One Hundred Years of Marriage Page 13

  Ever after that first discovery, I would often unwrap the dry silk to gaze at the picture which seemed more and more important to me as the regular patterns of my life dissolved. Last spring Mama removed herself from that bedroom to a smaller room down the hall.

  At dinner my little brother, Wendell, only five, had asked, “Mama, why did you sleep in the little room?”

  Father scowled and Wendell lifted his hand to shade his eyes as though Father’s face were a fierce sun. Father reached out to pull his hand down. This caused Mama to sing out brightly, “Wendell, darlin’, I have removed myself to the sewing room until I’m cured of this pesky cough. Victoria, dear, tell your Father about your paintings.”

  “That St. Pierre woman wasn’t here again today, was she?” Father asked.

  “They are going to hang them up on Contest Night all over the school house. Just think, our daughter so accomplished at fifteen.”

  “She’s nothing but a gossip,” Father pushed on. “Bessie said she was here today.”

  “Well,” Mama said, extravagant and playful, “if Bessie said she was here, she must have been here. Isn’t that right, Victoria? I myself did not see her, but Mrs. St. Pierre would never speak ill of you, Gilbert,” Mama said, her eyes twinkling. “She is one of your admirers.”

  Mrs. St. Pierre, a woman of strong opinions and coarse manners, forced a visit upon us often. In her garish mismatch of second-hand laces and furs, she reeked of perfume and unaired trunks. I had ceased taking her upstairs to visit Mama where she invariably clucked about, shifting the covers and recommending brutal remedies such as the blistering. I took upon myself the burden of entertaining this unrefined woman.

  *

  Bessie was our Irish hired girl who, though she rarely went anywhere except out to do the shopping, seemed to know a great deal about what went on Asheville as well as the whole of the Buncombe County. Bessie, her red face always moist, her carrot hair always frizzing down into in her eyes, was the one to tell me of anything exciting—calves born with two heads, girls sent away by their families, or murders— “She shot ‘im dead with his own rifle, cartridges in plain sight on the Chinese carpet.” Bessie was also the one who told me Father had made his quick recovery by putting all his own money and much he had from northern investors into buying up land from distressed plantation owners.

  I was just the opposite from Bessie. I never knew what was going on.

  That spring the doctor, who had at first been quite strict about the dangers of the cough medicine he prescribed for Mama—“One teaspoon only, morning and night”—put the bottle of medicine in my hand and told me I could give her as much as was needed for the catarrh. He seemed to be saying his patient could now swig down all she wanted.

  And something else that had never happened before: I heard Bessie argue with my father. “I’m only asking for what’s my own back wages.”

  “If you can’t be patient, I can have a darkie in here in a minute—plenty of them down at the Bureau with their skinny hands out. Not another word! You’ll be paid in due time.”

  Around that same time I noticed another strange alteration in our household. I felt my father’s eyes pass off the three of us—Mama, Wendell, and me. I knew he was eating most of his meals at the homes of friends in order to spare Bessie. Nevertheless, his absence gave me a guilty relief. I was now able to look after Mama in my own way, and Wendell was allowed to keep to himself, dreaming and singing his silly songs without criticism. Father was busy with business and with Asheville’s society. He bought new clothes and hired a team of men to paint our house a beautiful ivory. All summer life had seemed more spacious as Father came and went, spending most evenings helping the Widow Barringer with her late husband’s estate.

  Mama and Wendell and I ate at the little mahogany card table in her bedroom, at least we two children did. Mama’s cough caused her to keep to her bed most days. She would sometimes doze off, her head dropped back on her little baby pillow, the fork still in her hand.

  “I am sleeping my life away,” she wailed yesterday afternoon. “I am not taking anymore of that cough medicine.” And then she began to cough. And I seized the bottle and the spoon and began to pour her a dose.

  “No, no, Victoria. We are going to do something pleasurable. You rush home every day from school, never get to play.”

