The Family Greene (16 page)

I ran to her. "Eulinda!"

Her eyes made the adjustment to my presence. "What are
you
doing here? Did they have me followed? Do they want me back? My passage is paid for. I will not go back. They can't make me."

"No," I said quickly. "Nobody followed you. I hid away in the baggage compartment in back of the carriage. Nobody wants you back."

"You bad girl. You always were a bad girl. Gave your mama two days' travail when you were born. Since then you have been a bad girl. What do you want from me? Why have you come?"

She was wearing her best dress, made of a colorful patchwork of greens and reds and browns. And over it, of course, she wore the sacred shawl.

"I thought, since you were going away for good, Eulinda, since we would never see you again, that you might tell me now. The truth about who is my father."

She sipped her lemonade. Took her sweet time about it, too. The last of it was gone, then she ran her pink tongue across her lips carefully, enjoying my suspense. She narrowed her eyes. "You think I'd tell you that now?"

"Yes. I won't tell anyone you told me."

"How much money will you give me for the telling?"

Money again. "I have no money. Where would I get it? But you have money now," I reminded her. "General Wayne gave it to you. Didn't he?"

Again she ran her tongue over her lips. "Never enough money," she said. "I don't give away secrets for nothing. Now I must board." She snapped her fingers and a Negro came forward and picked up her belongings and carried them as she walked toward her ship.

"Eulinda!" I ran after her. "Tell me! Please! What difference does it make to you? Don't you understand? If you don't tell me, I'll go all my life without knowing! That isn't fair!
Eulinda!
"

She never stopped walking except once, to turn around and point. "See? Priam is leaving. He doesn't even know you are here. How are you going to get home now? You thought of that, you bad little girl? You're in trouble now, all right. But no, all you think of is who is your father! When you've got everything!"

Then she laughed, waved a derisive hand at me, and, with the Negro following, went aboard her ship.

I stood there, mouth open, watching her as she boarded. I stood there after she was gone. Then I turned to see Pa's "extravaganza" of a carriage drive away from the docks and down the street, and I felt a sense of despair that I had never before known.

What was I supposed to do now? I had it planned that I would tell Priam that I was here. But I'd become so agitated, thinking I had lost Eulinda, that I had forgotten to connect with Priam. And now I was abandoned here on the dangerous and confusing docks of Savannah, a place where ladies never went without a male companion. A place full of sailors on leave, drunks, people with no homes, doxies, and all sorts of undesirable personages.

I must get away from here. But go where for help? The only people I knew in Savannah were the Pendletons, Pa's friends. I would have to walk there alone. And I was not even sure I knew the way.

Well,
I decided,
I'd best get away from the docks, anyway.
So I started walking.

I was just onto the street, at the end of the docks, when I was sensible of the fact that I was being followed. Someone was following me on a horse. No, two some-ones on two horses. I knew they were following me, because horses can go faster than I was walking and they were keeping pace behind me.

My heart was racing. I felt sweat breaking out on my brow. My legs were shaking, but I knew I must keep walking. I would be kidnapped, I decided, wrapped in a filthy blanket and carried away someplace by some horrible thugs. Put on one of those vessels in the harbor and taken to a foreign land and sold into white slavery. I had read about it in books.

Oh God,
I prayed,
save me.

But I would not turn around. I kept walking for at least five minutes, and the two men on horseback kept following.

Then, of a sudden, I stopped. My energies were spent. To what end, all this walking? I could not get away from my pursuers. I put my hands to my face and started to sob. What was the use in trying to get away? I might as well give up and get it over with.

I turned around and looked up at my attackers.

There was only one. A man on a horse, leading another.

The man was none other than General Wayne. He sat his horse under a Mulberry tree, the leaves of which dappled his face.

"Ohhh," I said. "Ohhh, I thought I was being kidnapped."

He said nothing except "Get on your horse."

His face was grim. To say his eyes were not kind would be a generous thing to say. I could not meet those accusing green orbs.

