"Josh, I want to feel good about your relationship with the Franklins and the fact that none of you told me. Can you help me?"
"Susie, after I knew I'd lost you I held on to the next best thing—your child. And I fell in love with Lilly. Then there's Emalene and Joe, two of the most special people I know, and easy to love. We rarely talked about you, except when we would choose which pictures of Lilly to send you.
Josh said that the day we met in the park and I asked him to help me find Lilly, he'd gone to see the Franklins and that they were delighted I wanted to know her.
"You showed up and they loved you. I had to coordinate when I would be there around your visits because we didn't want to complicate things between you and Lilly." Josh said he would ask Emma and Joe about me and how after Rodney returned from Vietnam and it was obvious our relationship was over, Emma told Josh I might need a friend.
"A friend?"
"Well, it was no secret I'd never gotten over you. I'd brought a couple of girls to meet Emma and Joe, but those relationships weren't going anywhere, and they knew it. Think of it this way: Emma and Joe love us both and want us to love each other."
"You make it sound benevolent."
"Maybe it is benevolence. They are the most sincere folks I know." Josh and I sat in that booth and talked until the lights blinked and we realized we were the last people in the restaurant and the staff wanted to go home. We didn't talk as he drove me home, but we held hands on the console.
I felt a wave of maturity wash over me. Perhaps I could begin to see things from other people's perspectives and not stay stuck in my own feelings. Was that a sign of growing up? I was almost twenty-four years old; it was about time.
When Josh walked me to the door of my apartment I was thinking about how I needed to protect myself from being hurt again.
"What's wrong?" He put his hand over mine as I inserted the key in the doorknob. "Talk to me."
"Nothing's wrong." I didn't turn around as I tried to unlock the door. He put his hand over my wrist and tugged me towards him. I turned and faced him, my eyes level with his collar.
"What's changed all of a sudden? Everything was fine and now you're in retreat mode. Did I say something?"
"No. In fact, the opposite."
"Make sense. Talk to me." He took my other hand, and pulled me closer, into his personal space. I tried to step back. "Please don't pull away. Tell me what you're feeling."
"You won't understand."
"Try me." I didn't say anything. I stared at our hands, his wrapped over mine, and I could feel tears gather behind my eyelids. Josh's scent caught in my throat, spice and Dove soap and minty freshness. I thought about the first time Catfish shook my hand and I looked down and noticed how brown his hands were. When he let go and I saw that his palms were pink. I was startled.
Josh's hands were long, like Catfish's. I stared at them and felt the warmth that went from his palms into my hands and had goose bumps up my arms.
"I can't do this." I looked up at him.
"Do what?"
"Fall in love with you."
"Then don't. I'm not asking you for anything. We can take it as slow as you want. I'm in no hurry." He pulled me a little closer. I don't know what I was thinking. Part of me was glad he was patient and kind; the other part wanted him to grab me and force me to give in to him. "Although I'd like to kiss you and hold you every time we're together," he whispered and chuckled as if it were a joke.
I was aware of the sound of car engines as they pulled into the parking lot and the clop-clop-clop of shoes on the pavement, but what I felt was the warmth from Josh's chest penetrate the air between us, even though our bodies weren't quite touching.
"Why don't you?" I couldn't believe those words slipped out of me. I looked up with a jerk, surprised at what came out of my mouth. "I didn't mean…" Josh was laughing hard now, tears running down his cheeks. Whew, I thought. He didn't take me seriously.
"What do you mean?" He was trying to control his laughter and I had a grin inching across my face, which was close to his. I could smell the beer on his breath and see the glint in his eye. He was smirking, trying not to break out into an all-out smile.
"What's so funny?"
"You," he said. I wanted to laugh but I didn't get the joke. Our lips were so close I could feel the heat from his, but he didn't move in or try to kiss me. "You're quite a fighter," he said and I tasted his words while I watched his mouth move. Something happened inside me. I moved my face closer to his and our lips touched. He closed his eyes but didn't move his mouth. It was the ultimate in self-control.
