An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [84]
"I told you when you first came here not to listen to her, that she was a patient, not a prisoner. One of the effects of the medicine is that it makes people feel persecuted, mistrusting of others, and addle-headed. Even dizzy. They are plagued with dark thoughts. Lincoln's death didn't help. It brought her guilt over her past drinking to the fore. When these moods struck, she played on your sympathy."
I said nothing.
"Where is she, Emily? Can you tell me that?"
I met his inquiring look with a dumbstruck one of my own. "Gone," I said.
"Gone? Where? Where did you take her?"
"I took her to the Relief Society at Twelfth and O Streets this morning. It's where she wanted to go."
He started to get up out of his chair.
"No," I said. "She's not there, Uncle Valentine. She's gone by now. Long since gone. She just stopped by to tell the reverend there she was all right and to pick up some things. She was leaving this very day."
"For where?"
I brightened. "Home," I said. "You can likely fetch her there. Or get some medicine to her."
He shook his head sadly. "She never told me where home was, Emily. She never would tell me. Did she tell you?"
"No," I said miserably, "she didn't."
24. The Ferryman
THINGS WENT back to normal. Uncle Valentine wanted it that way. "It is over and done with," he said when I told him I wanted to do something to make up for the loss of Addie. "I just want life around here to get back to normal. Do you understand?"
I said yes. But I didn't believe it. Some matters are never over and done with. They just seem that way, is all. If you wait long enough, they pop their heads up again when you least expect it.
Uncle Valentine didn't believe it, either. He acted differently toward me. He acted polite.
I could have stood anger, I think. Even being punished. But in the days that followed he was so carefully polite I thought I would die. I went back to school and decided I would wait for a chance to make things up to him. It would come to me.
Myra Mott did not speak to me. Which qualified as normal, I suppose. I could bear that. But I could not bear the fact that Robert didn't speak to me, either, when he came around. And he came most every day. He actually sat at our breakfast table and didn't speak to me. He spoke more to Ulysses the cat. He acted so superior I couldn't bear it. I sat paralyzed in his presence, tears in my eyes. How could a person's silence say such terrible things to you? And when he left, I felt so stricken I wanted to die. Uncle Valentine noticed, of course. But all he said was, "He'll come 'round, be patient."
I didn't want to be patient. And I didn't want Robert to come 'round. I wanted to show old, superior Robert that I was not the stupid, noodleheaded, no-'count, inferior insect he thought I was. I didn't want him to like me anymore. I didn't even know if I still liked him. It had nothing to do with such insipid feelings. It had to do with respect.
Robert would know I was someone to be reckoned with before I was finished with him, or I'd know the reason why. And if I could make things up to Uncle Valentine at the same time, why, I'd die happy. That was all I knew.
In spite of my troubles, life went on. President Johnson granted amnesty and pardon to all who'd participated in the "existing rebellion," with a few exceptions. On Saturday, June 17, Annie came around. She looked wild eyed. I'd had it all fixed in my head how I wasn't going to talk to her because she snitched about my running away. But I don't think she even remembered that, that's how crazy-acting she was.
They were getting ready to sentence her mother. The government's man, John Bingham, was summing up his argument for the convictions, she told us. "He's been talking three days straight and shows no signs of stopping."
"The press has condemned your mother from the start," Uncle Valentine mused.
"Oh, what will I do?" Annie was pulling at her hair.
I hadn't thought about Johnny in a long time. But now I wondered what had happened to his "gentleman in Washington"