  “Oh, no, Mama, I’m quite fine.” I rushed to pick up the covers which were sliding off the bed as she put her feet onto the embroidered foot stool. It was strange that the thinner and weaker Mama was, the more excitable and beautiful she became. She stepped off the footstool and with her long black hair still undone walked to the window. Wendell, who was turned sideways in his chair, leaned his head against the spokes in the back, stuck his thumb in his mouth and gazed at Mama. I stared also as she looked out at the ginkgo tree in back of our house, the afternoon sun shining through the folds of her lawn nightgown in such a glowing way as to make of her little body nothing but a wispy shadow. She was smaller than me now, and I could no longer wear her hand-me-downs.

  “Just look at it, Vic,” she said. “Look at the sun on those yellow leaves. If only I could paint! You could do it with your watercolors. The world is so unspeakably beautiful! We are going outside today. Winter is coming, and we must seize this sunny day.”

  “Please, Mama, come away from that drafty window before you begin to cough.”

  “I don’t wanna go.” Wendell said.

  “It’s chilly outside,” I said, “the middle of November. I would never forgive myself—”

  “I will be fine. I am getting better. I surely am.” She turned slowly like a doll on a music box, her arms outstretched.

  “Your arms look like twigs, Mama,” Wendell said.

  “So they do,” Mama replied looking at her arms as though unfamiliar with them.

  Wendell slid out of his chair and started for the stairs. By this time of the afternoon, his little room was warmed by the sun, and he would sit in the patch of sunshine on the floor and move his little horses around.

  I dressed her warmly—flannel petticoats, muslin camisole, serge jacket and skirt, a heavy shawl, bonnet and gloves, wool stockings and her low-heeled boots. Over my arm I carried the tartan and the feather bed and Mama hugged her little pillow. She’d had this little pillow all her life. Her own mama had stuffed it with cotton and made a little pillow slip embroidered all over with blue forget-me-nots and violets made out of French knots and put it in her cradle. It’s all faded pinky gray now but Mama says the little pillow just fits at the back of her neck when she’s trying to get to sleep. I notice she also hugs it to her when she’s trying not to cough.

  Exhausted from the effort of dressing, she rested her arm on my shoulder, and I walked her out the front door and around the yard to avoid the steep back steps. I spread the tartan on the ground beneath the ginkgo tree, and Mama lay down on her back gazing up through the yellow leaves. We loved this—looking up the tree. Even in winter Mama loved the patterns the black branches made against the sky. “See darling how straight out the twigs grow.” And I did see them jutting out like thorns or nails. In spring we’d watch for the buds to come on, and on a summer evening lie here to catch the breezes which swept down off the high meadow behind the house. Sometimes, after the sun was long gone but before the stars came out, I would feel quite sure Mama saw something I did not in the tree or the sky, for her eyes would look quite lively as though following a speeding image beyond the branches.

  This afternoon I put the pillow under Mama’s head and spread the feather bed over her. She lay still, and I knew she was trying not to cough after the exertion of the walk. I crawled in under the feather bed and laid my arm over her waist, careful to avoid the sore spots. As though to welcome us the tree suddenly danced with a great shower of falling yellow leaves. “Oh my!” Mama exclaimed. “How lavish the Lord is! Like golden coins slipped from the Maker’s hand.”

  Lavish, yes, and yet today, I felt the waste of it. So many times I had
studied a single ginkgo leaf, holding it in my palm or up to the sun to see beneath the surface the hidden red flecks rushing up from the stem. These leaves seemed made of the thinnest leather like fine kid gloves. Little fans with cunning deckled edges. And with each gust of wind, a thousand more were spilt upon the ground to rot.

  “Victoria,” she began in her hoarse, whispery voice. “I heard the elegant Mrs. St. Pierre downstairs this afternoon.”

  “Oh, Lordy.” I was glad to hear her playful tone.

  “Don’t you find her,” Mama whispered, “a little, shall I say, girthful for a young woman?”

  I giggled.

  “A little painted perhaps for a Methodist? a touch forward for—”

  “A touch forward! Mama, she is a charging bison. Whatever happened to Mr. Pierre? Did she run him out of that big house?”

  “Ah, Vic, when Mrs. St. Pierre turned twenty, she began a new life. She sold her farm to a carpet bagger, moved into town, and changed her name. She just refused to be an old maid.”

  I was astounded. How is it I didn’t know this. I would wager Bessie knew this. “Was there a Mr. St. Pierre?”

  “Well, there was a peddler.”

  “Mama!”

