The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

by Jacqueline Kelly

  “Harry!” I shouted. “Have you seen Granddaddy?”

  “He’s over there right next to it. He hasn’t moved all day.”

  “What is it?” I screamed.

  “An auto-mobile!”

  “Oh!” Fern and I mouthed and mimed hellos and goodbyes to each other, and he led her away. I noticed that she had her arm tucked through his.

  The place was absolutely packed. It took me another five minutes to get through there, and I thought I’d suffocate with all the cigars and pipes, but at least I was near the ground where the air was slightly fresher. You couldn’t see the top of the tent at all—it was completely obscured by rolling clouds of smoke. Finally, just when I thought I would pass out, I shoved my way through the last ring of spectators and there it was, in all its dazzling glory, something never seen before: a carriage without a horse.

  How to describe it? It looked like speed incarnate, its every line carved by the wind. There were the shining brass appointments, the gracefully curved mudflap, the tufted black leather seat. And there was my own grandfather sitting on that seat, peering intently at the steering wheel as if mesmerized. A tall man sat in the machine next to him, shouting in his ear and gesturing at the controls. He turned out to be the owner, and Granddaddy was offering him cash on the spot for the machine—twice what he’d paid, then three times, then five times—but the tall man would not sell at any price. I wormed my way up to the auto-mobile and tugged on Granddaddy’s coat as the owner shouted “Sorry! She’s not for sale!” and climbed out of the machine.

  Granddaddy saw me and then spoke again with the owner and pointed at me. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Granddaddy was claiming me as his own, and so a second later the tall man lifted me up and placed me on the seat next to my grandfather. The crowd evidently liked this from the buzzing cheer it sent up, increasing the din to an unbelievable level. The noise momentarily stunned me, and all I could think about was that the backs of my legs were sticking to the leather and I needed to pull my dress down over my knees. But a second later someone whisked me out of the car and set me back on the ground. Granddaddy climbed out the other side, and the tall man nodded at two more bystanders, who scrambled to take our places. There was no question of driving the thing; it was an overwhelming experience to merely sit in it, to see it and touch it, to be in its presence, even at rest.

  Granddaddy took me by the hand, and we began our struggle back to the entrance. The noise and the smoke and the press of people made me lightheaded and limpsy. I thought, Right, I’m going to see what it feels like to faint after all, but if I faint in here I’ll have to do it standing up because there’s nowhere to fall. That might be a first. At the moment when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, we pushed outside and stood panting in the fresh air.

  I puffed, “You tried to buy the machine, didn’t you?”

  “He would not sell at any price, and I don’t blame him,” he said. “We have to hurry home. I must write—no, telephone—the Duryea factory in Massachusetts and place an order at once. The internal combustion engine. Think of it! The power of four horses!”

  “I don’t feel so well,” I said. “I think I’ll rest awhile. You go on ahead.”

  Granddaddy peered at me, saying, “You look flushed. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “It’s the smoke. I’m fine,” I said feebly as the world went black and I pitched over backward.

  Now, FAINTING. There’s a subject I’d always wondered about. The heroines in books seemed to faint a lot, swaying genteelly onto a handy padded couch or into the convenient arms of some concerned suitor. These heroines were always willowy and managed to land in graceful postures of repose, and were revived with the merest passing of a decorated flagon of smelling salts under their noses.

  I, on the other hand, apparently went over like a felled ox and was lucky to land on the grass and avoid cracking my head open. What brought me to was not the whiff of smelling salts but a half bucket of cold water thrown in my face. I opened my eyes and looked up at the sky. A ring of faces peered down at me. How blue the sky is, I thought. And look, there goes a cirrus cloud, it looks like Bunny’s fur, and why are all my family staring at me like that, and which one of my stupid brothers is throwing water on me?

  “Pet, pet, can you hear me?” Harry’s voice came from a long way off.

  I located his face, which for some odd reason was undulating, and croaked, “Sure I can, Harry.”

  Next to Harry I saw Fern Spitty. She was vibrating strangely, her enormous hat blocking out a good part of the horizon. And even though I had seen her half a dozen times before, I said dreamily, “Hello. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.” For this I got another half bucket of water in the face.

  All right, enough of that. I pushed myself up and shook water from my face like a wet dog and glared at the circle around me. Granddaddy took my wrist and felt my pulse. “Calpurnia,” he said, “what is the order of the spider commonly known as daddy longlegs?”

  “Opiliones,” I said tartly.

  “Very good,” he said. “I believe she is coming around.”

  “Stop that water,” I said to the circle at large.

  Next to Granddaddy were Travis and Sam Houston. I couldn’t see a bucket anywhere. No doubt one of them was holding it behind his back. Then of course there followed a big foofaraw about getting me to my feet and slapping the grass off me and getting me a lemonade and putting me into a borrowed gig to get me home. It wasn’t far, but no one would let me walk. Mother and Father weren’t to be found, so Harry drove, and Fern came along for the ride.

  The fresh air blowing across my face as we trotted smartly home made me feel worlds better. The attention was welcome at first but then quickly became oppressive as I perked up.

  Viola met us at the door, took one look at me, and said, “Lord, what now, Mister Harry?”

