Seven Sisters Collection

by M. L. Bullock

  “Hardly a basket case, Ashland. You have a long way to go before I check you in somewhere. Oh, sorry.” The look on his face reminded me that this kind of talk was no laughing matter. In some ways, Ashland and I were more alike than I had first believed, at least concerning our families. “What do you mean, remembering?”

  “I’ve been accused of having an active imagination, at least when I was a kid. Mostly by my cousin Robert, who passed on his loathing for the supernatural to me, but it wasn’t always like that. I swear, and this is the crazy part, I remember that I saw Calpurnia. I’d forgotten all about her, but I did see her once. It was during those days in the garden, the Rose Garden. I always hated going into the Moonlight Garden, and now I know why, but it was different in the Rose Garden.”

  “Did she say anything to you? You weren’t afraid, were you?”

  “No, she didn’t say anything. To be honest, she didn’t seem to notice me at first.”

  “Really?” I put my hand on his arm. “What happened?”

  “Mother was trying to prune some of the rose bushes, and I was sitting on the grass by a concrete bench reading a book. I didn’t notice the visitor at first, but I kind of felt the air shift and knew someone else was there. I looked up, and standing a few feet away was a young woman, very slender and tall, with an elegant hairstyle on top of her head. She knelt down beside me to peek at what I was reading. I know now that was Calpurnia. I mean, I’ve seen her picture before in the brochures, but I never put two and two together. At least not until recently. I clearly remember that she smiled at me, and I wasn’t afraid at all so I smiled back. She showed me her book: it was small, a little larger than her hand, and it had a leather cover. When she opened it to show me what was inside, it wasn’t a regular book, just a bunch of folded notes tied together with a purple ribbon. I guess she wanted me to see that she was reading too.”

  We started walking again. I whispered, “I’ve seen that book before, I think. Did it have an engraving on the cover—a bird sitting on a branch?”

  He thought for a minute. “Yes, I believe it did, right in the center of the cover. Do you know what book it was?”

  “Yes, oh my gosh. I think I do!” He put the blanket in the trunk, and we got into the car. I could feel him watching me in the near dark. “That’s the book she kept the notes in, the ones from the captain.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would she keep Captain Garrett’s notes in a book? I’ve never heard of that.”

  “I saw her father search her room once, but I got the feeling that he’d done it before. He looked through everything: her clothing, her hatboxes, everything you could think of to find Christine’s treasure. What would he have done if he’d found those notes? It wasn’t a clue to the treasure, but it would have put her in a dangerous position, especially with Mr. Cottonwood’s pride. She was a clever girl. Hiding them in plain sight, in a hollowed-out book, would be the smart thing to do. The question is why did she show you the book? What was she trying to say?”

  “I don’t know, CJ. So I’m not losing it?”

  “No, you saw her all right. You don’t have any reason to be afraid of her. She’d never harm you, but I think she wants you to know something.” A shiver ran down my spine.

  “It’s getting cool out here. Let’s go eat at Bill’s. They close up the sidewalks here around nine, so we better go if we want a seat. No more talk of ghosts tonight. Let’s talk about living.”

  I was disappointed not to hear more but happy that he’d confided in me at last. It had been quite an evening already.

  “Find us something good on the radio,” he said with a soft smile.

  “I can do that.” I flipped the channels in search of a good song, and we talked about practical things like his upcoming speech at the Historical Society and the custom-made, very expensive velvet curtains for the Blue Room.

  In the back of my mind, I knew what I had to do. This was going to be a late night.

  Chapter 5

  Strange music, a kind I’d never heard before, plunked from a piano on the boat. I knew it was a piano because Mrs. Cottonwood often played the big shiny black one in the ballroom, but this music was different. No long strands of silver notes here or heart-aching songs of love, but plunking notes that piled up together and made your feet want to move.

  I never touched the big black piano, but I had wanted to. What if there were silver notes in my fingertips too? Shouldn’t I let them have their song? Mrs. Cottonwood would probably never have scolded me—that gentle lady would never harm a fly—but Stokes would have beaten me with a hickory stick. I got smacked once for looking too long in a mirror. I missed the lady—she’d been nice with soft hands and a softer voice, but her death had not surprised me. Mr. Cottonwood was a cruel man, especially when he had turned up a jug a few times, but no one had suffered more from his words and hands than Mrs. Cottonwood.

