by Peter Taylor
It wasn’t long before the boys’ aunts seemed to feel, with the boys, that they had always lived there. Reaching back into the days of their visits for anecdotes, they managed to vest each of the three little boys with a highly individual character. There was little Jimmy, who had a natural bent for arithmetic and knew his multiplication tables before he ever went to school a day. They stood in awe of his head for figures and wondered what it would be like to have a scientist in the family. They said proudly that they hated to think of what out-of-the-way opinions he might come to hold. Jimmy’s birthday came on January 8, and when he was “just a little fellow,” he had figured out that if Christmas comes on a Sunday, then so must New Year’s Day, and so must the eighth day of January, and then he had calculated how many times in his life Sunday was bound to ruin those three best days of the year. His aunts marveled at him. He was the second boy and in some ways the brightest. Vance was the oldest, and about him they said, “He is a very sober child, so respectful—and beautifully mannered.” As for little Landon, they felt that one could not help adoring him, because of his sweet, dreamy nature and because he was the baby.
Vance was certainly the best mannered. But not their favorite. They had no favorite. Miss Betty and Flo Dear were impartial, utterly and completely. If one of Mr. Tolliver’s business friends said to them, “Tell me about your little nephews; I understand you’re very fond of them,” they would hardly know where to begin. Finally Flo Dear might say, “Well, Vance is the oldest.”
“Yes, Vance is getting so grown up it frightens me,” Miss Betty would add, as though she had been with him every minute since he was born.
All in all, the move to St. Louis gave Miss Betty Pettigru just the new start in life that it seemed to promise. She and her cousin had a small circle of acquaintances among the mothers and aunts of the Tollivers’ friends, but they seldom went anywhere or saw anyone except the members of their own family. Almost at once, Flo Dear had set up her drawing board in her room (she practiced the ancient art of blazonry), and very soon had completed a Tolliver coat of arms, which was hung in the library. Before long, she was accepting commissions from various friends of the Tollivers. Miss Betty assumed just as many household duties as Amy Tolliver would allow her to. But Amy, despite her easygoing nature, was too efficient and farseeing a family manager to leave an opening for trouble in that quarter. Miss Betty, in the end, was left free during almost all her waking hours to be of service to her little nephews. It was the new start in life she hoped for, and yet, almost upon her arrival, there began an unfortunate episode that threatened to demolish all this happiness. Within a matter of weeks after the two ladies were installed a terrible competition for the boys’ favor developed between Miss Betty and Vennie, the Tollivers’ aging cook.
At first glance, it would seem that Miss Betty had all the advantages in the struggle with Vennie. She lived in the same part of the house as the boys did; she ate at the table with them, was treated with respect by their parents, was at their service any and every hour of the day, not excluding Saturday or Sunday, when her chaperonage and financial backing were needed for excursions to the ice-skating rink or to the amusement parks and movie houses. Plainly, she was willing to throw into the battle the entire fortune old Major Pettigru, her father, had left her. She even went so far as to replace the town car she had sold upon leaving Nashville with a sea-green touring car, whose top could be put back in pleasant weather, and she added half again to the houseboy’s salary in order that he might look after the car and Flo Dear and the boys on their expeditions.
Vennie’s advantages were different, but they were real ones and were early recognized by Miss Betty. Vennie lived in a basement. She had not just a room there but an apartment, complete with an outside entrance, living room, kitchen, et cetera. One reached it by descending from the back hall to a long, narrow, poorly lit passage flanked by soapy-smelling laundry rooms, a tightly locked wine cellar, and the furnace room and coal bin. Her quarters were at the end of the passage. Miss Betty was destined never to go there, but in her mind she carried a picture of it that was as clear and accurate as if she had once occupied the rooms herself. The clearness was due to her knowledge of other such quarters she had visited in years gone by, but the accuracy of detail was due to the accounts her little nephews supplied. Landon told about the pictures on Vennie’s walls, pictures of Negro children in middy blouses and other absurdly old-fashioned clothes you never thought of Negroes as wearing, pictures of Negro sergeants and corporals who had actually gone to France in the Great War (they all wore spectacles and looked, somehow, very unlike Negroes), pictures of Landon’s mother and father and of other white people Vennie used to work for, in Thornton, and pictures of those other white people’s children. Jimmy told about the horn on Vennie’s old-timey phonograph and about the player piano and how it stretched and tired your legs to pedal it. Vance never said much about how things looked down there, but he talked about Vennie’s “magic stove.” Nothing cooked on the gas stove upstairs ever tasted like things cooked on that little coal range in Vennie’s kitchen. And not one of the boys had failed to mention the dark scariness of the passage and how safe and bright Vennie’s place always seemed when you got there.
