WEBVTT - Jeanette 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:08.720 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:11.680 realized I never knew my father. I think other guests 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:14.400 in your podcasts have talked about that, I really never 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:19.520 knew who he was. And it's still taking me many years, 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:22.439 and he's taken many years to even say that, and 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:24.200 I think it will be many more years to understand 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:31.600 what that means. That's Emily Bernard. Emily is a university professor, essayist, 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:35.720 and memoirist, author of the acclaimed book Black as the Body. 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:39.680 Emily also wrote an essay for Oh, the Oprah magazine 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:44.440 about forgiving her father's mistress. This is a story about 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:48.800 the many ways in which understanding and compassion can turn 0:00:48.920 --> 0:00:53.160 anger and enmity into something else, something that might even 0:00:53.200 --> 0:01:07.720 be called beautiful. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets, 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:10.560 the secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we 0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:13.880 keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:24.679 And my mother's daughter and that I don't have a 0:01:24.760 --> 0:01:28.400 natural relationship to the natural world. She was a child 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:31.280 who was very much sent her in the natural world 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:34.280 when she grew up in the rural South and Hazel Lors, Mississippi. 0:01:34.400 --> 0:01:37.679 But when we moved to the suburbs. She really stayed 0:01:37.680 --> 0:01:40.440 inside as much as possible, and I wanted to be 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:45.600 with her. So that was my planet, you know, the house. 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:49.200 Um and emotionally, my mother was the center of everything. 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:54.200 My mother was a beautiful woman inside and out. I 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:58.040 don't think there's a single person who would deny that 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.920 she was religious. But religion didn't nominate her, but it 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:04.000 was deep and it was true, and it's how she 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:08.080 organized her life around, you know, very traditional Christian values. 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.480 She was a kind person, a generous person. She's reserved. 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.880 She was very funny, and she was whip smart and 0:02:17.000 --> 0:02:21.240 very creative, very thoughtful, but also depressed from a very 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:24.400 young age, something she had inherited from her paternal line 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:27.240 and grappled with that before there was a real language 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:29.560 around it. She said to me, once you know, we 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.200 had the blues. It really hindered her um and also 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:36.000 I think her since of privacy hindered her a lot too. 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.799 She had a problem making connections with people outside of 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:42.560 the family. That made her very much alone, even though 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:47.120 people liked her. Feeling very afraid of my father. But 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:52.040 I mean, I remember just a constant feeling of anxiety, 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.080 not being able to relax. Worried that I was going 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:58.560 to set him off somehow, and his disapproval was something 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:02.520 that hovered over me all of time. My father ruled 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.720 the roost and that was that. So I had to 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:09.360 learn to live within those confines. And my mother didn't 0:03:09.440 --> 0:03:15.280 raise wilting flower. She raised someone who could speak her 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:18.359 own mind. But my father. One of the best things 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.399 I've heard that helped soothe me years ago, a therapist said, 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:25.960 you just weren't a good fit as parent and child, 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:28.800 and I gave me so much comfort. I think that 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:32.440 was really the problem. As much energy and money he 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:34.680 has he put into my education, the fact that I 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:37.440 was a childhood girl who talked back and had her 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:43.120 own opinions, he could not manage that. Emily's parents meet 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:47.040 in Nashville as university students in the nineteen fifties. Her 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:49.280 father was in medical school and her mother was a 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:54.640 well regarded campus poet. His story was that he just 0:03:54.760 --> 0:03:56.800 revered her from afar. In fact, one of his stories 0:03:56.840 --> 0:03:59.320 he liked to tell was that he knew how much 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:01.360 she loved art, and so he got a print of 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:04.000 the Mona Lisa and put it under her door for 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.680 dorm room, and I think that did seal it from 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:08.720 my mother that this guy with a buzz cut and 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:14.120 awkward glasses could be interesting for her romantically. My father 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.880 was a deeply charismatic person, and he had a lot 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:22.520 of fans um. He was somebody who come in a situation, 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.720 