The Amethyst Heart

by Penelope J. Stokes

  “No, she doesn’t,” Amethyst muttered woodenly. “But I do. And unless we want to dredge the bottom of the Tallahatchie River for it, we’re never going to see it again.”

  Silvie stared at her. “You don’t mean—”

  “What else could have happened to it?”

  “Your father knew where it was kept?”

  “Of course he did. The only surprise is that he didn’t take it sooner, to pay for his gambling and drinking and women.” Amethyst put her face in her hands. “It was my only hope, Silvie. What am I going to do now?”

  Silvie sat in silence for a moment, then put her hand on Amethyst’s arm. “Daddy will help, Amethyst. I know he will.”

  Amethyst choked back tears. “I know he would, Silvie. But Bick Littleton hasn’t spoken to Mama since the day she married Daddy and the only Averys left are distant cousins. If I can’t ask them for help, I certainly wouldn’t ask your father. We can’t take charity.”

  Silvie looked hurt. “It’s not charity. We’re family—a lot closer family than the Averys or the Littletons.”

  “Yes, we are.” Amethyst squeezed Silvie’s hand and felt strengthened, somehow, by the warmth of the touch. “I don’t know what I would have done without you these past six months. And I’m probably going to need your help in the future. But I can’t take your family’s money.”

  “All right,” Silvie conceded. “We’ll talk about that part later. For now, what can I do?”

  Amethyst shook her head and clenched her jaw so tightly it ached. There was no point crying over a brooch that was gone forever—even if it had been her only link to her grandparents and her only hope for a way out of this financial mess her father had left them with. There had to be another way.

  A desperate determination began to flow through her veins. The first thing she had to do was get this paperwork sorted out so she knew exactly what she was dealing with. Then she and Silvie could make a plan. What kind of plan, she wasn’t sure. For right now they would just take it one step at a time.

  “It’s worse than I imagined,” Amethyst moaned.

  Silvie glanced down at the stack of papers in front of her, and her stomach churned. She felt helpless in the face of this dilemma, and she didn’t like the feeling one bit. Amethyst was her best friend. They were like sisters. She knew her father would lend—or give—any amount of money to help get Amethyst and her mother out of debt, but she also knew that Amethyst would resist with her last breath taking what she called “charity.”

  The girl was proud, that much was certain, and her pride was both an asset and a liability. It made her strong, determined. But it also made her bullheaded and stubborn.

  “Look at this!” Amethyst went on. “Bills dating back more than two years ago. For renovations—the plumbing for the bathrooms and electrification of the house. For a stud horse named Benedict, an animal I’ve never even heard of. And what’s this one? A hundred dollars for a new suit and a brass-headed cane?”

  Silvie winced. “You got records of any of these bills being paid?”

  “Not a one.” Amethyst shook her head. “Who in his right mind pays a hundred dollars for a suit?”

  “Musta been made out of gold.” Silvie shrugged. “Too bad we can’t bury him in it, but there’s nothin’ left to bury.”

  Amethyst threw the bills onto the pile in front of Silvie. “I cannot believe he did this. I see it with my own eyes, but I don’t believe it.” She looked at Silvie, and tears spilled over. “We’ll have to sell the house.”

  “You are not selling this house.” A wave of determination rose up in Silvie, and she grabbed Amethyst’s hand. “Look at this.”

  “At what?”

  “At our hands. Mine’s brown, yours is white.”

  “So?”

  “So that’s the way it’s been for generations. Your grandfather built this house.”

  “Correction. Your grandfather built it.”

  “They did it together,” Silvie amended. “They were friends. Like us. They defied tradition and built not only a house, but a family. Your family and mine. Together. And what they created was not just a pile of bricks and lumber, but a home. A heritage. We’re not going to let that go. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “What other choice do I have?”

  “We’ll figure out something. God will see us through.”

  Amethyst snatched her hand away. “Don’t talk to me about God, Silvie.”

  “You believe in God. I know you do.”

