Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (75 page)

She’d grown up in that showplace home based upon some idea of order in Edinburgh (Angus McCloud hisself hailed from less tony Glasgow, but
stocked his place with huge oil paintings of Edinburgh Castle, aiming in everything he did to be Edinburgh fine-grained, Edinburgh worthwhile). Someway, knowing that Bianca McCloud Honicutt was
his
heiress made our neighbors find her willful clumsy housework all the sadder.

“Lucille, it’s a race that does not
mean
to steal.” (In 1900, this view made my momma a liberal by local standards.) “They simply take a shine to something and the next thing anybody knows (themselves included) a person’s signed Paul Revere silver sugar bowl, my dear dead poppa owned one, is in their handbag, soon to be displayed on some pine mantelpiece downhill. One doesn’t blame a magpie for hoarding certain bright items in its nest. So, we mustn’t blame
them
, is how I see it.”

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof
.

—Poor Momma.

AND
, oh yeah, what of Maimie? What about my Bible-believing namesake who—in her day—had made so many white children “straighten up and fly right”? She could not get work. Not anywhere. In six months, nothing. Once she was put in charge of a promising new bed wetter but, second day she turned up, news had struck. Beech was asked to leave at onct, please. Nothing personal. People now claimed she was just bad luck. Sleeping on the job, they said. Luring harmful Nature to the one whose nature she’d been hired to iron out.

Finally a committee of five black ladies from her church took a train, then hired a wagon, arriving unannounced at the flagship indigo plantation of Angus McCloud. High walls surrounded his headquarters: Angus—with two chemistry majors’ summer help—had concocted the secret formula for making semi-colorfast indigo dye. Others wanted it. The trip cost Sisters a two-day journey. Showed how much they meant it. Maimie’s onetime employer recognized this, asked ladies to sit down, please.

“She ain’t set foot in church since the day it happen,” one woman started. “Which ain’t
like
Maimie,” one lady added. “We been worried sick,” a third chimed. “Over her,” the first put in. They talked like this, such tag-team sentences. Though not related by blood, at Afro Gethsemane they called each other Sister and were. They’d belonged to one choir since childhood and now seemed to think and move the way they’d sung forever four times weekly: one harmonized, quietly fiery unit.

The group let on as how Maimie sure pined to see her little girl. Angus said that just won’t possible. Doctors’ orders, another scare could set Bianca off. Unfortunate but true.

“Maimie ain’t
just
sad.”

“She running out.”

“Of cash money.”

These friends knew better. Maimie lived alone, she’d saved for life, she only spent on church tithing and treats for her former children. (Beech hand-delivered a gift on each’s birthday. She carried presents in person,
hoping to see how another year’d changed each lapsed child. This also spared Beech having to address the package, write a card. Maimie’s first brats were nigh into their sixties now. “Well, look who’s here,” they’d say to shy smile. “Like the proverbial elephant, never forgets, does she?”)

During the long trip to the coast, Sisters decided: If they couldn’t get Maimie rehired, if they couldn’t get her back on visiting terms at McCloud’s Mansion, they’d at least try squeezing more retirement funds from Person County’s third-richest man.

“Cash,” that man now admitted, “might be forthcoming from me. Lord be praised. Especially considering my family’s feelings for Maimie. Terribly devoot. Starling character. Ever sa prompt. A genius with children, Beech was, is.” He took out a checkbook big as a Bible. The Sisters noticed: Twelve joined checks made up every page.

“Lord be praise,” ladies answered, a solemn breasty sigh rolled forth. What’d made these women travel so far and act this bold? Maimie’s absence from their midst. It felt killing. She used to move and breathe and speak with them like this. Downtown with her on Saturdays, Sisters grew flustered, pleased and troubled when fancy white folks, knowing Maimie from the McClouds’ very dinner table, nodded, touched hat brims, said without a whit of question in their voices, “Beech.” They said it like you’d factually say “Day” or “Night” in greeting. Maimie took this as her due. Made the Sisters feel a bit more visible and Maimie-famous. Beech’s memory for scripture was much admired at church. Her absence from these oldest friends felt like a amputation.