I kissed him. He didn't pull away, but he didn't kiss me back. I moved my lips on his and sucked in a little, then I felt his arm move around my back and he began to respond; softly, gently. He pulled away and looked at me as though he could see inside me.
"I like the way you taste," he whispered. "I always wondered."
"You said we could take it slow. Right?"
"Are you afraid of me?"
"No, I'm afraid of me. When I fall, I fall hard."
"Yes, I know that about you. That's something I hold on to." Josh turned to leave and I unlocked the doorknob.
"Want to come in?" I said it over my shoulder in a whisper, hoping he didn't hear me.
"I'd better not."
"Will you kiss me goodnight?" I turned around, my back against the door as I looked directly into his eyes. There was an unusual energy between us as we looked at each other. I realized I'd never locked gazes with Josh before. I'd avoided such an intimate connection, but now it was here and it was real, and I was mesmerized by him.
"Only if it's your idea." He kissed me deeply, no tongue, but with every fiber of his being, and my knees got weak. I almost fell, but he tightened his arms around me and I hung onto his neck to keep from sliding to the ground. "Good?" His breath was warm in my ear when he pulled his lips away but not his arms.
"Yes. Too good." I didn't open my eyes. My head rested against his cheek and I could feel him breathing, even and steady.
"Never too good," he said as he put his hands on my waist and put some distance between us. My hands slipped from his neck to his shoulders and I looked at him with what I guess was longing. "Goodnight. I'll call you soon," he said, and pecked me on the forehead, leaving me a bit confused. I watched him walk to his car with that confident saunter that was at once provocative and cute, and knew I was in trouble.
Josh Ryan was some kind of man.
I got ready for bed and tried to read but couldn't concentrate. I tried to sleep, but that didn't work either, so I got up and sat at my desk, opened the composition book where I wrote Catfish's stories, and began to think about the story he told me about Mr. Henry Van, Gordon and Marguerite's son. It was Maureen, the housekeeper who would tell the cook, Bessie, about what went on in the big house and Bessie, who lived in the Quarters, would pass the stories around. As I wrote what I remembered, I could hear Catfish talking in his slow Cajun drawl, stopping to laugh his belly laugh now and then. He’d look at me sideways to make sure I was listening, bend forward in his rocker, and stamp one foot on the floor of the porch over and over as his back lifted with each howl. Hearty as gumbo, I thought when I'd hear him laugh like that.
The story of a new baby made me think of Lilly and how I felt when she was born, and I cringed to think I was like Marguerite Van.
A Baby
1860
Maureen said Miss Marguerite wanted to spend her first year at Van Plantation redecorating and staffing the house properly. It had been a man's domain for too long, she said often. Her mother came for a visit six weeks after the wedding and stayed a month. She brought the wedding gifts that Maureen and Lizzie unpacked, washed, and stored—stuff like bone china, sterling silver, Baccarat crystal, whatever that is, silk linens, and other things Mrs. Pearce said would make the home more posh.
Mrs. Pearce brought Miss Marguerite's personal maid, Ellie, to liv
e at the plantation. Ellie was a slight young thing, not even as old as Miss Marguerite. She was dark skinned, almost as dark as ole George, with the whitest eyes you ever did see. And she was meek. She didn't say three words at a time and she stuttered when she tried to talk. That made Mrs. Van awful mad and she'd say, "Spit it out, Ellie. Stop that stuttering and say what you need to say." That Mrs. Van, now she was something.
The ladies ordered drapery fabrics, furnishings, and new gas light fixtures. Mrs. Van had talked Mr. Gordon into bringing gas lighting to the house and she wanted to install fixtures in every room with chandeliers in the dining room, parlor, and study, and other fancy lights all around, even outside on the porch.
After Miss Marguerite's mother went back to Oakwold, Miss Marguerite got sick. She couldn't hold down solid food, stayed in bed all day and refused to sleep with her husband, whose bedroom joined her chambers through a short hall with a pan closet on either side. Pan closets was small rooms with toilets where the waste went into a catch basin underneath. The housekeepers emptied it just like they emptied chamber pots. Course we had outhouses, still do.
