The Abolitionist's Daughter

by Diane C. McPhail

  “How dare you come to my house,” Belinda said. Her voice was low, harsh, almost secretive.

  Emily did not waver. Belinda opened the door wider.

  “You’re letting in the chill,” she said, and backed inside.

  Emily followed.

  The center hall was lofty, spacious, and chill. A massive arch divided the front portion from the rear. On either side, expansive double doors opened: on the left, to an elegant muraled dining room; on the right, to a parlor where a small fire burned beneath a faux bois mantel. An expensive paper of red poppies in an intricately latticed pattern covered the walls. Over the sheen of the floors lay carpets in a design of bold imperial circles in contrasting red and gold.

  Even in her extravagant silk of gray and gold stripes, Belinda appeared unchanged. She still wore the face of a hard child on a woman’s thin body. Dark wisps of curl escaped, as always, from her netted hair. Belinda’s green eyes flicked everywhere except at Emily.

  “I have learned,” Emily said without preamble, “that Adeline visited my children, her grandchildren, without my finding out. Did you know this?”

  The women stared at one another, unaware how, with every breath, each inhaled the other’s wary exhale.

  “Did you know that I loved her?” Emily said at last.

  “Loved her? Like you loved me? Like you loved Charles?” Belinda sliced the air with the edge of her hand.

  “Belinda, I never—”

  “Never what? Never meant to break my mother’s heart? To make my brother out a killer? You and your fine family with your godawful genteel greed? Is that what you never meant?”

  “To harm—”

  “Harm? Well, isn’t that a fine word on your tongue! Harm! You, who threw away everything good in my brother? And my mother?”

  “I loved her like—”

  “Stop it! I won’t hear it. Don’t you say you loved her like a mother. She was not your mother! You didn’t have a mother!”

  The blow of Belinda’s words was physical. Emily caught her breath.

  “She was mine! Do you hear me? Mine. And now she is gone and you have the gall to come here?”

  “I need the truth, Belinda. I have so much regret—”

  “Regret? For all the filthy, hateful things you did to us?” Belinda took a step toward Emily.

  “Stop now, Belinda. Before you have your own regrets.”

  “Regrets?” Belinda was screaming now. “You think I haven’t had regrets? You get out of here. I’m done with you.”

  “Belinda, please—”

  “Belinda, please,” Belinda mimicked, her mockery bitter.

  She was too close now. Emily crossed her hands over her abdomen and backed away.

  “Please what? Please share your mother? Please share your brother? Please, share your toys?” She stepped closer to Emily. “And while we are at it, Emily, why don’t you share with me? You share your brother and your father, and all that land he owned, and all those slaves he didn’t free!”

  Unintended, Emily reached out. Belinda slapped her hand away.

  “What did you imagine this was all about, Emily? Didn’t you care that your dear, beloved father refused to settle Will’s land on me? Refused me as a daughter when he died? And that Charles tried to help me? Didn’t you know your father’s glorious rejection was at the heart of this? Holding on to Will’s land for those precious children of yours my mother came to see?”

  “You are not sane, Belinda. I don’t know what—”

  “The trouble with you, Emily, is you don’t know anything,” Belinda snarled. “You never have. You were nothing but a child playing dress-up. A child in a family of landed men.” Belinda backed away, her manicured fingers reaching for a threshold to support herself. She found the doorframe and grasped it. “Land, land, and more land, for God’s sake. That’s all they care about, these men. Land and power. They think it can do everything. That’s all it has ever been about. All this bloodshed and death. And God help us, this godawful war.”

  Belinda collapsed against the doorframe and sank to the floor, knees bent, her hoops awry beneath the silk ruffles, her dainty buttoned boots and white stockings exposed. She covered her head with her hands. “What do you want from me, Emily? Truth? You want truth? I’ll tell you the truth.” Belinda paused. “I had no idea,” she said into the space between her palms. “I didn’t know what could—what could happen.”

  “What are you talking about, Belinda?” Emily moved closer, leaned down to hear Belinda’s muffled words.

