“Are you one of Poppa’s nephews?” she asked.
“No, madam.” He had a thin beard with just the hint of a moustache. Quite fetching. “I’m an aide-de-camp to Colonel Richards, a friend of your father’s.”
“I see.”
In the orange tree’s shade, the officer doffed his slouch hat and kissed her gloved hand. “Major Thorton Brooksford Norwick, at your service.”
Her cheeks felt hot as she curtsied.
“I trust the shade is more to your liking?” he said.
“Quite.” She was becoming lightheaded again. “Thorton—what a clever name.”
“‘He who lives by the thorn tree.’” He raised an eyebrow at the array of oranges beside them. “But I do prefer fruit trees. You may call me Thorne.”
Even his name had power and angularity, like his features. … A man’s jawline, covered with stubble. That’s what she had seen in Momma’s thoughts. I’ve struck a bargain with Jesus, she’d said. Paying penance.
“Have you ever tasted a scuppernong?” Thorne said.
“A scuppernong?”
“Yes.” He seemed to gauge the oranges’ very essence. “Every year, I assist my brother on his cotton plantation in Georgia. We have a garden of scuppernong fruits—grapes—which ripen in September. The seeds crunch between your teeth, and the taste …” He locked eyes with her and licked his lips.
Really, he was so forward, especially for an officer. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she said. “Are they related to purple grapes?”
“No.” He moved close, and she could smell him again. “Those you refer to are the muscadine.”
Her improper thoughts would get the best of her. She needed to retire to the Big House, where she could meditate on Momma’s rose garden. But it would be rude to excuse herself now. She tried to listen as Thorne described the figs he and his brother Pierce grew near the scuppernongs. When he said the figs split open after rain storms, attracting wasps, a chill raced up her thighs.
The jawline. Now the damn angel’s wings were out again, arcing over the hundred hatted heads of her relatives, swooping into Momma. Momma was watching Reverend Forney visit group after group, paying respects and hellos. The jawline—Momma loved Forney’s jawline, and the way it was accentuated by his crucifix necklace. Reverend Forney offered a wine glass to Poppa.
“My dear, are you still feeling faint?” Thorne said, bringing her back. He held her hand again.
Breathing deeply, Alice shook her head. “I—I’m fine.” She gently disengaged from him. It looked unseemly. “Just not myself today.”
Minutes passed as they made more conversation. She was torn between her desire to continue talking to him and to recompose herself in private.
“It’s a small house, by Georgian standards,” Thorne said, speaking again about his brother’s plantation. “I usually leave there after planting during the April-May wet season, then stay here in the Carolinas until fall.”
The excitement, the tight corset, her disintegrating control over the angel’s wings—Alice felt herself slipping. Struggling to appear normal, she blurted, “And when do you return to Georgia?”
Thorne had been surveying the landscape of picnickers. Sidelong, he raised an eyebrow at her. “The fall, I said, when I go back for boll harvesting.”
“Are the cotton flowers beautiful in the autumn?”
Again, the eyebrow. Thorne’s hands went to his hips. “No madam, the cotton bolls, not the flowers. But yes, when they bloom they’re quite beautiful.”
She would hate herself if Thorne walked away thinking she was callow—and while everyone’s gossip about her being without a man hit so close to home. White women were also expected to be conversationalists. Panicking, she searched for something to say although she desperately needed Momma’s rose garden. The angel’s wings were now so fluttery that she trembled.
“The flowers originally bloom in white, do they not?”
Thorne’s eyebrow relaxed. “They do. You’ve been to a cotton plantation?”
“Only to rice plantations, like Poppa’s here. But in school, I studied them many times. They first bloom white, then turn pink before they’re a boll, is that right?”
“Yes.” His hands left his hips and folded behind his back. Alice thought he must be impressed by her now.
She managed her sweetest smile. Now was a good time to excuse herself. She only required a quarter hour, then the wings would be under control, and she could return.
A woman’s shriek tore the air.