  “I did. Once. But you tell me—how much evidence have you seen that God is the least bit interested in what’s happening to me and Mama? God didn’t keep Father from leaving us alone and destitute. God didn’t lift a hand to change my father’s profligate ways. What did we do to deserve this? Nothing. It was Father’s doing, and we’re left to clean up the mess. No, Silvie, I’m not about to go begging to God—or anyone, for that matter—for help. I’ll figure this out for myself.”

  Silvie didn’t respond. In truth, she had nothing to say. She didn’t believe that God had abandoned Amethyst in her time of need, but it did look that way. And no amount of talking would change Amethyst’s mind about it. The only thing that might move her was some kind of miracle—an unexpected circumstance that would turn things around.

  Please Lord, her soul implored, let it be so.

  Amethyst inhaled the savory scent of beef stew with carrots and onions and potatoes in a rich brown broth. Thanks to Uncle Enoch, she mused as she stirred the stew, at least we won’t starve.

  That was one benefit to living on the land. Even in winter they had vegetables put up from the garden and meat from the smokehouse. The chickens still thrived, providing eggs and frying hens. The root cellar was full of white potatoes and sweet potatoes, and the cupboards were lined with Mason jars filled with canned beans, black-eyed peas, carrots, corn, and beets.

  Amethyst had never seen her father take a hoe to the corn rows, or help with grinding the meal or slaughtering hogs or smoking the hams and bacon that hung on meat hooks in the dark, fragrant log building out back. She had never once witnessed her mother anywhere near the kitchen on canning day. But still, miraculously, they always had good food, and plenty of it.

  Now that Amethyst was running the household, she knew where it came from. Enoch and his family kept them supplied, sending one of the fieldworkers in to stock the pantry without a single note of fanfare. That, too, she suspected, might be called charity, but she wasn’t in any position to quibble over semantics. It had probably been this way since her grandparents died—the responsible black landowner quietly taking care of the irresponsible white gambler’s family.

  What an irony, Amethyst thought. Her own father had been honored among the townspeople as the “master” of the Noble lands, while Enoch was simply tolerated and given a grudging kind of respect as “a credit to his people.” Translation: still a Negro, and in many people’s minds still a slave, but at least one who wasn’t lazy or shiftless.

  Amethyst was pretty sure that most of the citizens of Cambridge had no idea that Enoch was the rightful owner of Silas Noble’s land. They undoubtedly viewed him as an overseer, the manager of her father’s holdings. And Abe Noble had probably allowed—even encouraged—the misconception. He might not hold the title, but Abe Noble had the image and the name, and that was what was really important.

  Silvie came into the kitchen and opened the oven door to check on her cornbread. “Almost done,” she murmured. “It may be more convenient, but I still contend that cornbread is never as good in this modern oven as it was when it was baked in the wood stove.”

  Amethyst turned and grinned. Silvie’s constant lament about the new kitchen was that everything tasted better cooked on the old wood stove. She actually still used it for baking cakes and pies. “The stove’s out on the back porch, and there’s wood in the kindling box. Be my guest.”

  “Too late now,” Silvie sniffed. “Where’s your mama?”

  “If the co
rnbread’s done, go ahead and serve up the stew,” Amethyst answered. “I’ll go get her.”

  Amethyst made her way up the stairs, sighing as she went. Mama would, as always, be in bed with the quilt pulled up over her and that vacant expression on her face. Sometimes she would come down and join Amethyst and Silvie for dinner, but more often Amethyst had to make the trek up the stairs twice—once to inform her that dinner was ready, and a second time to bring her a tray. “I declare,” Amethyst murmured as she reached the top step. “It’s like having a baby, but without any of the benefits of being married.” What those benefits were, Amethyst couldn’t imagine. She certainly hadn’t seen much in her parents’ relationship to recommend matrimony.

  She paused at the bedroom door and knocked softly on the doorpost. “Mama? Can you get up and join us? Dinner’s ready. It’s your favorite—beef stew and cornbread.”

  No answer.

