

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Speaker 1: kids in the neighborhood, but it was not the same

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Speaker 1: as having another child in the household. I remember being

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Speaker 1: alone a lot. I remember being very aware of the

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Speaker 1: relationship between my parents in the house because there was

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Speaker 1: no other place.

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Speaker 3: For my focus to go.

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Speaker 1: It's not as though there was like another child there.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, it was much more like growing up as

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Speaker 1: an only child, and I definitely was really aware of

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Speaker 1: my isolation in that way. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: One of the things about only children, and I say

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Speaker 2: this as one myself, or actually as someone who had

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Speaker 2: a much older half sister, which is why I asked

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Speaker 2: that question, there's a way in which only children or

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Speaker 2: people who feel like only children study their parents. And

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Speaker 2: I'm wondering what you can tell me about your mother

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Speaker 2: from your early memories of her and what she was.

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Speaker 3: Like for you.

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Speaker 1: She was a big presence in the sense that she

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Speaker 1: had very specific ideas about how things should be done and.

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Speaker 3: What things should look like.

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Speaker 1: She was very obsessed with our house, and our house

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Speaker 1: was constantly being redecorated based on things that she saw

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Speaker 1: in various magazines, and everything was in this constant state

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Speaker 1: of transformation. And it was interesting because no matter how

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Speaker 1: much she did it, she was never completely satisfied with

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Speaker 1: the result for very long and it became clear that

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Speaker 1: the transformation part of it was the point, not the

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Speaker 1: end result. And that was largely her entertainment. And it

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Speaker 1: was unusual though in the sense that it was sort

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Speaker 1: of obsessive. She was also a very anxious person, and

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Speaker 1: so one of my memories was of her getting dressed

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Speaker 1: on an ordinary morning and she would come out wearing

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Speaker 1: one outfit or half of an outfit and say, how

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Speaker 1: does this look? And I would say, oh, it looks great,

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Speaker 1: and then she would go back to her room and

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Speaker 1: then she'd change again, and then she'd come out wearing

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Speaker 1: half of another outfit.

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Speaker 3: And she would go back and change again.

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Speaker 1: So self presentation and having you know, sort of control

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Speaker 1: was very important to heart. Some of it was about respectability.

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Speaker 1: I think she had grown up in poverty and you know,

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Speaker 1: hadn't always had the things that she needed, and so

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Speaker 1: she was absolutely meticulous about having control over the way

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Speaker 1: she looked when she walked out of the house.

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Speaker 2: What did I feel like to you? As the kid, It.

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Speaker 1: Felt anxiety producing. It's like a child sometimes you know

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Speaker 1: something is wrong and you don't know exactly what it is,

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Speaker 1: but you are certain that something's not right. This was

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Speaker 1: definitely that thing in that I understood that you weren't

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Speaker 1: supposed to change clothes six times before you left the

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Speaker 1: house on an ordinary work day, and by the time

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Speaker 1: we would leave, she would be in a complete panic

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Speaker 1: because of course we would be late, and that lateness

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Speaker 1: did not fit with her ideas about respectability. And yet

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Speaker 1: at the same time she struggled with just organizing herself

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Speaker 1: to get out of the house. And I absorbed a

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Speaker 1: lot of her anxiety as she was sort of going

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Speaker 1: through these paces in the morning, and I can remember,

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Speaker 1: you know, sort of I'd be sitting on the sofa

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Speaker 1: Washington o'clock as this was happening in my own anxiety

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Speaker 1: getting higher and higher as I.

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Speaker 3: Watched her going back and forth.

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Speaker 1: As for the transformations, I think that one of the

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Speaker 1: ways that it affected me was that my body was

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Speaker 1: also a part of it, and that she was not

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Speaker 1: satisfied with how I look either. She wanted control over

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Speaker 1: everything that I wore, but she was constantly shopping for

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Speaker 1: something that would make me look different. She thought it

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Speaker 1: was too thin, and she wanted me to be bigger.

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Speaker 1: She thought my sister was too big and she wanted

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Speaker 1: her to be thinner. And so some of the anxiety

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Speaker 1: was really about the fact that I think I understood

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Speaker 1: that there was something wrong with me in her eyes,

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Speaker 1: and that I didn't know how to address it, something

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Speaker 1: kind of unfixable, and I felt like I didn't have

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Speaker 1: control over the things that you know, she was disappointed in.

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Speaker 2: Tell me about your father.

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Speaker 1: I remember him as this very loving father who was

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Speaker 1: much more accepting, and yet he really wasn't that present

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Speaker 1: in the sense that he drank. He was, you know,

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Speaker 1: sort of trying to cope with a lot of grief

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Speaker 1: and things he experience in his past. And I think

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Speaker 1: that he was self medicating for a good portion of

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Speaker 1: my childhood. And he was very susceptible to alcohol as well.

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Speaker 1: So you know, if I were to say to somebody

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Speaker 1: how much he was drinking, they would say, well, he

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Speaker 1: wasn't drinking very much, but very little alcohol could really

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Speaker 1: knock him out, and it made it such that it

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Speaker 1: was lights out usually during and sometime after dinner, because

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Speaker 1: it didn't take a whole lot of alcohol for him

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Speaker 1: to fade into a dream like state where he would

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Speaker 1: be kind of snoozing in our home, usually in the

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Speaker 1: din and so it was pretty normal to walk into

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Speaker 1: the den and for him to basically be sitting in

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Speaker 1: this like lounge chair, but he's actually like asleep and

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Speaker 1: he's dreaming, and I can hear him. I think sometimes,

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Speaker 1: you know, I've heard people imagine that the parent who

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Speaker 1: is the alcoholic is this you know, horrible person who

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Speaker 1: is out doing all of this harm in this very

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Speaker 1: sort of vindictive way. But really, in a lot of ways,

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Speaker 1: he was somebody who was incredibly like sort of loving

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Speaker 1: and accepting when he was present with us. He just

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Speaker 1: couldn't be present with us.

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Speaker 2: He just wanted to check out.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he wanted to check out. And it was something

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Speaker 1: my parents argued over as well, about his you know, drinking,

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Speaker 1: And yet it was difficult because on the one hand,

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Speaker 1: they argued about it, but at the same time, you know,

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Speaker 1: I don't think either of my parents understood that was alcoholism,

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Speaker 1: I think in their minds, because he got up and

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Speaker 1: went to work every day, and he was a very

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Speaker 1: hard worker and he was very sort of successful at

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Speaker 1: the factory where he was working. I think that that

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Speaker 1: meant that he couldn't possibly be an alcoholic, because in

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Speaker 1: their minds, an alcoholic as somebody who drinks to the

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Speaker 1: point where you know they can't go to work. He

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Speaker 1: wasn't doing that, but he was the functional alcoholic.

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Speaker 2: When Cassandra's a little girl, her father often asks her

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Speaker 2: to take a ride to the country. That's what he

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Speaker 2: calls it, the country. Her mother goes along for the

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Speaker 2: drive as well. These regular outings stand out as unsettling

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Speaker 2: and strange.

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Speaker 1: Where I grew up, there was this distinct difference between

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Speaker 1: living in a town and then the more rural areas

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Speaker 1: outside of it. And my father had grown up in.

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Speaker 3: One of those really rural.

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Speaker 1: Areas, and so we would go to visit people that

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Speaker 1: he knew in his childhood. We would go there to

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Speaker 1: visit relatives, and we would get there and I would

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Speaker 1: meet these older people who in my mind were really

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Speaker 1: at the time because I was five, and they would

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Speaker 1: stare at me, they would act very oddly sometimes around me.

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Speaker 3: They were very interested.

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Speaker 1: In my appearance. I remember them trying to feed me constantly,

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Speaker 1: Like I would get there and they would say, oh,

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Speaker 1: let me go get some cookies, let me go get

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Speaker 1: some candy. There was always take lemonade, something that they

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Speaker 1: wanted me to eat. And they would often remark about

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Speaker 1: how much I looked like my father's family, who died

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Speaker 1: before I was born, And they would have these really

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Speaker 1: kind of interesting expressions because they were often, I think,

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Speaker 1: sort of trying to figure out if the resemblance was

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Speaker 1: just a resemblance, or if there was something of the

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Speaker 1: occult that was happening in these encounters, right, And so

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Speaker 1: in some ways, the whole thing about trying to get

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Speaker 1: me to eat was about trying to make sure that

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Speaker 1: I was like a real child and not something else.

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Speaker 1: And so they would sit there and watch me eat

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Speaker 1: whatever it was, and then they would be sort of satisfied, like, oh,

226
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Speaker 1: it's just a resemblance. But they talked about it constantly.

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Speaker 1: They would say to me, like, you look so much

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Speaker 1: like my father's sister, Maggie Joe, or you look so

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Speaker 1: much like Bernice's his mother. And they would say that

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Speaker 1: to my father over and over again. They would say, Oh,

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Speaker 1: she's just like them, mains, She's just like them. And

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Speaker 1: it's interesting because this was one of the things that

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Speaker 1: became pretty regular in my childhood when we would do this.

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Speaker 3: It happened over and over again, and even as I got.

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Speaker 1: Older, people still often responded in that way of feeling

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Speaker 1: as though they were trying to figure out or understand

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Speaker 1: something about the ways in which you know, there was

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Speaker 1: this genetic link between me and the past, and what

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Speaker 1: did it mean.

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Speaker 2: It also seems like those comments that they would make

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Speaker 2: in front of you as a child, they weren't even

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Speaker 2: really directed to you. It was almost like you weren't

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Speaker 2: even there. They were talking to your parents about them,

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00:15:00,040 --> 00:15:01,760
Speaker 2: talking to your father about them, they were talking to

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Speaker 2: each other about them.

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Speaker 3: It's really true.

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Speaker 1: And frequently it was if I was an object in

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Speaker 1: the room or so than a person, right, And even

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Speaker 1: with the staring without any real you know, sort of

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Speaker 1: self consciousness about the fact that you were looking at

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Speaker 1: another person was related to that in the sense that

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Speaker 1: it was something to be addressed and to be talked

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Speaker 1: about and to be discussed, but not necessarily with me.

