Recap: Hope and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Martin Henner, are driving in the middle of the night away from South Carolina to escape the KKK, which is after her father for following integration laws. They get stuck in a huge thunderstorm while on the road.
Lightening illuminated the sky like some mystical, magical creature ready to attack with its thundering voice and fiery tail. In that instant, I glimpsed something that made me tremble.
A pair of car headlights gleamed in the distance. What if it was the black car that was chasing us before?
I squeezed my eyes shut. We couldn’t drive forward in this monsoon.
“Shut the engine,” Mother said. “Turn off our lights.”
We sat waiting. My heart was thumping so hard I felt like it would explode out of my chest.
Mother squeezed my hand.
The headlights drew closer and closer. Suddenly the other car was right beside ours.
And then a man jumped out of the car and banged on our window.
Father opened the car door. “Steve. Steve. What are you doing here?”
Our chauffeur was standing in the pouring rain.
“Sir, please load everything into our car. Sarah and I are going to drive you to Pennsylvania.”
“But Steve, I can’t––”
“There’s no time to delay, sir. Please hurry. Those monsters came looking for you and – just please load everything into my car. Leave this one here. They are lookin’ for a white Caddie.”
My father and Steve had everything loaded into the trunk of his black Pontiac in a matter of minutes. Then mother led me into the car.
Sarah turned from the front and blew us kisses. She held my hand. I was crying tears of relief.
We zoomed away, leaving our white Cadillac on the side of the road.
“Sir, I’m sorry about your car, but it was just too conspicuous.”
Father, mother, and I were squished together in the back seat.
“How can we ever thank you, Steve – and Sarah. You saved us. But I don’t have the money right now––”
“Sir, please. It is our honor to help you. You went out of your way to help our people. It’s the least we could do.”
We drove on. The rain had slowed to a steady patter, and though it was still dark on this overcast morning, there was a misty promise that sunrise might come any minute and break through the dark veil. We passed farms and barns and cattle grazing, as the sun rose in weak yellow rays, laced by fog.
We hadn’t passed any cars for miles.
“We’re heading to Maine,” Sarah said. “My brother owns a restaurant there and he asked Steve to manage it.”
“That’s a great opportunity,” Father said.
“We’re happy ‘bout it but we do—” Sarah held back a sob. “We will miss being in our apartment in your home, sir, and our life in South Carolina. It’s hard that we left behind our daughter, Della, and her husband and baby, but Jeffrey’s in the Black college there and he wants to finish up his degree.”
We drove on in silence. I glanced back every once in a while, praying that there would be no car following us. Mother tried to distract me with a game of Geography. I couldn’t concentrate on the game. “Steve, how did you know where to find us?” Father asked.
There was a long pause. “Sir, they come and made a big fire in the front of your house, sir. We weren’t home, praised the L-rd. None but an empty house. They leave a message on the door. It said they want you dead, sir.”
Mother gasped. I felt anger bubble inside of me. How dare those men go near our precious house.
“We had already packed up and we just come back ’cause Sarah left some things in the apartment, and that’s when we saw the note and the burnt area from the fire. Must’a burnt all night.”
“That’s when we decided to try to find y’all on our way,” Sarah said. “We were driving North anyway. Y’all car is easy to spot and we rather spot it than any of them.”
“But we’d taken so many back roads and all,” Father said. “I still don’t see how you knew where we were.”
“Sir, I didn’t know, but I knew Route One is the main highway. The storm, I figured, would force you onto the highway. Thank the L-rd for that storm. With that much rain the back roads are too flooded.”
We all sat there, marveling at how they had found us and that we were safe. Listening to their voices droning and the steady movement of the car finally lulled me into a fitful sleep.
…
I awoke to bright sunlight. The sun had erased the fog and gray clouds, revealing a clear cerulean sky.
“It’s a good sign,” Sarah said, pointing to the sky.
We drove on for miles until we saw a sign that said welcome to Pennsylvania. I felt my stomach clench. We were almost there. What would it be like there? Would our second cousins be nice? How would my new life be?
