The Family Greene

by Ann Rinaldi

  "I will have an answer," Pa said. "Can you give me a good reason for this?"

  Tears came down and I swallowed them back. "Please, Pa, I can't. Please, you can punish me all you want. I can't."

  He scowled. Pa scowling was not a thing you wanted to see.

  "Has he done something to offend you? Has he acted unseemly toward you? You know what I mean, Cornelia. We've spoken of this."

  "No, sir." I started to cry.

  He let me cry for a minute, then took out his handkerchief and reached out his arm to me. I went to him, and he gave me the handkerchief and enfolded me in his arms.

  "My pa beat me," he said with no emotion in his voice. "When I came home from sneaking away to go to dances, he'd beat me bad. Quakers don't dance, you see, Cornelia, and I loved to dance. One time I fooled him. I put some wooden shingles inside my pants."

  My sobbing subsided somewhat. I looked up at him. "You are a good pa," I said.

  He rested his chin on top of my head. "Mayhap I should have let the others go for a ride this afternoon with Mr. Miller," he said. "Only I wanted to take you and George and Martha and Nat on a trip soon. To see the land I purchased on the southern end of Cumberland Island. It's a long trip. We've got to take a sailing ship about a hundred miles on the Saint Marys River, then go by horseback to where my land lies."

  "Oh! When can we go, Pa?"

  He scowled down at me. "Not for a while now. Not until I'm sure your mother is well."

  I nodded respectfully. "Is this where you're going to build the house you call Dungeness?"

  "Yes."

  "And you've got the plans all drawn up for it?"

  "Yes."

  "Mr. Miller told us you'll never live there."

  "He did, did he?"

  "I shouldn't tell tales out of school, Pa, but yes."

  He released me, but not without a mild shake. "No, you shouldn't. I don't like tales told out of school. I should be punishing you, not rewarding you by promising you a trip. But yes, I'd like to take you. Only after your mother is well again and we see how fares the baby. Do you think you could stay good until then? And go to school, despite your dislike for Mr. Miller?"

  "Yes, sir," I promised.

  "All right, now I'm going to see your mother. Go downstairs and make yourself useful."

  ***

  THE BABY DIED before nightfall. And I blamed myself, though neither Mama nor Pa did. But if I hadn't blamed myself, I could always count on Martha, who reminded me before I went to my room that night.

  "Well, I hope you're proud of what you did this day. It's all your fault, you know, that we lost our little sister."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WE BURIED the baby the next day, in the small cemetery plot Mama and Pa had on Mulberry Grove.

  Mama was not in attendance. She stayed in bed, Eulinda by her side. The rest of us gathered round the small coffin. And all the slaves sang their songs to oblige Pa, but I knew the sad cadence of these spirituals only brought him lower than he needed to be.

  When Pa and Mama had lived up north, they'd never had any slaves. They did not believe in slavery. But after the war, Pa had no money. He'd given thirty thousand pounds sterling to merchants to cover debts because they'd supplied his troops with clothing and other necessities. All his wartime investments went bad. His privateers lost fortunes. The iron furnace showed no profit.

  That's what Mama had told us.

  That's when the Georgia legislature gave him Mulberry Grove.

  Pa had once written to his friend Abel Thomas, a Philadelphia Quaker, On the subject of slavery, nothing can be said in its defense.

  And then, of a sudden, he had Mulberry Grove, which had more than 1,300 acres and included "fine river swamp" for cultivating rice, and a "very elegant house."

  South Carolina gave him a plantation called Boone's Barony, 6,600 acres on the Edisto River. And ten thousand guineas to go with it. The land without means of cultivation will be but a dead interest, Pa wrote when he petitioned the South Carolina legislature to buy the Negroes that went with Boone's Barony.

  Pa came to realize that you could not have plantations without slaves to run them.

  He began buying more slaves.

  He had to make a trip to Philadelphia, where he wanted to buy fifty-eight more slaves for Mulberry Grove. He refused to pay more than sixty pounds sterling per person.

