An Unlikely Friendship

by Ann Rinaldi

LATE THAT NIGHT when everybody was in bed, I heard Mammy moving about in the kitchen, so I got up and went downstairs.

  She was churning butter. A fresh loaf of bread lay on the table in front of her.

  She smiled at me as I approached. "You heard?" I asked.

  "Yes, child, I heard. Old Mammy got ears like the debil, though they ain't been painted green."

  "I don't know whether to worry about George or Levi first," I told her.

  "Worry 'bout yourself. You gots enough to worry 'bout. You goin' away to school in the fall and then there's movin'."

  "Moving? Who's moving?"

  "They ain't told you?"

  "No."

  "Your daddy been biddin' for Palmentier's Inn. It for sale."

  How Mammy Sally knew everything that went on in the family before I did was a matter of mystery to me. Maybe because she did have ears like the debil. At any rate I had no trouble attributing special powers to her. Black people did have special powers, I'd long since decided. They must have, to put up with what they had to bear. Besides, those like Mammy had to continually move between two worlds.

  But moving! Moving out of the house where I'd been brought up, where Mama had lived? And died? I suspected George and Levi wouldn't think much of the house on Main Street even if it was grander than this.

  And then another thought came to me.

  "What about the runaways?" I asked Mammy.

  She shook her head. "I just hafta pass the word on that they shud come to the new house. It got a barn an' a fence around it. You wanna paint some flowers on that fence when the time comes?"

  I took a deep breath. "Yes."

  "Good."

  "Mammy, what would I do without you?"

  "You'd be jus' fine. You're quality, Mary. You'd be jus' fine."

  "I don't ever want to leave you." I stifled a sob.

  "You gots to leave sometime. You find yourself another mammy somewhere along the way."

  "Is there anything you can do for George and Levi?"

  "I kin' talk to 'em. Not sayin' they'll listen."

  I hugged her. She gave me a piece of fresh bread and butter before I went to bed.

  LEVI WAS TO GO to Transylvania in the fall. At first he refused, angering Pa, and they had high words, but then Mammy Sally got ahold of him and they "talked." I think she threatened to tell Pa about his drinking down by the creek. And so he agreed to go and to behave himself. Already, as summer came upon us, he was registered and had his books. He was to attend day classes and come home each night.

  Ann was to go to Ward's and, of course, come home at night. I found myself envying her. I wanted to go back to my first year at Ward's when I had such innocence. I was afraid of Mentelle's, afraid of what was expected of me. Pa expected a lot.

  Pa had ideas about the education of girls. Somehow Elizabeth and Frances had escaped the full range of those ideas, being brought up mainly by Ma. But now, since my mother's death or maybe because of it, Pa was determined that the rest of his girls have the best education possible. And not leave school at thirteen, as Frances and Elizabeth had done, to become accomplished at nothing but dancing and social graces.

  I registered for school with Liz. We walked together up to Rose Hill, the name of the building the school was housed in. It was a sprawling, rambling gabled place with different wings jutting out unexpectedly and white organdy curtains at all the windows.

  "I heard there are about twenty motherless girls here," Liz told me as we trudged up the hill.

  "I guess I'm number twenty-one then."

  "Mary, don't hold it against me that I'm going home every night and you're not."

  "I'm not holding it against you."

  "Yes you are. You've been acting different lately. Not friendly anymore."

  "I've got a lot to think about."

  "What?"

  I couldn't tell her my concerns about George and Levi. My sadness at moving. She wouldn't understand. "It isn't you, Liz, I promise," I said.

  "I feel as if I've taken your place."

  "I have no place. So don't worry about it. There're eight of us home now. David is only three months old and Betsy needs more room for her babies. So she gets a new house and me out of it most of the time."

  "Your pa loves you, Mary. I know he does."

  "He can afford to love me only so much. Then he has to do what she wants. And she wants me out."

  "She's my very own aunt, but I'm ashamed of the way she treats you sometimes," Liz said.