She’d been the unit’s single skinny one. Sisters loved carrying food to Beech’s house, forcing her to eat it while they watched. She stayed their only unmarried member, the one un-mother.—First they’d tried matching her up with their Bible-believing brothers and flashy brother-in-laws, horse salesmen for Captain Marsden. But the men came back, sat down real hard, rubbing their tired eyes, whistling, “I already
finished
school. She only talk about some cute wicked rich white twins uphill. Do I care? She din’t notice me not all night long.” So be it, lady friends decided—Maimie’d stay more truly theirs. These five appreciated Beech’s refined ideas—they loved her unlikely spying news from the great homes. Mail-order bees! Though two of these Sisters taught school, they felt like Maimie’s years uphill made her almost their educated equals—whether she could technically read or not. Maimie had no family. These friends were her age or younger but forever treated her as something of pet, their secret child. Odd, Maimie let them. She knew just how to sulk and give way after years of white brats practicing on
her
. To Sisters it now seemed their oldest dearest child was fading quick. This made them fearless. They’d do anything to revive a woman who could be prissy and had real high standards but—if in the mood—might make low-down grumbly jokes with the best of them.

“Does this seem fair?” McCloud had written a check for eleven hundred dollars.

“Lord
be
praise.”

He told ladies that their own food and carfare should come out of this. He stood and thanked them for their trouble, for being such good friends to Maimie L. Beech. Angus said he personally missed her verra much but that it couldn’t be helped after what’d happened, which was nobody’s fault, was it? Who’s surprised that wasps are drawn to sweetness? So much awfulness in this world just cannot be blamed, can it? On hearing this, four women cleared their throats. One friend held the blue check, others grouped around. Soon one fingertip of each Sister touched a part of it. The unit didn’t seem disposed to leave McCloud’s office yet. A board meeting waited, mumbly, in the antechamber.

Angus leaned back against his desk. He didn’t say, “Ladies, I am, I fear, quite a busy man, I fear …” Instead he grinned his ginger grin: “This
has
been a fine visit. I believe you’ve got everything?” They then looked at him, they did so very hard and very neutral. The center woman spoke alone, slowed by trying to become others’ choir and quorum all her self. “This gone probably seem like a lot to Maimie. But she ain’t herself no more.”

“You feel my amount’s insufficient?”

The speaker got nudged by four soft shoulders from behind. She shrugged then, but left her own blank check of a look aimed Angus’ way. He thanked the women, hard. A gent fitted to do well in this world—Angus chanced adding, “Lorrd be prraised?”

“Lord be praise,” the unit sighed. And left.

MAIMIE’S
friends were headed home, not unpleased, taking turns holding a blue chit. Their preacher was knocking at Miss Maimie’s door. Smiling, the elderly gent explained:
He’d
found a way of easing Maimie’s mind. God had whispered it to him after supper last night. Hat off, Rev. stepped in, uninvited. There were, he said, so many
black
children hereabouts who might could benefit from MLB’s years of uphill practice. In Baby Africa, so many youngsters were flat starved for Maimie’s one-at-a-time kid-glove-type care. Why didn’t she cheer herself by tending
them
, us, ours? Beech’s plaits had come unfastened and dangled like risky laces trailing a untied shoe. She’d lost weight you never knew she’d had. She looked more pure and vertical. Less a virgin, more a warrior.

“God,”
Beech said, “whispered you that? Free babysitting from
me?”
She had not offered Preacher tea or even water. She stood, proving this’d be a short visit. On the table behind her, partly wrapped presents: fifteen leather pen wipes and twenty bath talcs. Hat bunched in hand, Pastor said: His job was delivering God’s word. What folks
did
with it was their business.

“Well, sir.” Maimie rubbed her eyes like a reader burned steadily by the world’s finer print. “One thing is, I real used to being
paid
for it. Got pretty good money uphill, too.
You
should know—I been tithing right along, paying
you.’
She explained she’d steadily worked for “quality.” Maybe that’d ruined
her, who knew? But these ragged weedy little young ones from down around here? Well, they just didn’t rightly
mean
as much to Maimie, you know? Did that surprise him, had she gone and hurt his feelings? “Not to boast none,” she went on wrapping gifts, “but I been called a genius at getting the Spoilt to do right. Could be, all my time
around
the Spoilt has done spoilt Maimie, too. But, way I see it, if I can’t cure me of my being ruint by spoilage, then can’t nobody else. As to my doing for these little black ones, free of charge? Noo, that don’t really draw Maimie unto it all that much, sir, but thank you.”

He turned to leave. “Sister,” he tried a last time. “You know this, but … Charity begin at home.”

“Fine,” Beech snapped. “Go start at
your
place. In this house, my remembered babies keep me steadily busy, sir. I believe they calling Maimie right now. Good day.”

