Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray (15 page)

We walked across a meadow until we got to a stream of water. On the other side were a grove of trees and some vines with red flowers hanging down. It made a pretty scene: blue water, red vines, green trees. Miss Mary spread the quilt and opened her paint box. The boys took off, and Cassie followed them to keep them out of trouble. The dog ran ahead, his tail swiping the air like a feather duster.

Miss Mary bent down over her painting and seemed like she forgot the rest of us were there. I picked some vines and started weaving them together.

Little Mary plopped down beside me. “Selina, what are you doing?”

“Making a crown.”

“Out of leaves?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Who is it for? I know! Me.”

“What makes you so sure? Maybe I'm making it for your brother Custis, or that spotted dog of his.”

She giggled. “Dogs don't wear crowns. Boys don't either.”

“Of course they do. It talks about it in the Bible.” I tucked the ends of the vines under.

“I don't care. I want it.” She reached for it. “It's pretty.”

“Let me tell you something, Mee. In your long life there is bound to be lots of things you will want and can't have. It's going to go hard for you if you can't learn that people don't always get what they want. Even you.”

“I'll tell Mama you were mean to me and then you'll be in big trouble.”

“Suit yourself.”

She jumped up. “Keep your stupid crown. It's ugly anyway.”

I shaded my eyes and looked back at Miss Mary. She had finished her sketch and was waving to the boys. Mee ran to meet Custis and Rooney, who had been wading, judging from their wet pant legs.

Miss Mary frowned at Cassie like the whole thing was her fault, and then at her boys. “Custis Lee, what on earth happened?”

“Rusty treed a squirrel, then he got scared and wouldn't cross the creek. I had to go fetch him.”

“Mama, I helped,” Rooney said. “Rusty was awful scared.”

Miss Mary laughed, and it was like sunshine breaking through the darkest clouds. “Then I suppose it is a good thing you brave boys were there to rescue the poor thing.”

Custis bent down to study his mother's artwork. “It's pretty, Mama. It looks like a picture in a book. Can I have it for my room?”

“If you wish, precious child.”

“I want a picture too, Mama.” Rooney collapsed onto her lap and rested his head on her shoulder.

“All right, my sweet. When we come tomorrow, I shall paint a picture just for you.”

Rooney beamed at his mother. “And after that it will be Mee's turn.”

“I don't want one.” Little Mary sat down on the quilt and folded her hands. “I'm hungry.”

Miss Mary put away her paint box and opened up the basket. I gave Cassie the crown I made and we ate our sandwiches. The boys took turns slipping bites to the dog.

It was a pleasant time there in the sunny meadow with the birds and insects singing and chirping and the water running over the rocks in the stream. When Rooney and Mee got sleepy, Miss Mary said it was time to go home. I folded the quilt. Miss Mary packed up her paint box. Cassie carried the sandwich basket, and we started back to the house. The children and Rusty ran on ahead, leaving Miss Mary and me to follow them.

She let go a gusty sigh. I was learning that when she sighed like that, it meant she wanted to talk about something that was bothering her. So I said, “What is it, Miss Mary?”

She stopped walking and reached out for my wrist. “Am I a good mother, Selina?”

Most of the time it seemed like the children were in charge instead of her. Sometimes they minded her and sometimes they didn't. But what did she think I was going to answer? “
No, you an awful parent”
?

The way she was standing there in the sunshine in a plain old dress that was wrinkled and spotted with paint and her hair in a plait, she looked like a ordinary farmwife and not the rich woman who one day would own Arlington and everything and everybody in it. I felt sorry for her.

“Just about the best there is, I reckon.”

“My husband scolds me for not being firm with them. He says I must demand their respect. I try, but they don't always listen. Especially Mee.”

I thought of times I saw that girl pushing ahead of her brothers to be first for whatever was happening. Snatching for herself whatever she wanted. A toy, for instance. Or the last biscuit on the breakfast table.

“Wesley doesn't listen to Mauma all the time either. But it does seem like Little Mary has a mind of her own, all right.”