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Speaker 2: Do you have any recollection of what that felt like

255
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Speaker 2: at the time.

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Speaker 1: I found myself thinking about it a lot, because I

257
00:15:35,880 --> 00:15:39,240
Speaker 1: think it felt different at different times. When I was

258
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Speaker 1: really little, I remember wanting to go home, and I

259
00:15:43,960 --> 00:15:45,880
Speaker 1: knew that we weren't going to stay at these places

260
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Speaker 1: for very long because my father couldn't stand to be

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Speaker 1: there for very long either, So we might drive a

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Speaker 1: good forty minutes and within ten minutes he's like, well,

263
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Speaker 1: it was nice seeing you, repeatedd back out the door.

264
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Speaker 1: But I do remembering rather nervous and like I was

265
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Speaker 1: supposed to do something and I didn't know what it

266
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Speaker 1: was I.

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Speaker 3: Was supposed to do.

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Speaker 1: I felt as if I did not really want this

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Speaker 1: attention that I was getting any situations, especially when I

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Speaker 1: was really small.

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Speaker 3: And it didn't make sense to me. I didn't know the.

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Speaker 1: People that they thought I resembled. I had never met them,

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Speaker 1: and we didn't talk about those people as a family either.

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Speaker 2: When you were a child at that point, what did

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Speaker 2: you know about your father's family before you were born

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Speaker 2: and what had happened to them.

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Speaker 1: I knew that there had been a car accident that

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Speaker 1: my father always referred to as the wreck when it

279
00:16:46,040 --> 00:16:49,320
Speaker 1: did come up, but we did not talk about it ordinarily.

280
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Speaker 1: Occasionally I would be looking at a photo album and

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Speaker 1: maybe point to a relative in that photo album, and

282
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Speaker 1: he would say, Oh.

283
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Speaker 3: She died in the wreck.

284
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Speaker 1: I knew there had been a wreck, I did not

285
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Speaker 1: know where it happened. I did not know when it happened,

286
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Speaker 1: and I wasn't clear on who was in the wreck

287
00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:17,160
Speaker 1: and who survived it and who died. I knew there

288
00:17:17,160 --> 00:17:20,200
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who died, but no one

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00:17:20,520 --> 00:17:24,679
Speaker 1: ever said to me, this is what happened, this is

290
00:17:24,680 --> 00:17:26,960
Speaker 1: where it happened, this is how it happened, and this

291
00:17:27,040 --> 00:17:31,719
Speaker 1: is how these particular people died. And so it was

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Speaker 1: one of those things that I felt like I was

293
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Speaker 1: learning about it kind of like piecemeal. But I had

294
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Speaker 1: a very hard time as a child keeping track of

295
00:17:41,560 --> 00:17:42,680
Speaker 1: all of these people.

296
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Speaker 3: I was too little, I guess, in some ways to

297
00:17:44,960 --> 00:17:45,560
Speaker 3: keep track of it.

298
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Speaker 1: But also we just didn't really talk about it unless

299
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Speaker 1: my father was saying, oh, the wreck, and that was

300
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Speaker 1: the explanation in those two words.

301
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Speaker 2: So did you have a sense as a child that

302
00:17:56,720 --> 00:17:57,920
Speaker 2: you shouldn't bring it up?

303
00:17:59,280 --> 00:18:03,800
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, I think I understood that there was a

304
00:18:03,800 --> 00:18:07,240
Speaker 1: reason that we weren't talking about this and I think

305
00:18:07,320 --> 00:18:12,160
Speaker 1: I also understood that this was a very painful thing,

306
00:18:12,640 --> 00:18:16,280
Speaker 1: and that in our family you don't talk about painful things,

307
00:18:17,040 --> 00:18:20,360
Speaker 1: and so I figured if they weren't talking about it,

308
00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:22,879
Speaker 1: I wasn't supposed to be talking about it either. And

309
00:18:22,960 --> 00:18:25,360
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure if I knew how to talk

310
00:18:25,400 --> 00:18:30,520
Speaker 1: about it, because at no point was there and open

311
00:18:30,640 --> 00:18:34,679
Speaker 1: enough conversation about it that I would have understood, like

312
00:18:34,800 --> 00:18:37,639
Speaker 1: the language in terms of that kind of conversation about

313
00:18:37,760 --> 00:18:43,320
Speaker 1: grief and loss. And so there was no model by

314
00:18:43,440 --> 00:18:49,159
Speaker 1: which to understand how you talk to someone about what was,

315
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Speaker 1: you know, the worst day in my father's life.

316
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Speaker 2: You also had a grandfather, so Daddy Blewett, it was

317
00:18:56,800 --> 00:19:00,000
Speaker 2: your father's father. He was a presence in your childhoo.

318
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Speaker 1: Absolutely, he was there in the summers usually, And he

319
00:19:05,040 --> 00:19:08,520
Speaker 1: was the only person too who ever really talked about

320
00:19:08,560 --> 00:19:12,320
Speaker 1: the wreck. And he didn't tell me what happened, as

321
00:19:12,440 --> 00:19:17,320
Speaker 1: much as he would repeatedly tell this story about the

322
00:19:17,359 --> 00:19:20,959
Speaker 1: aftermath and an incident he remembered in the hospital of

323
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Speaker 1: someone coming and trying to give him a shot and

324
00:19:24,280 --> 00:19:26,360
Speaker 1: having to be held down when they were giving him

325
00:19:26,359 --> 00:19:32,880
Speaker 1: this shot. And so that one story was really the only.

326
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Speaker 3: Story I ever heard about.

327
00:19:36,040 --> 00:19:39,639
Speaker 1: What happened exactly, and even that wasn't about what happened.

328
00:19:39,680 --> 00:19:41,760
Speaker 3: It was really about the aftermath in the hospital.

329
00:19:42,040 --> 00:19:44,280
Speaker 1: So I knew that he had been in the wreck,

330
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Speaker 1: and you know, he never said very much about when, how, where,

331
00:19:49,480 --> 00:19:49,919
Speaker 1: none of that.

332
00:19:50,080 --> 00:19:52,000
Speaker 3: But he did tell that one story about it over

333
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:52,439
Speaker 3: and over.

334
00:19:52,280 --> 00:19:54,919
Speaker 1: Again, and it was clear that he was telling that

335
00:19:55,000 --> 00:19:59,200
Speaker 1: story in a repetitive way that suggested trauma. And I

336
00:19:59,240 --> 00:20:01,720
Speaker 1: would listen to him to tell the story over and

337
00:20:01,760 --> 00:20:05,199
Speaker 1: over again, and I felt like I understood how to

338
00:20:05,240 --> 00:20:09,879
Speaker 1: participate in that particular conversation about it, because you know,

339
00:20:09,960 --> 00:20:12,000
Speaker 1: he could be very sort of emphatic when he was

340
00:20:12,040 --> 00:20:13,840
Speaker 1: saying things, and I.

341
00:20:13,880 --> 00:20:15,480
Speaker 3: Would sit there like a little.

342
00:20:15,440 --> 00:20:18,080
Speaker 1: Later and be like, mm hmmmm, that must have been awful,

343
00:20:18,160 --> 00:20:23,440
Speaker 1: like very like responding in ways that I understood how

344
00:20:23,440 --> 00:20:24,520
Speaker 1: to talk about this, because.

345
00:20:24,359 --> 00:20:26,560
Speaker 3: We weren't really talking about loss or emotions.

346
00:20:26,560 --> 00:20:28,760
Speaker 1: He wasn't talking about the fact that his wife had

347
00:20:28,800 --> 00:20:32,439
Speaker 1: died from that accident. He was just telling this story

348
00:20:32,480 --> 00:20:36,760
Speaker 1: about what happened to his body after this accident.

349
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Speaker 2: The way you're describing it makes so much sense to me.

350
00:20:40,280 --> 00:20:45,159
Speaker 2: I mean, trauma is recursive. The mind goes to the

351
00:20:45,200 --> 00:20:47,480
Speaker 2: same place over and over and over again. The story

352
00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:50,959
Speaker 2: doesn't progress until it does if it does, and so

353
00:20:51,000 --> 00:20:54,680
Speaker 2: he was trapped in that story. When he would tell

354
00:20:54,720 --> 00:20:57,800
Speaker 2: you that story, would you welcome it? Were you sort

355
00:20:57,840 --> 00:20:59,840
Speaker 2: of hungry for it because maybe you were going to

356
00:20:59,880 --> 00:21:01,120
Speaker 2: find out a little bit more?

357
00:21:02,240 --> 00:21:06,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was so hungry for it. It was very

358
00:21:06,880 --> 00:21:13,680
Speaker 1: clear to me that my family was really keeping secrets

359
00:21:13,760 --> 00:21:18,639
Speaker 1: about what had happened, and it felt like being let in,

360
00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:24,520
Speaker 1: you know, it felt like I was being treated as

361
00:21:24,560 --> 00:21:29,679
Speaker 1: if I was somebody who deserved to know. And in

362
00:21:29,720 --> 00:21:32,000
Speaker 1: all the other ways, I felt like with my father

363
00:21:32,520 --> 00:21:35,639
Speaker 1: that that story was not mine, even though it was

364
00:21:35,720 --> 00:21:39,359
Speaker 1: obviously impacting our family in ways that impacted me and

365
00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:42,359
Speaker 1: it was part of my story, I did not feel

366
00:21:42,400 --> 00:21:44,640
Speaker 1: like I could lay claim to it enough to be.

367
00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:46,200
Speaker 3: Able to say, hey, what happened?

368
00:21:46,880 --> 00:21:52,200
Speaker 1: And I think that I performed that sort of role

369
00:21:52,280 --> 00:21:56,080
Speaker 1: with my grandfather because it felt like I had a

370
00:21:56,160 --> 00:21:59,200
Speaker 1: role now, you know, like it felt like, oh, I'm

371
00:21:59,200 --> 00:22:03,080
Speaker 1: being told about this, and he's telling me because I'm

372
00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:06,840
Speaker 1: somebody who's supposed to know, and that felt like a

373
00:22:07,080 --> 00:22:13,600
Speaker 1: kind of belonging in a really sort of interesting way.

