Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (76 page)

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MAIMIE L. BEECH
, alone now, paced. She appeared to seriously read one upside-down piece of blue paper—indigo blue for purposes of advertising and as a little joke. To her, the amount seemed huge. Embarrassment ran just that size. This, stashed with her own savings, meant she’d have enough to live comfortably forever. Why did that now seem a endless jail term? McCloud’s gift felt rigged, each dollar had a stinger hid inside it. Money meant to slowly numb her, hush her, keep her calm downhill and minding rowdy children her own color. Once Maimie turned McCloud’s blue paper into hard yellow gold, she would sign away her last true claim. She tried and calm herself with scripture, “Psalm go: ‘If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgements, if they brook my statutes and keep not my commandments, then I will visit their transgressions with the rod and their iniquity with stripes.’” To the blue check, Beech explained, “I been famous. Fa-mous.” She kept pacing.

The “secret weapon” they’d called her. This payoff meant goodbye to remembered French at table, so long the Book of Palms. Bye even to the scary half-fun of smelling smoke, dashing toward it, screaming, “Sugar, sug, what
now?”
Beech was being asked to cash in her Bianca like a stack of soap-smooth ivory chips.

“No way,” said famous Maimie Beech. “No way in
this
world.” She walked back and forth, the check pulling nearer her long face and weak eyes. She pictured what gold this paper’d draw her at the bank. She imagined it: a head-sized pile of rattly yellow light, coins that someway rhymed with all the thousand gold/brown/yellow ringlets sprouting off pink babies for all those uphill years. Around her finger, she’d created them from fluff, from nothing much—the definite and separate curls, proud years of them. Baby ringlets seemed a type of coinage, too, maybe this earth’s tenderest denomination. Rich folks, out all day earning still more money, had onct felt proud to leave the costly Maimie Beech guarding their true treasures. Even as a slave girl decades back, Beech’d understood: The hellions, her chosen specialty, were oftentimes their parents’ best-loved. Everybody considered that being bad—wild, willful—meant both a sadness and a luxury. There was heat in badness. Beech knew. The homes might change, the children might look different, but out of baby blues and baby browns one thing scoffed at her. It made house calls and so did Maimie Beech. “How you hanging, Marse Satan?” she said with a silent nod. And He snarled back,
“You
again?” They were old enemies. She was His Laundress. He was her filthy livelihood.

Beech had onct felt so in charge when big spenders called her in, tried bribing her to come and tame their lively worsts. She felt she’d pulled a fast one all these years—
loving
the brats had been her trick—it was that simple, that cheap. (McCloud believed a person got what a person paid for. Beech now saw—a person surely did. And she wanted it back, fifty-nine years of it. Might be a seller’s market but she’d regather all of it she could afford.)

Everybody got issued a certain amount of love per household—even residents of Baby Africa found their rightful share. But hers? Oh, she’d been
real clever, she’d rushed uphill and squandered it on sets of thankless twins, she’d spread it—gilding powder—over idle little clumps of strangers’ babies. Her share went to end their fevers, to hush their stammers, it’d urged their first steps. She’d burned her share in reading kids the finest things a hired head could make up. Years of it—sunk into scoldings and Bible lessons, the changing of those million diapers, all the rubber sheets.

No gentleman caller ever returned to her home after visit number three—not even when local gossip hinted how much cash old Beech had squirreled away. To her, no gent ever buzzed, “Open up. It’s me.”

Pacing, Maimie wondered: Was she one bit better than the women who accepted white men into their houses for a fee? Name the difference between loving these men and loving these men’s brats? At least the other act was over with lots quicker. Even if nobody quite meant it, that deed was at least
called
“love.” Wouldn’t it have been a faster, more honest livelihood than her years of patience—this gallery of scribbles, a few bronzed baby tokens, her tended calendar of honored births, and for what? Her birth date was now nine weeks gone. Who had honored her?

She’d been whites’ “secret weapon.” Love had seemed her secret weapon against them. Now she saw, love had been their secret weapon—against her.

Beech studied his blue check. It was, she understood, a polite white uninvitation. Marse McCloud was taking back that time he’d held her hand. A genius with children—kept far from children—why, she ain’t no genius no more. Mostly she has sunk to being a bleachish watered ghost. The bank is broke.

