The Family Greene (8 page)

"Oh." I minded my own pa and how he'd blessed my union with Nathanael. And I thought,
Why is there always some sorrow attached to the joy and the pride that is given to us?

Later, when the British evacuated Boston, Lucy Knox told me that her parents had gotten out safely, and she thanked me for my friendship that first night, and for my concern. I had been such a comfort to her, she said.

I had not realized I had been a comfort. What had I done? All I had done was speak to her, listen to her.

I was to remain friends with Lucy Knox most of my life, and as I did not know I helped her, she did not know she helped me that evening.

I learned that once I started speaking to her I never minded at all that she was so fat. I learned that sometimes all you have to do to be a comfort to someone is to speak to them in their moment of anguish, to listen to them.

I learned to control my tears. Anyone, after all, can have tears come to their eyes, but not everyone can keep them from falling over.

It took me a few years, but I learned how to do it. And I am ever grateful to Lucy Knox for showing me the way.

"C
ORNELIA
?
CORNELIA
Greene, if you don't come out of hiding this minute and make me stop chasing you like a fool, I'll fetch your father. You hear me?"

Mama was running after me, chasing me. I knew it was not good for her to run seven months into her time, but I also knew that if she caught me, I'd get swatted good and proper. Mama swatted. Pa didn't. And I'd skipped class again this morning. I deserved a swatting.

I hid behind the dry sink in the kitchen. Only my older sister, Martha, who was nine, saw me go behind the dry sink. Would she tell where I was? Likely she would. She was a water snake, Martha was. She never let me forget she was named after Martha Washington, as if a hundred other girls weren't. She was always besting me for Pa's attention and love. She'd even lie to get it. I was always in trouble because I wouldn't lie.

Pa hated liars like he hated "little dirty politicians."

"She's behind the dry sink, Mama!" Martha yelled.

Mama ran into the kitchen after me, then of a sudden there came a thump and a distressed cry. "Oh!"

It was not good. Peeking out from behind the sink, I saw that she fell.

Martha was beside her at once.

I got up from my hiding place and went to her. "Here I am, Mama. Are you all right?"

"How can she be all right?" Martha snapped. "Can't you see? She's bleeding!"

I saw. Blood was seeping out of her, dark and evil, through her dress and onto the floor. She was biting her lip. I knew we couldn't get her up.

"We need help," Martha said. "The servants are never around when you need them. Not even Eulinda." She sounded just like Pa.

But she was right. Old Eulinda, the only paid black servant on the place, who'd been with Mama since the beginning of the war at Cambridge and was usually always at her side, was nowhere to be seen this morning.

"Go and get Pa," Martha said. "I saw him headed toward the coach house."

I ran. Out the back door, down the brick path, past the kitchen garden, and through the yard. Pa was in the coach house, overseeing the brushing of his horse, Tommy.

He looked up as I came in. "Good morning, Cornelia. Where have you been? Mr. Miller said you were not in class this morning."

"Pa, Mama is hurt. She tripped in the kitchen. She's on the floor and she needs you."

The look in his eyes told me he was in the kitchen with Mama already. He brushed right past me and, with long, purposeful strides, walked to the back of the house, giving orders, for there were servants everywhere of a sudden.

"Charles, fetch Dr. Kinney quickly—my wife has trouble. Alice, bring some warm dry blankets to the kitchen and get two other women."

Before going in, he stopped and looked at me. "Where's Eulinda?"

"Don't know, Pa. She's not around."

"How did your mother fall?"

There was no lying to Pa. He'd been a general in the war. An assistant to General Washington. "She was chasing me." I suddenly found the hem of my dress very interesting.

His breath came in spurts. "We'll talk, then."

"Yes, sir," I said.

He went inside. I followed. Martha was still kneeling over Mama, comforting her.

Mama, white-faced, with dark circles under her eyes, reached out her arms to Pa. "Oh, Nathanael, I'm sorry," she said.

Pa knelt next to her. "The doctor is on his way," he told her.

But it was what Martha said that affected us most.

"It's Cornelia's fault," she told him. "She was running away from Mama and she wouldn't stop when Mama said to stop. She made Mama run after her."

