Unravel by Michelle Johnson-Lane (the read aloud family .TXT) 📖

Matilda McGraw was born biracial in 1947 in Seattle, Washington and was raised with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her mother, Marianne, was black, and her father, Mackenzie (Mack), was white.

Six-year-old Matilda had not seen her father in 21 days. She knew her parents loved her very much but even she could tell things had not been right between them since her father began acting in Hollywood nearly a year ago. Even his calls home were becoming less frequent.

“I’m going to call Daddy,” she murmured to herself walking down the hall one evening. Matilda was barely tall enough to reach the phone but managed to grab it. That’s when Matilda got her first glance at the real world.

“Can you believe that? Some nerve! His NANNY?” she heard her mother yell over the phone.

“Oops!” Matilda said in a whisper before quickly clasping her mouth shut. She’d never heard her mother talk like that.

She recognized Aunt Ruby’s voice through the phone receiver and the naturally curious six-year-old continued to eavesdrop. Soon things became apparent to Matilda what was exactly wrong with her parents, according to her mother as she overheard Marianne explain to her great Aunt Ruby that she had accepted all of Mack’s flaws, including his selfishness, and she still loved him.

Matilda got an earful when Marianne said Mack told her that in order for them to remain married, she had to move to Hollywood and pretend to be Matilda’s nanny since California had passed an anti-miscegenation law making interracial marriages illegal.

Matilda had no idea she was a product of interracial marriage, but she learned her mother was well aware of what she got herself into long before she married Mack.
The couple met when Marianne was thirteen and Mack was fourteen after Marianne’s mother asked her sister, Ruby, to keep Marianne over the summer during the day. Since Marianne had always been a messy child, Ruby thought it was a splendid idea to take Marianne along with her to work. At the time, she was a maid for the McGraws. After Aunt Ruby showed her niece the ropes of real cleaning, she always gave Marianne half the day to play with the McGraws only child while his parents were away. Their playtime blossomed into secret childhood sweethearts. Aunt Ruby never knew that she had set a plan in motion for them to frequently sneak and see each other over the next few years.

In love, Mack and Marianne learned to deal with society’s treatment toward their interracial relationship. Occasionally, the couple had been spotted in public, and they grew tired of the looks of disgust, racial comments, and idle threats whenever people saw them together. So Mack decided to meet Marianne every Saturday to have a romantic lunch on a blanket far away from prying eyes. His father never knew about the secret rendezvous that took place on the grounds of the McGraws’ enormous cherry orchard—oh, if those trees could talk. Before parting their separate ways, the blissful couple always picked cherries for Marianne to bake a pie for them to enjoy. It was under that cherry tree where Mack proposed to Marianne.

Unfortunately, they never prepared Matilda for what lied ahead in a few short months when she began grade school. It would be to her detriment if she entered first grade and others teased her because they found out she was biracial. Matilda recognized the difference in the skin color between her mother and father. She had assumed every child had parents like hers; one with deep, chestnut brown skin and dark features, the other with milky white skin and light features. Whenever she was out with her mother, Matilda always thought the other women out with their children were their mothers, not nannies taking care of somebody else’s children.
After Matilda silently hung up the phone, she sat dazed, replaying her mother’s words over and over in her head. She wondered what anti-miscegenation, interracial, and nanny meant but was convinced they were bad.

More confused than before, Matilda continued to down the hall and remembered when she and her mother still did their weekly ritual of Teatime Chat 'n Chew, where they’d set the table and dress up in fancy clothes. She had gathered her oversized stuffed animals and sat them around the table as their guests. Whenever her father was home, he’d participate too. Young Matilda still didn’t understand why the tea parties stopped.

Starting to cry, she waited for Marianne to hang up the phone in order to ask when her daddy was coming home. Marianne barely had time to see what was wrong with Matilda before they were interrupted. Soon after she hung up, the phone rang and startled them both. It was Matilda’s father calling to speak to her.

“DADDY-EEE! Oh daddy, I miss you so much!” Matilda said grinning from ear to ear, showing her missing front tooth.

“I miss you too, pumpkin,” Mack said with a slight chuckle after hearing his overly excited daughter.

“When are you coming home?”

“Actually, that’s why I called. I will be headed home next weekend.”

“I can’t wait. Can we have teatime, daddy?”

“We will have our special teatime, angel.”

“Oh daddy, I can’t wait for you to get here.”

“I love you and I’ll see you soon, OK?”

“OK.” Matilda knew to pass the phone to her mother before she went off skipping and singing down the hall.

