𝐒𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐝, 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐁𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐅𝐚𝐧

37. Half Of It

  Clyde Johnson, a tall black man that spoke with a firm tone, sat at the head of the conference table. Our greeting was short and formal. There was definitely a sense of immediacy that he dragged in the room. He came with a blue folder and all, set it in front of him as he slipped on a pair of glasses. Nessie and I sat on his end across from each other. There was nothing but table in front of us. Call us unprepared.

With a stern face, Clyde mentioned being nervous. I mentioned being confused.

"You can start," Nessie chimed, looking at him. I then started to wonder what they possibly discussed in the car. But knowing Nessie, she probably said 'hey' and then cut on the radio to fill dead air.

"If you don't mind," I said, "can you just go right into Officer Brown's niece that your family has been looking for?"

Clearing his throat, Clyde nodded. "Yeah, um..." He took a deep breath first, eyes glued to the folder. "She's my daughter." Another pause as he collected his thoughts, but we sat frozen and waited.

"She was born January 15th, 1972. Amira Lynette Johnson." Storytime. He told it to us like this.

He met his wife Aivanni when she was 16, and he was a little older so he had to wait. Sounded familiar. 'Cause once she turned 18 he married her, and by time their first anniversary came around, they were already parents to their first daughter Aleia.

Folks around town started calling Aivanni "Bonnie", because of the whole Clyde thing, and the name just stuck like glue. They had plans for a big family, wanted lots of babies. So soon after Aleia came their twin boys. And "boy oh boy" they were a handful so they waited four years before Amira came. "That little girl was spoiled as I don't know what," he said, "but it wasn't anybody's fault but ours."

For Amira's first birthday they threw this big party in his grandfather's yard. "Pops lived in what the kids called a mansion. We always had parties there." Clyde went on about Amira's, detailing on the theme, the guests and down to the music that played. It was without a doubt the most precious memory he had of her. A one-year's old birthday party.

"About a month later," he continued, moving away from January of '73, "she was real cranky one night. Just crying and crying, wouldn't take the bottle, not her momma's singing or anything." So Bonnie took her to the ER. Clyde stayed home with the kids so he wasn't there, but his wife told him the story so many times he still dreams about it.

It was late, sometime in the middle of the night, and Bonnie was with Amira in triage, waiting on test results. There was a woman there too, a curtain over with her sick husband. The man was asleep and the woman immediately took a liking to Bonnie and Amira, asking questions about what brought them there and so on. Clyde pointed out that Bonnie was friendly "back then", so she engaged in conversation about Amira keeping her up all night. The woman started talking about her husband. High blood pressure or something. But then she went on about her daughter. Her daughter lived in Charleston and Constance, the older woman, was visiting in hopes of seeing her new grandchild. It was her 10th. But her daughter was still upset with her about something that happened years ago. She told Bonnie 'I just wish she could forgive me. They just won't forgive me.' Sounded like Constance had it bad with her all kids. And because of that, she never got to see any of her grandchildren. Her and her husband drove all the way up from Florida and they were turned away at the front door. Supposedly it got the husband's pressure all up and that's how he ended up there in that hospital bed.

Once the nurses came and gave Amira medicine, she calmed down and went to sleep. Constance at that point asked to hold her but Bonnie told her 'no', no explanation given. Just 'no'. She then also closed the curtain between them, thanking her but said the baby needed rest. And minutes after that barrier was put between them, Amira started whining.

"Bonnie was sitting in a chair close to the rolling basinet where Amira was," Clyde continued, hard swallow, "and she had her hand wrapped around her little fist, her thumb just soothing back and forth over Amira's knuckles. And Bonnie started to sing, my wife had this angelic voice that could knock anybody out. And it worked, Amira fell back to sleep—but so did Bonnie. When she woke up, Amira was gone."

     Heart dropped, I turned away as he said it again, his voice cracking at "gone".

"Bonnie saw Constance was nowhere to be found, her husband still asleep. The nurses couldn't confirm if that old man even came in with a wife, and they couldn't confirm if it was the staff who took our baby...and Bonnie begged them to just say it was them. Let that be the case but it wasn't... Our daughter was kidnapped."

The folder was finally opened and a pile of newspaper clippings, held together by a paperclip, were separated neatly before us. "The hospital had a faulty security system. They searched and searched. Bonnie told them the woman was from Florida so the manhunt went deep. But nothing."

Reading the headlines, my chest felt empty and my stomach knotted. Out of all the outcomes I had been imagining, this one never came close to any.

"Constance probably wasn't her real name. The man she was with was a stranger to her. He was in for stomach pain. And I don't know if she's really from Florida. But after we sued the hospital and got $750,000 in a settlement, I bought a house down there. At least once a week I started going there, just hopelessly traveling up and down the state. It started out me looking for the woman, carrying the sketch around, remembering every detail my wife told me. Then as years went by, it was Amira I was looking for. I travel all over the country, really. And I'm always looking. My family too."

Nessie sniffled, and I looked to see tears dripping down her cheeks. I'd never thought I'd see her cry like this. Reading one of the clippings, she just kept shaking her head. "This is insane," she pushed herself to say.

"It's been almost 20 years. I've met some girls I thought could be Amira, but it didn't end well. My wife said she'd leave me if I didn't stop. It wasn't healthy and honestly, borderline creepy in the other party's eyes. But you know," he shrugged, "I gave the detectives fair chance. But in '81, the guy on the case retired and his replacement was a piece of shit. He didn't care about finding no little black girl."

"Is that her?" Nessie asked, looking in the folder.

"Yeah." Clyde shared the photos of baby Amira, and I picked up one where she wore a yellow dress. "That's from her first birthday."

Staring, my eyes went wet. "Excuse me for a moment."

In Aívy's office, from her desk I pulled out the photo album she had been showing off to everybody. And when I flipped through, I fell down in the chair. It was the same baby. It was Amira. It wasn't until now that I realized the first pictures of her the Jenkins' had was well after her first birthday.

Carrying the book back to the conference room, the thing felt like the weight of the world in my arms.

Walking in, I saw Nessie was still in all the pictures, but also telling Clyde about Mabel Jenkins. "She died when Aívy was 13." She told him about Shelly then shipping her off to foster care.

The more Nessie talked about it, the tenser Clyde's features turned. Then I slid the book in front of him. "Aívy just recently got in touch with Shelly again. This was given to her."

Clyde flipped open the burgundy cover and in an instant, his prayers were answered. The hard man covered his mouth, flipping through the pages as tears soaked his hand. "There's no doubt," I think I heard him say.

Puzzle pieces clasped together as I went deep into my thoughts, but certain things still didn't make sense to me. But I guess it wasn't my job to figure out the full picture.

"I need a phone," Clyde said. "And I need Shelly's address."