Papà was the only one who could have cared because he was paying Delia’s wages. But Momma was happy and Delia was happy, so Papà Menotti was happy too. They were ALL HAPPY.
Gedeyon Wendimu, Teo’s Ethiopian father, was one of Papà Menotti’s student pilots. That is how Delia met him. France and Britain and Italy all have interests in Ethiopia – the French paid for Ethiopia’s first railway, and Ethiopians who want to study in Europe go to France. The emperor himself speaks French. Gedeyon was in France because he was the secretary for an official who came to Paris to set up a brand-new Ethiopian Legation. Gedeyon didn’t realise Delia was hired help when he met her. She got introduced to people as Momma’s bonne amie, her good friend.
Teo and I were born so close to each other, eight months apart, that Momma and Delia used to wheel us around in the same big wicker baby carriage as if we were twins. The story is that people got confused when they peeked in at us.
It was while they were hanging around the French airfield where Papà was working in France that Momma and Delia met Bessie Coleman. Bessie was the first Negro woman in the world to get a pilot’s licence, and the first American, black or white, man or woman, to get an international pilot’s licence. She had to go to France to do it because no one would teach her in the USA. She took French classes so she could go.
If it weren’t for Bessie Coleman turning up on their French airfield, it might not have occurred to Momma and Delia that they could learn to fly too. But Bessie did. Papà Menotti was not her chief instructor, but he gave her a couple of lessons. When Bessie flew solo for the first time, Momma and Delia were watching. Bessie took off and flew the plane and landed it again safely, all by herself.
Momma and Delia were waving and cheering as Bessie climbed out of the cockpit of the Nieuport, a little biplane that looks a lot like a Jenny, and she stopped by to shake their hands. She was a little bit older than they were, and Momma said they felt like they were meeting a queen.
‘You are an inspiration!’ Delia told Bessie.
‘Prove that to me by getting yourself into the air!’ she answered. She grinned at Momma too. ‘And you. I see you sitting here all morning just watching! Why don’t you both learn to fly? You’re lucky to be here and there’s no time like the present. You can take turns sitting with your kids.’
There is a photograph – one of three dozen in Momma’s little French airfield album – of me and Teo sitting up straight in our baby carriage, both of us wearing matching crocheted hoods with rabbit-fur edging, parked on the grass lawn outside the flight school. Momma is kneeling next to Teo and Delia is kneeling next to me. They are both dressed in long leather flying coats and white scarves and everyone is smiling. Momma says that Bessie Coleman took the picture for them.
Everything changed again because Papà had to go back to the Italian Air Force. He had to go to Tripoli in Italian North Africa, where they were fighting to control their colonies.
Falling in love with a nurse in wartime had been one thing, but Papà didn’t want to take his wife and toddler, not to mention everybody else, along with him to strong-arm rebellious desert nomads. Momma said she’d go back to Pennsylvania and stay with her parents while he was away. But Papà stopped paying Delia’s wages – Momma obviously didn’t need a maid and Delia obviously wasn’t one – so when Momma and Delia went back to Pennsylvania they started doing flying circuses. They did it to make their own living and to pay for their flying. Bessie Coleman was doing flying circuses too by then, and they thought they could be like her. That’s when they became Black Dove and White Raven. Until the Bird Strike.
Papà Menotti knew about what had happened to Delia. Until Momma shut herself in her bedroom after Delia died, Papà and Momma always wrote to each other. He sent her money sometimes, and he sent us presents – silver charms and bags with leather fringes and beautiful geometric rugs and blankets that Grandma used for bedspreads. After Delia died, Grandma wrote to him in Italian North Africa every month or so and she’d always get me and Teo to send him stories and pictures. He usually got a friend of his to write back to us in English. And when he did, we’d read his letters to Momma.
We’d been at Blue Rock Farm about a year when Papà Menotti left Tripoli.
‘This letter is from a boat!’ Teo crowed. ‘He’s at sea!’
