Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (26 page)

“Sure,” I said but worried underneath. He was settling in now, looking not at me but towards the foot of our four-poster like she stood there, young and beautiful and sent up to his mansion chamber.

Uh-oh.

“Before I touched the doorknob I felt her in there, in my bed waiting. One just knew. I was exactly as innocent as she. That was part of it, I wanted this to be the first occurrence for both of us. It was my choice. But was it hers? if you catch my drift? I wasn’t quite old enough to truly
do
anything but wanted to start with her. We’d been picked for each other before birth, it seemed. Everything threw us together around the acreage. She was so obviously superior and bright and, as I’ve said, not beautiful exactly but, yes, beautiful, taken altogether, potent, somehow in charge of everybody though technically, of course, still a slave.
Our
slave.

“Now I see she, in doing what she did, Castalia simply wanted to feel she had some control in this. A little control—especially for a girl convinced that she’d descended from royalty—even if that royalty was from some doodledy-squat Africa backwater. I think it’s true, her royal claim. At least she believes it to this day, which accounts for her carrying on like Catherine the Great all over this town—a town, to this day, absolutely terrified of her. Do you
doubt
I overpay her, my Lucille? Poppa always said that she and Momma got on like a house afire because they both believed in divine right and considered themselves its finest local proofs.

“But I could feel her through the door, I could, waiting for me. She knew I’d leave for war on Friday, that I’d be back, if at all, quite changed. She knew this from experience. Hadn’t she got clear to Pennsylvania? I’d only make it to Maryland! I knew next to nothing except that she was in there for me, and that I wanted her a good deal. I think Castalia also wanted it to happen. I know she did.

“But she was so proud even then. She longed to have a choice in the whole matter. Winch had probably presented this tryst as partly my suggestion though it came only from him. Of course, he saw that she drove me up the very wall. So it was partly me. But what she did was ill-advised. Still, it meant she’d made up something for herself, she’d provided her own part in our meeting. At my present age, I understand that better and I like her for it. But at the time … no. I opened the door and whispered towards my oak four-poster I would inherit—actually, come to think of it, this four-poster we are in, Lucille. I was whispering to a girl I would have inherited—had not events intervened. (About those events I have mixed emotions. Owning most of the others was one thing I could probably stomach even now. But owning her? Even then she made us know she was un-owned.) Anyhow, I’m dawdling the way you do when
you
tell things, Lucy. I tiptoed
over. Winch had provided her a nice white muslin nightgown and the older black women in the quarter—who loved the romance of this meeting of the twain, who considered it our actual honeymoon—had ironed the nightgown and teased her mercilessly all day long (she told me later). Instead, Cas had left the dress downstairs outdoors. She was hiding under the quilt—had covers pulled clear up over her head. You see, she was probably already embarrassed, she’d got herself up as the African princess she steadily considered she was. Castalia knew about as much about Africa and its rituals and how one conducted oneself over there as you and I do, Lucille. She’d made up her whole history from what she knew around The Lilacs. Which was all she knew, altogether. So, she’d daubed her face with stripes of red clay. She’d stuffed two cardinals’ worth of red feathers in her nappy hair, and in her pubic terrain (is this too much for a girl your age?) she’d put white chicken feathers so her … mound, what have you, was turned absolutely white. Like some Plains Indian, or some Falls child at Halloween. And I pictured her in this muslin dress I must’ve heard about in advance, with her long hair flowing down her back, except she didn’t have long hair and it was not about to flow anywhere but was pure wire … Anyway, I had one picture of the honeymoon bride, she had quite another.

“I lit a candle by the bed. I held it up. She was under this tent of sheets. I said, idiotic but nervous, ‘Is that you, Castalia?’

“‘Nope,’ came her answer. ‘It Princess Castalia in she native garb.’

“‘Sounds good to me,’ I said, or something like that. I thought she meant ‘naked,’ ‘birthday suit.’ When I pulled the quilts aside and saw this Hottentot clogged with mud and chicken plucking, I screamed.
She
screamed, I dropped the candle. She jumped out of bed and dodged past me, out the door. She passed Mother in the hall, who
really
screamed and swore till her last days she’d seen the ghost of a Tuscarora goddess in our dark hall. That was our connubial bliss. That’s about the size of it. It’s almost as if we got the whole romance over with by hollering instead of doing any full deed. It took us twenty years to even mention this and then we practically expired laughing. But the moment was gone, our moment. Anyhow, you asked, Lucille.