  How many times had I wanted to grab his arm or take a lash for her? But fear kept me from doing so, my completely miserable and undeniable fear. Hooney had warned me to stay out of the reach of the Master’s strap. Once he started swinging he wouldn’t stop, not until he passed out. She should know—she’d been at Seven Sisters for ages, longer than anyone except Stokes, but she’d only been beaten once. One stormy evening when we huddled around the kitchen fire for warmth, Hooney told me the story of Ann-Sheila, a pretty slave who had belonged to the Beaumont family before Mrs. Cottonwood came to Seven Sisters.

  Like me, Ann-Sheila was an island slave, a free woman before someone snatched her away from her home. Hooney said she was the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen, and she was smart too—way too smart for a slave. Ann-Sheila loved Mrs. Cottonwood, not like a slave but like a sister or a good friend. Stokes and Hooney said that was wrong, wrong to think a slave could be the friend of a free person, especially a white person. Ann-Sheila could read, like me, and sometimes the Missus would ask her to read aloud from one of the many books in the library.

  One evening, after Mr. Cottonwood had been in town for a few days of gambling, he came racing his horse down the lane, his anger stirred up from corn whiskey. They say he must have heard some bit of gossip in town, something about the Missus or Ann-Sheila or maybe both. He was powerful offended by gossip and had a great deal of pride for his family name. I don’t know what the gossip was, but Mr. Cottonwood went looking for Miss Christine with murder on his mind. He found her in the nursery with Ann-Sheila and the baby Calpurnia, and in his rage had struck his wife and daughter. Ann-Sheila slapped the belt from his hands, but she should never have done that. No, she should never have done that.

  The Master took Ann-Sheila to the slave quarters and made all the folks come out to see what he was going to do to his wife’s pretty young friend. He’d summoned the sheriff, the nasty one with the greasy black mustache, to deliver the punishment. The Master shamed Ann-Sheila by taking her clothes off and forcing her down on one of the big wooden tables in the middle of the quarter. He didn’t actually do the bad deed—the sheriff did that—but the whole time the sheriff was doing what he wanted, Ann-Sheila cursed him and Mr. Cottonwood until Mr. Cottonwood ordered Stokes to put his hand over her mouth to stop the curses. After the sheriff did what he wanted to do, Mr. Cottonwood made some of the slaves do the same thing. Some was old men and some was just boys. Everyone did what they was told, and even today nobody talks about what they did to Ann-Sheila. They turn and look the other way when passing the table, making the sign of the cross if her name is uttered, but nobody much utters her name in the quarter. You won’t find nary a slave at Seven Sisters sitting at that table either.

  When the deed was done, they say she crawled off the wooden table and started screaming and talking to people that weren’t there. People say she cursed the Master in her island language, and other people say she cursed everyone that did the bad things to her. Hooney said she had blood all over her because the Master whipped her to the ground after the deed was done. It was all too horrible to think of.
Ann-Sheila walked down to the river, and nobody stopped her. The Master laughed and laughed with his belt in his hand, mocking her, calling her names and such. When she got to the water, she threw her bloody self in with not a stitch of clothes on and floated away. Sometime later, some slaves pulled her out, and Hooney said that there was nobody ever been more dead than Ann-Sheila. The Master had her body put on a pile of wood, and he burned her up. “First that long dark hair caught fire, then the rest of her,” Hooney whispered, her large eyes looking even more huge and luminous. “And the Master made the Missus watch too. Poor lady. She couldn’t speak for days after that, but eventually she came round again. Horrible, horrible day. A cursed day.” She’d finished her recounting with the sign of the cross and a few other signs that I didn’t recognize.

