Barbara Delinsky: The Family Tree

Dana knew she was probably imagining it – infants couldn’t really focus – but she could have sworn the baby was looking at her as if she knew that Dana was her mother, would love her forever, would guard her with her life .

The baby had a delicate little nose and pink mouth, and an every-bit-as-delicate chin. Dana peered under the pink cap. The baby’s hair was still damp, but it was definitely dark – with wispy little curls, lots of little curls, which was a surprise. Both she and Hugh had straight hair.

‘Where did she get these?’

‘Beats me,’ Hugh said, sounding suddenly alarmed. ‘But look at her skin.’

‘It’s so smooth.’

‘It’s so dark .’ He raised fear-filled eyes toward the doctor. ‘Is she all right? I think she’s turning blue.’

Dana’s heart nearly stopped. She hadn’t seen any blue, but given the speed with which the baby was snatched from them and checked, she barely breathed herself until the staff pediatrician had done a thorough exam, given the baby a resoundingly high Apgar score, and pronounced her a hearty, healthy seven pounds.

No, her skin wasn’t blue, Dana decided when Lizzie was back in her arms. Nor, though, was it the pale pink she had expected. Her face had a coppery tint that was as lovely as it was puzzling. Curious, she eased the blanket aside to uncover a tiny arm. The skin there was the same light brown, all the more marked in contrast to the pale white nails at the tips of her fingers.

‘Who does she look like?’ Dana murmured, mystified.

‘Not a Clarke,’ Hugh said. ‘Not a Joseph. Maybe someone on your father’s side of the family?’

Dana couldn’t say. She knew her father’s name, but little else.

‘She looks healthy,’ she reasoned.

‘I didn’t read anything about skin being darker at birth.’

‘Me, neither. She looks tanned.’

‘More than tanned. Look at her palms, Dee. They’re lighter, like her fingernails.’

‘She looks Mediterranean.’

‘No. Not Mediterranean.’

‘Indian?’

‘Not that, either. Dana, she looks black .’

2

Hugh hoped he was being facetious. He and Dana were white. Their baby couldn’t be black.

Still, standing there in the delivery room, scrutinizing the infant in Dana’s arms, he felt a tremor of fear. Lizzie’s skin was a whole lot darker than any other Clarke baby he had ever seen, and he had seen plenty of those. Clarkes took pride in their offspring, as evidenced by the flood of holiday pictures from relatives each year. His brother had four children, all of the pale white Anglo-Saxon type, their first cousins had upward of sixteen. Not a single one was dark.

Hugh was a lawyer. He spent his days arguing facts, and, in this case, there were none to suggest that his baby should be anything but Caucasian. He had to be imagining it – had to be blowing things out of proportion. And who could blame him? He was tired. He had been late coming to bed after watching the Sox play Oakland, then awake an hour later and keyed up ever since. But boy, he wouldn’t have missed a minute of that delivery. Watching the baby come out – cutting the cord – it didn’t get much better than that. Talk about emotional highs!

Now, though, he felt oddly deflated. This was his child – his family, his genes. She was supposed to look familiar.

He had read about what babies went through getting out of the womb, and had been prepared to see a pointy head, blotchy skin, or even bruises. This baby’s head was round and her skin perfect.

But she didn’t have the fine, straight hair or widow’s peak that marked the Clarke babies, or Dana’s blond coloring and blue eyes.

She looked like a stranger.

Maybe this was a natural letdown after months of buildup. Maybe it was what the books meant about not always loving your baby on sight. She was an individual. She would grow to have her own likes and dislikes, her own strengths, her own temperament, all of which might be totally different from Dana’s and his.

He did love her. She was his child. She just didn’t look it.

That said, she was his responsibility. So he followed the nurse when she took the baby to the nursery, and he watched through the window while the staff put drops in her eyes and gave her a real sponge bath.

Her skin still seemed coppery. If anything, juxtaposed with a pale pink blanket and hat, it was more marked than before.

The nurses seemed oblivious to the skin tone. Biracial marriages were common. These women didn’t know that Hugh’s wife was white. Moreover, there were far darker infants in the nursery. By comparison to some, Elizabeth Ames Clarke was light-skinned.

Clinging to that thought, he returned to Dana’s room and began making calls. She was right about his parents’ wanting a boy – having had two boys themselves, they were partial to children who passed on the name – but they were excited by his news, as was his brother, and by the time he called Dana’s grandmother, he was feeling better.

Eleanor Joseph was a remarkable woman. After losing her daughter and her husband in tragic accidents four years apart, she had raised her granddaughter alone, and through it all she built a thriving business. Its official name was The Stitchery, though no one ever called it anything but Ellie Jo’s.

Prior to meeting Dana, Hugh knew next to nothing about yarn, much less the people who used it. He still couldn’t even remember what SKP was, though Dana had explained it to him more than once. But he could appreciate the warmth of his favorite alpaca scarf, which she had hand-knit and which was more handsome than anything he had seen in a store – and he could feel the appeal of the yarn shop. During these final weeks of Dana’s pregnancy, as she cut back on her own work, she spent more time there. He dropped in often, ostensibly to check on his pregnant wife, but also to enjoy the calm atmosphere. When a client was lying to him, or an associate botched a brief, or a judge ruled against him, he found that the yarn store offered a respite.

Maybe it was the locale. What could be better than overlooking an apple orchard? More likely, though, Hugh sensed, it was the people. Dana didn’t need her husband checking up on her when she was at the shop. The place was a haven for women who cared. Many of those women had been through childbirth themselves. And they showed their feelings. He had walked in on conversations having to do with sex, and it struck him that knitting was an excuse. These women gave each other something that was missing from their lives.

And Ellie Jo led the way. Genuine to the extreme, she was delighted when he told her they had a girl, and began to cry when he told her the name. Tara Saxe, Dana’s best friend, did the same.

He called his two law partners – the Calli and Kohn of Calli, Kohn, and Clarke – and called his secretary, who promised to pass the news on to the associates. He called David, their neighbor. He called a handful of other friends, called his brother and the two Clarke cousins with whom he was closest.

Then Dana was wheeled back to the room, wanting to know what the baby was doing and when she could have her back. She wanted to talk herself with her grandmother and Tara, though both were already on their way.

Hugh’s parents arrived first. Though it was barely nine in the morning, they were impeccably dressed, his father in a navy blazer and rep tie, his mother in Chanel. Hugh had never seen either of them looking disheveled.

They brought a large vase filled with hydrangea. ‘From the yard,’ his mother said unnecessarily, since hydrangea was her gift for any occasion that occurred from midsummer to first frost. Chattering on about the good fortune that this year’s batch contained more whites than blues, for a girl, she passed Hugh the vase and offered her cheek for a kiss, then did the same to Dana. Hugh’s father gave them both surprisingly vigorous hugs before looking expectantly around.