In Galveston, there were so many things to occupy her. She went to luncheons, dinners, parties, and exhibits, and pushed Philo out of her mind as best she could. She had always maintained the ability to improvise. Only at night, when she was out under the open sky, alone, a warm wind breathing on her cheeks, did she let herself remember his kiss and yearn for it so powerfully that her chest compressed.
But life was so delicious here, so edible. Her aunt would settle for no less than freshly squeezed orange juice every morning. They ate imported cheeses and sampled wines from Italy. Etta put on weight. Her breasts became heavier, her hips more curvaceous, and she’d never felt so womanly, so bountiful. Her body was a finely honed instrument to advance her opportunities, and every day she tested, observed, and learned more about how she should appear.
She began to question the love she’d had for Philo. Perhaps the secrecy, the forbidden nature, and the hopelessness of their ever having a life together had given it much of its passion. But one thing still haunted her: she had never said good-bye. In an act of cowardice, she had failed to answer his last letter before leaving Nacogdoches, the only place he knew where to find her.
Throughout wakeful, cavernous nights, finding no comfortable spot on her mattress, she fought through her grief, and before long she stopped tangling the covers. After three weeks in Galveston, all that was left of Philo in her heart was a vague sense of loss.
Grace began returning home from her charitable work later and later in the day, leaving Etta more time with Bernadette. During Grace’s second week of duty, she did not appear until after the appointed dinnertime. Etta sat with Bernadette at the table and watched her aunt become angry and irritated, maybe even a little afraid, as they waited for Grace to arrive.
The servants were doing everything they could to keep the dinner dishes warm.
Finally Grace appeared, and Bernadette said simply, “You’re late.”
“Yes, Mother, I know. I was detained. I’ll be back down as soon as I can. But I must change my dress first.” Grace’s face was rosier than ever. Well, well, thought Etta. It appeared as if her cousin’s punishment agreed with her. Or maybe it was just the heat.
Bernadette said, “I’ll send Dolly to assist you.”
“No,” said Grace quickly from the bottom of the staircase. “I can manage on my own.”
And so they sat. And waited yet more. Etta recognized relief on her aunt’s face, but she was still showing signs of irritation, too.
It was obvious that Bernadette was forcing a smile. She said, “I was looking at the calendar today and was surprised to realize that you’ve already been with us for a month.”
Etta’s heart froze. Was her aunt ready to send her back?
Instead, she said, “I’m proud of you, Etta. You’ve adjusted well. Everyone adores you.”
“Thank you.”
A devilish expression came over Bernadette’s face. “And I have a feeling that you won’t be leaving Galveston any time soon.”
Etta’s heart leapt joyously, but she managed a sweet smile.
“In fact, I’ve written to my sister and asked that she allow you to stay as long as you wish.”
Etta had to contain her elation. “I confess, dear aunt, that I was hoping you would do just that.”
Bernadette leaned forward a notch and lowered her voice. “Surely you know that you’re of a marriageable age.”
The mention of marriage temporarily stilled Etta. In Nacogdoches, her prospects for a husband had been limited to farmers, workers, and perhaps salesmen. But here the outlook was entirely different, and the idea of marriage to a wealthy Galvestonian turned her mind and heart. If marriage here meant a life of luxury, she would be crazy to avoid it. Her pleasure was so huge that Etta let down her guard. “But all the young gentlemen I’ve met are so much more . . . prosperous. I venture they think they know but really have no clue about my humble background.”
“There is no need for disclosure at this point. You’re living with me. And besides, the right gentleman, once he’s fallen for you, won’t care about your so-called humble background.”
“I do hope you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” stated Bernadette. “Oh, it shall be so much of an adventure to help you find the right match. Grace and Jonathan were destined since childhood, so there was never a need for me to guide her, to enjoy the courtships she might have experienced. It would be ever so pleasing to help you.”
