A Woman so Bold (17 page)

Then there was Will. Our engagement had emboldened him. When we met in secret, he praised my attributes.

“You’re beautiful. Everything about you is sumptuous, sensuous. Your hair, your mouth, your plump cheeks with those embedded dimples. A few other things as well . . .”

“Will!” I cried, but I did not dislike his words. I only feared he felt free to speak them because of all that had passed. “A gentleman shouldn’t speak so to the woman he is to marry!”

“Then to whom should I speak so?”

“A—a common whore. Not a chaste woman, your betrothed.”

“Must I tell you again of my own regrets?”

“I wasn’t thinking of
you
!”

“Dearest. You would compare the loss of your innocence to the boundless appetite of my immoral youth?”

Yet I was not comforted. A fissure, he insisted, did not exist between us, but I felt it. I did not know then that affection can create a bridge between two lovers separated by painful experiences, if given the time and care it needs, but I would learn.

The evidence of William’s desire for me burdened my mind with the possibility of future children, and when I had time, I visited Lenore. I had not seen her since she delivered Ezra five years before. When she came to the door, I said, “I’m sorry for coming unexpectedly but—

“Foolish girl!” she interrupted. “Come inside.”

Her kitchen was much as I remembered: small and fragrant with herbs. I sat at the table, and she offered me a bowl of shelled pecans. I ate a few as she put the kettle on.

“You are in trouble?” she asked.

“Oh, no.” I showed her my ring. “I’m to be married.”

“Ohhhhh!” She laughed, taking my hand and turning the emerald in the sunlight. “How fine! He is a good man?”

“Yes, better than most.”

“How is your little boy?”

I started. It was not a question I had expected. “He is well. Spoilt, I fear. I indulged him, so grateful was I to have the raising of him.”

She nodded. “I think of you many times since I attend your
accouchement
.”

I bit my lip. The French word was strange in her creole accent, but exciting.

“Why?” I asked. “Why should you think of me? You must see many girls, many women . . .”

She sighed, licked her lips, and was silent, thinking. At last she said, “I see many, yes. White and black, dey all come. I tink of dem all. You are lucky to have your child with you, but not so lucky, because he never can be yours unless you want shame.”

The kettle whistled shrilly, and she rose, returning in a few moments with two cups of tea. Her words pained me. It seemed she did not desire a reply, and I did not wish to speak further of Ezra.

“I came to ask if I could visit you after I am married. I want to keep it from happening again.”

She nodded. “You don’t want a baby with your husband?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t go through it again if I could help it, but I suppose it’s unavoidable. As it is, I liked having you and Jill with me last time. My stepmother’s midwife is a coarse woman. She has always frightened me. If I get pregnant, will you come to me?”

“Oh yes, I help you. I help all de white women, heal dem, cleanse dem wit my magic,” she said, lifting her eyebrows. Her tone was rueful, mocking. I felt suddenly disconnected from her. Because she had been a maternal comfort in my youth, so many years I had imagined that she loved me, but perhaps I had been no more than a child she was paid to look after. Maybe she even had her own children. Was the beautiful girl I had seen milking the goat Lenore’s child?

“I can make you a tea,” she said, “but tracking your cycle is better.” She explained to me then the cycle of my fertility and the days when I was most and least fertile.

“Thank you,” I said. “No one has ever shown me kindness the way that you have.”

She scoffed. “You still breathing? De world has been kinder dan you think.”

Chapter 14

Two Marriages

March 3, 1866

It has been four days since my last entry. So many terrible, lovely, unbelievable things have happened that I have scarce had time to write any of them down. Sunday, during my rounds on the convalescent floor, I stopped by to speak to Mr. Andrews, as usual. His bed was made, and he was sitting on top of the counterpane, fully dressed except for his coat; he wore a threadbare waistcoat with a pocket watch, and his shoes had been shined. When I saw this, I realized he was going to be sent home, but I said nothing. I have mentioned him often on these pages, but I don’t think I have ever truly admitted, even in my heart, the extent of my fondness for him. This is in part because I fear that Mother reads my diary while I am away, and in part because I did not see the point in indulging a fancy for a poor planter, however charming he may be.

He asked me to sit with him for a while, and I thought perhaps he wished to dictate a telegram to his mother, or listen to me read one last time, as he had often done in the past. But when I took the chair at his bedside, he took my hand in his own and told me that he loved me! None of his banter today, he did not even waste words by painting pretty pictures of his feelings for me, but came straight out and said I was the best woman he’d ever known, and then, using my Christian name, he said, “Elizabeth, will you agree to become my wife?”

I was so taken in that I fell back on my girlhood training and said, “Mr. Andrews, I am honored and terribly flattered, but I hardly know you.”

True to form (how I admire his forthright manner, so different from the languid ways of the gentlemen I grew up with!) he said, “Please don’t! Pardon me, but I feel I know ya too well for that. They discharged me. I’m leavin’ Atlanta tomorrow, goin’ home, to God knows what. My land’s a mess, ain’t been worked in years. Pa dead, mama gone queer in the head . . . all my brothers killed in the war, my little sister a spinster . . . But I feel like I could face it all if I had you. I mean, if you were with me.”