“What got me onto all this? I nearly forgot. Your asking? Why am I even telling you this—so few weeks into our marriage, if at all? Because I trust you and want you to know everything about me.

“I don’t know about having you two together all day. Some nights, you’re glazed. I see you’re thinking of her. I was your age once and I recognize the signs. She respects you. She’s said the most ghastly things about you—a recognition. But, enjoy her food and cleaning, and learn from her, because, past a certain point, she’s absolutely out of here. I want you to think of me, Lucille. One of the pleasures of
not
owning them, Lucille, is—you can fire them.”

How still I kept, listening for more. And when I heard him clearing his throat, already half regretting what he’d spilled, I at once faked sleeping—
long steady breaths. I finally heard him snort, pleased to look down, find me shut-eyed, to believe he’d maybe bored me into darkness. This way, I’d get more from him, about her. Later. But all in time. I must never seem to press.

He had told me where she lived. I now knew where to find her downhill. But, first, he woke me, a hand on my left leg under our sheets. I then understood, it was another form of the barter that Cap practiced at his stockyard. A tale of her for the tail of little me.

Well, a deal’s a deal. I’d started the night with a maid at the stove and wound up with a real princess in my history.

Seemed a bargain for just letting him again.

TRIALS
and errors, some mornings after I ate her eggs like medicine administered, I rose up and said, “I believe I’m going out. If anybody asks for me please explain I’ll be back by one for Captain’s lunchtime.” Funny, ain’t it—though I’d grown up in a house without no servant, I still knew how to announce such things. The knowledge must be waiting—like a tasseled service bell pull—in the genes.

I heard Castalia snorf, huff, doubting my mission. But it seemed I
did
have some appointment urgent as Cap’s daily dealings at his bustling livestock yard.

Around the street corner, I stood buttoning on white gloves, nodding at ladies who’d been wandering downtown to look at the same clothes in the same fifteen stores for years of such mornings. I tried and appear busy but slowly knew what’d pulled me onto the street, what’d made me feel so excited since I woke beside the Cap at five.

I wanted to play
. I really wanted to just go somewhere and haul off and play. But how exactly? Seemed like in six weeks I’d clean forgot the method.

Fifteen, I was. But kids stayed younger longer then. The week of my wedding I’d climbed every tree I could, guessing in advance that Mrs. Married in a Dress couldn’t exactly go with a monkey’s ease up any scary limb she picked.

Now, stranded between running wild and sitting still in a guarded parlor, I moped around the corner from a house whose address seemed assigned to me for life. I counted lacy peaks in the Thorps’ cast-iron fence here. My white glove’s first two fingers pretended to be a human runner’s legs hopping from one point to the other. Aloud, I said, “Being grown’s no fun.”

NEXT
morning, Mrs. Married sat reading in the parlor when a flat-featured plump young white man walked right into the room. I jumped up, stood facing him. He held his hat and wore clean coveralls. I could see that he was shaking like a person joking about shaking. He had to lean against the
doorjamb and was grinning to apologize. He mumbled the word “wife” and, ashamed at being barefoot, I admitted as how I was that … here … the wife.

“Mid … wife?”

“No, his first. Just plain wife.”

“Because I was told she worked here and was a colored lady. The mid-one. Doc Collier is away from town and his girls they sent me here for a midwife and gosh but I’m in one terrible rush. This Captain Marsden’s place, right?” Then Castalia was behind him, blocking doorway, wiping broad dark hands on the tiniest of white tea towels.

“How far along she?” Castalia asked.

He just nodded Yes, almost a spasm—his head wagged up and down so much. “Thank you, oh, very far along, thank you, yes, please do help us.” He nodded so hard he nearbout knocked his own weight forward.

“Where she at?”

“My wagon’s out front.” Castalia hurried to the kitchen, preparing.

He turned around and grinned wild-eyed at me. “Thank you for letting me have her.” Have? At first I thought he meant “have,” like “have a girl baby,” or even “have” like his wife. Then I decided he must mean my letting him have my maid, taking her off duty. I considered thanking him for that.

