Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

  Seeing this, picturing hisself midyard squatting at the foot pedals of nothing, pinned betwixt relations’ head-wagging smirks and his owner’s congealed smile, Xerxes suddenly doubles over. It’s something like a cramp. He wheels away from Lady. Seems to be laughing, till you hear him heave. Is it weeping or a sickness?

  Lady’s face restores itself: Xerxes apparently regrets. That quick, all’s well. Lady has never appeared more beautiful. Holding on to her silk hem, she shifts it with a huff. Chin up, the owner actually says, “Et tu, Xerxes?”—Look, nobody’s perfect. Just now, Lady E. M. Marsden feels more fully herself than maybe ever before. Says she, “Now that, I think, will about do it.”

  BUT here comes Zelia, easing up them steps, spindle arms out—balancing like walking on a clothesline tightrope. Spry Z climbs very slow. She might be stealing up on some ninety-five-pound cottonmouth disguised in this white dress. “Mrs. Lady? Z got something for you.” Arid spits.

  Wetness pills along dry silk. Lady leans forward, wrists cross at her Empire waist, she stares down—amazed, child, as if a sapphire has been hocked on her.

  Unchaperoned sun falls across the Widow Marsden’s bowed unaccustomed head. “What?” She retreats, upward a step. “Why now? what’s it for? Be direct. You shall find me not unreasonable.”

  Then the bolder children edge nearer, one stair step at a time. You can see their little jaws working, cheeks puckered. Xerxes, face still wet from crying, his back yet clenching, meekly tiptoes up, joins others. When Mistress grimaces his way, Xerxes offers, slack-mouthed, “Hi you do?”

  She can tell what they want. What kind of hostess would she be otherwise? And maybe hoping to forestall big changes through little social sacrifices, Lady E. More Marsden’s face opens. A determined brilliant smile displays itself, happier for a lifetime’s successes. She must somehow get through this, must discover the graceful gesture hidden even in this most unsavory of situations. It will not do to shirk one’s Christian duty now. Her face gives off a happiness seen mostly at piano or during Catacombs with these same youngsters. Lady spreads her own white hem, she makes things easier.

  Three children, eyes on her, spit in turn, comparing damage. The target herself bends forward, seeming interested in levels and amounts. Children hear her smallest silky voice, “So we’ve come to this, my darlings.—Oh, for tea, a bath, please. I’m simply not myself today.”

  Then she tries something else. “Zelia, when Momma died bearing me—you allowed me your milk, Zelia. Your very milk.”

  “Milk be spent, but here, Z gone give you little something extra,” and spits again, does a quickstep. Next the old black woman’s voice falls deeper than a man’s. “My boy he drownded running off. Winch caught Zelia with the chicken Zelia stole, he lashed Z till it took Zelia near a whole year to get back half right. You-all ain’t let Zelia know nothing Zelia need to. You done locked Z up. Seem like it been a most long time …”

  “Yes, but not me, Zelia. Not I. This is how things work here where we’ve lived together. How could a baby in your arms have invented it? I was born to my part, just as you to yours, old friend.—I’ve loved you all. I love you all. Surely that counts?”

  But people just gape at the lady on her steps. And Mrs. Marsden seems to suddenly recollect how bad she must look. Slow, like hoping others won’t notice a person’s trying to improve, she touches long pearly plaits. “What?” She gathers up the chignon’s collapse. “What?” She checks her nightdress’s seams for evenness. “Tell your Lady what.”—Darling? she thinks the world’s done come unloose because her hair has!

  “Seem like … with great gifts …” Castalia says.

  As the mistress of The Lilacs begins to sway. Down three steps she waltzes, silk tears lightly over stones’ rough nap, her arms spread wide. Her people know the game. She’ll need to be on their level for it to work proper. Sure enough, down into the yard their Lady totters. How she swerves from one to one, turning, reeling, woozy in her dancing slippers. How rehearsed it seems. Lady staggers like a drunkard teetering from one dark person to the next. Adults ease back a step, children must take two reverse steps to avoid her.

  Not one soul is left in range of maybe even catching Lady M.

