Sophie and the Rising Sun (2 page)

I was hardly more than a child myself. Only twelve or thirteen, and my mama made me stay in the back part of our house so I wouldn’t hear any more than she could help. Wouldn’t even let me sit out on the porch.

The doctor came and went at their house until Saturday afternoon, and after that, he never left until the baby finally arrived, around church-time on Sunday. Folks said that when he came out about an hour later, he looked like he’d been run over by a train, he did. Went straight home, his wife said, drank a fifth of bourbon, and slept for two whole days. Later, he told her he’d never seen anything like it. Just flat-out, a little baby that didn’t want to be born. “I had to drag it out!” he said. “And God only knows what-all it was hanging on to!”

Sophie’s mama always said the birth ruined her health. And I guess all the hand-wringing and the hollering and the running into each other the elder sisters did must have taken a toll, too. Because they said the birth ruined
their
health as well. So that as soon as Sophie could toddle around and understand when they told her to go get their crocheting for them or another pillow to rest their feet on, or a clean hanky, they had her doing everything for them. All the time. Just like she owed them something.

It must have been hard for Sophie, waiting on them hand and foot from the time she was just a little thing. And growing up under the black little bird-eyes of those women. And none of them young. In a house full of medicine bottles and handkerchiefs and smelling salts. And boredom.

That’s why I say that if there was ever a beau for Sophie, they would have nipped that right in the bud. Because they weren’t about to give up the one who ran around and waited on them. Besides, Sophie would have told me if there had been someone. I’m sure of it.

So she never did marry. Just took care of those old ladies and grew older and more faded-looking herself, every single year, what with them getting so elderly and so much more demanding and living for such a long time. And Sophie’s mama, especially, was always hard to get along with. When she got older, she took to doing some strange things, like collecting dead birds she’d find out in the yard from time to time. Take them right inside the house and lay them out on a shelf in the pantry. Such as that.

She was the first one to pass on, Sophie’s mama was, and I always thought somebody ought to have put her on a shelf in the pantry, too—let her see how she liked having that done to her. But of course, they didn’t. Then a few years later, Sophie’s Aunt Elsa passed on. Her Aunt Minnie was the only one left after that, and she was just as senile as a coot for a long time before she finally passed away. Used to sneak out of the house almost every night and wander around in the front yard in her nightgown, calling and calling for her mama. Can you imagine? Sophie never had a whole night’s sleep for all the years that went on, but she didn’t complain about it. Not even to me.

Afterward, when they were all gone at last—her Aunt Minnie passing on only a few months after Mr. Oto came to stay in my gardener’s cottage—folks thought then maybe Sophie would do a little traveling or something like that. But she didn’t. Just went about doing what she’d always done—taking care of the house and tending to her crab traps and painting some pictures down by the river. I guess by then it was too late for much of anything else.

But I’ll say this about Sophie: She was a real lady. One of the few left in this whole town, someone who was raised right—whatever other faults her mama and the aunts may have had. So Sophie always came calling on me—and she was the only one who still kept up that fine old tradition.

I was a little bit older, of course, and I’d known Sophie all her life, knew her better than is usual in small towns like this one, where everybody knows everybody else, anyway. Because when I was a young lady—and already being courted by my late husband—Sophie was just a little girl, and even then, I thought she was very special.

Maybe it had something to do with the way I’d always wanted a sister. Someone younger than me to look up to me and share her little secrets with me. Sophie was the closest I had to that. But of course, her mama didn’t let her get away very often, so it didn’t blossom into a real friendship—like sisters—it could have been. Still, I always thought she was a precious little thing.

I remember one twilight evening when I was sitting in the porch swing, and Sophie came skipping down the road right in front of my house—she couldn’t have been more than six or seven—and waved her fingers at me as she went by. Must have gotten away from her mama for a few minutes. She was wearing a white pinafore and skipping and singing right down the middle of the road, and I thought she looked so pretty that day. And, too, there was something about the way it was, right at dusk, that made me think she looked just like a little white egret, ruffling its feathers this way and that. But if her mama had seen her, she’d have had a fit.

