New Mercies (27 page)

He had never talked like this before. “What’s gotten into you, David? You’ve always loved your work.”

David didn’t answer. He put the hat on the porch and leaned forward in the rocker, resting his arms on his knees.

“Is that why you go off with the boys on those dangerous outings?”

David turned and looked at me, but in the dark, I could not make out his features.

“Those dangerous things you and Arthur do, is that the reason for them, because your work frustrates you? Tell me.”

David looked down the mountain. Pinpoints of light were coming from the windows of two or three houses now. The occupants had returned home, or they had just gotten up. He sat silently for a few moments. “Nothing’s wrong. Blame the damn opera. Don’t ever ask me to go to one again, will you?”

“I never knew you didn’t like opera.”

“Neither did I.” David relaxed a little and sat back in the
rocker, moving to and fro. “Do
you
think I could have been a pioneer?”

“We’re lucky we live in the twentieth century and won’t have to find out.” When David didn’t respond, I said, “But I suppose you would have done all right. You’re awfully good in an emergency. Look at how assured you were when we came across that mountain lion, and how you kept Betsey from falling off the cliff.”

“Those weren’t hardships. They were adventures.”

“You don’t lose your head in an emergency. And you’re not afraid of hard work. I think you could have been a pioneer, don’t you?”

David’s rocker squeaked rhythmically, and he didn’t reply.

Then I wondered if this might not be just an idle conversation. “Is something wrong?”

“Oh, no.”

“Are you sure?”

“Everything’s all right.”

I put my feet under me and wrapped the cloak around me like a blanket.

“I could have been a pioneer if you’d been there.” David turned his face to me in the dark.

“What?”

“With you beside me, I think I could do anything.”

“Oh, David, that’s one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me.”

“I mean it.” His voice was so ferocious that I shivered. “I’d be lost if you ever left me.”

I sat upright and tried to make out David’s features. The
intensity of his words troubled me a little, so I said lightheartedly, “I don’t have any plans to leave, so you needn’t worry.”

“I hope not.” David turned to look up at the stars, and at the same time, he reached over and took my hand, squeezing it so much that it hurt. “I love you, Nora. Don’t you ever doubt that.”

I didn’t, not then.

A
UNT
P
OLLY SAT ON A
white-painted bench in front of the quarters, a wooden bowl of green beans in her lap. She seemed in no hurry as she picked up the beans one at a time, broke off the ends, tossed them aside, and then snapped the beans in two. She dropped the broken halves into the bowl and picked out another bean, sliding over on the bench to make room for me. Placing the box of Amalia’s things on the ground, I sat down beside her.

“Ezra sleeping now ’cause he feeling all punylike. I dress his wounds with spiderweb. Them that bleeds too much, I put on sweet apple-tree bark. Then I bind ’em up. Before you know it, he as good as he was, though Ezra never ain’t goin’ be good as new. He too old.”

“How old is he?” I wanted to help with the beans, but Aunt
Polly seemed to be enjoying the rhythm of snapping them. Besides, I knew my place.

“Lemme see.” She paused with a string bean between her old fingers. “Ezra born eighteen and fifty-eight, so he seventy-five now, ’cause this nineteen and thirty-three. I ain’t never studied about how old I is, but I expect I been ninety for one or three years. I got no desire for one hundred, so I stay ninety. I about sixteen when Ezra’s born, maybe twelve when Welcome comes. Maybe less.”

Aunt Polly stared off in the direction of Shadowland. “My mind rest easy if I knowed Welcome growed up. But I ain’t ever goin’ know ’bout some things, and there’s no use wrecking my mind over it.”

“Aren’t there any records?”

Aunt Polly shook her head. “None I ever knowed about. Even if there was, who’d keep track of a darky after the War’s done with. ’Sides, it’s a long time gone. By now, Welcome’s most likely passed.” Aunt Polly had grieved for her child for almost eighty years.

We sat quietly for a few minutes. A goat came out of the bushes behind the quarters, and Aunt Polly stroked her affectionately, muttering, “Look at them goat legs. They got a wood-keg look to ’em, just like Miss Magdalene.” Since Miss Magdalene had worn a long dress when I’d seen her, I wondered how Aunt Polly knew about her legs. The goat wandered off. “I milked the goats and paid a boy a nickel to haul that milk to town. I go a piece of the way to make sure he done it right.”

