A Respectable Actress

by Dorothy Love

  “Binah was quite offended when I suggested that her pokers wouldn’t work.” India toyed with her cup, overcome with curiosity about the room upstairs. “When I got back here this afternoon from our visit to King’s Retreat, I couldn’t find anyone.” Her eyes sought his. “May I ask you about something?”

  He nodded.

  “There is a room upstairs that—”

  He rose abruptly from his chair, his expression unreadable. “Excuse me. I’ve just remembered I haven’t yet taken care of the horses.”

  CHAPTER 10

  INDIGO POINT, JANUARY 5, 1871

  INDIA KNOCKED ON AMELIA’S DOOR AND PEEKED inside. “Are you awake?”

  “I am.” Amelia waved India into the room. “Binah told me you took turns with Mrs. Catchpole, tending me until my fever broke.”

  “I was glad to do it. I’m relieved you’re feeling better.” India set down the tea tray and opened the curtains. Sunlight streamed into the room. “Mrs. Catchpole has sent more huckleberry tea.” Amelia wrinkled her nose. “She means well, but honestly, I cannot bear the thought of drinking another drop. What I need is a plate of biscuits and gravy. And some decent bacon.”

  “The doctor says to—”

  “Oh, I know. But he’s accustomed to looking after old folks with weaker constitutions than mine.” Amelia threw back her covers and got unsteadily to her feet. She reached for her dressing gown, which hung on a peg near the fireplace. “See? I’m good as cured.”

  “I hope so. You wouldn’t want to miss the boat races.”

  Amelia laughed. “With so few amusements available around here these days, any diversion is welcome.” She sat at her dressing table and picked up her hairbrush. “Before the war, we held boat races every year. Everyone brought their fiddles and banjos and food to share, and we made a day of it.”

  India perched on the edge of the unmade bed. “It sounds like fun, but I can’t imagine boat races in the dead of winter.”

  “Oh, it rarely gets too cold down here. And besides, we make a big bonfire to keep everyone warm.” Amelia finished pinning her hair. “I’m already looking forward to the seventeenth.”

  India’s stomach clenched. By then her trial would be just two weeks away. How could she enjoy any outing when her future was hanging by the thinnest of threads?

  “I suggested that day to Fan so I’d have time to remodel my winter dress.” Amelia’s eyes sought India’s in the mirror. “Can you keep a secret?”

  India nodded. Apparently the ability to keep secrets was a requirement at Indigo Point.

  “I’m hoping Mr. Lockwood will ask me to attend the races with him.”

  India struggled to hide her surprise. Cuyler Lockwood was entirely unsuitable for someone like Amelia Sinclair. For all kinds of reasons.

  Amelia swung around in her chair. “You don’t approve.”

  “I am surprised. But of course you hardly need my approval.”

  Amelia’s eyes filled. “Oh, I know he takes a nip of spirits now and then. He isn’t well educated. He isn’t half the man Thomas was, but since the war, there are so few gentlemen from which to choose, and I don’t want to live alone for the rest of my life.”

  India didn’t know what to say. She expected to be alone for the rest of her life, too, even if she avoided the hangman’s noose. But she wouldn’t settle for someone like Cuyler Lockwood.

  “After Thomas died, I never expected to feel anything for anyone ever again. But Mr. Lockwood—”

  “I didn’t realize you’d lost a husband.”

  “We were betrothed. I wanted to marry before Thomas left for the war, but he wanted to wait. He died at Gettysburg.” Amelia opened the drawer of her dressing table and took out a small tintype. “This is the only likeness I have of him.”

  India studied the image. “He was very handsome.”

  “He was. And he was kind, and he made me laugh. Just as Mr. Lockwood does.” Amelia let out a long sigh. “I’m sick to death of being sad. I don’t think I can take another minute of mourning.”

  India thought of the mysterious room down the hall. It seemed that everyone in this house was secretly mourning someone.

  Almarene came in without knocking and plopped a stack of clean linen onto the bed. “Got you some bath water heated up, Miss Amelia. Best get in the tub ’fore it gets cold.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll be there directly to help you dry off. Don’t want you gettin’ sick again. Makin’ more work for ever’body.”

  Amelia winked at India. “I’m so sorry to have caused you extra work, Almarene. I promise never to get a fever again.”

  “Huh. Words don’t cook rice.”

  “Where’s Binah this morning?” Amelia opened her clothespress and took out a clean petticoat.

  Almarene shrugged. “Off in the woods runnin’ around with them girls from Miz Garrison’s place, I reckon. And that bunch from plumb up at Darien too. I told her I’ll switch her good if she comes back too late to help me fix supper.” Arms akimbo, Almarene frowned at India. “You thin as a reed. I ’spect you need some breakfast. Put some meat on those bones.”

  “Not if it’s inconvenient for you.”

