Nine months after the blizzard three children were born that altered the lives and futures two white families. Well, three families actually, three families if one includes the ****** formed by the two white newlyweds whose bride gave birth to their first born child that was...black.
Within one week of the white newly wed’s receiving their black child, the unwed younger sister of the newlywed’s husband gave birth to a black child. Of the three young white girls who gave birth, only the white wife’s sister gave birth to a white baby. That white baby was the biological child of her brother in law, the husband of her older sister.
All of these unusual events came out of the crossing of paths of two white families and a black traveler to whom one of the families gave shelter. No one remembered the name of the black traveler, nor did they notice his license number of his car or obtain any other identification. His hasty departure after the storm lifted, he was on important business, and the passage of nine months before the consequences of his presence were known, made his identity a great riddle.
The truth, the truth was that none of the girls wanted to find him and their parents only wanted their black children placed for immediate adoption. The less said about their biological "father", the better. Traditional white parents and extended white ****** slowly distanced themselves from her. her husband and their black child. The ****** would never live down the disgrace of black grandchildren that were the result of illicit, carnal behavior with an anonymous black lover.
To what end to know his name, to know who he was? Would they invite him to ****** functions? To Thanksgiving? To Christmas? Hardly likely. The humiliation would be unendurable. The presence of his biological black children was enough pain to bear.
Would they sue for paternity? For child support?
The shame, the humiliation of a public record of these events, in a public court room, would have forced them out of the county, perhaps even out of the state. Even changing their names and moving far away would not have helped.
Of course the white baby of the married girl’s younger sister was another matter. At least the baby was white. At least its mother had shown the decency to refuse to identify her own brother in law as the father. Of course there was no real doubt. The timing of the births and the events leading up to them established the identity of the white biological father of her white child as undisputable. The father of her white child was her older sister's husband and the father of her older sister's black baby was an unknown black stranger.
The birth of a child to a girl’s younger sister, a child fathered by her own husband, put enormous strain on their relationship with each other. They got alone well until after their births. The oldest sister assumed her child was fathered by her white boyfriend and that it would be white. They’d planned to get married anyway and their premarital pregnancy just hurried things along. Hasty marriages after pregnancies were an old tradition actually. If the couple married and started a ******, premarital dalliances were forgotten and life moved on.
Unfortunately, her baby was black. The white man she'd mistakenly thought was its father and with whom she'd rushed into a hasty marriage, had no biological connection whatever to her black child.
Life moved on after these three births but nothing was ever the same. Nothing is ever the same under normal circumstances, but these were hardly normal.
The young husband treated his black acknowledged child far differently than the white unacknowledged child of his young sister in law. Why should he have treated his wife’s black bastard off spring differently than his biological white child from the younger sister? It was his sister in law whom he really loved and whose white child was really really his.
Often he reflected on the whole thing. If he’d just stayed out of bed with the oldest sister. If he just hadn’t slept with her. He’d fallen out of love with her and been drawn to her younger sister for a long time actually.
If he’d stayed out of bed with the older sister, he’d never have felt or acknowledged responsibility for her black baby and her race mixing with a black lover, a lover whose real name she doesn’t even remember, would not be his cross to bear, his humiliation to endure.
Why hadn’t he just stayed away from that house? Why hadn’t he just waited until the parents returned? So what if the phone went out. That kind of thing happened frequently in heavy storms. The ancient stone house had weathered hundreds of blizzards in its long existence, most of which was before telephones or electric lights were even invented. That ancient old house. A rock of the ages. It would outlive all of them, it would outlive their shame and their pain.
If he'd only stayed away, neither his wife nor his own kid sister would have delivered black babies. It was bad enough when the oldest ******** announced her pregnancy and they thought it was his. His own sister's pregnancy, however, was a different matter. Even before the birth of his sister's black baby, he suspected who the baby's father had to be. It had to have been the black stranger who made her pregnant.
