A Journey on Cane River
"Success always leaves footprints."
-
Booker T. Washington
Growing up, I knew for an absolute fact that no one on
the planet was stronger than my mother. So when she told
me stories of who she admired growing up, I paid attention.
She was clearly in awe of her grandmother Emily.
She described her grandmother as iron-willed and devilish,
physically beautiful and demanding of beauty from
others, determined to make her farmhouse in central
Louisiana a fun place to be on Sundays when family gathered,
and fanatical and unforgiving about the responsibilities
generated from family ties.
My mother drew parallels between her grandmother
Emily and Jacqueline Kennedy. "Emily was class," she
would say, describing her physical attributes: her long,
graceful neck, her tiny, tiny waist. "Emily was class, Emily
was elegant, just like Jackie."
How my mother came by this first-name familiarity
with the president's wife I couldn't begin to imagine, but
as I grew older and listened carefully to other stories
about my great-grandmother Emily that was the least of
my bafflement. The pieces wouldn't fit. On the one hand,
Emily, refined, graceful, elegant, soft-spoken, classy. On
the other, Emily, a woman from the backwoods of
Louisiana, possibly born a slave right before the Civil War,
unapologetic about dipping snuff, buzzed on her homemade
muscadine wine each and every day. Not exactly "just
like Jackie."
Emily intrigued me, and, the puzzle of this woman simmered
on the back burner of my conscious mind for
decades, undoubtedly triggering questions about who I
was as well. Not until 1995 did that the search really
started to heat up, for the simple reason that I was no
longer gainfully employed and suddenly had massive
quantities of time on my hands. I had been a corporate
executive, Vice President and General Manager of Sun
Microsystems in Silicon Valley, when I decided to change
my life by stepping off into the great unknown. I quit my
job. Not a sabbatical. No looking back or second guessing.
Just walked away.
"When does your new job start?" asked my mother.
Actually, what I heard was, "How could you possibly walk
away from a good job you got only because I sacrificed to
put you through school and by the way, I spent fourteen
hours in labor to get you here in the first place." She didn't
really say the last part, at least not out loud, but that is
what it felt like she said.
"I refuse to take a job for at least a year," I replied, trying
to sound confident. "I need to listen to the silence, find the
inner me, reengineer myself outside of the confines of corporate
America."
My mother had no patience with this drivel. "Who's
going to pay you to do that?"
"I've saved enough for a year or two."
"Can you get your old job back?"
"I don't want my old job. It's gone. There's something
else I'm supposed to be doing," I said.
"I just don't know
what it is yet."
"You're supposed to have a job."
I let the silence build. For some things, there is no
response. "So what are you going to do for the next year?" she
pushed.
Here was the critical moment where a persuasive argument
could win her to my side, put her mind to rest, reassure
her of my ability to adapt.
"I don't know," I said, which unbeknownst to me would
become my mantra of the next few years.
I couldn't explain it because I didn't understand it, but
I felt compelled to leave my job and research my ancestry.
Gradually, and then overwhelmingly, I slipped into the
dark, shadowy, addictive parallel universe of genealogy.
Entire days disappeared from my life when I entered the
bowels of the National Archives to pore over census
records. Secretive trips to Louisiana to chase down fragile
leads in local courthouses, newspaper archives and
libraries followed. I began to lie to my friends, telling them
I was "just relaxing, taking it easy, enjoying my newfound
free time."
Meanwhile, the relentless search for dead relatives consumed
weeks and then months. I lost all sense of shame,
carrying tape recorders into nursing homes to interview
people who couldn't remember what they had for breakfast
but could spin sharp tales of events from eighty years
ago. I craved one more fact, one more connection, one
more story, but one was never enough. I had to have
more, to know more about the people in my family, dead
for a hundred years. I was hooked.
So hooked, I traced my mother's line to a place in
Louisiana called Cane River, a unique area that before the
Civil War housed one of the largest and wealthiest collections
of free people of color in the United States. I decided
to hire a specialist on Cane River culture, a genealogist
who could read the Creole French records that I could not.
The task I assigned her was to find my great-grandmother
Emily's grandmother.
"Let's get the facts we know on the table, starting with
her name," the genealogist said.
"I don't know." (The mantra echoed.)
"No first name or last name?"
"No."
"Okay. Was she from Cane River?"
"Maybe," I said encouragingly.
"Her daughter was."
"Okay. Was she slave or free?"
"I don't know. I can't find any trace of her in the free
census records, but I'm not sure."
The genealogist seemed doubtful, but she took the job
anyway. I was, after all, paying her by the hour just to
look.
No job, no paycheck, so how long could this foolish
obsession to find my unnamed great-great-great-great
grandmother last? Turns out, for eighteen months, by the
hour, until the genealogist recovered a document that
banished any doubt I would write a historical novel based
on the characters revealed. In a collection of ten-thousand
unindexed local records written in badly preserved Creole
French, she found the bill of sale for my great-great-greatgreat-
grandmother Elisabeth, who was sold in 1850 in
Cane River, Louisiana, for eight-hundred dollars.
I wondered whether my great-great-great-great-grandmother
spent as much time envisioning her descendants
as I had spent envisioning her life. I held the bill of sale in
my hands, awed and humbled, curious what any one of
the women who came before me, born slaves, would think
of one of their own having the opportunity to become an
executive at a Fortune 500 company. Could any of them
have even dreamed of that possibility in 1850 as they
changed hands at auction from one property owner to
another? I wondered what they would think of the world
we live in today. What would Elizabeth have thought of
my quitting my job and spending far more than her selling
price to find any evidence she had existed?
At this point, I had no choice. I had to write their story
and document their lives - my history. They were, after
all, real flesh-and-blood people. I pieced their lives the
best I could from over a thousand documents uncovered
in my years of research, re-creating what life must have
been like for them during the 1800s and 1900s. The result
was Cane River, a novelized account covering one-hundred
years in America's history and following four generations
of Creole slave women in Cane River, Louisiana, as
they struggled to keep their families intact through the
dark days of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and
the pre-civil rights era of Jim Crow South.
The rest - the dog-work of writing the novel, finding an
agent, finding a publisher and doing the book tour - was
as grueling and exciting as discovering my ancestry.
Within days of being sent to several publishers, Warner
Books purchased the novel. Once again, my family was on
the auction block but this time in a more satisfying way,
honoring instead of dishonoring. Things had certainly
changed over the last hundred and fifty years. I wished I
could show my great-great-great-great-grandmother
Elisabeth the price our family commanded this time.
Three months after the publication of Cane River, the
phone rang as I was packing for yet another book-signing
trip.
"Hello, this is Oprah."
"Yeah, right!" I said, wondering which of my friends was
playing this cruel practical joke. I waited for laughter that
never came.
"This is Oprah," the distinct and ever-so-familiar voice
said again.
As recognition registered, I mustered my most professional
corporate voice in the midst of my total embarrassment
and surprise. "Hello, Ms. Winfrey. What can I do for
you today?" My heart pounded so hard I could hardly
hear what followed.
She had called to tell me she selected my novel for her
book club, which ultimately led to Cane River spending
seventeen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and
a readership broader than I dared dream.
My mother has conceded once, and only once, that
quitting my job wasn't as disastrous as she had feared. But
she still thinks I should be out interviewing for a corporate
position, as a backup. The women in my family are strong,
and strength is a mother's legacy.
Worry, on the other
hand, now that's a mother's prerogative.
-Lalita Tademy |