  Amelia gathered her things and headed for the door. “Give her some of your hot biscuits and butter, Almarene. That’ll fatten her up.”

  The older woman’s expression softened, and she bobbed her gray head. “Come on then, miss. I got coffee on the stove. I ’spect Miz Catchpole got the eggs gathered by now, and the grits is about done.”

  “Save some for me.” Amelia disappeared down the hallway.

  India followed Almarene to the dining room. Apparently Philip had already eaten his breakfast. A plate and half-empty cup sat at the head of the table. Almarene went to the kitchen house and soon returned with India’s breakfast on a tray.

  “It looks delicious. Thank you, Mrs.—?”

  “Just Almarene will do.”

  “All right. Almarene.” India buttered a biscuit. “It seems Mr. Sinclair has gone out early this morning.”

  “Yes’m. He left more’n a hour ago to post some letters for Miss Amelia. Said he had some important business with the steamboat captain.”

  “Oh? Did he say what kind of business?”

  Almarene huffed out a noisy breath. “Now do I look like the kind of a person Mr. Philip gonna tell his personal business to?”

  India bit back a smile. “I suppose you’re right. Mr. Sinclair seems to keep most things to himself.”

  “Yes’m, I reckon that’s true enough.” Almarene’s dark eyes bore into India’s. “And folks who know what’s good for ’em don’t go diggin’ into things that don’t concern ’em.” She wiped her hands on the front of her apron. “Anything else you need?”

  “Just some time to enjoy this lovely meal.”

  “Huh. Biscuits and grits ain’t lovely, if you ask me. Ham and collard greens, sweet potatoes and peach cobbler, now that’s lovely.” Almarene headed for the hall. “I got to tend to Miss Amelia. That fever took the stuffin’ right out o’ her. She ain’t
as strong as she thinks she is.”

  “Almarene? Would you tell Miss Amelia I’m going for a walk?”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  India finished her breakfast and lingered over a second cup of coffee. Through the window she watched the play of morning sunlight in the ancient moss-bearded trees and a flock of sparrows settling into a hawthorn bush. Despite the run-down condition of the house—the water-stained ceilings and the broken railings, the faded wallpaper and mismatched furnishings, and the unsettling, melancholy secrets that lingered in every room—Indigo Point gave her a sense of safety akin to a mother’s embrace. Or what she imagined a mother’s embrace to be.

  India retrieved her cloak and hat from the hall tree and set off along the footpath toward the beach. The tide was out, exposing the mudflats, which gave off the odor of rotting fish. Beyond the flats lay the unbroken expanse of sun-brightened sea. A fishing boat bobbed like a cork in the waves breaking beyond the remains of a jetty. She skirted the beach and turned toward the slave hospital, the leaves above her rustling like a silk petticoat. Something about Indigo Point conjured the past. She imagined Philip’s grandmother, a woman no longer young, tending to the slaves lying sick and injured within the hospital’s tabby walls. She imagined the slaves, too, watching the ebb and flow of the sea, reaching toward freedom and compelled to remain forever in the same hopeless place. No wonder Philip had set them free.

  Reaching the skeleton of the old hospital, India heard a chorus of young voices followed by peals of laughter. She stood in the open doorway and peered inside.

  Binah and half a dozen other girls, some white, some black, were seated in a circle on the bare floor, passing a bird’s feather from one to the other. A thin girl with freckles and an upturned nose took the feather from the Negro girl seated next to her. Closing her eyes, she waved the feather above her head and chanted, “Blue bird, blue bird, flyin’ out to sea, who is the one to marry me?”

  She released the feather, and each girl called out a name as it floated to the floor.

  “Tommy!”

  “Paul!”

  “Custis!”

  As one, the girls leaned forward to peer at the feather.

  “Awww, it be Custis!” the Negro girl said.

  “No!” the freckled girl yelled. “I can’t stand him. Let me do it again.”

  “You don’t get a second turn,” Binah said, reaching for the feather. “The feather already said the truth.”

  “Well, this is a stupid game.” The girl pushed to her feet. “I’m going home.”

  The girls looked toward the door and saw India. Everyone froze.

  Binah jumped up. “Miss, what you doing down here?”

  “I was just out for a walk.” India stepped inside. “I heard your voices and wondered what you were doing.”

  Another of the white girls, the best dressed of the group in a pink satin frock, folded her hands in her lap. “It’s only a silly way to pass the time.”

  “Because it’s so dreadfully boring here,” said another, a girl wearing a small plumed hat. “I hate this place. I wish I could run away.”

  One of the other Negro girls, an angular girl with coffee-and-cream skin laughed. “Oh? And where you gonna run to, Miss High and Mighty?”

  “I don’t care. Anywhere but here.”

  “Well, maybe when Tommy Dawson marry you, he’ll carry you clear to Atlanta. Won’t never see Indigo Point no more.”

