Delta Wedding (31 page)

Downstairs, with all the boys in white suits gallantly running about, the family gathering in the parlor around Ellen and Battle greeted the arriving families of the wedding party and too-early arrivers for the reception from the more distant plantations. Aunt Mac and Aunt Shannon came in on Orrin's arm, one at a time. Aunt Mac wore her corsage of red roses and ferns on the shoulder opposite the side with her watch, so she could keep up with things. Aunt Shannon proceeded uncertainly and yet with pride, her little feet in their comfort slippers planted wide apart, as a year-old child walks, her hot little hand digging into Orrin's arm. White sweet peas were what Aunt Shannon wore, and she liked them.

"It's time we were sitting down, now, as many as can," said Ellen, and all at once sank, herself, into one of the straight chairs before the altar.

All the windows were full of black faces, but the family servants stood in a ring inside the parlor walls. Pinchy stole in, all in white, and she looked wild and subdued together now in that snowiness with her blue-black. Maureen went up to her and gave her a red rose from her basket, not being, as a flower girl, able to wait. Partheny stood at the front of all the Negroes, where the circle had its joining, making the circle a heart. Her head was high and purple, she was thistlelike there, and perhaps considered herself of all the Negroes the head and fount. Man-Son, Sylvanus, Juju, more than that were all in the hall, spellbound and shushing one another. Aunt Studney, wherever she was, was keeping out of sight.

Uncle Pinck, who was laughing at something, hushed suddenly, Mr. Rondo had taken his place, and music began. The groomsmen entered, and then people leaned backwards from the doorway, so that everybody could see what came down the stairs. In twos the bridesmaids began coming, they entered and arranged themselves in front of the boys, fanning out from Howard's altar, deep to pale, dark to light in their pairs, fading out to Shelley, who entered trembling and with excruciating slowness, her sleeves aquiver. Their crooks they held seriously in front of them in their right hands, each crook crowned with Memphis flowers tied on with streamers. India came in, throwing petals, and Maureen, then Laura came in down the little path between people where she was supposed to walk; at last she was out before everybody, one of the wedding party, dressed up like the rest in an identical flower-girl dress, and she scattered rose petals just as quickly as India, just as far as Maureen. Did it show, that her mother had died only in January? Mary Lamar, in place at the piano, played in that soft, almost surreptitious fashion of players of wedding music.

It was Shelley that Ellen was watching anxiously. Ever since Dabney had announced that she would marry Troy, Shelley had been practicing, rather consciously, a kind of ragamuffinism. Or else she drew up, like an old maid. What could be so wrong in everything, to her sensitive and delicate mind? There was something not quite
warm
about Shelley, her first child. Could it have been in some way her fault? Ellen watched her anxiously, almost tensely, as if she might not get through the wedding very well. Primrose was whispering in Ellen's ear. Shelley would not hold her shepherdess crook right—it should be straight in line with all the other girls' crooks—look how her bouquet leaned over. Like a sleepy head, Ellen thought rather dreamily in her anxiety.

"Crook like the others, dear," whispered Primrose from her front chair. She made a quick coaxing motion with her little lacy mits (she had indulged herself with a pair just like the bridesmaids').

Shelley, with a face of contrition, held her shepherdess crook like the others. Aunt Primrose had such an abundance of small, hopeful anxieties—the mere little ferns and flowers of the forest she had never guessed could be! Shelley was glad to hold her crook right.

Troy came in from the side door, indeed like somebody walking in from the fields to marry Dabney. His hair flamed. Had no one thought that American Beauty would clash with that carrot hair? Had no one thought of that? Jim Allen blinked her sensitive eyes.

Robbie looked up at George, who had entered with Troy and stood up beside him, listening and agaze at his family. In the confusion she had been seated a little toward the back. There was no one looking at him—except a bridesmaid to primp for a moment, push at a curl, or long-legged Laura that smiled—there was no one seeing him but herself. George was not the one they all looked at, she thought in that moment, as he was always declared to be, but the eye that saw them, from right in their midst. He was sensitive to all they asked of life itself. Long ago they had seized on that. He was to be all in one their lover and protector and dreaming, forgetful conscience. From Aunt Shannon on down, he was to be always looking through them as well as to the left and right of them, before them and behind them, watching out for and loving their weaknesses. If anything tried to happen to them, let it happen to him! He took that part, but it was the way he was made, too, to be like that.

