I bit my lip. What was so bad about being countrified when we lived out in the country? And sometimes it was nice to be old-fashioned.
I wanted to be happy for my father, but how could I be? I had muddled over this thing—this awful marriage—ever since he had told me his plans. I fretted over it as I untangled snarls from my fine, flyaway hair. I had wept about it as I lay curled up in bed. I had brooded over it as I made candles and milked cows and swept floors. It was no use; Pa was going to do this, and nothing I could do would stop it.
“Fine day for a wedding,” Michael said as he helped me into the buggy the next morning. I could only nod miserably.
The weather mocked my mood. It was church-bell-ringing, bird-singing, blossomy April. Inside the chapel, the ladies had twined the columns with vines and festooned the pews with ivory ribbons and lilies.
Most of white Chicataw waited downstairs, while Laney, Michael, and other colored folks sat up in the balcony. It was the way we did things. I avoided Laney’s eyes.
That morning, in front of my greenish looking glass, I had thought I appeared all right, wearing a black silk that had once belonged to my mother. My hair was in ringlets twisted from rag curlers, which, combined with my cold and my dread of the wedding, had prevented sleep all night. All the curl would fall out shortly, but I had to try. Now, with Sunny perched in the pew beside me, I felt dowdy.
Sunny glowed in a frock of golden paisley-printed voile with coral silk fringe. She had pilfered it from my mother’s trunks and raised the waist to modernize it. I had loved that dress. My soon-to-be stepsister also wore white lace gloves, a pierced ivory fan tied by ribbons to her wrist, and dainty high-heeled slippers (although her feet were too large to be truly considered dainty). With so many of the guests in mourning, Sunny shone like a parrot among crows. Her satisfied expression showed she was happily aware of it.
My own face hurt from the effort of smiling.
The Reverend Mr. Stone, our minister, stood waiting to perform the ceremony. The Stones were the proprietors of the school I had attended from the time I was twelve until this past December. When it was announced that the academy would be closed for the duration of the war, so we might be with our families, most pupils had wept openly. Tiny Mrs. Stone, with her dashing clothes, ready smile, and kind ways, was adored by all the girls. She now slipped in to sit on my other side, her arms full of her latest darling redheaded baby swathed in a fluffy shawl. “Are you all right?” she whispered. I nodded. She reached down and squeezed my cold hand with her warm, reassuring one.
The organ commenced playing and my father and Miss Elsa moved up the aisle on a carpet of flower petals. Pa appeared distinguished in his new gray army uniform. Wraithlike Miss Elsa carried a bouquet of lilies and wore silver satin trimmed with a froth of misty lace.
I clutched a crumpled handkerchief and felt as alert as a soggy dishrag. Throughout the ceremony an irritation scratched at the back of my throat. It took all my concentration to keep from coughing, never to stop.
The groom slipped the pearl ring that had belonged to my grandmother onto the bride’s finger. He had assured me the ring would be mine someday, but this showed the worth of his promise.
Thankfully I got through the vows without making a coughing spectacle of myself. The moment my father and Miss Elsa headed down the aisle and out the archway, I scuttled to exit the back door.
I was bent over, hacking away, eyes streaming, when a deep voice from behind said, “May I fetch you some lemonade right quick? It might would help.”
Without knowing who had made the offer, I could only nod blindly, intrigued by his beautiful voice. Cough smothered, eyes wiped, cheeks pinched for a little color, I waited to see who would step back around the corner of the building.
A shadow preceded my benefactor.
It was Pratt Wilcox.
He came striding over holding a cup and something wrapped in a napkin. Naturally. Pratt Wilcox, whose unfortunately repellent self I hadn’t laid eyes on for at least five years. Something about him had always seemed slimy, and it wasn’t just the fact that his hair hung lank and greasy. It might have been his lips, which reminded me of sliced liver, or the way he stood a little too close.…
Oh, well. He’d been nice to offer the lemonade. “Thank you,” I said, and took a long, welcome swallow.
“You’ve got a cold,” he remarked astutely.
“Yes. It’s the kind that lasts forever.”
