Word: miriam
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Things begin tensely and go downhill from there. Miriam gets a call from Houston saying that her mother has had a heart attack and may be dying. Ronnee refuses to be deposited back in Brooklyn, her financial mission unaccomplished, to face her I-told-you-so father. "You don't want to introduce me to all your friends and your family," Ronnee accuses Miriam and then mockingly imagines the Houston reaction: "Who's this strange girl? Where did all this blackness come from...
...friends and her three other children are ignorant of this history, and Miriam has grown weary of pretending that a wrenching experience in her past never happened and hiding the fact that she has been living "with half a heart." With her nest temporarily emptied thanks to summer camps, and with her husband's cautious assent, she decides to try to contact the daughter she once surrendered. This plan succeeds with surprising ease; her daughter has also decided to get in touch with Miriam...
...Miriam doesn't know, but readers do, since Brown's narrative moves back and forth between the minds of mother and daughter. And it turns out that Veronica Reece, or Ronnee, as she prefers to be called, has accepted, over her militant father's objections, a modest scholarship to Stanford University. He derides the offer as a "Pity the Poor Nigger Scholarship" and tells Ronnee, "You're there, darlin', so their brochures will look good." Since he on principle won't help defray her college expenses, Ronnee wonders if this rich white mother in Texas she's heard about might...
...hidden motives and unannounced expectations accompany the meeting of mother and almost-grown daughter. Miriam flies to New York City, picks up Ronnee at Eljay's Brooklyn apartment and drives to her family's old summer house in New Hampshire, where, she hopes, they can get acquainted in peace and solitude...
...Miriam guiltily brings Ronnee back with her to Houston, much to the surprise of her husband, who meets them at the airport. Her mother's condition has improved, but Ronnee's presence poses a critical question for Miriam: how to introduce a daughter, and one of mixed race besides, of whom none of her friends have ever heard...