  She now understands that if she drops, she falls. And: Lady is deciding to give way anyhow when, that same second, she hears laughing. Lady spins to see a thirty-seven-inch black shadow of herself flopping directly behind, gasping, spastic, a giddy headless hen. “Am I all that bad?” Should she dodge over, slap the child—should she faint, or both? And Lady’s just about to take responsibility for her own falling … when hoofbeats punish the lily ponds’ bridge.

  “It them!”

  3

  FROM the post road, black people cheer, cackling at how Marsden freed folks bolt off, dragging children after. Cassie yells, “We free! I free!”

  In one second, only two figures are someway left in sight before the sunlit columns. Castalia, smooth, solid, breathing like she’s just sprinted a marathon—and beside her, this thin white woman in white, one hand still fidgeting to make sense of a hairdo. “Just look at me,” the lady says. “A perfect mess, and today!”

  That fast, all others are tucked back of a tall hedge. They squeal, “Cassie, over here. Save youself, gal!”

  “Well, I fear that Yankees are simply not welcome in my home.” Lady uses the back of one hand to test her brow for fever. Cassie snatches that wrist, tries running the Mistress one hundred yards toward lilacs.

  “Castalia, you goose, I’d never get that far. In my condition?”

  So, by simply stepping left, by dipping under one housefront magnolia, Cassie disappears. Through shiny green—one strong black hand reaches into sun, hooks a pale lady round her waist, jerks hard. Inside the tree’s strange hollow, White prepares to scream, Black clamps a palm across White’s mouth.

  Yankees fire one warning shot. White mouth calms some.

  Yanks will plainly shoot any owner trying to halt their torching duties. Castalia and Lady now wait inside a snug magnolia that grows against one marble pillar. Leaves are leathery, tenting clear to the ground. Like Catacombs, this hiding spot makes much of outside sounds. A second shot is heard. Cassie’s already going up a branch, she’s ten, then twelve, fifteen feet off the ground. One bough at a time she pulls the other person up. That one—totally supported by a single arm—yet uses the free hand to furiously work her hair.

  “Hep youself or be dead, one,” Cas settles the widow in a crotch of limbs. Lady shakes. Leaves take up her jitters.

  Mistress whispers, “Not those Satans from the North, not here? Tell me it’s not so, Castalia.”

  “It so.”

  “Well, go explain: we live here. You’re so sensible, people listen to you. I don’t even think you understand how persuasive and bright you really are. I’ve been meaning for the longest time to mention it. Tell them how happy we’ve been. Haven’t we? This is our home. You mostly grew up here. I grew up here. Reason with them. Your moment is at hand.”

  Lady, reaching for the shoulders of the person beneath her, nearbout topples from her roost. Castalia curses, stops this spill. Castalia feels she has forever braced her mistress into some uneasy spot overhead. Castalia finds her own hands around a pale spongy throat. Can’t quite stop strong thumbs. Thumbs press, slightly, testing. Cas sees the woman’s cheeks color, nostril wings tint pink, a pretty mouth comes opens. There’s no scream, not a bit of scratching. Instead, the mistress bends forward, polite, as if to beg.

  All Lady’s body weight now pivots through a fair neck—she presses her own lips down over Cassie’s upturned fuller set. First it seems that Lady’s pleading for air. Castalia’s thumbs relax, not quite meaning to. Then, slow, Cas understands: the mouth—on and across hers—plans more than leaching. See, Lady’s trying to kiss Castalia Marsden. Hard. It is a kiss, too. After Cassie’s first disgust, she decides this one does pack a certain damp conviction. Hmmm.

  Cas considers herself a right expert kisser. (M
ost everybody does but eighty-five percent are dead wrong, honey. We just hate to tell them others otherwise, don’t we?) Castalia has practiced with black men her age and older, black girls her age and younger, and—unwillingly—with this here lady’s husband. More happy-like she’s tried it with this woman’s son. And Cassie of a sudden understands that both males’ mild smoochy talent might come—through learning or inheritance—from this very mouth Cas is now in.

  Cassie, stunned by everything, waits on the branch below, ready for the smack to end. Around her upturned face, unlatched braids, chains of cool pearls lick and tickle—a strange shared curtain.

  Lady finishes and, winded, primly backhands wetness off her pointed chin. “Castalia, I know” (breath) “you’re trying to save me. I’m not certain” (breath) “why. But bless you. And you will be rewarded. With all I own. I tell you now: when this unpleasantness is over, we shall run off together. Just you and me. You’re the only one I’ve ever known how to love.”