always had a joke, always had a handshake. He had 0:04:25.760 --> 0:04:29.279 a heavy presence, and as much as he was someone 0:04:29.320 --> 0:04:32.560 who had a ready joke with his children, he was 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:37.120 deeply judgmental. We never we never really measured up. I 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:41.600 grew up with that sense of always bordering on disappointing him, 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:45.360 and so I followed the path that he had laid 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:47.880 before me, you know. And education was important to both 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:51.360 of my parents, and they wanted us to perform at 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:53.320 a high level. And it was the way I got 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:58.279 his approval, if not his love. Emily does perform at 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:01.400 a high level. She goes off to Yale, a school 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.839 her father would most certainly have approved of. She comes 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.719 back to Nashville one winter break. She's home with her 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.640 mom and her brother's Her mom was Emily's dad's office manager, 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:13.960 and she kept the books both for his office and 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:18.240 the household finances, so she's balancing the books, and her 0:05:18.279 --> 0:05:22.040 mom sees something that doesn't add up, a plane ticket 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:24.960 purchased in the name of a patient who also works 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:28.680 part time in her father's office. She said, why, I 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:30.480 wonder why he would do this? Why would he buy 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:35.240 this ticket? And I was very quick to rationalize it 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:38.400 or just dismiss it. And also my mother was a warrior, 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:42.719 so you know, I just reassured her quickly that it 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:45.640 was nothing, and she was imagining it, and that's what 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:48.360 she lived with. Unfortunately, I was part of the complicity 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:52.600 or the silence that surrounded her. The ticket was made 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.320 out to a woman by the name of Jeanette Curry, 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:59.320 and after Emily returns to college, it starts to become clear, 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.720 at least to her, that something troubling is going on 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:08.320 back home. You're a college senior and you write in 0:06:08.320 --> 0:06:13.000 your journal Jeanette Curry won't stop calling mom. Why is 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:17.400 she doing this to her? At that point I was 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:19.359 hearing I was I was in Connecticut and she was 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:21.240 in Nashville, and she would call me and tell me 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:26.839 about Jeanette's phone calls, and it was very confusing to me. 0:06:27.839 --> 0:06:31.520 Jeanette had been part of our landscape. Are family landscape 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:34.720 for for years. At that point. My mother and I 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:36.960 were very close and we talked almost every day when 0:06:36.960 --> 0:06:39.360 I was in college, so it would be it would 0:06:39.360 --> 0:06:42.200 punctuate our conversations this phone call and my mother would, 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:44.840 you know, call the phone company and change the number. 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:47.440 And then Jeanette would call the phone company and say, 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:50.159 this is Mrs Bernard and I've forgotten my number. And 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:52.479 I think those things would not be so easy to 0:06:52.520 --> 0:06:54.520 do now, And I often think about that, the things 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.520 that could have protected my mother or given her some relief, 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:00.000 But it was like her world was an open book 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:03.160 because she had no protection. My father was not protecting her, 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:06.680 and Jeanette had trained her attention on my mother because 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:08.560 she wasn't getting the response from my father that she 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:13.080 wanted those Emily and her mother were certain Jeanette was 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:17.440 lying a demented fantasist, that she was just playing crazy. 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:21.560 I mean, who stalks someone like this. The family narrative 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:24.280 was that this woman was just after his money. Her 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:27.480 father was insistent on this point, and he was apparently 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:31.480 very convincing. Besides, he was a formidable figure and it 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.720 must have felt impossible to push him. My father had 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:37.880 such a casual relationship with the truth in general, that 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:40.840 I didn't like to ask him direct questions because I 0:07:40.920 --> 0:07:43.640 knew his inclination would be to lie. He was someone 0:07:43.640 --> 0:07:46.000 who just made up stories about his life and everybody 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.480 in his world just believed them. But in fact, when 0:07:49.520 --> 0:07:53.200 Emily wrote those lines in her college journal, Jeanette Curry 0:07:53.240 --> 0:07:55.920 won't stop calling mom, why is she doing this to her? 0:07:56.920 --> 0:08:00.120 The answer was being played out in another home, in 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:04.320 another neighborhood in Nashville. There was a baby, a boy 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:08.040 named Lee, a toddler by this point, the child of 0:08:08.080 --> 0:08:15.960 Emily's father and Jeanette Curry. Could you describe Jeanette. We 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:19.640 went to a very state Episcopal church where we recited 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:21.600 the Latin, the Mass and Latin you know, in the 0:08:21.680 --> 0:08:25.440 high holidays um and Jeanette would come and she would 0:08:25.600 --> 0:08:28.400 shout about Jesus and it was just the most misort thing. 