I knew this was what all the men said when it came time to leave the girls who nursed them, but now, coming from him, it sounded very different. It struck a well of feeling I had buried deep inside myself, and suddenly I was overwhelmed with the urge to weep, and I turned my face from him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, reaching for me.

“I’ve spoken to you of how I look after my mother,” I explained, determined to be truthful.

“Yes, of course.”

I told him Mother thinks it shameful that I work, says I give myself airs like the Yankee girls, yet I never hear her complain that I keep food on the table and clothes on her back. I told him she complains when I dust or polish what’s left of the silver, but she won’t even let me hire a girl to keep up the house a few days a week. He said then that I could feel free to bring her with me if we were married, that he’d do his best to look after her as well as me, but of course that could never be. I told him she would never come with me if I married into a family she saw as beneath us, and of course, I could not leave her. She would have no idea how to fend for herself. She doesn’t understand that things have changed forever now that we’ve lost the war and that women like us must go to work to take care of ourselves and our families. I honestly believe she would rather starve.

Then, finally, he understood why I had spurned his advances in the past while keeping his friendship and why I was so sad to reject him. I told him goodbye and left shortly after that, for my shift was over. I had a mind then that I would never see him again. Monday, of course, I was at the Davis home instructing the children. They did far better minding their lessons than usual, and I was so relieved I let them come into the kitchen and help me bake a batch of cookies. Around the time I was perspiring and sprinkled with flour, the butler came in to tell me I had a visitor.

He was standing on the front stoop with his hat in his hand and a battered valise next to him. His unruly hair that I’ve seen awry so often was parted on the side and slicked into place with pomade. His cavalry mustache drooped so elegantly on either side of his mouth, and he looked so sad and handsome, I could have cried. He took me in his arms and kissed me. It wasn’t my first kiss, diary, as you know from what seems a lifetime ago, but it was the only one I’d ever had from him, and certainly the only one that seems to have counted. Then he pushed an envelope into my hands and went down the street.

The only thing in the envelope was a note written in his unsteady hand that said, “In case circumstances change, I will always be waiting,” and a train ticket, one way, from Atlanta to a place called Madison.

None of this would have had any bearing whatsoever on the matter, other than to make my heart ache, except that Mother and I had a disagreement that night. Quite the most dreadful one we’ve ever had. She was complaining over my working so often, especially on Sundays, and never attending services with her. She said it was unseemly for a young woman to behave so, working all day only to go and spend hours among strange men at the hospital and get home late in the evening. I explained to her once again that I get a small stipend for the work I do there, but she merely hinted I ought to be trying to find a husband. Well, something came over me, and I told her everything.

I said, “If it weren’t for you and your foolish notions about family and birth and a million things that don’t mean a hoot in the South anymore, I’d be on a train by now and married to the man I love by tomorrow.”

Then she said I was an ungrateful wretch, and thanks be to God my father wasn’t alive to see it, and I said, “Thanks be Papa isn’t alive to see how you’ve let me work myself to death just to keep food in our mouths, all the while bitching about my shortcomings and not lifting a finger to help me.”

She slapped my face for that and said being a working woman had taught me to speak like common trash. I was holding the tea tray with our best china on it, and I came near dropping it, but I just set it down on the sideboard and went to my room. I packed a few things into a carpetbag, put on my hat and gloves and wrap, and emptied the coffee can money into my purse, and before God, I walked right out of the house and didn’t look back. Mother had gone into her room and was weeping angrily, and I don’t believe she even heard me leave, nor do I care. I suppose she’ll find out what it’s like to work as a woman in a man’s world, or she’ll go to her relatives in Savannah, but it doesn’t matter either way to me.

I reached Madison yesterday morning, and a time did I have getting to Willowbend from there. It occurred to me I ought to have telegraphed Solomon Andrews upon my departure. Well, I hadn’t. If I’d had the money for the train, I may truly have lost all courage and gone to my sister Maude in Monticello, but I didn’t, so I paid a farmer to let me ride on the back of his mule cart, and one long, dusty, bumpy ride it was.

From there, I hitched another ride with a nice-looking family called Harmon, who seemed less than thrilled to let my dirty visage near their carriage. From where they let me out, it was a three-mile walk to the Andrews’ farm. I got there at dusk, and Solomon says he never laid eyes on a more beautiful sight than that of me hobbling up the drive on my blistered feet, with my shoes in my hand, my hair falling out of its net, and my face burnt from the sun. We were married by the local preacher this morning in the front parlor, and this is the first chance I’ve gotten to write since. I am not sure I’ve ever been this happy in my life, perhaps not even before the war. Then, things had a misty quality to them, like something so beautiful it can’t be true, but every moment since I left Atlanta has rung with clarity. I am his wife, and I will bear his children and keep his house and work his land, and warm his bed at night.

I know what Mother’s opinion is on the matter, but I can’t think what Papa would say. After all, his father came to this country with nothing and built his fortune on the backs of slaves. All that is gone now, the house burned and the land stolen for want of tax money. The wheel of fortune turns, and now I am the one with a round of work for the rest of my days. But we have our own land, our own life, Solomon and I. It seems like enough.