“The kind where you feel as if your head will cave in when you blow your nose.”
That actually was rather funny and I laughed. “Exactly.” My gaze fell on the three stars adorning the collar of his uniform. “Why, Pratt Wilcox, you’re a colonel.”
“So you do remember my name. Didn’t know if you would since I’ve been gone so long. Went into business with my uncle in Memphis, and then the war, of course. And I am indeed a colonel, in command of the Fifty-Sixth Mississippi.”
“Impressive,” I said. “You’ve certainly risen quickly.”
He colored modestly, moved a little closer, and cleared his throat. “Well, you see, my main accomplishment was not dying at Fort Donelson. I was one of the few in the regiment to make it out, so the powers that be rewarded me with stars.” He shifted his booted feet uncomfortably. “Oh. I forgot about your brother being there. Sorry. A capital fellow.”
“Yes,” I said. “He was.”
We were silent for a moment, and I thought what a pathetic pair we were, having absolutely nothing to say. Poor Pratt. It wasn’t his fault (probably) that he put girls off. I would be kind. I gave him what I hoped was a kindly smile.
“Would you,” Pratt said, unfolding the napkin to display a dark, fruity slab, “care for this? You know young ladies are supposed to place a piece of wedding cake beneath their pillows to dream of their future husbands.”
I didn’t want it, but to help him out I said, “Yes, thank you.”
Mischief sparked in his washed-out hazel eyes.
“What will you give for it?” he demanded, holding the cake above my head.
I stared. “I beg your pardon? My gratitude, of course.”
“What if that’s not enough?” He edged closer still. “You ladies always want to support the soldiers—wouldn’t you like to kiss a colonel?”
I stepped backward and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed hold of me with one damp hand. He smirked unabashedly. “You’re a pretty girl; sometimes don’t you want to be a naughty girl as well?”
At times I labored under the misconception that unattractive people would automatically be nice, humble people. Pratt’s face loomed closer to mine. I jerked out of his grasp and ducked under his arm. My hair snagged on one of his brass buttons. “Mr. Wilcox—”
“Colonel Wilcox.”
“I can’t imagine what I said or did to make you think—anything.” I painfully yanked my hair loose, scurried toward the corner of the church, and flung over my shoulder, “And I don’t even want any of that stupid cake.”
He sputtered, then came back with, “And you’re not all that pretty.”
I stepped out with Pratt following just behind, painfully aware that both of us were red of face and that my hair was disheveled. Sunny was holding court among a cluster of young people in either gray uniforms or outspread hoopskirts on the side lawn. They all looked up. Sunny’s bright, curious eyes took in our appearance. She gave a meaningful smile. Oh no. Oh no.
And there sat Ben Phillips, who had paid so much attention to me last year until I began to really like him and then had instantaneously transferred his attentions to Mary Clare. I had thought all was flourishing between us till the day I showed up at church and she was sitting with him in my place. Now whenever I saw Ben, I felt acute embarrassment, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. At least not that I knew.
I hastened over to Nannie Kate Smith, who, as usual, was standing on the fringes, bless her poor heart.
“Will you come with me to get a plate?” I ask
ed urgently.
She nodded, visibly relieved to have someone to talk to.
As we made our way toward the refreshments, I fumbled to retwirl my now-limp ringlets. I thought glumly that Nannie Kate and I made a fine, dowdy pair. Her thin greenish-yellow locks were plastered to her head with sweat, and her sallow complexion was extra sallow today due to the unpleasant shade of pea green she wore.
The bridal couple was seated beneath a latticework arch at a small private table. I watched how Miss Elsa and my father responded to each other. When she was with him, she laughed occasionally and looked more animated. My father beamed down at his wife. He was truly smitten and had not told the complete truth when he claimed he was remarrying for my sake. I was happy for him.
Everyone else was to dine standing or sitting in the grass. The church grounds were full of chattering, eating people. From somewhere the church ladies had procured a feast nearly fit for a wedding in the grand old Southern style. There was duck with a sauce of stewed peaches, beaten biscuits, and terrapin stew. The plummy wedding cake was dusted with sparkling white sugar.
