Known World (2004 Pulitzer Prize), The - Edward P. Jones [15]
They married in June, a wedding attended by even the better white people in the county, so liked had John become in his time in Manchester as Patterson’s deputy. His father’s cousin was ill in North Carolina but the cousin sent his son, Counsel Skiffington, and Counsel’s wife, Belle, a product of a very good family in Raleigh. Though John and Counsel had grown up together, as close as brothers, they had no overwhelming love for each other. Indeed, had Counsel not been a wealthy man he would have found his mild dislike of John veering toward something most unkind whenever they met. But wealth helped to raise him above what would have made other men common riffraff and so he was more than happy to come to his cousin’s wedding in a Virginia town whose name his wife had to keep reminding him of. And, too, Counsel hadn’t been out of North Carolina in five months and he had been feeling an ache to walk about under a different sky.
Counsel and his wife, with some discussion from his dying father, brought a wedding present for Winifred from North Carolina. They waited to present it until the reception for family members in the house John had bought near the edge of town for his bride. About three o’clock, after matters had quieted down some, Belle went out to where her maid was in the backyard and returned with a slave girl of nine years and had the girl, festooned with a blue ribbon, stand and then twirl about for Winifred. “She’s yours,” Belle told Winifred. “A woman, especially a married one, is nothing without her personal servant.” All the people from Philadelphia were quiet, along with John Skiffington and his father, and the people from Virginia, especially those who knew the cost of good slave flesh, smiled. Belle picked up the hem of the girl’s dress and held it out for Winifred to examine, as if the dress itself were a bonus.
Winifred looked at her new husband and he nodded and Winifred said, “Thank you.” Winifred’s father left the room, followed by Skiffington’s father. Counsel went on smiling; he was thinking of all those early days in North Carolina when his dislike for his cousin was taking root. The trip up to that nowhere Virginia town had been worth it just for the look on his cousin’s face. “It’s a good way of introducing you to the life you should become accustomed to, Mrs. Skiffington,” Counsel said to Winifred. He looked at Belle, his wife. “Isn’t that right, Mrs. Skiffington?”
“Of course, darling.” She said to the wedding present, “Say hello. Say hello to your mistress.”
The girl did, curtsying the way she had been shown before leaving North Carolina and many times during the trip to Manchester. “Hello. Hello, mistress.”
“Her name is Minerva,” Belle said. “She will answer to the name Minnie, but her proper name is Minerva. She will, however, answer to either, to whatever you choose to call her. Call her Minnie and she will answer. But her proper name is Minerva.” Her first maid, received when Belle was twelve, had had a disagreeable night cough and had to be replaced after a few weeks with a quieter soul.
“Minerva,” the child said.
“See,” Belle said. “See.” The night that Belle Skiffington would die, that first maid, Annette, grown out of a cough that had plagued her for years, would open a Bible in the study of her Massachusetts home, looking for some verses to calm her mind before sleep. Out of the Bible would fall a leaf from a North Carolina apple tree that she had, the night she escaped with five other slaves, secreted in her bosom for good luck. She would not have seen the leaf for many years and at first she would not remember where the browned and brittle thing came from. But as she remembered, as the leaf fell apart in her fingers, she would fall into a cry that would wake everyone in her house and she could not be calmed, not even when morning came. Belle’s second maid, the one who had never been sick a day in her life, would die the night after Belle did. Her name was Patty and she had