  “No, no. She didn’t marry the peddler,” Mama whispered. “This entirely innocent peddler had come to her farm before she moved, and he sold her some shell buttons. She asked him where these beautiful buttons had come from, and he said, ‘Ah lady, these buttons come from St. Pierre.’ And I suppose she thought it had an elegant sound, and she bought that house on Montgomery Street in the name of Josephine St. Pierre.”

  “What was her name before?”

  “Nettie Crow.”

  I burst out laughing. “Oh Mama, that’s terrible. Nettie Crow!” I hooted.

  Mama coughed hard and deep, then rolled away onto her stomach to spit a small pool of blood onto the yellow leaves. She quickly turned the leaves over, so I wouldn’t see it. She lay on her back, her pink cheeks blowing up with trapped coughs. I tried to find some serious thoughts to sober both of us. I looked up into the towering tree. A few leaves were still green, here in November, tender little leaves hugging close to the limbs. Ginkgoes are the strangest trees.

  “I wish I didn’t have to go to school,” I said, a tired old subject between me and Mama. “I can do fractions and decimals and recite Shakespeare and the English and American poets and draw the map of the world. And I have read many more books than the teacher. Can’t I quit and stay home with you?” I snuggled to Mama’s side.

  “Not yet, Victoria.” Her voice was so soft I could hardly hear it. “And I wish you would bring to your father’s attention that Wendell should move downstairs to the second floor this winter. It is too cold for him in the attic with that cough. I mean, bring it to his attention, later on.” Mama was staring straight into the sky. “In case it slips my mind,” she added.

  “Mama, I get into trouble sometimes at school. Drawing the horses I see right out the window. Miss Ernestine tore up my picture, a mare and her colt.”

  Mama patted my hand. “I have a good horse story, if you want to hear it.”

  “A horse story?”

  “A true one. My best story, and I saved it for you until this beautiful afternoon.” She turned on her side and looked at me in that deep way that pulls me into her mind. She laid her head on her elbow and hugged the little pillow like a doll against her bodice. Mama sighed. She was the best horsewoman in the county, and though she had not ridden in some time, her reputation was well established. When she rode, she and the horse rippled over the pasture like water. Father complained that he could hardly drag her to a fancy dress ball, though, of course, when she got there, she was the prettiest lady.

  Mama inhaled a shallow breath and began. “When I was eleven years old, living on the little farm in the shadow of the Smoky Mountains—”

  I loved the stories that started this way, on the little farm. One time when Father was up north in Richmond, Mama took me on the train back to Avery County where the farm had been, but there was little to see. We found the charred doorstep and some foundation stones. It made me sad that the house and barn and sheds had all vanished from this place Mama loved so well. She stood where the well had been and seemed completely drifted off, not moving, not even breathing.

  “Where are the people?” I had asked.

  “Why Victoria, you know your granddaddy Samuel fell at Fort Mahone.”

  “And Grandma Emma too?”

  “Oh, no, darling.”

  “Did she burn up?”

  “Victoria, no!” Mama had said as through such a terrible thing could never happen. “We hid in the woods. Just look there how the vines and the grass make it look like nothing happened here at all and look there at the mountains, their peaks and ridges drifting into view then fading back into those wispy clouds, so mysterious. It’s all just how I remembered it.”

  Mama never told me exactly what happened to my grandmother, and I knew it would pain her to be asked, so on an afternoon when Father had called me into his study to adjust the draperies against the setting sun, I stiffened my backbone and asked him how she died. He looked up from the law book he was reading, frowned, and answered, “Hunger.” I did not ask him to explain further.

  On that trip back to the farm beside the mountains Mama also showed me a giant sycamore tree where she’d had a rope swing with a log seat, the split side smoothed by her Papa. She gazed up into that Sycamore and said, “I’d drag that rope up into another tree and leap out swinging up so high Ma was afraid to look. I was a wild little thing. Ma once said, ‘She thinks she’s the Queen of Sheba.’ ‘Naw,’ Papa said, ‘She thinks she’s the King.’” Mama laughed that day, standing there where her childhood well had caved in and everything else had burned up. She laughed remembering herself as a child.