Nannie Kate and I took our filled plates and huddled near the throng of young folks. Sunny was in her element. I couldn’t help watching in fascination.
She stole a lieutenant’s hat. “There,” she said, setting it on her head at a coquettish angle. “Wouldn’t I make a fine soldier?”
“A devilishly stunning rebel!” exclaimed the lieutenant. “The Yanks wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Oh,” Sunny said, fluttering her fan, “you’re exaggerating.” A moment later, she announced “I’m bored” in a challenging tone. Immediately young men vied with each other to increase their level of charm and rescue her from such a wretched state.
Nannie Kate whispered from behind her hand, “Look how she touches the men. She’s constantly fixing their hair and patting them. Nauseating. Oops!” Her fingers flew over her mouth. “She’s your sister now, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said bitterly. “More’s the pity.” I scorned the piece of me that wished for a few shabby little wiles of my own.
“She paints her face, doesn’t she?”
I nodded.
“I knew those rosy cheeks couldn’t be natural. Not with the rest of her complexion so white.” Nannie Kate sniffed. “Does she use arsenic to make it that pale?”
When I said I didn’t know, Nannie Kate sniffed again.
“Of course she does. And burned hairpins to darken her lashes, and belladonna to brighten her eyes. I bet she uses all the tricks.”
Amazing. I had never even heard of any such tricks.
“Painted up like an actress.” Nannie Kate shook her head in disdain. “I daresay we could all look just as good if we weren’t ladies.” She smoothed out her skirts virtuously.
As folks gathered around the newlyweds’ table to offer toasts, Miss Elsa stood. “Before we start …” She scanned the crowd. “Where is she? Where is my new daughter?”
Reluctantly I stepped out so she could see me.
“Did you bring it?” she asked.
I nodded. Michael dashed up, carrying my dulcimer wrapped in a shawl. Miss Elsa had wanted harp music at the wedding, but my father didn’t want to risk damaging my big harp by transporting it. It was he who had suggested I play my mother’s small cherrywood dulcimer, which she had brought to Mississippi from her Virginia home, along with the harp. Miss Elsa and Sunny had feared it would be too rustic and the guests would scorn it, but my father had insisted.
A chair was brought for me. I seated myself and dropped the shawl from the teardrop-shaped instrument. I hesitated for a moment, as I always did after picking it up, running my fingers up the slender neck. Each time I played the instruments she had once used, I felt a connection with the mother I had never known well. I began to strum the four strings, two for melody and two for drone. In only a second I forgot where I was as I played and sang “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.”
When I finished, my father sucked in his cheeks and looked downward. Miss Elsa, tears streaming down her cheeks, clapped and begged in a tremulous voice, “Will you play ‘I Have Loved Thee, Dearly Loved Thee’?”
I did as she asked. Rather than their scorn, I could feel the audience’s spirits collectively caught up in the sweet music. They burst into applause and there was a flurry of requests.
I played a few more melodies. My stepmother hugged me when I finished.
Deacon Johnson invited us to raise our glasses in a toast to the happy newlyweds. “And may the joys of their ‘blessed union’ not make us any more tolerant of that other ‘union’ that is causing such misery throughout our homeland,” he concluded.
On the way home, Sunny turned to me with a knowing smirk. “You slyboots! You’re setting up a flirtation with Pratt Wilcox!”
“I’m not!” I cried. “I wouldn’t!”
She laughed through her nose. “Don’t be coy. I declare, you two go very well together. You’re both scholarly and—oh, I don’t know. You just seem to belong with each other. He’s leaving the same time as dear Papa William. One looks at a boy so differently when one thinks he may be killed tomorrow, fighting to preserve us.” She gave a sentimental sigh. “You know, of course, that you don’t have to actually like a beau to encourage him. No matter what, it’s good practice.”
Desperately I said, “Oh, look what we gathered up,” and uncovered a basket of leftovers from beneath the seat.
Sunny snatched a biscuit, split it, and stuffed the top half in her mouth. “Here”—she thrust a napkin-wrapped piece of wedding cake into my lap—“put that under your pillow so you can dream about your true love. I won’t need it. My head is that full of dreams already.”
