Also by Marilyn Nelson
Lyric Histories
My Seneca Village
How I Discovered Poetry
Sweethearts of Rhythm
The Freedom Business
Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies & Little Misses of Color (written with Elizabeth Alexander)
A Wreath for Emmett Till
Fortune’s Bones
Carver: A Life in Poems
Other Poetry Collections
Faster than Light: New and Selected Poems
The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems
The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems
Magnificat
The Homeplace
Mama’s Promises
Picture Books
The Ladder (translated from the Danish of Halfdan Rasmussen)
Beautiful Ballerina
Ostrich and Lark
A Little Bitty Man (translated [with Pamela Espeland] from the Danish of Halfdan Rasmussen)
Snook Alone
DIAL BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by Marilyn Nelson
I’d like to thank Solomon Ghebreyesus, William Timmins, and John Stanizzi for their helpful suggestions, and Jacob Wilkenfeld for his research on Connor’s behalf. Thanks to the Air Force Historical Research Agency for their help in locating the photos used in the book. And I’ll add here another shout-out of gratitude to my friend Pamela Espeland. —M. N.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Nelson, Marilyn, date.
American ace / by Marilyn Nelson.
pages cm
Summary: Sixteen-year-old Connor tries to help his severely depressed father, who learned upon his mother’s death that Nonno was not his biological father, by doing research that reveals Dad’s father was probably a Tuskegee Airman.
ISBN 978-0-698-40790-9
[1. Novels in verse. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 3. Family life—Fiction. 4. Identity—Fiction. 5. United States. Army Air Forces. Bombardment Group, 477th—Fiction. 6. Racially mixed people—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.5.N45Ame 2016 [Fic]—dc23—2015000851
Cover art: plane © 2016 Ronnie Olsthoorn; sky © Ekspansio, iStock; head and shoulders shape © Leontura, iStock
Jacket design by Lori Thorn
Version_1
To the sons, daughters, and grandchildren of the Tuskegee Airmen, and to those who wish they were their children or grandchildren
Table of Contents
Also by Marilyn Nelson
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part One The Language of Suffering
Uncle Father Joe
Driver’s Permit
Hot Cocoa
Letter?
Part Two La Famiglia Bianchini
Chinese Gong
Gold Class Ring
Heirloom
Italian Bling
Part Three The X-Factor
Baklava
Unknown DNA
The Stink Eye
Suo Marte
Part Four Dead-End Clue
The Mystery Ring
The Forcean
But
Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Part Five A Hundred What-ifs
What Families Are For
Googling Wilberforce
Lines of O O O O O O O
Ace
Part Six Together in the Kitchen
Cringing
DNA
Thanksgiving Gasp
Now That We’re Colored
Part Seven Acute Care
Rehab
Daily Visits
Watching Dad Come Back to Life
Reading Dad the Headlines
Part Eight Holding Dad’s Juice Glass
Feeding Dad a Salisbury Steak Dinner
Wheelchair to Walker
Rehab Christmas
Moving Dad Home
Part Nine Beginning
The Floodgates Opened
Heroes
DMV
Beyond Skin
How This Book Came to Be
About the Author
The Language
of Suffering
My dad went weird when Nonna Lucia died.
It was like his sense of humor died with her.
He still patted my back and called me buddy;
we still played catch while the mosquitoes rose.
He still rubbled my head with his knuckles.
But a muscle had tightened in his jaw
I’d never seen before, and the silence
between us in the front seat of the van
sometimes made me turn on the radio.
I knew he loved his mom. We all loved her.
But when he smiled now, his eyes still looked sad,
all these months after Nonna’s funeral.
Maybe there was some treasure he’d wanted,
that she gave to one of his brothers in her will?
Maybe he’d wanted some of the furniture?
But he got the embroidered tablecloth
Nonna and Nonno brought to America,
which she spread out at family festivals
under platter after platter after platter.
He wasn’t a movie dad with another woman:
He was an oldish husband who’d just moved away,
a dad who didn’t hear you when you spoke.