  I didn’t think there was any need for her to take that tone, especially in front of a visitor.

  “It’s nothing, Viola,” I said with great dignity. “I fainted, that’s all. You need not concern yourself with me.”

  “She’s fine, Viola,” said Harry. “It was smoky and hot in the tent. Let us sit down. Miss Spitty, do you care for a cup of tea? Perhaps a glass of cold lemonade?”

  Well, Miss Spitty thought a cup of tea would be delightful, and Viola went off to make it. We sat in the parlor and looked at each other. I searched her face closely and found her expression entirely lacking in the grasping quality that Minerva Goodacre had displayed. Miss Spitty had strawberry blond hair, which was definitely unfashionable, but I found it a beautiful color. Her complexion was a faint pink, and her eyes were a light blue, and although she gave an overall impression of paleness and delicacy, her alert expression and mobile features saved her from looking insipid. Compared with the odious Miss Goodacre, she stood up well. Perhaps I would have to bestow my approval on her after all. Everyone would be greatly relieved. She smiled at me. I smiled at her. The clock ticked on the mantel.

  Viola came back in with a tray of the best china and set it down. She looked at me. “Miz Calpurnia,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I think it’s time for you to go rest. After you fainting and all.”

  “I feel all right.”

  “I think,” said Viola, “it’s time for you to go rest.”

  “I’d like some tea,” I said.

  “I think,” she said, “it’s time. Right. Now.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll get you tea in your room,” she said.

  “Okay.” Unwanted again. Still, the idea of curling up with Treasure Island and a cold cloth wasn’t such a bad one. I left the parlor to the accompaniment of the inviting clash of crockery and the light tinkle of teaspoons, and went upstairs. SanJuanna brought me a pitcher of cool water and a fresh towel. Viola came up later carrying a tray set with the second-best china as a peace offering for my banishment.

  She said, “You be careful with
this tray. If you break one thing—”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  She put the tray down and inspected my ribbon, which I’d put on my dresser.

  “You got you a prize,” she said. “How did that happen?”

  “How do you think it happened?” I said grumpily.

  “The judges was all blind peoples?”

  “Ha ha.”

  “I got it,” she said. “There was only three entries.”

  “Yep.”

  “Hmm. Still, you don’t need to be telling folks that part. Now, don’t chip nothing.”

  She closed the door as she left. I admired the graceful gold-and-pink rose pattern on the translucent bone china and figured that some of the trappings of civilization weren’t so bad after all. I sipped my tea and turned back to my afternoon companions of pirates, parrots, and the sea.

  CHAPTER 24

  HARRY WOOS AGAIN

  Feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection. . . .

  COD-LIVER OIL. The grim specter of the teaspoon laden with the reeking oil suddenly leaped into my brain when I heard the wagon coming up the drive a couple of hours later, with Mother and Father and the three younger boys. If Mother thought I’d fainted due to sickness, I’d be in for it. Harry told me later that he and Fern had gone back to the fair and found our parents and told them the story. Harry stressed the smokiness of the tent in an effort to avert the deadly dosing, and this apparently did the trick. That and the fact that I ran out and met them all on the front porch looking as cheerful and lively as I could, wearing my prize ribbon, practically capering with girlish good health.

  “Look, look what I won. Isn’t it exciting?” I called out, gleefully pointing at my ribbon. I wasn’t above being a big, fat imposter if it diverted attention away from a potential drenching with the world’s foulest substance.

  “My goodness! A prize!” There were many exclamations of approval. Mother looked startled and pleased. She didn’t mention cod-liver oil, but she did say, “Do you feel all right, Callie? Your color’s high. Alfred, do you think we should send for Dr. Walker?”

  Father said, “She looks fine to me, my dear, but if you’re worried—”

  “I don’t feel sick, ma’am,” I said. “I’m excited because I won a ribbon, that’s all.”

  Jim Bowie said, “How come you got a white ribbon and Travis got a blue one?”

  “It’s because I’m so special, J.B.”

  “Really? Gosh, Callie.”

  “No, not really. I’m fooling you. A blue ribbon is lots better than a white one. Travis and Bunny won the best prize there is.” As I said this, I wondered if Mother would make me come clean about my entry, but she kept twinkling at my ribbon. Strange. Then I realized that she didn’t know. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed, or maybe she hadn’t gone by the display, or maybe Lula and Dovie had taken their pieces down before she got there. Mother looked so gratified. Did I have to be the one to tell her?

  “Uh, J.B.,” I said in a loud voice, “tatting wasn’t a strong field this year.”

  “Huh?”

  I glanced at Mother, who was chatting with Travis.

  I raised my voice. “The entrants. In the tatting class. Not so strong.”

  “Wha—?”

  “Anyone could have won a ribbon, J.B., is what I’m saying.”

  “Why are you talking so loud? Can I have your ribbon? I never win the Firefly Prize. I’d like to have a ribbon.”

  Mother didn’t look as if she’d heard me. My courage, watery and irresolute to begin with, ebbed away. I took off my so-called prize and pinned it on J.B., and he dashed away to admire himself in the hall-tree mirror. Mother started up the stairs to take off her hat.

