Box Set: The ArringtonTrilogy (14 page)

I sat up, taking a deep breath.

She waiting patiently for me to reveal how my
mother seduced my father while he was married to Madeline and that
I had an older half brother I never knew of. I told Hattie how I
allowed Perry Montgomery to kiss me and how I now feared to be
anything like my mother.

“Eugenia was right about me all along. Now I
need to pray every night for forgiveness, for myself and for my own
mummy. I pray not to be taken to the depths of hell the way she
was. I pray the kiss he and I shared will not have me damned
straight to the devil himself!” I cried.

Hattie hushed me and repeated over and over
that I was a good girl, that the kiss wasn’t my fault, and that I
would never be sent to burn in hell.

“How do you know, Hattie?” I sobbed.

“We all make mistakes, we all sin, but we are
forgiven. Your mummy isn’t in hell. You were made out of love,
between your mummy and your daddy. Just like the way Jacob Thomas
was made. Do you think Jacob Thomas will burn in hell or my momma
or your daddy?”

“Don’t you dare say such things!” I snapped
and I briskly wiped the last remaining tear from my cheek.

“Then you don’t say such things. Eugenia
knows nothing about you. Only Momma, your Daddy, and I do. Are you
listening to me?”

I had sat up and gazed out the window, trying
to see where exactly the laughter was coming from. I knew they were
out there - Jackson, Winifred, Simon, Eliza Sue, and the other
slave children. And for a fleeting moment, I wanted to take
Hattie’s hand and run outside with her into the warm, dewy summer
night and run like mad into the dark woods, only to see the sparkle
of fireflies dance before my eyes. I wanted to feel the leaves
beneath my running feet and hear the crickets all around, while I
laughed and played games with the children I had grown up with.

But I swore to be good and stay true to my
word. I would sit and study the Bible and pray for hours on end,
that night and every night after, praying not to be taken before my
time or made to suffer the way my mummy had. I prayed to be nothing
like her, that my worst fears would never come true. I begged God
to keep me from Perry Montgomery and any other man whom I could
possibly, sinfully fall in love with.

* * *

Summer came and went without incident and
flowed into a mild autumn. However, as calm as my heart and soul
were feeling, the world on the outside of the sanctuary of my own
bedroom was not long to remain without turmoil.

For months, Daddy was engrossed in the talk
of abolition, and it was merely talk until John Brown’s raid on
Harpers Ferry.

That mid-October evening, Daddy and the other
plantation owners met in Savannah to discuss the events that were
quickly unfolding. I heard Eugenia and Daddy arguing downstairs and
made my way from my room to the foyer so I could listen. Daddy had
just returned; it was about three in the morning.

“We need to crack down. These slaves of yours
are going to revolt!” Eugenia flared.

I crept into the shadows of Daddy’s office,
staying hidden behind a tall chair in the furthest corner. It
seemed they had been arguing for some time.

“They will not revolt. They won’t run. They
have nowhere to go. They have it good here,” Daddy protested.

“Thomas, you’re in denial! Don’t be a fool.
Didn’t you listen to anything those men had to say? Perry has lost
five slaves already. They escaped in the dead of night. Gone,
looking for their freedom. Escaped without prosecution! So far, the
only reason we haven’t lost any is thanks to Mr. Boyd. But how long
do you think he can continue to manage them alone? How long before
he has to deal with defiance that a whipping can’t fix?”

Daddy’s eyes opened shockingly wide.

“Whipped! I never gave orders to have any
slave whipped,” he shot back. “Ever!”

Eugenia let out a subtle snicker, stepped
closer, and said in a low, icy tone, “You think that tramp of yours
doesn’t deserve to be whipped. She sleeps with the plantation
owner! She sleeps with a white man and she gives birth to his devil
child. That heathen has been whipped more than once!”

I cringed and held my breath, sickened and
frightened with the images that were thrust into my mind. Daddy
looked as though she had sent a dagger through his heart, and for a
moment, as he stood there in shock, I thought he would tumble over.
Daddy must have had the same image in his mind’s eye, of Mammy
mercilessly whipped, bleeding. No doubt he was feeling her
pain.