  The room was dark, but that wasn’t unusual. Mama usually slept a lot, and sunset came early in December. Amethyst walked to the bedside and turned on the table lamp.

  “Mama?”

  The figure under the covers didn’t move or speak.

  “Come on, Mama. You’ve been here all day. You need to get up and move around a little.”

  Amethyst gently tugged at her mother’s shoulder. Still no response.

  “Mama! Wake up.”

  She pulled a little harder, and a bare arm flopped out from under the covers and landed, palm up, on the edge of the bed.

  It was blue and rigid.

  According to Dr. Noah Ramsey, Pansy Noble had died in her sleep. “I’ve seen it before, I’m afraid,” he told Amethyst. “A wife loses her husband suddenly and unexpectedly—or even after a long illness—and something in her just gives up. Your parents were very close, I assume.”

  “Of course,” Amethyst answered woodenly. What good would it do to tell him the truth?

  “There’s a special bond between loving spouses,” Dr. Ramsey continued. “Almost as if the dead husband summons his wife from the other side.” He gave her a consoling look and patted her on the shoulder. “I think she just decided it was time to go, time to be with him again. But you can rest in the knowledge that the two of them are together now . . . forever.”

  Amethyst stifled a laugh. Amid the swirling chaos of her emotions, all she could think about was how her father must feel at this moment. It had taken him years to get away from Mama, only to have her invade his blissful eternity after a brief six-month respite.

  “Serves him right,” she muttered under her breath.

  The doctor blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing. I was just thinking how right it was, for them to be together again.”

  Then the truth hit her with the force of a physical blow. She was an orphan. Alone in this house. Alone in the world. Seventeen years old, without parents, without an education, with a mountain of debts and not a nickel to her name.

  Silvie put an arm around her shoulders and drew her close. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered.

  But Amethyst knew better. It wouldn’t be all right, no matter what Silvie said.

  Nothing short of a miracle would make it all right ever again.

  23

  The Gift

  December 25, 1917

  Rain had been falling steadily for five straight days. The clock ticked loudly, echoing through the empty house. Four-thirty.

  Amethyst walked to the window and watched as the drops slid down the wavering glass panes. Her stomach rumbled, and she thought briefly that she should go to the kitchen and heat up some of the leftovers Silvie had sent home with her from the family dinner at noon.

  Christmas had been a somber celebration this year—the gathering of the Warrens in the big house Silvie’s grandpa Booker had built during the Reconstruction. The only white face among them was Amethyst’s, and although the wild turkey Silvie’s brother had shot was delicious, nobody had felt much like eating. Conversation was stilted and formal; no one dared broach the subject they were all thinking about.

  One week ago today, they had stood in a semicircle in the white cemetery adjacent to the old Rivermont Plantation and buried Amethyst’s mother. Even though her father’s body had never been recovered, a joint headstone served for Abraham Noble and his wife, bearing the ironic inscription, United for Eternity. Next to the mound of mud that covered her mother’s coffin lay a third plot, unused. Waiting for Amethyst. Calling to her, beckoning from beyond.

  It would be a welcome relief to answer the summons. Just to lie down and go to sleep and let peaceful death free her from the burden of going on with life.

  But Amethyst knew, deep in her soul, that she couldn’t—wouldn’t—give in so readily. The path that lay before her was a difficult, lonely one, but something inside urged her on, promised her that she would be all right, that she had the inner fortitude and courage to face whatever lay ahead. She had no idea where this assurance came from, but she believed it. It was a truth that tolled in her spirit like a bell, its low, solid note vibrating through the very core of her being.

  Amethyst watched as a single droplet of water, separate from the others, made its languid track down the far corner of the glass. She saw herself in that raindrop, alone on a journey that no one else could share, and a knot of apprehension twisted inside her. Where would she find the money to pay the taxes on the house, and the bills her father had left behind? How would she manage? The future stretched out before her, bleak and empty as the winter sky, and a thrill of fear ran through her.

