Another time Carey guffawed, “Why you courtin’ Eulalie anyway if it’s all gonna be over and done?” He repeated, with satisfaction, “Over and done.”
Although Franklin Ward reprised Reverend Miller’s thinking and provided corroborative essays by prominent theologians, Carey and Pauline enjoyed many a joke at Eulalie’s suitor’s expense.
Ellen listened more attentively. That Christ should bring the corrupt, ungodly world to an end certainly seemed plausible.
They were living through, Franklin Ward explained, the “tarrying time.”
* * *
Eleven months before the soonest date for the world to end, Ellen put away her catechism and The Lives of the Saints. She trumped up reasons why Father Michael should no longer be invited for her instruction and the dinners the good father and Pierre so enjoyed. When the priest asked when Ellen wished to be confirmed in her faith, the young lady was desperately vague.
Mammy didn’t need the laundrywoman’s report to know what had happened.
“Child,” she said when they were alone, “you ain’t cheerful like you been.”
“What’s to be cheerful about? My life is mean, small, and dull. I’ve no friends, really . . .”
“Nary one?”
“You don’t count.” Reluctantly she added—for Ellen was always truthful, “You are more than a friend.”
“You changin’, that’s all. Honey, you a woman growed.”
“I do not wish to be a ‘woman growed.’”
Mammy grinned. “Well, you ain’t gonna be no man. You got the Jack, and every moon Jack, he come visit you.”
Mammy gave Ellen soft cotton napkins. “Pin ’em in your drawers and change ’em much as you needs. Leave ’em in that covered pail next the back door. Keep pail covered. Your daddy don’t want to know ’bout it.”
Ellen’s face twisted. “Oh, Mammy! Do I have to?”
“Yes, child. I reckon you do.”
She wailed, “I’m so dirty!”
Mammy didn’t smile. “You ain’t dirty, child. What’s happenin’ was meant to be. Happen to your Momma, happen to me. You gets used to it.”
“I’m so dirty,” she whispered.
A month or two later, Antoinette Sevier reappeared. Skinny, thin, and pale, she knew not to sass Mammy but sassed her anyway.
The two girls resumed friendship as if there’d been no breach, and Antoinette’s friends became Ellen’s. Balls and picnics and racecourses and sailing filled her days. Often Ellen stayed over at Antoinette’s home, and before long Mammy didn’t know whether to set a place for her at table or not. Ellen accepted Mammy’s cautions and reproofs with her head cocked as if evaluating novel, dubious propositions.
Early one Saturday, returning from the market, Mammy jumped to the curb as Philippe Robillard’s carriage clattered by. Miss Antoinette Sevier was sprawled across Philippe’s lap, and both were laughing.
Children. When Mammy pictured how they were, what they thought, what they cared about—it all seemed as remote and ethereal as the plump clouds overhead. Mammy tucked her market basket under her arm and marched home, where Nehemiah was at breakfast.
Nehemiah didn’t want to know. “No colored ever gained nothin’ by white disgrace.”
“That Miss Antoinette, she goin’ round without no chaperone,” Mammy insisted.
Nehemiah took a cautious spoonful of hot oatmeal. “Not our bother. Not our bother to any degree.”
“Wherever that child be goin’, she ain’t be goin’ alone,” Mammy predicted unhappily.
Mammy blamed Miss Antoinette for unpleasant changes in Ellen’s appearance and behavior. Miss Ellen’s posture drooped, and the child who’d been meticulous and neat became flamboyant and not at all tucked in. The thoughtful replies Mammy was accustomed to became vague, uninformative mumbles. The child who had taken to deportment like a duck on a June bug had abandoned it.
One hot summer night, startled wide-eyed and heart-pounding awake by a dream, Mammy slipped into Miss Ellen’s disordered bedroom and sat on her empty bed until the downstairs clock struck thrice and a carriage drew up out front. Silence. The coachman popped his whip, and it rolled away. Key in the door, footfalls tiptoeing up Jehu’s stairs. The child eased her door open and whisked inside.
“G’mornin’,” Mammy said.
Through the window, the moon cast a pale swatch on the far wall. Caught in that light, Miss Ellen wiped her mouth and tugged her shirt collar straight. “I . . .”
“Don’t lie me no lies, young Missus!”
