The Gilda Stories (14 page)

Sorel's words sat heavily on Gilda as she rode to her meeting with Eleanor. She decided to put them aside and use only her power of observation and visceral reactions—much as she had done when among the night animals on the road. This would decide her course of action. Still, she was shaken by the obvious truth that hung in the air: in all their time together it was Eleanor who controlled every moment. Gilda began to taste her own naiveté in responding to desire, a sensation with which she had had little experience.

Once the footman had escorted her to Eleanor's table and she was seated across from Eleanor, looking into the deep green of her eyes, Gilda fought her sensation of falling.

“The outfit is perfect, you beautiful thing. And who'd believe such a devilish pantaloon contraption would be so engaging. Look how everyone gazes at you and tries to pretend they're not.

“Yes, I'm so grateful for your help these past weeks.” Gilda was silent, uncertain how to continue.

“Don't be silly. It was a purely selfish act. As anyone will tell you, that's my only motivation. How could we have the delightful evenings together that we've had with you in dusty breeches? That's not the sort of company I could endure, I assure you.” Eleanor's eyes flashed with mischievousness.

The room felt close to Gilda. Unlike Sorel's rooms these seemed stuffy, smoky, noisy. The men at the bar were a bit loud and drank too much. The edge in the conversations around her felt too close for her to be comfortable among these strangers. Gilda looked around the room and recognized a few faces, regulars here but ones seldom seen at Sorel's. She thought she glimpsed Samuel slipping out the door. She recognized the intensity in the bend of his body. He frequently hung around the edges of the room when she was present but had not approached her since that night on the street.

A deep exhaustion descended over Gilda that begged for quiet, a cessation of thoughts, simple enjoyments rather than the complexity of the unknown. She felt trapped here among these anxious people. Within her view were at least four others like herself and Eleanor. In their faces she could see juvenile preoccupations or convoluted machinations, the need to be entertained at any expense.

“Might we walk outside for a while? I'd like some air,” Gilda said.

Eleanor looked puzzled for a moment but signaled over her shoulder. A waiter appeared, and she told him to bring her a cape. They stepped out into a cool fog. She dismissed her driver, and the two of them walked downhill toward the bay. Eleanor linked her arm through Gilda's and then spoke. “What is it, my little one? You seem distracted. I've been waiting for so many days to be with you again, and you seem to be somewhere else.”

“Yes, I think that's true. There's so much for me to learn while I'm here—”

“And I intend to teach you—”

“Sorel and Anthony have done quite well, thus far.”

“What is it? Do you worry about your Bird? I think you must learn that we all make our own lives. That's just the way of it.”

“No, Bird is not a concern for the moment.” She was silent as they continued their walk down the shadowy street. Eleanor pulled her suddenly toward the darkness beside an unlit house.

“Why are you hiding from me?” She held Gilda's gaze in a grip of fire. Gilda felt her body yielding, sinking into the soft, satin-covered breasts. She tried to break the gaze but could not. Eleanor's mouth was on hers, and Gilda pressed harder into its fierce strength reaching out for her.

The kiss bruised her mouth. Yet Gilda matched its power, feeding a need inside her like no other she had experienced before. Her hand became entangled in the mass of red curls, and she pulled at it while pressing Eleanor's mouth tighter to her own. She heard only her own breath and Eleanor's. The woodframe building behind them seemed to creak with the energy of their bodies against it. The dry, old wood sounded as if it would ignite with the desire that passed between them.

Gilda felt the sharpness of Eleanor's teeth as she bit her lip and continued to press her mouth onto Gilda's, taking in her blood. Gilda became confused, unsure how to protect herself. She did not want to be bound to this woman by blood, but her desire was a tide she feared she could not resist.

She heard nothing in the world except the beating of their hearts and their breath rushing between them. She felt only the silkiness of Eleanor's hair in her hand and Eleanor's iron grip at her back until the sound of a crash echoed somewhere, perhaps inside her own head.