Pa went right on talking to Mama, and for a moment I didn't think he paid mind to Martha at all. I thought he scarce heard her.

But, as it turned out, he did. Pa's experience as a general had taught him to take account of everything at once, to listen to what six people were saying at the same time while the guns were booming. And there weren't any guns booming at the time in our kitchen.

P
A PICKED
Mama up, wrapping her in blankets that Alice had fetched, and brought her upstairs to their room.

"Go to your rooms and stay there," he ordered me and Martha.

Martha did but I didn't. I set to helping Alice and Polly and Janice clean up. Because it was my fault what had happened. When they wiped the blood up from the floor, I made some tea for Mama, and when the front door knocker sounded, I took off my apron and answered it and walked Dr. Kinney upstairs.

That good man stared at me. I must have been God's own mess. "Are you hurt, Cornelia?" he asked.

"No, sir, my mama is. I was just making her some tea."

He nodded and went into Mama and Pa's bedroom. "You're a good girl," he mumbled. It comforted me, his saying that. If only Pa would think so.

As I went back down the stairs, the others were coming up.

George, who was the oldest at almost eleven, born during a heavy bombardment at Cambridge at the beginning of the war and named after George Washington himself.

And Martha, who had come out of her room where Pa had sent her.

Nat came with them. He was near seven, born after me.

Louisa, the baby, toddled last. She was two.

I had the singular honor of being conceived at Valley Forge. "That camp on the west bank of the Schuylkill," Pa called it, "that had no valley and no forge. Your mother was happy there."

"Of course she was happy," Martha once told me. "Surrounded by all those army officers who danced and flirted with her."

Martha seemed to know a lot about it. Oh, there was no mystery as to the reason she knew a lot about it.

Eulinda told her things. In all honesty, Eulinda told us all a lot of things about the war, about the interesting stories in Mama and Pa's past, for as far back as she knew, anyway. How else would we know about "the dark huts and leaky roofs" the men lived in at Valley Forge? About how the men lived mostly on "fire cakes," a paste of flour and water cooked on hot rocks over an open fire.

How else would I know that when I was born, in our Coventry, Rhode Island, home, Mama was in travail for two days. And that at the time, Pa had wanted another boy but he didn't get one until Nat came along. And that somewhere in between, Mama lost another baby to whooping cough.

But always, always, Martha knew more. Because Martha badgered Eulinda to tell more.

Up ahead in the hall, Pa came out of Mama's room. My brothers and sisters were all chattering on the steps below me.

"Downstairs, all of you," Pa ordered. "The doctor is seeing to your mother. I want no noise. Where is your tutor? Where is Mr. Miller?"

"He's in the kitchen, seeing to some food for us," George said. "He wants to take us on a ride this afternoon. Can we go, Pa?"

"No. I'll speak with him. I want you all here, in case I need you. Now go downstairs." He shooed them and they went.

What did he mean, "in case I need you"? Was Mama failing? Dying? A shock of fear went through me. I cast Pa a look of appeal before I turned to go downstairs, too.

He put a restraining hand on my shoulder, then said, "Go in and see your mother."

Eulinda was in there. She glared at me as I entered. "Bad girl," she snarled, "to bring your mama to such a state."

Mama lay, eyes closed, pale and beautiful, in their large tester bed.

To the side, in a white, lace-trimmed cradle, lay the baby. From somewhere, some servant had hastily procured a pink bow and tacked it on the cradle. Another girl, but so tiny you would not believe she could manage to breathe. Yet she did.

"Mama?" I whispered.

The violet eyes looked up at me. "Cornelia," she said.

I could think of nothing to say. My mouth was dry. I needed some water. And then Pa came back in.

"What do I say?" I asked him.

"Nothing. Just hold her hand for a moment or two. Then go to your room. I'll be along when she falls asleep."

***

I
HAD CHANGED
my clothes by the time Pa came knocking at my door. He came in, leaving the door half open, and leaned against the doorjamb, looking at me. I sat in a chair, my bloodstained dress and apron on the floor next to me.