But there was something a little further, that no one could know except her. There was enough sweetness in him to make him cherish the whole world, but in himself there had been no forfeiture. Not yet. He had not yielded up to that family what they really wanted! Or they would not keep after him. But where she herself had expected light, all was still dark too.

He wanted her so blindly—just to hold. Often Robbie was back at the time where she had first held out her arms, back when he came in the store, home from the war, a lonely man that noticed wildflowers. She could not see why he needed to be so desperate! She loved him.

But he turned his head a little now and glanced at her with that suddenness—curiosity, not quite hope—that tore her heart, like a stranger inside some house where he wanted to make sure that she too had come, had really come.

It was all right with her, she wanted him to look at her and see that. She was rising a little on her chair as if she would stand up, while the music swelled—looking over Aunt Tempe's hothouse corsage and meeting the dark look. Somehow it was all right, every minute that they were in the one place.

There was a groan from upstairs, as at a signal given perhaps by Mary Lamar's rising music, and Battle, his skin, too, fiery red against his white clothes, brought Dabney down and entered with her on his arm.

In the early morning, climbing out of bed, Dabney had looked out her windows, walked around her room; at her door she had looked out and down the sleeping hall, out through the little balcony under its ancient awning. There were soft beats in the air, which she dreamily identified as her father's sleeping snorts. The sun, a red ball down East Field, sat on the horizon. Faint bands of mist, in the fading colors of the bridesmaids' dresses, rose to the dome of clear sky. And that's me, she had thought, pleased—that little white cloud. She had got back in bed and gone back to sleep. And she felt she had not yet waked up. Though Partheny had just come up to her and seemed to shake at everybody and everything in her room, wild old nurse—the way a big spider can shake a web to get a little straw out, seeming to summon up all the anger in the world to keep the lure of the web intact.

"Never more beautiful!" whispered Primrose.

That is what will always be said about a bride, thought Tempe, suddenly agitating her fan. And they all look dead, to my very observant eye, or like rag dolls—poor things! Dabney is no more herself than any of them.

Ellen looked at Battle as he sat down beside her, and took his hand.

Ranny in his white satin walked in on some kind of artificial momentum, bearing the ring on the pillow, never looking behind him though everyone was murmuring "Sweet!"

Then the women put their handkerchiefs to their eyes. Mr. Rondo married Dabney and Troy.

"Nobody from Virginia came, eh, Ellen?" asked somebody—Dr. Murdoch.

"Not this time," said Ellen, blushing somewhat. A piece of the family sat about in the dining room, more guests had poured in and been greeted and now stood eating food or carrying it out, or danced all over the downstairs, or sat in every chair in the house and halfway up the stair steps. Little Uncle, with a retinue, carried the tray that was bigger than he was, taking champagne around. The fans blew the candles. The children ran outdoors, chasing each other around the house, those that should be in bed wild with the rest.

"Tell about when your mama came!" Was that Orrin or Battle?

"The idea!"

She saw Mr. Rondo seat himself in their little group—and it was so hot for a preacher, too, poor man; he looked so resigned, yet cheerful.

"Mama!" said Ellen softly. "I've been thinking of her tonight.—Well, I was fixing to have Shelley, and Mama was alive. Mama came down from Virginia to stay with me. We were living at the Grove. So Mama was up when I called her, it was before day, and sent and got Dr.Murdoch. The Fairchilds turned out to be late getting there, or couldn't come—Aunt Mac was sick and Aunt Shannon, who was the busiest woman in the world then, had to be waiting on her hand and foot, and Primrose and Jim Allen were still out at a dance."

"But already it wasn't doing them a smidgen of good, Tempe had cut them out," Battle said, tweaking Tempe's little diamond-set ear. He loved her absurdity and would fish it out of any story even if she wasn't in it.

"Dr. Murdoch," said Ellen, her voice a little livelier as she went, "was a young man starting out and he brought a brand-new gas machine with him in his buggy and had a little Negro specially to carry it in the house and then wait for it on the doorstep. As soon as he got here he just sneered at me, the way he would now, and said fiddle, I had all the dme in the world and he was going to go and we could call him when I was good and ready. But Mama thought that was so ugly of him, and it was, Dr. Murdoch!—and she said, 'Don't you fret, Ellen, I'll cook him such a fine breakfast he wouldn't dare go.'