374
00:22:16,359 --> 00:22:30,400
Speaker 2: We'll be right back when Cassandra's nine years old, her

375
00:22:30,400 --> 00:22:32,720
Speaker 2: mother tells her that one of the people who died

376
00:22:32,720 --> 00:22:36,160
Speaker 2: in the wreck was her father's first wife, a woman

377
00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:40,240
Speaker 2: named will A Deane. This is the first time Cassandra

378
00:22:40,359 --> 00:22:43,480
Speaker 2: hears this name, and the first time she's told her

379
00:22:43,560 --> 00:22:47,760
Speaker 2: dad had been married before her mother. Cassandra's mind begins

380
00:22:47,800 --> 00:22:50,960
Speaker 2: to work overtime, trying to figure out how it's possible

381
00:22:51,240 --> 00:22:53,640
Speaker 2: that there could be something so big about her father's

382
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 2: past that she didn't know, and what does it mean

383
00:22:57,280 --> 00:23:00,639
Speaker 2: to have not known. She also begins to about her

384
00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:04,679
Speaker 2: older sister, Annette. The two of them look nothing alike,

385
00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:08,800
Speaker 2: which is something that's always commented upon. Maybe she's not

386
00:23:08,840 --> 00:23:14,840
Speaker 2: a full sister, Cassandra wonders, maybe Annette's mom is Willa Deane.

387
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 1: I remember that experience so well because my mother said

388
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:21,159
Speaker 1: it so matter of factly, like I'm just looking through

389
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:22,960
Speaker 1: a photo album I see and I'm like, oh, who

390
00:23:23,040 --> 00:23:26,119
Speaker 1: is this, Oh that's your daddy's first life. And she

391
00:23:26,400 --> 00:23:28,040
Speaker 1: just went back to reading, like I think it was

392
00:23:28,040 --> 00:23:29,800
Speaker 1: like a newspapers, Like she just went back to what

393
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:34,160
Speaker 1: she was doing. And I felt like somebody had just

394
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:37,080
Speaker 1: snatched the floor out from U under me, not the rug.

395
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:39,640
Speaker 1: The whole floor was gone for a moment there because

396
00:23:39,680 --> 00:23:42,440
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like, if you didn't.

397
00:23:42,200 --> 00:23:45,159
Speaker 3: Tell me this, what else do I not know?

398
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:49,800
Speaker 1: I just remember it being such an uncomfortable experience, and

399
00:23:49,920 --> 00:23:54,720
Speaker 1: that it raised so many other questions, including about my sister,

400
00:23:55,080 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 1: because everywhere we went people remarked on how different we

401
00:23:59,840 --> 00:24:04,120
Speaker 1: look I mean, and it was a constant kind of conversation.

402
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:08,800
Speaker 1: I was very very thin, my sister tended to be heavy.

403
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:13,640
Speaker 1: We did not resemble each other in any way. Our

404
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:17,280
Speaker 1: hair with different colors, like, there was nothing, and people

405
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:18,920
Speaker 1: are remarked on it all the time, and at no

406
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:22,960
Speaker 1: point had anybody ever said there's a reason for this.

407
00:24:23,240 --> 00:24:25,439
Speaker 1: At that point, and I thought, well, maybe this is

408
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:27,760
Speaker 1: the explanation, Maybe this could explain it.

409
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:30,879
Speaker 3: And I began just sort.

410
00:24:30,600 --> 00:24:34,800
Speaker 1: Of snooping through my parents' things, you know, trying to figure.

411
00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 3: Out who is my sister, Does she have a.

412
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: Different parent, could this woman have been her mother.

413
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:46,879
Speaker 2: It's funny because snooping comes up so regularly on this podcast.

414
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:53,640
Speaker 2: There's something about there's something about the deep knowledge, there's

415
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 2: something you don't know, that there's something that's hidden, there's

416
00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:00,800
Speaker 2: something that's being withheld what other records is there? Then

417
00:25:01,200 --> 00:25:03,000
Speaker 2: you know I'm going to turn into a little child

418
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:07,280
Speaker 2: detective and figure that out. Tell me about the snooping.

419
00:25:07,840 --> 00:25:09,760
Speaker 1: I go to my parents' room, and I know where

420
00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:11,879
Speaker 1: they keep all of their paperwork, and it's in this

421
00:25:11,960 --> 00:25:14,520
Speaker 1: sort of briefcase that my father received as a gift.

422
00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:16,800
Speaker 1: He worked in a factory and he used for a briefcase.

423
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 1: So they put all of our paperwork, like birth certificates

424
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:22,000
Speaker 1: and insurance papers and all this stuff is in it.

425
00:25:22,040 --> 00:25:23,560
Speaker 3: So I go, I pull it out.

426
00:25:23,600 --> 00:25:26,200
Speaker 1: I open it up. There's no lock on it, and

427
00:25:26,520 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 1: I'm looking through it and looking through it, and I

428
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:33,280
Speaker 1: find my sister's birth certificate. And I'm a little kid.

429
00:25:33,359 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 1: I don't know how.

430
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:36,480
Speaker 3: Birth certificates work at this point.

431
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,000
Speaker 1: And I pull out this birth certificate and it's got

432
00:25:40,080 --> 00:25:42,920
Speaker 1: both of my parents' names on it and my sister's name,

433
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:47,920
Speaker 1: and I'm like, wow, it was so unexpected. I just

434
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:52,160
Speaker 1: knew it was going to say something else. And I'm

435
00:25:52,200 --> 00:25:57,320
Speaker 1: looking at this piece of paper and almost disappointed because

436
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 1: I'm so certain that there's something I don't know. I

437
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:04,560
Speaker 1: thought this would be the key to this missing piece

438
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:09,440
Speaker 1: of information among many missing pieces of information, and yet

439
00:26:09,520 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: I still knew something wasn't quite right, and at one

440
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:18,240
Speaker 1: point I even asked, my sister was my father's first

441
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:21,119
Speaker 1: wife without your mother? And I remember her just really

442
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:24,520
Speaker 1: laughing this off. But she must have mentioned it to

443
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:28,679
Speaker 1: my mother, because it was after that that my mom

444
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:30,639
Speaker 1: showed up in my room in the middle of the

445
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:35,480
Speaker 1: night one night and starts telling me in the darkness,

446
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:37,639
Speaker 1: she does not turn on the light, starts telling me

447
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:43,159
Speaker 1: the story of a relationship that she had before my

448
00:26:43,320 --> 00:26:50,240
Speaker 1: father that resulted in my sister. I remember being just

449
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: utterly destroyed by it in the moment. It was one

450
00:26:54,640 --> 00:26:59,879
Speaker 1: of these moments when you think it's one thing that

451
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:02,400
Speaker 1: you don't know, and it turns out there's a whole

452
00:27:02,440 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: world of things that you don't know, and they're probably

453
00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:09,760
Speaker 1: connected in ways that you don't understand. And it felt

454
00:27:09,800 --> 00:27:14,600
Speaker 1: like such a colossal piece of information to withhold, But

455
00:27:14,720 --> 00:27:19,679
Speaker 1: it also felt a little scary in that part of

456
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:23,600
Speaker 1: me was thinking, I have so many questions about who

457
00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:27,120
Speaker 1: you are, mean and my mother, but who this person was,

458
00:27:27,920 --> 00:27:31,199
Speaker 1: because I've never met that person. So in my mind

459
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:35,800
Speaker 1: I had already worked out an explanation of what the

460
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:42,120
Speaker 1: secret was, and I'm hearing an entirely different one from

461
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:45,680
Speaker 1: my mother, and then wondering who knows and who doesn't know.

462
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:47,280
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's one of the first things

463
00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:48,679
Speaker 1: I said. He I was like, well, does she know?

464
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 3: Does she know this?

465
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 1: Because given everything that had been said at that point,

466
00:27:55,480 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: I felt like it was quite possible that she didn't know.

467
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:06,680
Speaker 1: And it turns out she did know. My mom said, yes,

468
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:08,879
Speaker 1: she knows, and then as she was leaving, I remember

469
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:12,679
Speaker 1: saying to her, does my brother know? She didn't answer,

470
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: and I knew then that he didn't know.

471
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 3: If he did, I think.

472
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:20,800
Speaker 1: She would have turned around and said he did. And

473
00:28:20,840 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 1: then of course I found out much much later that

474
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 1: he didn't know, and he was so hurt by it all,

475
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:31,680
Speaker 1: you know, so he was probably in his forties by

476
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:34,240
Speaker 1: the time he don't know, and he ends up finding

477
00:28:34,359 --> 00:28:38,920
Speaker 1: out because my sister thought he knew, and so she

478
00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 1: mentioned something about a half sibling who was not our

479
00:28:43,760 --> 00:28:46,200
Speaker 1: mine or my brother's sibling, and he did not know

480
00:28:46,240 --> 00:28:48,520
Speaker 1: what she was talking about, and she just assumed that

481
00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 1: if I knew, he knew, and that was not the case.

482
00:28:52,160 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 2: You know, it's such an interesting thing with secrets, because

483
00:28:55,040 --> 00:28:57,080
Speaker 2: there are secrets and then there are in a way,

484
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:01,760
Speaker 2: either the implicit or explicit instructions to people to also

485
00:29:01,840 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 2: keep the secret. And it sounds like, I mean, when

486
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 2: you found out your father knew something, your mother knew something,

487
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 2: and your sister all knew something that you did not know.

488
00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 2: And then all those years later, your brother finds out

489
00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 2: as a grown man and finds out that all of

490
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:18,160
Speaker 2: you knew something that he didn't know.

491
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:20,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was really devastated by it.

492
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 3: Ye and my sister really grew up together.

493
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:26,800
Speaker 1: They were not that far apart in age, like around

494
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: two years, and so they really spent.

495
00:29:29,600 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 3: Their childhood together, and they grew up together.