‘Where’s he going?’ Momma asked. The mail came before breakfast and we read it to her before we went to school, while she was still in bed. Momma got up and got dressed most days by then, but not till after we were out of the house. First she had to scan three different papers for news of Ethiopia, like it was a lifeline, the only thing she could still do for Delia. (She even used to get a subscription to a Negro newspaper published in Chicago.) When she’d given up, usually in disgust that nothing she cared about got reported, she’d go work in the stables. She didn’t feel like talking to anyone so she didn’t help in the riding school, but she worked hard enough behind the scenes that Grandfather paid her.
‘Italy somewhere,’ I said with authority. We’d only been in school a year.
Teo picked up reading a lot faster than I did. He read everything, all the time, even then. It made me lazy because he could read to me when nobody else would. ‘Em, you nitwit. He isn’t in Italy. He’s going to another place in Africa – Italian something – Italian Somaliland.’
Momma sat up straight in bed. It was like she’d lit up suddenly, as if a light had turned on in her head.
‘Italian Somaliland!’
Then she sagged again.
‘Oh, that can’t be so. You must be reading it wrong.’
‘Here, Momma, you can read it.’ Teo twitched the letter out of my hand and gave it to her. It was a letter from her husband, but it wasn’t even addressed to her. It didn’t cover most of a page; it was just a chatty, cheerful note in broken English which someone else had written, with my papà telling me about the ship he was travelling on. It had gone through the Suez Canal and they’d taken apart five airplanes to pack in the ship to take with them.
Momma’s face grew brighter as she scanned the page. When she’d finished, she looked up, and she was smiling the first real smile we’d seen on her face for a long time.
‘He really is going to Somaliland!’ she told us.
‘What is Somaliland?’ we clamoured. ‘Why is that good? What does it mean?’
‘It’s in the Horn of Africa,’ Momma said. She beamed at us. ‘It’s another Italian colony in Africa. Africa is huge, huge – it’s like he’s making a trip from New York to Los Angeles through the Panama Canal. But now he’s going to be right next door to Ethiopia! Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia share a border. He’s going to be so close! We could – we could finally go!’
‘To Somaliland?’ Teo asked, alarmed.
‘No, honey, to Ethiopia! Italian Somaliland is the perfect place to start – the perfect way for us to get in. It’s just over the border – and the Italians are bringing airplanes there and that will turn the distances into nothing.’
Teo and I both knew Ethiopia was Delia’s dream to start with. But we knew it had become our momma’s dream too because we paged through her French books of travel photographs with her, and we knew she scoured the papers for Ethiopian news, and that she never did anything with the money Grandfather paid her, like she was still saving it for something big. But our connection to the Underground Railroad seemed realer than our connection to Ethiopia. Ethiopia didn’t seem like a real place at all.
We got excited, and bounced on her bed. ‘Can we go before school starts?’ I begged. ‘Can we take all my White Raven outfits?’
‘Do you have to buy another plane?’ Teo asked. ‘Can we fly there ourselves?’
Momma gave a bitter, choking laugh. ‘It’s a little bit farther than you think.’
She hesitated. ‘I’d have to go by myself, at first, and stay with Orsino in Somaliland. I don’t think he’d let me bring you two to stay with him, not all of a sudden. I don’t even know if we could raise ch
ildren there. I’d have to go and see what it’s like. He’d be happy with me there, and maybe later on – I could take a trip to Ethiopia.’
‘By yourself?’ Teo and I chorused.
‘I’d have to, to start out. But you could stay here and live with Mother and Daddy and Connie – not for too long. Stay in school and learn to read! And I could find some work to do and a place for us to live. Papà Menotti would help me –’
Teo started to cry. Momma swooped him into a hug.
‘It will be the best adventure we’ve ever had,’ she told us, ‘living in that beautiful country, where there won’t be anyone calling you names just because you and Emmy don’t have skin that matches! You’re half Ethiopian yourself and we’re going to see the place where your father was born!’ She opened her arms to include both of us. ‘Come here, Emmy.’ We snuggled against her, excited and startled and bewildered. ‘We’re going to make Delia’s dream come true!’
