Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (56 page)

Pre-fire, women rushed this out of Lady’s first-floor dressing room. Was her favorite pier glass. Lady always admitted to her women, “Only the profoundly vain, my friends, understand: no two mirrors are alike. And only we, the truly unapologetic, can name our especial favorites from over the years. I remember one beveled one in Charleston, five feet square it was and positively wasted, exiled on my aunt’s landing. A genius of a glass when it came to showing me the me I intend. You know I’ve rejected several. I will
not
be distorted by something I myself purchased. I just won’t, I tell you—fair warning.”

This—her champion flatterer—is full length, oval. It rides a mahogany base and frame. Borders are inlaid: three shepherdesses lounge in one glen, holding ribboned crooks, no sheep in sight.

Zelia oversees its being grappled to the ground then pulled nearer, rocked until it’s plunked right square before her. Lady rests tipped against the quarter’s outside wall. Glass swivels, locking down down. In its lower eight, there she sort of is—blacked like a stage comic’s blacked front tooth. Can she find a way to
notice?
Old Z reaches over, whips a borrowed head rag off Lady’s pate. Z grins, “Better. Much.”

Castalia stoops beside her former mistress, nods at the reflection, half purrs to
it
, not the dark nub herself, “There you is. And here’s us ones,
standing all round, see?” Xerxes, unable to resist the pleasure of greeting his own raw-material self, grimaces through eight test faces, fast. But he spares Lady his imitation of her face
now
.

“We leaving,” Cassie explains. “You gone stay right here. You yours now. Satisfied?”

“No kindness!” Zelia yells. “I ain’t having no mushy tone of voice. Where kindness been hiding these eighty years? Why it should pop out today?” And, squatting, Z elbows Castalia aside. “Lookie,” Old Z’s gnawed fingernail thumps glass. “Know who
that
be?—Three guesses, first two don’t count. Missy? Do something about this toasted little muffin appeal to you?”

Requires many minutes for two ruby eyes, their strange pale centers, to settle on the skin of silver glass. Z holds a pince-nez before these eyes. “Do that help?” Lady keeps checking others’ faces, hoping for instructions, knowing something is expected—not yet rightly understanding what. Children tilt closer. Kids make sure their faces (inside a shepherdess frame) register well above their old-time owner’s.

(Black women watch theirselves, each one maybe wondering how this, her own fine face, will now aid or hurt her in downtown Falls. A female slave’s being beautiful only drew the Master then Winch and his crew—in that hand-me-down order. And yet, surely, for a
freed
lady, all this beauty’s going to help, right?)

One mirror holds a row of interlacing faces, totem-poled.

Lady checks from those higher in the glass to a little crisped one down here at the bottom. “Oh yeah, you catching on
now,”
Z nods hard. “Quit beating round the bush for that fussy other one. She gone. This all what left.”

Lady blinks. Everybody strains more forward. Lady cocks her head like a challenged bird or animal. She swallows hard. Honey, it’s grown so tense and still here in the yard. Evidence Anne slips off into the garden, gets well clear of mirror’s sight and others’ hearing. She stands crying, not rightly knowing why. Then—wiping her face on one homespun sleeve—she hurries back. The child understands: This here’s her History happening. Mustn’t miss a time you know your folks are going to talk about forever.

Evidence finds Lady bent more forward, Lady is about to touch the bluish glass. Something in her upper face has half unfastened. Others murmur, squatting now, heads a-bobbing. Through festered eyes, Lady studies them, she clearly wants to please. Finally she presses one blistered palm across this picture of somebody cooked. A diagonal of lost lanolin smears cold glass. She shifts her head one way then the other—like trying to catch the mirror at some mistake. Watchers recollect these same blue eyes fixing on any slave’s serving accidents at dinner parties, hard and strict. “Later,” blue eyes had said. This is later.

She now levels the famous stare at her own self. She is seeing something. Next she squirms so, tries getting away. “Ooh noo you don’t. Yeah, folks. It happening,” Zelia rubs hands together then holds Lady fast. Everybody
packs in closer. Dust under Lady darkens. Nobody mentions it. Bare feet sidestep sudden tributaries.

Then, slow, like scared of being wrong—slouching lower—Lady gives off one questioning sound, checking others’ faces. You know the optimistic way a question rises at its end?

“Yeah. It you. You
now
. Ain’t she smart?” Z slaps a thigh. And Lady—maybe troubled by being laughed at, maybe (thanks to pain) starting to understand she’s still alive—turns her head aside and does something strange.