  I have to quit thinking like this, she reprimanded herself. She had to have faith, had to trust that inner voice. She had to believe—if not in God, then in her own strength and resourcefulness. She was determined not to be like her mother. She would not simply lie down and give up. She would fight—whatever fighting meant—for a life of her own, a life of meaning and significance and fulfillment.

  The solitary raindrop paused in its downward slide, then began to move again. But before it hit the windowsill, a second raindrop appeared, then a third, then a fourth. They merged into one, shot down the windowpane, and landed with a resounding splat on the sill.

  Amethyst gazed at the pattern created by the splash of water against glass. It looked like a star—like the cut-glass star that hung over the créche on the mantel.

  The star that had led others before her to their destiny.

  The attic was dim and musty. When Noble House had been electrified, no one had thought to put a light up here. At dusk, with the rain pouring down, Amethyst could barely see the stacks of trunks and boxes and old furniture that had accumulated over the years.

  She lit a kerosene lamp and placed it on a rickety table just beyond the stairs. Yes. That was better. At least she wouldn’t trip and break a leg.

  She wasn’t really certain what she was looking for. She had no conviction that she would find anything of value, anything that would help her out of the financial mess Father had willed to her as his legacy. But it was Christmas Day, and she was alone. What better time to seek some kind of connection with her ancestors?

  Amethyst didn’t know nearly enough about her grandparents, Silas and Pearl Noble. She knew the common history shared between the Nobles and Warrens, of course, but she needed more. Something deeper. Something more . . . personal. Her father had always been reluctant to talk about the past, as if he had something to hide. He had told her only that her grandpa Silas had been a doctor during the Civil War, and had been assisted in his practice by her grandma Pearl. Amethyst didn’t ask many questions; it was abundantly clear that there had been some kind of falling-out between Father and Grandpa Silas. And if she had learned anything as a child, it was to tiptoe around Father’s anger as if avoiding a bed of fire ants.

  She took the lamp in one hand and began making a circuit of the attic. For an hour she sorted through boxes of old books and moth-eaten clothing, finding only a few ratty medical texts that no doubt had belonged to Grandpa Silas. Th
e dust and mold filled her nostrils and made her sneeze.

  “This is ridiculous,” she muttered, coughing and gasping for air. “Somebody should have burned this stuff ages ago.”

  She set the lamp on the floor, struggled to her feet, and attempted to brush the grime of decades off her dress. But just as she leaned down to retrieve the lamp, her heel caught in the hem of her gown and set her off-balance. She put a hand out to steady herself, and a tower of boxes went down in a clattering crash.

  “Amethyst? Are you all right? Where are you?”

  Silvie’s voice drifted up from downstairs, and Amethyst felt a warm rush of relief wash over her. “I’m in the attic,” she called. “Can you give me a hand?”

  After a minute or two Silvie’s brown face appeared in the small doorway. “What in the name of Saint Peter are you doing?”

  “I have no idea,” Amethyst responded with a grin. “Just poking around, I guess.”

  “Law, you look like a chimney sweep.” Silvie doubled over with laughter. “Or like you’re all made up to do a blackface vaudeville act.” She held out her arms and rolled her eyes. “Mammy!”

  “Would you stop, please?” Amethyst motioned to the overturned boxes. “I need help here, not humor.”

  Silvie climbed into the attic chamber and stood up. “It’s a mess, that’s for sure.”

  “An understatement if I’ve ever heard one. Could you help me pick up these boxes and stack them—” Amethyst looked around. “Over there.”

  “All right.” Silvie raised one eyebrow and pointed at Amethyst’s filthy dress. “But don’t ’spect this chile to be doin’ none of your laundry, mis­sus.” She chuckled and began moving boxes to the corner.

  “Silvie, look!” Amethyst took the lamp and sat down on the floor behind the fallen boxes.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a trunk—a very old one, if the rust and dirt are any indication.” She wiped a hand across the front, revealing faded white letters. “S. Noble. Silvie, this must have belonged to my grandfather!” She struggled to open it. “The lock is rusted shut.”