Kopp Sisters on the March

by Amy Stewart

  “Dare? I understand you took up with my granddaughter when she was thirteen years old. I guess you know about daring.”

  “She told me she was sixteen! She must be twenty by now.”

  “Well, she ain’t. She’s seventeen, so count up the years yourself. If she stays in Richmond, you’ll mess with her again, won’t you? Best to send her away, maybe up to a school in Alexandria, where nobody’ll know her.”

  “Maybe that is best,” Henry Clay said, with evident relief. “I’m fixing to get married anyway. They’ve got a girl all picked out for me.”

  Meemaw ignored the part about the marriage—men like Henry Clay were always about to be married—and said, “It costs a fair bit to send a girl off to boarding school, not to mention finding a home for that baby of yours somewhere far away where nobody asks no questions. That boy looks just like you. We don’t want him running home from school right past your house, do we?”

  “No, ma’am, we do not,” Henry Clay admitted. “But don’t you think the baby ought to be shown to me before I’m made to take responsibility for it?”

  “Like I said, ain’t nobody stopping you from visiting with Beulah or that baby. Go right on over there. But she’s going to make a scene. She was all ready to have letter-writing paper printed up with the name of Mrs. Henry Clay Beattie at the top.”

  Henry Clay spat again. “I never promised her a thing like that.”

  “Oh, but you did, when you gave her a baby. Now, would you like to make her your responsibility for the rest of your life, or just for this one year, and be finished with her?”

  That’s how it came about that Henry Clay Beattie agreed to pay for a year at St. Mary’s School for Girls in Alexandria, and offered up a lump sum intended to cover the baby’s upkeep for the first year of his life, to be settled in cash so that the Beattie name was not attached to a single penny of it. They met a week later to conduct that bit of business.

  “That’s the last you’ll ever see of Beulah Binford,” Meemaw said.

  A flicker of shock registered across Henry Clay’s face. Then he said, “You tell her I said to be a good girl.”

  20

  “OH, JUST STAND up and sing a line,” Fleurette said, when it came time to hold auditions for May Ward’s chorus.

  “I told you, going on stage gives me a nervous stomach,” Beulah said. She was beginning to tire of the girl’s insistence. Clearly no one had ever told Fleurette no. Beulah wished she’d made more of an effort to take up with some of the girls in the other tents, but it was too late now. Social circles formed quickly in a place like this, and they’d already tightened and closed.

  It was her misfortune to have ended up in a tent with a girl five years her junior, who wanted nothing more than to be admired and praised. Fleurette made much of very little: she dressed herself in beautiful fabrics and fine tailoring, which was no small feat, considering that her sisters seemed to be of limited means. She sat up every night making small repairs and improvements to their uniforms and working on bits of costuming for May Ward’s concert. Beulah had never done more than sew on a button or repair a ripped seam, but she could see now that it took considerable effort to keep a fine wardrobe in good repair. Beulah did admire her for that.

  But that was also the trouble. Fleurette put in the effort because she wanted to be noticed. She wanted to be seen. More than that, she was perfectly convinced that she was worthy of being seen. Beulah had watched her dance—just a few little steps when they were in formation, waiting for their setting-up exercises to begin—and judged her to be competent but not extraordinary. She sang in a fine, clear soprano, and knew a good many songs, but no one would ever line up to hear her at a concert.

  She was, in other words, as capable as any other girl who had ever gone through a music and dance academy, but no more. Why, then, was she so eager to put herself forward, and so at ease in front of others? How could she accept praise and adoration as if it were her due?

  Her sisters didn’t seem overly sentimental about her. Norma in particular hardly had a kind word for anyone, and Constance was careful and reserved in her praise for the girl.

  But it was obvious that no one had ever told Fleurette that she wasn’t worth a damn, and nothing had happened yet to allow her to come to that conclusion on her own. She sought out love and got it, just for being her ordinary self.

  Beulah found Fleurette a little hard to take sometimes.