She staggered backward, unable to imagine what had rallen from the building's upper stories to daze her. She looked upward at the blank eyes of the building as her knees buckled and she toppled over. She closed her eyes for a second, then panicked.

“Eleanor,” she screamed, and tried to focus the blur. Eleanor was there, against the wall, with a look of horror spreading across her face. And there, too, was Samuel.

“I warned you to leave us, you black demon. I warned you.” Samuel's face was engorged with hatred. He turned to Eleanor as if to hit her, but her look of horror quickly became one of derision. He turned back to continue directing his anger at Gilda.

She recovered herself and sprang to her feet. “Samuel, you're a foolish man. You've nothing to gain by this.”

Gilda felt blood slipping down through her hair, staining the collar of her new outfit. She was stunned but no longer disoriented. She could see from his eyes, almost before he was sure of it himself, that Samuel would attack again. As he came at her with the iron pipe she grabbed it in midair. He would not release his grip so Gilda swung it around in front of her, taking Samuel with it. He hit the wall beside Eleanor with a force that shook the woodframe. The pipe dropped to the ground, and he leapt at Gilda without missing a breath.

The force of his assault knocked Gilda back to the ground. He was atop her with his hands at her throat. She had never struggled with one of her own, only those who did not understand her strength. It was a moment before she realized Samuel was not trying to strangle her but to rip open her throat. Over his shoulder she saw Eleanor standing quietly. Gilda saw her look once up and down the street to see if anyone approached, but she maintained a gellid calm that unnerved Gilda more than Samuel's attack.

Gilda used her own head to butt Samuel's face, stunning him. She forced him aside and raised herself high enough to deliver a punch to his jaw. He fell backward. The surprise seemed to have robbed him of all his strength.

“Kill him, it must be done. We must be rid of him.” Eleanor's words, softly spoken, were full of desire and promise. Gilda looked down at the blond hair now laced with blood. Samuel began to gather his strength for another attack.

“You kill him, Eleanor. It's your wish that he die, not mine. He's a fool of your making.”

“Kill him! He'll haunt our every step if you don't.” Her urgency made her voice become more shrill. “How can we live if we don't rid ourselves of him right now?”

The face of the one man she had killed on the road north from Louisiana floated up from the quiet place in the back of her mind. And with it the revulsion she had felt at the deed. He had meant to kill her on the dark road but had died himself, never knowing why.

“How?” Gilda screamed at Eleanor. “I don't think we can live at all if we do this.” Gilda invoked reason, still unable to recognize the eerie lust in Eleanor's face. Samuel looked at Eleanor with disbelief and rage. He leapt up, no longer afraid of her power over him, and sprung forward to finally vent his anger at Eleanor. She swatted outward and sent him sprawling.

“You must be done with it, I beg you.” Gilda heard the forced guilelessness in Eleanor's voice that she had sensed before, but this time its falseness rang more clearly.

“No, Eleanor, I can't kill him for you.” Samuel tried to stand again, his face swollen, the fire in his eyes undampened. “You best keep up your guard, Samuel. I will not kill you for her, but surely, sooner or later, someone will.”

“My dearest, please understand, he's plagued me ever since the unfortunate death of his wife. A death he caused. Can't you see how he blames me? But it was he who took her final blood, not me. I couldn't stop him. He took her final blood.” Eleanor's voice rose in anguish and desperation. “You have to help me be free of him. You must.” This last was icily imperious.

Gilda stepped back. “I'm no longer a servant, Miss Eleanor. We been freed.”

Gilda turned on her heel as she had seen Samuel do. The force of her movement and intent propelled her forward into the dark, obscuring fog.

Away from the fire of their hatred, Gilda felt uncertain what direction to take. She soon found her way toward Mission Dolores. On unsteady legs she approached the bench where she sat before with Anthony and sank down gratefully.