Me and Mom and Theresa could see his pain,
but we don’t know the language of suffering.
Uncle Father Joe
One of Dad’s younger brothers is a priest,
so we thought he could be the one to break
into Dad’s silence: It’s part of his job.
But he was so busy finding common ground,
preaching compassion, and working for justice
and human liberation that the small
curling-inward of his own big brother
got only his occasional hug, and prayers.
I couldn’t ask, because I don’t believe;
or don’t know if I do. The difference
is moot, since anyway I’ve been confirmed,
like all half-Irish, half-Italian kids.
But Dad was spending another joyless night
sipping Chianti in front of the TV.
He looked like he might have been physically ill:
his face gray, his eyes lightless. He sat there
in his reclining chair sipping red wine,
letting Theresa control the remote.
Mom and I avoided each other’s eyes,
each of us aching with mute, helpless love.
I went to my room and called Uncle Father Joe.
Do you know how depressed my father’s been?
I asked. Should he be on some kind of drugs?
He said we should let Dad’s mourning run its course.
Driver’s Permit
Three months later Dad smiled a little more,
but that’s the only improvement I could see.
Mom and Theresa and I tiptoed around
as if his silence was glass that could shatter.
Uncle Frank, Uncle Petey, and Aunt Kitty,
his partners in the restaurant business,
kept Mama Lucia’s Home Cooking afloat.
They said the regulars were asking how Tony was.
Uncle Rich insinuated that maybe he should see a shrink.
Theresa whispered that Nonna Lucia
wouldn’t have wanted Dad to take on so.
Nonna lived a good life. She was ready to die.
My half brother, Carlo, Dad’s son with his ex,
who seldom visits, brought his wife and kids
to see their grandfather and cheer him up.
But nothing seemed to make much difference.
I googled depression. And I got scared.
The melt started on my sixteenth birthday.
(March 17: St. Pat’s. Mom’s family
says it means I’m 51 percent Irish.)
Dad said I should get my driver’s permit!
He promised me forty hours behind the wheel!
That was the best birthday present I ever got!
Hot Cocoa
Five o’clock Saturday morning: Dad’s idea
of the safest time for driving practice.
It’s pretty cool to be up and out together
while the day’s still dewy and birdsong-y.
I got the hang of driving pretty quick,
except for the hyper-responsive brake pedal.
We drove around in my high school parking lot,
then drove aimlessly in the neighborhood.
At six o’clock Dad turned the radio on.
There was talk of illegal immigrants.
Dad mused about building a border fence:
To fence them out, or to fence ourselves in?
I told him we read a poem about that,
that I bet he would like, by Robert Frost.
Is he the one on the less traveled road,
with miles to go before he sleeps? Dad asked.
We read him in my eighth-grade English class.
I always wondered what the hell that guy
had promised, that made him stay on the road
instead of going home for hot cocoa.
I said, My teacher thinks he was in love.
And for the first time in a year, Dad laughed.
Behind the wheel with two lives in my hands,
I felt the wall between us start to fall.
Letter?
We’ve practiced entering the interstate,
changing lanes, speeding up and slowing down,
the turn signal, left turn against traffic.
I always feel like I’m driving around
two thousand pounds’ worth of potential death.
Dad says he’s glad to know I feel that way:
He says it shows I’m wise beyond my years.
We’ve been trying to drive an hour a week.
Depends on our responsibilities.
It’s worked itself into a nice routine:
We listen to the radio, and talk
about whatever thoughts enter our minds.
It’s funny to think about identity,
Dad said. Now I wonder how much of us
we inherit, and how much we create.
I see so much of your mother in you,
so much of Carlo’s grandfather in him.
I used to love hearing I was like my dad.
Now I see that was just learned behavior.
I feel sort of like an adopted child
must feel, when he finds out he’s adopted:
like he doesn’t know anymore whose child
he is, like he doesn’t know who he is.
And it’s all because of the letter Nonna left.
