Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction

by Russell, Vanessa

  “Just read!” I gasped.

  “Very well,” he said in his maddeningly calm way. He read that history has shown that suffrage is not the way. That as far back as the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony and slave-born Sojourner Truth petitioned the government for emancipation of slaves with the belief that, once the war was over, women and slaves alike would be granted the same rights as white men. However, when the time came, Abraham Lincoln declared ‘This hour belongs to the Negro’. “Pity,” Robert said. “Abe was your hero and now we find he’s betrayed you too.”

  Anger bore down hard and I sent him away. I had work to do.

  Dr. Hughes returned in enough time to save my life and send Robert the bill – as Robert described it. I was bleeding profusely – as the doctor described it.

  Oh! Here comes Aimee in a beautiful fur shawl and matching hand muff – looks like another apology from her husband.

  April 6th, 1911: Aimee told me yesterday that when she heard me shouting out my window during the labor pains, she at once ran to fetch Phyllis. She brought her here with her midwife skills and basket of teas and tonics only to be turned away by Robert, who told them that no more than a real doctor was permitted in his home. I had no idea he was so protective! I will send a letter to Phyllis to explain this. How I would love to see her – not since Cady’s funeral have we spoken. In my letter I will tell her my marvelous idea. It came to me during the night while pacing with Little Cady. My idea is this: We need a place to run to in the storm of a husband’s drunkenness. And we could use the Pickering manor. Phyllis told Aimee and Aimee told me that Thomas no longer lived in the manor and was looking for another use for it. We could call it the Lighthouse.

  Little Cady is crying.

  April 15th, 1911: Phyllis loved my idea so much, she answered my letter in person. “Do this,” she said and she gently stroked the baby’s nose from the bridge down to the nostrils as I breast-fed her. “Do this several times while nursing to clear the mucous.” I hope it works and that Little Cady will begin breathing easier and sleeping more.

  He paces with Little Cady during the night as much as I do. His mother hadn’t allowed him to hold our first four infants. As I watched him pace last night I had an amazing revelation – Robert was growing up. Had he struggled these last two years without his mother telling him what to do? Does a mother have that sort of power? It’s true I tell my children when to eat, sleep, and what to wear – I could also tell Bess where to go and what to believe in! She’s such an obedient child. I could have Bess pick up where I left off. And Robert would never be the wiser for it. He’d pay no attention to the teachings of a mother to her daughter. And aren’t I only doing what Preacher Paul preached - about God’s hierarchy and the natural order of man?

  He handed Little Cady over to me so very carefully while saying, “She’s a cute little thing. Were the others this perfect?” Actually she’s quite frail but I dare not bring that home to him. Instead I unbuttoned my gown and brought her to my breast. She hungrily moved her head back and forth until her mouth found her connection. Ah, that sweet tugging – what did Phyllis call it? Yes, stimulating, that’s it. Never did I feel so close to my babies as I did in breastfeeding them. To be able to give nourishment like no man ever can. For the first time, I feel sorry for Robert.

  “You look happy now,” he said. “I prayed that another child would bring you back … your smile. Well, to be quite honest, I thought I was losing you. First to another man.”

  Dear Diary, I thought I would faint! With my heart in my throat, I glanced over to him. He was inspecting his hands, rubbing hard at the permanent shoe dye stain in his cuticles.

  “But then you explained that he was Cady’s husband, Thomas, and he was simply giving you a ride home in his blasted motor carriage.

  “And then I thought I’d lost you to those high and mighty women and their damned cause. I had to bring you down to where you belong – with me. I did things I’m not proud of.” He cleared his throat – the only thing customary in this dialogue, I assure you.

  “Then I almost lost you to death and I would be partially to blame, for it is my child that would’ve killed you. Only then did I realize.” He paused and finally met my astonished eyes. “I love you. There. It’s said. That might be the first time I’ve said it but.” He slapped his hands on his knees and looked around helplessly, finding himself in a realm he wasn’t accustomed to.