Ellen kicked her slipper into a corner, where it thumped the wall. Her other slipper followed. “Tell me, Mammy. Do you think the world is going to end? Antoinette says it won’t, but Philippe believes it will. We humans have done so many wicked things, wouldn’t the world be better without us?”
“Le Bon Dieu . . .”
“Do speak English, Mammy. You mean God. He who has His eye on the sparrow.”
“God see what we do, and what God don’t see, you Momma do.”
“Sorry. I don’t seem to recall that lady.”
“Miss Ellen . . .”
“Mammy, if you dare interfere, I shall . . .”
“What you gonna do to me, miss? What you gonna do ain’t been done worse afore?”
“Mammy . . . I just don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”
Stiffly, Mammy got to her feet. Her knees were bothering her.
“Take care, young Missus. You ain’t so bad as you wants to be. You ain’t got it in you.”
* * *
Nehemiah wouldn’t tell Pierre. “What Master Pierre gonna do?”
“He can talk to her.”
Nehemiah nodded. “What good that gonna do?” He cleared his throat. “If she was colored, be something we could do. Colored girl, we could hang bells round her waist so we catch her slippin’ out, or we can chain her ankles so she too hobbled to run.”
“Or send her for ‘a little sugar,’” Mammy suggested.
“But we can’t. That girl goin’ to the Devil, but she goin’ at her own pace and in her own time, and, Mammy, there ain’t one thing in the world you nor me can do ’bout it.”
They didn’t tell Pierre.
When Eulalie’s Franklin called, Pierre joined them in the drawing room beneath Solange’s portrait until the Benchleys came down, whereupon Pierre escaped for his Sabbath nap. At dinner Pierre drank a bottle of claret and Nehemiah helped him upstairs. When old friends called, Pierre greeted them amiably but after a half hour begged forgiveness and repaired to private quarters. Pierre Robillard’s grip was very much loosened, and if that amiable, distracted gentleman noticed the changes in his youngest daughter, he didn’t remark them.
Ellen didn’t lack respectable suitors. Moony-eyed Robert Wilson—son to that steamboat captain. Mammy found Robert on the front steps one morning—crack of dawn—hoping Miss Ellen would come out. And Gerald O’Hara kept calling with flowers, candies, all sorts of small gifts. True, he was an Irishman, but he was a respectable Irishman!
Respectable, Philippe Robillard was not. He was a scandal.
Wasn’t his fault, Philippe had no Mammy to rear him and plenty money to go wrong. Before he was out of short pants, his mother stopped taking Philippe to St. John’s. Other parishioners, who hadn’t enjoyed the boy’s kicking, screaming tantrums, were glad to see the back of him. By fifteen, Young Philippe had gone through five tutors, including a Boston Yankee.
Savannah market was happily scandalized by the young Master. When there were no new outrages to deplore, they recollected old ones: how Young Master Philippe rode a fine horse to death or how he’d insulted a nun and “that scamp sent Charles workhouse be whipped ’count Charles didn’t get scuffs out his boots. Scuffs is leather cuts. Charles didn’t cut scuffs in, how he gonna get
’em out?”
As the Robillards’ chief house servant, Mammy expected deference and small courtesies. “Fine green turtle. I know how Master Pierre like his green turtle, so I been keepin’ this fella back special, Mammy.”
Mammy did not expect impertinence, but one morning, Mammy Antigone (whose white folks lived on the trash side of Jackson Square) confronted her. “You Miss Ellen, Mammy Ruth. She carryin’ on outrageous with that Philippe boy. Outrageous! Miss Ellen scandalizin’ you!”
“Distress for Robillard family is you?” Mammy retorted. But sharp retort cannot hide truth.
As a child, Miss Ellen had snubbed Philippe. She wasn’t snubbing him now.
Mammy Antigone put her hand on Mammy Ruth’s arm! “You done everything you could, girl. Bless your heart.”
Mammy shook that hand off like it was a snake. Mammy Antigone feelin’ sorry for Mammy Ruth! How dare she!
Miss Eulalie was still in curlers when Mammy burst into her bedroom. “I hearin’ ’bout Miss Ellen,” she said. “Folk’s talkin’!”
Eulalie smiled a dreamer’s smile. “Philippe and my sister are very much in love. Everyone says so.”
