by Cathy Gohlke
Miss Grace, Olney Tate, Marshall, and Celia’s mother formed an army of painters and wallpaper hangers inside. Miz Hyacinth sat in her chair by the parlor window, smiling from ear to ear, every once in a while encouraging her workers along with a hum or a song or a “Don’t forget the corners. You’ll need to move that heavy china cabinet. Celia, you and Chester empty it. That will help. Just be mindful of the crystal. It’s older than you can count.”
Celia wasn’t partial to handling crystal and delicate things. She was more comfortable juggling abandoned birds’ nests and rocks dotted in flecks of shining mica and pine cones dried and split wide-open—real treasures, like those she’d lined across the ledge above her sleeping spot at home. But she and Chester did their best with Miz Hyacinth’s whatnots and only broke one crystal vase and a china teapot. Considering all there was, that didn’t seem too bad.
Celia noticed that Miss Grace worked as if burning was shut up in her bones, as if every inch of that old house must be scraped and painted and polished and scrubbed yesterday, all the while keeping a worried eye on Miz Hyacinth.
Celia’s mama said Miss Grace would work herself into an early grave at that rate and then where would Miz Hyacinth be.
But at long last, when the purple and white rhododendron and the oxeye daisies bloomed full in the garden and butter-yellow roses spilled over the picket fence, when turkey beard covered the surrounding meadows and fire pinks carpeted the woodland floor, it was finished.
“Thank You, Lord,” pronounced Miz Hyacinth, satisfaction in every syllable. “The bones are in place. Now the real work begins.”
Chester’s eyebrows waggled at Celia. Celia had no idea they hadn’t been doing real work, but the potential of what that might mean came intriguing.
Tired and dirty as the work crew was, Miz Hyacinth called on Celia’s mama to make a full pitcher of sweet lemonade poured over ice shavings for an immediate meeting with her, Miss Grace, and Olney Tate. Marshall, Chester, and Celia sat on the sidelines, watching. Miz Hyacinth ordered Miss Grace to sketch the house and grounds as she described them and encouraged Celia’s mama and Olney Tate to fill in all the plants and flowers and shrubberies and “appointments” they could remember of Garden’s Gate’s glory days when they were children. She even had Miss Grace write up an order for a fancy wooden swing like the one she remembered. Olney offered to build it for her, but she said she had other things for him to do. She remembered just where the wooden swing had hung when she was a girl—“The one Camellia and I shared—so many happy hours. Blindness only means my eyes can’t see now,” she said. “The sight of my memory is vivid.”
Celia closed her own eyes, remembering run-down Garden’s Gate as it had been a few weeks ago. Already on its way to glory, it was easy to envision the swing Miz Hyacinth talked of. I reckon she’s right about sight and memory.
Olney and Marshall pretty nearly tore up the yard and gardens weeding and replanting, trimming every tree and shrub, even though it meant many wouldn’t bloom till next year. They dug and burned with the intention of starting new beds from scratch.
It was an amazing thing for Celia to pass Garden’s Gate in the morning, on her way to the widow Cramer’s, and see it one way, then come home in the later afternoon and witness a new landscape. “Spring,” declared Olney, “would have been the proper time to plant and do all Miz Hyacinth’s outdoor bidding, but summer means longer workdays. We just keep on doing all we can. Next year will bring the harvest.” He seemed worn but mighty proud to do it.
Miz Hyacinth didn’t stop with the outside or the painting and papering of the inside. Once she had Olney and Marshall working like a house afire outdoors, she ordered Celia’s mama and Miss Grace to her library. Celia and Chester sat again on the sidelines.
“We must decide about my books. I so loved sharing them with the children when I taught school. Sometimes I even loaned a few to parents. But since my stroke, since the school here closed, there’s been no opportunity to reach the children, to see them day by day—at least I’ve made no effort.” Miz Hyacinth seemed to shrivel down a little at that confession.
