Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray

by Dorothy Love

  “That poor little baby got a red mark on her cheek. Miss Mary’s crying about it. But crying won’t do a bit of good.” Nurse shook her head. “I got to go get some buttermilk for a poultice.”

  I stood there in the hall wondering what I should do. I wanted to see Miss Mary, but not if she was going to be bawling and carrying on. And I was curious. I had never seen a baby with a curse on its head. Then Missus came out with a armful of dirty linens and I had my work cut out for me.

  Next day Missus set me to polishing the furniture in the children’s rooms. I got it all spit shiny and started downstairs to see what was next, and that was when Miss Mary called to me from her room.

  I went in, a part of me curious and another part scared to see the afflicted child. The red mark was still there, so I guessed the buttermilk hadn’t done its job. Miss Mary looked at me with big, sorrowful eyes. When she looked at me like that it was hard to remember that I couldn’t trust her quite as much as I once had.

  Still, in the Liberator Mister Garrison said the colonization people honestly thought they were doing God’s work. I decided as long as I was at Arlington, I had to believe that Miss Mary was sincere and doing her best for me.

  “Selina, do you know whether Judah has anything that might help my child?”

  “Like a spell, you mean?”

  “I don’t believe in spells and neither should you. Nurse brought up a buttermilk plaster to fade the mark, but it didn’t work. Perhaps Judah knows of a different remedy.”

  “I can ask.”

  “Oh, this poor child.” Miss Mary leaned back on her pillows and shut her eyes tight, but tears came running out anyway.

  I didn’t know what to do. For some reason she had been weepy ever since she got back from St. Louis. It looked to me like another attack of the mullygrubs was coming on. I didn’t want to see her cry, so I headed her off. “Miss Mary, you haven’t said what you named this one.”

  She sniffed and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her nightgown. “We’re going to call her Anne Carter Lee. After Captain Lee’s mother.”

  Good news: there wasn’t going to be a fifth Mary at Arlington. “That’s a good name. Sounds like a name in a book.”

  She propped herself up on her elbows. “How would you like to come with me on a trip?”

  I was so surprised I couldn’t say a word. I couldn’t picture Missus letting me go anywhere. Not when President Washington’s silver needed polishing every single week.

  “Captain Lee thinks I ought to take the children to visit my Turner cousins for the summer. Mother will come with me, of course, and Kitty. But we will need more hands to look after four children.”

  “But who is going to take care of Arlington if we are all gone?”

  “Margaret will be here, and Charles and Peter. And my father will be here to keep an eye on things.”

  Just like that it was settled. Along about the middle of July we packed up and started out for Kinloch, which was the name of Mister Turner’s place. We started out early. Daniel drove Missus and Miss Mary and the children in the carriage, and Thornton Gray got to drive the wagon that Kitty, Cassie, Nurse, and me rode on. Mister Custis had got a dog for Custis and Little Mary, and the dog rode all the way sitting on top of the trunks. Thornton kept after me to sit beside him, but I didn’t want to start any talk about me and him. I sat by Kitty and she told me about her adventures in St. Louis.

  It took all day and part of the night to get there. Miss Mary’s cousins came out to greet us. We went in and they had supper ready and we ate. White folks in the dining room and slaves on the porch and in the yard. Mister Turner sent one of his slaves to show Thornton and Daniel where to stable the horses, and gave them some quilts for bedding down in the barn.

  After I helped Miss Mary get the children ready for bed, I took my quilt and went to the sleeping porch where Kitty and the rest, except for Nurse, were already settling down. Pretty soon Kitty and Cassie started to snore, but I couldn’t sleep. After a while I took my quilt out to the front porch and sat on the steps listening to the crickets singing in the grass. Watching the lightning bugs flashing in the dark.

  Next thing I knew, Thornton Gray was standing over me dripping water onto my head. “You better get back where you suppose to be ’fore Miss Mary comes looking for you.”

  I sat up and scratched at a mosquito bite on my arm. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly seven. Me and Daniel is fixing to head back to Arlington.” He grinned. “You sure you don’t want to come with me?”