Etta sat completely still. She’d had no idea that Grace’s marriage had been carefully designed, and she doubted Grace knew it, either. If Bernadette had orchestrated that auspicious union, and in secrecy from her daughter no less, what could she do for Etta? She could scarcely believe how well things were going. Aunt Bernadette was more like a mother than Etta’s true mother was. Bernadette guided, listened, advised, and included. She had pulled Etta under the broad warmth of her wings. “Oh, thank you, Auntie! You have no idea how much this means to me . . .”
At that moment, Grace appeared in a clean dress and took her chair, and the conversation at the table came to a fast stop. No one spoke as they ate delicately like proper ladies, until Bernadette excused herself before dessert.
Even Etta was astonished by how fumingly her aunt could act toward her only child. Etta knew then never to cross her.
Grace stared after her mother and then turned to Etta. “She’s still angry with me.”
Etta said nothing as the dessert plates were delivered. “Give it time. It has been only a couple of weeks.”
Grace picked up her fork and looked at the fruit tart piled high with whipped cream before her but didn’t start eating. “I’m terribly sorry for what I did. I should’ve apologized right away, but I sensed you weren’t ready to hear me out.”
They had yet to speak about it, and Etta thought it would be one of those things that was simply never again addressed. She almost admired her cousin’s courage. Etta said, “I’m sorry your punishment is so extreme. Is it terrible?”
“No,” said Grace, then seemed determined to change the subject. “How are you faring overall? It had been my intention to be your companion.”
“I’m doing well. Many of your friends are showing me about. And then there’s your mother . . . I’m rarely alone.”
“I’m happy for you.”
Etta studied her cousin and was stunned to realize that Grace was not the least bit disingenuous. Her open face and clear eyes suggested she was telling the truth.
Grace asked, “What have you found the most enjoyable?”
After a moment, Etta answered, “Automobiles.”
“Not people?”
“Some people.”
“Whom do you like best?”
A loud laugh escaped Etta. “Dear cousin, I’m a forgiving person, but you don’t expect me to confide in you now, do you?”
Grace’s eyes immediately reddened and grew glassy. She sat in apparent stunned silence for what felt like long minutes, while Etta took a taste of the whipped cream. A funny memory suddenly came to her. During her first visit to this house, Etta had admired her aunt’s cherished china figurines. Bernadette kept those treasures displayed on the mahogany tables in the main parlor, and the young Etta had mistaken them for objects of play. Grace had to tell her that children were not allowed to touch the poised faces and graceful limbs of those painted ladies. Grace had been very kind to her back in those days. Perhaps Etta should search for more kindness inside herself now. She didn’t really hate her cousin.
Grace’s voice was weak and shaky when she said, “Memories fade. Maybe in time . . .”
But Etta only shrugged. True, she didn’t hate Grace, but she also wasn’t ready to let her off the hook yet. “Give me one good reason why I should tell you anything,” she said in a falsely sweet tone.
Apparently Grace wasn’t going to give up easily. “I’ll give you two.”
“Fire away.”
“We’re cousins. Blood kin.”
&nbs
p; Etta was unimpressed. Grace’s words could have been annoying clatter coming from the kitchen.
“And second, we could begin again.”
Etta shook her head. “I’m in the business of forgetting my beginnings.”
Grace sat frozen while Etta dug into the tart. It was peach. Wonderful. Without looking up, she said, “Once someone has betrayed my trust, it’s never to be regained.”
She had almost finished the tart by the time Grace spoke again. Her words were little more than whispers, breathy and soft. “I had hoped for genuine affection between us. I suppose I ruined that possibility.”
Etta took her last bite and licked the spoon. Her cousin’s obvious remorse moderated her a bit. “Maybe it will all turn out for the best. Look at it this way. Now you don’t have to endure your mother’s supervision all day. I’m doing that for you.”