She bobbed in under a red hat so small it seemed like something else. Castalia toted what looked to be a lunch pail. “Ready. Where we bound for?”

“I got my wagon out front.”

“So you say, but where that be heading us
to
, you?”

“She’s in it. She’s way past walking. Please, please hurry, it’s started. I can’t seem to make anybody
understand
me here today, please.”

“LONNIE!” A scream cut our neighborhood to green ribbons. “One’s most out, LONNIE!”

“Twins, Doc
said
it’d be.” But he spoke to where Castalia had just stood.

He raced after her. Now, rushing, confused, barefoot, I followed them down Cap’s front-porch steps. I still held my novel, tight.

Castalia moved like hot oil on glass. Never saw anything like it. Her jolt of speed—her running on tiptoe in gold dance slippers—it scared and stirred me. I speeded along our brick walkway after her. Maybe I could
do
something for a change! She straddled the wagon bed already, calm, looking down at something while she prodded through her lunch pail.

But when Castalia noticed me, her entire upper body shifted this way. She fixed me with a look. It was different from her usual punishing stare. It said, “Oh, the little one.” It
saw
me. In this emergency, I’d been spared whatever I usually stood for. I was just a girl fifteen hurrying to be of use, knowing next to nothing. But
meaning
well.

“You,” she called. “Go back in the house, child. Do this. Now. Boil water, yeah, go boil water. That you job.”

I minded her. Right off. I closed the front doors and leaned back against
them, one hand over my chest. I would help! I’d be good help. Won’t any question of my not doing what she’d just ordered. Even while the girl out there screamed, “Lonnie, oh Jesus, why two?” I was lost inside Castalia’s new tone of voice. I found the red-rimmed saucepan where she’d martyred my brush. I filled it at the kitchen pump, I set it on a hot stove. But mostly I thought of how she’d spoke to me. Once the water boiled, I risked stealing back out, a towel wrapped around the pan’s handle. Into the farm wife’s screaming, I hollered, “Water, boiling water—like you said.” I set the saucepan on the sidewalk near their wagon, hurried back up on the porch where Castalia seemed to want me stationed.

From here I could freely study the mule-drawn cart stopped at a angle before our garden gate. Something important was happening under cover of the wagon’s rough side planks. I heard a girl scream straight up, then heard her say she sure regretted doing that on a street like this, then do it again way worse. Her husband stooped beside her in the wagon. His head kept checking from the wife’s face down to her jolted body where Castalia worked, then back mostly at the girl’s face. He gazed down hard, like his wife’s face itself was changing from a big egg into some hatching yellow chick. All I could really see was her blanched fist, vined around his red one. And he was crying, “I
knew
we should of started out earlier. You just had to scrub that one last floor, you.” He laughed while crying, saying it.

Lower in the cart, I watched Castalia’s broad back struggling between uplifted dead-white knees. In the window of a house directly across Summit, one old couple held aside lace curtains and peeked but didn’t exactly rush out as volunteers. All at once, Castalia rocked back like some fisherman when he heaves his catch from one element into another. She reeled backwards most powerfully, buttocks flattening against her upper calves. She moved with such force that the wagon’s springs squeaked, its platform tilting so I worried all of them might topple out its back. Her red hat popped clean off and rolled—a pill—along brick street.

Castalia pitched hard forward, then suddenly held up a slick red sea creature spiraled to a trailing coral-colored line. She held this prize high in everybody’s noon air—like some fisherman showing off a catch in his own element. As her right hand bound the thing’s fin end, her left paddled the back till its wide mouth (seeming the whole front third) gave one unsealing hiccup. Then came a sound that seemed far bigger than its little fishy source. The sound was too human for me to quite abide or admit or stand—a wail so real and familiar it caused the old couple watching yonder to look at each other, nod, then smile and let their drapery drop.

Castalia turned the little noisemaker rightside up. She propped it in her lap. Using her apron, she seriously smeared at its eyes and nose. Then, after straightening a tangle in its line, she bowed more forward, seemed to place it on the mother’s chest. Castalia next straightened, hands joined before her. She tipped her head, seeming to enjoy a bloody sight hidden from me. I wanted to see.