“This is no ordinary library, you know. I’ve told you that I’ve acquired in my lifetime . . . oh, I suppose hundreds of books, and have done my best to keep up with both classics and the current writers of the day for children and adults. But there is so much more—there are books on these shelves from every generation of Belvideres reaching back to England and Scotland with our first ancestors to set foot on the soil of the New World. First editions, books autographed by authors—a veritable treasure trove of poetry and literature and plays, theological tomes and histories. I could go on, but you must understand what is here, and what it is potentially worth, especially once this horrid Depression is over. They are valuable as books, but books are only truly valuable as friends when they’re read and their contents devoured and treasured. What will you do with all these books, Li—Grace?”
Miss Grace’s eyes went wide. When she spoke, it came out more as a sputter. “Wh-what would you like me to do with them? They’re yours, so I have no idea.”
Celia had lots of ideas and it had been all she could do to keep her mouth shut and sit on her hands while Miz Hyacinth spoke. “I know!”
“Celia!” her mother hissed. “Hush, now! Miz Hyacinth knows what she wants done. She’ll tell us in her time.”
“But I have the answer—the perfect, most brilliant solution!” Celia loved the word brilliant and she loved the word solution.
Celia’s mother turned her back on her, but Celia, undeterred, pushed between her mother and Miss Grace to lay her hand on Miz Hyacinth’s arm and speak with her face-to-face.
“What is it, Celia?” Miz Hyacinth smiled as if she had all the time in the world. “What is your brilliant idea this time?”
“A library.”
“Yes, that’s just what it is, a library.”
“No, now it’s your library—yours and Miss Grace’s. I mean make it a library for everybody.”
“For everyone? Everyone in No Creek?” Miz Hyacinth’s smile faded, but her sightless eyes paused and her head tilted to one side. “A lending library. What an interesting, big idea.”
Celia’s mother shook her head. “Now hold on. Think about that, Miz Hyacinth. You’d have everybody and their brother traipsing through your gardens and knocking on your door all times of the day and night. They’d never care for these treasures as you do. Why, I’ve seen the books Celia brings home from the school library—covers torn off, pages dog-eared and thumbmarked and soiled. No. That won’t do.”
“Hmmm,” Miz Hyacinth considered. “Well, that won’t be my problem. Grace, what do you think? Would you want folks traipsing in and out? Would you trust them with our books? Would you even want to own or run a library for the community?”
Celia, holding her breath, turned to Miss Grace. It was all she could do not to press her hands together in a pleading prayer.
Miss Grace blinked, her eyes open wider yet. “Why—I never—that is a big idea. A very big idea, and I’m not sure I’ll be—” She stopped short. “I need to think on it.” She sat down as if the weight of such a thought liked to do her in.
Celia didn’t waste the advantage of now standing just above Miss Grace’s eyeline. “Miss Grace, when Miz Hyacinth taught school here, she read to us every day—books from her library, books we had no chance of owning or ever borrowing from anyplace else. She read us The Secret Garden! And Treasure Island! Sometimes she’d let us hold them in our hands. On her really old books we’d rub the engraving on the outside of leather covers, trace our fingers in the gold-leaf words on the bindings. Her new books smelled of ink. And we never hurt one, did we, Miz Hyacinth?”
“Not one.” Miz Hyacinth smiled in memory, clearly delighted that it had meant so much to Celia.
“We’d be real careful, and you wouldn’t have to let folks come day and night—just whenever you want. There’s books here I’d give my right arm to read, and I
swear I’ll be careful.”
“That’s not a good idea,” said Chester. “You’ll need that right arm for stickball, and you’re not supposed to swear.”
“It’s an expression, stupid.”
“Mama, she called me stupid!”
“Children, hush now!” Celia’s mama looked beside herself. “You’re wearing Miz Hyacinth to a frazzle.”
“It’s all right, Gladys. Let them be. I enjoy them more each day.” Miz Hyacinth beamed in the direction of Celia’s voice. “It’s a good idea.”
“Well, they wear me to a frazzle,” Gladys mumbled.
“Then I guess they need a job.” Miss Grace sighed the kind of sigh grown-ups heave when they’re about to give in and leveled a scrutinizing eye at Celia and Chester. “A job that may take quite a long time, if you’ll agree, Gladys.”
