Beauty From Ashes (12 page)

“Am I—your friend?” Anne asked simply.

“Why you ax me dat?”

“I don’t know.”

“I does.”

“The word is do, not does.”

“Do, does. Part ob tryin’ to prove to you dat I be you frien’, that I be more’n jus’ you slabe, is the way I been tryin’ to talk better lately. When I all tore up inside ober you, though, I forgets to talk good. You know what I be sayin’ anyway. Is I more’n jus’ your slabe?”

Anne covered her face with both hands. “Oh, Eve, how do I know? I can’t think even one whole thought right now, knowing I’ll have to live the remaining years of my life visiting among my relatives and living off their charity.” When, after

a long silence, Eve said nothing, Anne, in an almost accusing voice, said, “You’ve never called yourself my slave before.”

“Well, I is.”

“Yes. But all this talk of our being friends seems a funny time to bring that up for the first time in over half a century. Are you trying some kind of trick?”

Eve grinned. “You sound more like Miss Anne now. Smart aleck.”

Feeling more helpless than ever before in her whole life, Anne, because she could think of nothing to say, reached to grab Eve’s hand.

Eve took a step closer to where Anne stood, gripping Eve’s fingers. She looked at her mistress’s white hand clinging to her darker one, appeared to think a minute, then clasped Anne’s hand hard in both of hers.

“You’ll—you’ll go with me, won’t you?” Anne whispered. “You and June?”

“I done tol’ you we would. We hab to go effen you say we do.” Tears were now streaming down Eve’s face. “Me an’ June’s yo property.”

Feeling as though Eve had stabbed her, Anne

just stood there. 149

Finally, taking another step nearer, Eve begged, “You is orderin’ me an’ June bof to go where you go, ain’t you, Miss Anne? Sweet Jesus, order me, Miss Anne! Order bof June an’ me to leave Lawrence whenever you leaves.”

“But what if I don’t want to order you?”

“I begs you! Could you stand to leave dat pore lil tumbledown place wifout Eve ‘longside you?”

“I don’t know how I’ll leave it even with you! But am I taking too much for granted, because of what happened between us just now, to expect you’ll be going with me because we’re friends?”

A quick, puzzled frown creased Eve’s light brown forehead. “What happen wif us—just now?”

“You always know everything about me first. I’m surprised you haven’t reminded me that the very last barrier to our being truly friends just fell down.”

“When you think it fall?”

“Probably when I suddenly reached for your hand. Who knows? Who cares? It’s gone, Eve! And Mama was wrong. She was wrong about you anyway. You’ll never go to all lengths to trick

or mislead me. What took me fifty-two years to realize that my nearly perfect, sweet mother could possibly be dead wrong?”

“Yes’m, she be wrong ‘bout me, but I ain’t all them other peoples, Miss Anne. Don’ you trus’ no nigger but June till you ax Eve first. Eve just be Eve.” Slowly, but not unkindly, Eve loosed Anne’s fingers, dropped her hand, and stood very straight. “Two things I got to tell you. First thing is dat ain’t nobody, not even young John Couper or Pete, is gonna know plain as Eve knows what pain it bring you to walk fo’ de las’ time outa yo’ lil Lawrence house.”

“I know that—now,” Anne said in a scant whisper.

“I’se not through yet. Second thing is my grapevine’s got it dat niggers is runnin’ away here an’ dere all ober the South. Right here in Gawja too. Dey say someday we all gonna be free. Mos’ likely it be grapevine foolishness, but eben if it ain’t foolishness, Eve don’ wanta be free or anything else dat take her away from you. June an’ me, we done settle all dat. June,

he got it all plan out how to keep 151 watch on ole Mausa Couper’s trees an’ groves an’ flower beds at Cannon’s Point an’ still lib two, three nights a week ober here at Hopeton with you an’ me when we comes here to lib.”

Anne could only stare at her, unbelieving. “You and June would live apart except for two or three nights a week? Just so you could be here at Hopeton with the children and me?”

“Yes’m.”

“I don’t think real friends say yes’m to each other!”

Eve grinned again. “Now you does sound more like yo’self, Miss Anne. Smartin’ off.”

“I’m serious. As long as June is still on this earth with you, I won’t have you living that way.”