  But she came to the auditions nonetheless, because Fleurette was an irresistible force, and because her sister was the camp matron (what horrible luck for Beulah!) who would’ve been suspicious had Beulah disappeared just before the auditions began.

  Gathered in the mess hall that night were about fifty girls who professed some interest in singing and dancing. The others were made to attend a field bandaging demonstration put on by Nurse Cartwright. It gave Beulah some relief to know that a good three-quarters of the campers would rather watch a nurse bandage a volunteer than stand up on stage and sing a song. At least she wasn’t alone in that.

  Constance had confiscated the portable Victrola. It had been locked away in the supply shed until it could be put to some communal use, and this was just such an opportunity. Fleurette would’ve preferred an upright piano, with Clarence banging out tunes at her request, but such an instrument could not be had on short notice.

  “I’ll write off to my sergeant and see about getting one here in time for your concert, miss,” Clarence promised. “I wouldn’t mind putting my hands on a piano again.”

  Without the piano, there was nothing to do but to sing along to the Victrola. Constance carried it into the mess hall and allowed Ellie Duval, the owner of the player, to set it up. Beulah had the impression that Tizzy, Ginny, Ellie, and the others wouldn’t have come to the auditions either, but Ellie seemed to want to keep an eye on her Victrola and the others followed along.

  Fleurette stood up on the speaking platform at the front of the mess hall. “I’ve sent away for the sheet music, so that whoever is going to sing in the chorus will have time to learn it. May Ward usually travels with eight girls, but she’ll be by herself this time. She said that we could cast more than eight if we wanted to. We once had twenty up on stage in Pittsburgh.”

  Beulah could tell that Fleurette was showing off. Had any of the other girls traveled with a vaudeville act? Here again, Beulah marveled at how easily she put such a small accomplishment before an audience. From what the other girls said, May Ward was a minor actress, past her prime and unable to get a foothold in the moving pictures business. It wasn’t much to have traveled with her, but Fleurette thought it a fine achievement and believed everyone else would, too.

  “If you don’t mind singing unaccompanied, you can come up and perform whatever you’ve prepared,” Fleurette said. “Otherwise, you can sing along to the Victrola, but you’ll have to choose from among the music that comes with it. Who wants to go first?”

  A few girls queued up and took the stage with their own music: sweet, pretty songs that they’d been singing for years in their mothers’ parlors. A few others sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” or “My Old Kentucky Home,” and performed them quickly and nervously, as if their only interest was in getting it over with so they could sit in the back and avoid that Red Cross bandaging lesson.

  It was all innocuous enough, until Tizzy took the stage.

  “I believe there’s a song on the Victrola I could sing,” she announced with a note of daring in her voice.

  Ginny put the music on. It wasn’t a song Beulah recognized—she didn’t keep up with the new music—and she was surprised when a man started singing. What was Tizzy doing with a man’s song?

  She sang loudly and clearly, drowning out the man’s voice on the recording with her own. It was a bit of a dirge, the way he sang it, but she made it into a comical song, and embellished it with winks and elaborate vocal flourishes.

  I love you, I love you,

  You’re just the kind of girl for me,<
br />
  But there is something ’bout you, makes me doubt you,

  Why, oh! why must it be?

  You dare me, you scare me,

  And still I like you more each day,

  But you’re the kind that will charm, and then do harm,

  you’ve got a dangerous way.

  “You’re a Dangerous Girl.” That was the song. It had been popular just last year. Beulah remembered walking past a sheet music shop on Fifth Avenue and hearing the salesman sing it for a customer.

  “I wonder who they wrote that one about,” the man said, and the salesman only winked and kept singing.

  Beulah rushed on before she heard her name invoked. There had been a rash of songs like that after the trial. Songs about wanton vixens who lead men to their ruin took hold among vaudevillians and theater producers. Everyone wanted to put her story out in front of the public again, reformulated only slightly, so as to make it seem like dangerous girls and tawdry affairs had only been invented for people’s amusement.