496
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: And I don't even know if I can completely fathom

497
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,160
Speaker 1: what that must have felt like to him, as opposed

498
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:40,680
Speaker 1: to what it felt like to me. For that reason,

499
00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 1: because in his mind, this is a secret that they

500
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: kept from them even in their childhood, and I found

501
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:48,800
Speaker 1: out in childhood.

502
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:53,800
Speaker 2: The tragedy of the wreck and the avalanche of secrets

503
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:56,840
Speaker 2: kept in its wake make for an environment that Cassandra

504
00:29:57,000 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 2: wants to flee. She starts thinking about leaving home and

505
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,400
Speaker 2: making a life elsewhere. As early as eleven or twelve

506
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:04,160
Speaker 2: years old.

507
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,920
Speaker 1: I was thinking I'm out of here I'm not saying,

508
00:30:09,520 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 1: and there were a whole lot of reasons for that.

509
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:14,160
Speaker 1: As I said, like, you know, it.

510
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 3: Felt like a very oppressive place to live for a

511
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 3: black girl.

512
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 1: But my house didn't feel like my house either, you know,

513
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 1: So those feelings of like alienation that I was experiencing,

514
00:30:26,760 --> 00:30:31,080
Speaker 1: I think in the larger community were really matched by

515
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: what was happening in my own household, because it all

516
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:38,520
Speaker 1: felt like a secret. Most of the people who lived

517
00:30:38,600 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 1: outside of our home would never have guessed that my

518
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 1: father was drinking in the way that he was, that

519
00:30:46,520 --> 00:30:49,240
Speaker 1: he was, you know, sort of engaged in addiction.

520
00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:53,200
Speaker 3: And really unhealthy when and I don't.

521
00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 1: Think that that was something that anyone around us knew

522
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:01,160
Speaker 1: so much so that I could remember there were quite

523
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,959
Speaker 1: a few teenage boys in the neighborhood who they had

524
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:05,680
Speaker 1: a problem. They would come and want to talk to

525
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:08,760
Speaker 1: my dad, and sometimes they were friends with my brother,

526
00:31:09,120 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 1: but oftentimes they weren't. They would just come knock on

527
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:15,720
Speaker 1: the door and say can I talk to mister Jackson?

528
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: And he would go outside and they would talk, and

529
00:31:19,560 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: he would offer advice, and you know, it was frequently

530
00:31:22,840 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 1: about school or helping kids think through their futures, like

531
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:33,080
Speaker 1: he was an extremely respected person who was pretty much

532
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:37,160
Speaker 1: completely checked out on us, you know, And I don't

533
00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:38,880
Speaker 1: think I wanted to live with all.

534
00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 3: These secrets anymore.

535
00:31:40,200 --> 00:31:44,960
Speaker 1: It felt like secrets on top of secrets, and I

536
00:31:45,040 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: didn't feel that I could speak or talk openly about

537
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:51,000
Speaker 1: anything that was happening in my household. Like I think

538
00:31:51,040 --> 00:31:54,800
Speaker 1: I really understood that I was not supposed to do that.

539
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: And I think that in my mind, the solution was

540
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 1: go somewhere else, so you can be somebody else, you know,

541
00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:08,400
Speaker 1: that you could separate from the space, and that that

542
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: would be enough to create a kind of launching point

543
00:32:13,560 --> 00:32:18,560
Speaker 1: for like a different life.

544
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:25,080
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.

545
00:32:26,440 --> 00:32:29,920
Speaker 2: Cassandra goes off to Spelman College, a black women's college

546
00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 2: in Atlanta. At Spelman, for the first time in her life,

547
00:32:33,920 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 2: she sees all these different possibilities for who she might

548
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 2: become and undergoes several important shifts in her identity. She

549
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:45,360
Speaker 2: starts to imagine herself as a writer a professor. She

550
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:48,520
Speaker 2: also comes to realize that her background is quite different

551
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 2: from the young women surrounding her.

552
00:32:53,280 --> 00:32:55,120
Speaker 1: It's kind of the first time I was in a

553
00:32:55,240 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: space where majority of people who were around me had

554
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: parents who were black professionals, and many of them had

555
00:33:01,840 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: been a college educated for generations, where I was first generation.

556
00:33:05,800 --> 00:33:09,360
Speaker 1: So I felt myself different in those ways in terms

557
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:12,480
Speaker 1: of class, and yet there were other ways of which,

558
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: like it just made all of these you know, sort

559
00:33:15,360 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 1: of new things seem possible. The other thing I think

560
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: though that happened there was seeing other people's family lives.

561
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 3: You know, when you go to college and.

562
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:29,880
Speaker 1: You're staying in a dorm and you were hearing people

563
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,680
Speaker 1: making phone calls to their family, or you're seeing little

564
00:33:32,720 --> 00:33:35,080
Speaker 1: care packages that their family sent that they want to

565
00:33:35,080 --> 00:33:39,440
Speaker 1: show you or share with you. And I remember thinking like,

566
00:33:39,640 --> 00:33:41,160
Speaker 1: who are these people?

567
00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:43,080
Speaker 3: You know, they keep saying.

568
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:46,840
Speaker 1: I love you to their parents, and I think their

569
00:33:46,880 --> 00:33:50,000
Speaker 1: parents are saying it back to them. And I'm seeing

570
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: like these little cards and love notes and these care packages.

571
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 1: And we were not a family that said I love you.

572
00:33:57,080 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 1: We were not a family where there was hugging and touching.

573
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: We were very much, you know, kind of a family

574
00:34:05,160 --> 00:34:08,840
Speaker 1: that didn't communicate a lot and certainly didn't have these

575
00:34:08,880 --> 00:34:10,239
Speaker 1: like intimate conversations.

576
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:11,680
Speaker 3: So I would hear these.

577
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 1: Young women calling their family and saying.

578
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:16,279
Speaker 3: Oh, that's such a best day.

579
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 1: Well this happened, and thinking, why are you telling her that,

580
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:21,440
Speaker 1: like you really need to grow up?

581
00:34:22,040 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 3: You know.

582
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:26,760
Speaker 1: It's like it never occurred to me in that first

583
00:34:26,840 --> 00:34:27,720
Speaker 1: year that there.

584
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:28,759
Speaker 3: Was something normal about that.

585
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:30,719
Speaker 1: I was like, what happened to all these people that

586
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:33,400
Speaker 1: they can't seem to cope with their lives with at

587
00:34:33,480 --> 00:34:36,319
Speaker 1: having these conversations where they say I love you to

588
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:40,319
Speaker 1: their parents and it was that alien to me. And

589
00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 1: I think that it was when I began to recognize

590
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:48,520
Speaker 1: that there were a whole lot of people living in

591
00:34:48,680 --> 00:34:53,280
Speaker 1: relationship to their family in a way that was completely.

592
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 3: Foreign to me that I started thinking.

593
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 1: Oh, so there were actually a whole other ways of

594
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:02,800
Speaker 1: being in the world, Like not everybody is carrying around all.

595
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:04,840
Speaker 3: Of these things that I'm carrying around.

596
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 1: And all of these conversations and questions that could never

597
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 1: be said aloud. That not everyone is carrying that around.

598
00:35:11,640 --> 00:35:15,800
Speaker 1: There are people who were actually having these conversations where

599
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 1: they're expressing these intimate parts of their lives and they're

600
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 1: talking about their feelings and they're vulnerable with their own parents.

601
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 1: I had never seen my mother cry, I'd never seen

602
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:31,240
Speaker 1: my father cry like there was no way in which

603
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:37,760
Speaker 1: I was really privy to their internal lives in that way. Instead,

604
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:39,359
Speaker 1: I got glimpses of things that.

605
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:42,399
Speaker 3: I wasn't supposed to see. And when I say wasn't

606
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 3: supposed to I mean things that my parents wouldn't have

607
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:45,799
Speaker 3: wanted me to be aware of.

608
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:49,399
Speaker 1: So, you know, I was aware that my father was

609
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:54,200
Speaker 1: often having dreams when he was drinking, in which he

610
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:57,000
Speaker 1: was constantly trying to save people from something in these strains.

611
00:35:57,080 --> 00:35:59,279
Speaker 1: And the main reason I was aware of it is

612
00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:02,520
Speaker 1: because he was saying my name frequently during these dreams,

613
00:36:02,600 --> 00:36:04,399
Speaker 1: or at least I thought he was saying my name,

614
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:07,279
Speaker 1: but frequently he was saying the name of the child

615
00:36:07,280 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: that I was named after, and this was his niece

616
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:13,160
Speaker 1: who died in the wreck. And so even when I

617
00:36:13,200 --> 00:36:17,560
Speaker 1: got glimpses of my parents, you know, sort of internal lives,

618
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:19,759
Speaker 1: it wasn't something we could talk about because I was

619
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:21,560
Speaker 1: never supposed to see it in the first place. And

620
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: so being this person who had gone away to this

621
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:28,440
Speaker 1: other space was really really important to me because it

622
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:32,759
Speaker 1: gave me other ways of living that were entirely new

623
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 1: to me, so new to me that at times these

624
00:36:35,080 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 1: beautiful things were a little repulsive because they made me uncomfortable.

625
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:43,520
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, whenever my parents would see

626
00:36:43,719 --> 00:36:50,319
Speaker 1: couples expressing public affection, they would kind of recoil from it,

627
00:36:50,440 --> 00:36:53,480
Speaker 1: and my mother would always make a point of saying that,

628
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:55,759
Speaker 1: you know, he probably beats her as soon as they

629
00:36:55,800 --> 00:36:57,839
Speaker 1: leave here, you know, like that's that's the only reason

630
00:36:57,840 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: they would be doing that, is that this person was

631
00:36:59,600 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: doing some terrible.

632
00:37:01,280 --> 00:37:03,400
Speaker 3: To the other person in private.

633
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:06,360
Speaker 1: That's the only reason they would be expressing affection in public.

634
00:37:07,239 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 1: And it was all very strange to me having this

635
00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:18,360
Speaker 1: window into other people's lives.