I walked behind him and got on my horse and he gave me the reins. We did not talk at all for the first half-hour of the ride home.

When he did deign to speak to me, we were outside of town and he did not turn to face me at all. "Don't tell your mother why you came here," he told me in an even tone. "Make up some lie."

"So you know, then, why I came?"

Now he did cast an eye in my direction. "Do you think me stupid, Cornelia?"

"No, sir. Not you. Not ever."

"Then do me the honor of not asking such a question. You are as stubborn as a jackass in the mud. And you are going to continue in your stubbornness until you hurt someone. You are bound and determined to do it. You've already hurt your mother. She was frantic this morning, not knowing where you were. Martha told us she saw you sneak off in the back of the carriage."

Good old dependable Martha,
I thought. But I did not respond. I took his scolding because I supposed I deserved it.

"I did not mean to hurt Mama," I said.

"Well, when we get home, you're going to have to come with me into the back parlor for a whipping."

I stared at him, horrified.

"I promised your mother I'd give it to you. Because she said she would. She's waiting for you with a riding crop. I said I'd do it." His eyes slid toward me, craftily.

"I said it to spare you. I know what a temper she has, and there was no talking her out of it. So you come with me into the parlor, and we'll pretend that I've given you one, good and proper-like. You'll have to take on something fierce. Can you do that?"

I stared at him as we rode along. And in that moment, he had my heart, this dear man, laying claim to such severity yet going out of his way to protect me so. While at the same time shielding his tenderness toward me so it would not be so obvious.

"I can do it, sir," I said.

"And can you lie to your mother about why you came to Savannah this morning?"

I'd already considered that. "Yes, sir. I'll tell her Eulinda stole something from me. Something I treasure. And I went to get it back. But she wouldn't give it over."

"What did she take?" he asked. "If you lie, you must be able to back it up."

"A cornhusk doll she once made for me. She said it had spiritual properties, then she didn't want to leave it with me. She always said I was a bad girl because when I was born I caused my mama to be in labor for two days."

When I told him that he presented me with a face of sadness and compassion. And having given me that sadness and compassion, he looked like a cat who had just spent one of his lives.

"I hope your father forgives me for teaching you to lie," he said.

"Sir, why did you not think I would come home with Priam?" I asked.

"I had hoped," he said sadly, "to get to you before you even got out of the carriage."

He meant before I got to Eulinda!
To keep me from asking what I'd come for!

When we got home, he stood by me when Mama ranted and raved, calling me an "ungrateful little brat" and a "thoughtless, selfish, inconsiderate, infantile being."

I apologized seven ways into next week.

When she asked why I had played such a cruel trick, I delivered my lie flawlessly.

"All this for a cornhusk doll?" she asked incredulously. "Well, you've done yourself in now, Cornelia. Go with General Wayne. You deserve the whipping you're going to get."

I went into my act, pulling back when General Wayne took my arm, but he dragged me out of the room and down the hall into the back parlor, while I screamed and fought him all the time. "No, no, no. Pa never whipped me!"

He slammed the door behind us. We waited a moment. Then he whispered. "Yell and scream."

Then he shouted. "You little devil, come over here! You're only going to make it worse for yourself!"

Well, I yelled, I screamed, "I hate you!" and, "Oh, oh no. Oh, please no! Please stop! I'm sorry! Mama! Help! Make him stop! Oh, Mama, I'm sorry!"

Then General Wayne shouted again. "There, you bad girl, you'll never do that again, now, will you?"

We both stopped and looked at each other. "Cry," Wayne ordered.

So I mimicked some crying and he nodded approvingly. He took off his jacket and stock and ruffled his hair. Then he looked at me.

"The thing is," he said, "you really do deserve it. But I whipped my daughter, Margaretta, once, and she never forgave me. One thing piled on another between us. Things mushroomed and soon we grew apart. Her mother didn't help the situation. Margaretta got married recently, and I wasn't invited to the wedding."

I was honored by this confidence. He never spoke, at least to me, of his personal life.

