The Wilful Daughter (26 page)

The wedding had been something to behold but the preparations for it were even more exciting. “William and Bira Brown cordially invite you to the marriage of their daughter” the invitations read. Five hundred of them printed up in record time. Most of them hand delivered to the best colored families in Atlanta, the heads of the schools and colleges where the daughters taught and the preachers of the best known churches.

Within a few days of the delivery of the invites, the RSVPs and presents started rolling in. Not once, it seemed to Peter, did anybody miss June and her unfortunate child. His unfortunate child. She had been packed away to Alabama the neighbors and friends were told, to take care of her ailing Aunt Ella, a woman close to dying. She wouldn’t be up for the wedding. Someone in the family had to go and June was the youngest, why not? It was expected, it was the way things were done.

Never having been in polite southern colored society, Peter was surprised that no one questioned the fact that June was not in the wedding. People did strange things in the south, he thought. He, on the other hand, was doing the strangest thing of all.

What if he had told his father-in-law-to-be that the baby June carried was his and he wanted to marry her? He should have, he knew, but he had never wanted to marry June. Their ages were as far apart as their lives. Life felt more comfortable with Minnelsa. She caused no problems, no ripples in the stream of his or her father’s life. She easily accepted the burden of raising June’s bastard child as her own and living away from her family in Alabama. For this alone he could have loved her. But he realized that there was more to love about her as she teased him with fabrics from her trousseau and with questions about the wedding night. She was innocent in a way that her younger sister, a sister young enough to be her daughter, could never be.

As the groom, he was left out of the wedding preparations. He didn’t mind, he had no family and few friends that were being invited anyway. Everybody seemed to know everybody else. He picked a best man from one of his fellow professors and left the groomsmen to the Blacksmith daughters’ suggestions.

They were like little girls involved with the plans. “A winter wedding is a big challenge,” Fawn explained to him one evening at the table. The wedding was their entire conversation. At first the family seemed so lost without June and Willie, they turned to him now to fill the void. He felt he could never fill their shoes. “Everything has to be done indoors that was going to happen outdoors in the summer.”

“
You have to have winter fabrics,” Rosa commented. “I mean Miss Delsey made it a point when she said all brides should wear white and lace, but it has to be a winter color of white. And the lace. . .”

“
You have to have a reception. Where can we have a reception inside for five hundred people? My goodness, the food! Who will fix the food?” Jewel wondered.

They chirped like canaries and the Piano Man thought how pretty, like little birds, they all seemed. All of them lovely and perfect in hair and body, in disposition and intelligence. He could have met any one of them at a juke joint and wanted her. As he looked at them he understood how men could easily desire the Blacksmith’s daughters. He could close his eyes and hear their bird like voices, in their perfectly pitched ladylike tones. He could smell their essence, always washed and clean smelling of aromas that only money could buy. If he touched their skins he would find fingernails never bitten, arms and hands softened by oils and Mother Nature. Not a bump or bruise. The gods seemed to protect these almost too-perfect creatures. He could have loved any one of them the way he loved Minnelsa.

But he could never want any of them the way he wanted June.

Her passion still amazed him. As it got closer to his wedding day, what the Blacksmith and his family took as cold feet was really the Piano Man’s interest in what had happened to the most passionate woman-child he had ever known.

In the back of his mind he always remembered that it was June who had seduced him. Perhaps that was why he didn’t feel guilty about her fate. The way she had handled him, he was sure she was not a virgin. When she had told him he was the first he didn’t believe her. In the back of his mind he just knew she must have had others and had just wanted him.

But he had wanted her. He tried to remove her from his mind by spending the time at the home of his intended, not holding her hand as the preparations for the wedding took place, but by sitting at the piano playing elegant classical music that reminded him of his bride to be.

It was the blues, the get down and dirty rhythm he had once played in honky tonks and saloons, that reminded him of June. Of the way her body moved and her voice eased out of her. So he decided not to go back to Miss Emma’s. He would play no more music like that to be free of her.

The wedding was held at the family church. Jewel was Maid of Honor, the other two sisters bridesmaids. The building was packed with well-dressed guests in the February early spring-like weather. The sisters wore gowns of lilac (since it was not really winter and not really spring). Their lavender bouquets expensively shipped from some floral hot house. Their long hair pinned up under tiny crocheted caps. Their dainty hands covered with matching gloves.

When he saw Minnelsa at the end of the aisle he couldn’t believe it. She looked younger and more eager than a school girl in her off-white dress and long white veil. She was a statuesque beauty walking on the arm of her larger-than-life father. And the Blacksmith, everybody would later say, was the most handsome man at the wedding next to the groom.

* * *

When the Blacksmith felt all eyes on him he tried not to be nervous, not to sweat. Not to darken the starched white collar and nice suit. This was going to be one of the most glorious moments in his life, a triumph like no other. June was away from prying eyes having her bastard child and his eldest daughter, an obedient loving daughter, was walking down the aisle on his arm marrying the man he knew was perfect for her because he, the all knowing Blacksmith, had picked him.

He waltzed to music picked out by the groom, the Piano Man’s one contribution to his own wedding. The Blacksmith danced as if he had been in the best saloons of Europe. His daughters were proud for it was a family effort to get him to do this. Embarrassed, because he had never danced before, he had said: “There’s no need of me dancing at your wedding Minnelsa. You’ll dance with your new husband.”

But Minnelsa wouldn’t hear it. “It’s only proper that the father dance at least one dance with his daughter. It’s part of giving me away, Papa. Besides, don’t you want to dance with mama?”

He had to agree to tradition since he made such a big deal of it. When he saw the look of anticipation in Bira’s eyes he looked to his future son-in-law. “If you’ll play the music, I’ll learn the dance.”

