Come Juneteenth

by Ann Rinaldi

  You would think the responsibility would fall to Amelia, but she took no interest in me other than to scold. Oh, she oversaw my piano lessons. With a ruler. She smacked my hands with it when I hit the wrong note. I recollect Gabe coming by one time and taking the ruler out of her hands and saying that Chopin didn't learn that way.

  Even back then he was protecting me.

  I think I was five and he was eighteen and just finishing up college back east. Granville was finished already. Gabe traveled home from the states, part of the way by the rails. Granville was nineteen. Amelia was a little bit jealous of them both, just because they were boys.

  When I think about it now, it all falls into place and makes sense. Gabe was the only one who could get me to take medicines when no one, not even Mama, could. He'd fish a candy out of a carefully folded napkin in his shirt pocket and lay it down on the table between us and say it was mine if I would first take the foul-tasting stuff.

  He was the one who put me on a horse and taught me to ride, under instructions from Pa, who said it was time. Sis Goose already knew how to ride. Granville had taught her. But she wasn't especially fond of it. And now she was jealous because Gabe was to teach me.

  He did such a good job that Pa more or less turned me over to him and made him accountable for me. And when I did something wrong, like leave my horse's tack out in the rain, he, not I, got called on the carpet for it.

  He taught me how to shoot, of course, how to clean a gun, how to prepare a wild turkey for cooking, things that Amelia had kittens over.

  Things Sis Goose wanted nothing to do with.

  I did get him in trouble once, too. When I was about six, Granville told me a story about lions and I was terrorized. I started seeing lions under my bed at night and so did the natural thing.

  I got up and went down the hall to Gabe's room, with my favorite blanket, and got into bed with him.

  Well, you would think I was the devil himself, tucking his green tail under the covers. Gabe woke in a start and said, "What in the hell are you doing here?"

  I told him there was a lion under my bed. And he quickly got up, put on his slippers, and carried me back to my room, where he lighted a lamp and showed me there were no lions under my bed and, satisfied, I went back to bed and to sleep.

  The next night my lion returned. And so did I, to Gabe's bed with my blanket.

  The same routine. Only the next morning he took me by the hand and found Ma straightening her linen closet.

  "Ma, I have a problem," he said. And he told her what it was.

  She wasn't alarmed. She simply said she would think about it. Which meant she would bring the matter to Pa. And before you knew it, Gabe's worst nightmare came true. He was called into Pa's study and the door was closed.

  I waited outside, with my blanket, and listened.

  "Young man," Pa said sternly. "What's this I hear about Luli in your bed?"

  "Gawd, Pa, it isn't like that." Gabe sounded miserable. "She sees lions under hers and is frightened out of her wits and comes to mine. I put her back, right off."

  "Hmmph," Pa said. "You never think of locking your door?"

  "Pa, I couldn't do that to her."

  "Well, you are going to do it. Tonight. Hear me?"

  "Yes, sir." Now he was more than miserable. And I got up and left. With my blanket.

  Gabe did not dare disobey Pa. So he did lock his door. And the next morning they found me with my blanket, asleep in the hall on the floor outside Gabe's bedroom.

  Gabe couldn't abide that. So he took his pillow and blanket and went out to the bunkhouse where the nigra ranch hands slept and found a bunk and bedded down there. He left the door of his bedroom open.

  I slept in his bed. Nobody found out where he was sleeping until days later. When he came into the house, just to eat or change or wash, he wouldn't say a word to anybody. Pa told me to leave him be. So I did.

  He wasn't shaving because he was so unhappy, I suppose, and he had at least four days' growth on his face. And it was the first time Pa allowed him at the table in his work clothes. Ma said if he didn't shave soon she wasn't going to allow him at her table anymore. "Yes, ma'am," he said. Poor Gabe.

  "Look what you did to him," Sis Goose hissed when we were alone. "It's your fault. All yours."

  "See what you did to your brother?" Pa asked. "And he's so good to you."