“We all lib the way we got to lib ‘cause you hab to leave Lawrence. Miss Anne, yo’ papa be a tenderhearted gent’man. He make sure Johnson know right off ‘cause Mausa Couper, he know Johnson tell me. I tell June. Mausa Couper he know eberthing be better for you—even sompin as bitter as leavin’ Lawrence—effen June an’ Eve be

ready to help you.” The smile Eve gave her was only kind now and compassionate. “Me an’ June an’ Mausa Couper gonna do all we kin to help. Ain’t one ob us wants to see you suffer no more. You gonna be lost wifout yo’ own lil nest to shelter you. Wifout yo’ own private place to run to when the day’s gone. Look to me like the least you kin do is help us by not fightin’ us off when we tries to ease yo’ way.”

With all her being, Anne longed to cry again, to feel the cleansing flow of tears at such love pouring over her from this woman who had, even when Anne didn’t realize it or know how to accept it, probably always been her best friend.

No tears came. She had cried all her tears. But she had also seen the last barrier between her and Eve fall, and dry-eyed, she said, “Eve, I need to be hugged. Oh, how I need to be hugged, right now. Don’t say a word, but will you please just hug me?”

For Anne, who had told her father that she needed

time, every hour of the next two days dragged 153 by in near silence. She did the expected things a guest does. She helped Caroline cut out some dresses for the quarters children, did her best to make small talk at the table, but the one thing to which she’d always clung for dear life—good, long talks with Papa—she found impossible.

“You’re doing the obvious, Sister,” James Hamilton said repeatedly. “You’re blaming the messenger for the bad news. Surely you know that if it were within his power, our father would give the few remaining months of his own life to spare you such misery. Can’t you buck up, act a bit more normal for the Old Gentleman’s sake?”

For all the years of her life, if anything could have drawn her to Papa, one of James Hamilton’s stuffy lectures would surely have done it. Instead, every word he uttered, every chagrined look he gave her, drove her closer to total despair. Not once in her fifty-two years had Anne gone to sleep with anything but the warmest, coziest feelings toward Papa. Papa, her rock. Papa, her rescuer. Even twelve-year-old Selina knew something was terribly wrong between her mother and her grandfather.

Insofar as Anne knew, no one, certainly not she, had said one word to Selina, Pete, or Fanny to indicate that they were going to have to break up what was left of their little family, abandon the beauty and simplicity and sweet familiarity of Lawrence, and traipse from relative to relative, friend’s house to friend’s house, with never the solace of knowing they could eventually go home— back to their own house.

Papa had said James and Caroline could make room for them. In the tumbling chaos of Anne’s mind, she had tried to figure out how this could be done without adding an extra room even to the ample mansion her brother had built. If he could add a whole room onto his house, why couldn’t he find funds for a few nails and boards and two or three men to make her own house livable?

And then the chilling thought struck as Anne sat rocking alone on the wide Hopeton veranda the day before they were to leave for home to pack. Could it be true, she thought frantically, that her own family expected her and the three girls to live apart, under different roofs? Not everyone they visited would have room for all four of them! Hadn’t she been asked already, by a God she could no longer even

find, to live without John? Without 155 Annie? Where would they hang the very clothes off their backs? Would Pete have to pack boxes and valises when it came her turn to live somewhere other than in the same house with her own mother? Would Fanny? Anne had no intention of allowing young Selina, just entering womanhood, to live anywhere without her, but the two older girls would be expected—expected by Anne’s own once protective family—to take shelter wherever they might find it.

Again as she’d done so often since Papa had broken the tragic news, she longed for someone stronger than she to help her, to tell her which way to turn, even how to act in the smothering presence of once cherished family members who, in their separate ways, had been there to support her when each new blow fell, but who now made her feel only burdensome. No one could act naturally with her. Even the Couper children gave her the impression they were keeping their voices down, their laughter hushed. She was sure she had never lived through days in which she, Anne Couper Fraser, forced those nearby to tiptoe around her nettlesome personality. Only Pete, who seldom acted

intimidated by anything, was behaving in any way approaching the usual.