He'd often wanted to pull his sister aside and force her to tell him what happened, how it happened, how she was pregnant by a black stranger. He drew back, weak and afraid and knowing he would only draw attention to his own actions behind closed doors and drawn curtains in the semi-darkness of flickering candles. He had as much to answer for as his sister, perhaps more.
How many scandals had that old house weathered over the centuries? How many families living there had errant ********* that produced illicit babies, as the result of unwed, sexually charged young people? Were any of them black? There was no record of slaves on the grounds or being slaves being owned by the ancient families, but who knew? Were his wife’s child and own white sister’s bastard offspring the first results of interracial passions in the darkness in stolen moments with unbridled passions behind cold doors?
None of the elders had ever really pressed the point or asked pointed questions of how things happened, at least not in the open. Behind closed doors, however, things were hotly discussed. Fingers were pointed and blame was assigned, as it always is in these circumstances.
What if the parents hadn’t left their ********* all alone for a week? What if their ********* had refused admission to the black traveler who fathered two children. Wasn’t it enough they gave him shelter from the storm? What if their ********* had remained faithful to the teachings of a life time and guarded their chastity and virginity, had respected the importance of waiting for marriage to produce children?
Of course it didn’t help that the white father had impregnated the other ******’s youngest ******** and that his own white sister was pregnant by the black stranger. Any black grandchild was a disaster, but that their ******** bore a black baby made things even more painful. At least their son and his white ******** would move out of the house and establish their own home to raise their black baby. Their ******** and her black baby were sill living at home and their presence put unendurable strain on the house.
The ****** of the three ********* also had a single mother at home, but the baby was white and that was different. No more did they rejoice in flipping through ****** photograph albums that spanned decades, beginning with the invention of photography, at least consumer photography and mass produced so called “box cameras,” so popular for so long. How many millions of families documented their ****** history with the old ‘box cameras”, so primitive and clumsy by modern standards, yet at the same time taking black and white pictures of surprisingly good quality.
So many ****** pictures of get together, of holidays, of birth days, new births. New births!
Now every other ****** group picture would have their race mixing white ********* holding their black children. Now ****** pictures taken over decades would not record their happiness but their shame and their pain. At first it would just be young mothers holding infants, whose identity and race was undiscernable at so young an age. Of course those children would grow up, would be photographed and would recognized as unmistakably black. Black children among all the rest of their white ******. Several ****** members silently resolved never to take a group picture again, ending a decades old ****** tradition of ****** pictures.
Attending church was another nightmare. Both families were traditional, salt of the earth type people for whom regular church attendance was a tradition that was immutable. After the birth of their babies, however, it became unbearable. Unwed pregnant teenagers were as old as the human condition and as long as the boy married the girl and did the right thing it was regarded as one of the trials and tribulations of life. But unwed white girls with black babies, and worst of all, a newly white married couple with a black baby...all in two families, two families that were pillars of the church and pillars of moral authority.
How different if all the babies were white. The white baby of the white young marrieds would naturally be assumed to be theirs. Of course the problem with the newly wed white husband impregnating his wife’s younger sister would present complications, but at least it could have been ridden out.
Why didn’t they place them for adoption? Why did they have to keep their black babies and now they showed up at church with them. Wasn’t their own private pain enough? Why did they have to tar the whole church, the entire congregation with their iniquity? Thank God the got the hint and quickly stopped coming to church, at least with their black offspring. Thank God!
Of course nothing, nothing except the passage of time, would erase the embarrassment and shame of the birth of the newly wed’s first ...black...child. The hasty marriage after her becoming pregnant was not that big a deal, but everyone was notified of the date of the expectant’s birth and everyone celebrated. A huge party, a large dinner was planned as soon as the young mother was able to leave the hospital and recover from the birth of her first born. There would be parties and the child would be baptized into the church.
Then it happened. The news went through the congregation like a virus. The baby was black! The reaction to that news was invariably received with widened, unbelieving eyes and a stark silence. Before, their two families had been very popular at their church No more. Now they were pariahs.