  “Wouldn’t matter if I did, now, would it?”

  “Reckon not. You still got that paper I give you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You can trust me, Selina.” His voice went real low, in a way that made my stomach jump. “Because I—”

  I jumped up and folded my quilt. “I better go in.”

  “All right then. Reckon I’ll be seeing you whenever Miss Mary takes a notion to come on back home.”

  Daniel drove the carriage into the yard. I waved to him and watched Thornton head to the barn to get the wagon. I went back to the sleeping porch. Kitty and Cassie were awake and waiting on breakfast. We could smell bacon and biscuits and coffee coming from the summer kitchen.

  After breakfast came morning prayers, with everybody standing in the yard while Mister Turner read to us from the Bible. Then Miss Mary called me to come up to her room. She had just finished nursing Miss Anne Carter Lee, who was sleeping with her fists curled up like she was ready to fight. I figured with that red mark on her face, she was in for a lifetime of fighting off people making fun of her.

  “Selina, I am having a time with my hair.” Miss Mary handed me her hairbrush. “Can you do anything with it?”

  “I’m a housekeeper. I don’t know much about hair, but I might can make you a braid.”

  “Splendid! I do not want to fuss with it at all.”

  I braided her hair the way Mauma had taught me and helped her with her dress, an old blue one with wide sleeves that she wore for gardening back home. I could hear Custis and Rooney playing in the room next door and Little Miss Mary shouting and pounding down the stairs. But Miss Mary was staring out the window with the sweetest smile on her face, like she didn’t hear nothing but the birds singing.

  Finally she turned in her chair and pointed to a stand of trees. “See that oak grove down there? That is where my husband and I first realized we were meant to be married. Oh, he was handsome, even though he was just a boy of twenty. Never shall I forget how dashing he looked in his uniform.”

  I could see she was missing Mister Robert real bad, and I was afraid she might start crying again. “Sure is a pretty day. What you planning to do with it, Miss Mary? It’s too nice to sit inside feeling bad and missing folks.”

  “You are absolutely right. I think I will take the children for a walk this morning. I want to take my paint box along. Nurse will look after the baby, but I need you and Cassie to help keep an eye on the others.”

  Sounded good to me. Better than sweeping and polishing things. I looked through her trunk for her paint box and drawing paper. “You going to need a sunbonnet, Miss Mary.”

  She sighed. “What a bother. But of course you are right. Mother will never let me out of doors without one.”

  It took some doing to get the boys and Little Miss Mary ready for the outing. Custis wanted to bring his dog, which he had named Rusty. Rooney had lost one of his shoes and I had to find it. Little Miss Mary pitched a walleyed fit and said she wanted to stay with Missus. But Missus was expecting a visit from her Fitzhugh cousins. She peeled that child off her lap and sent us off with a basket of sandwiches and a quilt for sitting on.

  We walked across a meadow until we got to a stream of water. On the other side were a grove of trees and some vines with red flowers hanging down. It made a pretty scene: blue water, red vines, green trees. Miss Mary spread the quilt and opened her paint box. The boys took off, and Cassie followed them to keep them out of troubl
e. The dog ran ahead, his tail swiping the air like a feather duster.

  Miss Mary bent down over her painting and seemed like she forgot the rest of us were there. I picked some vines and started weaving them together.

  Little Mary plopped down beside me. “Selina, what are you doing?”

  “Making a crown.”

  “Out of leaves?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Who is it for? I know! Me.”

  “What makes you so sure? Maybe I’m making it for your brother Custis, or that spotted dog of his.”

  She giggled. “Dogs don’t wear crowns. Boys don’t either.”

  “Of course they do. It talks about it in the Bible.” I tucked the ends of the vines under.

  “I don’t care. I want it.” She reached for it. “It’s pretty.”

  “Let me tell you something, Mee. In your long life there is bound to be lots of things you will want and can’t have. It’s going to go hard for you if you can’t learn that people don’t always get what they want. Even you.”

