The Amalgamation Polka (14 page)

“She’ll be better once she takes her medicine,” noted Father. “These trips, even the brief ones, are becoming such a burden to her.”

“She seemed fine the whole time we were gone,” said Roxana, who had observed this same maternal phenomenon countless times before. And already had learned it was prudent and realistic to ignore much of her mother’s behavior, particularly the complaints.

“Cooper called while you were away.”

“Yes,” Roxana replied wearily.

“He’s a very nice young man.”

“He is at that.” She began fidgeting with her hands.

“He said he’d call again tomorrow at three.”

“Yes.”

“I want you to receive him. I want you to be polite. I want you to consider his feelings.”

She looked her father directly in the eyes. “Has anyone considered mine?”

“Oh,” said Asa dismissively, “you’re too young to know what your feelings even are.”

“Then I doubt I can progress much beyond this point while surrounded by people who hold to such patronizing views.”

“Don’t take that tone with me, Miss Roxana. I simply will not tolerate it.”

“And what will you do,” she answered sharply, “have me whipped?”

Without thought or hesitation Asa reached out and slapped his daughter across the cheek. “No one speaks to me in that manner, not even my own flesh and blood.”

Roxana stared at her father in mute shock, tears rolling down her face like drops of oil. Her body began to tremble. “I hate you,” she declared. “I hate you with all my heart.” Then she turned, bolted down the hall, her father calling after her, “Roxana! Roxana!” and up the stairs to her room, where she found Ditey curled up asleep on her bed. “Get out!” she shrieked. “Get out of here right now!” It was all she could do not to strike her. The frightened girl jumped up, crying, “I’m sorry, Missus, I was only resting for a minute.” “Get out!” Roxana screamed again, and Ditey rushed past her and out into the hallway. Roxana slammed the door shut, drew the bolt and threw herself across the bed, sobbing uncontrollably. She couldn’t think. All she could feel was a dark pain that plunged right through the center of her like a vein of throbbing sorrow. Then she heard her mother’s voice from beyond the door. “What on earth is going on now? Roxana, answer me this instant. I demand to know what is the meaning of this commotion.” “Go away,” Roxana moaned, weeping into her pillow. “Please.” There was a pause and then her mother said, almost wistfully, “Why is there no peace in this household?”

After crying herself out, empty as a hollow gourd, Roxana lay quietly on her back, chest occasionally heaving, and contemplated the network of cracks in the ceiling, a system of imagined roads or rivers she had been studying her entire conscious life as, over time, the fissures developed and lengthened. One day the whole ceiling would probably collapse in chunks and fragments, burying her alive in her own bed.

After a while she got up and went to sit in the window. She looked out at the sky and the trees and the river winding slowly seaward and she thought about running away. But where would she go? How far would she get? Her fear and her sense of incompetence at pursuing such a course only made her angry. If she were a boy, she imagined, she’d already be gone like her brother Winchester had done years ago. They’d heard he was somewhere out in the West, picking his way through a mountain for gold.

As she watched, a decrepit black sulky came rattling up the road and turned in at the gate. That insufferable ass, Dr. Quake. Come to make eyes at Mother and inflict his boring, self-satisfied conversation on all ears within reach. She’d never been able to understand why her parents even continued to receive him. He’d been discouraged (but oh so politely) from calling at most of the great homes in the county when, after receiving medical attention and advice, the residents would discover he desired further claims on their social regard than most were willing to give. She could hear him now, standing outside in the dust, calling for Hokie to come tend to his horse. Well, the way things had been going on this magnificent estate lately, he would still be out there at midnight, holding the bridle and waiting.

She sat in the window, watching the water running between the trees until she managed to bring on a vague self-induced trance (a trick she had begun to master as a very young girl, when she fell down the stairs and broke her arm and the pain made her almost crazy) in which her brain seemed to hold itself within her head in a frozen suspension, not a single thought traversing the horizon of her mind. She didn’t know how long she had remained so transfixed when a sudden peremptory knocking sounded on her door.

“Roxana!” her father demanded.

She turned lethargically toward the door and spoke to the dead panel of wood, not the living being standing beyond it. “Yes,” she answered dully.