  He now had a slave broker. The man advised him that the prices he wanted to pay were far too low: Common field negroes sold at St. Augustine for 50pounds to 70pounds sterling and on credit, of course, they sell much higher. The lowest terms that have been offered were 70 pounds per head for a gang of 72, viz. 25 men, 24 women, & 23 children, the man wrote, advising Pa.

  Pa paid a just price, though it was more than he wanted to, and purchased fifty-eight Negroes in Philadelphia and had them conveyed to his estate in Georgia.

  By that spring, the slaves had two hundred acres planted in rice and corn. And it looked, Mama said, as if the plantation would start to pay for itself.

  ***

  I CRIED ALL through the funeral for the baby. And just before it, I marched myself into Pa's library and made a demand of him.

  He was bending over his desk, writing something. He looked up. "What is it?" he asked.

  "The baby has to have a name," I told him.

  From wherever he was in his mind, he brought himself forward. He straightened up and stood, pen in hand. "A name?" he asked.

  "Yes, sir. She can't be buried without a name. What is it to be?"

  He gave a heavy sigh. He closed his eyes for a moment. "She only lived a few hours, Cornelia."

  "Please, Pa, she has to have a name. Didn't you and Mama give her one?"

  They had not. I could see that now.

  "Why is it so important to you?" he asked.

  "Because she would be alive if not for me. I killed her."

  "Don't say that."

  "I did, Pa."

  "I heard Martha say that to you when you parted before going to bed last night. And I'm going to have a firm word with that young lady about it. I will not have you living with that on your conscience. And I do not want to hear that out of you again. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, sir."

  He nodded, slowly. "Very well, if it makes you feel better, you may give the baby a name. I have to enter something in the family Bible anyway. What will it be?"

  "You want me to pick it?"

  "What will it be?"

  I thought for a minute. "Virginia," I said. "Do you think that will be acceptable to Mama?"

  "You are never to mention it to your mother. Or anyone. Now go out to the cemetery. I'll be right along."

  ***

  TOWARD THE END of the war, Pa had asked to be put in charge of the whole southern campaign. General Washington, by order of Congress, had given it to him.

  Somehow the South got a grip on Pa's soul, because he has the kind of soul you can get a grip on if you have a worthy cause.

  After the Georgia legislature gave him Mulberry Grove, he invested his money in seven thousand acres of land on Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia. And he drew up plans for a house, not yet built, that he called Dungeness.

  More a castle, it appeared from his drawing, four stories high, with thirty rooms and a tower on top. He wanted it made of tabby, which is a mixture of concrete and oyster shells. The walls, Pa said, would be six feet thick. He told us too that the land around it had acres and acres of oak and pine trees that he wanted to make into timber.

  In a house that big, I could certainly find a room where nobody could seek me out, I decided, and I could not wait to go with Pa and the others on the trip to see the land.

  ***

  WHEN THE FUNERAL was over, Pa gave orders that we were to attend school. It was no holiday and it shouldn't be treated like one.

  "That means you too, Cornelia," he said. "And I'll tolerate no less."

  I went to the classroom faithfully over the next two wee
ks, but I could not concentrate on my work. I seemed to fall into a morose stupor. A terrible sadness overtook me like the fog that sometimes lays over the edge of the Savannah River, just a hundred yards from our house.

  Twice in these two weeks, Martha reminded me that I was responsible for the death of the baby.

  It preyed on my mind.

  Sometimes I would just stare out the windows of our house at the great marshy wilderness of the rice fields. Sometimes I would watch my brother George tramping through the cornfields with Pa. George and Pa often walked through the cornfields together. No doubt Pa was teaching George things, things he had no call to teach the rest of us.

  At table one evening I paused, fork in hand, and stopped chewing.

  "Cornelia," Mama said, "what is wrong? What's ailing you?"

  "I was just wondering what this place was like when it was a silkworm farm."

  Pa fastened his gaze on me. He sensed something was amiss and he knew what it was. He knew I was still blaming myself for the death of the baby.

  After supper that very night, he summoned both Martha and me into his library.