Mr. Van, he thought his wife was sick 'cause she was missing her mama and would get better when she got busy again, but she wouldn't get out the bed.
Maureen said she could tell both Mr. and Mrs. Van's beds been slept in when she cleaned in the mornings and she said that Miss Marguerite's door was still locked between the two rooms when she brought Mr. Gordon's breakfast. Mr. Van was building a water storage tank in the attic so he could install new washdown closets, toilets with water tanks over them pipes to carry the waste out of the house and into the pond way back in the field. He thought that would make the new missus happy and get her to stop yearning for her mama and Oakwold. Poor Mr. Van was beside hisself, wanting to fix things so the missus would get back to loving him and being his wife.
Meanwhile Mrs. Van depended on Ellie and Lizzie to keep her chamber pots nearby, empty them, and return with them clean. Lizzie said that Mrs. Van was vomiting regular-like.
Mr. Gordon sat by her bed and held her hand in the evenings and tried to spoon feed her clear broth, which she threw up every time. Afraid she would die of dehydration, Mr. Gordon went to town to ask Dr. Tarleton to visit the plantation and see about his wife. The doctor came every week and talk to Mrs. Van about forcing herself to hold down water and broth if she wanted to live. Lizzie said his urgings were helpful 'cause Mrs. Van started to keep liquids from coming back up. Solid foods, now that was another thing. They wouldn't stay down for nothing, Lizzie said. After about a month Dr. Tarleton did some exams and said he thought Mrs. Van was with child.
Mr. Gordon was elated. Miss Marguerite was mad. She was angry with her husband for making her pregnant, angry with the baby for making her sick, angry with Ellie and Lizzie for breathing. Maureen said Miss Marguerite did not want a baby. Not yet! She had things to do, parties to host, a house to decorate, a new wardrobe to assemble. Now she had to wait an entire social season to stay home and hide her sins.
It was another month before the nausea and tiredness finally passed and Mrs. Van was able to go downstairs for dinner in the evenings, but she couldn't hide her displeasure from Mr. Van.
"I'm not ready to be a mother," she told him every night when they sat beneath the new gas chandelier and ate off bone china. "I need more time to accomplish things before I have to care for a child."
Mr. Van was hurt. At forty, he was ready for children. He wanted a house full of them. He tried to hide his delight from his wife, but she knew he was happy about the baby. This was the first wedge to lodge between the lovebirds. The honeymoon was definitely over!
Henry Van was born in December, 1860. From the beginning, the missus refused to feed him, said it would make her breasts fall. Josie had birthed another girl about a month before, and Maureen sent Anna Lee to fetch her to the house. Ellie brought baby Henry from the nursery and Josie nursed him until he was content. Every day, four times a day, Josie would nurse her little girl on one side then Henry on the other. Maureen said Josie had plenty of milk and it seemed to multiply the more she nursed. Henry cried at night for the first week, hungry but unfed, then Lizzie would take him to the kitchen around five o'clock in the morning where Josie would fill his little tummy.
The boy thrived but his mother barely noticed. Ellie, Maureen, and Lizzie tended the missus and the baby, and Maureen's daughter by Mr. Shelton, Anna Lee, who was six-years-old, played with him and was his friend and babysitter. Before long, she would rock him to sleep, stay in his room at night, and take him downstairs in the mornings to be fed. Mrs. Van got busy decorating the house and planning parties and kept Maureen, Lizzie, and Ellie so busy that Anna Lee fell into the role of nanny.
Maureen said a second wedge grew between Mr. Gordon and Miss Marguerite when she refused to sleep with him. She told him she didn't want to get pregnant again, so she slept in her room, he in his, and she locked the adjoining door at night. Mr. Gordon tried to question her at dinner, and that was about the only time he saw her, but she wouldn't discuss it except to say "I don't want another baby right now."
Mr. Van was frustrated and one day, right in the middle of the morning, he went to Mrs. Van's chambers to speak to her. Maureen was in the hall and saw him raise his fist to knock on the tall, oak door when he heard a commotion inside. Maureen said there was a slap, then another, then Miss Marguerite's voice bellowed through the closed door.