Maimie shut her Bible on the check. She tucked both underneath a pile of white hand-me-down plates. But even from the far side of her room, a tongue of indigo showed. She dressed to go out, she chanted verses Bianca’d liked: “Enter into His gates with singing. King in his countinghouse counting out his honey. Know ye that the Lord He is God. Queen down in she parlor eating bread and money.” Maimie pulled the check out, weighted it with the salt and pepper. These shakers: metal-plated baby booties—fitted with clear-glass inserts. Beech fetched her own unopened bottle of perfume—just like one she’d given to a birthday girl. Instant of Joy had been Maimie’s mirror-image gift to herself. She slipped into her best white governess outfit, one kept back in case she ever got offered work again. She pinned on her crispest cap. Beech stowed the perfume in one pocket, clutched her Bible big as a Welcome mat—hiked off to Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting. She was greeted with screams like the dead returned to life.

I’VE ONLY
heard this next part third-hand, fourth-hand. Still, especially if such events changed your coming life, especially if you’re named for the person, you try and understand what went on in her head that evening. We know the service ended around eleven. Sisters walked Beech home. They all kissed her good night. They kissed each other. Friends felt they’d saved
Maimie’s life. They were grateful she’d allowed them the excellent, justly famous sensation of doing right. (Wrong-doing is exceptional, too, and maybe has more variety, but right-doing’s pleasure lasts longer. Or so somebody as old as me must tell herself, darling.)

Maimie waited till loved ones meandered home. She already missed them. They’d always admitted envying her uphill reputation, amazed at how whites kowtowed. Friends forever acted kind to her but, in the end, they always left to join their real families. Beech knew: If she got sick, they’d tend her. If she died, they’d carry on proper and noisy at her funeral. But—even after years of kindness—Maimie knew what her Sisters knew: For a whole lifetime, it just won’t enough. The tally wouldn’t do.

Maimie—richer now—figured maybe she should haul off, hire herself a nurse and stranger (maybe even a white one). This person would come and stay with Beech tonight. The lady professional would bring along her knitting or letter writing but she’d first tuck in Maimie’s covers, she’d say, “I’ll be right here if you need anything,” she’d say, “There there,” or whatever honey-tongued hired comfort said.

The nurse wouldn’t have to mean it. Fact is, her words’d help Beech
more
for having nothing personal in them. For being bought at the going white rate, pricey.

FIRST BEECH
embarrassed herself by hiking uphill to the McCloud home. She guessed this was a humongous social mistake in the making. She couldn’t stop. Being “bad” was suddenly of major interest to her.
“You
again,” she muttered, and knew she was greeting Satan, Satan stationed on-duty in herself. If Beech set her mind to being bad—considering the years of observing little wicked geniuses—who might be better at it?

A party was underway. Chinese lanterns lit the trees. Lanterns drooped from a harem of palms dragged onto the porch. Every pastel lantern glowed with one squiggled Chinese letter. Maimie had learned: No McCloud could translate these. Each character looked like Beech’s vision of Oriental-Bible-English writing. Each looked written by some ink-dipped wing in flight.

Folks packed and jammered all over the McCloud lawn. You heard so many clinking glass ladles against glass punch bowls filling glass cups—sounded like the Caucasians were made, mouth and hands, of glass. Maimie mingled easy enough at first. Two young women asked her to please go get them some extra napkins. When she looked hard their way, one said, “Sorry. We thought …”

Three pianos sounded from indoors. The visiting Collier twins played flute. Music leaked through open windows with the candlelight. A gatecrasher moon looked on through tree limbs. The mansion’s hundred points and edges showed black against a sunset. This sunset was the color of cut-rate foreign rubies or the best local berry jams.

All in white, the second gardener stood carving rare roast beef on a banquet table dragged outdoors. The smell of food made Beech feel giddy.
Seemed she hadn’t eaten for the longest time. How many days made a week and what was her day off? The nearer she wandered to the churchlike home, the weaker did her legs feel. Finally—bumped and milling among glazed white strangers—Beech sat down on the lawn. She had to. She’d been staggering.

Waiting here in dewy grass, Beech held more tight to her Bible. (People would see the Book and know her.) She touched her scalp, was the hat on straight? Facing the three-story uphill home, its stained glass burning from inside like with a fever, Beech spoke as to some choosy eater …”Open up. It’s me.”

