On Agate Hill (5 page)

The letter came a week later, saying that Lewis Polk Hall had
exhibited great valor but died crossing the open fields to the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg July 3, 1863.
Aunt Fannie read the letter and fainted dead away.

And this is my mammas story of the ghost horse that came in a storm on the very night of Lewis Polks death to tell us.

So how can Uncle Junius
not
remember this as he stands on the piazza steps to tell the Gwyns good bye? He stands there a good long while shading his eyes from the sun. Then he walks back across the piazza and into the house and shuts the door behind him and calls me one more time.
Molly!

Then he calls,
Selena!

Then I can hear his slow hollow tread through the passage and out the back door and now I can see him from my cubbyhole window, see the top of his white head and then his back as he passes the brick kitchen and pauses to take off his dark jacket and put it over his arm. He stands there to breathe for a while. Then slowly he crosses the yard and passes the well and walks down past the garden and the cabins to the tenant house.

I have never seen Uncle Junius do this before. I have never seen him walk over there.

It takes him the longest time to get across the yard for he breathes so bad now, and walking hurts him. He drags his leg as well. Why Uncle Junius has suddenly got to be an old, old man! I realize as I watch him. This scares me. In fact he looks like a man in a white shirt in a painting of a man in a white shirt walking across a green yard in the hot still part of the day, he has to stop from time to time to rest, it takes him forever to get there. And there is no one else in this picture at all no one present to help him, not Old Bess nor Virgil nor Liddy nor Rom, just nary a soul, as Virgil would say.

All of a sudden I realize that I am not in this picture either.

I am no where, a ghost girl.

Uncle Junius goes to stand at the gate of the low picket fence surrounding the tenant house. He puts his hand on the latch and then they must see him for the door of the house opens up like Aunt Mittys coo coo clock from Germany and out they all come tumbling, tough little Godfrey mean as a snake and her two girls Victoria and Blanche, dont you think these are fancy names for the tenant farmers children? as Rachel pointed out.

But Selena has got notions, in fact she is full to bursting with them.

Selena is the tenant farmers wife.

Now that would be Mister Vogell of German descent, but where is he? Up and vanished into thin air one hot day last summer while Selena and the rest of us were picking peaches and cutting them up and drying them out on the scaffold in the sun. Selena told Aunt Fannie that Mister Vogell went to the field and never came home, and has never been heard from since. He did not show a sign of leaving before he went, according to Selena. It is hard to imagine Mister Vogell doing a thing so out of the ordinary, for he was a thick glum man like a side of beef who never said anything at all. He had an extra big head like a melon with a straight shock of yellow hair that fell into his eyes and gave him a stupid appearance, like a window with the shade pulled down. He wore his pants hiked way up high to show his fat white ankles. He was considerable older than Selena.

I just can not see why she ever married him, why she is an attractive woman, Fannie used to say, and Uncle Junius said, Now Fannie, we will
never know what kind of a situation she came from, nor what has happened to her along the way. And it is true that those two daughters look very different from Mister Vogell, being dark and curly headed like gypsy girls. Selena herself is dark complected and dark haired, a tall woman strong as an ox. She can work all day long in the field then split wood like a man, many is the time I have looked out my cubbyhole window here to see Selena out by the wood pile with her skirt hitched up and the ax upraised, and the ringing of the ax lasts all morning long. She is a good worker, and with those children, it is clear that Uncle Junius could never kick her out. It would not be in his nature. So Selena is still in the tenant house.

But little by little since Aunt Fannie died, Selena has been worming her way into
this
house too. Now Uncle Junius has took to calling her
the housekeeper
though Liddy will not do hardly a thing Selena says and Old Bess pays her no mind at all.

I look out my cubbyhole window.

There stands Uncle Junius at the gate to the tenant house. There stands Uncle Junius bareheaded in the sun with his jacket folded over his arm. It is like he is under a spell. He stands there until Selena herself comes busting out of the open door with her black hair just washed and hanging down almost to her waist in waves like some animals shiny coat. She is bare foot wearing a loose white blouse and a red skirt, she has got a big smile on her big red mouth and her black eyes flash in the sun like the fools gold I keep in my pocket. Uncle Junius says something and Selena says something and throws back her head and laughs. Her hair falls all down her back. Then she opens the gate and goes to Uncle Junius and wraps her arms around him like a vine.

Like poison ivy, is what I think.

All I can see of Uncle Junius is the back of his head but Selena lifts her head all of a sudden and stares straight up at this chimney. I know she can not see me really but it is like she is staring right at me. And then she smiles. She knows she can do anything, or have anything she wants. They stand like
this in the hot sun awhile and then keeping one arm around his waist Selena walks Uncle Junius into the tenant house through the open door. Her girls head off down toward the creek dragging Godfrey who fights them all the way. They disappear from view. Now the yard is quiet once more with no one present except for Virgils old dog that dreams a running dream in the sun and Daddy Rex who sits outside his cabin but never saw a thing since he is blind. And as for me my heart is beating very hard in my chest and I feel like I can not breathe. I know for sure that everything will be diffrent from now on.