  We stood there before his desk, much like two soldiers who had fallen asleep on guard duty, both sensing the worst.

  "I have a sense of what is going on," he said. "And it is getting tedious. Nothing is more painful than for me to see you two girls fighting. Martha, how many times since the death of the baby have you told your sister that she is to blame for this tragedy?"

  "I never said such," Martha lied.

  Pa slapped his palm on the desk. "Do not make so bold as to lie to me! I heard with my own ears you say these words to her the night the baby died."

  From the corner of my eye I saw Martha's face go white.

  "How many times since?" Pa asked again.

  Martha kept a still tongue in her head.

  "Cornelia?" Pa's gaze then was directed at me.

  I lowered my eyes and refused to answer. I would not tell tales out of school. And if he punished me, so be it.

  Pa saw his predicament. "From the observations I am able to make, I can see that you, Cornelia, are being continually brought low by circumstances your sister will not allow you to escape from. Martha, never in all my born days did I ever suspect you to be so unkind. I have not forgotten, lest you think I have, the terrible day your mother lay on the floor in the kitchen, badly injured, and I came to her aid. Before you said anything to me, you told me that it was all Cornelia's fault. In a time of family crisis your first thought was to lay blame."

  Nobody said anything for a moment.

  Then Pa spoke again. "You know, Martha," he said quietly, "the first time I saw you, you were over a year old. I rode one hundred and seventy miles, from White Plains, New York, to Coventry, Rhode Island, in two nights and three days. It was July of 'seventy-eight. I had not seen your mother since Valley Forge, winter of 'seventy-seven. George was two and a half and he scarce knew me. I had a day to spend with my family before I had to return to war. You were not a healthy child. You had what they call rickets. Perhaps, I mind now, I was away from my family too much, at war too much, for me to impart my values to you."

  "Pa," Martha said.

  "We cannot be divided in this family, nevertheless," he went on. "I thought I had striven to teach you that. I will not have it. Therefore, I do not beseech you both, I order you both to come about and mend your ways. Cornelia, I have told you once and I will tell you only once again, that the death of the baby was not your fault. It was God's will. Do you think you are God? Do you?"

  "No, sir."

  "Then let your mind entertain the fact that you are not responsible for life-death matters. Martha, my current sentiment toward you is high dissatisfaction. You have displayed all the qualities lately that I abhor. So you are to be punished. Not out of vindictiveness but out of hope that you will realize how unhappy I am with you and that if you pursue this same line of conduct, you will bring more unhappiness upon me. And yourself."

  Martha raised her chin in defiance but said nothing.

  "I intended to take you and George, Cornelia, and Nat on a trip, soon as your mother is well, to the land I own on the southern end of Cumberland Island, to see the place. Now the rest of us will go, but you will stay home."

  I stifled a gasp.

  "Not fair," Martha snapped.

  Again Pa brought his palm down on his desk. "Don't sass me, or you'll be confined to your room for a week."

  He was not our pa now. He was a general in the army, second in command to Washington. I could almost see the American flag on a pole behind his chair.

  Martha hushed. I could just imagine what she was feeling inside. I knew how much Pa's approval meant to her, because I knew how much it meant to me. And if he spoke like that to me, I would melt like a candle and drip into nothingness onto the floor.

  He dismissed us then, cautioning us both not to bring our "childish pettiness" before Mama. "She is still recovering," he cautioned, "in mind and body, from her loss."

  ***

  I WAS NEAR nine years old when Anthony Wayne made his spring visit. For some reason I felt electricity in the wind and decided that Anthony Wayne had brought it with him.

  Mama had known Brigadier General Anthony Wayne since Valley Forge, where he had helped save the army from starving to death by making expeditions rounding up cattle and bringing them back.

  He had a wife, even then, but she never came to Valley Forge like Mrs. Washington or Mama or Mrs. Knox. Her name was Polly Penrose, and she came from an important Philadelphia family. Early in their marriage, Wayne took her on a trip to Nova Scotia, when he had been a surveyor and agent for a land company. There she was miserable. Once home, she vowed never to accompany him anywhere again, and never did.