Vennie’s cooking, naturally, was a big advantage, but not such a serious one in itself. Auntie Bet could treat the boys to all manner of good things to eat when they went out. And what sort of handsome presents might she not have made them if it had been permitted! But it wasn’t permitted, and Miss Betty didn’t have to be told but once by Mr. James Tolliver that Christmas was the time—and the only time—when boys should receive expensive presents like bicycles and motor scooters. Amy and James were quick to shake their heads accusingly at her if one of the boys came back from Forest Park Highlands with even just a toy pistol he had won in a chance game. But when a three-layer chocolate cake was discovered in the lower compartment of the sideboard, and there was every reason to think other cakes had been kept there before and partaken of at will by the boys, despite all the rules against eating between meals, no more than a teasing, jovial finger was shaken at Vennie. Miss Betty protested that it really ought to be stopped, because Vance already had hickeys all over his face from so many sweets between meals. “But what can one do?” replied James Tolliver, shrugging his shoulders. “Vennie’s like somebody’s granny, and since the world began, grannies have been hiding cooky jars for young ’uns.”
Certainly James Tolliver would not have made that casual remark if he had known the pain it would cause Miss Betty. It came on a day when the boys had been repeating to her some of the stories they liked to hear Vennie tell, stories about the old times at Thornton and in the country along the Tennessee River where it flows north up from Mississippi. How Uncle Wash got lost in the snowy woods and slept in a hollow log for two nights, and how Mr. Ben Tolliver found him there and thought he was “dead and maybe murdered.” How little Jane Pettigru fell down the old well and Vennie’s blind dwarf brother, whose name was Pettigru, too—Jules Pettigru—was the only one small enough to be let down on a rope to bring the baby out. Vennie’s stories and her way of telling them were surely her greatest advantage. Or, at least, it was the thing that most unnerved Miss Betty and made her feel useless to her little nephews. Occasionally, she had heard Vennie telling some old anecdote to the whole Tolliver family. Vennie would take her stance just inside the dining-room door, arms akimbo, her head thrown back, and wearing a big smile that grew broader and broader until she finished the story in a fit of laughter. Her stories were mostly about the Tolliver family and the Tolliver Negroes, about the wondrous ways they were always rescuing each other from dangers great and small, usually ending with some fool thing a field hand Negro had said, or with Mr. Jeff Tolliver quoting the law to a pickaninny who had snatched an apple from the back porch. The really bad thing was that Miss Betty so often recognized Vennie’s stories, remembered hearing other versions of them in her youth. Yet she could not tell the stories herself,
or even think of them until something Vennie had told the boys reminded her. Sometimes she would recall a very different version of a story Vennie had told, but the boys were not impressed by Auntie Bet’s corrections.
When the very first newness of Miss Betty’s “treats” wore off, there would be times when she got all dressed and ready to take the boys somewhere and found that they were down in the basement with Vennie. Instead of sending for them, she would go to her room in a fit of depression, asking Flo Dear to tell the boys she had a headache and they would go another day.
James and Amy Tolliver were apt to say of almost anyone, “He is a genuine, intelligent, thoroughly sane person and has a fine sense of humor.” They said something of the sort about Miss Betty and Flo Dear, and added that they were also “characters,” which was the final term of approval. Amy especially was inclined to think everyone had a fine sense of humor. She herself saw what was funny in any situation and was wonderfully responsive to other people’s humor, frequently inspiring them to say something quite beyond their ordinary wit. She would laugh heartily at things the two aunts said, though at least half the time James would say afterward that he didn’t think she had been supposed to laugh. But Amy would reply, “Why, Flo Dear has a fine sense of humor,” or “You don’t do the boys’ Auntie Bet justice, James.”
