The Wrong Name

She looked around the room to see which of the many piles of unfinished projects she could take on without getting too involved. Something easy would get her through until dinner. Every time she looked at the various memory books in progress, a sick feeling came over her. Those needed so much organization and concentration that she couldn’t bear moving near them. On the floor, still in a Target plastic bag the rusty old lockbox she had brought back from Florida. OK, this was a good place to start. If she could go through what was in that box, maybe the box could be tossed out. Who knows, maybe the papers, too.

Lifting it from the bag, she noticed that some of the black finish of the metal box had come loose and collected in the bottom of the plastic bag. She was careful to peel back the bag without removing the box to avoid getting those black metal flakes on the carpet. She unlatched the cursory lock to look inside. What was that? Why hadn’t she noticed that before? The bottom of the box had a handle in the middle of it she didn’t remember seeing. On either side of the handle was a compartment that opened outward. Stuffed inside each compartment were receipts going back to 1915 for taxes paid on some property in Jacksonville. As she pulled out each folded piece of paper, she marveled at how well preserved it was for close to 90 years old. Each receipt showed much the same thing, property taxes paid on Lot 8, Block 4. There were receipts for 1914, 1915, 1918, 1921, 1927, 1931, 1933, 1934, some were for delinquent taxes. What a treasure. Maybe. What did any of it mean in terms of her family history? So there was property and taxes were paid and sometimes it was paid on time and sometimes it wasn’t. Big deal.

Wait a minute. The spelling of her grandfather’s name was different from what she knew. For as long as she could remember, and as a little girl she had been curious about the strange relatives that had died before she was born, the name had been spelled Brookins. All of these tax receipts showed the spelling as Brooking. Then she found an old employee insurance card from her grandfather’s place of work. It spelled his name Brooklyn. She was starting to get mad. Was the misspelling just the careless arrogance of white employers in the south who didn’t care if they spelled a colored man’s name correctly? Was there a reason the name was misspelled? Was there a family secret about to be revealed?

There was only one living relative that could explain this name thing and she reluctantly called Auntie in Florida.

“Hey, wake up!” she said to the sleepy sounding voice answering the phone.

“Oh, God, what time is it?” her aunt asked.

“It’s around 8:30. What were you pretending to watch on TV?” she asked.

“I was watching Jeopardy, but I must have dozed off.”

“Uh-huh. Well, what time did Jeopardy come on?”

“It went off at 8 o’clock,” replied her aunt, never one to answer a direct question with a direct answer.

“OK, so I was going through that lockbox that I took from your front bedroom…”

“What was that? A box?” her aunt asked. She was notorious for asking questions to stall for time. Rarely did she answer a question the first time she was asked. Sometimes the question had to be framed just so in order to force an answer from her.

“Do you remember when I was down there in early September and we started clearing out the front bedroom? We found this black lockbox in one of the nightstands and you said you weren’t sure what was in it. Instead of throwing it out like you asked, I brought it back here to Baltimore with me. I wanted to look at the papers inside to see what they were. What I found were all these receipts for taxes, but your dad’s name is spelled differently…”

“That’s right. When he made out his will and left the house, uh, to your mother, see they had some papers drawn up, and that’s why the name is different.” Jane doesn’t understand what her aunt just said. She takes a deep breath and continues.

“Wait a minute. That doesn’t make sense. I always thought the family name was Brookins, but it’s spelled Brookings on all these papers,” she tries to explain.

“Well if you hold on a minute I’ll tell you about it, OK? Are you ready to listen?” She hates when her aunt does this, thinking it is some tactic she used on the children she once taught, a way of showing dominance over them. You would think by now her aunt would know that never worked on her. She had been cantankerous all her life and she wasn’t about to stop now just because she had reached the half century mark.

“Go ahead,” she pretends to concede.

“I don’t know how the name got misspelled, but when Papa went to deed the house to your momma in his will, he had to sign a paper about the spelling of the last name. Somebody had gotten it wrong. That’s all that is,” she explains as if what she just said gets me any closer to the truth.

“So how did you spell your name when you were coming up?” Jane attempts to backtrack and picks a point in time to start from.

“Oh when we were in the lower grades we spelled it B-R-O-O-K-I-N-G, then later on we changed it to B-R-O-O-K-I-N-S. The “ins” is correct,” Auntie says, again believing she has explained everything.

“So on your school records, it would show “ing” instead of “ins?” Jane didn’t know what was getting into her to push her aunt so hard. So much of the family’s history would never be known because this aunt had never been too bright. That she once taught school to young children was a more chilling thought.

“That’s right,” responded her aunt.

“So how did it get misspelled in the first place, that’s what I wanted to know? I mean, I saw all those payments to S.A. Brookins where both your dad and your mom signed their names for years as Brooking.”

“S.A., that was Uncle Gus.”

“So how come Uncle Gus’ name was spelled correctly and your parents’ name wasn’t?” she asked.

“I’m sure don’t know. Listen, I sent your son $50 for his birthday. I mean I sent it to you to give to him.”

She must be getting close to some painful truth because Auntie has changed the subject. This is maddening. She just reminded her aunt last week that she had sent $100 for her son’s birthday. Her aunt must have forgotten that conversation. At any rate, this $50 would be a bonus for Ellis because there was no way this extra money will arrive on his special day. Her aunt’s forgetfulness would cause problems later when her estate was probated because no one would believe she wasn’t coerced into sending money just for her son.