  “Fine by me.”

  India smiled. “My friends and I played a similar game when we were your age. We peeled an apple and let the peel fall, and it was supposed to form the letter of the first name of our one true love.”

  Binah’s eyes widened. “Did it work?”

  “I don’t think so. It was just for fun.”

  The girl in the velvet hat frowned. “Are you the one staying at Indigo Point with the Sinclairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Binah says you’re a real theater actress.”

  “Yes.”

  “Miss Hartley got fancy costumes and greasepaint and ever’thing,” Binah said. “I seen it for myself. I do up her hair sometimes.”

  “Oh, you do not,” said the freckled girl. “Anybody knows a theater lady got her own servants. My mama said so. And I reckon she ought to know. She’s been to Savannah at least three times. Once she stayed at the Pulaski Hotel. Had a bed all to herself.”

  India took a seat beside Binah. “I once had someone to tend to my clothes and hair, but she couldn’t come with me here. Binah has been a great help to me.”

  Binah beamed, and the other girl stuck out her tongue.

  The girl in the pink dress scooted closer. “What’s it like, being on the stage?”

  “It’s hard work. One has to remember all of the lines in the play and remember just where to stand on the stage. Sometimes the theaters are drafty and the walls are so thin we have to speak very loudly to be heard. But it’s also a lot of fun to pretend to be someone else and to tell a story that makes an audience feel happy. Or sad.”

  The freckled girl nodded. “I was in a play once. Before the teacher up and left. I was Pocahontas.”

  “If I was in a play, I’d want to be Jo March from Little Women,” Pink Dress said.

  “I want to be in the play too,” said the older, lighter-skinned of the Negro girls.

  “You can’t be in Little Women,” Pink Dress said. “There are no Negroes in Little Women.”

  India watched the girl’s expression cloud, and her heart turned over. “Do you know the most wonderful thing about being in a play? With greasepaint, it doesn’t matter whether your skin is light or dark. You can be anyone you want to be. Once, in England, I was in a play with Sir Robert Atwood. His skin was as white as fresh-washed laundry. But he put on the greasepaint to play a black man named Othello. And at the end of the play, the entire audience was surprised to learn he was not a black man at all.” She reached past Binah to place a hand on the other girl’s arm. “What’s your name?”

  “Flora.”

  “Well, Flora, if you wanted to be in Little Women, you certainly could be. You’re so tall and regal looking, I think I would give you the part of Jo.”

  “What’s regal?”

  “It means you look like royalty. Like a princess.”

  “Oh.” Flora beamed.

  The girl in the velvet hat cocked her head. “I’m Elizabeth. Who would I be?”

  India considered. “Amy perhaps. Because you have such a kind face.”

  Pink Dress got to her feet. “This is silly. Because there is no theater and we haven’t any costumes and we haven’t any greasepaint and we can’t be actresses and that’s that.”

  India was stunned to see how quickly and completely the idea had taken hold in their hearts. How deeply disappointed they were to realize the girl in pink was right.

  “I have an idea,” India said. “The boat races are coming up in two weeks. I understand there will be a bonfire and a picnic. Suppose we meet here every day and practice some lines from Little Women. Then you could give a reading during th
e festivities. It won’t be the same as being in a real theater, but it might be fun.”

  India watched seven pairs of eyes light up as if she had magically turned back the calendar and Christmas had come again. And then they were all talking at once.

  “Who gets to be Beth?”

  “I don’t want to be the one who dies.”

  “Somebody dies?”

  “Yes, silly. You haven’t read the story?”

  “Don’t know how to read. I want to wear the geese paint.”

  “It’s ‘greasepaint,’ Flora. Not ‘geese paint.’ My stars! Don’t you know anything?”

  “I know as much as you do.”

  “Where we gon’ get any costumes?”

  “Girls!” India clapped her hands and they quieted. “Since there are only four little women and seven of you, we will take turns saying some of the lines. Everyone will have a costume, and everyone who wants to can try on the greasepaint. But not until the day of the performance, because I don’t have much of it left and we can’t afford to waste it. Now tell me your names, and one at a time please.”

  “I’m Susan,” said the skinny, freckled girl. She pointed to the girl in the velvet hat. “That’s Elizabeth, my sister.”

  “I already said my name,” Elizabeth said.

  India smiled. “So you did. Hello, Elizabeth.”

  “I’m Margaret.” The quietest of the group also seemed to be the youngest. No more than ten or eleven, India guessed. And from a family barely scraping by, judging from her patched calico dress and scuffed shoes.

  “My name is Claire,” said Pink Dress. “My papa manages the lumber mill for Mr. Dodge.”

  Binah pushed forward a darker-skinned girl with mesmerizing honey-colored eyes and the most beatific smile India had ever seen. “This Myrtilda. My cousin.”