June 5, 1872

Dear Diary,

Oh now we are having a time for Selena
the housekeeper
is bossing us all around, we must clean up the house to a fare thee well for the grand arrival of Uncle Junius sister Cecelia, or Sissy as he calls her.
Aunt Cecelia
to you, Selena says to me. Her daughters Victoria and Blanche will call her
Mrs. Worthington
. And now they are here too, in the house, helping to clean though they are lazy. Victoria is a big mean strapping girl like her mother, thirteen years old, but Blanche age eight is skinny with flyaway hair and knobby knees and elbows and a big grin. I like her better. They keep stopping to look at things, they touch everything. Old Bess does not like it. In any case Liddy must now boil out all the bed linens, and yesterday Washington and Spence had to carry all the bed ticks and pallets out to the yard where they beat them with sticks and allowed them to air in the sun while Selena and the rest of us scoured the bedrooms scrubbing the heart pine floors and rubbing the beds and dressers and chests with tallow to give a shine. Spence carried a whole mattress on his head with one hand. Selena was like a whirlwind with her elbows flying. Then she pulled up her skirt and got down on her hands and knees to thrust the broom under the bedsteads and sweep up piles of dust and God knows what all. Her rump stuck way up in the air but she did not care. We were in the girls bedroom.

Just look at them dust devils, she said, for some of the piles of dust and hair held together like little tornados.

Ooh, ooh, screamed her girls, dead mouse, dead mouse. They danced all around the dust devils pointing.

Selena rocked back on her heels and wiped the sweat off her face with a rag she pulled out of her bosom. She stuck out her bottom lip and blew her black hair up out of her eyes. Lord God. Its a pig sty in here, Selena said, like it pleased her.

Old Bess stood in the door with her hands on her hips.

Well what are you looking at, Selena said.

Old Bess said not a word.

Selena had me sweeping out the closet making a great big cloud of dust that stuck to my face for it was hot in there.
Horses sweat, men perspire, ladies glow,
my mother always said, but that was back before ladies worked.

Selena got back down under the bed to take another swipe with her broom.

Victoria pushed me aside as she ran into the closet and started pulling out drawers in the bureau. Oh look oh looky here, she said holding up a long white ruffled petticoat.

That was my mothers, I said. It goes over a hoop skirt.

Well wheres the hoop then? Victoria said, and I said,
Over there,
and showed her where the hoops were leaning up against the closet wall. The cloth strips that held them together had gone for bandages. Victoria threw the petticoat down and pulled out a silk camisole and held it up to herself. It had lace around the neckline. Why look it is just my size, she said, though Mamma had been real little and dainty. There in the hot dusty gloom with the camisole glowing white and Victorias dark messy curls all down in her face I suddenly saw how pretty she will be one day.

I hate Victoria.

Take it then, I said, and pushed her real hard so she scrambled backward and fell in the corner with the camisole clutched to her chest.

Girls, girls what is going on in there? Selena called.

Nothing, I said.

Molly pushed me
. Victoria set up a big fake wail like I was killing her.

Molly what is going on in there? Selena asked from the door.

She is just telling a stupid lie, I said.

Well get up from there now Victoria, Selena said, but Victoria lay on her back like a junebug and bawled like she was dying, and all could see her drawers.

I said get up
. Selena went over and yanked at her shoulder.

That hurt, Mama, she cried harder.

Come on now we have got a lot of work to do, Selena said. Instead Victoria scrambled up to her feet and ran out the door past both of us and straight into Bess who said, You stop right there Miss and snatched at the camisole.

But Victoria held on to it for dear life.

You are not going to have that now Miss, it belong to Alice Heart. It belong to Miss Molly now, Bess said.

I dont want it, I said.

Let go now child, Old Bess said. But she is getting little now, she has got a misery in her back too.

Oh just give it to her Victoria, for Gods sake, Selena said.

I dont want it, I said again.

Miss Fannie done save these things for you by the hardest, Bess said, and I knew this was true, for almost everything else in this house has been torn up and made into clothes even the curtains, and then patched and patched again.

I dont care, I said.

Old Bess turned to look at me hard, and in that instant Victoria gave a big tug and the camisole tore right down the middle and she stumbled back against a bed. She clutched the shiny cloth to her chest and cried harder than ever. Bess smoothed the other piece of the camisole over her arm, over and over, looking at me from the doorway.

What?
I said. I hated them all.

Selena stood still in the middle of the girls bedroom with her hands on her hips and her face on fire. Her black eyes darted everywhere. Her bosom went up and down. She seemed to get bigger and bigger while I watched, like the gods and goddesses of ancent Greece in Nora Gwyns book. I felt she would fling a thunderbolt. Blanche clung to her skirt. Go outside now girls, Selena said finally. She yanked Victoria up off the floor but before you could say spit, Victoria ran back in the closet and came out with one of the hoops. Ooh! I want one, Blanche said and ran in for another.

Molly? Selena looked at me.

I dont care, I said

Go on out then girls, you go too Molly, Selena said.

You are not the boss of me, I said. I did not bat an eye.

The girls ran whooping down the stairs.

Selena looked at me and nodded slightly, just once. Then she pushed back her hair and grabbed her broom. Bess, lets get this done, she yelled from under another bed. You go on down and get them to bring me some more water up here. I want it hot too. Go on now, Selena said, and then,
Bess?

The doorway frame stood empty.

Bess was gone, and she has not come back yet to help with the big cleaning.

But Selena proceeded like a house afire.

I watched her daughters roll those hoops in the yard until I could not stand it any more. Finally I got one for myself and ran out in the yard with it. Like this, Molly! Like this, Victoria said, rolling her hoop toward me, while mine wobbled and fell over. But soon I got the hang of it, and before long I was better at it than they were.

Look,
I called to Old Bess who came walking back from the garden with a mess of greens in her basket, but Bess did not speak. She set her face against me, and went into Liddys kitchen without a word.