  “Well, gal, you gots to get better at it than that! Look, was you proposing just now? Something ’long them lines?”

  “It is unconventional. But then, I’ve always been considered outré.”

  “Well, Castalia’s answer’s No. You clear on that?” And Cas is down the tree so quick. Horses gallop from around behind the house and right up portico’s stone steps. Cas bolts into the open towards a frothy hedge that’s absolutely hollering encouragement.

  4

  “WAS IT NOT Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lucille, who described History as ‘philosophy teaching by example’? Yes, it was. At times our Lucille’s personal variant seems to hold History most notable for its myriad rags-to-riches stories. But no. Both here and in her lurid Pompeiian effort, Lucille clearly prefers riches-to-rags themes. I am pleased that she has expunged from this essay a favorite locution which so marred her earlier effort. That being: ‘Little did they know.’ The expression had been utilized no less than fourteen times when This Reader saw fit to cease counting. ‘Little did they know that 79 A.D. suppertime when they set (sic) down to a hot meal how blamed (sic) hot it would be.’ Really, Lucille. Even for you, this is stooping! In light of my own exceptional early training, in view of my current wages, I must refrain from offering further comment here. History’s hindsight often tempts us, Lucille, to make such facile formulations. Others have found sufficient restraint to abstain from these belated gloatings. Yes, Pompeii, like its sister city Herculaneum (a town missing from your paper, and why? only because archaeologists have found it less perfectly preserved than your topic city), was a resort town notorious for its bawdy establishments, its profusion of sublime statuary. Yes, you are correct to view Pompeii as a resort, a city dedicated to pleasure. But does this justify your joy at seeing it smothered from consciousness? Ask yourself: Why, Lucille, the glee? As in her graphic (if savage) account of Vesuvian revenge, Lucille’s fiery conclusion of ‘Black, White, and Lilac,’ as she calls it, also hints at moral retaliation. But, Lucille, put the question to yourself: Are the wicked punished? Does one woman’s hereditary subscription to the peculiar institution called slavery make her so fitting a victim for avenging justice? If a mind lofty and democratic as Mr. Jefferson’s was incapable of freeing Jefferson slaves except by posthumous decree, why should we expect a profoundly sheltered, profoundly small-town woman to prove more exemplary? Perhaps the virtuous are rewarded in Lucille’s papers and her fantasy life. However, sharing, as I do, her literal hometown (if not her moral nature’s black-and-whiteness), This Reader is hard pressed to find many visible examples. Lucille understands Emerson’s edict that there is, per se, no history, only biography. She has found a fitting and all too mortal hometown subject. But do stay after school, my dear girl, and name for your Miss Beale here just one virtuous Falls citizen who has overtly benefited from said virtue.

  “Lucille’s paper can be, like Lucille personally, dogged, pugnacious, well-intentioned. But economic realities? Prevailing social attitudes? Ethical soundings?

  “I would send you to Goethe’s splendid epigram, related both to your title and to his color theory. As you doubtless recall from Thursday’s class discussion (while other teachers on our hall were forcing their unfortunates to try nothing more instructive than another drear round of, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”), Goethe’s color theory, unlike his competitor’s, Newton’s, proved fallacious. But perhaps Mr. Goethe’s is all the more poetically profound for that (meaning: there might yet be hope for you and your well-meaning Black, White, Lilac). Think about this, my dear Lucille.

  “Goethe puts it thusly: ‘Colors are the deeds and suffering of light.’”

  5

  CASTALIA, well hid back of lilacs, blots lips onto her homespun apron, muttering, “That Lady’ll try anything, seem like.” Cas expects the mistress to now pop out and challenge visitors, “Have we met, sirs?” Cassie strains for a better view of heroes. She’s heard how handsome Yankees are. The closer Northerners have got, wilder rumors of their beauty. Crouching, Cas fully expects the giant Young Linking.

  He’ll come to set finally this place afire with one finger’s pointing—the way a touchy God creates Adam in one oleograph upstairs.

  What had sounded—on the Chinese bridge—like a regiment now whittled into four ragged fellows. Two are old, fattish. All need shaving. The youngest and best-looking, missing a leg, appears tied to his saddle. Blue uniform’s left sleeve is also pinned up empty.