She began to moan. There were no tears to come to her eyes now—something she had become accustomed to once she was taken into the life. But she moaned as its equivalent, a high, keening sound of anguish as she once heard Bird do. She moaned for the loss of the one who had made her, for the loss of Bird, and for the loss of Eleanor. She moaned for the desperation of her need and desire, for the magnitude of her ignorance of the world.

“Will I ever know?” she asked aloud of the tombstones and stars. The wind around her was silent, and the fog was like a blanket. Looking at the graves of the churchyard, she was suddenly curious about what was beneath them. What would it be to lie still beneath these carved stones, to finally have peace?

“I hardly think you're ready to find out, do you?” Anthony spoke in a soft voice above her. He dropped to his knees in front of her and reached up to wipe the almost-dried blood from her brow. “Have you any wounds?”

“Not that bleed now. He was, as Sorel said, a weak man.” Anthony drew a handkerchief from his coat and wiped at her face as she released a stream of words in lieu of tears. “I couldn't kill him. Even seeing how he wished to kill me, to kill her. I couldn't do it.”

“There was no need. That is an important lesson,” said Anthony.

“Lesson! Aren't you listening?” Gilda almost shouted. “I could have destroyed him, happily. What does that make me? I've never, in all the time that's been given me, never wanted to kill as much as I wanted it tonight. I think it was only her entreaties that saved him. Saved me. The mesmerizing innocence of her voice was betrayed by her words.”

“What saved him was you. You are not as she and he are. Come home now. Sorel is waiting to spend time with you.”

Gilda walked in silence back to the house. She sensed Anthony standing in the hall as she washed her face and hands in her room and changed into clean clothes. Anthony said nothing when she emerged from the room, her hair rebraided, a dark shirt hanging loosely from her shoulders. Neither spoke as they descended the back stairs to Sorel's rooms. Inside, the fire burned low; Sorel sat before it with a book open on his lap. Gilda sat opposite him. Anthony stood across the room behind her.

“There has been some trouble, then?”

“Yes. It was as you said. Eleanor…” Gilda stopped.

“Yes, she's not learned the true ways. She will continue to be a most unhappy child.”

“If Samuel doesn't destroy her on the street where I left them.”

“He won't. He's a fool but also a coward. To take the life of the one who brought him into this life is certain destruction. It would remain to me—to us—,” he looked toward Anthony, “to then destroy him. You understand this? You've been taught this?”

“Yes, but it's never had much meaning. There were only the three of us…”

“Every lesson has meaning, Gilda. I think you must see now that it is a long life ahead. Each day will be a day to live out these lessons.”

Gilda heard the sound of Bird's voice. The room seemed filled with her presence. “I hold a grief inside of me that will not give way. Each one I've loved has been lost to me.”

“Not each one. Anthony and I are not lost. And Bird is only on a journey. Forget the simple concept of time that you've lived by these past few years. You have much time now to love again. To learn when it is safe to love. We may learn this lesson together.”

Gilda examined Sorel's room, then peered over her shoulder at Anthony standing in the shadow. She had expected to only pass a night or two and then be on the road again. The darkness of night's roads no longer seemed as inviting. The prospect of resting, healing, learning, drew her.

Later, when she looked back at the time spent with Sorel and Anthony in the town by the bay, she was always startled at how quickly the years flew by.

Aurelia surveyed the room, looking for the exact element that made her parlor so different tonight. Of course, hosting the Church Circle with Alice Dunbar there to address them was one of the most exciting things to occur in Aurelia's young life. Her year of widowhood had made some days unrelievedly bleak, and tonight's event was a great departure from the routine to which she had become accustomed. But she had always thought of her life as satisfying, perhaps even more so in widowhood which had bestowed an unfamiliar independence. Tonight there was something more.

