A Woman so Bold (19 page)

Chapter 16

Colleen

For most of 1892, we were preoccupied with the baby and our own troubles with the farm. Each time we made headway on restoring the house or growing a crop, something seemed to go wrong and set us back. We had little time to visit the Pines. In October, I realized the last time I was there Colleen had been feeling particularly unwell and Lily had looked harried, but I was too distracted at the time to think much of it. They hadn’t been to church in nearly a month, so one morning after breakfast, I informed Will I was going over to see them.

He didn’t say much in reply, but I ignored him; after all, it had been too long since I saw any of my own folk. I scrubbed the pot I’d made the breakfast hominy in and took Cardinal over in the wagon. He sat happily babbling in my lap on the way, saying the few words he knew over and over and trying to mimic my clucking to the horses.

Daddy met me at the door, which was odd, since he was usually out in the field that time of day. He looked weary, and he lingered at the parlor window once we had gone in, absent-mindedly shelling and eating boiled peanuts from one of his pockets. I mentioned that Colleen would have his hide for eating in her parlor and inquired after their health, but I barely caught his reply as he mumbled something about “much the same,” and “no better.” After a while, he moseyed outside without a word, and Lily entered with a basket of mending on one hip and the baby on the other.

“Hello, sissy,” she said. She spread an old quilt down and laid Effie on it with a rag doll, and I placed Card on it as well, keeping an eye on him so he didn’t get trampled. Effie put a hand up and cooed something that sounded like “Hi.” I squeezed it and kissed her downy head.

“Is something the matter?” I asked. “I met Daddy on the way in, and he didn’t give me so much as a ‘hello,’ and when I asked after everyone, he mumbled. Is it Colleen? She’s not expecting again, is she? She couldn’t survive another—”

“The doctor says she’s dying.”

My mouth fell open in shock. Our stepmother had been frail for as long as I could remember, but her imminent death had never been real to me. She had been a beauty when she won Daddy’s heart with her uncertain manners and sweet ways, but in no time at all, she became a frail woman, wilted in the years that should have been her prime. In spite of this, I had watched her survive nine lying-ins, four live births and five stillbirths, and endless bouts of bronchitis, grippe, even pneumonia. I had begun to think of her as the immortal invalid.

“You go on and see her,” said Lily, nodding toward Cardinal. “I’ll mind him.”

Nearing its end, the tuberculosis had felled Colleen in one heavy blow. Her form was wasted under a thin sheet, her cheeks hollow. I seated myself in the armchair next to the bed and took her skeletal hand, but I could not look at her for very long.

“You ought to have told me you were ill,” I scolded. “I’d have come to you.”

She shook her head. “You have the baby to think of, your own home. I couldn’t . . . impose.”

“All the same, I’d have come. Lily and Edith have dealt with this all alone. You need a nurse.”

She clucked softly. “
No
. I mostly lie here. Edith reads to me. Landra, please. Edith must be sent to my sister Elaine, in Concord. She’ll be looked after, attend a fine school . . .”

“I’ll write to her.”

“I have done so already, and she agrees.”

She began to cough, and for some time, our conversation was interrupted as she hacked bloody sputum into a handkerchief. When she had caught her breath again, she said hoarsely, “I want you to take Ezra home with you before I die. You ought to have him.”

“You speak as if he were an umbrella or a pair of boots.”

“He’s always been more yours than mine. I want him to be with you. How wounded you were when you asked for him at Oakhurst and I refused!”

“Colleen, what would people say?” I asked, repeating the phrase she had tormented me with so many years.

She winced. “What difference does all of that make now? Pretense…”

The look of pain on her face pricked my conscience.

“Hush, I won’t listen to this. You must rest and not speak anymore. I’ll take him until you’re well if you like.”

She nodded and managed a smile.

“Rest, get strong, and then you must go to the seaside again, or Massachusetts,” I babbled. Her silence made me nervous. “It did you such good before to get out of the heat and damp.”

She closed her eyes and made no reply. It struck me that she looked eternally peaceful, as if all her earthly scores were settled, but I put the thought away.