He had learned so easily no one could look at him now and realize that he was counting each move and each step. With Bira he was charming and elegant. With his daughters you could feel the love in the air and see the pride on his face. His family was the best attired and best looking in the room.

The Mason Hall was filled with good food and music but there were a few who gossiped that the Blacksmith had taken things too far. Only those whose names appeared on the guest list were allowed into the festivities. This was to be the biggest thing that colored Atlanta had seen in years. The invitations read “formal attire” and at the door were two young men of questionable sexual preferences who had the dubious task, and they seemed to enjoy it, of deciding what was appropriate attire.

Most of the people they let in, for they were dressed in their Sunday best and even the Blacksmith knew that most people could not afford formal attire. Two young women dressed in flashy gowns and sporting too much make up were turned away. When they argued that they were dressed for a party one of the young men went into a lecture on the difference between a party and a formal wedding reception and physically turned them back to the street.

One man tried to slip in with his work shoes on claiming good shoes hurt his feet.

“
The Blacksmith, sir, has explained this concern about his own dress shoes but he wore them. Not his work boots. They are not proper attire for his daughter’s wedding.” When the man suggested that he could enter in his stocking feet they sent him packing.

The cake was almost as tall as Minnelsa and the food was served by the ton. To those who had their ear to the gossip wheel, the word was that Bira insisted that they consult with someone, a lady who came all the way from New York, on what was the proper way to do the whole wedding and what to serve. There was punch, but to the delight of those who had never been to such functions there was real food, most of which they had never tasted before. Many of the guests felt this was an added treat. That the Piano Man’s European and epicurean tastes had helped to design the menu for the wedding feast. It was not a dinner, just something to snack on and most of the people had tasted leftovers from white folks’ kitchens. This food was unusual. And it was good.

At each corner, on each table, were bowls of peeled and hulled peanuts, roasted to perfection. There were butter mints, and pecan pralines, as well as two kinds of cookies. On shining silver platters were round chocolates called truffles, one of the waitresses said, “a candy confection from Paris.” At the main table tall brown waiters in even taller white hats served tiny sandwiches filled with a variety of meats. The guests “oohed” and “aahed” at the food and at the shameless display of finery in the presents, the largest of which was an upright piano wrapped in a huge ribbon for the couples’ new home in Alabama.

Minnelsa seemed in awe of the whole thing, only nodding and uttering a pleasant “Yes, thank you” to anything that anyone said. If he had taken off her glove, Peter would have felt the sweat on her palms, Minnelsa was that nervous.

At one point after the dancing had started and the orchestra was going at full tilt, the Blacksmith took Minnelsa and Peter into a small room in the back of the hall. There sat Bira, smiling but exhausted, and a weasely looking man that neither of them had seen before.

“
Henry Chandler Gibbs, Esquire.” He extended his small chubby hand to the Piano Man. “You father-in-law’s attorney. Have a seat.”

Speechless, Minnelsa and Peter held hands and sat down on a sofa before him. The Blacksmith looked even taller in his formal attire and new shoes standing next to the short man.

“
Congratulations are in order and in more than one department. I have the happy task of handing you the deed to your new property in Reading, Alabama, Mr. Jenkins, right outside of Tuskegee. Mr. Brown is giving to you, in the guise of his daughter’s dowry, two fifty acre parcels of land. The first in Reading, Alabama, as I mentioned before and the second right here in Atlanta.”

Peter and Minnelsa smiled.

“
However there are some stipulations.”

“
Stipulations?” Minnelsa’s smile faded. “Papa, you never said anything about. . .”

“
It’s for your own good, Minnelsa,” he said and he bent to whisper in her ear. “It’s nothing we didn’t discuss before. Besides, it’s all legal mumbo jumbo.”

The lawyer cleared his throat and continued. “The Alabama property is to be your home for as long as you see fit, Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins. When you have decided to return to Atlanta, its ownership will remain yours but should be handled as the property of William Brown until his death. I advise this for tax purposes.

“
However the Atlanta property will not become yours unless you agree to the following terms:

“
That you adopt, and raise as your own, the child of June Brown, Mrs. Jenkins’ sister.

“
That you provide a home for her child without question.

“
And that you never tell said child that he or she is not your child.”

Peter saw no problem with that and Minnelsa nodded in agreement. The Blacksmith had been correct. It was what they had all said before.

Papers signed and the new feeling of land ownership in his belly, Peter waltzed his bride out onto the floor with brazen delight. He now belonged, had something that was all his. Something other than long fingers and piano music to have for the future.

He had a wife. He had land. He was rich.

* * *

Minnelsa did not think about the time as she lay in the dark. She knew that her sisters would be up soon, making biscuits, cooking ham. Who would feed the chickens now that she was gone? Who would do all of the chores that she and Willie and June had shared?

She didn’t care anymore.

She was now Mrs. Peter Jenkins. In the dark of the bedroom, Minnelsa fingered the thin gold band. Her husband-a new word for her to use everyday- had not been able to afford something more. It was the one thing Peter refused to get from the Blacksmith. He had saved and purchased the ring himself. She felt the weight on the bed next to her move and her heart almost stopped.

Husband. He was here on the bed next to her. Sleeping.

Minnelsa tried not to breathe, not to disturb him-her husband. Her sleeping husband.

Hers. All hers.

She couldn’t sleep.

She wanted to get up and look at her new but temporary surroundings. One of her father’s houses that he rented out. Not the one they would have when they returned from Alabama but a small house, little more than the three rooms and a kitchen. Her father had called it a “honeymoon cottage.” It was away from town, from prying eyes, from people teasing the newlyweds about what they were doing when every adult who had or hadn’t been married knew what went on behind those doors.