For the first time since the fire, whilst gazing up and around at the faces grinning down on her, leaning back against the quarter’s wall and twisting far aside in hopes of losing the mirror, she cries. But everybody later swore—what rolled out them tear holes was purest black—jet pearls tipping down either cheek. A matched set—one moving faster than its mate. Poisoned through and through with all that this plantation has become—blackness empties from her eyes, bitter half-pints just gushing.

NOW
FOLKS
can leave. It’s the sign they’ve waited on.

Freed people wander, a last tour of woods and the root cellar where certain punished kinfolk died. One yellow-headed Yankee boy gallops up on a sorrel, seeking provisions. He rides right past the blackened lady cringing away from a mirror’s plank of light. He sees a headcloth slipped back showing a pitiful stubbled dome. Boy calls from his horse, “How you faring, Mammy? Where’s the grub at?” Blinking, she don’t answer. “Now now, act nice to Robbie. After what my people did for your people, what’ll you give us?” Shrugging—he’s gone. Others, watching, can ease out of the woods again. They lift their bundles.

“Time come, Mrs. We the last,” Castalia announces. “Off for to seek our fortune.” Cassie’s tone rolls out amber-sounding, round-edged. “Afterwhile, you ever come up to New York City town, New York the State? why, you and me can go riding on a red trolley car together, side by side, shopping, everything. By the time you get there, I gone know the whole map of streets. New York a island inside rivers. We go down look at the boats. Cas might save up for riding on one. Sail home to Africa, a garden that’d sure put
this
weed heap to shame. So, bye, place. We done lived here for White plenty long enough.—Lady, seems like I ought to tell you something. But now, Cas can’t for the life of her remember what that be. Oh well. Just … Bye.”

Around Lady, children now pile tiny unripe fruit from her orchard.

“Here,” says Baby Venus, “these you apples. Growing yonder, them’s collards. We trained you to cook greens, remember?—So long, good luck. Seem like you gone need it. Us too, probly.”

The little ones have gathered pebbles. White rocks are held to be the rarest hereabouts. Pale pinks and yellows get lined up nearby—a circle, like for keeping back wild animals or spirits. Evidence Anne sets down one pet cricket in a jar. Propped nearby, the snaggletoothed keyboard. One framed
family coat of arms is settled closer as a charm and badge. Two women, holding sacks, run over, aim the mirror more direct at Lady. A bright oval plays across her scrubby surface. With one hand, she shields her eyes. She moves to pad away from such glare. But the two women—easy as you’d block a toddling child—drag her directly back. They press their former owner face to face with glass.

Old Zelia stubs off first, not saying bye to nobody. Halfway cross the red Chinese bridge, she pivots, drags clean back uphill to Lady, bends nearer, takes up Lady’s matted left hand. Seems Z is asking for some final handshake or a Lady benediction. “You all got my son drownded that time he try and run off. Your momma, her momma, and now you done kept Miss Zelia busy here for all these years. You all made me do what I wouldn’t of, could I of picked. Starting, I was smart. How you gone pay Zelia back for Zelia’s long life, Missy? You didn’t know it but, ma’am? you never could afford me. Well, Z gone hep you try. Them others got they whole young lifes left them. Zelia’s nearbout gone.”

It’s the ring she’s after, twisting hard. She jerks this hand like it’s a glove she might could peel off, tote to Falls, and hock. But fire’s done got so close. Scar tissue is confused—gold band and diamond all scrambled with skin, scab, finger bone. Ring won’t budge. So, snorting, Z finally lets the wrist drop. Swearing, she stomps away. Lady, distracted, lifts that hand, studies where she’s just been touched.

Then Old Zelia’s going for good. Judge More’s early mistress is seen to hobble over the bridge spanning soot-clogged ponds. On the far side, she stoops at a gardenia bush, takes up a missing ham. Under one arm—Z lugs the single prize she’s managed claiming (and only by cheating others). Lady Marsden ordered that this delicacy must be kept back till her soldier son marched home victorious. A hog would have to serve as Confederates’ fatted calf.

Miss Zelia can barely hold on to the salted slippery thing. She hauls it tipped against her in one arm, crooked there like a infant. It’s what she’s got after eighty years—her severance-type pay.—Z onct diapered Lady. Zelia nursed the fretful pretty child (while Z’s own son, Lady’s half brother, cried in his hammock for what milk was left). Now, making a right turn, bound for Falls, Zelia only thinks to spit on the roadside. Hard. Twice.