  "I want him back in the house," I sobbed.

  "You going to stay out of his bed? You going to get rid of those lions of yours?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, we'll see. Tonight."

  As it turned out, Granville helped me get rid of the lions. After all, this was his fault, he admitted, and it was a family crisis, and when it got right down to it, everybody in my family loved crises. But first Granville sat me down and told me that the only people who slept together in a bed were married, like Ma and Pa.

  "Why?" I asked.

  He squirmed a bit. "Because that's how it is. Those are the rules. Now look, my story was made up and there are no lions in Texas. They're in Africa. Far away."

  But just to make sure, he came to my room and "exorcised" my lions. He did some of what Grandpa did when he claimed his land. He stamped his feet. He ripped up paper; he cried out; he rolled my marbles; and he performed other necessary acts, such as getting down on his knees and chanting to the lions that they had better leave or terrible things would happen to them.

  I must say he was good at it.

  And that night Gabe came back. He was cleaned up. Whitest of shirts, suspenders, cravat, clean-shaven face, all of it. He didn't say anything to me about the whole affair. That night at the supper table he just acted as if nothing ever happened, and when bedtime came I kissed him good night as if nothing had happened. But I lay awake in my room until I heard my elders coming to bed, until I heard the boys' boots on the stairs, and heard Gabe go to his room and not lock the door.

  No lions came that night. And if they had, I would have suffered their growls, their bared teeth, their bites, and my own dripping blood, rather than go to Gabe's room. Because, of all people, Granville had somehow instilled forever in me the rules about people sleeping together, though I knew no more than before. Just the look on his face told me all I needed to know. And the next morning at breakfast Gabe winked at me. To think he'd gone to the bunkhouse to sleep, rather than lock his door against me and leave me sleeping on the floor. Or give the affection we had for each other a bad name. I don't think I ever adored him so much.

  To think that Granville had come to my aid, Granville who, at twenty, was already above it all and distant and just a little bit jealous of what I had with Gabe ... I don't think I ever loved him so much, either.

  THERE WERE times, too, when Gabe and I got into mischief together. I particularly recollect the incident of the onions in the stew.

  No, Gabe would never outright disobey Pa, and he always reverenced him, but there were times when he teetered on the edge and gave in to boyish impulses, and this time he took me with him.

  It was simple. Pa hated onions. Now this may be unseemly for a Texan because most Texans like spicy food, but Pa always hated onions in his food. Ma had to be careful how she cooked, when she did cook, and had Old Pepper Apron trained not to put onions in the stew or the sauces or the salads. Pa's "system," she said, couldn't take them.

  The boys missed the onions. They had always had them "back in the states" at school. Oh, Old Pepper Apron made them special salads, but still, a pot of stew bubbling over the hearth on a cold day tasted just as good with or without onions.

  Gabe had an ongoing argument with Ma that if she chopped the onions real tiny, Pa and his "system" wouldn't know the difference. Ma held that they would.

  This was the spring Fort Sumter was fired upon. I was ten. Sis Goose was thirteen. The war hadn't yet officially started, and Pa and the boys could still disagree over something like onions and consider it worthwhile. This was back before Gabe was killing Indians and Granville was sh
ooting Yankees.

  It was a chilly day and Old Pepper Apron was down with some malady. Ma was cooking a stew and it was just starting to bubble on the hearth. She had left me in the kitchen to stir it every so often while she and Sis Goose took some chicken broth to Old Pepper Apron in the quarters.

  Gabe appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  "This is too good to be true," he said.

  "What?"

  "I can prove my point today. I can chop up an onion, real small, and put it in the stew, and Pa will never know. What do you say? Are you with me? If we get caught, I'll take all the blame."

  "Where will you get the onion?"

  "From the root cellar. Others eat around here. The servants use onions. You just keep sitting there and I'll be back in a minute."