636
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 2: During that period of time. Where does the wreck reside

637
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 2: inside you? You're coming into your own your meeting mentors

638
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:31,839
Speaker 2: and professors and role models, and your world is expanding

639
00:37:32,000 --> 00:37:34,440
Speaker 2: at a really rapid rate in terms of like just

640
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:39,839
Speaker 2: seeing the possibilities and different ways that families live during

641
00:37:39,880 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 2: those years, you know, as a college student, as a

642
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:46,160
Speaker 2: young adult, where does that history live inside of you?

643
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 2: Is there still the hunger? Is there still the wanting

644
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:51,920
Speaker 2: to know more? Or does it subside for a while.

645
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:58,239
Speaker 1: I think that both of those things happened, And what

646
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 1: I mean by that is I did become more outward

647
00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:04,239
Speaker 1: thinking because I was seeing, you know, the way that

648
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:08,880
Speaker 1: other people's families operated. But it made me long for

649
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:10,920
Speaker 1: more intimacy with my own family.

650
00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 3: Part of that was this past that we didn't talk about.

651
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:22,879
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, I found myself becoming much

652
00:38:22,920 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: more demanding of my mother, especially in terms of wanting

653
00:38:28,280 --> 00:38:30,520
Speaker 1: her to start saying I love you.

654
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:31,120
Speaker 3: Right.

655
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:33,279
Speaker 1: This is this is an actual conversation that we have

656
00:38:33,360 --> 00:38:34,960
Speaker 1: to have when I come home from school and I'm like,

657
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,319
Speaker 1: how about you never say this? Her response is because

658
00:38:37,320 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 1: you already know that. And I had to explain to

659
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: her why expressing that is important to me. And yet

660
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:50,600
Speaker 1: I think there's some part of me that also understood

661
00:38:50,600 --> 00:38:52,440
Speaker 1: that if you can't even say I love you, then

662
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:53,960
Speaker 1: you have no avenues.

663
00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 3: To talk about the past.

664
00:38:55,920 --> 00:39:03,040
Speaker 1: So in some ways, this longing for intimacy was also

665
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 1: a longing to be let into this secret history that

666
00:39:08,280 --> 00:39:09,200
Speaker 1: I didn't know about.

667
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 2: Also, during these college years when she's a junior, Cassandra

668
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 2: meets Reginald, the man who will become her husband.

669
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: We met in a philosophy because very early on we

670
00:39:23,160 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 1: were having these very intimate conversations about our childhoods.

671
00:39:26,239 --> 00:39:28,759
Speaker 3: And I mean, I know that that's how I fell

672
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:29,240
Speaker 3: in love.

673
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: That relationship was a place where I could have these

674
00:39:31,760 --> 00:39:35,520
Speaker 1: conversations where I was really sort of reflecting on these

675
00:39:35,640 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: very personal and cultural and familial experiences, and he didn't

676
00:39:40,640 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 1: turn away from any of it.

677
00:39:46,360 --> 00:39:49,799
Speaker 2: As Cassandra becomes more involved in the academic world as

678
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 2: well as more involved with Reginald, she engages in the

679
00:39:53,040 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 2: adult version of snooping research. In her research, she encounters

680
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 2: the term replacement child, and she comes to realize that

681
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 2: by giving her the same name as the child who

682
00:40:06,000 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 2: died in the wreck, her parents had in some ways

683
00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:14,160
Speaker 2: placed this loss directly upon her. When Cassandra and Reginald

684
00:40:14,480 --> 00:40:16,359
Speaker 2: decide to try to have a child of their own,

685
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:20,320
Speaker 2: something which it turns out isn't simple and easy for them,

686
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:25,040
Speaker 2: Cassandra feels an especially intense longing to know more about

687
00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 2: her family history.

688
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 1: I think that it really struck me in that moment,

689
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:37,799
Speaker 1: as we were trying and failing to get pregnant, that

690
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: there was something about legacy that was really important to me.

691
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:49,840
Speaker 3: To be able to pass on. And it's interesting.

692
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 1: Because I would have had a hard time expressing in

693
00:40:51,680 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 1: words at the time, but what began to happen as

694
00:40:55,880 --> 00:41:00,200
Speaker 1: we were trying is I found myself thinking more and

695
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: more about genetic legacy and this resemblance that was so

696
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:13,600
Speaker 1: meaningful to so many other people in my life, and

697
00:41:13,719 --> 00:41:18,319
Speaker 1: yet understanding that it's quite possible that we were not

698
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:23,840
Speaker 1: going to be able to have a child, and trying.

699
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:28,720
Speaker 4: To put together the pieces of that past felt really

700
00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:33,759
Speaker 4: urgent in that moment, because on the one hand, it

701
00:41:33,800 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 4: felt like I would at some point want to know

702
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:40,919
Speaker 4: this stuff in order to pass on to a child,

703
00:41:41,000 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 4: like I would want to be able to share a

704
00:41:43,440 --> 00:41:45,520
Speaker 4: family history in some way.

705
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 3: But it also.

706
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:54,760
Speaker 1: Felt like I was in some ways trying to create

707
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:58,600
Speaker 1: an extension of our family in this way that I

708
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: was created. So I guess it made me recognize something

709
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:09,920
Speaker 1: about the way in which reproduction was often connected to

710
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:15,760
Speaker 1: certain ideas about what survival looks like, especially for black people.

711
00:42:16,480 --> 00:42:21,680
Speaker 1: My father could not talk to me, you know, about

712
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:27,719
Speaker 1: that accident, and yet he had made me I existed

713
00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:31,920
Speaker 1: because of the accident, and there was a way in

714
00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:37,520
Speaker 1: which he was creating the future even when he couldn't

715
00:42:37,520 --> 00:42:41,440
Speaker 1: fully talk about the past, and it was all still connected.

716
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:46,319
Speaker 1: I was an extension of that, and it made me

717
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:51,759
Speaker 1: think a great deal, probably almost obsessively at times about

718
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:55,680
Speaker 1: these ancestors that I had never known, and particularly my

719
00:42:55,719 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 1: father's mother and his sister, and that you know, they

720
00:42:59,120 --> 00:43:01,080
Speaker 1: were the ones that people all that she looks just

721
00:43:01,160 --> 00:43:03,440
Speaker 1: like them, and you know, people would look at my

722
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:07,120
Speaker 1: face and clearly be seeing somebody else ohm I had

723
00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:12,920
Speaker 1: never known, and so it felt like I needed to

724
00:43:13,560 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 1: at the very least know what happened to them. I

725
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 1: knew a few stories about them, because when our extended

726
00:43:21,080 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: family would get together when I was a child, which

727
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:27,000
Speaker 1: is usually funerals, but when our extended family would come

728
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:29,480
Speaker 1: to visit, all they did was tell stories about their

729
00:43:29,480 --> 00:43:33,520
Speaker 1: mother mostly, and they would be these just incredible stories

730
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 1: about her sort of heroism, and all the stories were

731
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:41,120
Speaker 1: about her really sort of defending her children against you know,

732
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:47,560
Speaker 1: Jim Crow, segregation, racism, And so I felt like I

733
00:43:47,680 --> 00:43:51,240
Speaker 1: needed to know more than I knew, because I knew

734
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 1: very very little. I knew about the resemblance, obviously, and

735
00:43:55,239 --> 00:43:57,800
Speaker 1: that was about it. And it felt like whether or

736
00:43:57,840 --> 00:43:59,719
Speaker 1: not I had a child, and whether or not that

737
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:03,120
Speaker 1: was a logical childlie. It felt like I need to

738
00:44:03,560 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: know this. This is my story too, and I need

739
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:11,080
Speaker 1: to know it. The problem was my mother didn't think so.

740
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 2: During this time, Cassandra is on two parallel journeys that

741
00:44:15,680 --> 00:44:19,600
Speaker 2: are deeply entwined. The first is into the complex and

742
00:44:19,719 --> 00:44:24,239
Speaker 2: harrowing world of assisted reproduction. She and Reginald are determined

743
00:44:24,320 --> 00:44:27,400
Speaker 2: to do absolutely everything they can to have biological children.

744
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 2: They go through IVF cycle after IVF cycle, their hopes

745
00:44:32,239 --> 00:44:36,520
Speaker 2: dashed again and again. At the same time, her powerful

746
00:44:36,560 --> 00:44:38,719
Speaker 2: desire to know more about the relatives who died than

747
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:43,080
Speaker 2: the wreck becomes something she can no longer pack away.

748
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 2: She sends for their death records, which include five names

749
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 2: Bernice Jackson, Willa Deine Jackson, Maggie Joe Ray, Robert Ray,

750
00:44:53,719 --> 00:44:57,960
Speaker 2: and her namesake, Cassandra Ray, along with the dates of

751
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 2: their deaths. Sandra is startled to realize that much of

752
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:06,280
Speaker 2: the information on the death records isn't accurate. For instance,

753
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:08,799
Speaker 2: her grandmother and her father's first wife are listed as

754
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:12,720
Speaker 2: having been employed as domestics, and they were not employed

755
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:16,680
Speaker 2: as domestics, had never been employed as domestics. It was

756
00:45:16,719 --> 00:45:19,439
Speaker 2: all anyone could think a black woman in Alabama could

757
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:20,680
Speaker 2: have done at the time.

758
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:26,360
Speaker 1: I felt like at that point, when I get the

759
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 1: death certificates, there's stuff written on them, and it's been

760
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: marked out, and there are all these ways in which

761
00:45:33,560 --> 00:45:41,439
Speaker 1: I'm realizing that this record is not just inaccurate, but

762
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:45,479
Speaker 1: was done in a way that would suggest that these

763
00:45:45,520 --> 00:45:49,960
Speaker 1: people's lives don't matter very much. And you know, the

764
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:52,799
Speaker 1: one thing that I think I learned from those that

765
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:54,960
Speaker 1: I think was really important was looking at the dates

766
00:45:54,960 --> 00:46:01,160
Speaker 1: and realizing how long the dying went on, because it's

767
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:03,759
Speaker 1: not as though, you know, there was a wreck and

768
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:06,759
Speaker 1: everybody died instantly. You know, you've got a child who

769
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: dies on site. You've got people arrive at a hospital

770
00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:12,279
Speaker 1: alive and die after. You've got another person who has

771
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 1: the surgery that afternoon.