  “Ma’am, where’s Harry?” I called.

  She stopped on the landing, one hand on the rail, the other reaching for her hatpin. “He’s walking Fern Spitty home,” she said. Her expression was shuttered.

  “And . . . ?”

  “What do you mean, and? And nothing.”

  “I wondered if . . .” I wondered if this was good news or bad, that was all. But I had no intention of meddling.

  “Please don’t wonder, Calpurnia. I find it’s dangerous when you wonder.” Mother started up the stairs again. “And kindly don’t meddle.”

  There she went, reading my mind again. It was scary. And me, dangerous? That was a laugh. At least I had the answer though: Fern was good news. But if Mother thought Harry courting Fern was a good idea, what did this mean about her ambitions for him to go to the university? I couldn’t figure it out.

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Harry went to dinner at the Spittys’ home on the San Marcos Road. He came home long after we were all asleep. I noticed that nobody quizzed him the next morning at the breakfast table. I opened my mouth once or twice but thought better of it. Then Fern and her parents came to Sunday afternoon tea at our house. This was in truth the slimmest of formalities, as our families had been acquainted for years. I wondered why they were coming to tea instead of dinner. Did it have anything to do with the fact that the children were banished from these genteel afternoon entertainments? Or that Granddaddy wouldn’t have stuck around for tea at gunpoint?

  I got to see Fern arrive before we were all ordered outside to play (meaning, disappear). Her dress was rose-colored silk. Her hat was an enchanting confection of plumes and gossamer silk, dyed to match her dress. She made an appealing picture, unlike the loathsome Goodacre.

  I went out through the kitchen. Viola was bent over an elaborate cake, holding her breath and applying the final decorations of nonpareils, those tiny edible metallic nuggets that crunched thrillingly between the teeth. SanJuanna was arranging crustless finger sandwiches and candied flowers on an enormous silver tray. Neither one of them looked up. The atmosphere was tense. They were both dressed in their good dark clothes and wearing spotless starched white aprons, ruffles standing out at their shoulders like wings. I walked out the back door to the laboratory. Why waste time “playing,” as I’d been ordered, when I could spend some valuable time with Granddaddy? He didn’t find me dangerous when I wondered about something. In fact, he encouraged it.

  “Good afternoon, Calpurnia,” he said. “Are you not having afternoon tea today?”

  “Mother said we had to go outside while the Spittys are here. She’s probably worried I’ll frighten them off.”

  “That may be,” said Granddaddy, “although why Margaret finds you a frightening child, I don’t understand.”

  “Thank you, sir. Neither do I.”

  “Good, we’re in agreement. Kindly set this beaker up for another run, will you?”

  We busied ourselves in the shabby laboratory while the mating dance went on in the parlor.

  “It’s funny,” I said, “that girls have to be pretty. It’s the boys that have to be pretty in Nature. Look at the cardinal. Look at the peacock. Why is it so different with us?”

  “Because in Nature it is generally the female who chooses,” he said, “so the male must clothe himself in his finest feathers to attract her attention. Whereas your brother gets to choose from the young ladies, so they have to do their best to catch his eye.”

  “It’s much too much work,” I said. “All the clothes, the hats. And the hair dressing. When Mother dressed my hair for the piano recital, why, it took ages. And the corsets! Mrs. Parsons faints all the time in the summer from her corset. I don’t know how they stand it.”

  “Neither do I. It’s a silly idea. Your grandmother wasn’t one for such nonsense.”

  “Granddaddy.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Tell me about her. Grandmother, I mean.”

  “What do you want to know about her?”

  “Everything. I’ve never heard any stories about her. She died before I was born.”

  “She did? Yes, I suppose she did. She was a woman who grew hard later in life.”

  “Was she interested in science?”

  “Not particularly. And you m
ust remember, we were struggling to recover from the War. The economy was in shambles. I was trying to build up a business and had no time left over for studying the natural world or anything else for that matter. Hand me that other beaker, will you? She was an excellent needlewoman. And she did enjoy reading novels in the spare time that she had.”

  “I got a prize at the fair for tatting.” I grimaced.

  “Did you? I didn’t know you were interested in that sort of thing.”

  “I’m not. I hate it, and I’m no good at it. I haven’t told Mother that it was third place out of three.”

  “Never mind. Tatting was never my strong suit, either.”

  I thought he was joking but you could never be sure. We worked side by side for a few peaceful hours until Viola rang the bell. I was grateful for those hours. I had been missing him.

  CHAPTER 25

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  I would almost as soon believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells now living on the sea-shore.

  I CHERISHED THE INFREQUENT hours I had with Granddaddy. As Christmas loomed on the horizon, our paltry time together shrank even further. I worked in the kitchen at Viola’s elbow, which I think she found more aggravating than usual, as she had to cook and teach me at the same time.

  J.B. quizzed me. “Callie, how long until Christmas?”

  “Look, J.B.” I held up my hand. “See my fingers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, this finger is for today, and this one is for tomorrow, and this one is for the day after that, which is Christmas. You see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you understand now?”

  “Yes.”