Homeland (9 page)

Elinor visited this afternoon, to help sugar off. Elinor has borne two children, has walked the path on which my feet are irrevocably set, and has passed through that gate of pain that I myself face in less than ninety days. Peggie, looking to her own confinement only weeks beyond my own, will talk of nothing, as she and I sew in the evenings, but of how two of her aunts died in childbed, one of them in lingering agony which she does not hesitate to describe repeatedly and at length. To this, Mother invariably contributes, “If it is God’s will that you give your life bringing forth a child into this world, remember that it was so ordained since the beginning of Time.”

Susanna, I am frightened, terribly frightened. I try not to think about dying, and I try not to think about the pain. And all Elinor will talk about is how the town has voted to pay ten dollars per family, to any man who will enlist, and how towns all over Maine have been trying to wriggle out of paying the families of volunteers anything, and what a shocking thing this is, and what the Daughters of the Union must do about it. I try to remember that I am in God’s hand, and that
this present moment
—Elinor’s chatter, Peggie’s wails, the marvelous smell of maple-sugar, and Mother’s belief that saying “God knows the hour of your death” will comfort
me—all
this was formed by God, for my benefit, and is part of His ultimate intention for me.

Most of the time I do not succeed in this attempt. My child is due in the middle of June. If this is the only letter from me that reaches you, pray for me in that week. May God have mercy on my beautiful child.

And may God bless Mr. Poole, whatever his sins, for providing a trunk-full of comfort, of distraction, of amusement secretly imbibed, to lift my heart and dispel my fears. With my confinement approaching I should read nothing that does not calm and inspire, yet I find myself gorging on Mr. Poe’s macabre tales. Black cats—give me a sack-full! Gruesome resurrections? The more shocking, the better! Frightful revenge? I revel in each detail!

Can this be akin to my periodic, overwhelming cravings for pickles and crab?

Or is it only because these absurd horrors banish true fear?

May God bless you, my friend. Keep you safe.

P.S. I am more sorry than I can say to hear of your brother Gaius’s death, and the bereavement of poor Henriette, who was so hospitable (was it only March?) although I’m sure she quite agreed with your Aunt Sally about my Yankee barbarity. Please let me know, when you hear that she and her children came to safety. Let me know, too, if you have news of what became of your dear friend Mr. Cameron after seeing the Academy students safely to Chattanooga—and whether Mrs. Acklen’s art gallery suffered during the looting in Nashville.

[forwarded to Vicksburg—reached Vicksburg end of May]

Dearest,

News of horrendous battle in Tennessee, casualties almost unbelievable: nearly one man in five. Though as far as I can make out,
Shiloh is far from Greeneville (the nearest atlas belongs to Elinor), I have heard fearful stories of conditions in the east of Tennessee. I fear for you and your sister, though I know, even as I write these words, that I am powerless to help or even to know what is taking place there at this minute. And when you read them, the situation will have improved or worsened, but will not be the same situation. What manner of world do we live in, Susie?

Snow is flying, just when it looked to be spring at last. Papa is expected but has not yet arrived. Ollie is carrying in extra wood. He and Papa were to have cleared away the boughs from around the house this afternoon. Yet another week of darkness and snowshoes …

Still snowing. Sugared off four times. How I wish I could send you a cake of it!

Your letter. A prayer of thanks, that Julia’s child is safe born! It gives me hope for my own. I feel such fear, and then the child moves within me, and all the world transforms to joy.

And you, my dear, have a wicked, wicked pen! And yet, like Miss Austen’s books, your drawing of your Pa’s triumphant homecoming
disarms my rage at the man, for reducing the two of you—the
three
of you, now, counting Baby Tommy—to living on charity.

And yes, charity or not, poverty or not, you
will
find a way to get into the art academy. And then you can put your Pa’s face in paintings, say, of King Charles the Simple being forced to give up his land to the Normans, or of Nero falling off his couch in an orgy while good Christians sneer at him from the doorway. Please paint me in as a Christian.

Yes, a thousand times, and thank you, a thousand times: there will be a pact between us, that no matter what anger either of us expresses, it is understood that I love Elinor, and Emory, that you love Julia and your Pa. We feel what we feel, and pretending otherwise can only lead us—and the people around us—to grief. But, we are responsible for what we do, and for what we say in public. We can change the focus of our thoughts, until our feelings cool, or change, or pass.

This is the magic that I have discovered this winter: the secret blessing of being buried under a mountain of snow with a trunk full of forbidden novels.

You are quite right. My mother always cautioned me that it was improper to consider the physical relations between husband and wife. Only in reading of the natural rights of women have I come to the belief that it is not only a young woman’s right to know the workings of her own body, it is her duty. Surely to let her remain in ignorance is like sending a young soldier into battle only half-armed? I thank Heaven for my sister-in-law Betsy, who, as soon as I knew I was with child, explained to me exactly what I would have to face, and how best to get through it.

Sunlight at last! The snow has melted from the ground. The early saxifrages have bloomed in the woods—in a week, the world will be carpeted in flowers.

We begin spring-cleaning tomorrow—such a relief, to finally scrub away the greasy soot of winter, throw open every window to the air, to beat every rug and re-stuff every bed-tick and wash every curtain in the house! When Papa comes on Saturday, we will begin our garden. The fishing-fleet has gone out, and Ollie and Isaiah have just come home, with two weaner pigs whose bacon and hams will see us through next winter’s dreary cold.

Dearest Cora,

This is in the nature of a trial-balloon, sent up to see if Eliza is in fact able to get letters to “people who know people” and so across to where they can be mailed to you. I understand there is a woman in Sullivan County who operates a regular mail-service via the bush-whackers: every week she goes about to all her Unionist friends with a mail-pouch of letters from their husbands and sons in the Federal ranks.