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:31.880 I mean between I mean literally the b our pew 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:35.000 that we occupied as one of the old families in 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.120 the church, and Jeanette would sit on the other side 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.760 and she'd be shouting, and people would just not know 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:44.960 what to do with this person. So she was uncontainable. 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:48.560 She was a free radical in our world, and that 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:51.800 made it also very hard because she she had no shame, 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:57.760 She was unembarrassed about her relationship with my father, and 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:02.000 as opposed to my parents, who were very concerned with 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:06.160 self composition and how we appeared, she didn't care at 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:09.680 all about that. So we didn't have a choice about 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:14.120 how much we could conceal from our larger world because 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:18.160 she was making it public all the time, while your 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:20.440 father was all the while denying it. Yeah, he would 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:23.040 sit in his view and just to act nothing was happening. 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:25.560 So he left sort of everyone else to deal with 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:30.160 the mess. But he was an island of stoicism and denial. 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:35.920 So there's a baby, there's a mistress, and there are 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:40.760 family Sundays in church. Emily's father pretends nothing's going on. 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.280 But as with all good secrets and lies, this one 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.000 eventually proves impossible to contain, no matter how he'd like 0:09:48.120 --> 0:09:53.199 to pretend otherwise. So tell me about this legal battle that, then, 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:56.040 I guess, results in your father taking a paternity test. 0:09:57.040 --> 0:09:59.719 There was a call place to it's a d C 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:04.520 for the Child Welfare Services in Nashville that triggered a 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:08.040 blood test to determine Lee's paternity. And again I'm still 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:10.920 trying to sift through figure out the actual, the meaning 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:13.680 and what happened here. And the test revealed that my 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:18.040 father was Lee's father, as Jeanette had been claiming, So 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:21.880 it vindicated Jeanette. So we don't know who placed that 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:25.920 call that that triggered the whole episode. I don't quite 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:28.959 believe it, but Jeanette says, it's my mother who plays 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:31.880 a call. She thought that that would be a way 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:35.080 to kind of get Jeanette out of our life. And 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.360 even at that moment, my mother said, well, you know, 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:42.680 these tests are only reliable. I think about this so 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.920 much in my own life and also in the stories 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:48.880 of so many of my guests. On family Secrets, the 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.280 tagline for the show is the secrets that are kept 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:52.839 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:55.840 secrets we keep from ourselves. And I always find that 0:10:55.920 --> 0:10:59.319 last part the most resonant or haunting, the secrets that 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.319 we keep from our elves that were capable of keeping 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.920 out of self preservation, out of love, out of fear, 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:10.839 out of shame, out of so many things. But so 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:16.480 now your mother, no, I mean your and your father. Denies, denies, denies, denies, 0:11:16.520 --> 0:11:19.679 and then at some point he says yes, and so 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:23.920 what doesn't really matter. Everybody does this. That was his 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:27.679 attitude which shocked my mother. I mean, he did all 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:29.760 the classic things and begged her not to leave, and 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:32.720 um told her he didn't know what he'd do without her, 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:34.600 told her that he knew the kids would go with her, 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:37.640 which was true. We would have certainly taken my mother's 0:11:37.640 --> 0:11:39.760 side and anything she wanted we would have given her 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.880 in terms of shows of loyalty, and she stayed. She 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:47.080 was very practical, and she knew what happened to women 0:11:47.080 --> 0:11:52.439 after divorce. She had been so talented, but she spent her, 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:55.280 you know, so much of her life and our our 0:11:55.320 --> 0:11:58.960 lives working in my father's office and being an excellent homemaker. 