“Everyone do?”
“It is so romantic.”
“You only want what you ain’t got. If you got it, you wouldn’t be wantin’ it.”
A blind woman could have seen trouble coming: Miss Ellen’s moodiness, her indifference to favorite pastimes, her superior, cunning air—as if she had some secret nobody else was wise enough or good enough to know. Like many before her, Miss Ellen thought she’d invented love. She wore “I’m in love” like a placard.
Young folks think love is as simple as the sunrise and plain as the nose on your face. They hope to melt in their lovers’ eyes.
Mammy knew love is never simple or plain, and can be worlds of hurt. Miss Ellen was fifteen. Ripe enough to fall in love. Who she was in love with was the problem. Anybody but Cousin Philippe! After a night when the spirits wouldn’t stop chatterin’, Mammy went into Ellen’s bedroom and shook her awake. “What you up to with that boy? You scandalizin’ Robillard family.”
Although Ellen’s eyes were tinged with red and her hair was mussed, she rose, drew on her robe, sat down at her dressing table, and patted powder on her cheeks.
“I got to tell Master Pierre, honey. You leavin’ me no choices.”
Ellen’s shoulder dipped in a shrug so slight it might have been overlooked.
Mammy waited until Master Pierre made his toilette, was shaved, and had breakfasted on a coddled egg and a small cup of bitter chicory coffee. When Mammy told her story, the anger, distress, and concern flitting across Pierre’s face reminded her of the godparent he’d been so many years ago. But the lightning passed and his face subsided into an old man’s soft folds. “Young folks will be young folks. Not much we can do about it.”
“You ain’t gonna do nothin’?”
Pierre’s shrug was wearier than his daughter’s and no more helpful.
The twelfth of March was the soonest date Reverend Miller’s dire prediction might be realized, and Savannah’s young sports vowed to celebrate. Antoinette Sevier suggested, “With so little time left to live, shouldn’t we live it?” Mammy wanted to wash the child’s mouth with soap.
When Mammy prepared ambush by the back door, Ellen slipped out a window. When Mammy waited at the stable, Miss Ellen’s lover came to the front door. Mammy ran into the street in time to see Miss Ellen and Philippe on his horse, her hair loosed, arms wrapped tight around him as his stallion galloped down the street.
Mammy understood how a girl like Ellen might sacrifice herself, her virginity, and her reputation to a scoundrel provided that scoundrel was beautiful and perfectly in the moment, alive. Understanding didn’t mean she’d let it happen.
* * *
Midnight, March 10, Mammy banged on Nehemiah’s door. “Bring the coach round,” she commanded. “Hurry. It am Miss Ellen and that boy. Miss Eulalie knows what theys up to. ’Tweren’t no secret to Miss Eulalie!”
“I ain’t doin’ no such a thing,” Nehemiah said. “This white folks doin’s. Not for you ’n’ me.”
She said, “You don’t come, I tell spirits you doin’ wrong.”
Nehemiah said, “I don’t believe in them African spirits.” He dressed and hitched up the carriage.
* * *
Farnum’s Tavern had been a respectable two-story farmhouse twenty years ago. The red lantern in its window paled in cold moonlight. Tucked under unpruned live oaks, its broad veranda was fronted by a row of bleached casks. Unusually handsome horses dozed at the familiar hitch rack. Farnum’s Tavern was where flash sports came to play.
“Around back,” Mammy commanded. “Ride me round back.”
“I ain’t waitin’ for you!” Nehemiah whispered.
“Yes, you is. I fetchin’ Miss Ellen. We needin’ you bring us home.”
“I don’t see her.”
“Course you don’t. Miss Ellen, she inside!” The wheel ruts in the yard lacked shadows or depth in the pale light. Outside the back door, Mammy hitched up her skirt and murmured a prayer. So many ways this could go wrong.
Thumbing the latch, she slipped into a filthy kitchen. Arms crossed, a scar-faced mulatto dozed against a scummy sink, whose drainboard was heaped with unwashed tankards. His eyes snapped open. “Who you?”
“Mammy Robillard. I come for Miss Ellen.”
The man raised his hands as if deflecting a blow.
Behind the taproom door, she heard men laughing. Mammy tucked her starched blouse and straightened her red-checked kerchief.