  A petticoat flies from this raider’s saddlebag. Maybe a souvenir of some upriver outrage? The man halts his horse near the library’s French door. Slowed by missing one arm, he empties a canteen’s coal oil onto this dainty apparel. When it’s sogged good, he lights the thing and—horse shying—heaves it. A flaming crinoline seems to walk on air indoors. The horse Castalia recognizes. Ain’t no Northern animal but a dancy white Arabian from Cousin Mabry’s Shadowlawn, four miles north.

  Smoke—a nice blue plume of it—comes rolling lazy out one library window—hangs in air like searching for a purpose—then, seeming reminded of something by the view, curls back indoors, gets busy. Regulation-gray fumes soon hide the magnolia Cassie’s studying. Eyes shut, gagging behind her apron, she yet faces one clouded tree: Is Lady going to die? Should she?

  Ex-slaves hold one another. Faces streaming in this haze, they choke, watching a house they know so good commence to end. All burning homes—when you understand they can’t be saved, and were maybe even set for insurance’s sake—are right interesting to watch, don’t you find, child? I do. And how much more a fire must mean to slaves who’ve used up lifetimes maintaining the mansion’s spit and polish.

  From first-floor windows, blue light soon fountains. Light is easily taking out the bubbled windowpanes. First breakage chimes beautiful and spotty as them salvaged chandeliers hid in gunnysacks in woods. Fire now tests a solid-marble pillar. Fire’ll soon try scorching a magnolia and its mothy rider. Indoors, seventy-odd clocks suddenly sound a ragged group-question, like maybe plea-bargaining. Riders in the house laugh at how such chiming scared them.

  What must she be doing up there? If she outlives all this, will she finally learn some basic lessons? Cassie feels curious, without exactly wanting to. Honey, the healthiest people in the world are the ones most interested in others. It’s helped me live this long.

  How can so many noble-looking flames have sprung from four such scruffy men? Cassie hears soldiers barking jokes and stories at each other, Yankee accents mystify her. Maybe men’s being near so many mammoth fires has charred and hardened their words. Cas recalls the medicinal-sounding Greek her master used to jabber round this place.

  Two dozen rocking chairs become horses’ obstacle course. Yanks sure are having fun. Animals cobble down stone steps—not twelve feet from Lady’s tree. When torchbearers saunter off towards the barn (where Old Z wanted to hide furniture), Castalia bolts from kneeling, aims towards a middle-distance clothesline, pays no mind to friends’ shouts, “Come back, Cassie. How bout saving you own self.??
?

  Ears roaring, brain a-fuel, feeling herself the sudden leading actor on these two thousand acres, Cas runs smack under one clothesline and past it, now wearing a soggy percale sheet. Arms out, wetness curved against her, Cassie again goes, gasping, under warming leaves and, hid now, panting, stares up where she left a certain person.

  Looking down from on high, cross-braced by dark boughs, the face appears blank as yards and yards of white now drooping long as any christening gown. Lady, so pleased to see somebody she admires, grins, “You’re back. You’ll stay, my dear. I do thank you.”

  Castalia, disgusted while half laughing, scrambles up lower limbs. “Wrap youself in this.”

  Mistress reaches for the cloth. “But, my dear, it feels … quite wet.”

  “That’s cause fire’s hot and dry, you dizzy doo-doo! Cause you so near a fire!”

  “Clever you. Why didn’t I think of that.” And the Widow Marsden does as told but expects praise for it. Chill brings just one squeal. When horses pound back this way, Cassie clatters straight down—nearbout falling—she’s out in the open, she’s chugging toward a hedge’s encouraging cries. Onct safe, gasping hard, onct screened by lilacs, familiar hands settle all over her—pats, strokes.

  WHY, it might could be asked, are ex-slaves hiding from the very forces come to free them? Good question. It’s partly owing to years of Lady’s talk about the Barbarous Tartars North of Maryland. Partway cause of these black people’s own history with invading forces: example being them whites what slipped up a African river and tricked these souls onto a ship, and over here (Cassie’s tale). So, black people at The Lilacs, while right happy about being freed, whilst plenty ready to believe in a future, still choose to hide, thank you very much. Considering the favors History’s paid them so far, it makes a certain amount of sense.