On the day of my wedding, Colleen loaned me her false pearl earrings, and Tansy did my hair in a pompadour. Lily pinned a square of white organdy to my hair to serve as a veil, and I scrutinized myself in the mirror. I disliked my round face and plump cheeks, which contrasted with my sharp chin, and my eyes were a dull gray-green, lacking the size or sparkle of Lily’s. My fair skin was prone to freckles, and my rippling, reddish-brown hair was a constant mess that mussed in the wind and found its way out of every chignon I wrangled it into. However, as I smiled at myself, my two elfin dimples, invisible in repose, came out of hiding to soften my face. My happiness in these small physical triumphs was dimmed by the sight of Lily’s reflection in the mirror beside mine, and I turned away.

I took my one pair of crocheted lace gloves from where they lay on the dressing table and pulled them on, lacing my fingers together, then fastening the tiny mother of pearl buttons that held them closed at the wrists. Edith handed me a bouquet she had made of dogwood blossoms and peonies.

And so I was wed to Will. We stood beneath the dogwood tree in the front yard, on the carpet of petals it had shed in the spring wind, and said our vows. Afterward, we had luncheon in the dining room with everyone present: Daddy, Colleen, the children, Ida, Eric, Tansy, and Aunt Maude. With the money my aunt and uncle offered for the reception, Colleen had made delicate foods just for the occasion: cold chicken, finger sandwiches, coleslaw, petit fours, pound cake, quartered oranges, and lemonade so sweet and tart it set one’s teeth on edge.

After luncheon, as we gathered on the porch to say our goodbyes, Tansy took me aside and pressed a parcel into my hands. Inside were a pair of beautifully crocheted gloves and a set of handkerchiefs embroidered with my new initials, LEC.

“This sholy is goodbye,” she said. “Here you is married, and I’m to go north.”

“North? What for?”

“I got a job. Mr. Monday helped me find a job with somebody he knew up there.”

I felt the foundation of my world tottering for a moment. Tansy to leave, when she had always been there?

“But why must you go?”

She lowered her voice. “I’ve always wanted to. And I’m scared, Miss Landra. They lynched that woman up in Georgia for something she didn’t do, and being light-skinned ain’t gonna help me none.”

I pursed my lips, knowing she was right. “Are you to be a lady’s maid, then?”

“Lord, no. If I ever roll another curl it’ll be too soon. I’m gov’ness to a lawyer with seb’m kids. A black lawyer! Can ya imagine?”

“Governess?” I asked. It had never occurred to me that Tansy, as well as myself, might have excelled in academics. I had never spoken to her of the school she attended with the other black children.

“Yes’m,” she said, raising her chin. “I sat for my teachin’ certificate.”

“Well! It seems I’ve underestimated you, Tansy.” I kissed her cheek and whispered, “Sometimes I think it is you who has been my truest friend, and not Ida.”

She smirked. “Gay as a jaybird she is, and twice as mean. But she give me the train fare for Boston, and I’m grateful to her fer that.”

“Goodbye then, Tansy.”

“Goodbye, and best wishes.”

I kissed everyone goodbye, and Will helped me into the carriage, where my trunk and all of my belongings were waiting. I said goodbye to Ezra last and held him the longest. He wailed as we drove away, and I ventured a glance over my shoulder. He was running down the pine lane after us, but Lily hitched up her skirts and ran after him, catching up to him quickly on her long legs. I made myself turn around when he was safely in her arms, but there were tears on my cheeks. I caught them quickly with my handkerchief before Will could see.

When we arrived at Oakhurst and entered the house, I was disappointed to see that the interior was nearly the same as it had been upon my first visit. I admonished myself inwardly for my impatience, thinking it would improve somewhat with the addition of items from my hope chest, such as new linens, doilies, and lace tablecloths. However, it needed far more in the way of restoration than that.

Alighting from the buggy, Will shouldered the trunk containing my clothing, and I followed him into the house and up the sweeping staircase—the banister of which was in desperate need of polish—and into what was to be our bedroom.

“I’ve slept in one of the smaller rooms since I moved here,” he said, “but I thought you might like something a bit grander.”

The room he had chosen was grand indeed, or had been once. It was undoubtedly the master bedroom. Large windows, facing east, overlooked the cotton field, with a window seat beneath them. There was a mahogany wardrobe in one corner and a matching vanity. The glass in it was old, wavy, and dark with specks in it, distorting my reflection.

The bed was large, a brass four-poster bedstead with a barred head and footboard. The mattress was bare but freshly beaten and stuffed, awaiting the linens and quilts I had sewn for it. The heart pine floor had been polished to a glossy sheen, and there was a fresh coat of white wash on the board walls. The ceiling above was ornate pressed tin. A fainting couch from the Regency era completed the picture.

I turned to Will.

“You did all this?”

He smiled. “Most of the furniture was here when I moved in, but I spruced it up and did the rest. I thought you needed some small luxury to come home to, and the rest of the place is rather lacking in that respect.”

I threw my arms about his neck and kissed him.

When I pulled away, he said, “You like it, then?”