Darkest Hour

  As it turned out, my first day at school was okay. Miss Walker made me feel very special, especially when she gave me one of her own sandwiches. Emily looked sullen and unhappy most of the day and avoided me until it was time to make the walk home. Then, under Miss Walker's eyes, she seized my hand and led me off. When we were far enough away from the schoolhouse, she let me go.

  The Thompson twins and Niles walked with us two thirds of the way. The twins and Emily stayed in front and Niles and I lagged behind. He didn't say much to me. I would remind him years later that when he did speak, it was to tell me how he had climbed to the top of the cedar tree in front of his house the day before. I was reasonably impressed because I remembered how tall that tree was. When we parted at the Thompson driveway, he muttered a quick goodbye and sprinted away. Emily glared back at me and walked as quickly as ever. Halfway up our driveway, she stopped and spun around.

  "Why didn't you just go back home instead of making us the laughingstocks of the school?" she demanded.

  "We weren't the laughingstocks."

  "Yes, we were—thanks to you my friends are laughing at me, too." She fixed her eyes on me, narrowing them angrily. "And you're not even my real sister," she added.

  At first, the words seemed so strange, it was as if she had said that pigs could fly. I think I even started to laugh, but what she said next stopped me fast. She stepped toward me and in a loud whisper repeated her statement.

  "I am too," I declared.

  "No, you're not. Your real mother was Mamma's sister and she died giving birth to you. If you weren't born, she'd still be alive and we wouldn't have had to take you in. You carry a curse on you," she taunted. "Just like Cain in the Bible. No one's going to ever want to love you. They'll be afraid. You'll see," she threatened, and then pivoted on her heels and marched away.

  I walked slowly after her, trying to make sense out of what she had said.

  Mamma was waiting in the sitting room for me when I entered the house. She got up and came out to greet me. The moment she saw the mud-stained dress and shoes, she uttered a cry, her hands fluttering up to her throat like frightened little birds.

  "What happened?" she asked tearfully.

  "I fell into a puddle this morning on the way to school, Mamma."

  "Oh, you poor dear." She held out her arms and I ran to her, ran to her embrace and her comforting kisses. She took me upstairs and I pulled off my new dress and shoes. "There's mud all over your neck and hair. You'll have to take a bath. Emily didn't say a word about this. She just marched into the house as usual and went right to her room. I'm going to have a word or two with her right away. In the meanwhile, you take that bath," Mamma said.

  "Mamma," I called as she started toward my door. She turned around.

  "What?"

  "Emily said I wasn't her sister; she said your sister was my real mother and she died giving birth to me," I told her, and waited, holding my breath, anticipating Mamma's denial and laughter at such a fantastic story. But instead, she looked troubled and confused.

  "Oh dear," Mamma said. "She promised."

  "Promised what, Mamma?"

  "Promised not to tell until you were much, much older. Oh dear," Mamma said. She screwed her face into as angry an expression as she was capable of having. "The Captain is going to be furious with her, too," she added. "I declare that child has a streak in her and where it came from I'll never know."

  "But Mamma, she said I wasn't her sister."

  "I'll tell you all about it, honey," Mamma promised. "Don't cry."

  "But Mamma, does that mean Eugenia's not my sister, either?"

  Mamma bit down on her lower lip and looked as if she was going to cry herself.

  "I'll be right back," she said, and hurried away. I flopped back on my bed and stared after her.

  What did all this mean? How could Mamma and Papa not be my mamma and papa and Eugenia not be my sister?

  This day was supposed to be one of the happiest days of my life, the day I started school, but at that moment, it appeared to be the most dreadful day I had ever lived.

  2

  NO DENYING THE TRUTH

  When Mamma returned to talk to me, I was curled up in bed with the blanket drawn up to my chin. Shortly after she had left me, I was seized with a terrible chill that made my teeth click. Even with my blanket wound tightly around my body, I couldn't get warm enough to stop shivering. I felt as if I had fallen into that cold puddle again.