I had thought I would never tell another soul about my encounter with Pratt, but before I went to bed, I found myself relating it to Laney.
She laughed and laughed, and her laughter took the sting out of the incident.
“The thing that annoys me about Sunny—” I started to say.
“Only one thing?”
I grinned. “Well, the thing that comes to mind right now is that she says Pratt would be a good match for me. Surely, surely I can find someone better than him, can’t I?”
Laney was trapped in the kitchen rocking chair beneath her sleeping baby. She beckoned me closer with her fingers. I squatted down and she put one arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Of course you will.”
“If not, I vow here and now to remain an old maid forever.”
“You won’t be an old maid. You’ll meet someone. Your father waited a long time after your mama, but he seems happy with his choice.”
“I wonder if he thought about my mother at all today. I doubt it.” I pondered a minute. “Laney, how did you know Michael was the husband you wanted?”
She shrugged. “Instead of liking him less and less the more he was around, I liked him more and more. And that’s still how it is, even though sometimes I want to hit him over the head with the skillet.”
I was taken aback. “I’ve never seen you get mad at Michael.”
“That’s because I won’t be a whiny baby about my man. But when he won’t tend Cubby for five little seconds while I’m doing something I need to do—whooee!—bring on that skillet.”
We sat together comfortably in silence as Laney rocked Cubby and I looked into the fire.
“You know,” Laney said suddenly, “your features are actually nice as Miss Sunny’s. Fact is, though, she flounces around silently telling everybody, ‘Look at me! Aren’t I gorgeous?’ and folks believe her.”
“I don’t know how to announce such things silently, and if I did, no one would hear.”
“It’s the way she totes herself so wiggly and prissy, and how she looks at men, inviting them. Try it sometime.”
“Like this?” I said, and sashayed across the room, wiggling energetically.
“ ’Fraid not, sugar,” Laney said. “Menfolks don’t want a girl jiggling like a catawb
a worm on a fishhook.”
“Don’t men like that sort of thing?”
“Well,” she said doubtfully, “maybe white men …”
We both laughed again and I helped her stand up with Cubby.
Afterward, in the comparative safety of my bedroom (it was only comparative now because I could hear Sunny moving around on the other side of the wall), I debated using the cake-under-the-pillow trick. Such danger. What if I discovered my One True Love really was Pratt? Or the Chicataw coal deliveryman? I placed the slice firmly on the bedside table. Then, in case that was still too close and some night vision might manage to make the leap from there into my head, I moved it to the table in the hall.
My father’s knapsack lay at the bottom of the stairs, bathed in golden light streaming from the hall’s amber glass sidelights. He had returned from his honeymoon the day before and was leaving for his regiment shortly. He had barely mumbled two words to me, which was worse than it had ever been before.
Through the dining room doorway I could glimpse Miss Elsa draped over him as he sat at his breakfast. She was probably salting his eggs with tears.
“Vi-let!” Sunny called from the parlor, where she lounged gracefully in her wrapper on the scratchy horsehair sofa. Her rumpled, uncombed hair only made her more picturesque. “Will you tell that girl to bring my breakfast in here?”
I stepped into the room. “Why?”
“Obviously I’m not about to eat in the dining room with the lovebirds.”
“Go get what you want from the kitchen yourself, then.”
She stretched like a languid lioness. “That’s not something a lady should do. Anyway, that girl doesn’t know her place. She’s so bone lazy I have to remind her to do everything for me and Mama. Had to slap her the other day.”
I stiffened. “You hit Laney?”
Sunny gave a delicate yawn. “She had the impertinence to say she needed to finish feeding that baby before she tightened my corset.”
“Don’t you ever, ever touch Laney or Michael. Never! You hear?” I was shaking.
“Gracious, child, of course I hear you, all shrill and screechy as a jaybird. You needn’t worry—I doubt I’ll have to discipline her again, now she knows she can’t get away with insolence around me. Don’t feel bad; you just don’t know how to handle Negroes.”
The Mirk and Midnight Hour Page 4