  “Paint the rooms!” he suddenly announced with a proud smile. “Paint all the damn rooms you want!”

  What is Family?

  Mary Sue had stayed at Mama’s for four days after my wedding. On the fourth evening she walked home smelling of lavender. Handing me a sachet she had made - Thomas and Bess cross-stitched with our wedding date on one side - she smiled shyly. Her expression revealed no criticism of me. This was short-lived.

  She took papers from my hand and pulled me to the front parlor as if someone important were there waiting to see me. No one was there; the house was quiet with Lizzie on an errand and Thomas at the office. Mary Sue pushed me down onto the sofa.

  “You have to sit for what I’m about to tell you,” she said. Her expression had changed - her eyes wide, her mouth tightly turned down.

  I dared not let my mind guess so I folded my hands in my lap and waited.

  “I just came back from your mommy’s house,” she said, sitting beside me and patting my arm. “I stayed longer to help her wash out the bedding. With Pearl gone so much of the time, and you here doing Lord-knows-what, your mommy just can’t do all that lifting on her own.”

  I knew in my bones this had to be bad news.

  “Last night your mommy asked me to sit with your daddy while she went next door to visit. He was in a state for shore. Like my daddy says, nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

  She spoke so slowly I prayed silently to keep from screaming at her.

  “I knowed what was wrong right away. I told him he didn’t need to worry about you marrying again. You love Thomas a lot more than you loved my daddy, I told him. ‘Course I told him it wasn’t right you leaving my daddy after just one night, like we had cooties. But you couldn’t help yourself. You thinkin’ my daddy loved Miz Ruby more than you just ain’t true, so I told him don’t go worrying about that either. Daddy loved my mommy the best. Your daddy kept asking questions and I kept telling him not to worry. But. Well. You know your daddy’s been real sick and he took a turn for the worse last night. Your mommy woke up this morning with him cold as stone beside her. Sometime in the night he drew his last breath.”

  I absorbed her meaning, feeling each line like a dagger, gawking at this impassive child. I wanted to kill the messenger. No, I wanted to kill the murderer! “What are you saying, Mary Sue? That my father died?”

  She nodded gravely. “He just couldn’t go on anymore,” she said in a monotone, her eyes dazed. “Your wedding took what little he had left in him. He didn’t want to eat anymore, talked out of his head like he was still working in his shoe store and your mommy was a customer. He—”

  Rage took me to my feet. I grabbed her collar and jerked her to her feet. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” I shook her. “Do you? You vindictive crazy bitch!” I shoved hard and she fell back down onto the sofa.

  She sat where she fell, limp as a rag doll. “Don’t blame me for your sins,” she said in that same monotone. “You think you can treat—”

  I slapped her mouth shut. “Shut up you fool!”

  Papa is dead, oh my God, he’s dead. Mama! Poor Mama! I have to go to her!

  “Straighten up!” I shouted. She obeyed, holding her cheek, her expression slowly changing to fear, as if she were coming up out of a bad dream.

  “Mary Sue, do you know how to use a telephone? Do you? Answer me!”

  She had the audacity to scowl. “Yes. I’m not stupid!” This I was beginning to see.

  “Then ask the operator to connect you to Mr. Pickering at the Annan Newspaper. He’s sche
duled for an important interview and can’t leave now. I’ll run home, but just tell him what happened and to drive there as fast as he can. Can you do that? Can you?”

  Her shoulders lifted as the bearer of such important news to Thomas. Her mouth relaxed into a martyred smile and she nodded. “Don’t you worry. I’ll let Thomas know.”

  I rushed toward the front door.

  “And Lizzie, too!” she called out.