Poppa was staggering among the blankets, his face a red splotch. Dropping the wine glass Reverend Forney had handed him, now empty, he clutched his stomach and chest. Men rushed forward to support him.
“Poppa!” Alice’s corset squeezed her again. “Poppa!”
Now on the ground, Poppa shook as if he were freezing. Alice pushed men aside. When she finally supported his head in her lap, she saw that his eyes had gone wild, searching the sky. He jerked, and vomit spewed onto his chest. Alice turned away.
Momma pushed through the onlookers. “Jeremiah?”
The angel’s wings took flight. Helpless to stop it, Alice’s mind flew from her head, circled once over the knot of people, and alighted on Momma. Her mother’s perspiration seemed to cover her like mist. Momma’s mind voice: More punishment.
Hannah ran forward, and Momma shouted at her, “Go get him something. Hurry!”
The wings flapped through one of the men. Alice wore his beard for an instant and heard him think, It’s the malaria, sure.
Back through Momma: I’ve done him wrong.
Alice’s mind split into an entire flock of wings. A hundred separate perspectives dipped through a hundred separate brains.
Gramma Wharton: My boy’s gone sick.
She’s pretty, Thorne thought, but I knew she was strange.
look at her eyes rolling back …
my lord what’s wrong with him
wish that nigger would hurry up
damn hell
haven’t seen him since whatswrong hesgoing water daughterlookslikehegoingoughtoffer
ohpleasemyboy
knewitwouldhappen
thattheywhatgoinghimshegonnasickcaneatwould
uncleJeremiah!
Taking her air. Black spots. …
Darkness.
Chapter 3
Despite continual fanning, Gramma Wharton’s face appeared to melt in the August heat. On the edge of hysteria, she moved from room to room, repeating her theory of why her son Jeremiah had died following the picnic.
“It’s the wetness. I’m sure of it. He said telegram warned of a freshet comin’. It hit the fields early and increased the air’s wetness.”
It would be an unusually crowded funeral since all of Poppa’s relatives and friends were already in town for the reunion. Reverend Forney, who’d known Poppa since childhood, had single-handedly made all the arrangements. Everyone complimented him on his magnanimity. Burial would be immediately following the afternoon church service. Nearly two days had passed, and it was best to bury him before he started to smell.
Alice stood on the balcony, tapping her foot. Behind her, the gib window hung open like a door to promote ventilation. Muggy—maybe Gramma was right about the wetness. Her dress helped, however, for she didn’t have a tight collar like the other women. She refused to wear black, and instead had selected her blue dress with the lace trim. If Poppa’s death was additional punishment from Jesus, then it was right that Jesus, looking down from His altar, noticed her—the unintended victim—among the crowd.
She didn’t care what the relatives thought of her clothing. Below, they lounged on the courtyard’s serpentine brick walls. She hated them and their feigned grief, when they’d hardly known Poppa. Kin in blood only, they would’ve given their eye teeth for an early reading of his will.
Last night, the men had sat up in the den with the corpse, toasting Poppa’s memory with his liquor. The women weren’t invited and
couldn’t have entered anyway, for their skirts were too wide for the door. Poppa had of course designed his male-only “clubhouse” room with that in mind.
“Madam.”
Stepping onto the balcony, Major Thorne Norwick offered his handkerchief. Alice accepted it and dabbed her eyes. Thorne looked more striking than ever: he had slicked down his moustache and hair, and had polished his uniform buttons.
“Thank you kindly for coming,” Alice said. “I suppose we’ll head over there in a half hour.”
“May I have the honor of sitting next to you?”
Disgusting presumption at a time like this, she thought. Did the man have no propriety? It was flattering to be pursued, but Thorne displayed a disturbing singlemindedness. She dropped his handkerchief on the floor and walked away. “Excuse me.”
Since the house was built by Poppa’s own hand, every wall and floor reminded her of him. In the sun room, the brick floor made a herringbone design Poppa had been very proud of. The sight grew wavy through her tears, and she stumbled into Gramma Wharton, seated in a rocker.
“Careful, child.”