"Don't touch that, Lizzie. I told you not to go near my dressing table."
"Sorry, Ma'am," Lizzie said. "I wanted to dust it for you." Another slap.
"Don't speak to me unless I ask you a question! I've told you this a hundred times. Are you simple-minded? Get out!”
"Ellie, where are you girl?" Van heard his wife scream and stood in the hallway, dumbfounded. "Get in here and brush my hair, you lazy bitch. I'll show you what happens when you slough off!" Another slap. Then another. Lizzie opened the door to leave and ran right into Mr. Van, who walked around her and into the room, unnoticed. He stood and watched his beautiful, cultured wife yell obscenities and strike Ellie over and over. Lizzie and Maureen watched from the hall through the open doorway as Mr. Van walked up behind Miss Marguerite and, when she reached her arm up to hit Ellie again, he grabbed her wrist.
Mrs. Van look shocked. She turned around to see her husband glaring down at her. While staring directly into his wife's eyes he said, "Ellie, go to my study. Take Lizzie with you. I will meet you there momentarily."
"What are you doing in my chambers?" Mrs. Van spit as she barked at her husband.
"Listen to me, Marguerite, and listen well. I will not repeat myself. We do not mistreat our workers. Do you understand?"
"I did not mistreat anyone. Slaves have to be kept in line or they will be lazy. I will not allow my slaves that pleasure."
"On this plantation they are not slaves. They are housekeepers, field workers, staff. We do not mistreat them. Do you understand?"
"No, I do not understand!" she said. Lizzie and Ellie stood in the hall next to Maureen and cowered.
"Then I shall explain." Mr. Van sounded as if he spoke through clenched teeth.
"Release my arm. You're hurting me." He grabbed her other wrist and held them both, tight, in the air above her head.
"First of all, these are not your workers, they are mine. This is my plantation, my home, my rules. I have spent the past five years working hard to change rules, policies, and business practices so that this plantation can be profitable again. I will not allow you, or anyone else, to undermine my efforts."
"But…" Mrs. Van said.
"No buts. Let me finish. Secondly, you will either adopt my beliefs and policies or you will return to Oakwold. You are no longer a wife to me. You are certainly not a mother to Henry. I have no use for you but to admire your beauty, so it would not hurt me to send you home where you can beat human beings and lord your whiteness over them. Now, do you understand?"
; Tears ran down her face and she tried to pull away from her husband, but he held her wrists in his big hands and refused to release them. A silence filled the air that only her sniffles passed through. She nodded.
"Say it, Marguerite. Say you understand."
"I understand," she said, her eyes downcast.
"Look at me and say it!" Mr. Van yelled. Lizzie said she had never seen him angry since the time he fired Buckley. Mrs. Van looked into his eyes. "Look, Gordon. My daddy whips his slaves and my mother slaps hers. That's how I was taught. Who says you're right?"
"I say. And this is my plantation. What they do at Oakwold is none of my business but what anyone does on my property is very much my business. Do you understand?"
"I understand," she said. Lizzie and Ellie ran down the stairs and into the study just as they saw Mr. Van release Mrs. Van's wrists and turn sharply to leave her room, pulling the door shut behind him with a thud. They could hear his footsteps descend the staircase in a hurry, then he walked into the study and slammed the door.
Maureen was still standing in the upstairs hall when Mrs. Van removed her shoes and, in stocking feet, crept down the stairs and stood in the entrance hall next to the door to her husband's study. She could not hear much through the heavy door but she thought she heard him say, "Now, you go back and do your best, but if she strikes you again, I want to know about it. Do you understand?" Mrs. Van was leaning against the study door when it opened and the two women walked out. They cast their eyes down as if they didn't see her, but Mr. Van saw his wife standing there.
"Eavesdropping?" he said.
"No," she said. "I came to apologize."
"In your stocking feet? You had shoes on when I left you minutes ago." Shame reddened her face and tears streamed down her cheeks. She turned and ran back up the stairs, through her chamber door and slammed it shut. Mr. Van strolled out of the study and down the hall towards the kitchen.
Lilly Page 13
