The Secrets She Carried (6 page)

After scrounging up a can of soup for dinner, Leslie climbed the stairs to the room that had once been her mother’s, the room Maggie had always put her in when she spent the night. It felt strangely anonymous now. The walls were the same sunny shade of yellow. The old iron bed was still covered in white chenille. But the room had been carefully stripped of all traces of its former occupant, nothing personal, nothing that might evoke a memory.

Despite damp winters and blistering summers, and God only knew how many layers of old paint, she finally managed to wrestle the window open, though not without a few choice words, and eased down onto the sill. She’d spent a lot of nights in this window, lulled toward sleep by the here-then-there pulse of fireflies, the thrum and throb of night things. Now, with her eyes closed and her knees tucked up to her chin, she could almost convince herself that no time had passed, that the breeze sighing through the screen was the breeze of all those other nights. Almost.

But that girl was gone. She owned half a vineyard now, and a house full of memories, and at some point she was going to have to suck it up and begin the process of sorting through eighty years of personal effects. Without warning, William Goddard’s old clock was swimming in her head along with his grandson’s words, as grim as they were true.
Our grandparents left us their whole life’s work, and we can’t run away from it fast enough.

In need of a diversion, Leslie slid from the sill and padded to the nightstand to retrieve the photo she had placed there. Whoever took it knew what they were doing: the use of shadow to funnel the eye,
the negative space, the use of a lightning-split oak to frame the subject—all spoke of more than a weekend photographer. The lighting, though, was the remarkable thing, a single blade of sun slanting across the stone’s face, so that it almost appeared to glow.

With a kind of awe, she ran a finger over the image. Something about it did feel familiar, something she could almost touch, but not. There was an inscription, a few lines etched into the stone, but they were too blanched to read. Vexed, she squinted harder, but after a few moments gave up and fell back against the spread, too exhausted to keep her eyes open. As she lay there, drifting toward sleep, she recalled her mother telling her once that every photograph told a story.

What story, then, did
this
photograph have to tell? And whose story was it?

Adele

August 1930

F
or my seventeenth birthday I’m put on the noon bus for North Carolina.

My worldly goods are stowed below, in its fume-filled belly, all neatly packed in a bright new trunk from Parson’s Hardware. Mama made me three new dresses—two brown, one navy. There wasn’t money for new shoes, or for a new hat either, but last night before bed I put on another layer of polish and pinned a spray of violets on my old boater. I have an address in my bag and fifty dollars pinned to my slip.

At the station Mama cries ’til her breath heaves out in great shuddering gulps. “I’m going to miss my girl,” she says over and over, shaking her head like it’s someone else making me go.

I don’t cry.

It’s the only way I know to punish her.

I don’t want to go. I’m happy with things as they are: maybe not a lot to eat, and not a lot of work either, now that the country-club set has lost all their money. But we get by. Still, Mama says her girl’s going to have a different life, a better life. No sewing fancy clothes for snooty ladies with high manners and low opinions of folks who make their livings with their hands. No, sir, I’m smart and I’m pretty, bright-eyed
and fair skinned, with hair like smooth black glass. No reason to settle for Mama’s kind of life. And when Mama makes up her mind, that’s all.

I try to talk her out of it right up to the time the bus pulls into the station. I say I’ll find work in the Quarter, bring home a little money. I say things will get better. She gives my arm a little jerk and shakes her head again.

“There’s a path for you,” she says, with her chin stuck out. “And it isn’t in New Orleans. And it isn’t with any of the go-nowhere boys chasing around after your skirts. There’s a whole wide world out there, little girl, and you’re meant for it.”

“What’s wrong with the world we have right now?” I ask, then look away.

I already know her answer. I’ve been hearing it since I was old enough to listen, and maybe even before that. I’m not going to turn out like Mama, not going to make the same mistakes, not going to throw my life away on some man who can’t or won’t look after me. I wish sometimes that Mama had chosen a better man when she picked my daddy. It seems he had a lot of shortcomings and that I’m always the one paying for them.

I hold my lip stiff as the bus door swings open, and ignore the sting behind my eyes.

“No looking back,” Mama chokes, and gives me one last breathless squeeze. “No looking back, ever.”

And then the door closes and the bus jerks away from the curb, and I’m all on my own. We haven’t gone a mile and already my heart bleeds for home, and I start to think this might be the second biggest mistake Mama ever made, my daddy being the first.

I’ve never really believed in fairy tales—watching Mama’s heart break by inches over the years has worked on me like a vaccine, so I’m not expecting a castle or happily ever after—but when I first catch sight of Gavin, North Carolina, all I can think of is getting back
on that bus. How could anyone live in this place—this merciless place of scorched red earth and brown horizons, fields stripped bare as Pharaoh’s Egypt, as if the God of Exodus himself had smitten the land for its sins?

There’s a world out there, and I’m meant for it—Mama said so. But this can’t be what she meant, this baked ground with its stubbled fields. My feet move only because I know this is just one leg of my journey. Eventually, when I’ve set a little money by, I’ll leave and make my way to Mama’s people in Chicago, finish school, and become a teacher, or maybe a nurse.