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:01.720 So she didn't believe she could compete in a job market, 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:03.520 and she didn't want to. I think she felt she 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:05.959 had built my father's career. She was going to stay 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:08.320 and and reap some of the benefits. I remember at 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:11.360 one time saying to her, you know, Dad, he would 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:14.200 never hold it against you. If you are afraid of 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:17.480 the social stigma of divorce, you don't have to divorce him. 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:21.160 You can travel take his money. He would never regret 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:23.880 you that. And she said, Emily, I made this home 0:12:24.120 --> 0:12:27.160 and I'm going to stay this. So that's what she did. 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:32.760 Emily's mother also does something quite extraordinary here. She wants 0:12:32.800 --> 0:12:35.960 to see Lee taken care of because that's the right 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:40.200 thing to do. Despite everything, For all of her disappointment, 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:43.920 she didn't want another kind of unacknowledged black child in 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:45.880 the world. So she told my father, you have to 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.800 write him into your will in some way. So you know, 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:53.040 my mother is a deeply ethical person, and you know, 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:55.679 cared about the community. She cared about black people. She 0:12:56.240 --> 0:12:59.000 cared about this child even though she never knew him 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:01.480 and wanted to know him, and she cared I think 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:05.400 about what she would be leaving behind. But she was 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:08.680 very angry. I think she ricocheted between a lot of emotions. 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.120 I think she was almost making a conscious choice about 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:13.520 how to deal with this, how to be in the 0:13:13.559 --> 0:13:17.240 wake of this. So she tried anger, and she tried vindictiveness, 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.520 and she tried I think, almost mimicking Jeanette and kind 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.280 of being out of control and letting her emotions fly. 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:26.480 But in the end, my mother was a decorous and 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:32.600 decent person who preferred a contemplative life. We'll be back 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:44.240 in a moment with more family secrets. Emily's mom dies 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:47.600 at the age of seventy. She had struggled all her 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:52.360 life with depression, the blues, and she felt humiliated by 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:54.320 the role she had been forced to play in her church, 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:58.760 her community, that of the spurned wife. She also had 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:03.559 trouble breathing and suffer from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. By 0:14:03.600 --> 0:14:05.960 the end of her life, she was really a shut in, 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:11.200 a recluse, and all during her mother's decline, Emily begins 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.600 her life as an adult. She gets her doctorate, starts 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:18.960 to teach. Eventually she meets her husband and becomes the 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:21.960 mother of twin daughters. What must it have been like 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:26.520 to carry the weight of all that history, Well, my 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.520 mother was my first concern, and I think this was 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:32.880 true for my brother's as well. Um I never wrestled 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.360 with how I really felt about it. I had a 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:37.600 lot of rage toward my father, and we did not 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:39.560 have an easy relationship, and this was the icing on 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.920 the cake, and I buried that rage. It was very 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:46.080 hard for me to beat around him physically, and there 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:52.760 was just thick and unspoken distance between us. We both 0:14:52.840 --> 0:14:55.280 knew why we never spoke of it. He never talked 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:57.400 to me about Janette, never spoke her name, He never 0:14:57.440 --> 0:14:59.720 spoke Lee's name in my presence. He talked to my 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:02.080 brother is more about it. But I think I was 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:03.880 the girl. And also I was in rage with him, 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.560 and he felt my judgment and it scared him, so 0:15:07.800 --> 0:15:11.160 we never spoke about it. I was angry at her 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:15.360 sometimes for letting this break her. I needed to believe 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:17.480 she had choices because I was growing up and I 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:21.240 wanted to have choices. I hated to see her beaten 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:24.120 down by this man because it had not been an 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:27.160 easy marriage. She would always counsel me to make a 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.320 different kind of choice when I get married. So that 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:32.600 was the idea that my life would be sort of 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:37.840 corrective to what she was experiencing. But it tore it 0:15:37.920 --> 0:15:41.240 me watching her decline. She didn't want my help. She 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:44.440 actually disappeared into the marriage even deeper. My father took 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.000 care of her, and he administered all of her medications. 