Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray (4 page)

“I don't want to.”

“Girl? Since when do slaves get a say in what we want?” Mauma stepped back to look me over, then swatted my bottom and told me to get on up to the house. Missus was waiting for me. “And pick up your hem so's you don't go tracking dirt into the house.”

“But, Mauma, what if I can't learn it? What if—”

She put her hands on my shoulders. “Now listen to me. This
your chance to learn something useful that might can help you make a way in the world someday.”

Someday
meant when slavery times were over. Freedom was the thing all the Custis slaves talked about, sitting around the cook fires in the evening, the sweet hope of liberation lighting up their faces.

In the Bible it tells of all the ones God delivered. Moses, for instance, and Samson, and Jonah who got swallowed by a whale. Daddy said one day God would deliver us too. Didn't any of us know when that day was going to come, though.

Mauma gave me a little push. “You go on now. And don't you be dawdling on the way up there either.”

I hiked my skirt and headed up the path to the house, my stomach full of bees. Why did my whole life have to change just because Miss Mary and her sweetheart decided to jump the broom?

R
obert was confident that getting Papa's permission to marry was a mere formality, but months passed and my father had not given us his blessing. I decided to extract it from him myself or know the reason why.

I found him in his studio one morning, his pipe clenched in his teeth, working on a landscape picture, though December rendered the scene outside the window in drab shades of brown and gray. An old cat lay napping in Papa's chair. The entire room smelled of tobacco and turpentine.

“Mary Anna.” He set down his pipe and wiped his hands on an old rag. “You're up early.”

“I want to talk to you.” I shooed the cat away and plopped down in the chair. “It has been six months since Robert's proposal and we're still waiting for your blessing. I cannot understand such a long delay. Mother has agreed to our match. Why won't you?”

“Your mother is thinking with her heart and not her head. I am the one who must guard your inheritance.”

“I see. You think Robert is only after my money. I cannot even express to you how offensive that is. For both of us. He is no opportunist. And I would like to think he finds
something
in me to admire. If not my looks, at least my mind and my heart.”

“That was not at all the point.”

“Then what is the point? He has a small inheritance from his mother, and Shirley Plantation is still in his family. And you cannot deny that his character is exemplary. Four years at West Point without receiving a single demerit ought to count for something in your estimation.”

“He is a fine man. I am satisfied as to his character and prospects. But I worry about how you will fare, living on some army post, far from the shelter of your family and home. You and your mother are so very entwined, I can't image how either of you will manage without the other.”

“I will miss her terribly. But I'm twenty-three years old. Old enough to know my own mind.”

He sighed. “You are quite certain, then.”

“Yes. Robert will be coming for Christmas in a few weeks. It would be the best present of all to have your blessing.” I got up and threw my arms around him. “It's the only present I really want, Papa.”

“Very well. I shall write to Robert this evening.”

I wrote to Robert too, that very afternoon, and by spring letters about our coming bridal were traveling back and forth between Arlington and Cockspur Island near Savannah where Robert, now Lieutenant Lee, was involved in building a fort to protect that city.

His missives were filled with sweet declarations of his affections, but also with descriptions of canals, embankments, barracks, and wharfs. He wrote observations of his men as well—which ones had a cough and which ones had escorted the ladies to a ball. Often he alluded to his great loneliness at being apart from me.
I have arrived in the land of corn bread and ice milk
, he wrote last fall.
I hope it will keep me alive while I am apart from you.

His letters pleased me, as they were proof he considered me his
intellectual equal, someone who would understand his work and appreciate the challenges involved. Most men of my acquaintance preferred women to be seen and not heard, pretty but not necessarily educated.

Robert and I exchanged our ideas for how the wedding should commence without setting a firm date. Finally, exasperated at his stubbornness and after deliberately delaying my reply, I told him to have everything his own way.

The morning his reply reached Arlington, Mother and the girls were already assembled downstairs, sewing dozens of undergarments to see me through the first year of marriage. I was still in my room, having been late for breakfast, finishing a letter to my cousins at Kinloch. When Eleanor plodded upstairs to say that Daniel was back from town with a letter for me, I ran downstairs without waiting to do up my hair or change my dress.

I sat on the porch steps in a patch of early spring sunlight and opened the letter.

So now, my own sweet Mary, since you allow me to have everything my own way, let it be this. I expect operations here to be suspended on the first day of July. I will therefore have some fast-sailing vessel bound for some Port in the Chesapeake pass down the Savannah the evening previous. Aboard of which I will place myself and my trunk. And after a short passage of two days will enter Hampton Roads just as the S. Boat is passing for Washington. I will
—

“Miss Mary?”

I looked up to find Kitty, one of my mother's personal maids, standing in the doorway holding a silk dressing gown. “Missus says to come inside and try this on. Make sure it fits.”

I slipped Robert's letter into my pocket and went into the unfurnished ballroom opposite the parlor, which had been converted into a veritable garment factory. Liza was busy sewing pale blue satin ribbons to the sleeve of another dressing gown and didn't look up as I crossed the room. Selina glanced at me and smiled. She was my favorite even then. She was curious about everything and not at all shy about asking whatever questions came into her head.

I returned her smile and began unbuttoning the wrinkled calico dress I always wore for mornings painting in the garden. Too late I noticed a smear of red paint from yesterday running from knee to floor and bits of black dirt clinging to the hem. I tried bushing it away before my mother saw it, but her sharp inspection of my person missed nothing.

“It is nearly noon, Mary Anna, and here you are, running about looking rumpled as a pauper's child.”

“Papa is liable to be one by the time he finishes paying for this wedding.”

She pursed her lips. “That is not in the least amusing.”