In the flickering light of the one candle burning in their shared Hopeton room on the night before they were to leave, Anne could tell that her daughter was up on her elbow in the bed, peering down at her mother lying beside her but turned away to avoid talking. She couldn’t see Pete’s face but knew that her daughter was scrutinizing her. Knowing Pete as she did, she also knew the girl was concocting something firm and persuasive to say to her. If she pities me, sympathizes with me, tries to convince me that things won’t be as bad as I imagine, I’ll have no choice but to shut her up, order her to be quiet and allow me some sleep, Anne thought. One person Pete had better not mention is Papa. Sleep is the last thing I’ll get tonight if I’m hounded one more time about being the reason he hasn’t left his room for a day and a half. She already felt too much guilt at being unable to talk to her father. Then Anne surprised herself by asking, “Do you suppose there’s any way we could send for Eve tonight? I need Eve! Where does she sleep over here at Hopeton? Do you know?”

“In Lydia’s cabin, I think,” 157 Pete said so calmly her mother wanted to shake her. “The only way I know to reach her is for me to get dressed and walk way over by the river to the quarters. Are you really asking me to do that, Mama?” Pete spoke so quietly, with such feigned patience, Anne buried her own face in the pillow. “I can do that, Mama, but it could help a lot if you’d take a minute to think how such a thing might sound to—even to your own daughter. What can Eve do for you that I can’t do?” Anne felt Pete’s firm hand on her shoulder. “Are you thinking about how that really sounded at this time of night? Can you tell me, Mama?”

“No! No, Rebecca, I can’t tell you—anything. I can’t tell you anything because I don’t know anything. Not one thing about how I’m going to make it through one more day, to say nothing of day after day for the rest of my life.”

“It’s all right that you’re angry with me, Mama.”

“Who said I was angry with you?”

“You called me Rebecca. It isn’t right, though, for you to be angry, to shut yourself away from poor old Grandpapa. But you know that, don’t

you?”

“You’re being more than ridiculous! I’ve never been angry with my father in all my born days!” For a long time neither spoke. Then Anne said, “The old darling is just all worn out from his big birthday celebration. I know he’s been in his room almost the whole time since, but it hasn’t one thing on earth to do with me.”

No one needed to tell her how feeble, how false, that sounded.

“Pete, I’m acting like a six-year-old, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.”

“It looks as though you could give me a little argument on that. Am I—am I really being so childish? If I am, it’s only because I’m so scared. So … lost.”

And then the realization came—indirectly at least—that she was talking to Pete about a subject she hadn’t mentioned before. Anne had not told any of her three daughters that they were going to have to leave Lawrence!

“Pete, am I losing my mind?”

“No. You do have a big wide river to cross, though, and so far you don’t have a boat, Mama.

There is one, though. There’s got to be a 159 boat somewhere and I’d like to help you find it.”

“Why do you say that? Has someone told you what we’re going to be forced to do?”

“Yes. Grandpapa told me. He called me to his room. Mama, you’ve got to go see him. Give him a chance. His old heart is broken over you. Over the fact that for the first time he can’t do anything to fix things for you. Grandmama Couper told me that he’d spoiled you all your life, but only because he loves you. I’m glad my papa wasn’t rich the way Grandpapa Couper has been most of the time. Papa had no choices to make about spoiling me. Do you know why you thought you needed Eve before?”

“No. I just know she always tries to help me.”

“And don’t you think it’s time for you to start to try to help all of us who love you so much? Selina and Fanny know we have to get out of Lawrence, because I told them just as soon as Grandpapa told me. They deserve to know. I’ve written to John Couper, too. He should get my letter tomorrow in Savannah. Go ahead and be angry with me. Scold. Tell me I’m a

nosy busybody. I may be, but you’re the only mother I have and I don’t intend to see you drown in self-pity if I can, by any means, pull you out of it. Mama, will you—will you promise me you’ll talk to dear Grandpapa first thing tomorrow morning right after breakfast? Early enough so that the two of you can get everything patched up before we have to pile into the Lady Love and head for home?”

“Are you quite finished?”

“Except to ask you to forgive me if I’ve overstepped my bounds as a mere daughter.” In an almost roughhouse gesture, Pete took Anne in her arms and held her so hard, Anne felt almost frantic. “Promise, Mama? You always keep your promises. We all count on that. Promise you’ll visit Grandpapa just as soon as we’re sure he’s awake in the morning?”

Anne was clinging to Pete now. Weak, helpless, she was clinging to her eldest living daughter as though they’d changed places. She had cried all her tears. She was weeping inside, but in a surprisingly steady voice she said, “I promise, Pete. And thank you. I’d never, ever forgive myself if anything happened to Papa before