Castalia tells the children, “Hold hands, get ready.” Ex-slaves planned taking along the furniture but without no horse to pull a cart, with most of the saved things being such good size, you couldn’t lug enough today to make it worth your trouble. Only six miles to freedom, but six walked miles are still six miles. (Along the route to Falls, they’ll see Marse Mabry’s grandfather clock, heaved into a ditch and jumped on, splintered to matchwood.)

Folks did save, from under tarps, one gold cigarette box shaped like a scallop shell, half heavy as a cannonball. They left the green enameled frog, them hand-blown swans and gondolas, the Turkey carpets yet flying in trees for any takers.

•   •   •

EACH PERSON’S
brung along one green-banded demitasse and saucer of Spode: this stuff was always easier to clean than the silver. It is yet so pretty you can’t quite blame
it
for everything. People carry all the gifts Lady gave—busted castoffs and a few good birthday ones. Tucked into a tow sack, the Wedgwood gravy boat Castalia broke when she was ten and got so lashed for. It’s been mended with such care it looks less spoilt than Cassie’s back where the lashes’ curving marks still show. Rumors along the river claim: Lady onct handed a jewel to the slave girl that admired it. Cassie wears the item today—a small ivory brooch, a miniature: some English gent’s favorite hunting dog, and behind the hound’s bristled ears, a great house painted, half hid, in mist.

Who can say what waits in Falls? Nobody here’s got a lick of money. Ain’t one person leaving now that’s ever held more than three coins at a time. In Falls, there’ll be no ready place to live. These people’s skills are whatever slavery’s trained them for. If they do have a genius, it might be their gift for necessary acting.

Slaves leave because they can. Considering rumors of in-town hangings, of household guards and squatters’ villages, they’re scared to set off, sure. But, honey, they’re ashamed of having stayed out here this long.

Castalia lifts Baby Venus to her shoulders. The group stares down on a certain little woman. Her upturned face is flaking like a pane of isinglass. “It gone sing come night,” Evidence Anne points at the cricket jar. “That might could help you through.”

Then everybody moves away. Lady E. More Marsden is yet propped—her itchy back rests against stucco. She is left near a cook pot, a tin ladle for water, the busted keyboard, a glassed needleworked coat of arms, one overly life-sized mirror. Close by, the pebbles, a jar, some baby apples. This will have to be her kit for the world. She leans against the quarter’s chamber her husband used as his famous “nap” chamber. To this spot, he brought the young slave girls who helped him rest at midday.

Honey, Lady’s “people” became, for a while, her people—the only ones. Now off they trudge. She squints, seems to try and concentrate. Her split lips work, trying parts of words. Some women on the Chinese bridge turn back, others won’t, two swear long curses against the place, its owner. All children wave, not knowing no better. Xerxes, feeling fully hisself again—the sieve that others elegantly pour through—signals at Lady in her own old manner. It is that spare-your-energy hand jiggle Lady learnt from a Godey’s magazine, proving: being royalty ain’t easy. You can say that again.

Spying others’ exit, Lady goes even stiller. Her eyes are working better, more able to find middle distances. Slow, she shifts one bone arm, she lets that wrist rise. First the hand appears to point, accusing. Her brow knots. She then tries copying Xerxes’ copy of her. She’s trying hard to keep her people in view. She seems to partway guess she’s being left. She knows enough to want to stop it.

Castalia looks back just in time to see the former mistress manage. Lady has specialized in lush hellos, quick exits. Does she think she can woo folks back to help her? Does courtesy always hide a command? Cassie tells the children, “She alone now.” Everybody understands, in Lady’s forty-three years the woman has never spent one solitary night here on these grounds. She’s now waving so careful. Arm held in place, only the wrist gives a sidelong clockwork jiggle. Zelia, a good ways off, shifts, spies this last try at grandness. Yelling nothing, but yelling it real loud, Z gallops back to the property line, nearly drops her ham, yanks up many blooming roadside tulips, bulbs and all. Others join her, carrying flowers off, tossing them down, jumping on them for good measure. Ain’t no horse to steal and furniture’s too heavy. A few road’s edge lilacs have stayed unsinged. But won’t nobody touch these. (Forty years from now, the scent of lilac sachet sold downtown at Lucas’ All-Round Store will still turn these women’s stomachs.)