La Famiglia Bianchini
The Bianchinis closed the restaurant
on the anniversary of Nonna Lucia’s death.
They held an over-the-top Bianchini feast
that evening. White tablecloths and everything.
Digital photos projected on a screen:
Lucia with two sons, then three, then four,
her face orbited by children’s faces,
her beatific grief when Genaro died.
Uncles and aunts toasted the memory
of the woman who made them who they are.
I sat at the table of first cousins,
knowing Dad was going to break the bubble.
He clinked his glass during the spumoni.
Expecting a speech, everyone fell still.
He cleared his throat and said, Mama left me
a ring, a pilot’s wings, and a letter
saying Genaro wasn’t my father.
My dad wasn’t my dad. My family
is only half mine. You’re my half siblings.
My dad was an American, named Ace,
a man she loved with all her heart, who died.
Her letter didn’t tell me his last name.
But my own last name is a deception.
I’m half Italian. I’m your half brother.
If someone had dropped the proverbial pin,
it would have sounded like a Chinese gong.
The Bianchinis rebooted Mama,
the girl before them, as a girl in love.
You could almost hear the noises their minds made.
They rebooted their papa, Genaro,
who worked long hours in the factory,
gray and stooped, with a beautiful young wife
and five children in whom he found much joy.
Then Aunt Kitty confessed she was a little shocked,
. . . but I’m glad to know Mama had a Grand Romance!
Tony, nothing makes you less my brother!
There were a lot of hugs among them.
And confusion at the children’s tables.
One cousin asked, Half of Uncle Tony
is our uncle? So what about the rest?
Then Uncle Father Joe said, In God’s eyes
all humankind is one big family.
Let us be grateful for the love we share.
Tony, I wouldn’t be me without you:
You’re as much Bianchini as I am!
There were a lot more hugs. There were wiped tears.
I wiped a few. Some were because I knew
one-fourth of ME was now an enigma.
Gold Class Ring
Mom patted Dad’s hand on the steering wheel.
See? I told you they’d all feel as I do.
It’s so romantic to be a love child!
I wish we knew who this American was.
Dad felt his parents had made him live a lie,
that their kept secret was a betrayal.
To think, he said, whenever they looked at me,
what they saw was my secret history.
He wouldn’t share the letter, but he said
Nonna wrote he was the fruit of great love,
that Genaro’s love had saved them both from shame,
and that his fathers would be proud of him.
In July, Italy won the World Cup.
Mama Lucia’s Home Cooking was wild
with Asti Spumante, blaring music,
il Tricolore,
men shouting Viva!
A conga line danced out on the sidewalk.
Some dancers were part of my family,
some were Italian people we all knew,
some were neighbors. All of them were happy.
The next day I drove Dad on country roads,
the interstate, and the lot at the mall.
After lunch he reached into his pocket
and put a gold class ring on the place mat.
Heirloom
It’s too small for me. Can you get it on?
It fit the pinkie finger of my left hand
like it was made for me. I pretended
I couldn’t get it off, then snarled and said,
You’re mine at last, my Precious! and Dad smiled.
It’s yours, then, Connor. Your grandfather’s ring.
Maybe it’s a clue to the mystery
of our inherited identity.
I said, Mortal, beware of the power
of heirlooms from the vampires’ royal line!
I gave Dad a bloodthirsty, fangy grin.
Then I told him I’d use its power for good.
Hard to describe how the ring grew on me.
I looked at it hundreds of times a day,
admiring its rectangular logo
and the Latin phrase etched into the gold.
After some days, it belonged to my hand
as inevitably as my knuckles and nails.
It was PART of me. I understood what Ace
was saying when he gave Nonna this ring,
how much he loved the beautiful Italian girl
he probably talked to like “Michelle, ma belle,”
that McCartney/Lennon song on Rubber Soul.
My Nonna. She loved him for sixty-five years.
Italian Bling
I work at Mama Lucia’s once in a while.
It makes people happy, and gives me some cash.
There’s always a job to do in a restaurant:
for those who can’t cook, there are always plates to wash.