An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [10]
Was he rehearsing for a play? Was I supposed to answer?
"So many times he had the Federals cornered. Doesn't he understand the importance of the kill?"
I did not know my lines. I stood, dumbstruck.
Booth looked right at me, his eyes burning. "The fools! All of them! Don't they know what will happen once Lee surrenders?"
"What is it, Emily?" Mrs. Mary asked.
"I need someone to send a note to my uncle's house. Mama's taken a turn for the worse."
"Of course." Then she turned to Booth. "This girl's mother is dying," she said.
"We're all dying," Booth said. "Some sooner than others, that's all. Some not soon enough!" Again he looked at me. "Do you study Latin in school?"
"Yes," I said.
"Then tell me this, is tyrannis spelled with two n's or two r's?"
I liked it. It had passion. Not like so many of the milksop plays here in Washington. But I didn't think it would get past the Union people.
Mrs. Mary didn't like it. "Enough, Wilkes," she said. She called him Wilkes, not John. Annie said it was the name of some famous English ancestor.
Mrs. Mary called a servant and had my note delivered to Uncle Valentine. Then she saw me out. "Let me know how your mama fares," she said. Then she went back into the parlor, where Booth was still ranting and swearing.
Uncle Valentine sent medicine—calomel, rhubarb, and opium.
He also sent Maude. She was a short, heavy woman with hair tied back in a bun, and glasses on the edge of her nose. She looked like somebody's mother.
Not mine. My mother had never looked or acted like anybody's mother. My mother acted like a Southern belle. It was all she'd ever wanted to be. A Southern belle. It had nothing to do with politics or being for or against the Union. She just wanted to play the part, be taken care of by everybody, have Negroes waiting on her. Then she married my daddy and found out it wasn't to be.
I'd been taking care of her since Daddy went off to war. Now I knew what I'd missed.
I recognized it instantly in Maude's broad face, calm manner, and busybody ways. She let me give Mama the medicine in the doses written on the bottles in Uncle Valentine's hand. I told Mama the medicine came from Herold. She never would have taken it if she knew her brother had sent it over. I told her Maude was a friend of Mrs. Surratt's.
Maude never sat down for a second but that she took up her knitting needles. She could knit without looking at what she was doing. All through the war she'd knitted things for the wounded soldiers and taken them to the hospitals.
"Who will you knit for when the war is over?" I asked. Mama was sleeping. We spoke in whispers.
"There are plenty of young men in the hospitals who still need attention. Your uncle still tends them at Douglas Hospital. Of course, let's hope they'll all soon be going home."
"I wonder what we'll all do when the war is over," I said. "I wonder what we'll blame our misfortune on."
She smiled at me. "That's an awfully astute thing to say."
I was thinking of Mama. That would make anybody astute. I shrugged. "People make lots of their own problems. Then they blame them on the war."
"Most girls your age are so tainted with their own concerns, they scarce notice a thing." The knitting needles clicked. "We had a young man staying at our house for a while who was one of the wounded from Fredericksburg. Your uncle tended him in Douglas Hospital, found out his father was a country doctor and the young man wanted to be a doctor, and brought him home to recover. He's attending the university now, and all your uncle's classes. His name is Robert deGraaf. He's a lovely young man but very much alone in the city. You should come to our house sometime and meet him."
"I have no time for socializing," I said.
"Not now, of course. But you will in the future."
I had no future; didn't she know that? But the way