“If it will keep these two busy and out of mischief, they’re all yours,” Celia’s mama declared, fists dug into her hips.
“I think a library—with limited hours—might be doable. Might be just the thing for everyone.” A slow smile started at the corners of Miss Grace’s mouth. “If it doesn’t work out, we can always close. But we’ll need to organize the shelves first and find a way to keep track of who borrows each book.”
“Categorize—the Dewey decimal system,” Miz Hyacinth proclaimed. “Order the books that way and you’ll be able to keep track.”
“The Dewey decimal system? All these books?” Miss Grace paled and looked like she might croak.
“I just mean organize the nonfiction into those general categories, then alphabetize the fiction by author.”
“Yes, I can see that,” Miss Grace mused, turning slowly, taking in each and every shelf. “You’ve already done that for the most part.”
“What about kids’ books?” Chester caught the fever.
“Yes,” Miz Hyacinth enthused, “there must be a separate room for children. Perhaps the dining room—or the front parlor.”
Miss Grace smiled. “A children’s library. I think the front parlor, if that’s all right with you. We’ll keep your chair there by the window, of course, but the light is wonderful and the room’s so cheery, and there’s the piano. I can imagine we might want to play some songs and create some children’s programs at times; what do you think?”
Celia couldn’t keep the springs out of her shoes. She jumped up and down, threw her arms in the air, and shouted, “That’s a stupendous idea! This is the best day ever!”
Her mother caught the vase Celia knocked over just before it crashed to the floor. “Mercy sakes! Can we put these children to work right now?”
Miz Hyacinth clapped her hands and laughed her full repertoire of bells, the high ones and low ones, the deep warm ones and the silvery tinkle of fairy bells. “What joy! I knew there was a reason I heard the whip-poor-will sing last night!”
Celia grinned so she thought her face might split. Never had a prospect sounded so wonderful; never had a grown-up listened to her big ideas and acted on them straightaway. Miss Grace rose ten feet in her estimation, nearly as high as Miz Hyacinth.
Chapter Sixteen
I SAW IN AUNT HYACINTH a moment-by-moment transformation as we worked in her library each day. It was a mammoth project, one I knew might last the length of her life, but it kept us all together, bustling around her, busy and happy. That was worth every minute, every strained muscle from moving bookshelves and nose full of dust from the upper reaches—shelves that probably hadn’t received attention in ten years.
Celia’s excitement and growing sense of purpose made my heart sing. What it would be to live with such joy and purpose each day—to rise every morning looking forward to work that would benefit an entire community, bring us into relationship with one another and use the natural gifts and inclinations we’d all been blessed with. It seemed like heaven opening to me, and that was confusing.
How could something so lovely, so inviting and welcome come to me? How could it seem that God was blessing everyone around me, allowing me to be part of this amazing gift, when He couldn’t possibly look on me with favor? I didn’t know, and I dared not look too closely for fear the gift might be taken away. Any day, Gerald could waltz through the front door, or there would be a knock, and when I opened it, his smug power would bear down on me.
In the meantime I determined to do my best for Aunt Hyacinth and the people of No Creek who might benefit from the library, and to take advice from an expression of Olney Tate’s: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. You might find the teeth are rotten or you might find them fine; it’s a gift horse just the same.”
I could tell by Reverend Willard’s longing gazes at the books and his concern for Miz Hyacinth that he wished he could be part of tearing down the old and setting up the new, but he hadn’t time. He tended the congregational needs of a full church in No Creek on Sundays and Wednesday evenings as well as a church in Ridgemont on Saturdays and Tuesday evenings—besides visiting the sick and homebound and settling local disputes. All that plus another job writing a column of sermons printed in a Charlotte newspaper kept him busy and solvent.
Aunt Hyacinth and I could lift the window most late afternoons and hear him practicing his sermons to the tombstones in the churchyard. We couldn’t hear enough to know all he said but caught the inflection in his voice, the passion of his heart. It seemed to do Aunt Hyacinth good, so daily I raised the window by her chair. Sometimes we’d share a giggle over our eavesdropping or at amusing things he said.
