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“He was so sweet then. He talked to me and held me and even tried to cook sumpin’, but I had to take the kitchen away. After that we drove down to DC and I applied for a passport and we flew to London. That’s when we became lovers. I didn’t tell him that I had his baby for a year after he came back to Brooklyn.”

“So, Twyla really is his?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“If all this happened like you say, then why didn’t Twyla stay with you?”

“I had a little mental problem there for a while. I mean I was pretty crazy, and so he—he came and took Twyla and put her with Mara. He didn’t tell me it was her she was with, just that she was in a good place, a safe place, and that he didn’t want me to be with her no more. He was afraid that I’d go crazy again and hurt our child.”

“But you met Mara. Why would he think that you couldn’t see Twyla?”

“I moved up here to Mount Kisco about twenty-eight years ago. He sent me money. And one day his wife called me.”

“Connie?” I asked after reaching for the name.

“She told me where Twyla was at. She knew what was goin’ on. She knew, and even though she was hella jealous, she’d never keep a child from her mother.”

“And you’ve been hiding all these years because of Lamming,” I speculated.

“Him and the police and because I wanted my daughter and her father to be safe.”

“Why would the police be after you?”

“That’s another thing. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Isn’t it taking a chance for you to be performing even if it is under another name?”

“It is, but… I have to sing. I need it. It’s the only way I don’t lose my mind.”

14.

WE TALKED ALL through the night. She told me about the half-life she lived, under the heavy shadow of Melton Lamming’s assault, about how Arman’s wife, Connie, went through his pockets every night when he fell into bed in the early hours of the morning, smelling of stale tobacco smoke, liquor, perfume, and sometimes the odor of spent gunpowder. Connie knew about Dalia, Twyla, and Mara Macintosh. She knew about Aurilia Fox.

“Connie found out about other things too,” Aurilia/Dalia explained, talking about Arman Babylon’s long-dead wife. “She had taken her vows for better or worse and kept her own counsel in their Montclair, New Jersey home. She even came to visit me a couple’a times. The first was at a jazz venue. After that she came up to Mount Kisco. She had figured out what had happened between me and her husband, and she forgave me. That woman carried the weight of a love that I wouldn’t’a been able to bear, even though we were both with the same man.”

The story was reminiscent of an afternoon soap opera that had been on the air since Dalia and I were both children.

“You see?” she said by way of explanation at the end of the long tale. “We just did the best we could.”

“Uh-huh. So, where’s Twyla now?”

“She takin’ some time off.”

“Off from what?”

“Things got kinda tough on her after she turned thirteen. She got sad—mad, too.”

“What happened then?”

“That’s when Mara introduced her to me.”

“And told her that you were her mother?”

“No. I said that I knew her mother but that she had died.”

“Why not tell her the truth?”

“Mara and I thought that it was best. She was a child and didn’t need all that weight on her young mind. I mean, what was she gonna do in between her mother’s rape and her bein’ abandoned by her own blood?”