Eye of the Storm (Hudson 3)

Prologue

.

Sometimes I think that Mama Arnold named

me Rain because she knew so many tears would fall from my eyes. Other children often teased me. singing "Rain, rain, go away.. Come again another day." When I was older, boys would call out to me in the halls or in the street and say, "You can rain on me anytime, girl."None of them would do it if my brother Roy was around, but he knew they often did when he wasn't, and he got so angry about it once, he raged at Mama Arnold, demanding why she named me Rain.

She looked at him with such innocence and confusion scribbled through the lines in her face.

"Where I come from," she replied calmly. "where my family comes from, rain is a good thing, an important thing. Without it, we would go hungry, Roy. You ain't known that kind of hunger, thank God, but I remember it. We called it bottom hunger because you were empty right to the bottom of your poor stomach.

"And I remember feeling that first blessed drop after days and days of lingering drought. My daddy and mama would be so happy, they'd just stand in the downpour and let themselves get soaked through the skin. I recall once." she continued, smiling. "how we all joined hands and danced in the storm, all of us gettin' soaked to the bone and not a one car-in'. I Mess we looked like a crazy bunch, but the rain meant hope and money enough to buy what we needed.

"Why, some people took to prayer sessions and rituals of all kinds to bring on the rain. I saw my first rainmaker when I was about ten. He was a small, dark man with eyes like shiny balls of black licorice. All the children thought he was charged with electricity from being hit by lightning so many times, and we were terrified of his touchin' us.

"The church paid for him. Nothing he did brought a drop and he left saving we must've angered the Lord somethin' awful to have Him be so unforgiving. You know what that does to a

congregation. Roy? Everyone goes peerin' around at everyone else with eyes of accusation, blaming our troubles on their sins. I heard talk of one community driving a whole family out because they thought they were responsible for a prolonged drought.

"When your sister was born and I saw how beautiful she was. I thought to myself why she's as pretty and as full of hope for us as a good rain and that's when I decided it would be a good name."

Roy stared at her, obviously overwhelmed. Beneatha looked down, sullen because she had been named after some relative and that wasn't much compared to what Mama Arnold was saying about me. and I remember thinking I had a greater responsibility because of my name. Mama Arnold thought I would bring good luck.

Today. as I dressed to go to the cemetery to visit Grandmother Hudson's gave. I believed Mama Arnold couldn't have been more wrong. All I seemed to bring to anyone was bad luck. Of course.

Grandmother Hudson didn't think that when she died. She might have thought it in the beginning when my real mother had arranged for me to live with her under the guise of my being some charity case. That way my real mother. Megan Hudson Randolph, could still keep secret her getting pregnant and giving birth to me when she was in college, even from her husband and especially from her two children. Brody and Alison. My grandparents had paid my stepfather Ken to take me as soon as I had been born. Years later. Grandmother Hudson would take me in reluctantly, like a parent who had to swallow the sins of her child.

Mama Arnold was much sicker than any of us knew, and after my younger sister Beneatha had been killed and Ken, my stepfather, had run off and been arrested for armed robbery. Mama Arnold wanted to be sure I would be safe. When I think back now to that day when she forced my real mother to meet us for lunch and then convinced her she had to take me back. I realize how strong a woman Mama Arnold really was. Grandmother Hudson and Mama Arnold weren't so different when it came to the importance of and the sacrifices for their families.

On first impression, people like Mama Arnold who scratch out an existence in their state of poverty and hard times don't look like very much. Mostly. they hobble along looking tired. Aged beyond their years, cynical, hopeless, their eyes as vacant as blown lightbulbs. What people don't see is the great strength, courage and optimism it takes for women like Mama Arnold to do battle with all the evil around them in order to protect their children. Mama Arnold was our fortress.

It seems silly now to think of that fragile little lady as a power of any kind, but that's who and what she was. She and I weren't blood related, but she gave me the gift of grit. I stood taller because of her, and one of the things that had so endeared me to Grandmother Hudson was her recognition of that and her admiration for Mama Arnold.

Grandmother Hudson and I had grown so close so quickly. I really loved that woman and I la-low she loved me, despite her initial reluctance. After all, she was a woman born and bred in the Old South, formal and stern in her ways, and here I was a mulatto and her illegitimate granddaughter. She was a woman who wouldn't tolerate a stain on her dress, much less a stain on her family honor. However, in the end she proved her deep affection for me by arranging for my dramatics training in London and then, by leaving me so much of her estate: fifty- one percent of this house and property, fifty percent of the business and a twomillion-dollar portfolio of investments that provided more than enough for my well-being.

Grandmother Hudson's older daughter, my aunt Victoria, was so outraged she vowed to fight the will in court. Still unmarried, running the family's investment and development business. overseeing projects, my aunt Victoria felt unappreciated and, from what I had witnessed during my short time with Grandmother Hudson, was always in some sort of conflict or other with her. Victoria resented her younger sister, my mother Megan, whom she thought their father favored over her, and whom she thought had a head full of air. Perhaps she resented my mother mostly though for having a husband like Grant, a handsome, intelligent, ambitious man, the kind of a man she wanted for herself and thought she could appreciate and satisfy far more than Megan could.

Toward the end of my senior year in high school. Grandmother Hudson had arranged for me to live with her sister Leonora and my Feat-uncle Richard in England when I attended the Richard Burbage School of Drama. Neither Great-aunt Leonora or

Great-uncle Richard knew who I really was. They thought Grandmother Hudson was doing some sort of charity work, sponsoring a poor minority girl. They didn't learn the whole truth until Grandmother Hudson died.

When I was called back from England along with my greatuncle and great-aunt after Grandmother Hudson's death, my mother and her husband tried to get me to compromise and surrender much of what my grandmother had left me in the will. I think they both saw their offer as a way of paying me off and getting rid of me forever and ever, but I believed Grandmother Hudson had a purpose for what she had done. and I wasn't going to change anything in that will, not even a comma.

My aunt Victoria continued to rage about making legal challenges. something I knew was terrifying to Grant, who had political ambitions. The last thing he wanted out in the open was his wife's past affair with an African-American man and my existence. Even after the funeral and all, he and my mother had still not told their children the whole truth. Brody liked me. I know, but Alison couldn't understand why I was given so much and why I commanded so much of her family's attention. She despised me, but I wasn't sure the truth would make any difference when it came to that and so secrets and lies continued to swirl around this house and family like a maddened hive of bees.

Living in the mansion alone at the moment. I could practically hear those lies buzzing. Soon, they would sting us, sting us all and bring even greater pain, but everyone in this family was focused