No one was funnier to Amy than her own servants. She was forever laughing either at them or with them about something. But whereas many a Southern woman in a Northern city will get to be on rather intimate terms with her Southern servants, Amy never did. To some extent, she treated them with the same mixture of cordiality and formality that she used with her next-door neighbors. She nearly always liked her servants but never hesitated to “send them on their merry way” when there was reason to. “There are no second chances in Amy’s service,” her husband once said. “One false step and you are cast into the pit.”
“Oh stuff!” said Amy. “This house serves as a sort of immigration office for Tennessee blacks in St. Louis. We bring them up here and train them, and when they leave us, they always go to something better. You know that’s so.”
James laughed and said, “Only old Vennie is a permanent fixture here, I guess.”
“Ah, have no illusion about that,” said Amy. “Vennie’s time is bound to come. And when it does, we’ll be liberated from a very subtle tyranny. When Vennie is gone, I tell you, the turnover among the others won’t be nearly as fast.”
It seemed too funny for words when the current maid and houseboy could not get used to the fact that Flo Dear and Miss Betty were no longer to be regarded as guests. Despite all Amy could do, Emmaline would put only company linen on their beds, and every few mornings she would slip upstairs with their breakfasts on a tray. One morning, in an effort to put a stop to that, the two ladies came marching down the stairs carrying their trays, and they proceeded, amid general hilarity, to transfer their breakfast dishes to their regular places at the table. Emmaline was called in to witness it, and Bert, the houseboy, was also present. The two Negroes laughed more heartily than even the little boys at the two aunts’ clowning. Amy seemed almost hysterical. “I laughed so hard I thought I was going to have hysterics,” she said afterward.
But Miss Betty said, “The only signs of hysteria I saw were in Bert and Emmaline. They seemed downright scared to me.” Half an hour later, when she went upstairs, she didn’t stop a second in her own room but passed right on through it and through the bathroom into Flo Dear’s room. Flo Dear had preceded her upstairs by some fifteen or twenty minutes and was already at work at her drawing board. Miss Betty knew that her cousin hated being interrupted, but what she had to say could not wait. “I am now convinced,” she announced, “that all this politeness is that old Vennie’s doing.”
Flo Dear raised her eyes and stared at Miss Betty. “It is now plain to me,” said Miss Betty, “that Bert and Emmaline are taking orders from two mistresses.”
Presently Flo Dear gave three quick, affirming little nods and said, “Yes, you’re probably right. But you and I must not give them still two more mistresses.” She and Miss Betty looked into one another’s eyes for a moment, and then Miss Betty turned and retreated into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Yet very soon Bert and Emmaline began to have small pieces of change thrust into their hands at the oddest moments—when Bert forgot to put the pillow in Miss Betty’s chair at table or when Emmaline put frayed and faded towels in the ladies’ bathroom. Within a few weeks, the difficulty with the two younger servants was past.
Miss Betty’s three “nephews” went to a school on Delmar Boulevard, only a few blocks from home. School was out at one o’clock on Wednesdays, and it was their privilege that day to bring home as many as four guests to lunch. Since Wednesday also happened to be Emmaline’s day off, it was Vennie’s privilege not only to cook but to serve the meal to the boys. It was a privilege and an advantage of which she made the most. By a ruling of Vance’s, none of the white adults were allowed to be present at the meal, and Vance often directed what menu should be used. He always saw to it that Landon asked the blessing at that meal, and there was no horseplay whatsoever at the table. Vennie served in a black uniform with white cap and apron, and she never said a word until spoken to by Vance. But Vance, seated at the head of the table with his black hair slicked down on his head, the part glistening like a white scar, would faithfully begin addressing remarks to Vennie when dessert was about over. He did it in just the manner that his father did it whenever Vennie appeared at the evening meal, and Vennie responded with the same show of modesty and respect. “Oh, come on, Vennie,” Vance would say. “Tell us about Uncle Wash’s fight with the bear when they were laying the railroad to Texas.”