  Wayne, everyone said, loved women. Mama was fond of saying that he collected sweethearts all over the place and of times forgot he was wed.

  In the army, Pa had put Wayne in charge of the Georgia campaign.

  And wherever Mama and Pa lived during the war, Wayne made it his business to call.

  Mama, you see, was one of his "sweethearts." She knew it, and Pa knew it and accepted it. And Wayne knew it, and he respected the boundaries of it because he respected Pa.

  Wayne's plantation was now downriver from Mulberry Grove. He came often to call. I found myself quickening and becoming more alive when he did. I was fascinated with his large, capable hands, his manner of speech, his teasing of my brothers and sisters.

  He had come to sup with us on this one balmy March evening, and Pa was telling him about having two hundred acres of the place producing rice and corn this year.

  "Your gardens are delightful," Wayne said. All the time, he was watching me, and I was looking at my plate of food.

  "Yes," Pa agreed. "We'll soon have green peas and as fine heads of lettuce as you'll ever see. The mockingbirds sing, evening and morning. In our orchard we expect to have apples, pears, peaches, apricots, figs, and oranges. And strawberries that measure three inches around."

  I looked at Wayne. He smiled at me. "You're raising some beautiful children, too, Nathanael," he said, eyeing me as he said this.

  I blushed, then I shivered, then tears came to my eyes.

  "Cornelia, you're not eating," Mama said.

  "I don't feel well. Can I please be excused," I pleaded, looking at Pa.

  He, being the general that he would always be, saw the predicament I was in, in my girlish embarrassment, and said, softly and gently, "Of course, darling."

  I fled the table and the room.

  Wayne, now separated from his wife, practically became a member of the family. So much so that he came to call without notice, when Pa was away on business. Those times, he had long talks with Mama in the front parlor while she did her embroidery. They talked about the old days at Valley Forge. One day when I came in from picking some strawberries in the garden, the ones that measured three inches around, I heard them from down the center hall of Mulberry Grove. As I
approached the door of the front parlor, the talking stopped. The door of the room was partly open, and I found that they were kissing. Standing up and kissing. She held the pillowcase that she was embroidering in one hand as he held her in his arms.

  I made a noise in my throat that was involuntary, more of a stifled cry.

  Wayne turned and Mama pushed him away. Her eyes went big and she said to me, "Cornelia, don't you know you're supposed to knock and not just intrude on people?"

  Wayne took my part. "It's her house. She'll throw me out in a minute. All right, Cornelia, I know when I'm not wanted. I was just giving your mother a polite kiss because I can't stay for the noon repast. I've got a plantation to run, too. Someday you two must come and see it."

  He was not to be brought low by a near-nine-year-old girl. He reached for his hat on a nearby table, bowed to us both, and strode out of the room, right past me.

  As he did so, he patted my head and looked down at me, this handsome man with the strong jaw and hazel eyes, and winked as if we had some secret between us. Then he walked out, leaving me there to deal with Mama. Leaving her there to make explanations to me, if she chose to make any.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MAMA NEVER let a word pass her lips to me about that kiss with Anthony Wayne. And so, in turn, I never made mention of it to her.

  It was there, though, between us, like a moth fluttering between two flames, igniting our souls, making each of us remember.

  But somehow not as bad as what had flared in me the time I'd caught her with my tutor Phineas Miller in the schoolroom.

  I'd forgotten my notebook that day and had gone back for it to find the classroom empty but for Mr. Miller and Mama. She was in front of his desk, leaning over it. He was showing her some papers, and then, just as I came to the doorway, of a sudden he stood up, took her by the shoulders, and kissed her.

  There was my beautiful mama, the mother of five children, and twenty-five-year-old Phineas Miller, who hadn't the sense to mind his own beeswax, kissing her! I wanted to storm into the room and beat him over the head or something! But I just stood there. Then, because the kiss went on beyond decency, I cleared my throat and said, "Excuse me, I left my notebook."