The good wishes hung heavy and mournful and echoing in the air. Just as the soldiers were nearly out of sight, they turned in their saddles and gave a resounding rebel yell, sounding like the scream of a banshee. I clapped my hands over my ears.
Sunny burst into sobs. A little crowd gathered to pat her shoulders, offer handkerchiefs, and tell her everything would be all right.
“I try not to be so sensitive,” she said in a choking voice, “but I can’t be like Vi-let.” She turned to me. “How can you be so unfeeling? How can you remain dry-eyed?”
Several pairs of eyes turned my way and I went rigid under their examination. My fears and sorrows were deep, but private; I kept them to myself.
As I silently waited for Sunny to regain her composure, my eyes were drawn to a group standing across the street, remote from the rest of the crowd. Amenze, the young VanZeldt fellow I had seen in our woods, and the older, bearded man loomed like shadows surrounding a slight man with spectacles and a forked silver beard. He wore a neat white suit and straw hat. The “improper” doctor. He appeared squat and gnomelike next to the VanZeldts.
The shadows might well have been members of one family. All had the same loose, elongated limbs and severe, beautiful bone structure. While Amenze glowed in her shimmering garments, the two men wore shapeless shirts and ill-fitting dark trousers. I got the sense that their clothing was no more than a covering for them, that they hardly noticed what they wore. Their expressions, as they looked down their noses upon the world of men, were aloof and contemptuous, although I reminded myself not to judge too quickly; Amenze now appeared every bit as haughty as the others, yet she had tried to help me and had needed my help.
Dr. VanZeldt must have felt my gaze, because he looked up now so that his spectacles glinted straight my way, causing me to blink. He flashed a swift, rather sweet smile and tipped his hat.
I turned away, flustered, barely acknowledging the gesture. “Come on,” I said. “There’s Michael now.”
Sunny squelched through the mud to the buggy, squealing, “Ooh! My shoes! My new shoes!”
“This farm has got to be the lonesomest place in the world,” Sunny said as she sulked in one of the shabby, overstuffed sitting room chairs.
I shrugged. “Don’t worry. We won’t be lonesome once Cousin Seeley arrives. He’ll love to have you go on adventures with him all day long.”
“Bite your tongue. I hope I never even have to see the child. Where can we keep him? The chicken house? Or better yet—aren’t little boys kind of like dogs?—can we tie him to a tree out back?”
“Anna Bess, hush,” Miss Elsa said in her sweet, plaintive voice. “You know how wretched I’m feeling.” She seemed to be perspiring more than the temperature justified.
A striped sock she was knitting had been lying limp in her lap for the past hour. She dabbed her forehead with a handkerchief.
I stroked Goblin, who was curled, purring, on my lap under the book I was reading, and wondered about my stepmother. She had always appeared pale and fragile, but in the week since my father’s departure, she’d begun looking consumptive—thin and almost bluish white, with purple shadows beneath her eyes. She would fall asleep sitting up, in the middle of the day. I had asked her if she was ill, but she had brushed me off. Maybe when I knew her better, I could inquire more persistently. If I ever know her better. Conversations with Miss Elsa were fragmented, with a detached quality, as if she weren’t quite with us.
“Mama!” Sunny said loudly.
Miss Elsa winced as though her daughter had thrown a firecracker at her feet.
“Mama, don’t you think we ought to redecorate this room?”
My stepmother fluttered her hands without looking up. “I’m not sure.… Perhaps Mr. Dancey …”
“You know it’s hideous,” Sunny said.
“It’s not!” I cried.
“Shows your taste, miss,” Sunny said tartly. “The carpet’s all nubby and homespun and holey, there are cracks in the plaster, and there’s not even a lick of wallpaper. And that ghastly bird on the mantel!”
“It’s a bittern,” I said under my breath.
“It did what?”
“It’s a bittern,” I said, louder. “My uncle Ed trapped it and had it stuffed.”
“Whatever it is, must it lurk up there staring at me?”