Miss Mary heaved another sigh. “You were right not to give her the crown you made this morning. She must learn to think of others before herself.”

We started walking again. Seemed like our talk had made Miss Mary feel better. I hoped she was right about Miss Mee learning from what I had done. But some people are just born to think only of their own selves, and it seemed to me Little Mary was one of them.

The summer passed slowly. On days when Miss Mary's rheumatism pained her, she sat at a desk in the parlor and wrote long letters to Captain Lee. Then she waited for him to write her back. On good days we went back to the meadow for more painting. When it rained we sat on the porch and listened to Miss Mary reading from the books she had brought from Arlington. Mister Turner played the fiddle, and some nights he stood on the porch and played while Missus and Miss Mary sang. Missus Turner had a fine voice too, and many a night I nearly drifted to sleep listening to the singing.

On days when Miss Mary's many cousins came to visit, Cassie and Kitty were in charge of the three older children. Sometimes I went with them fishing in the stream, and me and Cassie and Kitty taught them to play tag and pickup sticks. Come Saturday night we stayed up late talking to the Turner slaves in the yard
and singing our own songs. When Sunday rolled around we had prayers on the porch and Mister Turner read from the Bible.

Then one day it was all over, like waking up from the best dream you ever dreamed. Daniel and Thornton showed up with the wagon and the carriage, and we made the trip back to Arlington.

The minute I got home I knew there was something bothering my mauma. She stomped around the cabin like she was mad at the whole world. Wouldn't hardly talk to me. I helped her with the baby and put the corn pone on the fire, and when Daddy and Wesley came in, we sat down to eat supper.

Many a time Mauma would ask me to read from the Bible before we went to bed. But that night she banged the dishes so loud she woke up the baby, and when Daddy asked her what was the matter she didn't even answer.

Wesley caught my eye and said, “Best leave her be, Sister. She in a fighting mood these days.”

So I went up to bed. My bones were tired after the long trip from Mister Turner's place, but my thoughts jumped around like drops of water on a hot skillet. I wondered what was on the other side of the stream at Kinloch. What would have happened if one day I had just kept on walking and never come back? I thought about Miss Mary wanting everything to stay the same. And the feelings the
Liberator
had awakened in me. If there was a wedge between Miss Mary and me, this was it.

I rolled over to the edge of my pallet and reached underneath to touch that folded-up paper that held my dreams in it.

“You won't find it.” Mauma's voice in the darkness made me jump. She had come up the ladder to the loft silent as a cat.

I sat up, my heart thumping in my chest. “Who found it?”

“I did, thank the good Lord. Suppose Mister Custis had found it? Or Missus?”

“They never come down here. You know that.” I was mad as I had ever been. Over a simple sheet of paper. “It was mine. You had no right to take it.”

“You got no business putting this whole family in danger, Selina. Have you forgot what they did to Nat Turner?”

“I haven't killed any white people lately. Don't plan on it in the future either.”

“You think because you work in the house and Miss Mary treats you special, the rules don't apply to you. Let me tell you something. If they catch you reading things like that, you liable to find yourself in the slave pen across the river and on your way south. Is that what you want?”

As far as I knew, Mister Custis had never sold anybody. But wasn't no use arguing with her. I flopped down onto my back. “I'm sorry I worried you. I won't do it again.”

“All right then. Get some sleep.”

I never would have thought that one piece of paper could mean so much to me. I felt its absence like a missing arm, but I knew Mister Garrison's words by heart anyway.
Men should be as free as the birds in choosing the time when, the mode how, and the place to which they shall migrate. The world is all before them, where to choose their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

When morning came I went up to the house to polish the silver.

1841

B
ut I want to go swimming right now.”

I looked into the mutinous face of my oldest daughter and wished her father were there to witness just what I had to contend with every moment of that child's life.

“I have told you, Mee, that we will go once we are unpacked and the house is in order.”

“Don't call me Mee anymore. It's a baby name and I am not a baby.”