Ezra jumped up with joy when I found him playing outside and threw himself into my arms. I packed his things and took him with me, and he was more than eager to leave the Pines. He had grown from a clinging little waif into a grave and quiet boy, and I feared that during my absence and Colleen’s illness, he had been much overlooked.
Never mind,
I said to myself,
I’ll have him right as rain soon enough.

He was fond of Will and excited at the prospect of playing with Card, and although he expressed some regret at leaving Effie, I promised him he would see her again soon. He held my hand as I carried Card across the backfield and through the pecan grove where I had hitched the buggy, skipping and chattering about the different birds he saw. That evening the wind began to pick up, and heavy clouds gathered. After supper, as I was washing up, I saw a lantern light bobbing in the cotton field. It was Ephraim, coming to tell me that Colleen had died.

I let him in the back door and looked at his face in the light. It was devoid of any emotion.

“My mother died when I was a little girl. I’m sorry to see it happen to you and your sisters.”

He nodded.

“Have you wept?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I won’t.”

“Why?”

“I’m angry at God for taking her.”

He set his jaw, and for a moment, I recognized a glint of my own iron will, remembering how I had refused to cry at my mother’s funeral. I gathered him into a firm embrace just as the clouds outside broke, cloaking the house with rain. He struggled against me, growling and shrieking like a wildcat, but eventually he went limp and wept against my ribs until the bodice of my dress had a wide, wet patch on it.

I allowed myself the solace of tears, albeit silent ones, as he wept noisily. When he was calm, I told him to stay until the storm abated and placed him at the table with a cup of tea and a slice of gingerbread. Colleen had only allowed the children cambric tea, but I figured he needed something to bolster him.

“Esther and I are to be sent away,” he mumbled, nibbling at the gingerbread.

“Sent where? And to whom?”

“To Aunt Sally out west.”

“What of Effie?”

“She’s to stay with Lily and Daddy.”

I closed my eyes. Had my father gone mad? Had he no regard for his wife’s children now that she was dead? He was neglectful of us after my mother’s passing, but I didn’t recall any talk of divvying us up like winnings in a poker game. Perhaps I could talk some sense into him.

I touched Ephraim’s shoulder. “I’ve never met Aunt Sally, but by all accounts, she is a kindly person. Kinder than Daddy, with a husband who doesn’t drink. You would love the west. Lots of land to run free, and it snows there.”

“I don’t want to leave the Pines.”

“I know.”

Ezra did not take Colleen’s death as I had expected. He cried for her, but he’d heard talk of her going to heaven so often he seemed to think she’d merely left for a temporary journey. He clung to me all the more in the event of her absence, and it reminded me of old times.

I accompanied Ephraim back to the Pines in the wagon the morning after the storm. Approaching the house from the road, we saw that one of the tall sand pines lining the drive had fallen in the high wind. I recalled how Will and I had shared our first kiss beneath the branches and frowned. Pointing it out to Ephraim, I said, “Sand pines are weak and only live about 25 years. Ask one of the hired men to chop it for kindling.” Pinewood was too full of resin to be used indoors, but it did well for a bonfire in a pinch.

Aunt Maude came over from Monticello for Colleen’s funeral. She was dressed in her finest black taffeta mourning. I had dyed my old brown calico and wore my beaver hat with a black mesh veil over it. Eric had graduated in December the year Cardinal was born and stayed in Tallahassee, working at the law firm where he had interned, but Colleen’s death brought him home. Lily threw herself into his arms when we met him at the depot. Ephraim was nowhere to be found before the funeral, and at last it was held without him.

“If someone had spared me Mama’s funeral, I’d be thanking them to this day,” I told Granny, but she only scoffed at me. Colleen’s mother had come all the way from Massachusetts, and she stood apart from us, weeping and casting bitter glances at me across the grave. She hated Daddy, and me as well, I reckoned, indirectly.

Esther and Ezra wailed when the casket was lowered into the ground, and Edith stood with silent tears rolling down her cheeks, but no tears came to me.
I ought to cry
, I thought.
Perhaps if I did, it would convince the old gossips I’m human after all.