It was fun at the time, but later I felt guilty—as if we were being sacrilegious. And yet, when Aunt Hyacinth surprised me by telling Reverend Willard we did that, he laughed as if it was the best joke in the world and said he figured it a great compliment that we’d listened so attentively since, after all, he’d not been able to raise the dead with his preaching.
It was on a Tuesday that we finally finished organizing the adult nonfiction. Alphabetizing the fiction and setting up the children’s room would be pure pleasure after that.
“How will we let people know when to come?” Celia asked the question that had troubled me. As a newcomer I didn’t think I was the one to spread the word. And I feared, as the time drew closer, opening up Garden’s Gate to the scrutiny of strangers and the litany of questions regarding my relationship to Aunt Hyacinth and the Belvidere family that would surely come with daily visitors. How could I answer them truthfully without revealing too much, without running the risk that word of my whereabouts would somehow get back to my husband or father?
“Reverend Willard can announce it on Sunday,” Chester volunteered, which sounded like a very good idea.
“But then it just sounds like something the preacher wants us to do that’s good for us.” Celia stuck out her lower lip and pinched it. “Nobody’s likely to take to that.”
“We could post a notice at the general store. Ida Mae’s good for spreading any word we want.” Gladys flicked her dustrag across the bottom row of novels authored by writers whose names began with the letter A.
But it was Chester who came up with the idea Celia seconded and championed. “A party, like they throw after a working—that always gets people to come.”
“Clogging and Joe Earl’s fiddle—here?” Their mother frowned.
“Perhaps not, but a party,” Aunt Hyacinth mused. “A summer tea party to show off Garden’s Gate and welcome our friends to the library. That’s not a bad idea. What do you think, Grace?”
“Well, I—”
“We could show them all the books and how they’re arranged and teach them how to check them out!” Celia looked near to bursting. “I can be the librarian and sign everybody up! And lend all the books out!”
Her mother fussed, “Settle down, Celia. You’re hopping like a pogo stick. I don’t know that an invitation to view books will bring people out, Miz Hyacinth.”
“They’ll come if there’s cake!” Chester asserted. “I’ll come, if there’s cake.”
Aunt Hyacinth�
�s bells went off again. “Then cake there will be!”
“And lemonade for the kids and sweet tea for the grown-ups!” Celia was already making a list. “And everybody can come, right? Right, Miz Hyacinth? We can help spread the word.”
“Grace?” Aunt Hyacinth deferred.
“It sounds like a good idea—more work, but a good idea.”
“Excellent! I do think posting a notice in the general store and post office is the thing, and if Reverend Willard would make some sort of announcement and mention on Sunday that he’ll come, that would certainly bring folks out.”
“At least women with unmarried daughters,” Gladys said under her breath.
So our plans were underway, and Celia, true to her word, set about inviting everybody she knew.
Chapter Seventeen
JESSE WAS DELIGHTED with the library idea and more than glad to make the announcement in church, extending the invitation to Miz Hyacinth’s house on Sunday. The tea party and library reception would take place that very July afternoon, and all of No Creek was invited.
Ida Mae and those attending church who’d seen the notice all week tacked up in the post office took it for granted that only the white people of No Creek would come. Jesse knew and accepted that. It hadn’t occurred to him that it would be otherwise.
Notwithstanding a shred of misgiving when he saw Ida Mae’s face, Jesse wholeheartedly expressed joy and offered a firm handclasp when he met Reverend George Pierce of No Creek’s colored church, Saints Delight, leading his flock to Miz Hyacinth’s door.
Reverend Pierce was one of the finest men and most gifted pastors Jesse knew. Miz Hyacinth and Miss Grace already ranked high in Jesse’s estimation. Their invitation to the members of Saints Delight Church despite No Creek’s known prejudice shot that standing over the moon.
Olney Tate was not among those attending, but Jesse saw his wife and children right behind Reverend Pierce. Olney and Marshall, Jesse knew, were working that afternoon for the widow Cramer, who desperately needed a new well dug.