Box Set: The ArringtonTrilogy (9 page)

“You hold my hand, Amelia. Let’s go further
in. We’re always getting caught because you stay too close to the
marsh. With the moon high and bright, they will spot us for sure,”
she said breathlessly, as she hurried me into the dark, frightening
woods.

“Haven’t you heard the stories Mammy used to
tell us about spirits haunting the woods? Spirits of your buried
family members?” I asked, with chills running down my spine and
goose bumps covering my arms at the mere thought of seeing a
ghost.

“I’ve never seen any ghosts,” she said,
pressing her back up against a thick, moss-covered tree. “Here is a
good spot.”

I scanned the forest and could barely see my
hand in front of my face. If Hattie hadn’t been holding my hand, I
wouldn’t even have known she was there.

“I don’t hear them, Hattie. We’ve gone in too
far,” I said anxiously.

“For sure we won’t be the seekers.”

Above us an owl hooted, startling me.

Hattie giggled.

“Come on, let’s go back.”

“No. I am tired of my cousins teasing me.
When they call ‘come out, come out wherever you are,’ that’s when
we will go back,” Hattie insisted.

I leaned into the tree and tried to stay
calm. I tried not to feel my pounding heart. Then, I heard what
sounded like footsteps coming closer and closer. I tried to stop
imagining it was the ghost of Hattie’s Auntie Frannie.

“Do you hear that?” I whispered.

“What?”

“Footsteps?”

Hattie went silent. “I don’t hear
anything.”

Suddenly I was tugged away from Hattie, and I
yelped in fear as I felt something slithery fall into my hair.

“Get it off me!” I screamed and flailed
around. It felt like a snake, and I heard it hiss at me.

Laughter echoed through the forest as Simon,
Hattie’s oldest cousin, stepped close enough for me to make out the
whites of his eyes.

“Simon, you get that nasty thing off her!”
Hattie ordered.

Simon reached into my hair and pulled it out,
as Winifred, Jackson, and Lucy came running over. They had a
lantern, which cast a glow around us and lit up the forest. I
shuddered as I watched the snake slither away.

“You’re it!” Simon called after tagging me,
and he ran off.

“Come on, let’s count,” Hattie said.

“Hattie.”

“Yes?”

“I still hear footsteps.”

“It’s just Simon coming back to scare you
again. Let’s go,” she said, grabbing my hand. We took off running
back to the cabins.

Around trees, over logs, we ran as fast as we
could without tripping and falling. “Hurry!”

Twigs and pine needles latched onto the
bottom of my dress. I increased my pace until I could run no more.
I stopped, out of breath, and fell to the ground. And that’s when
Curtis P. Boyd snatched hold of me.

“Get yourself up!” he commanded. “Your mother
has ordered you back.”

“My mother?”

“You mean her stepmother,” Hattie
interjected.

Without warning, Curtis P. Boyd reached over
and grabbed Hattie by the hair and said through gritted teeth, “Get
back to your quarters.”

Hattie obeyed reluctantly. When she was out
of sight, ordered me to do the same, though he escorted me the
entire way.

“You will not play with the slave children
anymore!” Eugenia ordered when I entered the suite she shared with
Daddy.

Curtis P. Boyd stood blocking the doorway as
she calmly but resolutely continued her list of rules.

Eugenia sat dignified, her back as straight
and stiff as if a thick plank was shoved up under her dress,
sipping on a hot cup of tea beside the dormant fireplace. On the
end table next to her sat a weathered Bible.

“You will not set foot near the slave
quarters again. You will not, under any circumstances, play with
those children.” She emphasized the words
those children
, as
if they were vile.

“You will stay inside, studying either your
school work or the Bible. You will stay in your room at all times
unless it is time to dine.”

Stunned, I tried to speak in my defense, to
convince her that playing with Hattie and the others was just fun -
harmless fun.

“I know Simon scares me sometimes, but it is
all in fun. I really didn’t mind the snake trick,” I began, until
she rose and stepped closer to me. I instinctively stopped talking
and swallowed hard as her fiery eyes narrowed down onto me.