772
00:46:13,600 --> 00:46:14,759
Speaker 3: Even the accident happens in the.

773
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,120
Speaker 1: Morning, the surgery and then dies after that one and

774
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 1: another person who was retent days and it was overwhelming,

775
00:46:21,480 --> 00:46:27,520
Speaker 1: I think to look at those death certificates and understand

776
00:46:27,560 --> 00:46:35,080
Speaker 1: that this was something that was happening in time right, that.

777
00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:36,200
Speaker 3: It happened in a place.

778
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:41,080
Speaker 1: And I realized from the death certificates as well that

779
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: I didn't understand the circumstances of the accident in terms

780
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:47,680
Speaker 1: of like I didn't even know where my relatives were living.

781
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 1: The death certificates indicated that some of them were just

782
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:57,360
Speaker 1: visiting when this happened to them, and so I realized

783
00:46:57,360 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: them It's like I have to go home because the

784
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:03,640
Speaker 1: only person who can really sort of fill in the

785
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: blanks in the story is there in Alabama.

786
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 3: I need to talk to my dad.

787
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: When I had tried to talk to him over the

788
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: phone about what happened, it was really hard for him

789
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 1: to talk about. He could give me a certain amount

790
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:20,520
Speaker 1: of information for a certain amount of time, and he

791
00:47:20,520 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 1: would stop. And the last time that he had stopped,

792
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:26,920
Speaker 1: he had said to me, you know, it was in

793
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:27,640
Speaker 1: the newspaper.

794
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:31,160
Speaker 3: And I remember thinking, like, what do you mean it

795
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 3: was in the newspaper and he said, no, it was

796
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:34,759
Speaker 3: on the front page of the newspaper.

797
00:47:35,120 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: And he's like, this was a really big accident, and

798
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:40,680
Speaker 1: he kept saying it was in the newspaper. You know,

799
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: I don't know how you would get the newspapers, but

800
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:43,280
Speaker 1: you could get the newspaper.

801
00:47:44,160 --> 00:47:46,399
Speaker 3: And I thought, I know how to get a newspaper.

802
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 3: I'm an academic.

803
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 1: If I could do anything, I can do research. I

804
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:53,080
Speaker 1: was like, I have to go to Alabama and find

805
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:55,759
Speaker 1: out the secret of what happened there. Yeah, I got

806
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:57,920
Speaker 1: on a plane and I went down there, and I

807
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:00,279
Speaker 1: think that in the beginning, I really thought but that

808
00:48:00,320 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 1: I would be able to have the revival conversations with

809
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:06,399
Speaker 1: my father over the phone and a lot of this.

810
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:10,239
Speaker 1: Neither of us had the practice talking about any of

811
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: this that we would have needed to be able to

812
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:18,239
Speaker 1: have like really productive conversations about it. And I get there,

813
00:48:18,280 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 1: and I get up the next morning and I'm on

814
00:48:21,280 --> 00:48:25,240
Speaker 1: my way to the library and he's finishing up, picking

815
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:28,640
Speaker 1: breakfast and cleaning up, and he says, oh, wait, mine, honey,

816
00:48:28,640 --> 00:48:31,719
Speaker 1: I'm going to take you down there. And I remember thinking, what, No,

817
00:48:32,040 --> 00:48:33,440
Speaker 1: I thought the whole point of me going to look

818
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:35,759
Speaker 1: at the newspapers was so that you wouldn't have to

819
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 1: relive this experiences what I was thinking.

820
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 3: But it was very clear to me that he.

821
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:42,880
Speaker 1: Wanted to do this with me, and he said, oh, no,

822
00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:45,200
Speaker 1: I'll drive you down there, and we go down there

823
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:46,720
Speaker 1: to the library together.

824
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:51,200
Speaker 2: It's important to know here that your father had stopped drinking.

825
00:48:52,360 --> 00:48:56,560
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, he is like a different person at this point,

826
00:48:56,840 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: and I think that his life could change pretty dramatically

827
00:49:02,239 --> 00:49:04,160
Speaker 1: since you know, the time when I was a kid,

828
00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:07,839
Speaker 1: in the sense that he had started going to church more.

829
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:10,200
Speaker 1: He had become a leader in that church, and it

830
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:12,440
Speaker 1: was around that time that he just really stopped drinking,

831
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:16,840
Speaker 1: and it made him into just an incredibly different person,

832
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:19,279
Speaker 1: Like suddenly he's present and he's like, Oh, yeah, I'm.

833
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:20,759
Speaker 3: Gonna drive, I'm gonna take you, I'm gonna do this

834
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:21,200
Speaker 3: with you.

835
00:49:21,800 --> 00:49:25,920
Speaker 1: And I think part of what was so scary for

836
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:30,040
Speaker 1: my mom about this was that I think she was

837
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:36,359
Speaker 1: concerned that him revisiting his grief in this way might

838
00:49:37,040 --> 00:49:41,319
Speaker 1: snatch him back to drinking, because I do think that

839
00:49:41,600 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: the drinking was a primary way in which he coped

840
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:49,359
Speaker 1: with what had happened, and it was a way of

841
00:49:49,440 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 1: just turning everything off.

842
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:54,200
Speaker 3: I think she was really worried that.

843
00:49:54,200 --> 00:49:57,399
Speaker 1: He would start drinking again if he was really sort

844
00:49:57,400 --> 00:49:59,760
Speaker 1: of faced with that tragedy again.

845
00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:02,560
Speaker 2: So what happens in the library?

846
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:06,640
Speaker 1: To go to the library, and it was such a

847
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 1: strange experience because you know, I'm at home in library,

848
00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:14,839
Speaker 1: you know, like I know what I'm doing in those spaces,

849
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 1: but this felt scary to me and that I know

850
00:50:19,200 --> 00:50:21,560
Speaker 1: what I'm looking for, but I don't know what it

851
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:24,520
Speaker 1: looks like, right, Like, I don't know if we're looking

852
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 1: for something that's like a small column on an accident

853
00:50:27,200 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 1: that happened, or if we're you know, looking for something bigger.

854
00:50:32,360 --> 00:50:36,279
Speaker 1: And what happens is we're using a machine where you've

855
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,680
Speaker 1: got to kind of scroll through the newspapers to get

856
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:42,960
Speaker 1: to the daily paper that has the.

857
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:43,879
Speaker 3: Accident in it.

858
00:50:44,200 --> 00:50:50,360
Speaker 1: And it was a really troubling experience in that you

859
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:56,640
Speaker 1: are completely engulfed in another time, and these newspapers really

860
00:50:57,400 --> 00:51:02,680
Speaker 1: bring what saigation looked like at that time in Alabama

861
00:51:02,719 --> 00:51:07,759
Speaker 1: to life. So we get to this page, but by

862
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:12,000
Speaker 1: the time we get to it, I've seen about three

863
00:51:12,040 --> 00:51:15,759
Speaker 1: dozen articles with the title that's a Negro prowler, right, Like,

864
00:51:16,320 --> 00:51:20,640
Speaker 1: there is no good reason that you're in a newspaper

865
00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:26,319
Speaker 1: in you know, Alabama in nineteen sixty if you're black.

866
00:51:26,560 --> 00:51:29,560
Speaker 3: Right, Like, you don't want to be in that newspaper.

867
00:51:29,680 --> 00:51:35,759
Speaker 1: And so you begin to realize all of these customs

868
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 1: white supremacy are present in the newspaper. And so that's

869
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 1: the context within which I encounter this article. And so

870
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:52,120
Speaker 1: it's on the front page the day that it happens,

871
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:55,319
Speaker 1: but the paper came out in the evening back then,

872
00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:58,360
Speaker 1: and so the first story is a little bit shorter

873
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:00,400
Speaker 1: than we get to the second story and it's a

874
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 1: little bit longer, and there's all these pictures and they

875
00:52:04,480 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 1: are devastating vehicles melded together. I can see my ancestor's

876
00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:14,680
Speaker 1: shoes that have come off in this horrible wreck. And

877
00:52:14,719 --> 00:52:16,680
Speaker 1: I'm trying to read the articles and my father is

878
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 1: reading them at the same time, because I'm realizing he

879
00:52:20,680 --> 00:52:21,800
Speaker 1: has never read these before.

880
00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:25,480
Speaker 3: Right, he was at the hospital watching.

881
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:29,080
Speaker 1: His family die, so he was not reading about this accident,

882
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:31,120
Speaker 1: and so he's reading these things for the first time,

883
00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:34,960
Speaker 1: just like I am. And I'm feeling like he's kind

884
00:52:34,960 --> 00:52:37,720
Speaker 1: of adjusting in some ways to nineteen sixty way faster

885
00:52:37,840 --> 00:52:41,040
Speaker 1: than me because he lived through it. But I can't

886
00:52:41,040 --> 00:52:43,600
Speaker 1: get past the first part of the article because I

887
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:48,360
Speaker 1: noticed that the names of the white victims in the

888
00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:52,000
Speaker 1: accident have to be mentioned first, like that's the custom, right,

889
00:52:52,239 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 1: and they get a moniker, so it's like mister and

890
00:52:54,719 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 1: missus so and so, and then black people's names have

891
00:52:59,040 --> 00:53:01,360
Speaker 1: to be listed after all the white people have been listed.

892
00:53:01,920 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 1: They don't get a moniker, so it's just a name

893
00:53:04,200 --> 00:53:06,640
Speaker 1: and then a comma and the word negro behind them.

894
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 1: And I'm supposed to be this expert in like race

895
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:15,359
Speaker 1: in the United States. I've written books about this, and

896
00:53:16,560 --> 00:53:22,960
Speaker 1: I am floored by this in the sense that you're

897
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:28,880
Speaker 1: reading about how your family died, and you're at the

898
00:53:28,920 --> 00:53:35,799
Speaker 1: same time recognizing all these ways in which their humanity

899
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 1: is denied even in the telling of what happened to them.