I hadn’t thought about the goats. “Ezra must have done a good job of defending himself last night.”

“Oh, he good at that all right. Ezra ain’t easy scared. He’s a fighter when he’s young. He was a good-looking man back then—still is, if you asks me—and had all the girls pursuing after him, and that make all the mens mad, so Ezra have to fight ’em. Then when he marries with Sukey Pea, he’s got to defend her. I try to keep it out of his ears about what that fractious girl is up to, but he find out anyways. If it still been slavery days, the captain sell him just ’cause all the trouble he make round here. Once, the captain say he put Ezra off the place if he don’t behave, but Miss Amalia beg for Ezra to stay.”

She paused. “There’s times when Ezra the only one can protect her. She need him. When she look at her brother, fear stares her down.” Then Aunt Polly added quickly, “Miss Amalia not afraid of much else.” She ran her hands through the beans to feel for any she’d missed, found one, and snapped it hard.

“Why was she afraid of her brother?”

“I don’t get no full understanding about it. You like these beans? I cook ’em up for supper with a little piece of pork.”

“That sounds tasty.”

“I hoping Ezra don’t have no backsats with his healing.”

I pondered the word
backsats
, then decided Aunt Polly meant setbacks. “So the captain didn’t force Ezra to leave Avoca after all.”

“There ain’t nothing the captain won’t do for Miss Amalia. He cherish Young Miss, love her better than anybody, even Miss Emilie. Miss Emilie sick all the time.”

“He took Miss Amalia to New York.”

“Oh my, yes, after slavery done gone. He take Miss Amalia and three, maybe four servants to look after her. I don’t go
’long, but Ezra done. He think maybe so he stay in New York. Up there, he a pass-for-white man. But he come on home instead, and after a while, he marry up with Sukey Pea.”

“Did Miss Amalia’s brother go to New York?”

Aunt Polly nodded. “Miss Amalia don’t want him to, but he did.”

“And Miss Emilie?”

“No, Miss Emilie too poorly. She tell the captain take Miss Amalia, get her out of dis bad house.”

“Bad house?”

“Sick house, I guess. Miss Emilie say Miss Amalia deserve her fun. She tell the captain make sure she have the time of all times.”

“And did she?”

“I ain’t the one to ask.” Aunt Polly stared hard at me, then returned to Ezra’s marriage. “None of us didn’t care if Sukey Pea run off, most especially me and Miss Amalia, and maybe Ezra, too, after he get used to it. The leaving was the best thing she done for him. He put all his badness behind him after she gone. Folkses say he met up with a gospel bird and that the reason he give up the fightin’ and the drinkin’, but I know better. Ezra wasn’t never much for religion, not like some that wears out their knees crawling to the cross, then wears out the seat of their britches sliding back. It was Sukey Pea what made him crazier than a betsey bug, and he never have peace in his mind till she gone.”

I changed the subject back to Amalia. “There was an opera program among her things. It’s dated 1877. That was the year the captain took her to New York.”

“I don’t study too hard on years, ’less they has to do with me
and mine, ’cause I ain’t got no learnin’. Now Ezra, he read and write. Miss Amalia teach him when he’s a chap, before the War’s over. The captain beat Ezra if he know about it back then, but Ezra do trick him. One day, marster see Ezra with a book, and he reach for the whip, but quick as a mouse in the flour bin, Ezra turn that book over, so when old marster come up close, he see Ezra look at it upside down. Marster laugh so hard, Ezra don’t get no whipping.” Aunt Polly chuckled and leaned her head back against the brick wall of the quarters, closing her eyes. “He never say he read till freedom come. Then marster glad, ’cause Ezra help him with the lumber company. He better than Miss Amalia’s brother at figurin’. If the captain give Ezra the lumber company, instead of Mr. Frederick, it still be hummin’.”

“Did Miss Amalia like New York?”

A shadow crossed Aunt Polly’s face. “She come home full of misery for a long time. Then Miss Emilie get sick and they boat the river to New Orleans, and I never see Miss Emilie again. I ain’t never talked to Miss Amalia about New York.” She paused, then sat up straight and looked at me. “How come you wanting to know so much into Miss Amalia’s business?”

“Because she was my aunt,” I replied, then added slowly, “Or my grandmother.”

A muscle twitched in Aunt Polly’s face, but she leaned her head against the bricks and closed her eyes again. “That’s something I ain’t never paid no attention to.”