Aunt Sally ordered us to dress in our best on Sunday, and took us visiting to all her friends, to introduce us to Polite Society here.
Julia agreed earnestly with everyone we took tea with, that in fact there are
not
hundreds of men fleeing Tennessee rather than fight for the Confederacy, but “only a few white-trash troublemakers.” I keep my mouth shut like the she-traitor spy that I am, firstly because these are Aunt Sally’s friends and I am Aunt Sally’s guest and secondly, because disagreeing wouldn’t change their opinions one whit! When I confront Julia with the fact that she
knows
that thousands in our State are riding in arms against Confederate rule, she widens her eyes at me and scolds, “Now, you know that isn’t true, Babygirl.” In any case, she is so taken up with Baby Tommy that it’s difficult to converse with her about any subject but how many times Tommy has needed his diaper changed today. I think Aunt Sally would have left Tommy under a bench in the depot if she thought she could get away with it.

Aunt Sally’s house is on China Street, at the top of a hill. In addition to being set on the bluffs above the river, Vicksburg is all hills, worse than Greeneville. From the one called Sky Parlor—if you climb it up either a switchbacked zig-zag path, or a long flight of wooden steps—or from the cupola of the Court-House, you can see miles up and down the Mississippi. It’s a breathtaking sight, Cora. Vicksburg lies just south of a sharp hook in the river around DeSoto Point. North of town the land flattens into a swampland of bayous around the Yazoo River, and across the Mississippi from us the land is flat, too: the best cotton land in the world, Aunt Sally says, though it floods in winter. You can see all the little houses of DeSoto, where the railroad comes in from the west, and where the ferry crosses to town. The house is large and luxurious, since Aunt Sally’s most recent husband was a wealthy merchant here, and has a garden where I draw most afternoons. Her second husband made the Grand Tour and she has three Italian and two French paintings here in the house for me to copy, in oil, if I can get any. Mr. Cameron set out a program of drawing-practice for me, to follow if I cannot get regular lessons. One thing that reconciles me to Sunday calls with Aunt Sally is, to see who has decent paintings in their houses. I am currently making plans to ingratiate myself with them all!

She also has her third husband’s whole library! Including
all
Jane Austen’s novels (including
Northanger Abbey
, which I’ve never read!), and Sir Walter Scott’s
Paradise!

The paintings are:
Bacchus Comforting Ariadne
(by Vernet); a
Portrait of the Artist’s Sweetheart in Gypsy Costume with a Suit of Armor
(it isn’t called that, but that’s what it is); a
splendid Rape of Lucrece
(which I think she purchased because she likes to gaze upon the semi-draped Adonis the artist got to model Tarquin); Samson grinding grain (ditto ditto the model for Samson); and
A Mother Displays Her Daughter to a Wealthy Suitor
. The Wealthy Suitor has a scrawny neck and squinty pale eyes, exactly like Captain McCorkle, only without the spectacles.

Unspeakable fighting at Shiloh. I remember the wounded being carried ashore at Nashville back in February, after the fighting at Fort Donelson—when I got Mr. Cameron to take me down to the landing—and I am filled with rage, at the lives so casually blotted out.

[
I dreamed about Payne, and Gaius: an awful dream in which they came back to Bayberry, Payne carrying his right arm in his left hand like a stick, Gaius with his lungs in a basket and a hole through his chest you could see daylight through. Bayberry was the way it is now, trees cut down, rugs torn up by the militiamen. When the boys smiled at me, their mouths were full of flies
—entire paragraph heavily crossed out]

Please be there to get this letter, Cora.

Dearest Cora,

Two
letters!!! How strange to read of icicles and snow still on the ground in April!, then go down to the river landing, where the air is hot and close as steamed towels. Reading your letter made me wish again that I could go there and pull Elinor’s hair for her. When Payne was killed, I know Regal and Julia both felt angry at President Lincoln,
personally;
at Senator Johnson,
personally;
at Justin,
personally
, as if everyone who favored the Union had conspired to murder our brother. Sometimes I find myself wanting to blame someone, for the fact that I’ll never see Payne again, and I’ll never see Gaius again, but there’s never anybody really to blame. I go calling with Aunt Sally, and everyone sounds the same. Hating the Yankees. Wishing every one of them would die, and that they could watch it happen.

Your other precious letter was the one you wrote back in February, about Justin Poole. Thank you for not being horrified. Or for not saying so, if you were. When Justin took me in his arms at the depot I didn’t know what to think myself. It was the first time that I thought that I might not
want
to leave Greeneville—only I knew I really
did
. (You’re absolutely right about not being able to think clearly.)

“…. the time that God has taken pains to interpose between you.” I remember when I was a little girl, Mammy used to tell me: “In front of every door that it’s best you don’t walk through, God has placed an angel with a flaming sword.” Needless to say, I did
not
appreciate this piece of advice! But hearing it again, now, like Elizabeth Bennet re-reading Mr. Darcy’s letter several times, I see what it actually says. Thank you.

And of course I don’t think you’re being “coarse” for telling
me not to let Justin seduce me if he gets the chance. I have never understood why “nice” ladies don’t talk about how babies get born. I helped Cook with the accounts in the kitchen since I was a little girl. What I
didn’t
learn listening to her and Mammy Iris, when they forgot I was there, talking about Pa and the housemaids, could be written on the back of a visiting-card. It always sounded sort of silly to me. Mammy slapped me for asking about it, but Payne and I used to hide and watch when Den would put one of Pa’s stallions to the mares. Obviously, God invented this means of producing colts. It can’t be
that
different for human beings.