“You listen to me, Amelia. You stay away from
Hattie, Simon, Mammy, and the others. You especially stay away from
that unholy mulatto baby of Abigail’s.”

“Jacob Thomas?” I uttered. “Jacob Thomas is
unholy?”

Eugenia’s face was blazing with anger, and
she began to pace back and forth.

“Men, Amelia, can’t control their lust, even
when sin and the devil himself stare them straight in the face.”
She shot Curtis P. Boyd a look of disgust. Then she turned to
me.

“You know what lust is, don’t you?”

I shook my head no.

Eugenia smiled contemptuously, then leaned
down to me while staring me straight in the eyes and said, “Lust is
what you crave between your legs.”

I gasped and felt flushed.

“Every time you feel that sensation, that
urge and yearning, know it is caused by the devil, and that you are
full of sin.”

Eugenia motioned for Curtis P. Boyd to step
in. “Take her to her room and see to it that Mlle. Duval washes the
filth off her.

“And afterward, you sit and read the Bible.
Fill yourself with the word of God, Amelia, and save yourself from
the devil.”

Curtis P. Boyd rushed me along and all the
while, as we hurried through the dim halls and back to my wing of
Sutton Hall, I tried to erase from my mind everything Eugenia had
just said to me. Jacob Thomas was an innocent, angelic baby, just
like Jesus himself. There could be nothing unholy about him, I told
myself. Nothing!

As if Mlle. Duval was personally instructed
to remove any layers of sin that might have attempted to seep into
my body, she scrubbed my soft skin with a scrub brush so vigorously
that I began to bleed.

“You’re hurting me!” I cried while sitting in
the tepid water of the bath tub brought up into my bedroom.

My complaints and cries didn’t stop her, and
she continued to scrub me from head to toe. It was only when every
inch of my body was rubbed raw that she pulled me out, had me dry
off, and dressed me for bed.

While I listened to Beatrice and Violet
giggle as they played in their room down the hall, I lay in bed
succumbed to a restless night of physical and emotional torment
that would become almost as predictable as the sun rising each
day.

~ ~ ~

Daddy returned from his trip, and when he
finally came to see me, as I was banished to my room after
breakfast as punishment for what Eugenia called disobedience, I
broke out in tears.

“There, there Amelia, did you miss me that
terribly?” he crooned. “Don’t you like the doll I brought you? She
had the most beautiful blonde hair and dazzling blue eyes. I was
certain you would like her.”

I looked up at him and hoped he would see my
scabbed face. My heart sank when he smiled and kissed my cheek, and
then put me aside.

“Perry is coming for supper. Myrna isn’t
well. She is expecting another child, so she won’t be dining with
us. Dry your tears, and put on a pretty dress.”

After he left without really looking at me,
I, having been unable to confess all that Eugenia was doing to me,
fell back into bed with the new doll he’d brought back for me.
Indeed, she was the prettiest doll I had ever owned. Her hair was
silky soft and the color of gleaming gold. Her features were fine
and delicate, and her glass eyes sparkled. Her lips were painted
rosy red. Her dress was bright yellow and most fashionable, and she
wore suitable undergarments as well.

Normally I didn’t name my dolls, but I felt
this one needed a name. A name for the doll who would become a new
friend for me, because Hattie was being taken away and I felt more
alone than ever. This doll I could tell my secrets to, my fears and
my hopes, and I just knew she would listen.

I went to my armoire, took out my journal,
and scanned back pages and pages. I had been writing in it for
years now. I recalled a young woman I’d seen only once. She was in
the mercantile with her handsome husband, looking at some lovely
red fabric. Daddy was placing an order with the owner of the
mercantile, and I had been peering up at the shelf of dolls when I
couldn’t help but notice the woman. She was strikingly beautiful,
and I remember as soon as we returned home writing down in my book
the name I’d heard her husband call her - Lillian. I wished I had
that name, for it was so pretty, and I wished I had her thick, gold
hair and would someday acquire her shapely figure - the kind that
made all the men in the store stare at her in awe, mouths agape,
eyes locked onto her, even Daddy’s. Her husband’s expressions were
cloaked with jealousy. I named my doll after her.