Without warning, the back of Daddy’s hand
came barreling against Eugenia’s stone-cold face, the smack so
intense it sent her reeling to the floor.

Eugenia lay frozen, clutching her face, while
Daddy towered over her. He extended his long arm down to her,
pointed his finger, and bellowed, “Don’t you ever have a finger
laid on Abigail again, for if you do Eugenia, I will . . .” Daddy
stopped mid-sentence.

“What will you do?” Eugenia spat while slowly
lifting herself up. “Will you divorce me? Will you make that slave
girl your wife? Perhaps you will run off in the darkness of the
night with her and your half-breed son and go live up north with
the rest of the good-for-nothing Yankees. And of course, don’t
forget to take your tramp of a daughter and that slave she pretends
is her sister!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.

“You shut your mouth, Eugenia! Shut it this
instant!” Daddy ordered. His face was fiery red, his eyes bulging
with rage. His tight, white-knuckled fists were clenched next to
his side, pounding against his legs, as he tried not to strike her
again.

I stayed frozen, fearing I would be detected
and punished forever. And just when I believed he would strike her
again, Daddy crumbled and began to sob and shake uncontrollably. He
fell to his knees, covering his face with his hands to hide his
tears.

Eugenia lowered herself next to Daddy, took
him in her arms, and cried along with him.

“I’m sorry. I truly am. I wish you loved me
the way you love her,” she said between kisses to his wet
cheeks.

“I do love you; I wish you would believe me,”
he whispered back. “Please don’t hurt her anymore. It wasn’t her
fault. It was I who seduced her. I took her to bed when she begged
me not to!”

Eugenia’s eyes widened. “You mean you lusted
after her, just like you did with Charlotte? It wasn’t for love
after all? Besides Madeline, am I your only other true love?” She
seemed so desperate, but most of all, so pathetic.

To appease Eugenia and prevent her from
ordering Mammy whipped again, I was certain, Daddy agreed with
everything she said.

“It was pure lust. I never loved Abigail, and
she doesn’t love me. I haven’t bedded her in as long as I can
remember. I want you and you alone.”

Without wanting to see their intimate
reunion, I stole out as quietly as I’d crept in and hurried back to
my room without being noticed.

For the rest of the early morning hours,
forsaking my Bible reading, I wrote in my journal about what I had
witnessed and how I would always loathe Eugenia for hurting my
Mammy, and how I could never forgive Daddy for loving such a
hateful, evil woman. As evil as I may have been in their eyes and
even in my own, I could never manipulate and destroy another person
as Eugenia had done to my father. Daddy was no longer the man I
used to worship, the man I once adored. He no longer had my heart,
unconditionally, forever. My daddy was dead to me, and God forgive
me once again, I wished him gone forever, that I would never lay
eyes on him again.

~ ~ ~

It was only months later that Abraham Lincoln
was elected president, South Carolina seceded from the Union, and
Daddy enlisted with the Confederate Army. He served as a major, and
he set off only weeks before the war between North and South
officially began.

It was my wish never to see Daddy again, and
on the day he left Sutton Hall, I chose not to say even a hasty
goodbye.

“Amelia, your father is waiting to say
goodbye. He is downstairs with Perry. The least you could do is bid
them farewell,” Eugenia said, and she roughly pulled me up out of
the chair. “What is wrong with you, girl? You may never see him
again.”

Over the months that had passed, Eugenia and
Daddy had become close, like a real husband and wife, and I could
do nothing but stay locked away and pretend none of the world
existed outside of my bedroom.

I thrived on my Bible, the school lessons
given by my private tutor, church on Sundays with Eugenia, and of
course my beloved piano lessons. As many times as I could have been
with Daddy, Eugenia, Hattie, or Mammy, I chose not to. Even at
Christmas, I spent my holiday away from everyone. Daddy attempted
to come see me once or twice, but the third time I sent him away,
and he never tried again.