“Le Bon Dieu preserve me,” she prayed.
Smoking lanterns illumined splotched plaster walls. Mismatched tall and short candles marched raggedly down a long table. The air was a fug of stale tobacco smoke and spilled whiskey. If Farnum’s Tavern were, as some Baptists claimed, Satan’s Entry Hall, Satan needed a new housekeeper.
Young Masters in various stages of drunk sat along the table. Mammy Ruth knew them. She’d known them as children.
She should have been surprised to see the man presiding, but she wasn’t. She was heartsick.
Philippe Robillard sat beside Colonel Jack, and Miss Ellen was pressed against Philippe like a second skin. His top hat askew and his ruffled linen shirt open to his navel, Philippe was a beautiful ruin. On her pale brow, Miss Ellen wore a circlet of delicate pink camellias: a bride’s circlet. Miss Ellen’s eyes were dull. Youngbloods will continue too long and too late, until what had been bright and hopeful with the sunset and the first glass has died.
“Fetch us a tankard, wench!” In the shadows Colonel Jack hadn’t recognized her. “Savannah niggers slower’n my piss water.”
“They were quick enough until Philippe caned our waiter,” young Master Billy Obermeier objected. “Niggers have limits. Man can’t push them too far.”
Absently but tenderly Philippe patted Miss Ellen’s hand. “Are you performing my wedding, Jack? Or must we wait until you drink the last of my wine?”
Colonel Jack Ravanel grinned. “Perform, Philippe? Tonight?” He scraped his chair back, stood, and beamed on the company. “Dearly beloved . . .”
“I ain’t your beloved, Jack,” young Master Fleet objected.
“More’s the pity, Jimmy,” Jack leered.
Billy called, “Wench, where’s those damn tankards!”
Mammy stepped into the light. “I ain’t no wench, and you already drunk aplenty. An’ you, young Master Fleet: what your Papa think if he sees you now?”
Colonel Jack gasped. “Ruth!”
“I Mammy Robillard now, Colonel Jack. I comes to fetch Mistress Ellen home.”
Philippe lurched to his feet. “You forget yourself, nigger.”
“You gonna cane me, Master Philippe? You
gonna beat me till I faint? What your poor Momma think of that? Miss Osa, she never cause nobody no harm. What she think of these shenanigans?”
“Ruth . . .” Colonel Jack began.
“I young Mistress Ellen Robillard’s Mammy. This suppose to be Miss Ellen’s weddin? Where her guests? Where her family? Where the churchhouse? Where the preacher? Is you, Colonel Jack? You repented and confessed your sins and got yourself ordained so you can tie the knot what no man put asunder? God be praised! Miss Ellen, them saints of yours; what they think of these goings-on? What Jesus Christ think? You think He nailed Hemself on the cross so young masters could drink and fornicate?”
Philippe shrugged off Jack’s restraining arm. “I’ll sort this out,” he said and fronted Mammy.
Mammy gave not one inch to the young white master. “Young Master Fleet,” she called past Philippe. “What you gonna tell your Papa ’bout tonight? He gonna be so proud? And you, Master Obermeier, three weeks after your Papa pass to his Heavenly Reward and you Momma sorrowin’ and grievin’. You think your Momma smile when she hearin’ what you done tonight?”
“I never . . .”
“You never said no neither. You never said ‘Don’t mock God!’ He been here tonight, what would Papa Obermeier thought?”
Miss Ellen restrained Philippe’s arm. Her tiny hands forestalled him. “Darling Philippe, she is my Mammy!”
Whiskey fumes clung to the young master like morning fog. “Nigger!” he bleated as if the word explained everything anyone might want to know about her.
“Master Philippe,” Mammy said quietly, “I knowed you when you in nappies and you was a troublesome child! But you was lovable. You always been lovable, and I reckon Miss Ellen loves you tonight. But you ain’t in nappies now: you a man! One day, be important man; governor, senator maybe. You gonna want this affair knowed then?” Mammy mimicked Langston Butler’s Low Country drawl, ‘Philippe Robillard? Oh—that fellow! Didn’t he marry in a tavern?’ You want that name for youself? You want that name for Miss Ellen?”
Ruth’s Journey Page 23