900
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:41,839
Speaker 3: And then I quickly.

901
00:53:42,000 --> 00:53:45,120
Speaker 1: See these accounts of the wreck, and you know, my

902
00:53:45,200 --> 00:53:47,319
Speaker 1: father stands up at one point and he says, they've

903
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:50,240
Speaker 1: got this all wrong. They dodn't got it all wrong.

904
00:53:51,160 --> 00:53:53,640
Speaker 1: And at this point he had already told me how

905
00:53:53,680 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 1: the accident had happened. But the account that's in the

906
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:03,839
Speaker 1: newspaper is clearly suggesting that the problem is these you know,

907
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:08,640
Speaker 1: Negro drivers, and when the accident happened, my uncle was

908
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 1: in the accident, he's like driving a new Pontiac. And

909
00:54:13,040 --> 00:54:16,799
Speaker 1: there's clearly this idea, and they make a point of saying,

910
00:54:16,840 --> 00:54:19,439
Speaker 1: and he was driving a new Pontiac Like it's very

911
00:54:19,600 --> 00:54:24,160
Speaker 1: like biased in the sense that if an accident happens

912
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:28,399
Speaker 1: between a white person and a black person and it's

913
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:32,200
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, you're in Alabama, it's the black person's fault.

914
00:54:32,200 --> 00:54:33,200
Speaker 3: It does not matter what.

915
00:54:33,280 --> 00:54:36,480
Speaker 1: Happened because black people are supposed to get out of

916
00:54:36,520 --> 00:54:39,800
Speaker 1: the way of white people, so no matter what happens,

917
00:54:39,800 --> 00:54:43,880
Speaker 1: it's the black person's fault. And my father knew what

918
00:54:43,960 --> 00:54:46,560
Speaker 1: had happened, and he knew the account was.

919
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:48,480
Speaker 3: Not correct because his mother had.

920
00:54:48,320 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 1: Lived for ten days and he remembered her telling him

921
00:54:51,719 --> 00:54:54,120
Speaker 1: exactly what happened and telling him he needed.

922
00:54:53,840 --> 00:54:56,200
Speaker 3: To remember it because they would tell a different one day.

923
00:54:56,880 --> 00:54:59,960
Speaker 1: And just sort of recognizing all these ways and when

924
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:04,120
Speaker 1: which all these just humiliations that were part of the

925
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:10,040
Speaker 1: way in which the newspaper operated because it adheres to

926
00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:11,520
Speaker 1: all of these customs. So the next thing that we

927
00:55:11,520 --> 00:55:13,799
Speaker 1: were trying to do, after we go through all of

928
00:55:13,880 --> 00:55:17,040
Speaker 1: the articles, and there's quite a few of them, we

929
00:55:17,440 --> 00:55:19,880
Speaker 1: start looking for the obituaries because I was trying to

930
00:55:19,960 --> 00:55:23,440
Speaker 1: understand something about all of these funerals, because you know,

931
00:55:23,480 --> 00:55:25,680
Speaker 1: he then had to basically bury five people.

932
00:55:26,520 --> 00:55:31,799
Speaker 5: How old was he He would be about twenty five

933
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:37,080
Speaker 5: at the time, and he buries his wife first, but

934
00:55:37,440 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 5: you know, there are other family members who are waiting

935
00:55:41,280 --> 00:55:43,960
Speaker 5: for other family to arrive for certain funerals.

936
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:45,919
Speaker 1: So all this to say, though, is that we can't

937
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:50,400
Speaker 1: find the obituaries while we're sitting in the library. And finally,

938
00:55:50,640 --> 00:55:52,879
Speaker 1: while we're looking for them, there's like one of those

939
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:57,280
Speaker 1: like library dudes, these guys who like they hang out

940
00:55:57,360 --> 00:55:59,880
Speaker 1: and read all newspapers in the library all the time.

941
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 3: Them.

942
00:56:00,760 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know what exactly they're doing them,

943
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:04,840
Speaker 1: but they.

944
00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:05,719
Speaker 3: Live in the library.

945
00:56:06,400 --> 00:56:08,640
Speaker 1: And there was a guy like that.

946
00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:09,799
Speaker 3: He was sitting back there.

947
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:11,920
Speaker 1: He was back there the entire time we were there,

948
00:56:11,960 --> 00:56:13,640
Speaker 1: and he had not made a sound, even when my

949
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 1: father was saying out loud, they've got it all wrong,

950
00:56:15,680 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 1: they got it all wrong, like he had said nothing.

951
00:56:18,360 --> 00:56:21,400
Speaker 1: And he looks over at us and he says, excuse me.

952
00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:24,319
Speaker 1: He actually begins with I don't want to offend y'all

953
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:26,960
Speaker 1: or nothing, and I was like, oh god, this is

954
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:29,840
Speaker 1: not going to go all already. He said, are you

955
00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: looking for the obituaries of people who are African American?

956
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:38,239
Speaker 1: And we said yes, and he said, well, you're not

957
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:42,200
Speaker 1: going to find them in the obituary section because they

958
00:56:42,239 --> 00:56:47,640
Speaker 1: didn't print black people's obituaries in the section where white

959
00:56:47,640 --> 00:56:50,880
Speaker 1: people's obituaries were. They had to be printed on a

960
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:55,600
Speaker 1: separate page. And it only came out in a column.

961
00:56:55,200 --> 00:56:57,799
Speaker 3: Called News about Negroes that.

962
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:03,880
Speaker 1: Came out once a week and my father says, oh, yeah,

963
00:57:04,239 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: like the guy had said, Oh, they moved, you know,

964
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:08,920
Speaker 1: they changed the peanut butterial at the grocery story.

965
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:10,520
Speaker 5: It's like, oh yeah, it was like.

966
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:13,319
Speaker 1: That wasn't it. And I'm just sitting there like you

967
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:17,160
Speaker 1: have got to be hitting me, Like you couldn't even

968
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 1: print a black person's obituary next to a white person's obituary,

969
00:57:23,240 --> 00:57:27,760
Speaker 1: and yet you claim to be a news source about

970
00:57:27,760 --> 00:57:30,000
Speaker 1: an accident that black people were in.

971
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:32,440
Speaker 3: You know, it said so much.

972
00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:35,600
Speaker 1: About how that world operated, in the ways in which

973
00:57:35,640 --> 00:57:39,560
Speaker 1: sort of journalism was both a reflection of that world

974
00:57:39,560 --> 00:57:44,720
Speaker 1: but was also creating and participating in segregation, in white supremacy.

975
00:57:45,520 --> 00:57:48,320
Speaker 3: And so we go to the column News about.

976
00:57:48,080 --> 00:57:52,520
Speaker 1: Negroes, and it shocked me because it's basically a column

977
00:57:52,560 --> 00:57:56,120
Speaker 1: that was written by a black woman, and it had

978
00:57:56,280 --> 00:57:59,360
Speaker 1: every single thing that could have happened to a black

979
00:57:59,440 --> 00:58:03,320
Speaker 1: person that was good or bad in it. And for

980
00:58:03,360 --> 00:58:06,560
Speaker 1: the most part, though, it read like a society column. Oh,

981
00:58:06,800 --> 00:58:08,920
Speaker 1: such and such, we'll be visiting the so and sos

982
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:11,919
Speaker 1: this week, you know, And it was the only part

983
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:15,280
Speaker 1: of the newspaper where black people had titles. So it'd

984
00:58:15,320 --> 00:58:17,480
Speaker 1: be like, oh, Colonel, Lieutenant so and so was opposed

985
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:20,400
Speaker 1: to just such and such negro It would have all

986
00:58:20,440 --> 00:58:24,000
Speaker 1: the weddings, all the church socials, everything crammed into this

987
00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:26,440
Speaker 1: tiny column. And at the very end of it, it

988
00:58:26,440 --> 00:58:30,520
Speaker 1: would have funeral announcements. And that was how we were

989
00:58:30,560 --> 00:58:34,840
Speaker 1: able to locate the obituaries and so that I could

990
00:58:34,920 --> 00:58:38,480
Speaker 1: understand the sequence of funerals that my father had to

991
00:58:38,560 --> 00:58:43,200
Speaker 1: attend and basically arrange as well. And so, yeah, it

992
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:46,720
Speaker 1: was all in a little section called news about Negroes.

993
00:58:47,200 --> 00:58:49,480
Speaker 1: And like I said, like I'm supposed to be some

994
00:58:49,560 --> 00:58:54,200
Speaker 1: sort of expert, and you recognize that there's something about

995
00:58:54,920 --> 00:58:59,080
Speaker 1: so much of this history that has been actively repressed

996
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:02,840
Speaker 1: that when I go out and I get talks and

997
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 1: this comes up, most people are pretty stunned. And it's

998
00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:11,280
Speaker 1: hard to believe. It wasn't that long No, it just

999
00:59:11,520 --> 00:59:13,120
Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago.

1000
00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:17,680
Speaker 2: I'm imagining like the experience, you know all of this

1001
00:59:17,720 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 2: as an academic, as an author. You're sitting there as

1002
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:24,560
Speaker 2: a daughter and a member of a family in the

1003
00:59:24,560 --> 00:59:28,160
Speaker 2: town that you grew up in, looking at this nineteen

1004
00:59:28,200 --> 00:59:33,200
Speaker 2: sixties newspaper. It makes it so incredibly stark and personal.

1005
00:59:33,280 --> 00:59:39,840
Speaker 1: So personal because it hurt to see my family's names

1006
00:59:40,680 --> 00:59:45,640
Speaker 1: not just without monikers, but also this common negro because

1007
00:59:45,840 --> 00:59:47,520
Speaker 1: the point of it was to make sure that no

1008
00:59:47,560 --> 00:59:50,400
Speaker 1: white person picked up the newspaper and thought that blew

1009
00:59:50,480 --> 00:59:53,160
Speaker 1: with Jackson was the one that they know, right, like, oh.