Eugenia was so preoccupied with the secession
and impending war and fretting over Beatrice and Violet being
unable to leave England anytime in the near future that she rarely
checked on me. Hattie and the other slaves were more than busy
tending to the plantation under the watchful eyes of Curtis P.
Boyd, and no one had even a moment to try and see me. Occasionally
I would wander the about the mansion late in the evening,
eavesdropping on Cordelia, Abraham, and Helen and easing any slight
curiosity I may have felt about recent comings and goings. My life
seemed content that way. Easy and self-preserving. Staying numb to
my surroundings, I missed no one in particular. The only true joy I
still claimed was writing in my journal and talking to my doll,
Lillian. The doll was the one who listened to my lonely words and
somehow understood how lonely I truly was. When I looked into the
blue glass of her eyes, I could see a part of myself in her. I may
have appeared lifeless, but I believed that someday I would have a
grand life of my own, far from Savannah and the isolated walls of
Sutton Hall. There, perhaps, I would live on an island far away,
with my true love, of course. I still had fantasies, though they
were of the purest sort, never to be indulged with a man who would
lead me down a sinful path. This I swore to myself.

Eugenia noticed that I was off daydreaming
and shook me out of my thoughts.

“Get downstairs this instant and say good
bye. Perry is leaving too. Do you think
his
daughters
refused to say goodbye to their own father?”

When I wouldn’t budge, she proceeded to push
me along until Cordelia announced that Daddy and Mr. Montgomery
were needing to leave right away.

Eugenia looked at me again, seeming almost
desperate for me to see my father before he went off to the pending
war. I wondered why it mattered to her.

Eugenia left without another word, and I
sighed with relief, telling myself it was for the best, convinced
that Daddy didn’t want to see me anyway. He only had love for
Eugenia now. And certainly it was for the best that I didn’t bid
farewell to Perry Montgomery. After his grief subsided, I had heard
that he asked about me often and wondered when I would come down to
join him and the family for holiday celebrations. Still frightened
by him, I managed to stay far away and was grateful that he never
came up to my room.

The days following Daddy’s departure all
seemed fairly quiet. I think Eugenia was expecting a big revolt,
but things went on as usual. It wasn’t until April of 1861 that
everything as we knew it in the entire South would change, after
the attack on Fort Sumter.

“We are officially at war,” Eugenia announced
to me at the supper table. I had begun to make my way downstairs
for suppers regularly, as it was now quiet and somewhat peaceful,
even in the company of Eugenia. Most often we discussed the Bible,
and she occasionally agreed to sit and listen to me play hymns on
the piano.

With Daddy gone, we strangely found ourselves
looking to one another for company. Eugenia would never converse
with the slaves, and Curtis P. Boyd was too busy patrolling the
plantation night and day, looking to catch any slaves attempting to
run away.

We had only lost two as of April, and the
plantation carried on, unlike the Montgomery plantation. Most of
his slaves had run away, leaving his in-laws with very little help
and a plantation slowly falling apart.

The only obvious change to our place was that
Eugenia had Hamilton replace Abraham.

“That man does what he’s told and says
nothing,” she said one evening. “More men should be like him.”

Hamilton waited on her like Abraham waited on
Daddy as his personal slave. Eugenia seemed to enjoy taking on
Daddy’s duties. She held her head high and dignified, and spat out
orders that had everyone jumping. Then, as time passed and we
rolled into another long, hot Savannah summer, Eugenia brought
Mammy into the mansion. I was initially delighted to see Mammy
every day, although within a few days I realized the reasoning
behind her being allowed to serve in the mansion again.

Day and night, Mammy worked. Eugenia had
orders for her to strip every drape in the mansion, even in the
unused rooms, and wash and iron them. After that chore was
completed days later, she ordered Mammy to strip all the bedding
and repair all rips, if any, then wash and iron all the bedding.
And when she was finished, Eugenia ordered her to redo the bedding
from Eugenia and Daddy’s, bed, not once, not twice, but three
times.

“Mrs. Arrington, I done it three times; ain’t
it clean enough by now?” Mammy signed, wiping her sweating brow
with the back of her frail hand and falling into the nearest
chair.

“You get up this instant!” Eugenia barked.
“If I say they are not clean, then they are not clean! Don’t you
talk back to me, girl. Your master may no longer be on these
premises, and though he allowed you to back-talk him on a frequent
basis, the other rules have not changed! And I suppose I must
lecture you on what those rules are, since Thomas perhaps didn’t
divulge all of them to you.