JEWEL Read Online Free

in the box.
    No one spoke while I pawed through my daddy’s souvenirs, what he’d deemed keepable from his life, this pile his legacy to me and my momma.
    There were a few picture postcards from New Orleans, a steamboat, Jackson Square, another of a smiling black mammy, a little burrhead next to her, the two of them grinning and holding huge pieces of watermelon.
    Scrolled across the bottom of the picture were the words Greetings from New Orleans. On the backs of the cards were no words, no stamps. Only blank space and the small words telling who’d printed up the cards. I held them in my hand, just looking at the empty space.
    “He couldn’t write, ” Benjamin said. “Nor read, of course, neither.”
    I put them down, then pushed around an old comb, a coil of rope, a belt.
    I said, “When was he there? In New Orleans.”
    No one answered, and I didn’t look up, didn’t want them to believe I might truly be interested. But I was.
    Momma was the one to speak. She said, “That’s where your daddy and I had our honeymoon, right down in the French Quarter. That’s where he got those.”
    “Oh, ” I said.
    Benjamin took up the cards, held them out to Momma. “You want to keep these? ” he asked.
    “I” she started, and I held my breath. She stopped rocking, then slowly put out a hand to him, took the cards. Benjamin put his hand down as soon as she’d taken them, and Momma let the cards rest on her lap, her hands holding one another again. She didn’t look at them.
    Then I found the tin of pomade, there beneath a shirt with three buttons missing. I opened up the can, saw inside the dull pink swirls, evidence of his fingertips. I brought the tin close to my nose, took in the sweet smell, but this time it was too much for me, so that I gagged a moment, brought the tin down and snapped back on the lid as quick as I could.
    Benjamin must have thought I’d begun to cry, because he put his hand to my back again, the same touch he’d given yesterday when we’d stood looking at my newly dead father, and said, “Now, honey, you go on ahead and cry.”
    But I got my voice from somewhere, tried my best to make it the same iron my momma had. I said, “Don’t you worry about me, ” and reached down to the bottom of the sack where a photograph lay face down, all I could see of it the curlicued edges of the paper, the white back faded to brown.
    I picked it up, turned it over. It was a picture of a man, the photograph soft and worn, as though it’d been crumpled and rolled flat any number of times. He stood next to a big wingback chair, his elbow resting on top, the other hand on his hip. His chin was hard, the bones in his cheeks high, his skin even darker than my daddy’s. His eyes were black, turned from the camera to something far off. He had on a white hat, the crease in the crown perfect, the vest he wore black and white stripes, gray pants. His boots shone in the picture, one foot crossed over the other so that the toe pointed down and rested on the Persian rug beneath him. Even through the wrinkles and folds of the photograph I could feel the attitude he bore, the one that kept the eyes focused somewhere else, the hand at the hip, his head tipped just a hair to the left, as if daring the photographer to tell him to hold it up straight.
    Before I could think of what I might be asking, I said, “Who is this?
    ” Again no one answered, and I waited, the photograph in my hand.
    I looked up from it after a few moments, saw Benjamin eyeing my momma.
    I turned to her. Her eyes were on the window, searching for something I couldn’t imagine, and she nodded.
    Benjamin said, “That’s his daddy. Our daddy. Your grandpa.” He paused.
    “Jacob Chetauga. Then Jacob Chandler. Choctaw. Was. He been dead twenty-one years.”
    I looked up to Momma. Her eyes were closed now.
    I turned to the photograph, tried to figure what this might mean, my grandpa an Indian.
    But it only took a moment before I felt my fingers go