The Wilful Daughter (50 page)

A smile curled her lips; “Papa can’t control the Piano Man anymore than he could his other sons-in-law.”

She put the papers back, what was she supposed to do with them?

What was she to do about Peter leaving Minnelsa? Was he leaving her or did he plan to take her away? Her body shook for she couldn’t think clearly without the bottle in her closet.

The early evening heat filled the dining room of the Blacksmith’s house as the family sat down to eat. Bira said grace thanking God for the safe return of June and the speedy birth of Minnelsa’s baby. After a loud resounding “Amen” from all, they began to pass the food.

Glasses of iced tea clinked with fresh chipped ice from the new icebox. “That ice man is making himself a mint this summer,” the Blacksmith noticed as he downed the glass holding it up for more of the sweet brown liquid. Without hesitation Fawn got up and went to the ice bucket on the sideboard as Jewel passed the tea.

Servants in their father’s house, June thought. She found the sweet drink irritating. She watched, though, as Ophelia drank her milk in silence, watching the adults around her.

Minnelsa didn’t eat much. Her presence was more out of duty than due to hunger. The Piano Man feigned total attention on her, like the doting father they never had, touching her belly whenever the baby moved.

He should have been there to touch me when Ophelia moved, not some boy like Michael who was in love with my hair and the color of my skin.

They were all looking at her. She wondered why until she realized that it was her turn to tell the Blacksmith what she had been up to that day. They all held their breath, as in the past, wondering if what she would say would cause a problem in a household already overwrought with problems.

“
Well, daughter?” he asked again and took a big gulp of his drink.

“
Today?” she said as if she had to think of an answer. What would happen, she wondered, if she said: “I went to get Ophelia some clothes and discovered the dear old Peter here is planning on selling the property and probably moving away.” She wondered if her sister would miscarry and the Blacksmith blame her instead of the man who had orchestrated her demise from the first.

“
Nothing much,” she said about to end it there, then added. “Oh, I had to bathe Ophelia before supper. She had been very busy this afternoon making mud pies.”

Peter’s eyes widened. Minnelsa looked at her daughter who was grinning at all the attention and just said a disappointed: “Ophelia.”

“
It’s a shame that she gets her nice little dresses all messed up playing outside. She should be in jumpers all day. At least until dinner and then maybe she could put on a . . .”

“
But, daughter,” the Blacksmith was cutting his meat and not looking at her as he spoke, “she’s a little girl. A little lady and . . .”

“
I couldn’t agree with you more, June.” Minnelsa interrupted.

The family looked at her. The Blacksmith looked up from his food. She had never disagreed with her father before. “I beg your pardon,” the Blacksmith said. And he placed his fork and knife on the table and delicately wiped his lips with the linen napkin.

“
June is right, Papa. With another baby it’s just going to be too much to have one wild little girl.” She turned to the child and cuddled her chin with one hand. “Ophelia is wild and happy, and always getting those lovely little dresses messed up. A jumper is appropriate. No way with all that hair are they going to think my Ophelia is a boy.”

“
I’m a girl,” the little one said a bit loudly and they all laughed, a nervous laughter to fill the fearful silence of the Blacksmith.

“
Besides that’s what we had to do with June when she was little. She was getting into everything.”

The Blacksmith didn’t say a word at first. They thought he was trying to remember June as a baby in jumpers instead of pretty dresses. How much Minnelsa reminded him of Bira when she was pregnant, the control she took over the children.

“
Well, your mother has spoken Ophelia. And you must obey your mother, right?” he asked his pretty granddaughter.

“
I’m not a boy, Grandpa,” she said adamantly and he heartily agreed.

Peter caught June’s eye just like in the old days. But June didn’t care to answer. She had something for him later.

* * *

When supper was over the Piano Man made his excuses to go to choir rehearsal. He thanked God to be able to get out of the house, that Minnelsa and June had not argued over the child and that the family seemed at ease for a change.

With the heat still blasting like it was high noon, the Piano Man ordered every door and window opened in the church so his choir members wouldn’t pass out. The sound of voices raised in song to God spread out over the community like evening prayer. They hovered coolly above the Georgia heat, reminding those who were sitting on their porches wishing that soon there would be a breeze, that soon there would be the dog days of summer and endless rain.

The music lulled Ophelia to sleep, and quieted the moving baby in Minnelsa’s belly. Bira opened the front porch door, knowing the Piano Man would close it when he came home and let the slowly cooling air and music fill the house like an evening concert. The Blacksmith fell asleep in his place on the front porch and she had to wake him to make him go to bed.

Fawn and Jewel had long faces as they listened to the voices in song. “Maybe we should go back into the choir,” Fawn sighed.

“
I am not sure I want to be there or anywhere,” Jewel told her sister. “I keep dreaming someone is going to take me from my father’s house as used merchandise.”

When they were all asleep, June took her flask of brandy and went outside and drank under the tree beneath Willie’s old room.

She was not concerned about how the voices would sound on Sunday under the direction of the Piano Man. She didn’t care if the music was sweet and peaceful and had put her child to sleep.

“
Listen, Willie,” she whispered up to his room in a voice so tiny anyone hearing it would have thought she was a ghost. “It’s Friday night and no man has come to call. I got music though, music provided by the most inspirational hand on earth. My Piano Man. Remember him Willie, I told you about him. He’s going to marry me.”

She was good and drunk as she repeated ‘marry me’ to the window. Her thoughts were jumbled. She had met him first and he was supposed to marry her.

“
Minnelsa,” she remembered. The scene years ago flashed through her mind. “I made love to him, but that didn’t make him want to marry me. He wanted the land. Wanted the dowry that came with marrying the Blacksmith’s oldest daughter. He didn’t love her.”