Henry had come for the funeral as well. He wore a dark suit and a band of black crepe around his hat, which he removed as he approached me after the burial. He clasped my hands and placed a kiss on my cheek right in front of Will, murmuring, “My deepest condolences.” I pulled away from him, looking at each of them in turn, to gauge their reactions. Will was stoic, but a muscle jumped in his jaw, betraying his clenched teeth. They nodded to one another.

“W-where is Della?” I asked nervously.

“At the farm with Ma and the girls,” said Henry. His eyes were on Ezra, who stood beside me. Cardinal was in William’s arms. A silence elapsed, at the end of which, I said, “Thank you for coming.” Henry nodded, putting on his hat.

“I’ll take my leave of you,” he said. “She was a kind woman.”

Later, at the wake, Maude, Granny, and I sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee, nibbling at the plethora of dishes people had brought, as the men stood outside smoking. Colleen’s mother had retired to the spare room to rest, as had Edith. Lily was playing the old piano as Esther wept.

“It makes me think of nothing so much as Mama’s passing,” I said to Aunt Maude. “You were here, weren’t you?”

“I was.”

I glanced at Granny, who was beginning to nod in her chair.

“Did she suffer terribly?” I whispered. “I don’t recall, I was so young. I only know Eric took us to the barn because we were so frightened.”

“I suppose she did suffer, to die that way, anyone would suffer. They gave her laudanum for the worst of it, though, once they realized she and the child would not live.”

“They?”

“Hannah Miller and the doctor.”

“Did she mention me?”

Maude shook her head. “She knew very little by the end.”

I found myself crying into my coffee, and I plied my napkin to my wet cheeks.

“Shameful to weep over it now, so many years later,” scolded Maude. “Your departed stepmother barely in her grave, and you’re crying for Elizabeth?”

“I can’t grieve for Colleen without also grieving for Mama.”

“Well, you wouldn’t grieve for her when she
died
, and you a girl of seven.”

I shrugged, sighing. “Everyone speaks of that, but I barely remember it.”

“You stood there in your newly blackened pinafore and held to Lily as if she were to be snatched from you at any moment, but you didn’t shed a tear. Your mouth was set firm as a padlock. It was unsettling, some said, unnatural, for a child not to weep over her dead mother. I say it’s unnatural now.”

“Say what you like,” I managed, my voice a trifle shrill. “Her death has been the cause of all my sorrows.”

She shook her head. “You speak with the inexperience of youth.” She nodded toward the sound of the piano and Esther’s weeping. “Try thinking of someone else.”

I was frustrated by her words and lack of empathy, but she was right. I blew my nose into my handkerchief and went into the parlor. Esther lay prone on the rug, sobbing. I knelt beside her, and she wailed, “Oh, Landraaa,” with the plaintive sorrow that only children can feel. I let her place her head on my lap and stroked her hair until she was quiet.

“I don’t want to go to Aunt Sally out west,” she whispered. “I don’t know her!”

“You will once you get there. There are many things out west that we don’t have here. Schools, jobs, land, men. When you’re grown, you may have your pick of husbands! By 1930, Willowbend will be nothing but in-breeds.”

Lily laughed at my joke from the piano, but Esther was too troubled. “Please, Lan. Tell Daddy not to make me go.”

“I’ll try, but your father is an implacable man, especially when he’s in his cups.”

I stood and pulled her to her feet, and we left the parlor. I paused in the kitchen to tell Will I was going to look for Daddy. He brushed my fingertips lightly with his own, a comforting gesture. I found my father drinking in his usual place by the spring. He raised his flask to me.

“Didn’t bring your own glass?” he called. “We coulda toasted ‘Leen together. Will says—hic—you like your wine of an evening.”

He was feeling talkative, as was his wont when he drank.

“Will should be quiet about our private affairs,” I said. “I don’t like my occasional glass of scuppernong wine in the same way you like your liquor.”

“What’s the difference?” he breathed, swilling the burning liquid like it was water.

“For one thing, I think it’s shameful of you not to show up to your own wife’s funeral.”

“Don’t give a damn what you think.”

“For another, it’s selfish to pack off your own children as if you were tired of them, just because you’re grieving. Not that I preferred your way of raising Eric, Lily, and me, by ignoring us altogether. Perhaps you can find a middle ground this time?”