The next day, Grace was late coming home again, even though Jonathan was joining the three of them for dinner. Etta had welcomed him after he arrived and was now waiting with him in the front parlor, whereas Bernadette had decided not to come downstairs until after her daughter arrived.
Sitting alone with Jonathan was decidedly awkward. Etta looked at the flowers placed throughout the room instead of at Grace’s fiancé. Bernadette spared no expense in filling the house with vases of fresh flowers in each of the occupied rooms and also the foyer, the main parlor, and the dining hall.
Finally she had to let her gaze fall on Jonathan, or she would be considered rude. His dewy eyes said it all. He was enamored of her, under her spell, captivated yet clearly torn, because of course he had to have known that he shouldn’t have any of those feelings for any lady other than his fiancée.
“Another long day among the poor for Grace, I presume,” Etta said.
He sat tall in his chair and wouldn’t allow himself to slouch, as he often did on the portico. He glanced away and murmured, “I presume.”
She made her voice just the slightest bit vulnerable. Men liked vulnerability; they liked any perceived weakness in a woman, even if it wasn’t real. “Are you angry with me?”
He held her gaze a moment longer before glancing away again. “No. Why should I be? You haven’t wronged me, have you?”
“No, but it’s on my behalf that Grace is being punished. If I hadn’t come here, the two of you would be spending much of your summer together. But now she hardly has time.”
He took a moment before answering.
He was lonely, Etta could see that, and vulnerable, too. He had a malleable mouth that gave too much of him away. She could have him if she wanted. All it would take would be a little more play and then a snap of her fingers. But it wouldn’t serve her purposes. She felt no desire for him anyway. Etta wanted passionate love, along with prosperity. Being in Galveston and becoming a part of its high society had made the idea of marriage palatable, even desirous, but she didn’t want to sacrifice love. There was no reason she couldn’t find a wealthy man who could also ignite her passions. She was becoming greedy; she wanted it all.
Jonathan said in a sorrowful tone, “Grace accepts the blame. She accepts her punishment. She knows she was wrong.”
“Yes, I realize that. It’s honorable of her.”
He appeared weary. “Yes. Honorable.”
A long uncomfortable silence. Even Etta had no clue what to say next. Then he gave her that appraising hungry look again that spoke of anything but honor.
She no longer cared if she behaved rudely. She said in a heated manner, “What are you thinking when you give me those looks?”
Jonathan glanced down, took a deep breath, and then gazed back at her. “What looks?”
“Oh please. Don’t deny it. You look at me like a dog circling a bitch in heat.”
Looking stunned, he shook his head. “I hadn’t thought it was noticeable.”
“Noticeable? It’s downright blatant.”
He grasped his hands between his knees.
“So, go ahead. Let there be no secrets between us. What are you thinking when you give me those looks?”
“I’m wondering what you think of me.”
“I think that you are Grace’s,” Etta snapped. “That’s what I think.”
His face trembled a touch, and he grasped his hands so tightly they were blanching. But his eyes did not leave Etta’s. “I barely see her now.”
Poor, poor, lonely rich boy. “You’re feeling neglected.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “So go ahead. Say it. What? What do you think of me?”
“My God, Jonathan. You don’t want me to tell you what I really think. Truly you don’t.”
“Yes, I do.”
Now Etta shook her head. “You must trust me on this.”
“I want to hear it. Say anything.”
“Very well,” Etta said and then, “What I think is that Grace is too good for you.”
Chapter Twelve
THE GIRL
A Saturday in June, and the girl found her present living situation to be a shed on Madu’s property. That morning she’d already visited old Gwendolyn, a hickory twig of a woman who sold the best tamales and stuffed crabs on the island and often gave her a handout; then she found Harry down at the docks and shared the food with him, sitting beside him on the wharf, where they listened to an old man playing the harmonica until it got too hot in the sun and Harry needed to scrounge for work anyway.
Back in Madu’s small yard that faced the alley, the girl drew water from the cistern and washed her hands before creeping back toward the old shed.