She turned to Edna Bright who was about to shepherd Alice Dunbar back to her train. Edna's husband waited outside, and Aurelia could feel the nervous connection between them. His impatience with female social niceties, “talk and twitter” as Aurelia had heard it called, was a cloud over Edna's head. Inside, Edna warred against herself—her desire to stay and hear more, to say more, battled with the knowledge that he waited. The longer she lingered, the more the women's efforts would be belittled. Aurelia moved to Edna's side and gave Alice Dunbar one last good-bye. Aurelia was taken again by the unwavering gaze of her piercing eyes, a look that felt both challenging and seductive. A moment later Dunbar was out the door and waving backward on the lamplit street.

As the remaining wives of the Church Circle departed, Aurelia sensed the difference she had been trying to identify. The room really was no longer her dead husband's sitting room: it had become hers now. The friends who'd been here were here to be with her, not just with their minister's widow. The four-poster bed in the narrow room across the foyer was now her bed; he no longer was part of its definition. And the attic full of bric-a-brac accumulated before their marriage was hers, too.

And there was Gilda. She wasn't in the room at the moment, yet she was everywhere. Her favorite chair was angled in the corner next to its ornate reading lamp where she sat many evenings, first as Aurelia's comforting neighbor, later as a special friend. Books she had given as gifts filled a shelf in the parlor, and the garish wind-chimes from St. Louis tinkled in the air that rushed in through the open door. Aurelia was suddenly anxious that the women leave so she could have her home and friend to herself again.

When the door finally closed on the last guest, Aurelia looked at her reflection in the mirror above the sideboard. She admired her plumpness and the glow in her eyes. “Not a bad-looking woman,” she'd heard from neighbors, quick in their attempts to coax her back into community social life.

Aurelia stacked the napkins for the laundry, remembering how surprised she'd been when Dunbar accepted the invitation to visit the Church Circle and speak on working for the race. It was fitting that Dunbar should come now when Aurelia's home was full of energy. Aurelia hadn't felt this independent since she was a girl playing in her parents' yard.

Gilda worked alone in the kitchen washing the fragile china cups, saucers, and small dishes as Aurelia brought them in from the dining room. The task was comforting in its normality and reminded Gilda of Bernice, the cook who used to drift into her own world back at Woodard's, her heavy brown arms glistening with soapsuds while she hummed to herself.

Although Aurelia continued to wear the dark cloth of widowhood, she felt light and careless tonight, savoring the high-pitched laughter still ringing inside her head.

“I don't think I'm going to stop smiling for at least a month,” Aurelia said, carrying the folded tablecloth into the pantry. Her voice had the edge of Missouri yet was still round with the music of the Delta. “She was so inspiring. We think of these things ourselves, of course, but it often takes someone from outside to show you how to do something.”

“The ladies of the Church Circle will never be the same,” Gilda said sardonically. She didn't mean to make light of it all but she had found Alice Dunbar a tiny bit pompous.

“Oh dear, you didn't enjoy the talk, did you?” Aurelia asked.

“No, I did,” Gilda protested. “It was a fine evening, and I'm pleased the group was inspired. Work with the poor is crucial…” She didn't want to criticize when Aurelia was so clearly ablaze with enthusiasm. Aurelia was Gilda's first friend since she'd left Sorel's, and it was difficult to navigate her way. She longed to share much with her but wasn't certain she'd be able to hold back anything once she began. Most of her feelings stayed buried within deep folds of protection, finding their way out only through the pages of her journal or letters to Anthony.

Both women were silent for a while. Gilda dried the silverware while Aurelia returned to the parlor, plumping the pillows and finishing putting the room in order. She came back to the kitchen with a purposeful step and announced, “I know she's a snob. She was taking inventory of everything in sight before she determined if I was a worthy hostess or not. But what she said was important. That's all!”

Gilda's laughter rang out fully. This was one of the qualities that made Aurelia so appealing: she was both naive and wise. The Alice Dunbars of the world had much to offer Aurelia, but intimidation was not part of it.