  “I’ll tell Mama you were mean to me and then you’ll be in big trouble.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She jumped up. “Keep your stupid crown. It’s ugly anyway.”

  I shaded my eyes and looked back at Miss Mary. She had finished her sketch and was waving to the boys. Mee ran to meet Custis and Rooney, who had been wading, judging from their wet pant legs.

  Miss Mary frowned at Cassie like the whole thing was her fault, and then at her boys. “Custis Lee, what on earth happened?”

  “Rusty treed a squirrel, then he got scared and wouldn’t cross the creek. I had to go fetch him.”

  “Mama, I helped,” Rooney said. “Rusty was awful scared.”

  Miss Mary laughed, and it was like sunshine breaking through the darkest clouds. “Then I suppose it is a good thing you brave boys were there to rescue the poor thing.”

  Custis bent down to study his mother’s artwork. “It’s pretty, Mama. It looks like a picture in a book. Can I have it for my room?”

  “If you wish, precious child.”

  “I want a picture too, Mama.” Rooney collapsed onto her lap and rested his head on her shoulder.

  “All right, my sweet. When we come tomorrow, I shall paint a picture just for you.”

  Rooney beamed at his mother. “And after that it will be Mee’s turn.”

  “I don’t want one.” Little Mary sat down on the quilt and folded her hands. “I’m hungry.”

  Miss Mary put away her paint box and opened up the basket. I gave Cassie the crown I made and we ate our sandwiches. The boys took turns slipping bites to the dog.

  It was a pleasant time there in the sunny meadow with the birds and insects singing and chirping and the water running over the rocks in the stream. When Rooney and Mee got sleepy, Miss Mary said it was time to go home. I folded the quilt. Miss Mary packed up her paint box. Cassie carried the sandwich basket, and we started back to the house. The children and Rusty ran on ahead, leaving Miss Mary and me to follow them.

  She let go a gusty sigh. I was learning that when she sighed like that, it meant she wanted to talk about something that was bothering her. So I said, “What is it, Miss Mary?”

  She stopped walking and reached out for my wrist. “Am I a good mother, Selina?”

  Most of the time it seemed like the children were in charge instead of her. Sometimes they minded her and sometimes they didn’t. But what did she think I was going to answer? “No, you an awful parent”?

  The way she was standing there in the sunshine in a plain old dress that was wrinkled and spotted with paint and her hair in a plait, she looked like a ordinary farmwife and not the rich woman who one day would own Arlington and everything and everybody in it. I felt sorry for her.

  “Just about the best there is, I reckon.”

  “My husband scolds me for not being firm with them. He says I must demand their respect. I try, but they don’t always listen. Especially Mee.”

  I thought of times I saw that girl pushing ahead of her brothers to be first for whatever was happening. Snatching for herself whatever she wanted. A toy, for instance. Or the last biscuit on the breakfast table.

  “Wesley doesn’t listen to Mauma all the time either. But it does seem like Little Mary has a mind of her own, all right.”

  Miss Mary heaved another sigh. “You were right not to give her the crown you made this morning. She must learn to think of others before herself.”

  We started walking again. Seemed like our talk had made Miss Mary feel better. I hoped she was right about Miss Mee learning from what I had done. But some people are just born to think only of their own selves, and it seemed to me Little Mary was one of them.

  The summer passed slowly. On days when Miss Mary’s rheumatism pained her, she sat at a desk in the parlor and wrote long letters to Captain Lee. Then she waited for him to write her back. On good days we went back to the meadow for more painting. When it rained we sat on the porch and listened to Miss Mary reading from the books she had brought from Arlington. Mister Turner played the fiddle, and some nights he stood on the porch and played while Missus and Miss Mary sang. Missus Turner had a fine voice too, and many a night I nearly drifted to sleep listening to the singing.

  On days when Miss Mary’s many cousins came to visit, Cassie and Kitty were in charge of the three older children. Sometimes I went with them fishing in the stream, and me and Cassie and Kitty taught them to play tag and pickup sticks. Come Saturday night we stayed up late talking to the Turner slaves in the yard and singing our own songs. When Sunday rolled around we had prayers on the porch and Mister Turner read from the Bible.

