Free Harlem Redux by Persia Walker Page A

proud, and deeply religious—would take her own life. What brought you down, little sister? What brought you down?
    A breeze, unseasonably warm and gentle, caressed his hair. His nostrils caught a faint whiff of perfume, lightly sweet and powdery. He imagined he heard her voice.
    Remember me, she seemed to say. Forget what others tell you. Remember me, as you knew me.
    He’d been five years old when Lilian was born. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he’d given her his heart. His parents were touched and amused, but perplexed by his singular affection for Lilian. She was a twin. Why did he love her more than Gem, who was as sweet and huggable as her sister? How could he, as small as he was, even tell the two tiny girls apart? He shrugged— he didn’t know. He simply never mistook one for the other.
    Snatches of memories floated to the surface of his mind. Images of life with Lilian: holding her up in the shallow end of the public swimming pool as she splashed about; stealing chocolate chip cookies for her from Annie’s kitchen; standing side-by-side at their mother’s graveside. They had been so close. How could he have let four years go by without seeing her?
    The last time he had seen her, she had been conscientiously teaching English to bored high school students. It was her way of living up to their parents’ edict of giving back to the community. He had visited her classroom one day and, quite honestly, found her a tedious, uninspiring teacher. He had come away wondering whom he should feel sorrier for, Lilian or her students. He thought her effort misdirected, but he admired her for it just the same. During summer breaks, Lilian would escape to Provence. She had friends there who rented her a small cottage. She wrote during those summers, but she seemed to have given up any hopes of a serious literary career.
    Then her situation changed.
    From Lilian’s letters, he knew that she had met Helga Bennett during one of those summers in southern France. Bennett was just launching the Black Arrow, which was to be not only a literary journal, but also the official voice of the Movement. Bennett was so impressed with Lilian that she invited her to join the staff. She became Lilian’s mentor, but was herself inspired by Lilian’s enthusiasm and vision. They both dreamed of a day when Harlem artists would receive the same recognition, prizes, and contracts that white writers did. Lilian wanted to read books about her people, written by her people. By that she meant books about well-bred, refined colored people. There was, she said, enough being written about the downside of Negro life, about the crime and the poverty. Someone had to tell the story of the educated colored people, too. Someone had to speak up for the Negroes who were doctors, lawyers, philosophers, professors.
    “We live as a minority within a minority,” she once wrote him. “It’s time our voice was heard. That would advance the cause of the entire race.”
    By the time of her death, Lilian was a senior staffer at the Black Arrow and making her own mark as an author. The Nubian Art Players had performed her unstructured play, Shadowlands, the year before. She had written one novel and was working on another when death claimed her. Her first book, Lucifer’s Parlor, was a social statement about Irish and Negro life in the Tenderloin. Her second work, Lyrics of a Blackbird, dealt with betrayal in a genteel Harlem family. Her first book was well received. He was confident her second one would have been, too.
    Someone had placed fresh roses near her headstone. The flowers were a pleasing soft shade of pink. He brushed them with his fingertips. The blooms were stiff in the cold air. They would discolor and shrivel soon. He closed his eyes. The pain in his head had become a steady pulse. There was again that breeze from nowhere. He blinked and looked up at the sky, but saw nothing there. No miraculous face in the clouds, not even a sudden ray of