  "There's only one thing I want," I told her. "I want my ma's ladies' desk. Pa said once that I could have it. And I aim to take it when they move. I know a lot of things will be sold because she wants all new things. Fancy red damask drapes and Belgian carpets and imported French mahogany furniture. But I want that desk for my own."

  "You'll have it," Liz promised.

  But I worried. It wasn't her place to say so.

  "WELCOME TO Mentelle's School for Young Ladies," Charlotte Mentelle greeted us.

  She was a small, lively woman, with bright blue eyes and a little knot of hair atop her head, tied with a black velvet ribbon. "Sit down, girls, sit. Did you know we are across the way from Senator Henry Clay's Ashland?"

  We said yes.

  "And did you know one of my daughters is married to Henry Clay's son, Thomas?"

  She puffed with pride. Yes, we said, we knew that, too.

  "Well, and so you are going to be part of my school. This is a proud school and we uphold standards. You will be learning French, morals, temper, and health, among other things. I give no holidays but one week at Christmas, one day for Easter, and one day for Whitsuntide. You will act in French plays and dance while I play the fiddle. Mary Todd, do you realize what a wonderful father you have?"

  "Yes, ma'am," I said meekly. One did not oppose this woman. I could see that immediately.

  She wore a white dress this summer's day. We were to discover that she wore white all summer long and blue all winter, that, like her husband, she was an expert fiddle player, that she loved to terrorize the girls with stories of her childhood when they misbehaved, and that she had six children of her own, three still at home.

  She made a big fuss over Liz, sending her into the parlor to have tea while she took me to see my room. She liked Liz's blond curls and Bo-Peep look. Everybody did.

  As for me, I liked the look of her house. It looked comfortable and lived-in, with plumped pillows on all the couches, books in every room, heart pine floors, and woven rugs. An English springer spaniel accompanied us through the house, licking my hand as we went.

  "The dog helps girls to feel at home," she told me. "Ah, here, this will be your room. You will share with a lovely girl named Mercy Levering."

  Sunlight streamed in the windows. The beds had quilts covering them. There were flowers in a vase on a dresser. And then I had a thought.

  "Is there room for a small desk?" I asked Mrs. Mentelle.

  "I usually don't allow the girls to bring furniture."

  "It was my mother's," I explained. "And with my family planning on moving, I'm afraid it will get lost."

  "Well then, we'll make room," she agreed, "if it was your mother's. Everybody knows how important things are when they come from your mother."

  I think I loved her on the spot.

  JUST ABOUT EVERY summer my family traveled fifty miles south to Crab Orchard Springs where we could take the waters, play, and socialize with other prominent families in the area.

  That summer we didn't go. That summer was different and the worst I ever remember.

  That summer cholera came to Lexington.

  First came the rain, a pouring rain, for days, that made the privies overflow and the streams contaminated. There was a dreadful smell in the air everywhere, even after the rains stopped. The newspapers warned people not to drink water from the streams. Pa forbade Levi and George to go near Elkhorn Creek behind our house.

  Then one day Mrs. Holmdel, who lived on Water Street, became ill.
Her mammy met Mammy Sally at the market and told Mammy Sally that her mistress had all the signs of cholera. By nightfall Mrs. Holmdel was dead. Word went around from house to house. People knew what the disease was because it had already killed thousands in New York City and New Orleans. Last summer, Pa's sister, Aunt Hannah, had died from it when it visited outlying parts of Kentucky.

  Now it was here.

  By the end of the first week, ten people were dead of it.

  The rest kept their doors and shutters locked, their children inside, and their businesses closed. The town was empty except for the dead carts rattling through to pick up bodies.

  "We must leave," Betsy told Pa. "We endanger the children by staying. We should go to Buena Vista." It was her country estate on the Leestown Pike near Frankfort.

  "Cholera is in the countryside, too," Pa told her, "and as a city councilman, I must stay. You may take the little ones and the baby and go if you wish, Betsy. I'll send George and Levi with you, and Nelson can drive you to the country."

  She decided to stay.