“We have a visitor. I want you to come down and at least put on a show of civility.”

There was no reply.

“Roxana.”

“I don’t want to,” she said at last.

“I don’t want you hiding in your room like this. It doesn’t look proper.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before striking me like a common house servant.”

“Open the door.” He rattled the knob impatiently. “Open the door. I want to speak with you.”

The bolt scraped back, and Asa gently pushed his way in. Roxana was standing stiffly in the middle of the room, staring at the window. He closed the door behind him.

“Roxana,” he said simply. “I’m sorry. I lost my temper. It’s a shameful thing, and I don’t feel right about it. You know you are my sweetheart, my only treasure in the world. I wouldn’t want any harm to come to you, ever.”

She remained still, her head turned away.

“Come here, darling, come to your papa.” He held out his arms.

At last she turned and came to him and fell against his chest, weeping. He held her until the convulsive sobbing stopped. Then he said, smiling to himself, “You know you have quite a tongue on you. Take after your mother, I suppose.”

Roxana pushed herself away and began wiping at her face with her hands.

“Dr. Quake has asked after you. You will come down and at least greet the poor man, won’t you?”

She nodded.

“Good. We’ll be out on the gallery taking some refreshment.” And he left.

Alone, she sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her hands. They were such pale, soft things. What would they do with her life, what shape would they give to it? Perhaps handwork would be preferable to headwork. She thought that probably she thought too much about too many things, things that girls and women should not trouble themselves about. She resolved from this moment on not to think, or at least to think less. The idea calmed her. She could dress now and prepare to face company.

When she was ready she studied herself in the mirror. All in perfect place except for her expression. She tried out a variety of smiles until she succeeded in finding one suitable for the good doctor.

Quake and her father were seated comfortably on plush armchairs that been carried out from the parlor. Their legs were stretched out on the rail. Each man held a cigar in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.

“Why here she is,” declared Dr. Quake, leaping to his feet, taking Roxana’s hand and kissing it. “I had so hoped you might find the time to join us.”

“You know I can’t keep away whenever you come to visit, Dr. Quake,” she responded, producing the smile and staring past the doctor’s shoulder at her father.

“It is always a pleasure, a distinct pleasure, to share a portion of a superb day with such a delightful presence as yourself, Miss Roxana.”

“But it’s my pleasure also, Doctor. I learn so much from listening to your conversation.”

“Please, sit down,” said Quake, offering her his chair.

“But where will you sit, Dr. Quake?” she inquired, settling herself down.

“My God,” exclaimed Father. “We are not destitute. I think we can summon up a stray piece of furniture. Samson!” he called. “Samson, get out here!” He addressed the doctor. “This will require a minute or two.”

“I don’t mind standing,” answered Quake, who was leaning against one of the columns. “It affords me a clearer view of your lovely daughter,” he added, beaming intently at Roxana who, ignoring his gaze, was noting with silent amusement the untouched bloodstains on the steps.

“Samson! Where the deuce is that useless rascal? If I have to get up and go in there…” Asa had placed his hands on the armrests of the chair and was preparing to rise when Samson’s head came peering around the edge of the doorway. “Yes, Master.”

“Where the hell have you been? Didn’t you hear me calling?”

“Yes, Master, and I came soon as I heard you. I been dusting the lamps in the back parlor.”

“And I’m sure by now they’re clean enough to eat off of. Bring another chair out here for Dr. Quake.”

“One chair or two?”

“How, may I ask, is Dr. Quake going to sit in two chairs at the same time?”

“I didn’t say he could, Master. I just thought maybe you might be expecting some more company.”

“I’ll tell you what to think,” said Asa curtly. “Now go get that chair and get it out here damn quick. Dr. Quake’s tired and needs to rest his feet. Show some hospitality, some due respect.”

“Yes, Master,” replied Samson and, leaving, muttered under his breath, “I’m too old for all this cussed shecoonery.”

“What’s that, Samson?”

“Nothing, Master,” came the fading voice as he shuffled off down the hall.

