On Agate Hill (16 page)

I am not thinking anything, I said.

Its not what it is cracked up to be, Selena said, but not really to me, as if to herself. Its too hard. It is all of it too goddamn hard. Then she seemed to forget me and let go of my shoulder and set off wobbling down the passage toward the kitchen, leaving Uncle Junius door open behind her. I went over to close it so as not to lose the heat. The spirit lamp hissed in the corner. The wood was getting low. He raised his head. Selena? he said.

I closed the door.

All he ever says now is Selena, its like she has bewitched him.

Christmas is coming, you can not stop it,
she said. But does Uncle Junius not remember how it used to be? Am I always the only one who must remember everything? Does he not remember how it smelled for instance, when Rom and Spence brought big armfuls of red holly and cedar boughs and pine branches in from the woods to tie along the staircase railing, to line the mantels and stick in the big Chinese vases on either side of the front door and in the parlor? That sharp smell still prickles my nose as I think of it. It meant Christmas along with the smell of the oranges that came from faraway in a wooden box and were much prized for we never saw them at any other time of year.

Fannies fruitcakes were lined up in the cold corner of the kitchen for weeks on end, drenched with whisky. Julia and Rachel made divinity fudge, and Liddy made fried apple pies. Sometimes we had ham for Christmas dinner but more often it was a big wild turkey which Spence had shot in the woods. It was roasted all day then served on the ironstone platter surrounded by parsnips and sweet potatoes dug up from the cellar. Fannie and Liddy scrimped and worked for weeks on that dinner, and Uncle Junius said the blessing.

Mama Marie sat smiling at everybody, while Aunt Mitty glowered and ate each helping of food on her plate up separately before she began on the next one.

Now the passage is empty and cold and dirty where we have been tromping in mud with the snow. Selena does not appear to notice. She says it is all she can do to keep wood in the house and food on the table. She says anybody who wants Christmas dinner this year can damn well get it off the stove in the kitchen. Squirrel stew. No gifts. Liddy is cooking the stew right now in the big black pot on the tripod over the fire outside. Tomorrow morning Washington and me will take some of it over to Mama Marie and Aunt Mitty along with some roasted quail and a pound cake. Arent we having carols then? Blanche asked, for she loved to sing as Fannie taught us, but Selena said,
Not hardly.
Victoria grinned. She is not so bad after all. I hope Selena will let her go over there with us tomorrow.

December 26, 1872

Dear Diary,

Washington came to wake me and Victoria at first light. Liddy gave us some coffee and johnnycake to eat in the kitchen, ham biscuits to put in our pockets for the long walk to Mamma Maries. Victoria was sleepy and sullen but I was excited, after all it is always an adventure, like Gullivers Travels and Robinson Crusoe and the Odyssey. All the books are about somebody going someplace. Liddy wrapped us up in all the old clothes she could lay her hands on. It is real cold right now. We set off across the yard and through the woods under a low gray sky, it was like walking under a blanket. There was only a couple inches of snow. Washington carried the pot of stew. I went last. Ahead of me Washington and Victoria looked like snowmen, their arms stuck out from their bodies because they were so bundled up.

We walked through the big pine forest and came to the sandy spring now covered by solid ice. I imagined it gurgling underneath,
biding its time
, as Victoria said. We walked along the stone fencerow past the old homestead. Animal tracks were everywhere. When we came to the place where the negro
had hung, there was no way to tell it, just a big tree with a long limb and the old road passing underneath in a stretch of unbroken snow, as if nothing had ever happened there at all. But it DID happen, I thought.
It did, I remember, I remember everything
. I said nothing.

We went on but the sun never did come out. Victoria kept complaining. I kept thinking I saw Mary Whites red coat ahead of us through the trees. I knew this was not true, but it made me happy to think so. By the time we got to the mill, we could hear distant pops in the air as people shot off their guns the way you do on Christmas. The sky stayed dull and low. Morning never came.

At the big tree Victoria said Frankly I cannot go one more goddamn foot. We sat down on a rock to eat our biscuits. I gave her my second one. So Victoria ate three biscuits and I ate one and Washington ate two. The dim gray woods were very peaceful.

Its nice out here, isnt it? I said.

No it is not Miss Fancypants, Victoria said. What is the matter with you? Its too dark out here. You cant see anything. I want to SEE what I am doing. I am sick of snow. I am sick of mud. I am sick of being poor and everybody dying. I want a city, she said, with streetlights and paving stones. I am tired of working my fingers to the bone. Work work work. Thats all they know around here. It was even worse at the Bledsoes. They prayed all the time too. Well there is a lot more to life than this. I want some pretty clothes and a pretty boy like Declan Moylan and there aint no reason in the world why I cant have it.

Washington and me sat looking at her. I bet you gets it then, he said.

She looked over at me. What do YOU want, Molly? she asked in a different voice.

I dont know, I said. But I’ll know it when I see it, and I’ll want it the worst in the world. What about you Washington?

He looked away.
I aint saying.
He stood up. Less get on then, he said.

We saw lots more tracks, wagon and horse and foot, when we got to the public road. They continued under the big stone arch and into the Four Oaks lane.

Something going on, Washington said.

We walked faster. The huge trees spread their black arms out across the snowy yard where three or four wagons were parked helter skelter, mules and horses stamping their feet in the snow. People stood on the porch. A man drank from a bottle then put it back in his pocket and stared at us. Spencer stood out in the sideyard all wild-haired and wild-eyed smoking a cigarette. We went over there.

Spence, I said. Whats wrong? What is happening? Wheres Rom?

Spence grinned his big grin at us. Miss Marie up and died in the night, he said, and now Miss Mitty gone too.

What? Victoria and I looked at each other.