Once I would have agreed with Sunny that the bird was ghastly; as a child, I had been frightened of its long, pointed beak and its beady little eyes glaring down from the polished black mantel, but now I loved it because everything in this shabby room meant home to me. I loved the furniture in the simpler style of the last century and my graceful harp of burnished wood, whose strings tinkled softly, hauntingly when anyone walked near it. The flaws—a cracked pane in the bookcase door, the funny, warped shadow the bittern cast on the wall, the indentations on the floor Rush had caused when he was stomping around inside with homemade stilts—only made everything more endearing.
“Mama!” Sunny said piercingly again. When she saw her mother shudder, she lowered her voice and continued in a wheedling tone, “If you’ll just give me the money, I’ll take care of everything. Even these days, Memphis is sure to have all we’ll need, and Papa William left you plenty of cash—I saw.”
“I don’t think—” Miss Elsa began, closing her fingers protectively over the purse she kept in her pocket.
“You can’t spend Pa’s money on wallpaper!” I interrupted hotly. “Not when we need it for food, and heaven knows how long this war will last.” The stimulation of speaking my mind to Sunny these days was enjoyable. It felt as if I had loosened the corset laces I had begun cinching more tightly since Sunny’s comment about them.
“It’d be fun, Miss Priss!” Sunny retorted. “Don’t you know anything about fun? I’ve got to have something to do here. I’m dying of boredom. Can’t you see I’m bored as a pancake?”
I laughed out loud. “ ‘Bored as a pancake’? What is that supposed to mean?”
My stepsister stared, baffled by my amusement.
“Poor Sunny, you have no idea how idiotic that was, do you? The saying is ‘flat as a pancake.’ Who knows what someone as silly as you could be as bored as?” I laughed again. “I have to admit it was funny, though.”
She compressed her lips. “Do you always have to make me feel stupid?” Her voice shook and she turned her back on me. “You’re just like my aunt and the teachers at school and—and everyone else. Always treating me as if I’m a useless fool.”
These last words stopped me short.
Could it be true? Could it be that all the while Sunny had been making me feel despicable and inferior, I had been making her feel despicable and inferior? That we were even? This was a new thought.
Sunny still faced away. Now it was her turn to rub her forehead as if it ached.
In a surprising, jerky movement, Miss Elsa kicked out her legs beneath her skirt and put her arms over her head, moaning.
Sunny gave a great sigh. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Mama, go take your medicine.”
“Yes,” Miss Elsa said, rising. “Yes. I need it, don’t I? Excuse me.…” She drifted from the room.
“Bless her heart,” Sunny said, shaking her head.
“What is her medicine?” I asked.
Sunny was silent for a moment, gnawing at her lip, before replying. “Laudanum, if you must know.” She looked down at the carpet and burrowed the toe of her slipper into a hole. “Your father is aware of it and scolded her, so that’s why she didn’t have any this morning. She’s trying to cut back, but it makes her miserable.”
“Does she take many doses?”
“Only constantly,” Sunny said shortly.
“That much?”
She groaned. “Surely you’ve noticed she’s never really with us. I’ve always felt a bit like an orphan.”
I tried to return to my book but ended up going over the same page three times without really seeing it. How often had I felt unnoticed around my invalid mo
ther? And I had had a homey home, a father, a brother, Laney, and Aunt Permilla as well. I glanced at my stepsister. “Did you always live with your uncle?”
“Yes. Ever since I was a bitty baby. Our aunt kept us cooped up in one little room. She didn’t like to be reminded we lived there.” Sunny tossed her curls and looked away so I couldn’t see her expression.
I sat silently stroking Goblin and thinking. “Sunny, this is your house now too,” I said at last. “Let’s paint this room. Paint doesn’t cost much and we could do it ourselves. What color do you think?”
She turned and looked searchingly into my face. Then she gave a little cry, smiled brilliantly, and threw her arms around me. I braced myself.
“Oh, you darling thing!” she said. “A cheery buttercup yellow, I’m thinking. Sorry I was cross. You know I can’t help my temper—it’s the Irish coming out.”