She remembered the papers and whispered to Willie. “He’s got what he wants. He can leave her now, brother. Do you think he still loves me?”

Over and over she asked herself that question until she started to cry beneath the tree

* * *

Minnelsa rolled out of bed to go relieve herself. She was tired of this pregnancy. Tired and feeling old. She longed to own her body again, to go back to life before the Piano Man and Ophelia.

She was tired of waking up three times a night to go to the bathroom in a house where there were no more slop jars. Modern conveniences irked her now. Modern conveniences had taught her how to hold on to this baby. She could tell that her sisters were jealous of her life, her perfect husband and ready-made family. She had to see them cry over the men who had loved and jilted them for money and property.

She heard the tiny voice whispering in the wind. She looked down out of the bathroom window and saw a figure that vaguely resembled June just sitting there and crying, or laughing she couldn’t tell. “She’s crazy.” Minnelsa decided June was lost long ago and she had better things to worry about.

Let her stay there, I don’t want to help her anymore. I helped her enough, taking her baby, raising it. The moment June had recovered from her illness Minnelsa had wondered if she wanted the baby back. Ophelia spent hours with her “aunt” leaving Minnelsa weary at the thought of losing the child. But right now, she didn’t care anymore. Too much was happening around her and June was not the center of the world anymore. “At least not to me.”

She decided to go onto the dark front porch and wait for her husband. He would unintentionally wake her when he came to bed anyway, so she might as well wait. He was usually careful about her condition, but he was so noisy getting into bed. She sighed and leaned back in papa’s old comfortable wicker chair, repainted and refinished at least 4 times. The new pillow, freshly stuffed and soft was one she had hand stitched lying in bed a few weeks ago. She sighed happily and rubbed her stomach to comfort the moving baby.

“
Soon, soon.” she said and waited for her husband to come home.

* * *

June heard the people coming out of choir rehearsal. She listened to the faint goodnights from far across the street. She heard shoes, flat shoes, work shoes, high heeled shoes, walking down the road and away. She knew the Piano Man’s routine. He would close the church and lock the door and then walk down the block past the six houses that separated home from the place of worship.

“
And then he’ll come in and slip into his bed with his so called wife.” She took a little sip. “She can’t do nothing for you, Piano Man,” June said to the dark and then, giggling covering her mouth, she drunkenly reminded herself to whisper. “The wind has ears.” She danced about in a small circle. “Pick up what I say and carry it around the house and thru the door and into my mama and papa’s room. Tell them I’m his real wife.” She danced until she fell down dizzy.

She decided she needed to talk with the Piano Man before he went into the house and curled up with his fat pregnant wife. June would bring him down the incline to the tree, under that part with a lot of leaves. Nobody could hear their conversation there, not even the wind. Minnelsa would not be awake the way that baby made her sleep and her parents would never know.

She hid her almost empty flask in the hollow of the stump at the side of the house, “Got to save some for my man.” She climbed barefoot up the yard towards the wide front porch.

June didn’t see the figure in the chair sitting in the dark away from the gaslights. But in the moonlight, she saw the handsome Piano Man cross the street and loosen his tie as he entered the yard of his wife’s parents’ home.

Minnelsa saw him too. She smiled at the sight of her husband. But in the shadows weighed down by the baby and being tired she had no intention of moving until he was nearer.

June’s voice came out of the darkness.

“
Good job, Mister Choir Master.” The Piano Man stopped and looked in her direction, trying to make out the image before him. “A job like that deserves a drink or two. Want to join me?”

He swallowed hard and tried to walk past June. “I don’t go there anymore, you know that.”

“
Really, Mr. Piano Man? Anyway, I wasn’t talking about Miss Emma’s. I got some good stuff.” She slurred her words and spoke just above a whisper. “Down in the hollow of that old tree.” He said nothing and continued to walk away.

“
Besides, I heard they’re asking for you at Miss Emma’s. Especially the women, that’s what I been told even if I haven’t been there in six years. They’re asking for the man with the slow hands and the long fingers.” She giggled. “Especially the long fingers. They got that right. You got a reputation down there at Miss Emma’s and I’m sure it ain’t all musical.”

She laughed as he told her to hush. “Oh come on. It’s nothing wrong with getting away every now and then. I used to see it in New York all the time. Wife ain’t what you want her to be, she don’t move like you want her to move, so you go out looking for. . .”

“
This is what that pipe did to your head? I think you need more rest. Good night, June.” He headed for the porch so angry he didn’t notice the figure in the old wicker chair drinking in every word of the scene.

“
When you leaving, Peter?” June said just a bit louder and it threw him off. He turned one foot falling off the steps, the satchel with music in his hand swinging with him like a quick dance.

“
What did you say?” He thought he whispered but Minnelsa heard him.

“
You’ve sold the house and property, you got the money. Where you hide it? In a box? Or did you just put it in the bank in your name so that you could grab it all on your way out of town? You going back up North, gonna take your little family? Waiting for your wife to finally give birth?”

He didn’t answer.

“
Cat got your tongue? All I said was when you leaving? Alone or with my sister, is what I meant to say, brother-in-law.”

Minnelsa would have moved but the baby did first and the words that she heard after the movement ran through her body in one large long sharp pain.

“
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Be quiet. People will hear.”

“
People around here hear only what they want to hear. Or what the Blacksmith tells them to hear.” She collapsed to the ground too drunk to stand. “My father hand picked the people he sold this land too. Never sold any land to a white man. I wonder how he’s going to feel when he finds out you took his hard-earned land and sold it to the other side just for money to get away from him.”