As if nothing more could go wrong, the ****** of the three sisters received a notice of foreclosure on their beloved old house. They’d only bought it a few years before actually. Acquired by their father at a foreclosure sale for pennies on the dollar, The owners were new, but the house, the ancient stone colonial manor house, was regarded as an historical relic of the community, timeless, permanent, indestructible. Even if old buildings were indestructible, their inhabitants are not.
Good economies and good times are not indestructible either. They’re seasonal. They’re cyclical.
Although the old house had been acquired for pennies on the dollar, its new owner had borrowed heavily to refurbish it, to modernize it. Now his business fortunes turned, and the economy took a turn for the worse. Moreover, the private party from whom he’d borrowed was an old man, a patriarch at the church. He had passed away. Now the loan he held on the house, and on other houses owned by church members, were the property of his estate his estate that was being distributed to the heirs pursuant to his will. He was widowed and childless, at least as far as everyone knew. . Everyone wondered, who were his heirs? Distant cousins? Perhaps unacknowledged children? Perhaps even unacknowledged grandchildren.
The congregation buzzed. Of course he had a huge memorial service, well attended by people throughout the county and even the state. No man was more respected for his strength of character, his generosity, his Christian piety, his Christian charity, his Christian faith. He was a pillar of his ******, a pillar of his community, a pillar of his church. Person after person spoke of his faith, his generosity, his role as a moral leader of the church and the community.
Now he was dead and now notices of foreclosure were being mailed out by the executor of his estate. Perhaps the heirs were not so steeped in Christian charity as he had been. There was a sense of quiet rage that swept through the congregation as news of the executor’s actions against church members were occurring. Surely he would have forgiven the debts in his will? Some people naively thought that if he died before the debts were paid, the debts and the obligation to repay the loans, would die and be buried with him.
The newspapers reported a hearing on the estate was noticed in the County court house and debtors. The hearing was a formality at which nothing substantive was scheduled so only lawyers and the executor planned to attend. They could read in the papers the name of the heir so no reason to go to court. They'd learn who he...or she...was soon enough.
The case was called first and one of the well known lawyers appeared, representing the executor of the estate.
“I understand the will has one named beneficiary. Is that correct counsel?”
“That’s correct your honor. He was the grandchild of the decedent.”
“Is he present in court?”
“Yes you’re honor.” The lawyer turned, “Please come forward.”
A hush came over the courtroom as the tall, well dressed man walked to the front of the courtroom and identified himself to the court. The judge winced, visibly taken aback but maintaining his composure.
“Are you represented by counsel young man?”
“No your honor. I’d like to ask, respectfully ask, for more time, a brief continuance perhaps.”
The judge cleared his throat, obviously unsure of how to proceed.
“We have no objection,” the lawyer for the executor hastened to add. "A continuance is fine for us."
“Sure,” the judge responded. “How about ninety days?”
“That would be fine your honor. Thank you. I'll give notice," concluded the lawyer for the executor.
Other than for the sounds of papers and files being gathered up and briefcases snapping shut and lawyers turning to walk away from the counsel table, the court room was momentarily silent.
“Next case,” the court clerk announced in his robotic, monotone. "No. 2 on the morning probate calendar. Counsel please step forward."
Outside the courthouse, TV cameras were waiting. The decedent was a prominent man in town. He owned half of it and his death was widely covered. Although details of the proceedings, sparse as they were would be published in the next day’s paper, the real impact came later that night on the five o’clock news when the heir of a white man, beloved in the community and never known to have produced children, was interviewed by TV reporters on the courthouse steps.
The whole county watched the local news almost every day, but in no households did the heir's appearance create more of an impact than in the three households so powerfully altered in the last year and a half. The heir who would inherit millions of dollars in cash and real property would also inherit the mortgages on the three households...was the black stranger who briefly sought shelter from the storm and , who disappeared just as suddenly as he’d appeared. A stranger to tens of thousands of viewers, he was instantly recognized by the two white girls who had delivered his black babies, by the young white father who was married to one of them and by his white sister in law, who had delivered his own unacknowledged out of wedlock white baby.