“I’ve a good mind,” said Asa, “to order up a sound whipping for every soul on this—” And, catching his daughter’s eye, he stopped.

“Full moon tonight,” observed Dr. Quake. “Always makes them fidgety, prone to sauciness and the like.” His voice possessed a flagrantly knowing manner that irritated Roxana tremendously. “And then, of course, there is this Middleton business, riled up the whole country. White man, too. I can never understand that.”

“Some folks,” pronounced Asa, “are too dumb or too ornery to comprehend just where their best interests might lie. And all this abolition devilment has a pernicious effect on weak minds.”

“You mean like women?” asked Roxana, smiling sweetly.

Undeterred, her father went on. “There’s no denying women’s sympathy with those in want or need, or their natural tendency to ally themselves with the more tender affections.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” asked Roxana.

“Not a thing. That is woman’s proper sphere. She should follow her inclinations and do that which is proper to her estate.”

“An estate located in a backwater region well off the main routes on which the world as a whole travels.”

“My, my,” commented Quake, regarding in new wonder this beautiful, clever girl with such outrageous opinions.

“You exhaust me, Roxana,” admitted her father. “I cannot dispute each and every syllable with you.”

“I do believe, Asa, you have the makings of a fine lawyer in that girl.”

“And a difficult wife,” Mr. Maury added.

“Not if the husband is an agreeable, generous, open-minded young gentleman,” offered Roxana.

Quake burst into toothy laughter. “Where, indeed, are you going to find one of those?”

“One never gives up hope, Dr. Quake.”

A commotion of banging and scraping erupted from the interior of the house, began advancing slowly, achingly slowly down the hallway toward the door.

“Pick it up, Samson!” yelled Father. “I don’t want that floor scratched all to hell.”

The noise subsided somewhat into an occasional bump and at last Samson, hunched over and wheezing, rounded the corner, a huge wooden chair teetering unsteadily in his arms. He let it drop onto the gallery boards with a loud bang.

“Took your sweet time about it,” Father snapped. “What’d you do, hammer a chair together in the backyard?”

“No, Master, I had to find the chair first.”

“And where would the chair have gone to?” Father wondered. “Next thing you know we’ll be having to put leg irons on the furniture to keep it from running off.”

“Yes, Master.” Samson’s rheumy eyes hopped skittishly from one of these buckra faces to the next, unable to linger long beneath the scrutiny of any white gaze.

“Go tell Sally that Dr. Quake will be staying for supper.”

“Yes, Master.”

“And Samson?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Don’t let me catch you out back chasing a footstool around the barn.”

“Yes, Master.” He retreated back inside, mumbling unintelligibly as he went.

“That boy’s quite a character,” said Dr. Quake.

“Yes,” agreed Asa, “and we’ve got a houseful of characters here. Suppose I could rent them out as a traveling show and retire on the proceeds.”

“I wish you wouldn’t treat Samson so,” said Roxana.

“Why not, Daughter, look how he treats me. If I stopped to worry about the sensibilities of every one of these niggers, nothing would get done and we’d be bankrupt in a month. We’d lose the house, the land, the crops and the stock, and there’d be no place for anybody to live, white or black.”

“Mother talks constantly of selling the plantation,” said Roxana, “and moving to Cuba.”

Father laughed. “Your mother is a prime talker. She hasn’t quit to take a breath since the first day I met her. She doesn’t know a damn thing about Cuba, or any other place for that matter. She knows the Hall, that’s what she knows, and
all
she will know until the day she is laid to rest in its hallowed soil.”

“Cuba,” mused Dr. Quake. “Heard some fine things about that country. Wouldn’t mind sailing down there one day to see for myself.”

“Oh, nonsense,” said Father. “What could they have down there that we don’t have right here?”

“Peace of mind?” suggested Roxana.

Father snorted derisively. “You think you can escape slavery by going into the Caribbean? Why, they practically invented the institution. I’ve heard how they work the niggers on those big sugar plantations. Don’t believe one of ours would last half a day down there. No, you can’t get free of slavery, and even if you could you’d be back living in barbarity. Can’t have civilization without slavery. Read your history. That’s a fact.”