“I couldn't have put it better myself,” Gilda said, and they laughed together, pleased they'd averted their first disagreement so easily.

Aurelia's dark, shining face was made more alluring by her broad smile. Her softly pressed hair was pulled back in thick girl-like braids. She was heavier than Gilda. Her breasts strained at the wool of her bodice, and a wealth of gabardine swung loosely around her full hips. Gilda was sure that even the most recalcitrant of Aurelia's Sunday school students must eventually come to adore her face.

Once the dishes and linen were tended to, Gilda prepared to leave. The hour was still early, but the full moon already hung lazily above the western hills. It was several miles east to her small farmhouse, and the practical necessity of restricting her public travel to a motor car made the trip from the town limits of Rosebud to her farm longer than it would be if she simply traveled by foot.

She marveled at the automobile's popularity and had come to enjoy the calming influence driving sometimes had on her. It took several years for the townspeople to become accustomed to seeing a black woman driving. And after all, Gilda—“the widow who bought the Wirth farm”—was always a bit of an oddity to the communities, both black and white. She attended the most important weekly event in the black community, church service, dressed in the staid colors of widowhood, but kept herself apart from most social activity. She made frequent forays into St. Louis and did a minimal amount of shopping in town, contributing to the aura of mystery that surrounded her. It was known she maintained a full garden and gave away a good portion of its yield; that she had an independent income; that she kept to herself except for time spent with Aurelia and her nearest neighbor, John Freeman, also considered somewhat of an outsider. When Negro factory workers were fired to make way for returning white soldiers after the end of the war, he had drifted west from St. Louis and used his earnings to buy farmland.

To blacks she was an eccentric who was, they conjectured, overly affected by the death of her husband. Whites thought her much too bold. The officers of Rosebud's one bank had been cautious when Gilda purchased the farm on the edge of town. They were accustomed to a more supplicating attitude from their colored citizens. Running a bank in a fast-growing town gave them a somewhat broader view than most, but they were ill at ease with any woman who did not negotiate haltingly for a mortgage. Instead she outlined instructions for a transferal of her funds with the assurance of a white man. Yet none of the citizens of Rosebud, black or white, could find any specific act that would lead to opposing her presence in town. Her obviously secure financial status and clearly superior education gave her a curious place among them.

Gilda took much pleasure in the occasional encounters she had with the townspeople. The modest shape of their aspirations, their solid sense of endurance, the complexity of their social interactions were life energy for her.

In the three years since she moved onto her land, rumors had circled around her based purely on the imagination of others. For in spite of her unconventional attitudes and independence, Gilda behaved as any upstanding woman alone in a new town would. With the death of Aurelia's husband, a minister much her senior, it seemed natural that the two widows console each other. Aurelia turned to Gilda because she was solicitous without exuding the condescension customary from those who had known her since childhood. Gilda talked easily of places and customs Aurelia had never heard of before, speaking as if they were just around the bend in the road. Tonight was the first social event she organized on her own, and it was Gilda who made her think she could manage it.

Gilda's lean, self-possessed carriage and soft humor cut through the edgy chill of death that left Aurelia feeling helpless. She gravitated eagerly toward Gilda's aura of self-reliance and adventure. It contrasted brightly with her own practical competence in everything from mending linen to repairing hinges.

Aurelia had escaped much of the hardship that was everyday life for many blacks in their area. Her parents' position as educators had kept poverty from dominating her small, comfortable world. The nightriders who regularly terrorized blacks in the towns to the south and west of Rosebud had never taken hold in her county, leaving the small enclave of freedmen to build solid lives.