  We burned tar in barrels to stave off the disease. Mammy Sally had the other servants wash down the walls with vinegar and spread so much lime about the outside of the house you nearly choked for the smell of it. We were allowed to eat only biscuits, eggs, boiled milk, and water.

  One day I ate some mulberries. They were sitting there on the sink in the kitchen and I thought, What harm can they do? So I ate them.

  Betsy and Mammy found out at the same time and you never did hear such screaming and carrying on. Betsy sent for the doctor. Before he could come Mammy Sally got the ipecac and held my nose as I fought her.

  "If the doctor come, he give you mercury chloride," Mammy scolded. "He bleed you. You want that?"

  I didn't, so I took the ipecac and threw up. The boys laughed and enjoyed the whole thing. The new baby, David, cried. Pa was furious.

  "There are people dying all around us, and you-all are making a mockery of this," he scolded. Pa never scolded, so we quieted down.

  In the terrible, ghostly days that followed, we tried to stay out of one another's way, for the crowding in the house. When Levi and George couldn't abide it any longer they sneaked outside to look up and down Short Street, where the living were throwing the dead people out the windows to be picked up by the dead carts that came around for the bodies.

  "They're blue," I heard Levi tell George, who was always hungry for otherworldly information. "Their hands and feet are all puckered. Their tongues are hanging out."

  I caught them often in whispered conversation and knew they were discussing the victims. Doctor Joseph Boswell had succumbed to the dreadful disease. So had Captain Postlewaite and Mrs. Charles Wickcliffe. I don't know where they got their information from, but they had their ungodly contacts. Besides, though Pa would not let any of us out of the house, he allowed them to go out for an hour every day to check up on Grandma Parker, to see if she was keeping and if she needed anything. I wanted to go, of course, but he wouldn't let me.

  And then one evening at supper I looked up from pushing my eggs around on my plate to see them looking at me oddly.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked, only to realize that others at the table would not even meet my gaze. I shivered.

  "Is Grandma all right?"

  "She's fine," Pa answered, "but, Mary dear, two of your school chums from Mrs. Ward's have died."

  I felt such relief that Grandma was all right that I scarce heard him. Then I did hear. "Who?"

  "Emily Houston and Charlotte Wallace."

  "Oh." I stared down at my eggs and biscuits. Emily and Charlotte. We hadn't been close, but still, now they were dead! What had it been like for them? Had they been frightened? I shuddered and it came to me then. Any of us could die. I could die, too.

  I started to cry and got up and went to Pa, who took me on his lap. And nobody, especially not Levi or George, laughed at me. As a matter of fact, they looked most serious.

  There came a pounding on our front door then, and Nelson went to answer it. We heard him saying, "Ain't nobody dead here."

  Pa set me down and went into the hallway. I was right behind him. So were Levi and George and Ann.

  It was Old Sol, the town gravedigger. He was short and squat. Behind him in our drive was his donkey harnessed to his dead cart. "I needs to see Mr. Todd," he said.

  "What is it?" Pa asked.

  "Sir, I'm outa coffins. I got no more. So I'm askin' at all the houses if the people will go to their attics and find what boxes and chests they got and donate 'em."

  "Fine. We'll do that," Pa said.

  "I'm runnin' outa space in the church cemeteries. Gonna have to start usin' that trench in the new graveyard on the corner of Main and Limestone."

  Main and Limestone! A block from our new house. Levi nudged me.

  "You do what you have to do," Pa told him. "I'll have some chests out here for you tomorrow."

  They closed the door and Pa turned to us. "It'll give you children something to do tomorrow," he said. "Go to the attic, select the biggest chests, and empty them. Nelson will bring them down to put out front."

  We nodded, saying nothing. We were stunned, I think, for since Ma died we were never allowed in the attic. In the attic were her things, and Pa and Betsy didn't want us up there, poring over them and getting all cast down.

  Now he was allowing us up there.

  "Is that wise?" Betsy asked from the background.

  "We're moving soon," Pa told her. "All those things have got to be gone through sooner or later."

  THE NEXT MORNING after breakfast Levi, Ann, and I made ready to go to the attic. Halfway up the stairs Levi turned to George who stood at the bottom.