Apparently tired of ranting, Gramma hunted for a needle in the pin cushion by her feet. Her gray hair spilled from under a tiny turtle shell hat and waved in the draft. Gramma didn’t care about proper wardrobe, either—so much for black veils.
“Sewing—that’s an excellent idea,” Alice said, and sat in the empty rocker. Any distraction would do. She thought herself an excellent seamstress from spending so much time making clothes for the slaves.
But when Gramma sat back up, Alice’s heart sank at the sight of their project: the family hair ornament. It normally hung on the wall in the library and incorporated a lock of hair from every family member who had died for fifty years. A clip of Poppa’s hair rested on Gramma’s knee.
“Here,” Gramma said, and transferred everything to Alice’s lap. “It’s better you do it.”
“No!” She leapt up, scattering thread, needles, and ornament. “I will not. I can’t!”
She needed to hide in the roses. If she didn’t calm the angel’s wings now, they might fly in search of Poppa, perhaps following him all the way to Providence.
When she reached the drawing room, however, the door was locked. Odd. The doors were only closed in the winter, and they were never locked.
Irritated, Alice peeked through the keyhole. The first thing she saw was Poppa’s portrait over the fireplace. Although behind the door, it still appeared to stare at her. She maneuvered to scan the room. All the windows were shuttered except the one where Momma kept her tray of roses.
Momma stood there now, staring down at them, apparently meditating and giving flight to her own angel’s wings. Long before learning of that function, Alice had asked Momma about the garden:
It’s my private garden, Momma had said. Of beauty. It’s the one thing I regard as truly mine.
But why do you keep it inside, Momma?
Because that’s where true beauty lies.
Her face twisting with grief, Momma now opened a hand over the nearest rose. Alice gasped as the air between her mother’s fingers shimmered, like summer sky on the horizon.
The rose withered.
Alice’s wings touched her thoughts. The end, Momma was thinking. The end of the days.
Momma’s face pinched as she moved to the next rose. That flower also blackened, like paper in a fire. She moved her hand again, and another rose blackened. And another, and another. …
✽ ✽ ✽
The Church of the Wesleyan Brethren couldn’t hold everyone who’d stayed for the funeral. Many stood in the aisle or waited outside. Alice discovered she wasn’t the only woman wearing untraditional funeral attire. In fact, she was disgusted with their vanity; not only did some wear showy dresses, but they pancaked on wax makeup as if it were a debutante ball. Her own mole-sized, black-felt beauty patch, covering a smallpox scar on her cheek, was tame in comparison. But what did it matter what they wore? Poppa was her father, not theirs.
She sat down between Gramma and Momma in the front row. To the sensitive feathers of Alice’s angel’s wings, Momma’s grief felt like a cold wind. Her thoughts were otherwise unreadable.
Gramma was more vocal as she scowled at the casket up front. “Better be the last child I bury.” She spoke low so that only Alice could hear. “My stomach’s been in knots. I didn’t eat this morning, did you?”
Alice stared at the iris flowers framing the casket. Even from here, she sensed they could serve the same function as the roses, if necessary. The sight of the casket was so terrible that she might need them. She blinked at Gramma. “Were you talking to me?”
“Never mind.”
A sick stomach. She hoped Gramma hadn’t caught the same sickness that had killed Poppa. Cautiously, she attempted to probe Gramma with the wings.
Instead, her perception was drawn the other way, into Momma. The shields on her mother’s thoughts were crumbling.
Momma’s memories coalesced around Alice so that she felt herself in Momma’s body.
Alice’s mother stood at the church’s front doors. That morning’s sunrise played on the horizon. Reverend Forney held her hand. His jawline—that damn, wickedly attractive jawline—moved as he spoke: “My darling, you can’t stop now. You need me more than ever.”
“I have no choice,” she said. “Jeremiah’s death is more punishment for having the wings.”
“I agree Jesus is being more aggressive—but that’s exactly why we must continue! You need my special rapport with God.” Smiling, Forney stroked her buttock. “I wish to go inside and continue right now.”