  “About them coming here—no, not here—that other place, Will’s place, our place—that stupid old log house your father built. Charles said we could talk and it would all be over. I sent for them—no, him—to come. Your father. Charles told me to. To try to settle the estate. Be done with it, he said. I was so tired. So tired.” Belinda leaned her head against the door, rolled it side to side. “I still am,” she said.

  The clock ticking on the mantel was the only sound. Emily leaned against the doorjamb on the opposite side of the hall. She rocked her body, her hand at her abdomen, waiting. Into the tension, she said, “You sent for my father? And he came? Trusting you both.”

  “I didn’t know. I couldn’t. No one could. Not even Charles. It just—happened.”

  The clock ticked away the time, louder than sound should be, and chimed a quarter hour.

  “What happened, Belinda? What exactly—”

  “I don’t know what exactly. Don’t you see? I don’t know. I thought he was my father, too. It wasn’t land I wanted. It was being a Matthews. And I wanted a father. But he didn’t want me. He said there had to be a child. All he wanted was a child and I didn’t have one and I hit him, I was so hurt and angry and Charles grabbed me and then it got into a fight. They were pushing and shoving and there was the gun and I snatched it and Hammond tried to get it from me and—” Belinda pressed her white fingers into her stricken face.

  Emily rocked, her eyes closed.

  “And then there was blood everywhere and blood all over me. How could I have all that blood on me? Oh, God.” Belinda vomited into the folds of gray silk between her knees.

  In the silence that followed, Emily no longer heard the clock. Her hands tightened over her abdomen. “You killed him? It was you. You let Charles, let Hammond—let them be taken? Hammond died for you? And Charles? You never told the truth? You just went and got another life and let us all believe—” Fingers spread, Emily pushed at the air between. “Even your mother.”

  Belinda wiped her mouth on the velvet trim of her sleeve and said without looking up, “I want you out of my house.”

  Emily pushed away from the doorjamb, her balance imperfect. She fumbled with the latch. The door caught in a blast of cold air and slammed open.

  Outside, the wind whipped at Emily’s skirts as she fled across the verandah and down the steps. At the bottom, she stumbled on her petticoats. Her vision blurred, but she caught herself. The green bonnet flew from her head, hanging from her neck by its ties. When Emily bolted into the road, Lambert was waiting.

  CHAPTER 42

  When the baby came, Rosa Claire was all questions as to her name, a name Emily thought she knew, but could not be sure. Weeks passed and the child was simply called Baby Girl. A quiet, strong infant, she nursed well, kneading at her mother’s breast, pushing away hard with her little hands when she was full. She rarely cried and woke only once in the night to be fed.

  “I’m taking the baby on an outing this afternoon,” Emily said one day at dinner. “I may be a while.”

  “Where to, Mama?” the boys asked in unison.

  “Just out.”

  “Can I go with you, Mama? I don’t need a nap and I’ll be safe. The war is over now,” Rosa Claire said, her demeanor straightforward, as if she sensed the coming of something important.

  “May I,” Emily corrected. She studied her daughter’s face, the unguarded openness of the very young. “Yes, you will be safe,” she said. “Here, ho
ld the baby while I get your things.”

  “All by myself?”

  “All by yourself.”

  Emily propped the baby in Rosa Claire’s arms while she reached for a shawl, but Ginny was ready with it. She wrapped it around Emily’s shoulders and her arms around Emily. Aimee leaned over and fingered the infant cheeks. Arm in arm the two women stood watching the girls: Aimee beside Rosa Claire, cradling her sister, tucking the soft yellow receiving blanket around her again and again.

  Emily retrieved the baby and the three of them went out together. She studied her daughters closely, the one in her arms, the one holding her hand. Moments like these are drops in a sieve, she thought. They will drain away or evaporate. As will sorrow.

  Near the cemetery, Emily stopped and adjusted the baby in one arm. She put her other arm around Rosa Claire’s shoulder. When the little girl realized their destination, she raised her clear gray eyes and nodded.

