Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (18 page)

Arms crossed, the gloomy one snorts, sounds bored at the first sight of me. She wears two necklaces, sizable glass earrings, and a red head kerchief. The chrome-yellow blouse binds every which way. One purple gypsy sash girds her center. A polka-dot green skirt has cloth enough for covering any couch. Honey, to ever get color-coordinated, these clothes wouldn’t just need some tactful saleslady, they’d require a treaty.

She’s onto two hundred pounds. It mounts up. Cap sets me before her like this here’s a relay and she gets me next. Then off he strides to read his mail. Seems she’s considering eating me for a snack but worries I’ve been
left out in the air too long. Shy, I smile, legs yet weak from certain marital activities.

My husband, flipping through letters, remarks over his shoulder, “You two know each other.”

“No,” I speak soft. “I don’t believe we’ve had the …” Big woman roughly shucks me of my wrap.

“What, haven’t met?” Cap acts surprised.

“No way.” Billy goat gruff, her voice goes deep as his. Loamy with that long a history.

“Well,
now
you have. Castalia, may I present my young wife, Mrs. Marsden? Lucy, Castalia. Cassie here’s been with me since … well, since forever, right, Cas? Yes, sir, if the years could speak …”

She growls, “Years can, you don’t play you cards right.” Then these two stand facing one another and are laughing—the concord of a lifetime stretches betwixt them. They chuckle at a single pitch: like some accordion shaken with violence to sound its jolliest.

And me? I’m in everybody’s way. I feel that to my very molars. I touch my neck’s bun. I figure: Lucy, about one-eighth of a polite little simper will do nicely just now. So I risk it. But Large Person notices, she blisters me with such a look, like I been caught eavesdropping. “Pleasure,” grins I. Meaning “Pleasure to meet you.” Nobody much hears.

My husband stands by a candlelit hall table, his massive back is toward me, the ivory blade goes ripping into four pounds of business mail. Castalia has stacked it just so beneath a ivory letter opener. “Seem to have received eight or nine paternity suits in ten days. Roughly the usual number.” Appears he’s made a joke for his celery-stalk wife and pumpkin-coach maid. Don’t neither one exactly fall out laughing.

The front hall is underfurnished—a bachelor just sleeps here. That ex-bachelor is yonder muttering about bills and more bills—about others’ mistakes. “I
told
that dunderdick ‘in escrow,’ now look what’s he gone and done. I swear, you leave them for a minute—”

I’m scared to turn towards Castalia. Somewhere deeper in this house, apples must be boiling on a stove. Smells nice. Rooms away, is that possible gardenias? But as my face begins to open with smells’ pleasure, the woman steps before me, gives a shake to earbobs large as cut-glass doorknobs. Eyes hold steady over the big jaw. Castalia’s pillowy mouth might hint at Song of Songs but, child, these eyes form chutes that send you straight to a reckoning called: Revelations.

Candlelight shows her off in ledges. She allows Lucy sufficient time to understand how much of her is here, how serious it mostly is. I do.

Now her boss’s back is turned, she tilts nearer me. Up close, her head—red cloth flagging its dome—looks the size and shape of a small fire hydrant. This face arching on front seems a mask made from bent dark woods, a disturbed violin maker’s work. Some breasts!

Her scalloped edges bring to mind Momma’s favorite portrait of Henry
VIII, hands lording it over hips, baggy clothes clinging to the globe of him like being all crepey Nations of the World. Castalia’s breath smells of marigold (she
eats
marigolds?). Hoarse breath explains, “See me in this house? I been here. I permanent.—Who
you
kidding?”

Captain, hearing silence, wheels around, “Now now, girls.” He grins like he’s expected strife, considers it right cute. “Listen, and listen reasonably hard here. You two
will
get along, do you understand me? I mean—you’re so abidingly alike or I never would’ve chanced bringing you two under a single roof. I’ll lay odds you all will soon be just like … this.” He raises two fingers. They spastic across each other. Two form one pinkish stump. I quake.

“Oh, I’m sure,” I try sounding like Goodwill itself. “I mean, I’ve heard so much
about
…” I pivot.

She ain’t there.

ON THE
second floor, my hot bath waited. Somebody’d carried each heated bucketful upstairs. I felt nervous about that. Being waited on never seemed worth the awkwardness of having help nearby constantly
watching
you. My own mother lived in fear of black people. Wouldn’t have one in the house. Anyway, how did this woman know exactly when Cap and me would drag in, dusty from Georgia? Is it hard to keep this many gallons warm so long?