  "Oh, you poor dear," Mamma lamented, and hurried to my side. She thought I had gone to bed only because of the terrible things that had been said. She brushed back the strands of my hair that had dropped over my forehead and kissed me on the cheek. The moment she did so, she sat up sharply. "You're burning up!" she said.

  "No, I'm not, Mamma. I'm co . . . co . . . cold," I told her, but she shook her head.

  "You must have gotten a chill after you fell into that puddle and walked around all day in a damp dress. Now you've got a terrible fever. The teacher should have sent you home directly."

  "No, Mamma. I got my dress dry and Miss Walker gave me half of her own sandwich," I said. Mamma gazed at me as if I were babbling gibberish and shook her head. Then she pressed her palm to my forehead again and gasped.

  "You're scorching. I've got to send for Doctor Cory," she decided, and rushed out to find Henry.

  Ever since Eugenia had been born with a lung ailment, the smallest sign of illness in me, Emily or Papa stirred a tempest of worry in Mamma. She would pace about and wring her hands. Her face would whiten with panic, her eyes become washed in anxiety. Old Doctor Cory had been called here so often that Papa said his horse could make the trip blindfolded. Sometimes, Mamma was in such a frenzy, she would insist that Henry bring him immediately in our carriage and not wait for him to harness his horses to his own.

  Doctor Cory lived on the north side of Upland Station in a small house. He was a Northerner who had been brought South by his family when he was only six. Papa called him a "converted Yankee." Doctor Cory was one of the first residents of Upland Station to have a telephone installed, but we still had none. Papa said that if he put one of those gossip machines in the house, Mamma would spend most of her day with it glued to her ear, and it was bad enough that she cackled with the other hens once a week.

  Doctor Cory was a diminutive man whose strawberry red hair was mixed with strands of gray, and whose almond-shaped eyes were always so friendly and young-looking, they put me at ease almost as soon as he set his concerned gaze on me. He always carried something sweet in his worn, dark-brown leather satchel. Sometimes it was an all-day sucker, sometimes it was a sugar stick.

  While we waited for his arrival, Mamma had one of the chambermaids bring me another quilt. The added weight and heat made me more comfortable. Louella brought up some sweet tea and Mamma fed it to me a teaspoon at a time. I found it hard to swallow and that made her even more nervous.

  "Oh dear, dear," she chanted. "What if it's scarlet fever or tetanus or strep throat," she moaned, starting her litany of possible illnesses. She would go through everything in the medical dictionary she could recall. Her lily-white cheeks were blotched and her neck was red. Mama eventually broke out in splotches when she was this upset.

  "It don't look like no scarlet fever or tetanus," Louella said. "My sister died of scarlet fever and I knew a blacksmith who died of tetanus."

  "Oooooh," Mamma groaned. She paraded from the window to the door and back to the window looking for signs of Doctor Cory's arrival. "I told the Captain we should have a telephone now. He can be the most stubborn man."

  She rambled on, wrapping her thoughts around herself for comfort. Finally, after what seemed like an interminable wait, Doctor Cory arrived and Louella went down to show him in. Mamma swallowed a gasp and nodded at me all bundled up in bed when he stepped into my room.

  "Now don't get yourself all flustered and sick with worry, Georgia," he told her firmly.

  He sat on the bed and smiled at me.
r />   "How are you doing, Lillian honey?" he asked.

  "I'm still cold," I complained.

  "Oh, I see. Well, we'll fix that." He opened his satchel and took out his stethoscope. I anticipated the icy metal on my skin when he asked me to sit up and pull up my nightshirt, so I cringed before he touched me. He laughed and breathed on his stethoscope before placing it against my back. Then he asked me to take deep breaths. He put it on my chest and I did the same, breathing in as deeply as I could.

  My temperature was taken; I had to open my mouth and say "Ahh" and then he looked into my ears. While he examined me, Mamma ranted and raved about what had happened on my way to school.

  "Who knows what was in that puddle? It could have been infested with germs," she wailed.

  Finally, Doctor Cory reached into his satchel and brought out an all-day sucker.