Madu had a supernatural kind of knowing, not unlike a witch’s, and he knew when the girl had been thinking about the sea, when she’d been dreaming of it. He could see its motion in the way she moved. She swayed on her feet, wavelike, and he knew her feet were inclined to go running there. He heard her dreams in the night wind that rattled his cracked windows. But in the summer the beaches were full of tourists and city folk taking strolls and eating out of their wicker picnic baskets. The beach was not a good place for the girl to spend her days. Too easy for her to be noticed.
Madu’s crinkled face, so black it was almost indigo, thrust out past the screen door. He bared his stubby yellow teeth. “You ain’t aiming to go down there today, is you?”
The girl looked up and gave a shake of her head.
Madu shuffled out beyond the door and nudged a stray tabby cat that had balled herself up in the shade of his porch. Then he straightened up and rubbed at the small of his back. “I be making my magic black candles with monkey blood today. You best stay around here and help me.”
The girl stood still. The truth was she had been planning on heading to the beaches later, when old Madu took his second nap of the day. Today the air was unusually still, quiet as the clothes hanging on lines, and hotter than the blue part of a flame. The beach was the only place to go on a day such as this. It was still June, but the air was already suffocatingly hot and heavy, drifting up sultry out of the Tropics. The only thing to do was get wet.
When she’d been barely old enough to walk, her father had introduced her to the ocean; he had used his life savings to build a souvenir shop down on the sand. The store stood six feet off the beach on pilings he sunk himself, and board by board he was putting it together, always with his son and daughter there for company. One day he paused from his work, held the girl up high in his rough, big-fingered hands, and together they looked out to the sea. The girl remembered how deeply her father had breathed, and she sucked it in, too, the smell of freshly cut lumber, the sweet dustiness of wood chips and shavings all around them, mingled with the wet and salt of the sea. She held on to his shoulders while he told her just how vast that world of water was. “We’re seeing nary a drop of it,” he said.
That was the first time she could remember finding her favorite spot, that place far away on the water where the sea was a calm and quiet shelf of palest silver, and then beyond it, where it took the curve into nothingness or maybe the first reaches of Heaven
. She tried to find the exact spot where bright sunlight floated away into sky and then disappeared. In her nightly dreams, the girl lay on her back, arms outstretched, and drifted all the way to that distant watery band.
Her father worked inside the shop every day, selling his shells and trinkets to tourists, and the girl would play down below on the beach, jumping in and out of the gentle breakers, searching for shells, and chasing sand crabs. The pull of the ocean was especially strong in her legs, a swirling sensation around the long bones that sucked her feet into the foam. Eventually her father taught her to swim.
Madu snapped, “You stay put, you hear?” He terrified others, but the girl knew better. He was all bark and no bite. Overhead a flock of laughing gulls circled and let out their hoarse screeches. More than speech, the girl missed laughing. She would’ve laughed at him along with the gulls if she could, but Madu craned his neck upward and shouted, “Quiet!” He looked at her then, his gaze piercing her skin.
“There’s a white woman been sniffing around,” he said solemnly.
The girl let out a sigh, because she’d seen her, too. Several times.
“She been helping out that white preacher man.”
Yes, the girl had seen her passing out sacks of flour and baskets of fruit, calico cloth, buttons, notions, and worn but clean shoes and coats. The woman was only an inch or so taller than the girl, small boned with golden hair and pink cheeks, and she always wore such finery—netted or flowered hats and white gloves, and on her feet polished, buttoned shoes. She was so pretty; the girl wished she could grow up to look like her.
But wealthy white women had no business in the alleys. Instinct had already convinced the girl to keep out of her sight. Reena had more than once proclaimed that white folks, even the ones who occasionally came offering goods and kindnesses, would probably find it upsetting that a white girl was living amongst the Negroes. They would want to take her away, and images of cages had never left her fearful thoughts.
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