He looked down at the floor, then at me. And I thought,
Is this why he won't say he isn't my father? Because in some way he wants me to think he is?

He looked so sad that before he went out of the room, I ran over and hugged him. "Thank you," I said.

"You must be angry at me for a while now," he told me. "And a bit fearful of me. Remember that." Then he left.

W
ITHIN A WEEK
, General Wayne went back to his own plantation, counseling us children to behave and to be mindful of the fact that our mother was in mourning. He told George to send for him if there was an emergency, then he got on his horse and left.

Within a week of that, Phineas Miller moved into our house.

We children were confused and in anticipation of the worst. Was this how Mama was to go about her mourning?

Phineas Miller in the house?

We understood now how the colonists felt when Paul Revere sounded his alarm that the British were coming. We crowded around George in whispered conspiracy. "You've got to go and tell General Wayne," Nat said. "It's an emergency."

George shook his head no. "Mama wants it," he told us. "And the general said we have to do what Mama wants and keep her happy."

"I hate him," I said.

"Who?" Martha snickered. "Wayne?"

"Hush, Martha," George ordered. He was a man already. And he knew how to order. "We just have to put up with Miller, is all. Don't pay mind to him when he's about. Just be respectful. Otherwise, ignore him."

"But he's our tutor," I said. "How are we supposed to live with our tutor?"

"I doubt he'll be doing much tutoring from here on in," George said. "He's too busy managing the plantation. Mama's taking us all to Newport soon, anyway."

So we settled down and abided by George's advice. But I still could not forgive Mama for allowing Miller to move into the house.

He brought in all his possessions. He moved his books and papers into Pa's study; that's what hurt me the most. He took all Pa's personal items off the desk and had a servant box them away, and soon
his
pipes and quill pens and papers and notebooks and other properties were there.

One day, when I could abide it no more, I sneaked into the study and spilled it all off the desk with one swoop of my arm.

Everything went onto the floor. I sobbed, doing it, and, sure enough, Phineas Miller caught me in the act.

"What are you doing, you terrible child? You always were a terrible child! I knew you never liked me. Caty! Caty?"

Mama came running, saw the mess on the floor, observed me standing there crying my soul out, and picked up the first suitable object she saw, a yardstick, one of Miller's. And there, right in front of Miller, she bent me over the desk and whipped me with the yardstick while I screamed out for Pa. A real whipping, not like the one Wayne had faked.

By that time, my screams for mercy had brought George to the doorway of the study.

"Mama!" he screamed. "Stop!"

She stopped, grabbed me by shoulders, turned me to her, then slapped my face.

"Mama!" George yelled again. "She's been punished enough!"

She whirled me around then, to face Miller, and made me say I was sorry.

I did so, barely able to get the words out for my sobbing. Then, under her and Miller's watchful eyes, I was made to put every item back on Pa's desk, exactly where Miller wanted them, before I was permitted to leave the room.

George waited for me. And comforted me when I was allowed to go.

***

T
WO THINGS
became as clear as birdsong to me from that moment on.

One, Phineas Miller had some kind of hold over Mama. And two, Mama was getting more and more severe by the day with her children.

How deep the hold was that Miller had on Mama I did not know. And I had no one to discuss it with. Not Martha, certainly. I would never even approach such a subject with Martha. As for George, he already had the sensibilities of a man, which included loyalty toward Mama. And such a subject as the possibility of a romantic liaison between his mother and Miller would be off-limits for discussion.

So it was left for me to chew it to the bone myself.

Was Miller having a romance with Mama? Did I have to worry about that now? I knew that his feelings were not only alive but growing steadily every day for her. But what about her feelings for him? And now here they were in the house together.

And this man did not have the honor General Wayne had.

As for her severity with us, was she just trying to make up for the fact that Pa was no longer here? And that Pa could becalm us with just a look? Or a word? And she could not?

I did not mind for myself. I could take her critical looks, her sudden outbursts, even her slaps. But I hurt for the others.