  And he disappeared. True to his word he was back with one onion, which he commenced to chop up in the most tiny pieces while he told me to keep an eye out for Ma. I did.

  I never saw such tiny onion pieces. Where did he learn how? "Sometimes," he said, "when I'm out on the prairie, searching for runaway cows for Pa, and I camp out overnight, I shoot a wild turkey and roast it. I fry up a potato I bring along with a wild onion. Lord, it's good. Even the dog I bring along with me loves it. Now there." And he scooped all the onion off the wooden table and dropped it into the beef stew.

  "Stir it," he ordered me. "Do your part."

  I giggled and did so.

  "Now remember. Don't say a word to anyone. Especially Sis Goose. Don't act strange or laugh or anything. Don't stare at Pa or he'll know something's going on. Hear me?"

  "Yes." I said. And I could scarce wait for supper.

  AMELIA WAS the first to remark on how good the stew was. "Ma, you're going to have to teach me how to make a stew like this before I get married," she said.

  "You getting married?" asked Granville. "When? Can I have your room for an office?"

  Those two were at it constantly. For some reason, Amelia did not get on with her brothers.

  "Leave your sister alone," from Pa.

  He was enjoying his stew. He wore a white linen napkin around his neck so as not to dirty his snow-white cravat. He spooned his stew into his mouth carefully. "This stew is excellent, Luanne," he told Ma.

  I sat across from Gabe. Under the table he kicked my black, laced-up boot.

  I giggled and lowered my head over my plate.

  Immediately Pa saw something. "You two, behave yourselves. I've got Granville and Amelia at each other's throats and you two giggling like two geese at a pond full of fish. The only one who's behaving is Sis Goose. Now all of you behave or you can leave the table. Luanne, I've never tasted such wonderful stew."

  This time I kicked Gabe's boot. He cleared his throat. I giggled and choked on a piece of bread.

  Pa scowled. "Luli, you want to be spanked?"

  "No, sir."

  Pa threatened but he never acted on it with me.

  Sis Goose gave me a very superior look because she knew I was up to something with Gabe and she was jealous she wasn't in on it. But she was comforted because she knew I'd soon be in trouble.

  "You tell Old Pepper Apron she's outdone herself this time," Pa said.

  "She didn't make it, she's ailing today," Ma told him. "I made it."

  "Luanne." Pa put down his spoon and looked at her across the table. "After all these years, I never thought you could cook again like you used to."

  Gabe couldn't take it anymore. He started laughing, and to hide it he covered his mouth with his white linen napkin and pretended he was choking.

  "Drink some wine," Pa said. "Drink some wine, boy. For heaven's sake, it'll put hair on your chest, make you more handsome, the girls will be crazy over you. Give this family a good stew and they can't take it. Reminds me of the kind Edom would cook for me on the way to Mexico. Luanne, what's wrong with your children today?"

  "I don't know," Mama said slowly. But she was looking at Gabe and then at me, slowly, knowingly, as if she did know, and I got scared. Still I started to laugh again until tears came to my eyes.

  Pa slapped his hand down hard on the table. "Enough!"

  I stopped. Gabe stopped.

  "What in the name of the devil's purple ears is going on here with you two?"

  "Sorry, sir," Gabe said. "I just had a choking fit."

  Pa accepted that. "And you?" he asked me. "You just had a laughing fit?"

  I knew when not to reply.

  "You leave the table, little girl," he said. "Now. And take your muddle-headed brother with you. Both of you, out of my sight. Here we have solemn times. Fort Sumter's just been fired on by that fool Beauregard, South Carolina has seceded, and we're going to discuss this with our apple crisp and coffee for dessert. But you two won't be present. That's your punishment."

  We didn't laugh, leaving. I'll say that for us. We didn't laugh until we got into the hall. Pa didn't understand. Both boys would soon be gone for soldiers. There was little time left for laughing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WITH SIS GOOSE though, there was always time for laughing. She and I, growing up, were always in some mischief together. You would think, being nearly three years older than I, that she would have more common sense. She did when it suited her. But most of the time it didn't.