  "This will make your throat feel better, too," he said.

  'What is it? What's wrong with her, Doctor?" Mamma demanded when he rose slowly and calmly and began to put things back into his satchel.

  "She's got some redness, a little infection. Nothing very serious, Georgia, believe me. We always get a lot of this when the seasons change. We'll give her some aspirin and some sulfur. With plenty of bed rest and hot tea, in a day or so she'll be like new," Doctor Cory promised.

  "But I've got to go to school!" I cried. "I just started today."

  "I'm afraid you'll have to take a little holiday right away, my dear," Doctor Cory said. If I thought I felt miserable before, it was nothing like how I felt now. Miss school, the very first week, the very next day? What would Miss Walker think of me?

  I couldn't help myself; I started to cry. This now, on top of the horrible things Emily had said and Mamma had not denied, seemed too much to bear.

  "Now, now," Doctor Cory said. "If you do that, you'll make yourself sicker and it will take you that much longer to get back to school."

  His words effectively choked off my sobs, even though I couldn't stop my body from shaking. He gave Mamma the pills I was to take and then left. She followed him out, still seeking reassurance that what was wrong with me was not very serious. I heard them mumbling in the hall and then I heard Doctor Cory's footsteps die away. I closed my eyes, the tears behind my lids burning. Mamma returned with the medicine. After I took it, I fell back against the pillow and slept.

  I slept for a long time because when I woke up, I saw it was very dark outside. Mamma had left a small kerosene lamp lit in my room and assigned one of the chambermaids, Tottie, to sit and watch me, except she had fallen asleep herself in the chair. I felt a little better, the chills now gone, although my throat felt as dry as hay. I moaned and Tottie's eyes snapped open,

  "Oh, yer up, Miss Lillian? How do ya feel?"

  "I want something, to drink, please, Tottie," I said.

  "Right away. I'll go tell Mrs. Booth," she said and hurried off. Almost immediately afterward, Mamma came charging through the door. She turned up the light and put her hand on my forehead.

  "It feels better," she declared, and released a long-held breath of concern.

  "I'm very thirsty, Mamma:"

  "Louella's on her way with some sweet tea and some toast and jam, darling," she said and sat down on my bed.

  "Mamma, I hate not going to school tomorrow. It's not fair."

  "I know, honey, but you can't go if you're sick, can you? You'll only get sicker."

  I closed and opened my eyes as Mamma tried to make my bed more comfortable and pounded the pillows. When Louella arrived with my tray, they fixed it so I could sit up. Mamma remained seated beside me as I sipped my tea and nibbled on my toast.

  "Mamma," I said, now remembering what it was that made me feel so terrible, "what did Emily mean when she said I wasn't her sister? What were you going to tell me?"

  Mamma sighed deeply as she always did whenever I asked her too many questions. Then she shook her head and fanned herself with the lace handkerchief she kept in the right sleeve of her dress.

  "Emily did a very bad thing, a very bad thing when she said those things to you. The Captain's furious with her too and we've sent her to her room for the night," Mamma said, but I didn't think that was much of a punishment for Emily. She liked being in her room more than she liked sitting with the family.

  "Why was it a bad thing, Mamma?" I asked, still very confused.

  "It was bad because Emily should know better. She's older than you are and was old enough at the time to know what had happened. Back then, the Captain sat her down and impressed upon her how important it was that you not be told until you were old enough to understand. Even though Emily was only a little younger at the time than you are now, we knew she understood the importance of keeping something secret."

  "What's the secret?" I asked in a whisper, never more intrigued with anything Mamma had told me. Henry was always saying that houses and families in the South had closets full of secrets. "You could open a closet door kept closed for years and have skeletons fall out over you." I didn't know exactly what he meant, but for me there was nothing more delicious than a mystery or a ghost story.

  Reluctantly, her hands on her lap, her beautiful soft blue eyes filled with pain, Mamma took a deep breath and began.