“No.” She broke away, holding up her hand. “Not so soon after his death. I … I’ll probably come back, but now I need to mourn.”
Forney’s jaw clenched. “Postpone, and you risk God’s wrath. Don’t you see that our copulations are penance for your old crime?”
“Perhaps God will reveal another way of penance without committing sin.” She spat a “goodbye!” and ran.
The wings slammed back into Alice’s head, paralyzing her with shock. Time moved onward as if beyond a curtain of gauze. Only the smallest part of her remained aware that the funeral service had started. Everyone stood and sang a hymn, “Faithfulness Everlasting.”
Alice continued sitting. Momma was committing adultery with Reverend Forney? A sin, but it was at Jesus’s instigation. Was it still sin, then? She looked up at her mother, whose face was a rictus of grief as she mouthed the hymn’s words.
Gramma tugged Alice’s sleeve. “Stand and sing, girl.”
She could not conceive of Momma doing such a thing.
After the hymn, the congregation sat back down. Forney removed a lace covering from the altar with a magician’s flourish, revealing the bread and wine of the communion sacrament. An odd tension gripped his wrists and shoulders.
“The church at this time offers a special communion to the Wharton family so they may call upon Christ’s special strength.”
As Forney began his liturgy, Gramma’s cold fingers enclosed Alice’s. “Dear child, would you mind if I abstained?”
Gramma held her stomach. Perhaps its knots were more tangled than Alice had been led to believe. She searched her grandmother’s features, noting the pain at the corners of her eyes and the perspiration beading on her forehead.
Gramma whispered, “I’ll be sick if I take the wine.”
Overhearing, Momma nodded her assent. She took Alice’s other hand. “It’s all right as long as Alice goes with me.”
Without warning, the wings shot from Alice’s head, taking Alice with them instead. Wind rushed past her ears. Damn Jesus and all His angels, how dare He—
They alighted within the reverend’s thoughts. She saw Momma from his eyes before they refocused on the communion glass, which he now offered to Heaven. His thoughts were carefully channeled within the liturgy, almost as if he were afraid of them being read. But Alice detected his unconscious feelings—his av
ersion—to the wine. His hands withdrew until they only held the cup with his fingertips.
“‘This is my blood,’” Forney quoted.
The vision dissipated like fog until Alice found herself back within her own body, staring at Forney’s crucifix necklace. It caught the sunlight as he held the cup aloft. Even the necklace held a quality that wasn’t quite right. Perhaps it was the way its three termini each forked into two hooks, like the ends of serpents’ tongues.
Momma was already standing and pulling her hand. “Come on.”
And the words left Alice before she could stop them: “No, Momma.”
Both women turned on her in alarm. Momma said, “What do you mean, ‘No’?”
At the front, Forney coughed with irritation. “Will the family please come forward?”
Congregation members shifted uneasily. People whispered into each other’s ears through cupped hands.
“Oh Momma, I don’t …” She tried to pull her back into the pew. “The wine, it …”
Momma’s eyes brimmed with tears. Her mind voice: More punishment. Body hard with fury, she jerked her arm free and continued alone to the altar.
There wasn’t anything wrong with the wine—there couldn’t be. She must have imagined Forney’s discomfort.
Someone whispered, “What’s that girl doing?”
Alice closed her eyes as Momma knelt on the cushion before the altar. The relatives continued talking—“Such a tiny family”—and Alice didn’t know if she heard their voices or their thoughts. Perhaps it was her heart, chastising her.
A crumb of bread, a sip of wine. “Through Christ, put to death the deeds of the flesh,” Forney said.
Momma looked up sharply at that, but Forney pushed onward.
Alice marveled at the spectacle; Momma had refused a more meaningful communion with Christ that morning, but now knelt before His agent in yet another attempt to commune. Momma seemed to say she would serve Christ and pay penance for her old theft, but on her own terms. Her presence on that cushion was a statement to Heaven. If Christ didn’t strike Momma dead, then the new bargain of penance was agreed to.
Cursed by Christ Page 2