She only wanted rest. She felt like she deserved to rest right here. To someday be buried in this pretty grass—a gravestone white as a salt lick. Soon Bianca would know Beech was here, Bianca would dash out holding tailor-made clover anklets, a five-strand clover crown.

Guests—though busy admiring, addressing, and fondly criticizing each other—did slowly notice the curious sight: a black woman wearing a white uniform—sitting in grass as if stationed here for some useful chore, to read “fortunes” from her big black book, or to bodily plug the yard’s worst geyser, or give guided tours of clover. Nested among the pretty open-toed shoes of white ladies, shiny summer shoes of gents, the seated woman was careful to keep her long neck stretched in a way half grand—her pleated face wide open with a look of full entitlement.

Out-of-towners’ fancy shoes first edged away from her. Then one pair of white suede oxfords did come nosing nearer. “Might we be of service?” The shoes had a young white male voice helping them from high above. “You’re feeling a tad woozy, I take it. Well, welcome to a fairly largish club. My friends were just asking what our Presbyterian Angus uses to spike this stuff. Certainly sneaks up on one. Not that you don’t look perfectly at ease down there, but, listen, should you ever
care
to stand, I consider myself still steady enough—possible mistake of mine—to maybe assist a person. Say, are you a nurse? We were just wondering over there. Couldn’t help notice your tidy little hat. Young lady in my group, see the one? she was admiring it. Look at her giggling. Definite drawback. Don’t you hate it when they giggle?” “Tell Marse Angus my name. He know me. I used to help around this place. Set right at the table. Tell him Maimie L. Beech back on the job. See what he say do.”

Beech understood: McCloud must now be sent for. Her order had been given. She was glad. Enter into his presence with singing. Sound the gongs, burn incense, waste precious precious ointments. When the gates swung open, when Beech was asked to enter again, she would know what to say or chant. She felt she did not need to plan it now. Her favorite hymn was “Something Always Sings.” Just trust, she told herself—she gave herself some credit.

But Beech was down here shaking. Her dark legs—little wider than the bones in them—poked straight before her, ending in great blockish white
shoes. She always wore flats to shorten the distance she had to bend toward her children. Now hugging the Book, she waited among other feet. Her face changed, mouth almost gloating, mumbling, ready to greet the man. She sat stubbornly grinning at nothing—plainly eager to become more naughty. Beech was laboring at it.

The young white shoes went off to others (“Seems to actually
know
Angus”), then both shoes moved to the house, climbed nine front steps, returned: a message.

Clumsily, one whole young man bent down into sight and breathed whiskey. Beech closed both eyes. She never expected to see a whole person lower towards her like a diver coming down to join her underwater. This was the first direct order Beech had ever sent McCloud: “Hear my petition. Come unto me.” Where was the man?

“Angus insists you meet him on your back-yard bench, on you two’s bench. You
do
know him, don’t you? Boss told me to tell you, at all costs, ‘Bleach must not be seen by the youngest,’ that little one who always wears the hats, their baby one … named …”

Eyes shut, Maimie hoarsely announced with great tired feeling, “Bianca.”

“Very one, yes. Boss said, under no circumstances should you be seen by her. I hinted as how—maybe you’ll object—you’d perhaps imbibed a drop. Not that I haven’t. (But then I have due cause. I still work for him.) And Boss goes, ‘Bleach is not to be seen by Bianca. Bleach will know this herself, in whatever state.’ He said you were devoot! But why ‘Bleach’? Anyway, my advise’d be go and try him now in the back yard. You know, Clara’s right. Especially up close, this is quite a cunning little hat you’ve got. Clara might even want it. I think I’m going to go
ask
Clara.”

Maimie Beech nodded, careful to keep eyes mashed closed. She started to unpin her cap but the voice walked off. Beech let her hat stay while repeating in a dulled locked tone, “‘Cannot be seen here.’ ‘Cannot no longer be seen here.’ He acting so rude. He
rude
to me.”

She had asked for a moment’s credit and right out front where folks could see a person get her due—prepare a table/presence mine enemies. He had not come out to her. “Open up,” she’d asked. The household would not. Few saw the minor spectacle. Through groves of ankles, cuffs, pale shoes, paste buckles, one lean black woman in outsized whites, eyes mashed stubbornly shut, clutching her Bible, scrambled away on hands and knees. She slipped from the lantern-lit yard, was soon just white shoes scuddling out a hedge’s hole, was lost to the safety of the darkness of the street.