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:51.720 All the while. Emily isn't just contending with her sadness 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:55.400 and grief about her mother and her rage at her father. No, 0:15:55.800 --> 0:15:59.120 She's also dealing with the spectra of Jeanette, who in 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:02.600 some way she blames for the whole thing. Whenever I'd 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:07.080 see her, I would feel homicidal. I mean really, I 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:10.960 learned about anger from my experience with this woman. Because 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:16.280 she was whittling my mother away. Myself was ricocheting between 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.080 a lot of different emotions, and it was easier to 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:21.840 bury them, to stay buried in the New England, and 0:16:22.120 --> 0:16:24.080 then to remind as far away as I could get 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.560 from them and stay in the United States. I didn't 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:31.960 allow myself, I think, to confront what I felt my father, 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:35.920 even though he had done such damage, he still ruled 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:38.640 the roost. He was a king and we were subjects. 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.040 I never would have been able to conceive of even 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:46.600 bringing this woman's name up to him. It was out 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:50.000 of the question. She would be at our church. She 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:51.800 would come up to me, I mean she again, this 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:56.040 woman obeyed no conventional boundaries, and she would talk to 0:16:56.080 --> 0:16:59.240 me about my family. And there was one moment when Isabella, 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:03.080 my utter, who was just a very sweet child, and 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:05.800 she came up and said, oh, Isabella's gotten so much bigger, 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:08.679 And Isabella went in to hug her because she was 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:12.119 responding to the tone of her voice, and I just 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.359 put my hand in Isabella's back. And I went home 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:19.040 that day from church and I heard my father on 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.439 the phone saying, and these low, soft tones, well, you 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:26.080 have to be the bigger person. And I knew down 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.480 to my toes like a lightning bolt. He was talking 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:31.679 to Jeanette, and then he was casting at that moment 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.280 as if I had been so rude, inexcusably rude, and 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.359 she should rise above. What it did was it just 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:43.399 kept the bottom kept falling out, the bottom kept descending, 0:17:43.480 --> 0:17:45.679 you know what I mean. There was no floor to 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:51.160 my feelings of disappointment and my father and I still 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:53.679 needed a father, I mean, I still needed him to 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.080 be a person I could respect. So it was easier 0:17:57.160 --> 0:17:59.680 just to let him lie and to keep my distance. 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.879 But eventually Emily does go visit her father. She describes 0:18:04.920 --> 0:18:08.119 the trip to Nashville as a whim. She was working 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:11.080 on her book and wanted to do some research. There 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:12.880 was some journals she wanted to lay her hands on. 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:16.520 I'm still stunned by the turn of events that happened 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:22.000 now four years ago, almost exactly. It came in the 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:26.399 house and I was looking for the journal, and my 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:28.959 father came upstairs, and my mother had all these They 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.680 were all these pill bottles that were still on the 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:34.240 bathroom sink. She had died in two thousand and eight, 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:36.640 um seven years before. And I said, what are these 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:39.359 bottles doing here? And he said, you know, I just 0:18:39.480 --> 0:18:43.000 I think I'm still in love with your mother. And 0:18:43.040 --> 0:18:46.719 we hugged, and it was the most sincere and deepest 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:51.679 hug that we'd had in many years, maybe since I 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:54.600 was a child. He was not comfortable really with a 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:56.320 lot of touching, so he was even a little but 0:18:56.359 --> 0:19:00.280 I kept him close, and I noticed at that moment 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:04.359 that in my heart I received those words purely and 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:07.680 without the usual sarcasm I felt. And I'm so grateful 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:10.320 that those are the last words we spoke, because the 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:13.560 next morning he was dead, and my father was in 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.320 perfect health. He'd never been sick of day in his life. 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:21.399 Amazing the way sometimes we're given a gift, even in 0:19:21.440 --> 0:19:25.439 the midst of great pain, a hug, a moment between 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:28.040 a father and a daughter. Who what was it? The 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:31.920 therapist once told Emily weren't a good fit as parent 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:36.000 and child. After her father's death, Emily reaches out to 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:39.840 the relatively new reverend from her family's church, Reverend Cynthia. 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:44.520 Her father had been gone for only hours. His body 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:46.439 was still seated in the chair where he was stricken 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:49.680 by the massive heart attack. Reverend Cynthia comes to the 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:53.720 Bernard at home. She performs a beautiful ritual and anoints 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.760 Emily's father's body with oil. And we said that my 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:00.800 father is sitting in the chair, and tell her everything. 