  The theaters wouldn’t allow Beulah on the stage, but they would put up another girl with another name and a story only slightly different from hers. That was enough to sell tickets. That was enough for someone to get rich, as long as it wasn’t her. It could never be her.

  The songs only got worse from there. Tizzy and her friends, it seemed, were obsessed by Binford-style scandals. Dorina and Liddy, two girls so alike that they might’ve been twins, with their pink cheeks and dimpled smiles, linked arms and delivered a clownish rendition of another lurid tune.

  If I hadn’t-a shot young Mary

  I’d have loved her all my life

  If I hadn’t-a shot young Mary

  I’d still have her for my wife

  But she’s dead and buried, Lord, she’s gone

  And soon I’m going, too.

  If I hadn’t-a met young Annie

  I never would’ve thought to run

  If I hadn’t-a met young Annie

  I never would’ve bought that gun

  But Annie led me down that path, Lord, it’s Annie’s fault

  And now I’ve lost her, too.

  Beulah went cold all over. The room seemed to swim around as the girls finished their vile song, to great laughter and applause from the others.

  She dropped to a bench and looked around at the faces surrounding her, all of them grinning monstrously, their teeth bared, their lips red and wet.

  Did they know? How could they? And why would they take this moment to put it in front of her?

  From behind her, a hand clamped down on her shoulder and she nearly screamed.

  “Roxanna?” It was Constance, taking a seat alongside her, pressing her body solidly against Beulah’s. It was evident to Beulah that Constance had done something along the lines of a matron’s duties before. She knew how to use her size to her advantage, and to put herself right up against a girl in trouble, offering her comfort, perhaps, but also giving her no way out. Beulah gave into it and sank against her.

  “It’s that song,” she whispered. “I don’t know why they sing such wicked, awful songs.”

  Constance looked down at her in surprise and put a hand on her forehead. “I didn’t think you shocked so easily. But you’re right, it’s a—well, it’s what my mother would’ve called an ode to iniquity. Go on out and get yourself some air. I’ll put a stop to it.”

  An ode to iniquity. As long as she lived, Beulah would keep learning new words for what she was. Her stomach turned over, sharp and sour, and she ran out of the tent with her hand over her mouth.

  21

  HAVING BEEN LIBERATED from the auditions, Beulah found it a relief to be out in the chill of early evening. No one else was about. From inside the mess hall came laughter and a pair of voices raised in song. They were singing decent songs now, about a sweet home far away and a mother praying for her son. Constance must’ve seen to that.

  Across the field, a Red Cross demonstration was under way in one of the classroom tents. The campers inside were mostly quiet. Beulah could hear only Nurse Cartwright, who was lecturing in a loud, clear voice. “If you can’t find anything that will answer for a splint,” she was saying, “take his belt and lash his legs together, like so.”

  Beulah shuddered at the thought of it. What gave nurses the courage to tend to wounded and dying men? Beulah was probably more at ease with the bodies of men than any girl at camp, but not when they were suffering. Not when they were in agony.

  She’d known every kind of man during her years down on Mayo Street. At first, when she was only thirteen and looked it, men would try to have their way with her, but they would only go so far. They liked to hold her on their laps, and bounce her up and down, and rock her back and forth. They liked to put their hands on her, and to go all the way up her skirt, and to put a finger somewhere they shouldn’t. Sometimes they’d take her hand and put it down their trousers. Beulah always kept her eyes closed at those moments. That made it seem more like a game, or something she was only imagining.

  She couldn’t remember exactly when it progressed beyond that, but Henry Clay wasn’t her first. He didn’t get that privilege. She couldn’t remember who did. They were all like him, though: fresh-faced, milk-fed, strong-jawed southern boys raised on fried chicken, biscuits, and sorghum syrup. They came to Mayo Street with sharp haircuts, clean shirts, and pockets full of their daddy’s money. Beulah sought them out particularly: she couldn’t stand an older man, or one who wasn’t clean.

