The Wilful Daughter

by Georgia Daniels

  She opened the bottle and took an unladylike sip. The brandy went down smoothly. It was probably quite expensive.

  “Nothing like being in this house,” she said as she sipped again.

  Among her possessions she had a small flask, nice silver with her initials carved in it that had been a gift from an admirer. She filled it each day when her father left. After each drink she chewed on mint leaves to mask the odor of spirits on her breath.

  Each day she saw the Piano Man with his family: his wife, his daughter. Her daughter. Minnelsa did not protest as much as she used to when Ophelia went to June. June was a new playmate to the child.

  “Aunt June sleeping in my bed.”

  “Aunt June is the lady in the pictures.”

  “Aunt June is so pretty.”

  And more and more, day by day, it was because of Ophelia that she needed to take the edge off. She’d look in the bathroom mirror.

  “I thought I gave this up,” she would tell herself as she took a little swig.

  “I should have stayed to be mother to this child.” She’d drink to that. “Peter does not want me near the little girl that we made lying in the grass over five years ago.” She’d take another sip. “Why are they are so happy together?” On that she wouldn’t sip but she would cry.

  “Afraid she’ll catch on?” she whispered to him one night when he came to get the child out of June’s bed and put her on a pallet in the room where he and Minnelsa slept.

  He said nothing to her. So she touched him. Just touched his arm to see what would happen. He stopped to look at her. She tried to find love in those eyes. Where were the nights at Emma’s, nights on the grass, days of sneaking and hiding and professing his desire for her? She tried to see him playing the piano the first time in front of her and watching her as she crossed the room.

  It was gone, vanished like low-lying fog at dawn. Evaporated with the light of the new day. His new day, his new family.

  She didn’t see any love there at all.

  She let him go.

  “Here’s to you, Piano Man,” she said into the closet of her room. Outside the family prepared for dinner while the Piano Man played the dull music that soothed his wife and satisfied his father-in-law.

  “What you doing in there, Aunt June?” came the tiny voice from the doorway. Two thick plaits hung to her shoulders, her dress was covered with dirty hand prints from an afternoon of baking mud pies outside when no one was looking.

  “What am I doing? Look at you. What have you been doing? Your mama and daddy are going to be so furious at you for getting all dirty.”

  She didn’t hesitate as she took the little girl to the bathroom and undressed her. She filled the tub with warm water and told the child to get in.

  Ophelia stood naked in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. “Daddy says I can’t get in by myself. Somebody got to put me.”

  “Oh really?” June said back, and Ophelia nodded her pretty head. June grinned and picked up the child to put her in the warm water.

  This was the first time since Ophelia had been born that she had held her this close without her clothes on. Then she had been all toes and fingers. She had more hair now and weighed more but she was still her baby. Hers. She placed the girl in the tub and told her to wash.

  “How nice of you to do that for Minnelsa and Peter.” Bira stood in the doorway smiling. “I was going to do it myself but. . .”

  “I have her, Mama,” June smiled. “I just need some clothes for her.”

  Ophelia splashed a little in the tub. Jewel laughed from the kitchen as she heard the happy sounds of her niece, the only happy sounds that had emanated from the house lately.

  “In the chest-of-drawers in Minnelsa’s old room,” Bira told June who answered with a mumbled “of course”. Bira said she would watch her granddaughter as June went to get the child a clean change of clothes.

  The music bothered and bored her. Peter should have learned by now that a lively tune should be played for a houseful of lonely women getting dinner ready for one man. What possessed him to be so inconsiderate? His wife was trying to give him a child for the fourth time, two of her sisters had been left without husbands. His music was too dreary. “Can’t he play a waltz or a ditty?”

  “Leave him be,” Bira said. “It’s nice music.”

  “It’s so sad.”

  She went into the chest-of-drawers knowing that if Minnelsa kept things as before, the top drawer would hold shirts, the second drawers her blouses and camisoles, the third unmentionables. So the fourth had to be Ophelia’s clothes.

  June laughed as she opened the drawer thinking nothing had changed. But the Piano Man had been dressing his daughter and the clothes were not where they were supposed to be.

  She found Ophelia’s unmentionables in the unmentionable drawer. She found a little jumper, overalls just like her grandfather’s and what the child should be allowed to wear in the first place, in the drawer with Minnelsa’s clothes. And in the Piano Man’s shirts she found a tiny shirt for her daughter, tucked on the side like an afterthought.

  She pulled it out, trying not to ruin the neatness of the drawer’s configuration. But one tiny sleeve was caught on something and in order to preserve the order, she had to remove everything.

  She cursed the Piano Man’s neatness under her breath.

  She cursed out loud when she saw the envelope the shirt was stuck on.

  She checked to see if anyone was looking then opened it and found a contract with one William Robert Thomas of Peachtree Street, (clearly a white man for this address was on the white folks’ side of town) to purchase fifty acres in Alabama from Peter Jenkins. It was signed and done. The amount paid had been paid to the Piano Man more than two weeks ago. Attached to it was another letter showing that Peter had sold him the fifty acres in Atlanta with the house, and though fully paid, had until the end of the year to vacate.