  "You coming?" he asked.

  I saw the indecision on George's face. "Pa said I don't have to if I don't want."

  "Come on." Levi extended his hand. "You and I'll go through Pa's things. All that stuff from the war. Let the girls do the rest."

  So we four went to the attic. I was trembling with anticipation. How much of Ma's things had Pa saved? And why hadn't he allowed Betsy to convince him to throw them away?

  The boys weren't interested in Ma's things. There was a lot of Pa's old stuff to be gone through from the war back in 1812. One chest was labeled LEXINGTON LIGHT ARTILLERY, and Levi and George couldn't wait to get their hands on it.

  "You shouldn't be handling those knives and haversacks and guns." Ann was starting to sound more and more like Betsy every day.

  As for me, I was already starting to open a chest of Ma's things.

  "If it isn't big enough to hold a body, don't bother with it," Levi said with his wicked sense of humor.

  I raised the lid of the chest and gasped. Here was everything I imagined as it would be. There were petticoats, silk dresses, shawls, even embroidered aprons. I touched each article reverently.

  "Come on, get it out. We don't have all day. You know Pa wants Nelson to bring the chests downstairs by this afternoon," Ann said.

  "These are Ma's things, Ann," I told her. Across the attic I saw George looking at me as I raised a tea-colored blouse in the air.

  She shrugged. "I know."

  "Don't you want to go through them? And see what you'd like to keep?"

  She shook her head. "It won't bring her back. Come on, I'll help you stack them in a corner someplace."

  I put the blouse down. George went back to Pa's things.

  Ann and I had never been close. She was closer to Frances, who spent all her time going to lectures at Transylvania and teas, and sewing things for when it was her time to go to Springfield. Was Ann hiding her true feelings for Ma? Or did she truly not care?

  We found an old blanket and wrapped Ma's clothes in them. "I'm going to ask for that shawl," I said, pointing to a black silk one.

  "Don't bother," Ann said. "I heard Betsy say everything up here was going out to the first gypsies who came through."

  I made a note to ask Pa for what I want
ed. Not now, though, not today, not with people throwing dead bodies out their windows and Old Sol collecting boxes and chests for coffins. Pa was a city councilman. He would be busy.

  BY THE END OF SUMMER the cholera was past and we who were boarding at Mentelle's were allowed to move our things into our rooms. Pa sent Nelson to accompany me with my baggage and Mama's gold and white ladies' desk in the wagon. Nelson was to carry everything upstairs.

  The moving took near all day, and when I got home, the first thing I did was go up to the attic to get the clothes from Ma that Pa said I could have.

  They would be kept at Grandma Parker's. She had agreed to it.

  I went across the attic room to open the blanket. The clothes were not there! They were gone.

  I stood stunned for a minute, thinking. Where had they gone? Had Nelson brought them to Grandma Parker's? I held the empty blanket in my hand, wondering.

  Had Ann or Frances become interested in them after all?

  And then I was struck with fear. Betsy! And I knew where the clothing had disappeared to.

  I went downstairs on shaky legs. I heard her in the kitchen, talking to Mammy Sally about supper.

  She saw me standing in the doorway. "So, you're home. How did the moving go? Did you get your room in order?"

  I had the empty blanket in my hands. She saw it but said nothing.

  "Where is my mama's clothing that was in the corner of the attic in this blanket?" I asked.

  "Heavens, Mary, you wanted that old stuff?"

  "Where is it?"

  "Some strolling players came through today. I gave it to them."

  "You gave away my mama's blue taffeta dress? Her lace collars? Her black fringed shawl from New Orleans?"

  "Well, it was all old and moth-eaten. What could you possibly want with it?"

  "That was for me to decide!" I was crying. Tears were coming down my face. "Pa said I could have it. Nobody else wanted it. Grandma Parker was going to keep it for me."

  I was full of rage. And her becalmed manner enraged me more. She had done it to spite me, I was sure of it.

  "The attic had to be cleaned out." She raised her voice just a bit. "We're moving."