  A block or so away, I waved down a taxi and finally reached my childhood home. The house already looked different. The threatening rain clouds fitted the occasion and the worn-out three-story wood and fish-scale siding had a doomed grayness surrounding it. Its second story window blinds were pulled down like eyes closed in death, the grief of another life lost here prevalent. It was like facing brother Jonathan’s death all over again. Gloom settled around my heart and slowed my steps. I didn’t want to walk into this grief I knew permeated these walls, grief which would bring tears of loss and worse, guilt. Damn that Mary Sue to hell! Already I wished I had been a better daughter to him as I took the steps to the verandah.

  “Bess, he’s gone.”

  I turned to see Mama in her rocking chair, partially hidden in the shadows. I rushed to her side and hugged her, relieved I wouldn’t have to go into the darkness of the house just yet. “I know, Mama. Mary Sue just told me.” If Mama only had a telephone I would’ve known sooner.

  “No, I mean he’s gone. The undertaker just left with him … his body. They’ll do whatever it is they do to a body, and then will bring him back here. Those were his wishes; to have his funeral in the parlor, just as we’d done for his mother. He’ll be buried beside her and his father, as his mother had planned. Everything in this house seemed to go as his mother planned. Sometimes I’m not sure if I ever got the reins.” She continued to steadily rock and gaze ahead of her as if her rocker was taking her for a ride through the past. “Look at that poplar tree there. It used to be so small I could see through its branches when I used to bring Little Cady out here and rock. Pearl believes Little Cady was born and died out here, but of course you know better than that. I feel like I can just think better out here. I can barely see around its trunk now, it’s grown so big. Everything’s grown, except me. Everybody’s leaving, except me.”

  She paused in her rocking and turned her gaze down the street as if her ride took her to a scene to reckon with.

  “At one time I wanted to go; when I saw him riding down my street right there, sitting tall on his horse, knowing he was looking only for me, I wanted to go with him. I dreamt about it but I couldn’t get to the other side. There was no way to cross that river.”

  Her rocking resumed and she faced the tree again.

  “My journey remained on this side of the river, to raise my five children, to see them move out into the world, to lose two to death. Little Jonathon; how I miss him and his arguments with his big brother Victor. Robert tolerated his two boys, but his girls, well, they seemed to have minds of their own he couldn’t understand. But he tried in his own way. A day or so after your wedding, he said, “Ruby, I believe Bess has grown up to be a good woman.” He gave Pearl his blessing for her marriage to David, too, and for the first time said he was proud of her. She was respectful enough to pretend she needed his permission.

  “But I think you and Pearl were good women before you found a man to marry you. I taught you both to have your own lives, your own thoughts, and I never apologized to Robert for that, even if Pearl did get a little wild. She’ll be fine. She and Victor have gone with the undertaker. Victor and your papa had money put aside for this, he said. I don’t know how much or what the plan was. I’m told not to worry, they’ll handle it. And so now I must see Robert go and this, too, is out of my hands.”

  I’d never heard Mama talk so, her eyes dreamlike and misty, but not teary. It wasn’t only the December wind that chilled me. Mama felt it, too, and pulled her old black shawl tighter around her.

  “Were you in love with him?” I asked.

  “With all my heart.”

  She wasn’t looking ahead any more, but down the street. I almost expected to see a man on a horse there.

  Victor and Pearl’s return from the undertaker brought Mama out of her trance. Victor looked so much like Papa it was as if Papa’s spirit had simply moved down a generation to have another go at life. He looked stiff and uncomfortable surrounded only by his womenfolk. His big brown eyes – cow eyes I used to call him in our younger days – were red-rimmed and his square jaw was set to tolerate, as I’d seen Papa do so many times.

  “The wake begins tomorrow night,” he said as we sat around the table munching leftover bread and fried chicken, our family tears sufficiently subsided enough to eat. “We’ll be up all night for the wake when his body gets here. Bess, plan to spend the night then. You can sleep with Pearl. Caroline and I will sleep in my old room on the third floor. The funeral is the next day. Preacher Paul will preside over the funeral. He’ll be here tomorrow for prayers. Don’t cook anything. I would imagine tons of food will be brought in from the church ladies once word gets out. Thomas can put this in the paper, Bess. Write something nice for the obituary, or better yet, I’ll talk to Thomas about it. He’ll know what to do.”