1010
00:59:53,160 --> 00:59:54,000
Speaker 3: No, it's just a Negro.

1011
00:59:55,040 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 1: And of course half the information is wrong too, like

1012
00:59:58,160 --> 01:00:02,960
Speaker 1: there's biographical mistakes or other ways in which they make mistakes,

1013
01:00:03,120 --> 01:00:06,720
Speaker 1: plenty of them, but they don't make any mistakes when

1014
01:00:06,720 --> 01:00:09,160
Speaker 1: it comes to white supremacy. And so yeah, it was

1015
01:00:09,200 --> 01:00:14,280
Speaker 1: incredibly painful. It was also I think very painful for

1016
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:18,120
Speaker 1: my father, though, to see the accident reported in the

1017
01:00:18,160 --> 01:00:18,960
Speaker 1: way that it was.

1018
01:00:20,360 --> 01:00:24,640
Speaker 2: What was it like to then have had that shared

1019
01:00:24,720 --> 01:00:28,960
Speaker 2: experience with your father? Was there a shift in your

1020
01:00:29,000 --> 01:00:33,720
Speaker 2: family in your sense of the secret is no longer

1021
01:00:34,720 --> 01:00:38,920
Speaker 2: a secret? There's this shared kind of uneersing of it.

1022
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:40,400
Speaker 2: What was that like for you?

1023
01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:48,320
Speaker 1: It was meaningful in ways that would have seemed unimaginable

1024
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:51,440
Speaker 1: to me before that day. And I think what I

1025
01:00:51,520 --> 01:00:55,800
Speaker 1: mean by that is that it opened up this shared

1026
01:00:56,080 --> 01:01:00,960
Speaker 1: space that allowed for me to be able to ask

1027
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:04,120
Speaker 1: questions about his experience.

1028
01:01:04,840 --> 01:01:07,440
Speaker 3: It was as if this idea of sort.

1029
01:01:07,280 --> 01:01:12,440
Speaker 1: Of sitting here and reading about it together, and his

1030
01:01:12,600 --> 01:01:15,920
Speaker 1: willingness to relive it in that moment in that way

1031
01:01:16,680 --> 01:01:21,640
Speaker 1: with me as a witness to that that felt like

1032
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:26,520
Speaker 1: a new kind of bond between us for sure, and

1033
01:01:26,600 --> 01:01:30,280
Speaker 1: that me reading those papers in this way is like

1034
01:01:30,320 --> 01:01:33,240
Speaker 1: completely freshed, like never seeing any of this before and

1035
01:01:33,240 --> 01:01:34,120
Speaker 1: then recognizing it.

1036
01:01:34,160 --> 01:01:34,760
Speaker 3: Wait, this is.

1037
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: Also fresh to him, and it clearly took him back

1038
01:01:38,920 --> 01:01:42,160
Speaker 1: into the past in a way that was different from

1039
01:01:42,200 --> 01:01:46,000
Speaker 1: the way in which I was experiencing it, but it

1040
01:01:46,040 --> 01:01:50,680
Speaker 1: was simultaneous, like we were there together reliving this, and

1041
01:01:51,080 --> 01:01:55,000
Speaker 1: it allowed me to be able to experience that with him,

1042
01:01:55,040 --> 01:01:59,520
Speaker 1: but also to be able to ask questions that I

1043
01:01:59,560 --> 01:02:04,240
Speaker 1: had spent my whole life afraid of asking. And knowing

1044
01:02:04,280 --> 01:02:07,000
Speaker 1: that I could ask that question and that he would

1045
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:09,320
Speaker 1: not fall apart and I would not fall apart, that

1046
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:11,640
Speaker 1: we would still be whole at the end of.

1047
01:02:11,600 --> 01:02:15,760
Speaker 3: The day, that felt like a completely.

1048
01:02:15,280 --> 01:02:18,479
Speaker 1: New possibility to me, because you know, when you spent

1049
01:02:18,520 --> 01:02:24,240
Speaker 1: your whole life tiptoeing around secrets and not talking about things,

1050
01:02:24,320 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 1: it feels like if you broach the subject that that

1051
01:02:28,960 --> 01:02:31,880
Speaker 1: will be enough to destroy all of you, that you

1052
01:02:31,920 --> 01:02:35,200
Speaker 1: will all sort of go up in flames if someone

1053
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:41,440
Speaker 1: brings up something that hurts. And we got in the

1054
01:02:41,480 --> 01:02:47,920
Speaker 1: car and we drove home together, and it felt like

1055
01:02:48,120 --> 01:02:50,160
Speaker 1: I knew him in a way that I hadn't known

1056
01:02:50,240 --> 01:02:55,080
Speaker 1: him before, and that it wasn't accidental, that it was

1057
01:02:55,240 --> 01:02:57,440
Speaker 1: very purposeful because.

1058
01:02:57,160 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 3: He just didn't have to come with me that day.

1059
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:02,240
Speaker 3: It felt like such a gift, like such a gift

1060
01:03:02,680 --> 01:03:04,480
Speaker 3: that he would.

1061
01:03:04,240 --> 01:03:07,320
Speaker 1: Go there with me, do this with me, experience this

1062
01:03:07,480 --> 01:03:11,280
Speaker 1: with me in this way, and that we could.

1063
01:03:11,080 --> 01:03:14,640
Speaker 3: Trust that we would still be.

1064
01:03:14,720 --> 01:03:16,439
Speaker 1: There together at the end of it.

1065
01:03:17,280 --> 01:03:23,120
Speaker 6: And that felt very new, And I will always be

1066
01:03:23,280 --> 01:03:30,800
Speaker 6: really grateful for having had that experience with him.

1067
01:03:31,160 --> 01:03:35,440
Speaker 2: Very shortly after this extraordinary experience with her father, something

1068
01:03:35,480 --> 01:03:40,600
Speaker 2: else extraordinary happens. After several IVF attempts, on the fifth try,

1069
01:03:41,040 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 2: Cassandra becomes pregnant. She and Reginald have a daughter, and

1070
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:49,360
Speaker 2: just a couple of years later they have another. It's

1071
01:03:49,400 --> 01:03:53,200
Speaker 2: almost as if the excavation of her legacy allowed her

1072
01:03:53,320 --> 01:03:58,200
Speaker 2: to continue it. But when Cassandra's daughters are seven and four,

1073
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:02,120
Speaker 2: her father, who has that cancer for some time so

1074
01:04:02,120 --> 01:04:06,160
Speaker 2: it comes to his illness. She is heartbroken. Of course,

1075
01:04:06,720 --> 01:04:08,920
Speaker 2: but feels grateful that he did get the chance to

1076
01:04:09,000 --> 01:04:11,840
Speaker 2: know and spend time with his granddaughters.

1077
01:04:14,000 --> 01:04:17,400
Speaker 1: I think about talk about gifts him being able to

1078
01:04:17,440 --> 01:04:21,240
Speaker 1: spend those like last days. We just happened to be

1079
01:04:21,400 --> 01:04:26,080
Speaker 1: there visiting when he was dying. You know, when we

1080
01:04:26,120 --> 01:04:28,960
Speaker 1: got there, he's like playing with the kids, And we

1081
01:04:29,000 --> 01:04:31,480
Speaker 1: get there on a Tuesday, and he dies the following Tuesday.

1082
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:38,280
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking that what a gift it was

1083
01:04:38,360 --> 01:04:43,120
Speaker 1: that he got to spend his last days with them,

1084
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:47,560
Speaker 1: and that they were there and had this chance to

1085
01:04:47,600 --> 01:04:50,800
Speaker 1: say goodbye. Because we don't live in the same place.

1086
01:04:51,440 --> 01:04:55,440
Speaker 1: You expect to get a phone call, and it was

1087
01:04:56,280 --> 01:05:00,920
Speaker 1: so incredible that we were there and there was this

1088
01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:05,840
Speaker 1: opportunity to say goodbye, and to know that you're saying goodbye.

1089
01:05:06,160 --> 01:05:10,520
Speaker 2: And in a way, I guess to be saying the

1090
01:05:10,520 --> 01:05:12,680
Speaker 2: best kind of goodbye is it has to be goodbye,

1091
01:05:12,680 --> 01:05:15,440
Speaker 2: which is that it's all been said, it's all been expressed.

1092
01:05:16,240 --> 01:05:17,240
Speaker 3: Oh definitely.

1093
01:05:17,600 --> 01:05:19,640
Speaker 1: One of the last conversations I had with him was

1094
01:05:19,680 --> 01:05:23,200
Speaker 1: about the book that I was writing, and to be

1095
01:05:23,320 --> 01:05:29,080
Speaker 1: able to say that and to know that that was

1096
01:05:29,120 --> 01:05:33,960
Speaker 1: what he wanted to was also incredibly sort of freeing

1097
01:05:34,240 --> 01:05:38,520
Speaker 1: as a writer to have a parent basically sort of

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Speaker 1: give you their blessing in writing.

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Speaker 3: About the ways.

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Speaker 1: That you experienced your life with them.

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Speaker 2: Here's Cassandra reading one more passage from her powerful and

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Speaker 2: beautifully written memoir The Wreck.

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Speaker 1: I will tell my daughter that the body is a

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01:06:03,800 --> 01:06:06,960
Speaker 1: story that does not end with the body. That we

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Speaker 1: carry others from room to room on our backs, calling

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Speaker 1: out the names of our dead and our sleep, and

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Speaker 1: that this is why I have given her a new

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Speaker 1: name of her own.

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Speaker 3: I will teach her the other names in due time.

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Speaker 2: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacur is

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Speaker 2: the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

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Speaker 2: If you have a family secret you'd like to share,

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01:06:51,920 --> 01:06:54,360
Speaker 2: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

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Speaker 2: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

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Speaker 2: eight Secret zero number zero. You can also find me

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Speaker 2: on Instagram at Danny Ryder. And if you'd like to

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Speaker 2: know more about the story that inspired this podcast, check

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Speaker 2: out my memoir Inheritance. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

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Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

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Speaker 2: your favorite shows.