I had changed into a calico he'd given me last Christmas. Did he notice? Did he care? "Is Mama all right?" I asked.

"She's been brought awfully low, but she will recover. With rest."

"And the baby?"

"Seven months. Dr. Kinney says she won't make it through the night."

The calm with which he said this shocked me. I think he too was in shock.

"Is it my fault, then?" I asked.

He shook his head no. "We don't play that game in this house. I've told you that before. In the army, Washington never laid blame when a battle was lost. He gathered his officers and made plans for the next one. But I would like to know why you were running from her. That would be a help right now."

Sarcasm. With Pa, it was on the way to anger. I must be careful. "I didn't go to school this morning," I said quietly, "and Mama was after me for it. And so I was hiding from her."

"Why didn't you go to school?"

There was nothing for it but to tell. "I don't like Mr. Miller."

"You don't like Mr. Miller," he repeated flatly.

"No, sir."

"Why?"

Well, there was no telling
this,
now or ever. What could I say? That one day I'd left my notebook in the classroom and gone back for it and found Mr. Miller, all of twenty-five, sitting behind his desk and Mama standing in front, leaning over it, and then him, of a sudden, standing up, taking her by the shoulders, and kissing her.

"I will have an answer," Pa said. "Can you give me a good reason for this?"

Tears came down and I swallowed them back. "Please, Pa, I can't. Please, you can punish me all you want. I can't."

He scowled. Pa scowling was not a thing you wanted to see.

"Has he done something to offend you? Has he acted unseemly toward you? You know what I mean, Cornelia. We've spoken of this."

"No, sir." I started to cry.

He let me cry for a minute, then took out his handkerchief and reached out his arm to me. I went to him, and he gave me the handkerchief and enfolded me in his arms.

"My pa beat me," he said with no emotion in his voice. "When I came home from sneaking away to go to dances, he'd beat me bad. Quakers don't dance, you see, Cornelia, and I loved to dance. One time I fooled him. I put some wooden shingles inside my pants."

My sobbing subsided somewhat. I looked up at him. "You are a good pa," I said.

He rested his chin on top of my head. "Mayhap I should have let the others go for a ride this afternoon with Mr. Miller," he said. "Only I wanted to take you and George and Martha and Nat on a trip soon. To see the land I purchased on the southern end of Cumberland Island. It's a long trip. We've got to take a sailing ship about a hundred miles on the Saint Marys River, then go by horseback to where my land lies."

"Oh! When can we go, Pa?"

He scowled down at me. "Not for a while now. Not until I'm sure your mother is well."

I nodded respectfully. "Is this where you're going to build the house you call Dungeness?"

"Yes."

"And you've got the plans all drawn up for it?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Miller told us you'll never live there."

"He did, did he?"

"I shouldn't tell tales out of school, Pa, but yes."

He released me, but not without a mild shake. "No, you shouldn't. I don't like tales told out of school. I should be punishing you, not rewarding you by promising you a trip. But yes, I'd like to take you. Only after your mother is well again and we see how fares the baby. Do you think you could stay good until then? And go to school, despite your dislike for Mr. Miller?"

"Yes, sir," I promised.

"All right, now I'm going to see your mother. Go downstairs and make yourself useful."

***

T
HE BABY DIED
before nightfall. And I blamed myself, though neither Mama nor Pa did. But if I hadn't blamed myself, I could always count on Martha, who reminded me before I went to my room that night.

"Well, I hope you're proud of what you did this day. It's all your fault, you know, that we lost our little sister."

W
E BURIED
the baby the next day, in the small cemetery plot Mama and Pa had on Mulberry Grove.

Mama was not in attendance. She stayed in bed, Eulinda by her side. The rest of us gathered round the small coffin. And all the slaves sang their songs to oblige Pa, but I knew the sad cadence of these spirituals only brought him lower than he needed to be.

When Pa and Mama had lived up north, they'd never had any slaves. They did not believe in slavery. But after the war, Pa had no money. He'd given thirty thousand pounds sterling to merchants to cover debts because they'd supplied his troops with clothing and other necessities. All his wartime investments went bad. His privateers lost fortunes. The iron furnace showed no profit.