Russell Banks - The Darling

For years, Mother and Daddy and I relied on go-betweens, people in the Movement or Weatherman who, to the best of our knowledge, were not being followed or tracked by the FBI. From Mother’s point of view, no news from me was not necessarily bad news. It left her free to fantasize that, in spite of appearances, everything was actually hunky-dory, as if I were living on a hippie commune somewhere in Oregon and “going through a stage.” I never sent messages to the house or Daddy’s office at the clinic. From time to time, maybe once every three or four months, I did leave word with one or another of Daddy’s lawyers or his literary agent in New York, messages that I hoped would provide some small comfort to my parents without at the same time putting them or me at risk. I’d say to a receptionist or an answering machine, “Please tell Doctor and Mrs. Musgrave that their daughter is safe and in good health,” and then hang up.

Mother and Daddy, a lot has changed in me since I left the U.S. Not my underlying political beliefs, Daddy, I’m sorry to say, although you’ll be happy to know that I have pretty much separated myself from Weatherman and have no contacts with them anymore. That’s a whole other story, which I hope to be able to tell you someday in person. But something that’s possibly even deeper in me than politics has been changed. My mentality? My underlying temperament? I don’t know. But for the first time in my adult life I’m not part of a movement, I’m not a member of a group or organization dedicated to political and social change. I’m alone. Wholly alone. And it’s a little bit weird for me. A lot weird, actually, and I can see that it’s changing me in unpredictable ways. Who knows, Mother, I may turn up one of these days with a husband and a baby asking to swap recipes and gardening tips. No, not likely — just teasing. Actually, there is a man here with whom I’ve become seriously involved, but there’s nothing about the relationship that I need to burden you with, not just yet anyhow, if ever. Trust that he’s a good man, however, very kind and helpful to me.

In the months since I’d arrived in Africa, the literal physical distance between me and my parents had grown so great that for the first time in years I found myself unable to imagine their daily lives, and I think that’s what made me suddenly want so badly to communicate with them. Somehow, even though back in the States we’d been unable to speak or safely write to one another, as long as we were located close enough to get to one another in a matter of hours if need be, I’d been able to imagine Daddy and Mother going through their usual day-to-day activities and not feel especially worried about them. Once in a while I’d catch an item about Daddy in the news — his arrest at an antiwar protest with a dozen other distinguished citizens, people like William Sloan Coffin and Arthur Miller and the Berrigan brothers, an interview or essay under his byline in The Nation or The New Republic , his appearance on TV as a McGovern delegate at the ’72 Democratic Convention, and so on. Sometimes an item showed up on the book pages or in the culture section of the New York Times , usually having more to do with his liberal politics and exemplary personal life than his best-selling books. I could tell that, through it all, Mother was still playing her lifelong role as the loyal, selfless Wife of the Great Man. She was occasionally photographed at his side, although during those post — Civil Rights years when he was seen arm in arm with like-minded, earnest white men of a certain age and position, if a woman other than my mother was present, she was usually a famous folk singer.

Now, however, with no access here in Africa to those reassuring, though distant, glimpses of my parents, I had begun to worry about them. I fretted mainly about their health. They were in their sixties, and back then, in my mid-thirties, that seemed elderly to me. With no clear prohibitions against my contacting them by mail, I had on several occasions sat down to write them a letter. But I didn’t know who they were anymore; nor was I sure of who I was. So what on earth could I say to them?

What else can I tell you that won’t take pages and pages? It feels so strange writing to you like this. I wish I could tell you about the country and the people, about my life here and about how I came to be here in the first place, but I’m not sure how to say it yet. Just know that I love and miss you both very much, that I’m all right and in good health, mentally as well as physically, and that I feel safe here.

Better to say nothing, I decided, and again and again tore up the letter and put away my pen. Until that evening when I returned from my first visit to Fuama. I sat down at the table in my cottage, and by the light of a kerosene lamp — the electric power was off, and Woodrow still hadn’t been able to locate a working generator for the compound — began finally to write my letter.

Write me back, if this letter reaches you. If yours reach me I’ll let you know by return mail, and then we’ll once again be in touch, after so long, too long, all these months and years. I hope you know how grateful I am for the way you both have stood by me throughout those years, even though out of necessity we’ve had to remain at such a distance. I’m sure it’s been difficult for you, especially since our political beliefs, though they overlapped, never quite matched. But despite everything, they are not lost years. I know that my actions and their consequences have been hard on you, painful and frightening, and I often wish that it could have been different. I love you both and always have, and I think of you all the time, even way out here in deepest Africa.

Love ,

Hannah

The impulse to write my parents satisfied, I mailed the letter and quickly forgot about it. Then, two weeks later, I was leafing through the day’s mail, the usual packet of lab reports from the NYU administrators of the project, who still seemed to think of me as their field agent, someone who could make sense of the charts, graphs, and statistics they’d derived from the blood samples I’d shipped them months earlier and who was therefore eager to read them, along with the odd jumble of official Liberian government pamphlets and studies financed by the UN and USAID and distributed to every agency in the Liberian government, regardless of its area of expertise and responsibility or lack thereof. From the day of my arrival at the lab, I had not read more than the opening paragraph of any of these reports and had simply dumped them unopened into the trash for burning later. But this time a stiff, white, business-size envelope fell out of a report on the practicalities of developing a fish-farming industry on the St. John River. It dropped into my hand as if seeking it out.

My dear Hannah ,

How thrilling and, after so long, what a relief to receive news of you and to receive it from you directly! Your mother and I literally wept with joy when your letter arrived. I cannot begin to express the pleasure it gave us (and you may be pleased as well as surprised to know that it arrived unopened, with no evidence of its having been tampered with). I hasten, therefore, to answer it. I will be discreet and discursive, as you were, so as not to compromise your situation in any way.

I’d known at once what it was — I’d seen that envelope a thousand times before, since childhood. It bore the return address of Daddy’s clinic, his familiar letterhead, and I recognized in my name and address the typeface of his equally familiar IBM Selectric, probably typed by Ingrid, Daddy’s doe-eyed Danish assistant, and I thought, Damn him, he can’t even write my name and address by himself and in his own handwriting, he has to dictate the letter on his little tape recorder, probably on a plane to Houston or someplace, and on his return have that poor, lovelorn sad-sack, Ingrid Andersen, type it out and leave it on his desk for his signature. She’ll even fold and seal the letter and lick the stamps for him. Suddenly I was sorry that I had written my letter and wanted to toss his into the trash. It was stupid of me to have contacted Daddy and Mother, stupid and self-indulgent and sentimental, and now I’d pay the price, and the price was having to open and read my father’s answer.