She saw him ease down her porch steps, the man looked caved in, that disappointed with his old favorite who knew the best 100 from the Book of Psalms’ 150. She grabbed up her Bible (dust was on it—troubling, the strange deadly feel of grit there). She ran to her porch, didn’t even bother opening the Book but mashed one hand across its cover. Then—like receiving telegram knocks—she quoted aloud at his bent hurrying back: “Preacher? We all ‘discipline problems.’ You, too. Who is ever going to take us in hand? Psalm 14 it say, ‘Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand and seek God. They
all
gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.’—Everybody a brat underneath. Maimie ain’t the only one spoilt rotten.”

Three children (one of them Castalia’s) were playing with a wagon wheel on the dusty street. They went still, watching. Miss Maimie’d once been this neighborhood’s example. Some mothers told brats, “Get out that lazy bed and come to this window and notice our Sister Beech.” There she strided, stern uphill in virgin white, Bible clutched against her, bound daily toward making children of the grand do godly. She now knew from street kids’ faces—one-half year out of work and she’d become a witch. Beech touched her untended hair. This uniform seemed soiled. “You so ill-bred to stare,” she shook her Book at them. “You bad.”—She hurried indoors, leaned against the wall. It crackled with hundreds of children’s yellowing drawings.

How could she ever tell her preacher and Sisters what it meant to eat alone, a meal without one living child nearby to stroke and cleanse and stuff? Food interested her none at all now—Maimie by herself hardly seemed worth cooking for. She was accustomed to dining at the Governor’s fancy table or else lolling in a sunny nursery alongside her darling—or even sitting at the staff lunch, Bible opened before her so she wouldn’t have to talk to simple under-gardeners and such. Sent to her home downhill, Beech first struggled to make one nice meal a day, she’d tried amusing herself. She uselessly ironed her uniform at night. All day, she wore the nurse’s cap
around her kitchen. She told herself kiddie stories—the one about a king that turned everything he touched into refined genteel gold—a king that couldn’t keep his mitts off of his favorite little girl—that made her too be valuable, twenty-four carat and dead, dead.

Bored of food (a rich person’s ailment caught uphill), Beech used tricks perfected on five decades of fussy eaters. This woman alone at a table in a house, lifted a spoonful of hominy grits. She held it before her own resisting mouth. The mouth called singsongy, “Knock knock? It me. Open
up
, Maimie’s Sweet Flower. Cause here come big fat old Marse Bumber Bee.”

Then she heard herself. The woman, alone at a table in a house, lightly set her spoon aside. She mashed both palms flat against wood. She stared ahead.

FIVE SISTERS
, returned to Baby Africa, brought McCloud’s blue check direct to Maimie’s home. She didn’t look so good. Her face was ashy as she thanked them. “I hopes,” she said, her back turned toward these dearest friends, “you didn’t beg him for it or nothing. I right fixed, money-wise. It ain’t the money so much. I hopes Mr. McCloud give it free-will-like.”

“He seem real glad to.” “He tell all kinds nice things on you.” “We figure he got off mighty cheap.” Maimie thanked them but cried again. They all prayed together, holding hands, hoping to regain their nice old working unit. Traveling ladies then dragged on home, exhausted. Wilmington’s “True Blue Unltd. Indigo Camps, Inc.” was as far from Falls as many of them would ever go. Only on account of loving Maimie had these Sisters made the sacrifice of distance.

Towards their houses, women scattered to pray for Beech whilst bathing, steeping. (Water can be a form of prayer—a lightning-luring conductor even for the Spirit.) Tonight was Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting. Again Preacher would mention Maimie’s health. For nearbout seven months, he’d kept her on the “Favored Shut-in’s Church-Pillar Prayer List.” Secretly, while praying under a flutter of Amens like pumping wingbeats, all of Afro Gethsemane sat, eyes closed, blaming blaming one white child.

Sisters back from duty found their home porches alive with husbands unworthy or overworthy. Their sinks were piled with days of dirty dishes. The back yards were littered and too loud with children less refined than their chosen mascot Maimie. But after
her
bare box of a house, a person did feel joy in greeting loved ones’ noise, the pleasure of this much friction waiting to welcome a body room to room. Just another soul’s saying (without even being real deeply interested), “So, how
was
it?” That helped. You compared your life to Maimie’s choices—walls coated in baby scrawlings, total silence, one big calendar Xed grand with bigwigs’ birth dates. Maimie—and her kindergarten of white ghosts—ghosts that hadn’t even held the door or waited for her. Ghosts that’d betrayed her—not staying baby ones but growing up on her and coarsening, forgetting.