The corrugated tub smelled of lemon juice. A single gardenia floated on top. Set inside its petals, one white birthday candle burned. I stood staring as if down some well. I longed to crawl between the satin sheets of that white flower. Like a girl in some illustration by Mr. Walter Crane, I’d sail away for good. After my honeymoon of service, such kindnesses made a body feel weepy. Castalia wedged in through the doorway behind me, arms crossed like some harem’s strongman guard. I praised her thoughtfulness. She shrugged, “Just be my duty to. His momma never got near no bath without they be gardenias in it. Winters, had to have us a greenhouseful. She was worth it. Believe me, gal, ain’t got nothing to do with
you.”

Castalia offered to help me undress. My hand flew up, shielded a top collar button. I said, oh, I could probably manage undoing my own self, but thank you
so
much. (I thought, I’d rather strip naked on the Falls Courthouse steps in January and before a lynching party than have this particular person see my over-many ribs and calcium-deposit knees.)

A secret pasteboard sign had been tied behind the honeymoon getaway buggy. One of Cap’s hired men put it there. Everywhere we went, folks smiled and pointed. This pleased me. I didn’t know as how this hidden placard read, “May tonight’s Bedtime be like a Kitchen Table—all Legs and no Drawers!”—Hours later, during a rest stop, finding the thing, I tore it into bits. I stood gasping, grinning myself sick from shame. Hundreds had seen it!

Now another stranger waited to undo my travel clothes. I turned. Castalia’s size made her forever seem standing one yard closer to you. Wet eyes
burned, bloodshot in the unglossy face. Eyesight seemed some privilege granted late in life. You know them haunted-house portraits where certain ancestors’ canvas eyes get snipped from behind—then some stranger’s peepers fester back there, watching you? Castalia’s amber eyes didn’t so much live inside her head as stare
through
it.

I decided: Bad stuff has happened to this woman. Considering her eyeballs’ haywire heat, you didn’t need no genius to help guess that.

Finally, mumbling, shaking the jeweled head sideways, she left. I locked that door so fast. I listened. Glacier bulk creaked slow downstairs. Safe, I stripped pronto, climbed into the tub. I spoke kind to a gardenia candle boat, “Well, hi, you. Ain’t you nice for staying up so late to be in here with Lucy.” When my overutilized lower sector hit uppermost hot water, ooh but I did hiss, squint, thrash. I drowned the candle’s flame, said, “Sorry.” Both eyes closed, I tucked a wet flower back of one semi-prominent ear. Gardenia smelled peppery yet sweet. “There, there, Lucille,” said Lucille here. I tried remembering what words my mother used when I was sick. I needed me a nice soothing nickname to goo-goo at myself. Who
else
would?

When you been bouncing in a train or buggy, you know how onct you stop, the world still seems to rattle forwards awhile, surfaces gliding towards congealing nowhere fast? This tub now felt set on a dozen axles spinning down Atlantic Coastline Railroad tracks. Maybe rude signs, hooked to the caboose, caused dirty-minded trackside watchers to hee-haw my way. Our buggy’s other plaque had announced, “Grand opening tonight!” Tell me, child, was I a prude to mind? Any girl fifteen that survived so recent a breaking and entering, she’s earned a bout of sopping self-pity. Prior to marriage, I had lived with my folks two blocks, away. Those years now seemed like happy solitude. Here recent, all my beds and baths were supervised by different grownups, training me in your quicker ways of getting naked. That much I could do myself.

Seated in wet, I told myself, “This is Falls, North Carolina, you’re home safe, right?” All the way back, I believed that finally getting inside the city limits might save me! So, in hot water, I tried staying attractive and deserving, I still felt mighty willing to be spared. “Welcome back, Lucy Married, darling,” Lucy Married said, her tone lacking total sincerity maybe.

D
URING
the long trip back from Georgia, Captain had paid courtesy calls on fourteen small-time Livestock Barons. Every three counties boasted one. Captain knew the pedigree and pig-broking repute of each. New at wifeness, I tried acting deeply interested. I have always wanted to do right. A failing, it turns out.

From my present ripe-to-ptomained age, I recall these Barons as being rolled into a single well-fed gent. He wore a checkedy suit loud as the tin sign for some new chewing tobacco. He spoke from under orange-bristled mustaches that corkscrewed on either end like pigs’ tails. The dandy didn’t
know
his face hair copied backsides of the pork that’d so fattened his fortune. (I reckon all of us are daily paying homage to things we ain’t yet recognized, child. Vanity is sensible. It hides so much from us.) Pig Baron squired my hubby and me around a hog-parlor breeding station he claimed to’ve invented. But we viewed the same model sty from county to county. “Finer than many
homes
in our area,” the similar Pork Lord joked over and over. The more times I got introduced to him, the more I longed for a town that knew its scab-kneed Lucy by name, and on sight, and from one hundred yards up any tree she climbed.