Then she laughed a little, a real laugh, not a bitter, sarcastic one. ‘What’ll Mother and Daddy think!’ She hugged us close. ‘You ready for a fight?’
We looked at her and gave her the Nod – her own single, certain nod. Both of us at once, like we’d practised. It was the only thing to do. We knew the Ethiopian sky was the only thing big enough to fill the Delia-sized hole in Momma’s heart. The only thing to make us into a family again.
That is the best I can do to explain how home can be where the heart is. Delia’s dream was to come here to Ethiopia, and Momma’s heart is with Delia’s dream, so this is home.
Episode from THE SLEEPING QUEEN (Summer 1930?)
The two explorers thought that their job would be easy. White Raven had a good idea to look in the magical briar forest for the castle where the Queen of Antemeridia was hidden. They knew that a princess had fallen asleep in a castle there before, under a spell for a hundred years. Maybe Queen Morning Glory was hidden there too.
Black Dove and White Raven were smart about getting through the forest. They took a boat along the river that used to lead to the castle. But when they got there they were surprised to find that the castle was gone. There was nothing left but one broken tower. All the rest had fallen down an enormous waterfall.
Black Dove tied the boat up to the tower. He and White Raven got out and looked down over the edge of the waterfall. They could see the other towers that had fallen down, standing upright in the water far below.
Queen Morning Glory could be sleeping safely in one of those towers, the explorers thought. But the waterfall was too dangerous for them to sail their boat down.
Suddenly, the Prairie Falcon swooped overhead.
‘The longer you wait, the longer the queen will be under the spell!’ the Prairie Falcon teased. ‘For every day it takes you to get to her, she will have to sleep for another year!’
The bottom of the waterfall was too far away and too deep for them to climb down or swim.
Black Dove said, ‘The queen has already been asleep for three years. Her subjects want her back. We don’t need to waste another day hunting for her. Let’s kill that stupid bird instead. Then the spell will be broken and it will be easy to find her.’
Theme for Miss Shore by Teo
By Teodros Gedeyon Dupré
Subject: ‘My Father’
Beehive Hill Cooperative Coffee Farm, Tazma Meda
Teqemt 23
Nov. 2, 1934
My father died before I was born. So far, I have been raised by girls: Delia, Momma, Grandma, and you could even count Aunt Connie in there, I think. And Sinidu, Momma’s best friend here.
My real father was called Gedeyon Wendimu and he was an Ethiopian working in France right after the Great War ended. But he died of influenza in 1919, three months before I was born. There is Grandfather, of course. But I don’t think of him as my father. When we lived with Grandfather, Emmy and I mostly read and drew and acted out our made-up stories in the hayloft. Then Grandfather would stomp around muttering to himself because we’d make a mess of the hay when we slid down the chute, making a pretend getaway for the forty-sixth time.
It was uncomfortable going to baseball games with him. People pointed and whispered, and we’d think at first it was because I’d put my sweater on inside out again without noticing. Then suddenly some ticket seller would call Grandfather a ‘nigger lover’. He never got mad. He’d just bow or tip his hat and say something absolutely irrelevant like, ‘Yes, my morning glories are out in full force right now.’
One time when someone made a sneering remark at us Em snarled back, ‘Least he doesn’t look like a dogfish, like you,’ and Grandfather stunned us by grabbing the backs of our collars and marching us right out to the streetcar without going to the game.
‘Name-calling is a pointless way to fight a battle,’ is the only thing he said to us for the whole hour and a half it took to get home. But he helped me figure out my sweater.
I love Grandfather, but I don’t think of him as my father. Maybe I’ll start off writing about him anyway and a few other fatherly fellows, and hope I get somewhere.