You going to eat that? Spence was looking at the food we carried.

Come on, I said. We went over to the porch and climbed up the steps and walked through the people. Two rough looking men in black coats and hats were trying to talk to Susie through a crack in the door. One of them waved a sheet of paper.

Yankees, Victoria said into my ear.

You will have to speak to Mister Junius Hall, he owns this place now Susie was saying. She had big dark circles under her eyes.

I am telling you, I now own this property! said the fat one with the mustache.

You will have to leave now, Susie said.

Madam, if you will allow us to come inside for a moment—

At that point Spencer picked the man up like he was a stick of firewood and threw him off the porch into the yard where he landed all spraddled out like a child playing angels in the snow.

I am hurt! I am hurt! he cried, then cut loose in a string of language such as I have never heard. Everybody moved over to the edge of the porch to get a look at him. The other man walked down into the yard.

Why good Lord, looky here at you children, where did you come from? Get on in the house, Susie said. We went in with Spence following us all the
way back to the big warm kitchen where Susie put the pot on the stove and we sat down and Spence started eating the quail one after the other.

What he had said was true, all of it. Mama Marie had died in her sleep with her Bible in her hand and a smile on her face. Nobody could have gone more peacefully, Susie said, adding that somehow Aunt Mitty had known it, that she had got up in the night and gone upstairs and got on the bed beside Mama Marie to keep her warm as she was passing. When Susie came into the bedroom in the morning, Aunt Mitty got up, straightened her nightdress, then kissed Mama Marie on the mouth.
Good bye Marie,
Aunt Mitty said. Then she went back downstairs and took a little sponge bath and dressed herself in her good black bombazine dress, calling Susie in to put up her hair. By then, Susie said, Mrs. Goodnight and two other women had already arrived to start laying out Mama Marie.

Susie gave Spence a bowl of the squirrel stew.

Now Mrs. Goodnight appeared in the kitchen door. Miss Marie is ready, she said. Mrs. Goodnight is a thin sour looking woman with moles on her face.

I did not want to see Mama Marie. I have already seen enough dead people to last me the rest of my life. But it was clear that we had to. So we all got up and followed Susie straight back into the hall and up the stairs and into Mama Maries bedroom where she lay with her hands folded together as if in prayer. Now Mama Marie herself had gone off to the world of light. Susie started crying.

Dont she look nice? Mrs. Goodnight said.

Susie put her hand over her mouth and turned away stumbling, Spence caught her before she fell. We went back downstairs where Mrs. Goodnight set Victoria and me to lighting lamps in the parlor. Then Spence and Rom carried Mama Marie down there on a board and placed her between two straightback chairs.

And how is your dear uncle? A woman who used to be Fannies friend was pinching my arm.

Come on, I told Victoria.

Aunt Mittys door stood open as always. A big fat woman named Maude Lear was telling the tale— how Miss Mitty had got all dressed up, how she had said,
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
then climbed into her coffin. Well I knowed better than to try and stop her, Maude Lear said. She laid herself down in that coffin and said Maude, come over here and fix my dress, and so I fixed it, and then I got up my nerve and I ast her, Miss Mitty do you expect to see God?

I expect to see Marie,
she said,
but we shall see what we shall see.

She closed her eyes and died within a hour, bless God. Maude Lears voice and her chins were quivering. We went over to the coffin to look at Aunt Mitty whose mouth turned down like a shovel as in life. She wore the black dress and her accustomed lace cap which looked sillier than ever above her stern dead face.

All of a sudden I got tickled.
Lets go.
I jabbed Victoria. We did not go back into the parlor, but grabbed our coats from the kitchen where we found Washington. The three of us set off fairly running through the woods.

Selena met us at the door. Before we could say a word, she told us that we had just missed Julia who had arrived after all with her fiancé, an older man very stuck up and wearing a bowler hat which he never even took off his head. They had not received my letter. Julia was real mean about everything that had happened at Agate Hill, and did not have any appreciation at all for what good care Selena was taking of her father. Harsh words were exchanged. Julia and her fiancé had left within an hour of their arrival, taking little Junius with them.

What?
Everything went black for a minute as I sank down upon the cold stone steps of the piazza. Did she say anything about me? I asked. I did not say, Didnt she ask for me too?

She brought you all some oranges, Selena said. But that so-called fiancé of hers was egging her on, I swear I would rather be horsewhipped than marry that one. You get up from there now Molly. It is cold as a witches tit out here. Get on in the house.

So I did, and then Victoria and me told her everything else.

She stared at us open-mouthed. Well honey, she said, there is not a goddamn thing I can do about any of it. You better go in there and tell Junius, which I did, though the medication keeps him so dreamy now it is hard to tell if he takes things in or not.

I was feeling light headed myself by the time I finally got back to the kitchen. Liddy had left the stew still warm on the stove. The wooden box of oranges sat beside it. I got some stew and ate it all alone at the big pine table which used to hold ten or twelve of us, negro and white alike. A low fire burned in the hearth so that points of light gleamed from the hanging pots, and shadows flickered on the old brick walls. I finished the stew and got an orange from the box.

Suddenly I remembered it was Christmas. And now it was almost time for all the animals to kneel in prayer as they did in the stable so long ago, Fannie used to tell us the story. If I got up and went down to the barn right now, would I find Buck and Bill on their knobby old knees in prayer? I did not think so. I thought of the baby Jesus born in the stable and then I remembered Mamma telling about some family back in South Carolina who had so many children to die that they didnt even name them when they were born, they waited to see if they would live until their first birthday. They called all of them Captain, Mama said. But the baby Jesus was Jesus right from the beginning and everybody knew it. I started peeling the orange. The white stuff makes my nose wrinkle.