Within one week of the white newly wed’s receiving their black child, the unwed younger sister of the newlywed’s husband gave birth to a black child. Of the three young white girls who gave birth, only the white wife’s sister gave birth to a white baby. That white baby was the biological child of her brother in law, the husband of her older sister.
All of these unusual events came out of the crossing of paths of two white families and a black traveler to whom one of the families gave shelter. No one remembered the name of the black traveler, nor did they notice his license number of his car or obtain any other identification. His hasty departure after the storm lifted, he was on important business, and the passage of nine months before the consequences of his presence were known, made his identity a great riddle.
The truth, the truth was that none of the girls wanted to find him and their parents only wanted their black children placed for immediate adoption. The less said about their biological "father", the better. Traditional white parents and extended white ****** slowly distanced themselves from her. her husband and their black child. The ****** would never live down the disgrace of black grandchildren that were the result of illicit, carnal behavior with an anonymous black lover.
To what end to know his name, to know who he was? Would they invite him to ****** functions? To Thanksgiving? To Christmas? Hardly likely. The humiliation would be unendurable. The presence of his biological black children was enough pain to bear.
Would they sue for paternity? For child support?
The shame, the humiliation of a public record of these events, in a public court room, would have forced them out of the county, perhaps even out of the state. Even changing their names and moving far away would not have helped.
Of course the white baby of the married girl’s younger sister was another matter. At least the baby was white. At least its mother had shown the decency to refuse to identify her own brother in law as the father. Of course there was no real doubt. The timing of the births and the events leading up to them established the identity of the white biological father of her white child as undisputable. The father of her white child was her older sister's husband and the father of her older sister's black baby was an unknown black stranger.
The birth of a child to a girl’s younger sister, a child fathered by her own husband, put enormous strain on their relationship with each other. They got alone well until after their births. The oldest sister assumed her child was fathered by her white boyfriend and that it would be white. They’d planned to get married anyway and their premarital pregnancy just hurried things along. Hasty marriages after pregnancies were an old tradition actually. If the couple married and started a ******, premarital dalliances were forgotten and life moved on.
Unfortunately, her baby was black. The white man she'd mistakenly thought was its father and with whom she'd rushed into a hasty marriage, had no biological connection whatever to her black child.
Life moved on after these three births but nothing was ever the same. Nothing is ever the same under normal circumstances, but these were hardly normal.
The young husband treated his black acknowledged child far differently than the white unacknowledged child of his young sister in law. Why should he have treated his wife’s black bastard off spring differently than his biological white child from the younger sister? It was his sister in law whom he really loved and whose white child was really really his.
Often he reflected on the whole thing. If he’d just stayed out of bed with the oldest sister. If he just hadn’t slept with her. He’d fallen out of love with her and been drawn to her younger sister for a long time actually.
If he’d stayed out of bed with the older sister, he’d never have felt or acknowledged responsibility for her black baby and her race mixing with a black lover, a lover whose real name she doesn’t even remember, would not be his cross to bear, his humiliation to endure.
Why hadn’t he just stayed away from that house? Why hadn’t he just waited until the parents returned? So what if the phone went out. That kind of thing happened frequently in heavy storms. The ancient stone house had weathered hundreds of blizzards in its long existence, most of which was before telephones or electric lights were even invented. That ancient old house. A rock of the ages. It would outlive all of them, it would outlive their shame and their pain.
If he'd only stayed away, neither his wife nor his own kid sister would have delivered black babies. It was bad enough when the oldest ******** announced her pregnancy and they thought it was his. His own sister's pregnancy, however, was a different matter. Even before the birth of his sister's black baby, he suspected who the baby's father had to be. It had to have been the black stranger who made her pregnant.
He'd often wanted to pull his sister aside and force her to tell him what happened, how it happened, how she was pregnant by a black stranger. He drew back, weak and afraid and knowing he would only draw attention to his own actions behind closed doors and drawn curtains in the semi-darkness of flickering candles. He had as much to answer for as his sister, perhaps more.