  Now here I was doing the same thing as Ann-Sheila, helping someone escape the wrath of Mr. Cottonwood. And not just anyone but the Master’s own daughter! I stood on the bank of that river, trembling in my uncomfortable shoes and talking to God, telling Him why I wanted to live another day, but I was sure I wouldn’t. I had nowhere to go except into the river. Tears streamed down my face like two fountains of salt water. Hooney’s warning rang in my ear: “You knows too much—too much for a slave. You thinks too deep to live too long. You a dead man, Muncie, if you don’t stop thinking. You a dead man.” She’d prayed, sometimes for me and sometimes against me, twisting the worn edge of her white apron. I wanted to yell at her, “That is not my name! I am no dead man!” but I never did.

  I hunkered down in the scratchy reeds and stared at the big boat. I would wait right here until I knew she was gone, safely away. Then I would run to the Mobile Bay Port, not the river port but the big one with the big ships. I would find a way to steal aboard a ship, and maybe that ship would take me home and once again I would be who I really was—I could have my name again.

  I guessed if the dogs came for me, those snarling hounds of Jeremiah Cottonwood’s, I’d do like Ann-Sheila—I would jump in the river even though it wasn’t a smart thing to jump in the Mobile River at night. There was snakes in that river—cottonmouths that could kill a man with one bite. If the snakes didn’t kill me, perhaps the alligators would. Me and Early saw one snap a raccoon right off the shore one day. We were little then and weren’t serving in the house yet. The two of us snuck off to splash and swim, and when we were finally tuckered out we sat on the bank to catch our breath before heading back to the quarter. All of a sudden that gator raged up and out of the water, snapping that coon, and then slid back into the black depths. Early had screamed, but I’d taken off running.

  I thought about my choices, snake bites, alligator bites or dog bites. Those dogs were nothing but mean. I remember once they’d gotten into the rabbits—Calpurnia’s pet rabbits—and left nothing behind but torn bits of fluff all over the ground like a furry hailstorm of death and guts and blood. I had to clean it all up and gagged the whole time. But even with all the dangers around me, I couldn’t leave. Not without knowing for sure that she was gone, safely away from the hands of death that reached for her from Seven Sisters. I didn’t want her to die like Miss Christine or disappear like Louis Beaumont. She must live because I loved her.

  I stood in the tall reeds without moving, like one of those statues at Seven Sisters, frozen in time forever. I heard a limb snap and looked about me, half-expecting to see Isla standing in my hiding spot. It was unearthly how she moved about without anyone hearing her—like a Haitian demon, one that played tricks on naughty, unsuspecting children. Some demons could come up through the floor of a house, grab you from a tree or get you any number of ways. My mother told me that you could summon one up just by thinking about it or saying its secret name too many times. I believed whether she was a Haitian demon or a plain old Alabama devil in pretty white skin, Isla lived to torment me.

  One morning, I woke up and she was on top of me, straddling me like she was riding a horse. She was light as a feather; I suppose that’s why I didn’t know she was there until her lips were on mine. She wore nothing but her thin petticoat—too thin for my tastes. My eyes flew open, and I stared into her blue ones. Like two pools of clear blue water they were, but empty, without any life in them. Startled, I pushed her to the ground, and she fell on the floor with a scowl, mustering up a scream at the sound of Stokes’ heavy footfall approaching from the hallway. As his dark frame filled the doorway, he threw her a disdainful sneer and stepped out of the way, pointing to the door. “You shouldn’t be here, Miss.” When she left he struck me to the ground with his oversized hand.

  “You stupid boy. Put your shirt on. I told you to stay away from her.” I didn’t argue with him or try to defend myself—he knew the truth. He was just afraid like we all were.

  That same day, Calpurnia had searched me out. Her eyes were red from crying; her hair looked unbrushed and hung free down her back. She’d passed me as I pumped water from the well, giving me the hand signal that meant “Meet me in the greenhouse.” I delivered the buckets of water to Hooney, looked over my shoulder a few times to see if the blonde devil dogged my heels and took the long way around to our meeting spot.