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:04.640 And she knew everything. And she told me the situation 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:08.000 between my father and the Curries had been the biggest 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:11.080 drift in her congregation. She was pretty new to the church. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.320 My father was mentoring her. He was trying to introduce 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:17.439 her to the kind of social infocacies at our church 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:22.880 and help her become adjusted to the life at our church. 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:26.560 And she was trying to make things right. But there 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.000 are people who could not forgive my father. And that 0:20:29.119 --> 0:20:30.719 was the first time I knew that people actually had 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:35.400 been my mother's side. But during the course of their conversation, 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:40.760 Emily makes another painful discovery. Despite the bottles of her 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:45.359 mom's prescription medication, despite her dad's confession that he still 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:48.719 was in love with her, he still had remained intensely 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:54.040 involved with Jeanette Curry, Jeanette's husband, children and grandchildren, but 0:20:54.400 --> 0:20:58.080 not as a romantic partner. And I found out that 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:01.280 my father he was eating every meal at Jeanette's house. 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:05.719 Her grandchildren called him Grandpa. She and her husband had 0:21:05.720 --> 0:21:08.080 a child, and then she and your father had a child, 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:13.720 and this somehow coexisted as some version of modern family. Absolutely, 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:16.040 I often think when I understood it when I read 0:21:16.080 --> 0:21:18.560 The Color Purple, I think I was in college and 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:21.040 at the end of that novel, Mr and she could 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:24.160 cause Sally so much pain. But they were sitting together 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:25.560 on the on the porch, and I think they were 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:28.280 knitting or doing something, all three of them. And that 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:31.840 was the situation between my father and Jeanette and her family. 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:34.879 They were survivors of a war, and it was a 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:36.520 war of their own making, but it was a war 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:39.720 all the same, and they lived together. Really, my father 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:41.960 would go over to their house, he every meal there. 0:21:42.680 --> 0:21:46.040 If this man is never gonna stop disappointing me, how 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:48.119 could he have a relationship with this family after what 0:21:48.160 --> 0:21:51.920 they did to my mother? But he did. He took 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:54.879 Jeanette's grandchildren to church, to school, He helped them with 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:56.960 their homework, something he never did with my brother. My 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:59.080 brothers and I think were surprised because he was a 0:21:59.080 --> 0:22:03.399 different person of them. He was an active grandfather. He 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:06.840 and Jeannette had more of a relationship of equals. They 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:10.480 would argue. He never argued with my mother. My mother 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:13.440 never would have questioned him. She was quote unquote the 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:15.960 perfect wife. You know, That's that's who she was. She 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:18.399 was living out of some magazine, I mean, and it 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:20.560 wasn't fake, you know, it was sincere. She was just 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:24.119 someone who believed that the husband was at the head 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:25.840 of the family. I mean, I think there's half of 0:22:25.840 --> 0:22:28.280 her that really questioned that. But again, she had been 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:30.760 groomed for a certain kind of adult life. But he 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:36.840 Intoett were sparring partners. Um she confronted him with his 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:39.280 hypocrisy in a way my mother I don't think she 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:42.760 really would have ever felt comfortable doing that. He was 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:45.000 nurtured in that family, and he was seen in that 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:47.159 family in a way that he was not seen in 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:50.560 our family. He was himself there in a way that 0:22:50.600 --> 0:22:52.240 he could not be with me. I think in my 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:55.840 brother's and my mother, I learned also that he he 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:58.720 was trying to in some ways I think repent and 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:02.680 he and Jeanette would go into you know, laurencome neighborhoods, 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.160 the projects, if you will, and proselytize and bring Bibles 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:08.280 and try to convert people. I mean, I always had 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.119 always on who's very religious. He grew up in the 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:14.040 Anglican Church in Trinidad. It was very obedient in that way. 0:23:14.760 --> 0:23:17.040 But I mean, I'm still trying to understand this and 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:19.560 reconciled this portrait with the person I grew up with. 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.120