Finally our buggy creaked within four miles of home. I’d been steadily asking, “Are we near it yet, halfway, more?” Cap rolled his eyes but told. My heartbeats clocked the whittling distance. I sat up stiffer, cleared my throat like some speech was soon expected. I pinned such rebel-tendril hair as had escaped the mother bun. Preparing for what?

I onct heard life described as “a horizontal fall.” Our toppling towards home that afternoon seemed as destined as gravity.

So far, no vista looked familiar. Just typical crops, rural mailboxes boasting Scotch-Irish names, zinnias collaring your finer farm homes. Ambitious ladies out this way copied yard fads from off my home street, Summit
Avenue, Falls real estate’s top de la tip. Today I saw watery holes sunk in some farmyards, holes edged with metal wagonwheel rims and surrounded by marigold borders. From one such puddle, a sunfish broke water. I understood—Falls’ trend towards goldfish ponds was being honored way out here. Why did this make me feel proud yet melancholy?

I scouted for landmarks I might know. Just more red dirt, a countrified sky being light and massive over acreage stretched taut in all directions. At 4 p.m., June heat had finally lost its ambition. And I sat waiting for some noisy welcome party’s approach. I kept clearing my throat. My old man asked me was it the dust?

“Nervous is all. You
sure
we’re nearbout there, sir?”

“The signs for Hedgepath’s will appear in a minute and a half. Then perhaps you’ll believe me and stop asking.
How
old are you?” But primping his beard, getting ready to greet any acquaintances, Marsden seemed pleased by my innocent excitement. His pleasure made me want to keep such pleasure to myself. In short, we’d really started being married, child.

A one-lane dirt road—a fringe of battered grass along its center. Coming at us, three pretty sisters on one threadbare asthma-gasping mule. Passing them, a old man whose jowls bounced atop his frisky palomino—horse tail all silver-white, streaming perfect in its breeze. Beyond roadside ditches, low scrub woods: loblolly pine, beech, sassafras, sumac, unappreciated Queen Anne’s lace. The forest smelled musty, secret, welcoming. Woods smelled of living mushrooms and of Tuscarora ghosts. In 1900, so much of Carolina was still as outwardsly wild as I felt inwardsly. I was a secretly disguised Indian princess. I was a dark beauty, safe under straw-toned hair and a spy’s zillion false freckles. Nobody would ever know me. I would see to that.

Jostled by a washboard roadbed, I sat hoping that our hill town up ahead might make certain things up to me. Maybe Falls would prove a tourniquet, it’d put the brakes on certain bedtime poisons just released in me. To be made a un-virgin before you ever understood you
were
one, no fair. I didn’t really crave seeing my parents (they’d given Cap my hand in marriage, my hand and every other part). But Home, yeah. That. A new start in a safe place. I clutched my carpet sack. Hid under my Stevenson poems, hotel soap, and, wound in tissue paper, fourteen prisms rescued from the windows of my childhood bedroom.

Meantime, farmland’s blankness did soothe a person some. Two counties—flat as kitchen tables. Roadside ditches bristled with blackberry vines and—if you looked close—lightning bugs showed among the shadows. Waking bugs blinked, practicing their on/off switches. Soon, darkness would lift these creatures out of homely shade. Lack of light would turn the world into their free-range home.

It’s 5:40 p.m., June 15, 1900. It’s 89 degrees. My bloomers are stuffed with strips of the
Atlanta Constitution
to absorb stray embarrassing losses. And here I start the happy recognizing.

We round a bend. Sure enough, my Captain’s right. We pass four sooted chimneys of a famous plantation home, Captain’s, once called The Lilacs. Sherman burned every surface not brick. Virginia creeper vines and mud dauber wasps’ nests now bind and clot each exposed hearth. Vandals long ago stripped white onyx off the hearth facings. Rumor claims all our county bats sleep in these three-story hollows. Their bricks have been continuously falling all my life and everybody else’s but won’t end their brave topple for some years. (A inspiration to us all, Rome itself took nearly eight hundred years to fall. Gives me faith that I might hang on by the skin of my former teeth for maybe nine more months!)