“It wasn't meant to be.” I handed her my dress and slipped into the new dressing gown. “Honestly, I wish he didn't feel he had to spend so much. Robert and I will be just as married without all the expense and fuss. I wish—”

Mother stopped my words with a shake of her head and a sharp glance at the servants. I clamped my mouth shut and stood still while she arranged the folds of the dressing gown and marked the location of buttonholes with pins. She pinned the hem and adjusted the bodice. “You've gained weight.”

“I know it. Three pounds at least.”

She was worried that in another two months my wedding
dress wouldn't fit, but the dress was the last thing on my mind. For almost a year, my forthcoming marriage had existed for me only in the abstract. Now everything was becoming vividly real. My mind filled with the worries of any young woman embarking upon the uncharted waters of matrimony. Could I learn to run a household, to manage servants, to keep my own accounts? And what of the requirements of the marriage bed? When I contemplated this question my feelings veered wildly between apprehension, curiosity, and the sweet anticipation of any woman in love with her intended.

Mother held the sleeves while I shucked out of the dressing gown. “Don't forget we have the society meeting this afternoon.”

“Oh dear. Is that today? I was hoping to finish the landscape sketches I started last week.”

“Your artistic endeavors will have to wait upon our more important pursuits.” Mother cupped my chin in her hands. “And please, child, humor me and wear a decent dress for the occasion.”

Impatient to escape her critical eye, and to finish reading Robert's letter, I slipped back into my old dress and returned to my sunny spot on the porch.

I will arrive at Washington anytime on the night of the 3rd. At daylight the next morning I will be landed at Arlington as the sun is rising and you are coming out to walk. And then you will be deprived of your walk, Miss Molly. I am sure there can be no objection to this Plan.

His fanciful imaginings of such a wedding, so romantic and so utterly impossible, made me laugh out loud. Robert knew very
well that a proper Virginia wedding required months of preparation, tons of satin and lace, and enough food to satisfy an army. There could be no clandestine arrival, no early-morning nuptials on the dewy grasses of Arlington. But I loved the beauty of his daydream all the same.

A flash of pink caught my eye, and I looked up to see Selina running from the house.

“Selina!” I caught up with her and found her trembling, one finger dripping blood. “What on earth happened?”

She was crying so hard I could barely make out her story. Finally I understood that my mother had given her the cream silk dressing gown with orders to hem it. The needle had slipped and stabbed the poor child's finger, and blood had smeared the hem. The dressing gown was ruined.

“Now Missus will beat me.” Selina threw herself onto the ground in another fit of tears.

I took her by the arms and hauled her to her feet. “Don't be silly. She may be angry, but she won't beat you.”

“But your fancy new gown got blood on the hem. And Liza said it was real silk and cost a fortune.”

“It was expensive, but it's hardly worth a fortune.” I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket and handed it to her. “Dry your face and let's go back to the house.”

“I can't go back.”

“What will you do, then? Hide in the garden forever?”

She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dress, an unfortunate habit that made me wince. “Got to hide somewhere.”

“Whatever mistakes we make in life, Selina, we must own up to them. Running away won't solve anything.”

We started for the house.

“Miss Mary, you gone to stop teaching me now?” Her round little face puckered with worry.

“Of course not. Why would I?”

“I just wondered.” Selina peered up at me, her eyelashes spiked with tears. “Wisht I could learn everything I want to know before you go away.”

“After I'm married to Mr. Robert, Mother will continue your lessons. She mentioned just the other day that we need more books for all our young scholars.”

“Oh.” Selina smiled at last and skipped along beside me. “When you get married you get babies. That's what Thursday said. You gone get you some babies?”

“That's up to our heavenly Father. Such things are not for me to say.”

“When you get married you gone kiss Mr. Robert?”

Even though she was a child, such intimate questions made me blush. “No more questions. Let's go inside. I have things to do.”

I returned to my room and dashed off the remainder of my letter to my cousins. A reply to Robert would have to wait. To please Mother I arranged my hair and dressed in a pale blue frock trimmed in white lace.

She had sent Ephraim to cut baskets of roses for us to sell in Washington before we attended the meeting of the American Colonization Society. Our flower sales had raised a modest sum directed toward training bondsmen for useful occupations and for purchasing their freedom in preparation for their relocation to Liberia. Several thousand families had already made the journey to a new life. But I was impatient for faster progress.

Presently Mother joined me, and we set off for the city.

Our flowers sold briskly, and when the hour of the meeting
drew near, we left Daniel with the carriage and walked the short distance to the society's offices, dodging loose cattle wandering about and mud-caked pigs rooting for garbage in the gutter.

Outside on the street, a small but vocal crowd had gathered, and soon it was clear that they had come to disrupt the proceedings. An angular man dressed in the garb of a minor aristocrat stood in the doorway, blocking our path. His sunken cheeks and piercing eyes gave him a slightly feral look.

“Please excuse us,” Mother said. “We don't wish to be late.”

He glowered at us. “You're the Custis women. I recognize you from the last picnic at Arlington Spring.”

“Since you have availed yourself of my father's hospitality, surely you won't wish to disrupt our afternoon,” I said. “Kindly step aside, sir.”

“So you can make plans to send the Negroes packing.”

“It is not my first choice, but so long as they cannot be fully accepted as free persons in America, their best hope is a new homeland.”

Another man, with reddish-gold hair and a gingery beard, elbowed his way to the front of the small gathering. “It's people like you who are making the slaves restless. They have taken up this talk of freedom, and most of 'em aren't educated enough to even know the meaning of the word.”

“And whose fault is that?” Mother asked.

“Certainly not yours. Everybody knows you are breaking the law, teaching your slaves how to read, lettin' them come and go as they please.”

“What we do with our servants is no concern of yours,” Mother said.