***

Matilda had been bouncing off the walls for days, but this day beat them all. She’d been jumping up and down in the kitchen while her mother was preparing dinner. Marianne managed to put up with it, despite all she had to do. Mack was coming home and would be there within the hour.

Matilda knew her father would want his favorite meal—Lobster and Steak with a steamed California blend of vegetables and buttery mashed potatoes, which was ready when Mack walked in the door bearing gifts. He gave Marianne a beautiful set of pearl earrings and Matilda a gold heart-shaped locket necklace.

For a week, the family appeared to have what Marianne and Matilda longed for—the stability of having the man of the house live under the same roof. That stability was short-lived, however, because Mack received a phone call from his agent, Carl Bretts, telling him that he needed to fly back to Hollywood to film for a major role.
Matilda ran upstairs to her room sobbing after Mack told them the news

“Marianne, I can’t continue to live like this anymore,” he said pacing the floor.

“What do you mean?” she said, following his every step.

“Listen!” he said, as he turned to face her, stopping her in her tracks. Mack towered over Marianne like a Goliath to David—he was massive. “You knew all my life, I wanted to become an actor. I prefer we sell this house and move to Hollywood under the conditions we discussed a few weeks ago. You’ve had more than enough time to think about it, Marianne.”

“What are you saying to me, honey? If I decide to raise our daughter here, in the only home she’s ever known, you’re leaving us?”

“I’m trying to tell you that I never wanted this—living a double-life,” Mack said raising his hands in the air. “I don’t want to take over my father’s orchard. My life is in Hollywood with or without you. I’ve already explained the California law to you. So, if you’re not coming, then you’ve made your choice. I won’t be back.”

Marianne begged him not to go. She had tears streaming down her face when she dropped to her knees, grabbed his pant leg, and pleaded that he quit acting all together.

It was then that Mack faced his wife and decided to give her the ultimatum. She could move to Hollywood as a law-abiding citizen and they all live together under false pretenses. When Marianne refused, Mack pulled away from her, marched upstairs, and found their only child at the top. She had heard the heated exchange between her parents. He stopped, looked down at the floor, sighed, and picked little Matilda up in his arms.

Mack told her how sorry he was that she had to hear that and explained that it was not her fault. He raised her chin and moved her hair from her face. Mack then told Matilda that she did nothing wrong and that people don’t like to see mommy and daddy together because they think it’s wrong because of the different color of their skin. He said he could even lose his job. Naturally, the child didn’t understand. Matilda shot back so many questions that he became overwhelmed. Finally, after a long pause, Mack told her that someday, she would understand. He then kissed her forehead, told her that he loved her, and left her crying.

The argument led to the demise of the marriage. Fortunately, Marianne came from a wealthy family, which always surprised many who assumed Blacks were poor and illiterate. She didn’t need Mack’s money to take care of Matilda.

After packing a few personal belongings, Mack placed the divorce papers for Marianne to sign and a cashier’s check for his daughter on the table. He never looked back as Marianne and Matilda watched him walk out the door to catch the next flight to Hollywood. They never saw him again. He occasionally mailed his daughter money-filled birthday and Christmas cards. Marianne hid the sealed cards from Matilda out of bitterness but kept them safe and out of site.

Summer was over and Marianne drove Matilda to her first day of grade school. Since schools were still segregated, Marianne decided Matilda would be better off attending the White Only school because she could easily pass for white as Matilda had inherited her father’s fair complexion, icy blue eyes, and light hair color. Ironically, Marianne hoped that people at school would assume she was the nanny and prayed no one asked any questions. This added to her already broken heart, but she knew there was no other choice in the matter. She had to do what was best for her one and only child. Marianne never told Matilda her plan or anything about her mixed heritage. She had recently asked her elderly Aunt Ruby to move in and help care for Matilda. She knew her aunt would be good moral support if things ever hit the fan. Aunt Ruby never married or had any children, but raised many white children.

A few months later, when Marianne brought Matilda her lunch that she had forgotten, Matilda had to learn from her classmates that she was biracial. Someone in her class overheard Marianne tell Matilda to tell no one that she was her mother. It took no time for the news to spread amongst her peers. They talked about how she had Marianne’s hair texture, almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones with a dark beauty mark on left cheek, and bowed legs. She was teased and tormented everyday after that.

Over the next few years, Matilda suppressed her feelings and never told her mother or aunt what she was experiencing in school. During this time, Marianne fell in love again and remarried, causing Matilda more problems to adjust to. Often times, she claimed to be sick and stayed home, remaining in silence for more than just suffering from the hands of her classmates but also from the abuse of her new stepfather.

Matilda was