  "As you know, I had a younger sister Violet. She was very pretty and very delicate . . . as delicate as a violet. All she had to do was stand in the afternoon sun for a few minutes and her cherry-blossom-white skin would turn crimson. She had your blue-gray eyes and your button nose. In fact, her features were only slightly larger than Eugenia's. My papa used to call her his little pickaninny, but my mamma hated it when he said that.

  "Anyway, when she was a little more than sixteen, a very handsome young man, the son of one of our closest neighbors, began to court her. His name was. Aaron and everyone said he worshipped the ground Violet tread upon, and she was very fond of him. People thought it was a dream romance, the kind of love affair they read about in story books, as sweet and as fascinating as Romeo and Juliet, but unfortunately, just as tragic.

  "Aaron asked my papa for permission to marry Violet, but my papa was very possessive when it came to his favorite. He kept promising to think seriously on it, but he put off a decision for as long as he could.

  "Now," Mamma said sadly, sighing and dabbing at her eyes with her lace handkerchief, "when I think about what happened, it was as if Papa knew the future and wanted to protect Violet from unhappiness and catastrophe as long as he could. But," Mamma added, "it was even more difficult for a young woman to do anything but marry back then. This was to be Violet's destiny, just as it was mine . . . to be courted and promised to a man of good stature, a man of property and respect.

  "And so Papa finally relented and Violet and Aaron were married. It was a beautiful wedding. Violet looked like a child bride, looked no more than twelve in her wedding dress. Everyone remarked about it.

  "Shortly afterward, she became pregnant." Mamma laughed. "I remember that even after five months, she hardly showed." Mamma's smile evaporated. "But while she was in her sixth month, a great calamity befell her. Her young husband Aaron was thrown from his horse during a rainstorm and hit his head on a rock. He died instantly," Mamma said, her voice cracking. She swallowed before continuing.

  "Violet was devastated. She wilted quickly, like a flower without sunlight, for her love was her sunlight; it was what brightened her world and filled it with promise. By this time, our papa had passed away, too, so she felt very alone. It was painful to see her dwindle in little ways: her beautiful hair grew drab and dull, her eyes were always dark, her complexion became more and more pallid and sickly and she stopped caring about what she wore.

  "Women who become pregnant," Mamma said, "usually look the healthiest they ever look. If the pregnancy goes well, it's as if the baby inside is enriching their bodies. Do you understand, Lillian?"

  I nodded although I didn't really understand. Most of the pregnant women I had seen all looked big and awkward, groaning when they sat
down, groaning when they stood up and always holding their stomachs as if the baby would fall out any moment. Mamma smiled and stroked my hair.

  "Anyway, weakened by tragedy, weighed down by sadness, poor Violet didn't grow stronger and healthier. She carried her pregnancy as a burden now and spent long hours of each day mourning her lost love.

  "The baby, feeling the sorrow throughout her body, decided to be born sooner than she was supposed to be born. One night, Violet was taken with great pain and the doctor was rushed to her bedside. The struggle to give birth was seemingly endless. It went on all through the night and into the morning. I was there at her side, holding her hand, wiping her forehead, comforting her as best I could, but the effort was too much.

  "Late in the morning of the next day, you were born, Lillian. You were a beautiful baby with your features already quite formed, perfect features. Everyone oo'ed and ahh'ed over you, and everyone hoped your birth would restore Violet and give her some-thing to live for, but alas, it was already too late.

  "Shortly after you appeared in this world, Violet's heart stopped beating. It was as if she had remained alive just so you would be born, and her and Aaron's child would see the light of day. She died in her sleep with a soft, gentle smile on her face. I was sure Aaron was there for her, waiting for her on the other side, his hand out, his arms ready to embrace her soul and bring it together with his.

  "My mamma was too old and sick to care for a child, so I brought you back to The Meadows. The Captain and I decided we would raise you as if you were our own. Emily was four years and some months old by then, so she knew we had brought my sister's baby home to live with us, but we talked to her about you often and impressed it upon her that she should keep the secret. We wanted you to have a wonderful childhood and always feel you belonged with us. We wanted to shield you from tragedy and sorrow for as long as we could.