I shook out a set of summer curtains and draped them across the back of the settee in the parlor of our rented house in Brooklyn. “Well, you are certainly acting like a baby. Agnes is more grown up than you, and she is barely six months old.”

“You love Annie and Agnes and the boys more than you love me. But I don't care.”

I reached for her but she pulled away, her arms crossed. I unpacked another set of curtains, heartsick that this child was so hard to love, was so dead set against me.

Kitty came in with Annie in her arms. “Miss Mary, I can't do nothing with this child. Baby Agnes is upstairs sleeping like the dead, but this one here? She has cried for you all morning.”

I reached for Annie, who had just passed her second birthday. She was usually a happy child and easy to manage. I loved her all the more for the raspberry birthmark still visible on her face.

Kitty transferred Annie to my arms. “I can unpack that crate for you.”

Annie quieted as I jostled her on my shoulder. “Where are the boys?”

“Off somewhere with Jim. Don't worry, Missus. Jim got his eyes on both of 'em.”

“Maybe you ought to take Daughter and join them.” I eyed Mee. “She seems to have little use for her mother's company this morning.”

Mee brightened. “Can Kitty take me swimming?”

“She may not. Go along now, and behave yourself. If you can.”

With Annie asleep on my shoulder, I walked to the window and watched Kitty and Mee crossing the yard behind the house. In addition to Kitty and Rose, who helped with the house and with my personal needs, we had brought Jim along to look after Robert's horses and our carriage. He was proving to be an excellent companion for my growing sons. Jim had made a swing for the children, and now the boys were taking turns on it. Custis was nearly ten, Rooney was four, and they were in constant motion from morning until night, when they finally settled with their father and me for reading and evening prayers.

I was pleased to have a spacious house all to ourselves, the yard for the amusement of my children, and a garden for planting the seeds and cuttings Mother sent from home. There was a beach nearby, and on my walks around Fort Hamilton I watched ships coming and going from New York Harbor. Looking out over the pastoral neighborhoods of Brooklyn, it was difficult to
believe that the bustle of New York City, with its endless array of fashionable shops, lay just a few miles away. Though Robert's military salary was modest, it was enough to indulge my occasional forays into those shops, where I had already purchased beautiful dresses for my daughters and my mother.

On this blue and gold September day, however, there was no time for walking or shopping. The week before, Mother had requested that I write letters to several of our cousins and acquaintances urging their support of our resettlement efforts.

I eased the sleeping Annie onto the settee, sat at my desk with paper and pen, and unfolded the list Mother had sent. Among the Fitzhughs and Williamses and Turners I spotted the name of Mrs. Pinckney, the woman who at my wedding ten years earlier had offered to buy the carved ivory box my father had just given me. I couldn't imagine that such an acquisitive woman would be sympathetic to the cause, but I penned a note and added it to the stack with the others.

I wrote straight through the day until Rose came in at three to tell me dinner was ready.

“Guess what, Mama?” Custis said as soon as we were seated at the table. “Jim made us a swing.”

“I saw it from the window this morning. It looks like the most fun.”

“It is fun,” Rooney said. “Jim pushed me higher and higher. I went higher than Mee.”

“Oh, Rooney, you did not,” Daughter said, picking up her glass of milk.

“What about you, Custis?” I worried constantly about my elder son. I wanted him to have the same carefree childhood I had enjoyed, but he seemed always to be serious and preoccupied.

“I swung once or twice, but then I let Mee have my turns. She's younger than me.”

“That was kind of you, son. But there is nothing wrong with enjoying yourself.” I took a bite of Rose's excellent apple pie. “You ought to have fun while you can. Your formal schooling will begin soon, and then you won't have as much time for leisure.”

“I don't know why you can't keep teaching me, Mama.”

“Well, my precious child, for one thing I am not very good at mathematics.”

“Maybe you take after Grandpapa. He says he was not any good at it either. He says President Washington worried about it all the time.” Custis buttered his biscuit. “Did Grandpapa worry about you?”