Close to noon, we pulled up to a street filled with town houses. They were connected in pairs. The style of the houses was Tudor style. Mother commented, “The houses look nice and tidy.”
Father didn’t say anything. Everyone was unnaturally quiet. Mother kept dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.
“Are you okay?” I whispered.
She nodded slowly.
Mother had lived her whole life in a mansion. She’d gone from Grandma and Grandpa’s beautiful Victorian mansion in Charleston to our luxurious mansion. Viewing those town houses had to be a shock to her. They were so tiny compared to what she was accustomed to.
We drove down three more streets and then we came to a large park. The park looked like a forest. We pulled up to another street and passed a creek surrounded by cedars, oaks, and rows of evergreen trees. We pulled up to a corner Tudor style house that was attached to a house that looked exactly the same. The front garden was small with a patch of Tiger Lilies and one pink rose bush. In my mind’s eye, I pictured our rose garden back home with the dozens of different colored roses: lavender, red, white, yellow, and deep pink. The center of the garden back home sported a large fishpond with striped and spotted fish and a fountain with a statue of a mother duck and duckling that tricked water into the pond.
Steve stopped the car and Father and Steve began unloading our luggage. “No, Martin! I can’t!” Mother burst out.
“Charlene, we discussed this. It’s the only safe alternative for Hope and for us.”
Sarah came over and put her arm around me. “You have to be brave, Hope,” she said.
“I don’t want to do this.” Mother suddenly flung her arms around me.
“Mother, we’ll be here together. That’s the main thing,” I said.
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Hope, there’s something I have to tell you now. It’s so painful but you have to be grown up and accept this. We are not staying here with you!” Her voice was choked with sobs.
“What do you mean? We came here together. I don’t understand.” I felt my legs start to tremble. “When did you change our plan, our family’s plan?”
Father stepped towards me. “Hope, honey.” He lifted my chin up and looked me in the eye. “We love you so much. We can’t risk your safety. When you were sleeping, Steven explained that they are looking for the three of us. I so regret putting you and Mother in danger like this. If anything ever happened to you, I would never forgive myself. Steve explained that the best thing is for us to go ahead with them to Maine. There’s no KKK there and right now it’s too risky for the three of us to stay together in the car. The best thing is for you to be here where you’ll be safe. When things clear up and the leader is put behind bars, then we’ll come back for you.”
I felt like everything around me was spinning. I was too shocked to even cry. My parents were leaving me – deserting me here to fend for myself with some relative we barely knew. They were leaving.
I stamped my foot. “No!” It was the two-year old me, but I didn’t care. “YOU can’t do this to me. Mother, no. Don’t leave me!” I’d been glad to see Steve and Sarah on the road. Now I wished they’d never come.
I couldn’t stay here alone. I tried to get back into the car, but Father blocked me. “No, Hope. You have to go up to that door and knock.”
Mother was crying so hard her whole body shook. “When we are settled, we’ll find a way to contact you. This won’t be forever,” she said.
Father tried to hug me, but I backed away. I wouldn’t even look at Sarah or Steve. Sarah was crying softly and supporting Mother.
“We have to get going,” Steve whispered. “We don’t want them to catch up.”
I watched as Sarah helped Mother into the car. Father and Steve slid in and, in a matter of seconds, they had sped away. My whole life – my family – was gone. I ran after the car, but it had disappeared down the road and was already out of sight.
I trudged back to the house where my two suitcases stood outside the door. I sank down onto the stoop and burst into hysterical tears.
To be continued…
Susie Garber is the author of the newly released historical fiction novel, Flight of the Doves (Menucha Publishers, 2023), Please Be Polite (Menucha Publishers, 2022), A Bridge in Time (Menucha Publishers, 2021), Secrets in Disguise (Menucha Publishers, 2020), Denver Dreams, a novel (Jerusalem Publications, 2009), Memorable Characters…Magnificent Stories (Scholastic, 2002), Befriend (Menucha Publishers, 2013), The Road Less Traveled (Feldheim, 2015), fiction serials and features in Binah Magazine and Binyan Magazine, and “Moon Song” in Binyan (2021-2022).