  I had chosen to forget Victor’s domineering demeanor. It all came back to me in double irritation. But more so, I wondered where Thomas was at this late hour. He should have been here by now.

  Victor leaned his chair back to look out the dining room window. “There he comes now. Beauty of a car. Has a darkie with him, though. With a house like that, I suspected slaves all along. Or could it be he has a mistress already?”

  I ignored his feeble attempt at humor. At that moment, I wouldn’t have cared if Thomas brought a flapper girl. I needed him - and at last hugged him tightly to tell him so.

  “We would have been here sooner, but that little missy didn’t tell us until after we ate supper,” Lizzie said, deep lines in her dark brown forehead telling me of her fury.

  “She didn’t call you, Thomas?” I asked.

  “Only to tell me to come home early for dinner.”

  “She sat in your place at the dinner table, Miz Bess,” said Lizzie, “like she was Queen Victoria. Said she didn’t want to spoil our appetites until we’d had a good meal. That girl wants to rule the roost, I tell you. I left her there to clean the kitchen,” she added, looking quite pleased with her retaliation.

  I had enough to worry about at the moment and did not wish to air out any more of our home laundry. “The funeral is day after tomorrow,” I said to Thomas and Lizzie. “What time is the funeral, Victor?”

  “One in the afternoon. After the funeral, we have an appointment at the lawyer’s office to hear the reading of the will.”

  He scowled at Mama’s stunned look. “He didn’t tell you he had a will?” He shook his head when she shook hers. “Pity. He should have told you.” As if giving her further clues, he added, “This is the same lawyer who drew up the papers for the Walk Wright shoe store transfer to me. We had an agreement. I thought you knew all about it.”

  “Your father told me little about his business. I thought you knew that.” She sounded as if she felt like me; I wasn’t appreciating the suspense either.

  “Do you know what’s in the will?” I asked.

  “A little.” His attention remained on cutting fat from his beef. “But I’m not obliged to say. It’s legal jargon you wouldn’t understand. Best left to the lawyer to explain.” He placed his knife carefully on the left-hand corner of his plate.

  A chip off the old block in every way.

  The wake droned on and on and was putting me to sleep. I felt suffocated in the hugs of the crowds of people who came in and out of the parlor. Uncle Jesse and Aunt Edith squeezed me hard at the same time.

  “Your papa and I didn’t have much to say to one another,” Uncle Jesse said, “but he was a good enough man, I believe.”

  “Every wife’s fear, this is,” said Aunt E
dith, sniffing and shaking her head.

  Aunt Opal and Uncle Jacob quietly patted Papa’s hand – an unnatural manikin color, made worse by being manicured - old stain from shoe polish gone now – as if comforting him. I couldn’t touch him. The man displayed in the coffin was a skeletal version of the papa I remembered from youth, even different from his sickly pallor in his last few years. I no longer wanted to be reminded of the years gone by and how death sneaks up on a loved one.

  He wasn’t going to wake; this old custom of staying with him in this cramped parlor suddenly seemed horribly morbid. The stroke of midnight coming from the mantle clock was the last strike and I sneaked out when Victor went to the privy. How I missed Thomas!

  Shivering and exhausted from the long walk, I finally found my way through my front door. Without the aid of lighting I fumbled up the stairs to our bedroom. The door opened of its own accord and I stood face to face with Mary Sue, a candle in her hand illuminating wildly frightened eyes at seeing me there.

  “What’s the matter, Mary Sue? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” I whispered. It sounded more like a hiss. “Why are you coming out of my husband’s bedroom?”

  “I-I thought I heard something. I-I was afraid.”