  The only time it did was when she and Gabe became smitten with each other. Then those three years she had on me seemed like a hundred. She had entered a world that was a universe away from me and left me like a falling star, burning out, with a tail like tears trailing across the sky.

  But that would come later when I would realize that what I had with Gabe was nothing compared to what she had with him. And that she had knowledge I did not have. That alone killed me.

  When I was about ten, the year the war broke out, Sis Goose decided she wanted to know more about the birds and the bees. Young girls, of course, were supposed to be kept innocent. Ma was forthcoming with nothing except what we were to expect when we got our women's time of the month.

  She didn't tell us why we got it. We were in total ignorance. It isn't as if we didn't associate with enough girls our own age to gossip about such things. We'd been to balls, hunts, horse races, taffy pulls, weddings, Christmas parties, and even corn huskings over the last year. But other girls our age didn't know any more than we did.

  All were hungry for knowledge.

  "You have to look in books," Lucy Raleigh of Peach Point Plantation wisely told us at a taffy pull.

  When we got home, Sis Goose was after me to use Pa's library.

  "It won't be in there," I told her.

  "Then where?"

  I thought a while. "Gabe's bookshelves," I said. "He's got all sorts of books. And he gave me permission to use them if I need to for my schoolwork. As long as I'm careful with them and put them back in place."

  "What makes you think Gabe has a book like that?"

  "Well, I don't know for sure. But Gabe knows everything. Where do you think he learned it?"

  "Back in college."

  Both boys were out of college now, working for Pa on the ranch, overseeing the men in the fields and the barns and corral, inspecting the care of the Thoroughbred horses. Sometimes riding out on the prairie to supervise the mending of fences. They left the house early in the morning and didn't come back until supper time.

  Sis Goose took charge, as she was wont to do when she understood a situation. First she checked on the whereabouts of Ma and Pa and Amelia. Satisfied that they were out of the way, she led me quietly to Gabe's room and we sat on the Persian carpet next to his bed and beside his cherry bookcase.

  I marveled at it. It spoke so much of Gabe, with the books lined up neatly and the book covers titled in gold writing.

  The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. He had a lot of Poe books. The Vicar of Wakefield. He had his collection of Charles Dickens, too. And The History of Texas and The Conquest of Mexico and so many others. There were school-books on Latin and Greek, on science, trigonometry, and the study of the heavens,
and Shakespeare, and so many others I cannot name them.

  There were copies of The Spectator from when he visited Williamsburg and theater programs from that town and biographies of George Washington.

  And then there was a book called Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior, which he'd told me about. George Washington had read it and abided by it.

  "I've got it," Sis Goose said triumphantly. And she held up a pamphlet. "Imported from England." She showed me. "Oh, how wicked," she said.

  In it were all the words and explanations we wanted to know.

  We bent our heads over it together.

  "Oh, look," she pointed, "there's the one I wanted to know. Pimp. Do you know what a pimp is?"

  "No."

  So she read it to me. And so I learned that afternoon, all the words that most young women from respectable families who were not married, and many who were married, did not know. "What does ravished mean?" I asked her.

  "Well, here, read it; it's right here."

  And so I learned another word. And I saw the pictures. And my face paled and I felt faint.

  But in the next moment when I looked at Sis Goose, she started laughing. And I started, too, and soon we were both helplessly laughing and rolling on the floor. And the more we thought about it, the funnier it seemed.

  "Do Ma and Pa do this?" I asked her.

  "How do you think you all were born?"

  I thought of Pa, stern, strict Pa, and I started another laughing fit. "Oh, oh, please," I begged her, "put the pamphlet back before I wet my pants."

  She secured it in back of some books on the shelf where she'd found it. "Naughty Gabe," she said, and I had another thought. "Oh, I won't be able to look at him at supper without bursting into laughter," I said.

  "What about your pa?"