Later, when Sunny was pacing the floor and making her plans, I took a cup of warm honey milk to Miss Elsa’s room. She was huddled on a chair by the window.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” I asked. “I’ve brought you something to drink.”
“Thank you,” she said, lowering her hands. She looked appalling. “How considerate, Violet, dear.”
I dropped to the floor beside her. “Does your head ache terribly?”
“Not now that I’ve taken my medicine. Your papa doesn’t like me to use it. I know I’m weak and foolish. I’ve tried and tried to quit, and obviously I lack character. I began dosing myself because of my headaches, but now … I seem to need it always. And it helps me be more creative with my painting. It really does. I’ll take less … starting tomorrow.” She let her gaze drift toward the window. “Perhaps I’ll wander outside since I feel better. Find something to trim my bonnet …”
A while after I rejoined Sunny in the sitting room, Miss Elsa floated in with a basket of cut blossoms. To our amusement—and my amazement—she began sewing real flowers to her oldest, shabbiest bonnet. Sunny and I looked at each other, then ran to fetch our own.
I hollered to Laney in the kitchen, “Come in here and bring your bonnet!” Sunny sniffed but said nothing.
Laney entered, mystified. Her eyes widened when she saw what we were doing. “Y’all are crazy,” she said, shaking her finger. However, she pulled a needle from my pincushion and threaded it.
We stitched away, dissolving into giggles as each creation got more and more flamboyant. Tiger lilies dripped down the sides, crape myrtle fronds became plumes, and daisies lined the interiors.
Miss Elsa did not work for long. Soon after Laney entered, she drooped onto the sofa and closed her eyes.
Once I was satisfied that my bonnet was outlandish enough, I put it on and sat down at my harp. I sang, “Begone, dull care! I prithee begone from me.” Laney warbled along, rich and full-throated. Sunny hummed, slightly flat. A little smile played about Miss Elsa’s lips. “Angelsss.” She let out her breath with a sigh. I glanced at my stepmother lying there peacefully. I was beginning to see what had attracted my father to her.
Life at Scuppernong was more interesting with my stepfamily, I had to admit. Miss Elsa was kind and sweet in her own wistful way, and a far cry from a cruel stepmother. And, yes, Sunny was too pretty, too flirtatious, and too vain, and not the most clever girl in the world, but if I could accept her as she was and expect nothing more, I might actually enjoy her company.
That evening the world was permeated with a weird beauty. Filmy white moths flitted across the front lawn like tiny ghosts, and the sunset behind the black trees was an odd pinky-purple. For some reason I thought of the VanZeldts, with their unearthly looks. Their silhouettes would suit such a setting. I was idly swinging a fussy Cubby in our grapevine swing beneath the live oak while Laney made supper.
When someone caught the ropes from behind, I jerked and nearly fell out of the swing.
“My dear cousin,” drawled a voice. “I didn’t mean to startle you that much. I only meant to startle you a little.”
I jumped down and whipped around. A fashionable young man with a merry, laughing face held the ropes. He wore a long buff-colored duster and subtly striped trousers. He tipped his straw hat with a flourish.
“Cousin … Dorian?”
“In the flesh.”
“You haven’t hardly changed at all since I last saw you.”
His eyes were still so blue I couldn’t quite get over the shock of them, and he had the same engaging smile and bright hair. My mother had called him “the golden boy.”
“Can’t say the same for you, Cousin Violet. You were a little girl in pigtails that summer I stayed here, back when Seeley made his debut into the world. Somehow I expected you to remain the same. Instead you have turned into a very pretty young lady. With a baby.”
“Oh, this is Cubby. He belongs to Laney, if you remember her.”
He laughed. “Well, I didn’t really think he was yours.”
Of course, now that I looked closer, there were changes. “You’ve got a mustache,” I said, thinking out loud and immediately wishing I had kept my mouth shut. Silly. He was good-looking, and good-looking men made me nervous. “I guess we both grew up.”