“You are my best friend because I am not
allow to be with Hattie,” I said to the doll, who when I looked
into the glass of her eyes, seemed responsive.

“And though I intend to steal away to see
Hattie every chance I get, I know I can share everything with you,
even things I might be too embarrassed to tell anyone else. Even
Hattie.”

Long-winded, boring, stuffy suppers were what
I least looked forward to. As I sat and ate, I kept my mind
occupied with thoughts of the real Lillian. I wondered where she
lived, if she was happy. I bet she was. After all, she was so
beautiful. Daddy had always told me I was beautiful, and when I
looked in the mirror, especially lately, I could see some signs of
the beauty coming out - a real mature beauty that only a few women
possessed. And when Perry Montgomery glanced over to me on
occasion, I swore he saw it too. Before, I was eager for him to see
me that way, to gaze at me from afar. Now, however, I was not only
eager, but frightened, after what Eugenia had said to me. Was I
truly full of sin, when every time this handsome man’s eyes fell
onto me I felt heated, flushed, and tingling all over, I
wondered?

I was uncomfortable with the thoughts running
through my mind and ate as quickly as I could without being
reprimanded and then asked to be excused.

Eugenia scowled inconspicuously as Daddy
happily granted my request.

I stepped outside to get some air, though the
heat of the hot summer early evening offered no relief. In the
distance, I could hear the children playing and the slaves singing.
I wanted so much to sit with Mammy and watch her rock Jacob Thomas
as she sang gospels with her sisters. It wasn’t to be, however. I
sadly sat down on the steps to the gallery and sulked. Fireflies
signaled on and off in front of me, and I was surrounded by a
symphony of night creature activity. Over in the woods, raccoons
hunted, bats flew overhead in search of insects to eat, and owls
hooted. The crickets were deafening and drowned out the footsteps
behind me. If it wasn’t for the distinct smell of his pipe tobacco,
I wouldn’t have known he was there, leaning up against the thick,
white column, staring deeply at me.

I quickly stood.

“I didn’t mean to startle you, Amelia,” Perry
Montgomery said, then took a long drag of his pipe.

“I wasn’t startled,” I replied nervously.

“Enjoying the night air?” he asked in a soft
voice.

I nodded.

He continued to stare at me, and I stood
looking down, with my hands behind my back, nervously wringing them
together.

“It’s strange isn’t it?”

“What is strange?” I asked, and looked
up.

“You and I are related now.”

“I suppose so.”

“I was honestly surprised when your father
asked for my aunt Eugenia’s hand in marriage,” he said and
sauntered over to where I stood. “After all, she isn’t exactly the
kind of woman that most men desire, especially a man like your
father.”

I took a long-needed breath and again shifted
my eyes down to the floor. I was so nervous around him. My heart
raced as he stepped only a few inches from me.

I had known Perry Montgomery nearly all my
life. I was certain he knew nothing of my infatuation with him,
which had grown over the years.

As he continued to move in and lock his eyes
onto me, I suddenly felt exposed, frightened, and unable to
breathe.

“You are a remarkable young lady and have
captured my attention. I see the way you look at me. I have noticed
you becoming a woman,” he said, leaning in so his words were a mere
whisper for only me to hear. “Do you realize that you have the
ability to crush a man’s heart with your stunning looks alone?” His
eyes were half closed and relaxed. Behind the scent of pipe smoke,
I could smell the distinct scent of brandy.

I was frozen with fear and fascination at the
same time. Here was the man I had worshiped from afar, dreamed of
kissing, coming close to me and whispering how I had captured his
attention.

My mind scrambled to put it all into place
and make sense of what was happening. Was this just a dream, my
mind questioned, or was Perry Montgomery really inching closer, so
close his hot breath was hitting my already flushed cheek?

“Do you know how dangerous men are, Amelia?”
he asked me with a serious, glazed look. “Men are like fire. What
burns inside cannot always be contained.”

“Mr. Montgomery,” I stammered. “I really
should be getting back inside,” I blurted out, with my heart racing
so fast I thought I just might faint. As fascinated as I was with
his undivided attention, the fear of what he was saying took hold
of me, and instinctively I felt the need to flee.