I reach the house straight from the station, wilted and hungry, my neck sticky under the collar of my new dress, my hair crushed flat as a sparrow’s nest. Even my hat is a shambles, my violets lost somewhere along the way. I can hardly believe my eyes when I finally see the place, spanking white and set way up high, looking out over all that green grass. There’s lots of shutters and four white columns, and a porch across the front.

I make myself go up on that front porch and bang the shiny knocker. A man answers, wearing a vest and tie. His shirt is crunchy with starch. His mouth looks starched too, while his eyes skim me from top to bottom. He tries to hide what he’s thinking as he shows me into a fancy parlor with brocade curtains and a green velvet settee. He doesn’t offer his name or any refreshment, and there’s something in his eyes that makes me queasy as he points me toward the settee, as if he’s almost sorry for me. I’m to sit quietly, he tells me in his starchy voice, and wait for the
Missus.

The
Missus
leaves me sitting in her parlor a full twenty minutes. It’s a long time to wait when you’re someplace you don’t want to be—someplace you don’t belong. I run my eyes around the room, all glossy and spotless. There’s not a speck of dust on anything except me. I fold my hands tight in my lap, careful not to touch anything. Over my head there’s a paddle fan wheezing. After a while, I start to
think it’s going to run me crazy. I wonder what Mama is doing, if she’s still crying, and if she’s started supper.

My belly is empty, gnawing at my backbone, and my eyes are hard on the candy dish when Susanne Gavin finally sails in. She’s thin as a fence rail, with straw-colored hair and a face like cider vinegar, trying her best to look grand for me in her filmy lavender chiffon. It flutters about her white shoulders, clings to her calves like sea-foam. It’s what the ladies back home call a
to-do—
a dress not suited to the occasion. Mama would have said it wasn’t her color either, that it made her look green at the gills. Her eyes fall on me as if she’s afraid I might spoil the velvet on her fine settee.

I hate her on the spot.

Her hands flutter around the high round bump of her belly while she looks me over, like a pair of pale birds that don’t know where to land. I congratulate her on the child because I can see she expects me to. And I hold my spine straight as a church pew because I know Mama expects me to. From the day Mama first laid eyes on me she’s been planning for this, training me how to get along, how to melt in, how to be invisible. I use all of it now.

It’s enough to get me the job. I expect because the other two girls who answered the ad were Negro. Missus makes it clear she’ll have none of those coloreds prowling around her expensive things or around the soon-to-be heir to her precious plantation.

“We have a reputation in the town,” she says, looking down her nose. “And a duty, I suppose, to set some sort of standard. Any girl working in my house has to look like she belongs.”

She’s looking at my shoes when she says it, at the fresh scuff marks and layers of polish. It’s her way of reminding me she sees me as nothing but poor white trash. That suits me just fine.

She sits down then and crosses her legs, her thin white hands clasped over her knees, as if to keep them still. Her eyes are queer, I notice now that she’s sitting close, pale as water, with tiny pupils like
the prick of a pin. Her lips are curled at the corners when she leans in, as if she’s about to tell me a secret.

“I suspect you know you’re in the town of Gavin?” Her voice is all high-and-mighty, like the name should mean something to me.

I nod and say, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, if you’re going to work at Peak Plantation, you should know the town was named for my husband’s family, back before the Revolution. And you mustn’t ever forget that my husband, Henry, is a very important man.”

I can see she’s waiting for me to say something, but my belly’s too empty to think of anything. I duck my head. That seems to satisfy her.

“Working for the Gavins is a privilege,” she tells me next.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask how many other girls have had the privilege before me, and why she had to advertise all the way down to Louisiana, but in my mind I can see Mama’s face all puckered with disapproval, so I stay quiet.

The mistress of Peak Plantation frowns a little when my stomach grumbles, but it doesn’t stop her from rambling on about the Big House, as she loftily calls it—that it’s nearly one hundred years old, built on the highest point in the county so that it looks down on all of Gavin. I think how very much she must enjoy looking down on all of Gavin.

I know Mrs. Susanne Gavin. For years, I’ve watched Mama
yes, ma’am
and
no, ma’am
women just like her through a mouth full of pins—all to earn their pennies. I wonder how the rest of Gavin likes her sitting up here in her fine plantation house, surrounded by acres of tobacco and dressed for afternoon tea, while plain folks scramble to find work and put food on their tables. And I wonder what kind of man could be married to such a woman.

We talk about my duties next, my
domestic skills
, as she calls them. She seems pleased but reminds me that I am to be plain and serviceable
at all times, no taking airs just because I’m in her employ and living in the finest house in the county.

And all of a sudden I understand why she wants a companion. I can see it in the pale eyes she scrapes over me. She needs someone to be better than. And that’s me, with my drooping hat and wilted home-sewn dress. Next to her I’m patchwork, frayed just enough around the edges to make her superior. It may only be my gnawing belly, but the room begins to tilt and shift, like sand being sucked from under my feet. I’ve got one leg in the old world and one in the new.

I’m given a room at the back of the house but on the same floor as the Missus. I am to be
convenient
, near enough to see to her tiniest whim. It’s a small room with papered walls and good furniture—better than I’m used to. There’s also a window that lets in a nice breeze and looks out on a lake and a bit of woods. My hardware-store trunk is brought up by the man in the vest. His name is George, he tells me, still with that look on his face, as if he’s just come from my funeral. There’s a plate in the kitchen for me if I want it, he says, and closes the door behind him.