  Even though Henry Clay wasn’t the first man to take her to bed, he was her first in another way. He was her first love and, to this day, her only love. He was the only one she ever thought of when she was apart from him. He was the only one who talked to her—really talked to her, about his innermost thoughts—and the only one who seemed interested in hearing hers.

  “Strange as it seems,” he said to her one night, when they were up in her room at May Stuart’s, “you and me have something in common. We don’t want to live the lives we’ve been given. I don’t want to run my daddy’s store, and you don’t want to keep house with your Meemaw.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Beulah said. She had her head on his chest and she was smoking his cigarette. “What are we going to do about it?”

  “Run off, I guess,” he said.

  Beulah’s heart turned over when he said that. That was how she knew she loved him.

  HOW, THEN, COULD Henry Clay ever marry another woman? She was so astonished to hear about his nuptials, only a year after Henry Clay Jr. was born, that she had to see it for herself.

  Beulah had been off in Alexandria, at the school Meemaw chose for her, although she only lasted a month at St. Mary’s before the teachers there realized exactly what sort of girl they had in their possession and told her she wasn’t welcome. The rest of the tuition money stayed in Meemaw’s pocket, as did most of the money for the upkeep of the baby, until a home was found for him.

  Meemaw never could bring herself to deposit the baby at the Catholic home as she’d sworn she would, nor did she have the wherewithal to place him in another town, far away from Henry Clay’s family. She kept him for so long that Beulah thought Meemaw wanted him for her own, and never imagined that she’d give him away.

  But just before Christmas, a neighbor girl came over to say that her family was looking to adopt a baby, and pointed out that Meemaw seemed to be in possession of one that could not possibly be her own. It took very little convincing for the child to change hands. Beulah wasn’t told about any of it until months later, in the middle of summer, when cholera took the baby away. The funeral was over by the time she knew a thing about it.

  Beulah returned to Richmond to lay a wreath at her baby’s grave. With that wreath she also laid down all of her regrets: her regret for surrendering the child at all, and making it so that the baby would never know its mother, and her regret for not taking seriously Meemaw’s intention to give the baby away. What made her think that an old woman could raise an infant
by herself, or would want to?

  She could hardly imagine what those last months must’ve been like for little Henry Clay Beattie Jr. (she called him Clay, during the short while that she had him), being passed from one family to another, with such a bewildering array of new faces to look up at through those deep blue eyes, blinking at each face like a star winking in and out. For his life to be over before it started—it was terrible to think of. What had she done by abandoning him, and to what end? School had nothing to offer her. She knew it wouldn’t. She’d lost her little boy, and gained nothing by it.

  She laid that wreath down for her mother, too, although she hadn’t any idea whether her mother was alive or dead. Meemaw didn’t want to hear Jessie’s name spoken in her presence. That was another regret: Why hadn’t Beulah ever gone looking for her mother again? Couldn’t she, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, have found some kind of steady work and rented a room for the two of them? If her mother was so terribly ill, shouldn’t Beulah have provided her with a bed, at least?

  It was a mournful day in the graveyard. All of Richmond seemed gray and drab. She couldn’t stand to stay in that town for another minute. She would’ve left right away, but then she heard about the wedding.

  Henry Clay was to marry Louise Welford Owen, a girl from a good family, a girl who wore the approval of Henry Clay’s daddy like a garment label. Beulah remembered hearing Henry Clay talk about a girl named Louise, a girl so bland he couldn’t ever find a word to say to her. Louise and Henry’s mother could talk endlessly of old family connections, of grandmothers’ china patterns, of cousins who married well and nieces who didn’t. It bored Henry to tears, all this talk of lineage and inheritance and propriety. Henry couldn’t imagine how his own father had seen fit to marry a society girl.

  “He must never have known a girl like you, Beulah,” Henry said to her one afternoon, as they lay in bed together passing a bottle of wine back and forth between them. “If he had, he would’ve known what he was missing, and that would’ve been intolerable. I have never once seen my father laugh at a single thing my mother said, and you make me laugh all the time, girlie.” He chucked her under the chin when he said it.