An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [28]
One box held old love letters to her from my daddy. I read them all on the floor of my room, with the dust motes floating in the late-afternoon sunbeams and the night-blooming cereus in a vase on the floor beside me. I devoured them. When I looked up finally, it was dusk, shadows everywhere. I was starved for food. That's what the love letters had done to me.
But downstairs I couldn't find matches or candles. Finally I discovered some matches on the mantel in the dining room. Then I remembered the candles Annie had given me. I crept into the parlor. The mirrors were still covered and the cloth draping them was ghostly white. I fetched the two candles and took them into the kitchen. The parlor was not to be borne.
The fire in the stove had gone out. There was some kindling but no paper. I searched and searched. Now what to do? No fire, no tea. I fetched the box of love letters, put them in the stove, piled the kindling on top, and watched them burn. They made a good fire. Mama would have cried, I thought, but my daddy would have said, "Good girl, that world's all over with, and you must go on." I set some water to boil, searched in the larder to see what was to be had to eat. Not much. Some cold ham and leftover hard biscuits. No milk, no butter. Hadn't there been a pot of strawberry jam this morning?
The place was wiped clean. Maude had taken everything. Why? Because she wanted me to be miserable when I came back here. So I would flee back to Uncle Valentine's. Well, I would settle for cold ham, hard biscuits, and tea without milk. I sat down and waited for the water to boil.
The house was so silent. I wished I had a cat or a bird. I'd had both back in Surrattsville, but Mama wouldn't let me bring them here. Annie took care of them for me. The cat had been old and died. Annie had let the bird go free. I'd always wanted to, but Mama had said no.
Mama again. Would I never stop thinking of her? Even in anger?
Mama was gone! The fact of it closed in on me. How could she be gone? For my whole life she had been moving about in the background, telling me what to do, complaining, plaguing me for the most part, but there.
Now she was gone. The quiet mocked me. I was worn down—there's the truth of it—from the last six weeks of nursing her. I was glad the drudgery was over. No more cleaning up bloodstained handkerchiefs or sheets. No more changing the bedding because she'd wet herself. No more hearing her hacking cough in the middle of the night. That's why I was unable to cry. Because I was glad it was over.
By her own admission, she had been a selfish person. "My daddy spoiled me so." She was proud of it.
Mama, Uncle Valentine, and Aunt Susie had grown up in a two-story frame house in Richmond. It had upstairs and downstairs galleries, and outbuildings for servants. Mama said her father was collector of the port, but I think he must have owned the port for all the money they had. Her family had eight slaves just to keep that house in Richmond. Her father also owned a country seat in Roanoke.
My daddy never deceived her. He was not wealthy. But he had gone to West Point. He was still in the army when she met him. It was 1848 and he had just returned from the Mexican War, dashing and full of the Devil's own merriment, as Aunt Susie once told me.
Uncle Valentine was back from Edinburgh, Scotland, a doctor already. "He has no money, Mary Louise," he told Mama. "And you need money to live."
"Don't marry him," Aunt Susie begged her, "you'll kill each other." Aunt Susie was sixteen and had already toured Europe, where she had learned, apparently, how some men and women who are in love can kill each other.
Mama married him. She did not think she needed money to live. She thought that what she needed was culture, gallantry, protection, tradition. Daddy had all those things. I remember her saying that Uncle Valentine was crude and cruel, Aunt Susie jealous.
The water started to boil. I got up and made tea. I found an old pot of honey that had eluded Maude. I poured