Grandfather brought us here to Ethiopia in 1930, two years after Momma left Pennsylvania and three years after the Bird Strike. It meant that he and Grandma were away from home for two months. Aunt Lorna came to take care of Aunt Connie and the riding school while they were gone. We took so many different boats and trains to get here that it didn’t really sink in we were in Ethiopia until Momma met us at the train station in Addis Ababa. Of course I also remember how we couldn’t get off right away at Dire Dawa because there was a pack of hyenas prowling on the platform, and that one time the train had to stop because there were camels on the line.
I remember those things, but what I really noticed was how people stared at Grandfather, and then quickly dropped their eyes when he tried to shake hands and talk to everybody who got near him.
Em and I didn’t realise then that there is a separate passenger car for white Europeans and Americans to travel in if they want to. I guess we travelled with the Ethiopians because of me. But no one ever stared at me. I was invisible at last.
When we got off the train in Addis Ababa, Momma was waiting for us, but Em and I felt as awkward as if we were meeting her for the first time. We hadn’t seen her for two whole years. She threw herself at Grandma while me and Em lurked behind Grandfather, hanging on to each other’s hands so tightly it made my own hand ache after a while.
‘Mother – Mother!’ Momma cried out. ‘I got your wire from Djibouti so I knew you’d be on this train, but before that I came to meet every train for the past three days! I can’t believe you’re here at last – we’re all here!’
Then Momma dove at me and Em and swept us into her arms like an enthusiastic puppy dog. ‘Oh, sweetie-pies, you kids! You know what they sometimes say for a greeting here? “Selam – peace.” Isn’t that wonderful? “Peace” for a greeting! And “Tafash! You’ve been lost.” You’ve been lost! But we made it. We’re all here!’
She let go of us. Em and I grabbed each other’s hands again and ducked behind Grandma this time, while Momma hugged Grandfather. She seemed like the Momma I remembered from when we were little, but that person had disappeared three years ago after the Bird Strike and this one was a stranger.
She chattered on, ‘I’ve got rooms for us at the Hôtel de France. It’s not the fancy hotel, but it’s European – there are a lot of reporters staying there for the emperor’s coronation. It’s beautiful we’re all going to be here for the coronation!’
The emperor’s coronation – this sounded like something Em and I would make up, not something that would really happen in a place where we were living. We were instantly hooked. Em peeked around Grandma’s shoulder.
‘Why is the emperor being crowned now?’ she asked.
I came out of hiding too. We still hung on to each other’s hands. ‘We thought he was already emperor,’ I said.
Momma gazed at us, grinning hopefully, trying to reel us in. ‘He was the regen
t for his cousin, who was the old empress. “Regent” means he was running the show for her,’ she explained. ‘Now the empress is dead and he’s going to take a new title and take the throne. We won’t be able to see the coronation ceremony, but we’ll see some of the procession from the hotel porch. The soldiers wear lion skin capes and carry spears. The priests wear crowns and carry silver crosses, and the new emperor’s wife rides in a red car with guards standing on the running boards – you will love it. And we’ll get to watch the dress rehearsal for the flying show at the race course!’
Then Momma turned and talked fast in Amharic to the kids who were unloading our bags from the train and into the cart she had brought.
Em and I glanced at each other. She mouthed at me: A flying show?
We hadn’t seen a flying show since the Bird Strike. Grandfather wouldn’t take us even when there was one as close as Lambstown. He took us to the new art museum in Philadelphia that day so we wouldn’t have a chance of sneaking away to the air show on our own.
I grinned. I wanted to see a flying show. I wanted to see a flying show in Ethiopia. I wanted to see it with Momma, after all these years. I was ready. I was itching to learn how to fly some day, and Em knew it.
‘Sounds good,’ Emmy said quietly.
Momma’s hair was longer, tied back in a ponytail, and her skin was darker and she was wearing a white cotton shawl like a thin blanket wrapped around her shoulders – a shamma, like everybody wears, only we’d never seen Momma in one and it made her look mysterious and foreign. Em and I crowded up against each other’s shoulders. Momma said, ‘Mateos and Orsino are going to meet us at the hotel tonight –’