“Keep your skirt down, Sophie!” she would have admonished. “And behave like a
lady!
” Like I said, whatever other faults Sophie’s mama had, she certainly raised Sophie to be a real lady.

I don’t know why that particular image of Sophie stands out like it does in my mind. But then, we never do know how it’s going to be with us when we get older.

Anyway, when she was just a little girl, Sophie used to come over to my house some afternoons, whenever her mama would let her, and she’d play dress-up, draping herself all over with my scarves, and sometimes, I’d let her put some of my face powder on her nose. Other times, she liked just lying across the front of my bed and watching me mending my silk stockings or making some tatted lace for the pillowcases in my hope chest.

“What’s a hope chest?” she asked me once. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, I remember.

“It’s where you keep all the things you fix up for when you’re a married lady,” I told her.

“Is that what you’re supposed to hope for? Is that why it’s called a hope chest?”

“I think so. And yes, it’s what every young lady hopes for.”

“Not me,” Sophie said in a voice strong with that particular kind of certainty children have.

“Yes—you, too,” I assured her, enjoying the little proclamation she had made. And her absolute confidence in it.

“No,” she insisted. “‘Cause Mama wouldn’t let me.”

“She would if you were a grown-up young lady,” I explained, and then I amended that: “She
will
when you’re a grown-up young lady.”

“I don’t think so,” Sophie said matter-of-factly.

I was really quite amused at her earnestness about it. As I said, she was such a precious little girl. Other folks may have thought that she was plain-looking, but I always thought it was just that she’d never had a chance to be free. Or happy, maybe.

By the time Sophie was a young lady, I was already married and had a home of my own—this house, built by my late husband’s grandfather, the one who started this whole town. And I think that one of the reasons Sophie particularly like calling on me was because she enjoyed being with someone who really had a life of her own, if you know what I mean. Not just living right in the same house where she was born, like she did. Years later, after my husband passed on and when all Sophie’s old ladies were gone at last, she just kept on coming to call on me anyway.

Such a
lady
, she was. That’s why I don’t... well, I’m not sure what happened. About two years after Mr. Oto first came to work for me, it was, if I’m remembering it right. Because after all, it was such a long time ago.

Right around Halloween, and nobody knew what was coming to us in that terrible December.

By the time the new spigot was in his hand, Mr. Oto had regained his composure— or so he believed. Because when he turned to leave, he had no intention whatsoever of saying one word to the beautiful lady who was still studying the seed packets. But as he passed so near her on his way out, he watched in horror as his hand came forward with a mind of its own, and his thick, soil-stained finger lightly tapped the packet of pink petunia seeds in her hand.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, not knowing if he was speaking of the flowers at all.

Of course, he startled her, even as he startled himself with such an unintentional gesture, so that the first time her eyes turned fully on him, they were filled with offended surprise, and her cheeks instantly flamed into a more vibrant pink than the petunias on the packet. Mr. Oto’s own face began to burn at the realization of what he had done, so that just as abruptly as he had intruded upon her privacy, he bowed deeply before her.

“Please excuse me,” he whispered, and scurried from the store without glancing her way again.

On his way back to Miss Anne’s house, he chastised himself mercilessly. How
dare
he presume to speak to her? After all, he was no impetuous boy—even though he was still young enough for his blood to flow hot in his veins on rare occasions. But he was, after all, mature and with over fifty years of discipline in him. So there was no excuse for it.

But for days afterward, he found it impossible not to think about her and to wonder why she had no husband—as he knew by the absence of a ring on her hand. How could the men of the town, those who were worthy of her—the bankers and the managers and the quiet gentlemen—fail to see the beauty of a face that reflected mature wisdom and gentleness? Why had they never seen it! For she was definitely a spinster, not a widow. He knew that because of the faint aura of expectancy that still clung to her.

In those first few days, he thought about her so often that he even found himself

fantasizing about what could be possible if he were not so poor and so old and if only she had come into his life when he had been young and filled with potential. And if only he were wealthy.

“Good morning, my dear Miss Sophie,”
he would have said, standing tall and strong in front of the gates of his vast estate, wearing a beautiful, embroidery-encrusted coat and bowing low before her. “I hope this day sees you in excellent health.”