Vennie would demur, saying, “Those boys don’t want to hear my old-nigger talk.” But finally she would be brought around by the insistence of all the boys, and never were her tales so exciting as then, and never so full of phrases like “plantation roads” and “ol’ marster” and “befo’ freedom.” While she talked, Vance would sit winking at the other boys, just as his father would do. Vennie’s favorite way of beginning was to say, “Now, every Tolliver, black or white, know this story and know it be true.” It was a convincing way to begin and usually removed all doubt from the minds of her listeners. But on a Wednesday in the fall after the boys’ aunts had come there to live, one long-faced little friend of Jimmy’s stopped Vennie with the question “How do you mean ‘black or white’? Are there black Tollivers?”
“What do you think my name is?” Vennie asked, annoyed by the interruption.
“Your name is Vennie.”
“My name’s Vennie Tolliver,” Vennie said. Her name indeed was Tolliver, since she had once been married to one of the Negro Tollivers at Thornton. The Negro Tollivers, like the Negro Pettigrus and Blalocks, had kept the name of their former masters after emancipation, and most of them had continued in service to the Tollivers. But Vennie’s husband, like Flo Dear’s, had long before “disappeared off the face of the earth.”
The four luncheon guests all broke into laughter because they thought Vennie was joking. Landon and Jimmy laughed, too. But Vance began to blush. His whole face turned red, even the part in his hair changed color. Vennie looked at him a moment in bewilderment, and then suddenly she began to laugh herself. “Didn’t you-all know I was kin to Vance?” she said in a shrill voice, which normally was rather deep and hoarse, grew clearer and higher. “Course it ain’t really the truth, ’cause I ’uz only married, to a sort of cousin of his. But I’m his old Auntie Vennie, all right. Ain’t that so, Cousin Landon?”
Landon smiled sweetly and said he guessed it was so. Vennie never did tell her story that day. Under her breath she kept laughing so hard that she couldn’t have told if she had tried. And the boys—all but Vance—kept giggling until they finished their dessert and left the table.
Worst of all for Vance was the laughter that night from the grown people. Landon told all about it a
t the dinner table, right where Vennie could hear every word of it. Vance at first managed to smile halfheartedly, but in the midst of all the talk and laughter he observed that there was no shade of a smile on his Auntie Bet’s face. His own halfhearted smile vanished, and he and Auntie Bet exchanged a long look, which—in Vance’s mind, at least—may have constituted some sort of pledge between them.
It was Vance, with his sense of what the grown-ups liked, who had invented the pet name Auntie Bet, and he would have said Auntie Flo, except that Flo Dear had discouraged it. Instead, she had asked the boys just to call her Flo Dear, the way their Auntie Bet did. She was ever considerate of Miss Betty’s prerogative as a blood relation, despite all of Amy and James’s impartiality. In her consideration, she went so far as to try to accept Miss Betty’s views of every important thing that happened in the house. When the first complaints against Vennie were made to her by Miss Betty, she tried to admit their justice, while at the same time minimizing their importance. She imagined she saw seeds of Miss Betty’s ruin in the struggle, and events pointed more and more in that direction.
By Miss Betty’s “ruin” she didn’t mean that Vennie would remain and Miss Betty would go, she knew that Vennie would finally be sent away, but Miss Betty’s ruin would lie in her very condescension to this struggle and in the means she would use to dispose of Vennie. If only Flo Dear could delay action on Miss Betty’s part, then soon enough Vennie would be discharged for reasons that wouldn’t involve anyone else, because Flo Dear knew, without listening at the hot-air register in the shut-off cardroom downstairs, that if Vennie entertained and cooked on her magic stove for the boys in her basement rooms, she also entertained and cooked for a large number of those colored people, or their like, whose pictures hung on her walls, and the food, of course, all came out of Amy’s kitchen. She knew there would be a last time for Amy’s saying, “My grocery bills are outrageous! I don’t understand where the leak is. That is, I’m not sure yet.”