  Calpurnia’s thin arms were around my neck before I had closed the door good. She clung to me like I was the last breath she could take and she wanted to hold on to it. She’d gotten thin—too thin; I could feel her bones beneath the silk of her dress. “Calpurnia, what has happened to you? Are you hungry? You know we can’t be here—your cousin, she’s always following me. She might tell Stokes or Mr. Cottonwood.” Her eyes were green that day; sometimes they looked brown, but that day they were full of heartache. I knew those emotions—fear, hopelessness, grief. They were all I knew for many years, but Calpurnia had helped me. When I cried for my Momma, Calpurnia read to me, sometimes about faraway places with coconut trees and colorful birds—like the ones I left back home.

  “I don’t want any food. I have to think. I’m sorry for calling you here, but what do I do? What can I do?” She shrugged her scrawny shoulders at me and handed me a piece of paper. “Look at this—it’s a letter from Lennie Ree Meadows. She wants to help me with my wedding because I don’t have Momma.”

  I took the paper and pretended to read it, anxious to see how I could help her but even more anxious to get away. I loved her, but after that morning’s encounter with Isla, I had an uneasy feeling that something bad was going to happen. It hung in the air over me like a sword on a string, just like the story of Damocles. Any moment the string would snap, and the sword would come crashing down on me. That would be much worse than getting slapped by Stokes. I heard Hooney’s warning ringing in my ears: “You a dead man, Muncie.” I loved my friend, but what would happen to us if I was caught in here now?

  “What does that mean? Who are you marrying?”

  “No one has proposed to me, but Mrs. Meadows seems to think differently. She says my father has made arrangements for me to marry and he didn’t bother to tell me. He wants me gone so he can have it all, all my fortune. It’s mine because I’m a Beaumont! I know the truth now; Mr. Ball told me, but I can’t find it! Mother hid it somewhere, but I don’t know where.” She rubbed her forehead with her bony hand and kept talking, “I bet half of Mobile thinks I’m going to marry that man. And if they didn’t before, they do now! If Mrs. Meadows knows, every gossip in Mobile County knows. What am I going to do? I cannot marry him. I will not!” She snatched away the note and walked up and down the length of the greenhouse talking to herself, her hands on her hips.

  “Who is it you’re supposed to marry?”

  “It’s the mayor, that old man, Charles Langdon—the one from Connecticut. He came to my Cotillion Ball, but you probably wouldn’t remember him. He’s not a remarkable man except that he’s old and likes licking his lips. What shall I do? I’d rather marry Reginald Ball than Charles Langdon, but it’s too late. The die is cast.”

  “Surely she’s wrong, Cal. Maybe she’s wrong.”

  She shook the letter at me. “No, she’
s not wrong, but I’m not going to do it. I won’t do it. I’ll walk off into the river like Ann-Sheila before I do that.” We heard a voice, Isla’s voice, calling Calpurnia’s name in the distance. It sounded like she was in the Rose Garden. I ducked down, and she squatted with me. “If I go away, please don’t worry about me. I will be all right. Promise me you will not worry over me.”

  “No!” I whispered furiously. “You can’t leave. What would your Momma say if you left here with no chaperone and no one to watch over you? I have to go too.”

  “Don’t bring Mother into this. She’s gone, and she left me here! I have to go, and I think I know someone who can help me. If I took you with me, it could mean the death of you. I couldn’t live with that.” She reached out and squeezed my hand. “I love you, Muncie,” she said, her voice breaking.

  Isla called again, and I could tell she was closer now. So close that I knew she’d find us in just a minute. Calpurnia stuffed the note in her dress pocket. I wanted to argue with her, remind her that I could die either way, whether I was with her or without her, but I didn’t have much time. “You can’t leave me here. Promise me you’ll take me too,” I pleaded with her, my heart jumping like a rabbit in my worn cotton shirt.

  She sighed but smiled. For a second, I could see her as she used to be, happy, beautiful and full of life. The beautiful storyteller who dreamed of traveling the world with her uncle. “All right, but we have to be careful. Nobody can know, not even Hooney. Now I have to go. My cousin will find you in here in just a second.”

  “Miss…don’t trust her. Don’t tell her nothing! She’s not got a good heart like—she’s not good.”

  “Stop that, Muncie. She’s been through so much. You don’t understand.”

  “No, you don’t understand, Miss. She’s trying to get me into trouble. I can’t tell you how many…”