  The land and the house? What was wrong with Peter? Where was Minnelsa supposed to stay? What about Ophelia?

  A smile curled her lips; “Papa can’t control the Piano Man anymore than he could his other sons-in-law.”

  She put the papers back, what was she supposed to do with them?

  What was she to do about Peter leaving Minnelsa? Was he leaving her or did he plan to take her away? Her body shook for she couldn’t think clearly without the bottle in her closet.

  The early evening heat filled the dining room of the Blacksmith’s house as the family sat down to eat. Bira said grace thanking God for the safe return of June and the speedy birth of Minnelsa’s baby. After a loud resounding “Amen” from all, they began to pass the food.

  Glasses of iced tea clinked with fresh chipped ice from the new icebox. “That ice man is making himself a mint this summer,” the Blacksmith noticed as he downed the glass holding it up for more of the sweet brown liquid. Without hesitation Fawn got up and went to the ice bucket on the sideboard as Jewel passed the tea.

  Servants in their father’s house, June thought. She found the sweet drink irritating. She watched, though, as Ophelia drank her milk in silence, watching the adults around her.

  Minnelsa didn’t eat much. Her presence was more out of duty than due to hunger. The Piano Man feigned total attention on her, like the doting father they never had, touching her belly whenever the baby moved.

  He should have been there to touch me when Ophelia moved, not some boy like Michael who was in love with my hair and the color of my skin.

  They were all looking at her. She wondered why until she realized that it was her turn to tell the Blacksmith what she had been up to that day. They all held their breath, as in the past, wondering if what she would say would cause a problem in a household already overwrought with problems.

  “Well, daughter?” he asked again and took a big gulp of his drink.

  “Today?” she said as if she had to think of an answer. What would happen, she wondered, if she said: “I went to get Ophelia some clothes and discov
ered the dear old Peter here is planning on selling the property and probably moving away.” She wondered if her sister would miscarry and the Blacksmith blame her instead of the man who had orchestrated her demise from the first.

  “Nothing much,” she said about to end it there, then added. “Oh, I had to bathe Ophelia before supper. She had been very busy this afternoon making mud pies.”

  Peter’s eyes widened. Minnelsa looked at her daughter who was grinning at all the attention and just said a disappointed: “Ophelia.”

  “It’s a shame that she gets her nice little dresses all messed up playing outside. She should be in jumpers all day. At least until dinner and then maybe she could put on a . . .”

  “But, daughter,” the Blacksmith was cutting his meat and not looking at her as he spoke, “she’s a little girl. A little lady and . . .”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more, June.” Minnelsa interrupted.

  The family looked at her. The Blacksmith looked up from his food. She had never disagreed with her father before. “I beg your pardon,” the Blacksmith said. And he placed his fork and knife on the table and delicately wiped his lips with the linen napkin.

  “June is right, Papa. With another baby it’s just going to be too much to have one wild little girl.” She turned to the child and cuddled her chin with one hand. “Ophelia is wild and happy, and always getting those lovely little dresses messed up. A jumper is appropriate. No way with all that hair are they going to think my Ophelia is a boy.”

  “I’m a girl,” the little one said a bit loudly and they all laughed, a nervous laughter to fill the fearful silence of the Blacksmith.

  “Besides that’s what we had to do with June when she was little. She was getting into everything.”

  The Blacksmith didn’t say a word at first. They thought he was trying to remember June as a baby in jumpers instead of pretty dresses. How much Minnelsa reminded him of Bira when she was pregnant, the control she took over the children.

  “Well, your mother has spoken Ophelia. And you must obey your mother, right?” he asked his pretty granddaughter.

  “I’m not a boy, Grandpa,” she said adamantly and he heartily agreed.

  Peter caught June’s eye just like in the old days. But June didn’t care to answer. She had something for him later.

  * * *

  When supper was over the Piano Man made his excuses to go to choir rehearsal. He thanked God to be able to get out of the house, that Minnelsa and June had not argued over the child and that the family seemed at ease for a change.

  With the heat still blasting like it was high noon, the Piano Man ordered every door and window opened in the church so his choir members wouldn’t pass out. The sound of voices raised in song to God spread out over the community like evening prayer. They hovered coolly above the Georgia heat, reminding those who were sitting on their porches wishing that soon there would be a breeze, that soon there would be the dog days of summer and endless rain.

  The music lulled Ophelia to sleep, and quieted the moving baby in Minnelsa’s belly. Bira opened the front porch door, knowing the Piano Man would close it when he came home and let the slowly cooling air and music fill the house like an evening concert. The Blacksmith fell asleep in his place on the front porch and she had to wake him to make him go to bed.

  Fawn and Jewel had long faces as they listened to the voices in song. “Maybe we should go back into the choir,” Fawn sighed.

  “I am not sure I want to be there or anywhere,” Jewel told her sister. “I keep dreaming someone is going to take me from my father’s house as used merchandise.”

  When they were all asleep, June took her flask of brandy and went outside and drank under the tree beneath Willie’s old room.

  She was not concerned about how the voices would sound on Sunday under the direction of the Piano Man. She didn’t care if the music was sweet and peaceful and had put her child to sleep.