The old black woman was silent then, and her face was so serene that I thought she might have fallen asleep. Perhaps she had been through so much in her life that my prying questions meant nothing to her. I felt drowsy myself, sitting there in the
afternoon sun with the sounds of birds and insects flitting about. There was a noise from the direction of Shadowland, but I had no way of telling if it were Magdalene or a goat in the underbrush. I put my head against the wall and lifted my face to the sun, closing my eyes, and I might have gone to sleep had Aunt Polly not asked suddenly, “What gatherin’s you got from Miss Amalia in that box?”

“The things I want to keep. I was afraid someone would come back and steal them. They’ll be safer with me at the hotel.”

Aunt Polly leaned over me and peered into the carton with her good eye, the eye closest to me.

“There’s her workbasket and some silver, a quilt and a sampler, this and that,” I said. “And her jewelry.”

“Her jewelry the best there is. It never need no polishin’ up nothin’. I proud to see her wear it.”

I took out the jewelry boxes, opened them, and lined them up on the bench.

Aunt Polly looked at the pieces and smiled as she recognized them. “That belong to Miss Emilie.” She touched the sapphire ring and added, “Just like that one you got on belong to Miss Emilie one time.” She picked up the diamond earrings tucked inside the tortoiseshell box and held them to my ears and laughed, then put them back.

“Miss Amalia beg the captain to buy her this. She wear it lots of times.” Aunt Polly pointed to the pearl necklace. Then she looked at the spray of diamonds and pearls and frowned. “Mr. Bayard give her that. She ain’t never wear it.”

“When did he give it to her?”

“She come home from New York with it. Mr. Bayard, he go
up there to try to get her to marry with him, thinkin’ life be a mess of cornmeal dumplings if she done it. He taken that fancy jewelry piece up with him and give it to her. Miss Amalia don’t marry with him, but she don’t give him back that pin, neither. I tell her sell it, but she say what people think? She rather let Avoca shamble down than sell her jewelry.” Aunt Polly shook her head as she examined the contents of the boxes. “Miss Amalia love her pretties. She wear ’em even when she’s old. Sometimes she get dressed up in her fancy dress and her ear bobs and that pearl necklace, and she dance around the house.” Aunt Polly smiled at the memory. “She wear her jewelry sometimes when she sell the goat milk. She always a lady.”

“Which piece do you like best?”

“Oh, I can’t rightly say.”

“Choose something. Miss Amalia would want you to have a piece of her jewelry, don’t you think?”

Aunt Polly stared at me, but whether it was with pleasure, surprise, or suspicion, I couldn’t tell.

When she didn’t reply, I picked up the dragonfly, thinking the bright rubies might appeal to her “What about this? It’s one of the prettiest pieces.” I held it against her dress, which had been red once but had faded to the double pink color of old quilts.

Aunt Polly looked at me skeptically. “What I do with it?”

“You could wear it.”

“Folkses think I all biggity-acting if I wear something like that, think I steal it from Miss Amalia. Can’t no colored person wear that jewelry.”

I hadn’t considered that, and I hoped my offer did not emphasize the class distinctions she had suffered all her life. Still,
she deserved something valuable of Amalia’s, even if she kept it tucked away in a drawer.

Aunt Polly leaned close to the boxes. “Them sparkly stones sure is pretty with the sun all shining over ’em.” She meant the diamonds.

I picked up a pendant, a large pink diamond suspended on a diamond-studded gold chain, and thought that if the stone were good—and Amalia wouldn’t have had diamonds that weren’t—it was the most valuable of the jewels. I tested the chain to make sure there were no weak links, then inspected the catch to see that it fastened properly. For a moment, I had second thoughts about giving it away, then chided myself for my selfishness. There were other pieces for me to keep. “You could wear this under your dress, where no one but you would know you have it on. It would remind you of Miss Amalia and how much she loved you.”

Aunt Polly held her face tight for a moment, then slowly looked up at me as if expecting me to change my mind. She took the necklace and held it to her eyes. The catch was tricky, but she opened it easily. Of course she knew how to work it, because she had fastened it around Amalia’s neck. Aunt Polly put on the necklace, straightened it, and ran her fingers over the diamond drop. “The captain give this to Miss Amalia when she sixteen. It richer than top milk. She pleasured herself with it often and on.”