  “Would you like to pick some flowers?” Emily asked, and Rosa Claire nodded again, running toward a row of wild forsythia. She returned, arms draped with cascading branches of yellow forsythia. They negotiated their way among the stones and makeshift wooden crosses. There were so many now. The field was crowded with them, for those whose remains had made it home. Emily thought of the war-torn fields filled with young bodies across the land, the dead crowding the dead. She threaded her way through the graves to a plot marked with four wooden crosses, three quite simple, bearing the names of Charles, Hammond, and Thomas, with corresponding dates painted on the plain façades.

  “This is your daddy’s grave, Rosa Claire. He was a better man than any of us knew,” Emily said, her hand on the little girl’s head. “Would you like to put some of your flowers on his grave?”

  The child nodded and arranged a handful of the blooming twigs on the ground in a small circle.

  The fourth cross had been carved from a tree stump and retained the appearance of its origin. The roots remained intact, though clipped so that it sat level, semiburied in the earth. Two intricately carved branches, equally truncated, formed the arms of the cross. Along the back rose a natural, unbroken branch, bearing no leaves. Carvings of ivy wrapped the primary trunk of the cross, on which Adeline’s name appeared. Below the name was a single word: Beloved. And above it the phrase: At Rest. Surely the work of Mason Johnson.

  When Rosa Claire looked up, she saw her mother’s cheeks were wet with tears. As Emily lowered herself and patted the ground, Rosa Claire laid the remaining forsythia against the stump and curled against her mother. They sat like that, together, in the quiet, until the baby woke and stirred. Emily pulled back the shawl, freeing the infant, who rubbed her clear eyes and stretched.

  “Has she told you her name yet, Mama?” Rosa Claire said.

  “Yes, her name is Addie Grace.”

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  THE ABOLITIONIST’S DAUGHTER

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of Diane C. McPhail’s The Abolitionist’s Daughter!

  Suggested Questions for Discussion:

  1. How familiar are you with instances of opposition to slavery in the South? Were you surprised to learn about Southern abolitionism? Do you know any stories of other areas of resistance to slavery in the South? How do you understand the underlying foundations of such opposition?

  2. Were you aware that by the 1820s, manumission—freeing slaves—had become nearly impossible and ultimately illegal? What are your thoughts on the moral dilemma of a man opposed to slavery being himself a slave owner? What other options could he have considered? What might the repercussions have been to those options? How do you view the route Judge Matthews chose?

  3. We often think of the “frontier” as the expansion out into the West of the United States. Were you surprised at the idea that Mississippi was, indeed, considered “frontier” in the early to mid-1800s? Since this novel is based on actual history, how does life in Greensboro fit with your concepts of the frontier? How do you see the qualities that motivated people to move toward the frontier in the town of Greensboro?

  4. As legends often do, the story of the Greensboro “feud” in reality has taken on a dual tone of “good guys/bad guys,” based solely on the motivation of land greed. Yet these families had enough in common that two siblings from each family married siblings from the other. What are your thoughts on the relationship of these two families? What were your initial ideas on reading of the murder and mob lynching?

  5. We all have certain unconscious assumptions based on our cultural background. Where and how do you see such assumptions playing out among the characters in the novel? Did you find yourself affected by your own assumptions as you read?

  6. Today we are all familiar with the concept of PTSD, especially in military conflict. The novel examines numerous traumas of a non-military nature and the long-range effects on various characters. How do you see this playing out in the book? Were you surprised to learn that those effects can be lifelong? What about the effect of repeated trauma? How do you see the courage of various characters to overcome their trauma?

  7. The Civil War marked the beginning of a major shift in the role of women in the United States, leading to the suffragist movement around the turn of the century. What factors do you see contributing to that shift? How do you see the shift in Emily as a woman as a parallel to this historic shift for women in general? How do you perceive Emily: for example, strong, weak, changeable, likable, unlikable, realistic, idealized, simple, or complex? What qualities in her did you relate to personally?

  8. Which of the masculine characters did you identify with? What qualities appealed to you? Frustrated you? Which did you admire, find courageous?

  9. Were you surprised by ambiguities and conflicts in various characters? Did you identify with any of them? Where did you find qualities to admire?

  10. In general, which characters or scenes might have made you think about your own pre-judgments? Were you surprised? Has that changed your thinking on any issues or on the tendency we all have toward premature judgment of others without knowing their full story?