How many scandals had that old house weathered over the centuries? How many families living there had errant ********* that produced illicit babies, as the result of unwed, sexually charged young people? Were any of them black? There was no record of slaves on the grounds or being slaves being owned by the ancient families, but who knew? Were his wife’s child and own white sister’s bastard offspring the first results of interracial passions in the darkness in stolen moments with unbridled passions behind cold doors?
None of the elders had ever really pressed the point or asked pointed questions of how things happened, at least not in the open. Behind closed doors, however, things were hotly discussed. Fingers were pointed and blame was assigned, as it always is in these circumstances.
What if the parents hadn’t left their ********* all alone for a week? What if their ********* had refused admission to the black traveler who fathered two children. Wasn’t it enough they gave him shelter from the storm? What if their ********* had remained faithful to the teachings of a life time and guarded their chastity and virginity, had respected the importance of waiting for marriage to produce children?
Of course it didn’t help that the white father had impregnated the other ******’s youngest ******** and that his own white sister was pregnant by the black stranger. Any black grandchild was a disaster, but that their ******** bore a black baby made things even more painful. At least their son and his white ******** would move out of the house and establish their own home to raise their black baby. Their ******** and her black baby were sill living at home and their presence put unendurable strain on the house.
The ****** of the three ********* also had a single mother at home, but the baby was white and that was different. No more did they rejoice in flipping through ****** photograph albums that spanned decades, beginning with the invention of photography, at least consumer photography and mass produced so called “box cameras,” so popular for so long. How many millions of families documented their ****** history with the old ‘box cameras”, so primitive and clumsy by modern standards, yet at the same time taking black and white pictures of surprisingly good quality.
So many ****** pictures of get together, of holidays, of birth days, new births. New births!
Now every other ****** group picture would have their race mixing white ********* holding their black children. Now ****** pictures taken over decades would not record their happiness but their shame and their pain. At first it would just be young mothers holding infants, whose identity and race was undiscernable at so young an age. Of course those children would grow up, would be photographed and would recognized as unmistakably black. Black children among all the rest of their white ******. Several ****** members silently resolved never to take a group picture again, ending a decades old ****** tradition of ****** pictures.
Attending church was another nightmare. Both families were traditional, salt of the earth type people for whom regular church attendance was a tradition that was immutable. After the birth of their babies, however, it became unbearable. Unwed pregnant teenagers were as old as the human condition and as long as the boy married the girl and did the right thing it was regarded as one of the trials and tribulations of life. But unwed white girls with black babies, and worst of all, a newly white married couple with a black baby...all in two families, two families that were pillars of the church and pillars of moral authority.
How different if all the babies were white. The white baby of the white young marrieds would naturally be assumed to be theirs. Of course the problem with the newly wed white husband impregnating his wife’s younger sister would present complications, but at least it could have been ridden out.
Why didn’t they place them for adoption? Why did they have to keep their black babies and now they showed up at church with them. Wasn’t their own private pain enough? Why did they have to tar the whole church, the entire congregation with their iniquity? Thank God the got the hint and quickly stopped coming to church, at least with their black offspring. Thank God!
Of course nothing, nothing except the passage of time, would erase the embarrassment and shame of the birth of the newly wed’s first ...black...child. The hasty marriage after her becoming pregnant was not that big a deal, but everyone was notified of the date of the expectant’s birth and everyone celebrated. A huge party, a large dinner was planned as soon as the young mother was able to leave the hospital and recover from the birth of her first born. There would be parties and the child would be baptized into the church.
Then it happened. The news went through the congregation like a virus. The baby was black! The reaction to that news was invariably received with widened, unbelieving eyes and a stark silence. Before, their two families had been very popular at their church No more. Now they were pariahs.