“I do indeed have a mustache. Thank you for being so perceptive; I’m awfully proud of it. Of course you wouldn’t remember, but like many sixteen-year-old boys, I was trying to sprout a beard last time I saw you. To my sorrow, even after weeks of putting all my efforts into it, no one could tell at all.”
“Aunt Lovina’s letter never mentioned you coming. Are you here—what exactly are you doing here?”
“You might well ask since I’m showing up uninvited but, I hope, not unwelcome.”
“Oh no! You’re very welcome.”
“I’m glad. You see, I was accompanying Seeley and Co., but I rode on ahead to give you fair warning of our arrival. I took the liberty of putting my horse in the barn just now, by the way.”
“Good. I hope you gave him oats too. But I thought you’d be too busy to come. The letter said Cousin Seeley was traveling with another household.”
“He is, and the whole Tingle entourage will arrive shortly. I came along with the poor little fellow so he’d have a familiar face here at first.”
Something in me that had been holding back warmed to Cousin Dorian. “How nice of you! That should help Cousin Seeley feel at home.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stay more than a couple weeks, though. Duty calls.”
“Yes. Pa told me you were—um—running the blockade.”
“Me, as well as a big, fast ship and lots of other, far more daring associates.” His eyes scanned the road. “There. That’s the first of them.”
A carriage lit by lamps, followed by slow-moving outlines, topped the little hill. As I watched, more lanterns came flickering on like fireflies.
Cousin Dorian slipped his hand firmly into the crook of my arm, and I readjusted Cubby. “Let’s meet them up at the house. It’s been an interesting trip. Did Aunt Lovy write how the Tingles were moving every last person from their plantation to Texas? All hundred of their slaves? Well, with each stretch we traveled, they lost more of their Negroes to the lure of the Yanks. They’re left mainly with women and children now. Serves them right for vamoosing from their property.”
“You think they’re wrong for fleeing before the Federals?” I asked. “Cowardly?”
“Not so much cowardly as stupid. So far the Yanks mainly burn abandoned homes. I would never for a second leave Panola if I didn’t know Aunt Lovy and the rest of the caboodle were there. We’ve got a good overseer, who keeps me informed of what’s going on, and the fields are still being cultivated. We’ll keep at it till the bitter end. If you’d ever seen Panola, you’d understand how it gets in a person’s blood.”
In an instant I remembered that the Panola my cousin spoke of had been my mother’s childhood home. The few times she had mentioned it, love had misted in her eyes. It was from there she had brought the musical instruments that were first hers and n
ow mine. I’d not thought of it before, but what must it feel like to leave a beloved place knowing you may never return? I felt a rush of compassion. Poor little Cousin Seeley.
“I hope I may see it someday” was all I said.
The carriage stopped in front of the house, and a middle-aged man and a pleasant-faced woman alighted. The woman, seeing me, came forward and held out her hand. “I’m Jacintha Tingle, and this is my husband, Matthew. And you must be Violet.”
I dropped a quick curtsy and took her hand. “Yes, ma’am. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. Won’t you both make yourselves at home inside while your people camp on the lawn? I expect y’all would relish a warm meal and soft bed after traveling so far.”
“We would indeed,” Mrs. Tingle said, beaming from ear to ear. “We’re most grateful.”
“And we appreciate you bringing Cousin Seeley,” I said, glancing around. “Who is—where?”
“Oh,” Cousin Dorian said, “he generally hangs back with my body servant. He and King are great cronies. Seeley!” he called. “Come meet your cousin Violet.”
A small figure hesitantly broke away from the others and shuffled toward us. He was undersized for his age, with a head that looked too big for his body and a slouch hat pulled low. He reached out a reluctant hand for me to shake. I still couldn’t see his face, but his jacket sleeves were slightly too short and his wrists bony. “How do you do, Cousin Violet?” he mumbled.
“Very well, thank you, Cousin Seeley,” I answered. “I’m so happy you arrived here all safe and sound. And you know what I think?”
He shook his head slowly. Sullenly. Obviously he didn’t consider what I thought of much importance. But then I stopped myself from sizing him up too quickly.
The Mirk and Midnight Hour Page 6