"Mama was from Virginia, so sure enough, she cooked him everything in the creauon from batter bread on. She might even have had shad roe except I don't know where she would have found it. Dr. Murdoch sat down and ate like a king, all right, but he, or Mama one, forgot how early in the morning it was for all that. Poor Dr. Murdoch got the worst off he ever got in his life, I imagine, on that Virginia breakfast, and then of course he had to lie down and groan and feel sorry for himself, and the only bed he could get to with Mama helping him was mine, downstairs—Mama couldn't drag him all the way upstairs by his feet! She put him down by me. So I began to poke his side presently, to attract his attention.

"I poked his side and he just groaned. Finally he popped his eyes open and looked at me from the other pillow and said, 'Madam,' meaning Mama, 'will you please do such and such and kindly stoop over the gas machine and see if it is in order.' And Mama did what he said and took one breath and fell down in a heap.

"So Dr. Murdoch used some profane words, he thought Mama was snooty anyway toward the Delta, and he got up—he could have done it in the first place. He pulled Mama up and he put her on my bed. She opened her eyes and said, 'Is my baby born yet?'—like you were hers, Shelley.

"So Dr. Murdoch went over and he fiddled with the gas machine and he bent over and took a testing breath and he fell over. Mama just was not able to pick him up a second time, so we just let him alone, and I asked Mama to leave the room, I was shy before her, and I had the baby by myself—the cook came and she knew everything necessary—Partheny it was."

"Papa, where were you?" asked India, leaning on Mr. Rondo.

"Greenwood! And you hush, you weren't born yet."

"Aunt Shannon got there and was deviling Dr. Murdoch—oh, her positive manner then!—for being nothing but a green Delta doctor that couldn't even tend himself, and Mama was snooting Aunt Shannon—snooting things clear back to Port Gibson—!"

They laughed till the tears stood in their eyes at the foolishness, the long-vanquished pain, the absurd prostrations, the birth that wouldn't wait, and the flouting of all in the end. All so handsomely ridiculed by the delightful now! They especially loved the way it made a fool of Dr. Murdoch, who was right there, and Ellen, her eyes bright from the story, felt a pleasure in that shameless enough to make her catch her breath. Dr. Murdoch looked straight back at her as always, as if he counted her bones. She laughed again, pressing Battle's hand.

"Mama, don't tell how much I weighed," Shelley begged, darting in and darting out of their circle.

"You weighed ten pounds," said Ellen helplessly, for that was the end of the story.

The laughter focused on Shelley, and she fled from the room, almost upsetting the aunts.

"One little glass of champagne and I don't know bee from bumble!" cried Aunt Primrose. "And neither do you, Jim Allen!" India sprang up between them and joining hands swung the ladies off. Dr. Murdoch, smiling handsomely, merged with the champagne drinkers over in the fern corner, where Uncle Pinck welcomed him by raising his glass.

"Well—it's over, the wedding's over.... Did you hear how old Rondo threw in his prayer, 'Lord, I know not many people in the Delta love thee'?" Battle said, stretching himself up and then slapping Mr. Rondo's back as if he were congratulating him.

"Cut the cake! Cut the cake! Cut the cake!" cried Ranny, running through.

"I'm tired of the cake! All day long in front of us!" glowered Roy. "Cut it and get it over."

Dabney was brought in and given the knife, and she cut the first slice. Then the bridesmaids and all rushed to cut after her. "I'm cutting the ring!" India cried, and sure enough, she did. "I'm the next!"

"Here comes the picture taker, Aunt Tempe!" For Tempe had said she had taken the liberty of giving permission to the Memphis paper to send down. Now she said "Mercy!" and clutched her hair. "Oh, we're all flying loose."

Battle wanted the photograph taken of the whole family, not of simply the bride and groom. Taking absolute charge he grouped his sons and daughters around him the way he wanted them. "Get in here, Ellen!" he roared through the room.

They posed, generally smiling. "Say cheese," Aunt Primrose reminded them, and said it herself.