  Now, lying under the Ginkgo tree, Mama was calm again. But shouting coming from the front of the house made us both lie still. It was the house painter, come again about being paid. The last time father had threatened to take a rifle to the man, but this time Bessie had to handle things. Mama looked as though she had decided not to hear the row and gathered up a little breath to go on with her story. “We had a fenced-in back kitchen garden,” she said, “where we hung the clothes to dry. Ma and Papa and the hired help had gone into town one day. I stayed at home to do up my pa’s shirts. He said my ironing was the best anywhere around.

  “I was laying his shirts across a line when suddenly, like a cloud passing off a mountain top, an Indian boy on a pinto pony appeared at the break in the rails of the fence where I should have closed the gate after the others left.”

  “Were you afraid of him?”

  “I don’t think so. He didn’t ride in, just waited there framed in the gateway. There were always Cherokees around our farm. Papa traded with them. He said they had pure blood and had escaped the Federal men who forced most of the Cherokees out to Indian Territory long ago. Indians would come to our gate in the morning and wait for Papa to go out to them. Ma didn’t like that. ‘Why don’t they come up and knock on the door like respectable folk?’ she’d ask.

  “’They are a defeated people, Emma,’ Papa would say. Starting as a tiny thing I would go out with Papa and stand, my arm around his leg, while he silently bartered as though he’d turned into an Indian himself. He’d give the leader a respectful nod, and then make another nod to the horses if they deserved it. But if some rag tag heathen showed up with an old nag, Papa wouldn’t even give him a nod. He’d start out the door, see the sway back or the knocked knees and turn right back into the house.

  “The Indians usually had very fine horses, like this pinto pony. The boy was about my age, sitting there bareback and naked. He sat his mount straight as a pine, and the little pony stood on perfectly straight legs beneath a wide chest—a good galloper. I could tell.

  “The Indian boy slipped down from the pony and stood a step away holding the rope bridle in his open hand, so I knew right awa
y that he was offering to trade, and the very idea of me being picked to trade for a horse puffed me up so’s I could hardly keep my feet. The boy wore a little a loincloth and didn’t move or speak. He didn’t boast of the pony the way a white man would, pointing out the wide nostrils or bragging about the bloodline or saying how gentle or spirited the horse was. He just stood there like a statue, the rope in his open palm.

  “The pony was what it was, a perfect creature. I wanted it like I’d never wanted anything in my life. But what did I have to trade. I thought perhaps the Indian boy had come to our garden because he’d seen our giant pumpkins. Reaching in under the huge prickly leaves I got my arms around one of the bigger pumpkins and looked back at the boy who was staring straight ahead with no interest in me my pumpkin offer. I don’t know how he kept from laughing at me, this girl trying to trade pumpkins for a horse. Then I saw his eyes move to the clothesline where my papa’s beautiful white shirts hung. I ran to the line and carefully took down the oldest of the shirts and held it up so’s he could judge my mother’s fine needlework. To my delight he reached out for the shirt with his free hand, and I thought he would hand over the rope to me, but he laid the shirt across the back of the pony and resumed his statue-like pose.

  “Well, of course, I said to myself, a horse for one worn shirt. That wouldn’t be a fair trade. I ran into the wagon shed and brought out a shovel, a hoe, a bucketful of seed corn, but he wouldn’t reach out for any of these. His eyes stayed on the clothesline. I didn’t want to part with one of the newer shirts, the one Papa wore to market, but I did and it was laid on the back of the horse, as was his Sunday shirt and finally the one Ma had just finished for him to wear to see the banker in Asheville. All the fine white shirts were gone and still the Indian boy would not hand over the rope. He glanced at the laundry basket, but he could see it was empty. Oh Vic, I don’t know what possessed me to be so high-handed with my pa’s clothes, but I was still so greedy to have that painted pony, I ran back into the shed, pulled up my skirt and untied the waist string of my best petticoat. The Indians respected fine needlework, and there was nothing to compare with this. Above the tatting on the hem my mother had embroidered buttercups in bright yellow silk thread. No other girl in our little country school had anything like this. I held up the embroidered hem to the naked boy standing not six yards away. He smiled. Indians don’t smile often, Vic. They save their smiles. He handed over the rope and walked away with my pa’s only white shirts and the petticoat it had taken Ma weeks of working by lamplight to finish.”