  “Listen, Willie,” she whispered up to his room in a voice so tiny anyone hearing it would have thought she was a ghost. “It’s Friday night and no man has come to call. I got music though, music provided by the most inspirational hand on earth. My Piano Man. Remember him Willie, I told you about him. He’s going to marry me.”

  She was good and drunk as she repeated ‘marry me’ to the window. Her thoughts were jumbled. She had met him first and he was supposed to marry her.

  “Minnelsa,” she remembered. The scene years ago flashed through her mind. “I made love to him, but that didn’t make him want to marry me. He wanted the land. Wanted the dowry that came with marrying the Blacksmith’s oldest daughter. He didn’t love her.”

  She remembered the papers and whispered to Willie. “He’s got what he wants. He can leave her now, brother. Do you think he still loves me?”

  Over and over she asked herself that question until she started to cry beneath the tree

  * * *

  Minnelsa rolled out of bed to go relieve herself. She was tired of this pregnancy. Tired and feeling old. She longed to own her body again, to go back to life before the Piano Man and Ophelia.

  She was tired of waking up three times a night to go to the bathroom in a house where there were no more slop jars. Modern conveniences irked her now. Modern conveniences had taught her how to hold on to this baby. She could tell that her sisters were jealous of her life, her perfect husband and ready-made family. She had to see them cry over the men who had loved and jilted them for money and property.

  She heard the tiny voice whispering in the wind. She looked down out of the bathroom window and saw a figure that vaguely resembled June just sitting there and crying, or laughing she couldn’t tell. “She’s crazy.” Minnelsa decided June was lost long ago and she had better things to worry about.

  Let her stay there, I don’t want to help her anymore. I helped her enough, taking her baby, raising it. The moment June had recovered from her illness Minnelsa had wondered if she wanted the baby back. Ophelia spent hours with her “aunt” leaving Minnelsa weary at the thought of losing the child. But right now, she didn’t care anymore. Too much was happening around her and June was not the center of the world anymore. “At least not to me.”

  She decided to go onto the dark front porch and wait for her husband. He would unintentionally wake her when he came to bed anyway, so she might as well wait. He was usually careful about her condition, but he was so noisy getting into bed. She sighed and leaned back in papa’s old comfortable wicker chair, repainted and refinished at least 4 times. The new pillow, freshly stuffed and soft was one she had hand stitched lying in bed a few weeks ago. She sighed happily and rubbed her stomach to comfort the moving baby.

  “Soon, soon.” she said and waited for her husband to come home.

  * * *

  June heard the people coming out of choir rehearsal. She listened to the faint goodnights from far across the street. She heard shoes, flat shoes, work shoes, high heeled shoes, walking down the road and away. She knew the Piano Man’s routine. He would close the church and lock the door and then walk down the block past the six houses that separated home from the place of worship.

  “And then he’ll come in and slip into his bed with his so called wife.” She took a little sip. “She can’t do nothing for you, Piano Man,” June said to the dark and then, giggling covering her mouth, she drunkenly reminded herself to whisper. “The wind has ears.” She danced about in a small circle. “Pick up what I say and carry it around the house and thru the door and into my mama and papa’s room. Tell them I’m his real wife.” She danced until she fell down dizzy.

  She decided she needed to talk with the Piano Man before he went into the house and curled up with his fat pregnant wife. June would bring him down the incline to the tree, under that part with a lot of leaves. Nobody could hear their conversation there, not even the wind. Minnelsa would not be awake the way that baby made her sleep and her parents would never know.

  She hid her almost empty flask in the hollow of the stu
mp at the side of the house, “Got to save some for my man.” She climbed barefoot up the yard towards the wide front porch.

  June didn’t see the figure in the chair sitting in the dark away from the gaslights. But in the moonlight, she saw the handsome Piano Man cross the street and loosen his tie as he entered the yard of his wife’s parents’ home.

  Minnelsa saw him too. She smiled at the sight of her husband. But in the shadows weighed down by the baby and being tired she had no intention of moving until he was nearer.

  June’s voice came out of the darkness.

  “Good job, Mister Choir Master.” The Piano Man stopped and looked in her direction, trying to make out the image before him. “A job like that deserves a drink or two. Want to join me?”

  He swallowed hard and tried to walk past June. “I don’t go there anymore, you know that.”

  “Really, Mr. Piano Man? Anyway, I wasn’t talking about Miss Emma’s. I got some good stuff.” She slurred her words and spoke just above a whisper. “Down in the hollow of that old tree.” He said nothing and continued to walk away.

  “Besides, I heard they’re asking for you at Miss Emma’s. Especially the women, that’s what I been told even if I haven’t been there in six years. They’re asking for the man with the slow hands and the long fingers.” She giggled. “Especially the long fingers. They got that right. You got a reputation down there at Miss Emma’s and I’m sure it ain’t all musical.”

  She laughed as he told her to hush. “Oh come on. It’s nothing wrong with getting away every now and then. I used to see it in New York all the time. Wife ain’t what you want her to be, she don’t move like you want her to move, so you go out looking for. . .”