  Then one day it was all over, like waking up from the best dream you ever dreamed. Daniel and Thornton showed up with the wagon and the carriage, and we made the trip back to Arlington.

  The minute I got home I knew there was something bothering my mauma. She stomped around the cabin like she was mad at the whole world. Wouldn’t hardly talk to me. I helped her with the baby and put the corn pone on the fire, and when Daddy and Wesley came in, we sat down to eat supper.

  Many a time Mauma would ask me to read from the Bible before we went to bed. But that night she banged the dishes so loud she woke up the baby, and when Daddy asked her what was the matter she didn’t even answer.

  Wesley caught my eye and said, “Best leave her be, Sister. She in a fighting mood these days.”

  So I went up to bed. My bones were tired after the long trip from Mister Turner’s place, but my thoughts jumped around like drops of water on a hot skillet. I wondered what was on the other side of the stream at Kinloch. What would have happened if one day I had just kept on walking and never come back? I thought about Miss Mary wanting everything to stay the same. And the feelings the Liberator had awakened in me. If there was a wedge between Miss Mary and me, this was it.

  I rolled over to the edge of my pallet and reached underneath to touch that folded-up paper that held my dreams in it.

  “You won’t find it.” Mauma’s voice in the darkness made me jump. She had come up the ladder to the loft silent as a cat.

  I sat up, my heart thumping in my chest. “Who found it?”

  “I did, thank the good Lord. Suppose Mister Custis had found it? Or Missus?”

  “They never come down here. You know that.” I was mad as I had ever been. Over a simple sheet of paper. “It was mine. You had no right to take it.”

  “You got no business putting this whole family in danger, Selina. Have you forgot what they did to Nat Turner?”

  “I haven’t killed any white people lately. Don’t plan on it in the future either.”

  “You think because you work in the house and Miss Mary treats you special, the rules don’t apply to you. Let me tell you something. If they catch you reading things like that, you liable to find yourself in the slave pen across the river and on your way south. Is that what you want?”

  As far as I knew, Mister Custis had never sold a
nybody. But wasn’t no use arguing with her. I flopped down onto my back. “I’m sorry I worried you. I won’t do it again.”

  “All right then. Get some sleep.”

  I never would have thought that one piece of paper could mean so much to me. I felt its absence like a missing arm, but I knew Mister Garrison’s words by heart anyway. Men should be as free as the birds in choosing the time when, the mode how, and the place to which they shall migrate. The world is all before them, where to choose their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

  When morning came I went up to the house to polish the silver.

  17 | MARY

  1841

  But I want to go swimming right now.”

  I looked into the mutinous face of my oldest daughter and wished her father were there to witness just what I had to contend with every moment of that child’s life.

  “I have told you, Mee, that we will go once we are unpacked and the house is in order.”

  “Don’t call me Mee anymore. It’s a baby name and I am not a baby.”

  I shook out a set of summer curtains and draped them across the back of the settee in the parlor of our rented house in Brooklyn. “Well, you are certainly acting like a baby. Agnes is more grown up than you, and she is barely six months old.”

  “You love Annie and Agnes and the boys more than you love me. But I don’t care.”

  I reached for her but she pulled away, her arms crossed. I unpacked another set of curtains, heartsick that this child was so hard to love, was so dead set against me.

  Kitty came in with Annie in her arms. “Miss Mary, I can’t do nothing with this child. Baby Agnes is upstairs sleeping like the dead, but this one here? She has cried for you all morning.”

  I reached for Annie, who had just passed her second birthday. She was usually a happy child and easy to manage. I loved her all the more for the raspberry birthmark still visible on her face.

  Kitty transferred Annie to my arms. “I can unpack that crate for you.”

  Annie quieted as I jostled her on my shoulder. “Where are the boys?”

  “Off somewhere with Jim. Don’t worry, Missus. Jim got his eyes on both of ’em.”