As if nothing more could go wrong, the ****** of the three sisters received a notice of foreclosure on their beloved old house. They’d only bought it a few years before actually. Acquired by their father at a foreclosure sale for pennies on the dollar, The owners were new, but the house, the ancient stone colonial manor house, was regarded as an historical relic of the community, timeless, permanent, indestructible. Even if old buildings were indestructible, their inhabitants are not.
Good economies and good times are not indestructible either. They’re seasonal. They’re cyclical.
Although the old house had been acquired for pennies on the dollar, its new owner had borrowed heavily to refurbish it, to modernize it. Now his business fortunes turned, and the economy took a turn for the worse. Moreover, the private party from whom he’d borrowed was an old man, a patriarch at the church. He had passed away. Now the loan he held on the house, and on other houses owned by church members, were the property of his estate his estate that was being distributed to the heirs pursuant to his will. He was widowed and childless, at least as far as everyone knew. . Everyone wondered, who were his heirs? Distant cousins? Perhaps unacknowledged children? Perhaps even unacknowledged grandchildren.
The congregation buzzed. Of course he had a huge memorial service, well attended by people throughout the county and even the state. No man was more respected for his strength of character, his generosity, his Christian piety, his Christian charity, his Christian faith. He was a pillar of his ******, a pillar of his community, a pillar of his church. Person after person spoke of his faith, his generosity, his role as a moral leader of the church and the community.
Now he was dead and now notices of foreclosure were being mailed out by the executor of his estate. Perhaps the heirs were not so steeped in Christian charity as he had been. There was a sense of quiet rage that swept through the congregation as news of the executor’s actions against church members were occurring. Surely he would have forgiven the debts in his will? Some people naively thought that if he died before the debts were paid, the debts and the obligation to repay the loans, would die and be buried with him.
The newspapers reported a hearing on the estate was noticed in the County court house and debtors. The hearing was a formality at which nothing substantive was scheduled so only lawyers and the executor planned to attend. They could read in the papers the name of the heir so no reason to go to court. They'd learn who he...or she...was soon enough.
The case was called first and one of the well known lawyers appeared, representing the executor of the estate.
“I understand the will has one named beneficiary. Is that correct counsel?”
“That’s correct your honor. He was the grandchild of the decedent.”
“Is he present in court?”
“Yes you’re honor.” The lawyer turned, “Please come forward.”
A hush came over the courtroom as the tall, well dressed man walked to the front of the courtroom and identified himself to the court. The judge winced, visibly taken aback but maintaining his composure.
“Are you represented by counsel young man?”
“No your honor. I’d like to ask, respectfully ask, for more time, a brief continuance perhaps.”
The judge cleared his throat, obviously unsure of how to proceed.
“We have no objection,” the lawyer for the executor hastened to add. "A continuance is fine for us."
“Sure,” the judge responded. “How about ninety days?”
“That would be fine your honor. Thank you. I'll give notice," concluded the lawyer for the executor.
Other than for the sounds of papers and files being gathered up and briefcases snapping shut and lawyers turning to walk away from the counsel table, the court room was momentarily silent.
“Next case,” the court clerk announced in his robotic, monotone. "No. 2 on the morning probate calendar. Counsel please step forward."
Outside the courthouse, TV cameras were waiting. The decedent was a prominent man in town. He owned half of it and his death was widely covered. Although details of the proceedings, sparse as they were would be published in the next day’s paper, the real impact came later that night on the five o’clock news when the heir of a white man, beloved in the community and never known to have produced children, was interviewed by TV reporters on the courthouse steps.
The whole county watched the local news almost every day, but in no households did the heir's appearance create more of an impact than in the three households so powerfully altered in the last year and a half. The heir who would inherit millions of dollars in cash and real property would also inherit the mortgages on the three households...was the black stranger who briefly sought shelter from the storm and , who disappeared just as suddenly as he’d appeared. A stranger to tens of thousands of viewers, he was instantly recognized by the two white girls who had delivered his black babies, by the young white father who was married to one of them and by his white sister in law, who had delivered his own unacknowledged out of wedlock white baby.