As her parents' only child, Aurelia had enjoyed unbound days of sunlit adoration. Daily married life remained unchanged: her husband replaced her father as patriarch, guiding her along a preordained social path. The death of her parents and then her husband left Aurelia financially comfortable but with little direction. She began to see the poverty and fear in the newly arriving blacks who lived on marginal farms with insufficient yields or labored in St. Louis factories for the lowest wages. Gilda's steely calm made these new shadows less frightening. While she looked not much older than Aurelia's twenty-five years, the way she moved, the seriousness in her eyes, spoke of great wisdom. Their mutual enjoyment of small pleasures rekindled Aurelia's hope.

When Gilda took Aurelia on drives through the countryside they sometimes wandered at a leisurely pace. But often she drove wildly, spraying clouds of dust in the air and grime on their coats. After taking the wheel the first time Aurelia never felt helpless again.

“Come, please have some sherry with me before you go home.”

“Not tonight. I've a few letters to write and send off tomorrow first thing. Besides, you look a little tired,” Gilda said, trailing her finger across Aurelia's cheek.

“I do not! I look like I won't sleep for a week I'm so excited.”

“You'll be sorry in the the morning when there's the laundry to be done,” Gilda said.

“Maybe I'll just leave it 'til the end of the week. Or let it pile up in the pantry and grow grey.”

“Wouldn't Maerose Spenser love to gossip about that,” Gilda said, laughing. “If you'd like, on Saturday I can help with the canning you've been delaying so shamelessly.”

“Alright then.” Aurelia tried to assemble her Sunday School teacher's look. “Canning on Saturday it is.” She took Gilda's hand in her own. “I can't tell you how grateful I am for your help today. I'd never have had the courage to even suggest inviting Alice Dunbar, much less have her here in my house, if you weren't by my side.”

“Not true. You'll surprise yourself yet. Anyway, it was great fun for me, too. We make an excellent team. Perhaps we should become impressarios.”

“We'll see what kind of impressario you are on Saturday, madam!”

Gilda took her light cloak and descended the front steps. She waved a final time before driving away from Aurelia's woodframe cottage, which sat at the end of the tiny spur that served as the main street for the black population. The town's two thoroughfares—one white, one black—came together at an oblique angle around a tiny town square. People met at the dry goods store, apothecary, feed store, and bandshell often enough to think of each other as neighbors. But their lives ran off in separate directions like their two main streets, like the Missouri and Mississippi rivers straddling St. Louis.

After passing through so many towns that had been devastated then revitalized by war, Gilda was used to the multiple ways in which blacks and whites accommodated to each other. In Rosebud, the interconnection of their worlds seemed perfectly balanced. She wondered how this small town had escaped the bitterness and rivalry she had found in other places.

The orderliness of its outlying farms and the small houses of the main streets were comfortable to her. They evoked the future that she had been promised. The two streets mirrored each other's ambitions and contentment. Every house was like Aurelia's: inside, the lampglow implied infinite possibilities. On each street she found the same pattern of lamplight and the same sound of evening. But now her attention to these details was drawn away by her body's need.

Gilda drove back through the town onto the road leading southwest to her farmhouse. Tonight the car made her impatient. She longed to be free of the dress and stockings, to wear her dark, men's trousers and woolen shirt. She always looked forward to night when she'd race through the wooded area between Rosebud and St. Louis hunting for the blood. The feel of wind whipping around her swept away the long past and with it her loneliness for the company of Sorel and Anthony. When she moved through the night with the wind she forgot she was still awaiting some message from Bird.

The light from the full moon and her acute vision made a lamp unnecessary inside her house. Gilda walked slowly through the sitting room and narrow hallway to her sleeping room with its double-locked door. Entering its draped darkness, she slipped into her more familiar clothes. She went through the hall again, back to her desk, and sat down before her open journal. It had been some time since her last entry. She passed her hands over the dried ink and looked out the window to the empty road winding away from her front porch to the east and west. Three years here, she thought. What a ridiculously short time. What a horribly long time. It had been fifty years since she last saw Bird and almost as long since she left Woodard's. Yet the loss of them lay heavily on her, a weight that would not relent until she finally spoke with Bird and peace was made.