One Hundred Years of Marriage (17 page)

“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 away 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.”

I didn’t breathe, waiting for Mama to tell what happened next.

“I led the pony around to the front of the house and tied her to the porch railing so the folks couldn’t fail to see her as they drove up the lane. I wanted them to admire her before I had to explain.”

“Mama, I can’t believe you were such a naughty girl.”

“Oh, I was bold—Samuel and Emma’s only child. They reared me like a son.” Mama’s voice broke when she said this last. It seemed to be an idea—to be reared like a boy—that broke her heart.

I leaned over her. “Was that a bad thing, Mama, to be reared like a son?”

“It was glorious.” Her hands reached up as though to pull herself into the tree.

“But what happened when your folks got home?”

“Oh, yes.” She folded her hands and took up her story. “I told them about the shirts.”

“Not the petticoat?”

“You’re the only one in this whole world I have ever, ever told about the petticoat.”

“But your mother must have missed it.”

“Of course, she missed it, but she never said a word. It was my petticoat, after all, and if I wanted to trade it for a horse, then that was my privilege. That’s what she would have said.”

“And your father?”

“Papa? He laughed. He loved the little pony before he even got up to the porch. He named her Four Shirts.”

I looked down at my mother’s beautiful face. A large ginkgo leaf had fallen beside her ear and she looked like a rosy-cheeked gypsy. “Why didn’t you tell me this story before?”

“Oh, it was the sort of thing you keep wrapped up, so it won’t fade.” She looked at me and reached up to push the hair back from my eyes. “Shortly afterward, Papa joined Mr. William Thomas’s Legion to fight for the Confederacy.” Mama’s stomach bucked again and the coughs began. It was getting colder.

“Quickly, we must go in.”

“Not yet, Victoria. Listen to me. Robust though my spirit was, I still
had
to marry a strong man to protect me. But everything is changed now the war’s over. You can find a husband who will—” She paused. I looked at her, her blue eyes staring at me, frantic with weariness. “—who will talk with you.” I rushed her inside leaving for later the feather bed and the tartan in a growing pool of yellow leaves. “I am getting better,” she said as soon as we’d got in the house. “I told your father last night, I expected to be completely well by Christmas.”

* * *

I awoke in the night to the sounds of Mama’s coughing and Father’s voice. He didn’t usually go to her, so I was happy for her. I knew I was supposed to stay away whenever they were alone together, but the coughing and retching grew much worse. He didn’t know how to help her—sit her up against the big rolled comforter, give her the cough syrup, tell her to breath very softly. My feet skittered down the stairs, and I stood in the crack of the door to her room. Father was standing beside the bed, his back to me. He held her baby pillow in his hand. All I could see of mother was her white arm hanging from the bed. Without looking, he tossed the little pillow to the carpet. There was blood. Like Jesus’ face on the handkerchief, the shape of Mama’s mouth was pressed into the blood. He had tried to stop the blood, and now she was quiet. He did not move. I turned and very softly climbed the stairs, my mind a washed slate.

The next morning in my attic bedroom I was awakened before daylight by Wendell’s climbing into bed with me. He was the worst bed-fellow in all of North Carolina. Every part of him—knees, elbows, pointed little nose—was as sharp as an icicle, and small as he was, he showed a powerful determination in pushing me aside. Once he had positioned himself in the warm middle of my bed, and I’d covered him up and put my arm over him, he fell immediately to sleep, beginning the whistling little snore that always kept me awake until time for breakfast.

I waited hoping to sleep a little more, and perhaps I did, because all of a sudden I thought it had snowed in the night, unheard of this early in the fall. I was certain if I looked out, I would see a thin coat of white upon the leaves below. Wendell went right on whistling, and I lay still awhile before I realized that the certainty about the snow was owed to my seeing the cross pieces in the window frames and the ceiling lit a blue white light from below.

“Children.”

So concentrated was I on the light that I heard my father’s voice before I saw him standing in the doorway to this little attic room—a space he had never occupied before. Wendell had wakened with the sound of Father’s voice, and his head jerked up to bump my chest. Father cleared his throat. “Your mother passed away last night. You should get dressed.” He turned quickly back into the little attic passageway.

Where was she? I must hurry. I stepped out onto the freezing floor. “Wendell, darlin’, get up and get dressed.” I threw my dress over my head. “Wendell. It snowed. Come to the window and see.”

“I don’t like snow.”

I pulled my shawl around me, and rushed down to her room. It was empty and the bed was neatly made—more sharp and tidy in the cold light than it had been in months. Where had he put her? I ran to the window. There was no box upon a wagon in the lane. “Mama?” I had taken her outdoors and lain her on the damp ground. I, her strict little nurse, was in charge of the whole house, and I had not prevented this! Mama, I am so sorry!

I stepped toward the bed. Blackness rose within me, and for a moment I saw nothing. I took hold of the bedpost and hoped I was dying, but the dark faded. I covered my eyes against the morning light. How would I possibly get through one day without her, my only friend.

Down in the kitchen Bessie stared at me through her frizzy hair, her mouth chewing the air. “She was alive. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I swear she was alive when I came downstairs. Why, last night, after you was asleep, she commenced dancing around the bedroom making plans for Christmas. Your father grabbed her and heaved her back on the bed. I sat with her after he went out. She was alive when I came downstairs. I swear to you, Miss.”