The Wind Done Gone Read online

  I cleared my throat, paused a moment before rising—she could wait to see who had heard—then I rose. I stand a good three or four inches taller than she does. But her waist is smaller. Mammy used to tell me that. There are things of mine that she has taken. I could not let this hour, this visit be one of them.

  She was scared, and for the first time in my life I saw her scared without her angry.

  I knew if I said boo, she'd run out the room.

  So I said, "Boo."

  Or I said, "My mother and I want to be alone, ma'am. Captain R. sends his condolences, sho do. He sent some fruit for you. Sent some for me and all the folks here too."

  Other ran out the room, crying.

  I stepped to the door, calling softly, "Ma'am? What must I do to comfort you?"

  23

  Nowadays, Miss Priss and her mother, Garlic's family, live in the old overseer's house. The house where Lady caught some fever, smallpox or scarlet, and died. Someone has ludicrously trained rosebushes to grow up the side of this slap-dash wooden structure. Most nights Garlic sleeps in Planter's old room and leaves his bed in the overseer's house empty. He's put my bags in the trellised shack; I'm to sleep in his empty bed. Before I came down from the old house, I took a bottle from Other's dining room sideboard. I hope no one misses it tonight. I help myself to a long swig.

  I walk out on the porch, hoping it will help me catch my breath. There's no gas to illuminate the dark out here, only oil lamps and bee's-wax flame. It makes for a different color of night. The stars are brighter. It's hard to see to write.

  There are so many things of Other's I have wanted. Things, then people. People more than things—but nothing she has ever had, no emerald, not R., have I ever wanted as much as I wanted her love for Mammy. As the sun sets, it don't hurt near as much that Mammy didn't love me as it hurts that I didn't love Mammy.

  Once upon a time I loved my mother. But that love was frail and untended; I let that love die. No, it wasn't like that, like a plant in a pot deprived of water. Truth is that love got some sort of sickness that moved so quick and there was no doctor to tend the patient and my love just died. I had no idea in the world how to stop that death from coming once it started, and started coming on quick. It was like the smallpox moving through the house, leaving scars and death, and you're scared to see it coming. And you never forget it came. Just like the first time you see a dead body, you know one day death's coming for you too. The first time you stop loving somebody, you learn all love ends. And loving somebody is just the graceful practice of patience before the love dies.

  I know exactly where my love for Mammy is buried. Like an unembalmed beast left decaying in the yard of my mind, it stinks the place right up to high heaven. Is there a low heaven? Can I drift there and stay close to her?

  It hurts not to love her. And it hurt more when I didn't—I still don't—believe she ever loved me. I close my eyes after writing that, after making that witness, and I wince in a breath. God damn her soul! And it's less a curse than a fear. What do God do with folk who won't see the beauty He put in all creation? What do He do when He tired of hearing the angels weeping? I know the angels weep every time a dusky Mama is blind to the beauty of her darky child, her ebony jewel, and hungers only for the rosebud mouth to cling to the plum moon of her breast.

  Don't I understand why Miss Priss killed Mealy Mouth? Don't I remember Garlic's wife with Mealy Mouth and Dreamy Gentleman's Harvard-going brat at her breast? Miss Priss lost two brothers to that woman. It's all so mixed up. I take a sip more—or is it more than a sip—from Other's brandy bottle, and my memories are like fish in a bowl swimming one way and then another, detached, insignificant, but still I turn back to look, remember, watch, mesmerized as the memories glide past.

  24

  R. didn't have too many bedroom memories of Other to tell, to hold back. But sometime during the afternoon that Georgia entered the war, he felt her breath on his face, and that breath left its imprint on his eye. Other never knew, didn't guess, I was the one first spoke her name to him. To get her out of my head, I put her in his. That's not what I intended to do, but I did something, and that's what happened. I was the one told him 'bout her.

  I'm trying to remember about that time and get it straight. R. had gone to the picnic barbecue at Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees, gone to do a little business, he told me. I believe now he went there to see her. Other had gone in the hopes of getting Dreamy Gentleman to ask for her hand in marriage. But that was not to be, and everybody but Other had seen it a long time coming.

  Dreamy Gentleman had made up his mind to marry his cousin Mealy Mouth, a flat-chested slip of a girl who would never ask more from marriage than family. She didn't have the first idea about passion between a man and a woman, but she possessed a fiery loyalty to family, particularly to her brothers, that attracted Dreamy Gentleman profoundly. He saw luscious possibilities in that loyalty. And he saw a fine line of children springing from his loins (which he coveted and hoped he deserved), golden children that would resemble his beautiful cousin, resemble all his cousins, for they greatly resembled each other.

  Dreamy Gentleman was a particular friend of Mealy Mouth's brother (not the young one Other would marry; an older brother nobody really talked about). This brother played Cupid for Mealy Mouth and Dreamy Gentleman; Dreamy Gentleman could not but be slain by Mealy Mouth's brother's golden arrow. Mealy Mouth was grateful to her brother for forming the attachment.

  If Other could see how tenderly Dreamy Gentleman valued loyalty and silence and how roughly he disdained feminine hunger and passion, she would not have made the drive to Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees. She would have known that she was not and had never been a featured player in the theater of his life. No wife would be. But she was blind to all that. Other knew only every man she knew would give his life to be the object of her desire.

  There had been someone Dreamy Gentleman loved, but not someone he could marry or that any of us could talk about. Miss Priss had a brother who worked for Mealy Mouth's Mama and Papa, and that brother was dead. They never feared Miss Priss after that; after her brother whipped up dead, Miss Priss went kind of simple. She seemed to want to make it all up to the family, the family, she said, over and over again, "what had been betrayed." Mealy Mouth's family thought she was talking about them. They continued to believe Miss Priss understood that a trusted family servant (even your brother) whispering a family secret (even in passion) was peculiar treachery. Garlic, who mourned his son, knew what his daughter meant. And knowing that Miss Priss possessed a keen and labyrinthine intelligence, Garlic seemed willing to let her balance the scales. He did very little to make amends. He just was.

  But Miss Priss was there both times Mealy Mouth gave birth, the time she died, and the time she almost died. Miss Priss scares me. I don't think there's anything simple about her. So later, when they were all together during the war, when I lived at Beauty's and they were living at Other's Aunt Pattypit's, and Miss Priss told me how Other "throwed herself" at Dreamy Gentleman and how R. saw, I didn't tell her different. She thought R. was seeing her for the first time that day; she thought what Other thought. But he was only meeting her for the first time. He saw her first in his conversation with me.

  It was me who told R. about Other. Even before they met, I made him see her. I didn't want to lose him, but I wanted someone who loved her to love me more than her. I made the introduction in fear with trembling. I didn't believe anybody who knew us both could love me more, but I hoped for it, and I had to know. I didn't trust Miss Priss enough to tell her how it really was then, and I don't trust her enough now, but I remember.

  I fed R. from Mammy's store of how wonderful Other was—and there is something wonderful about her and it was exactly this: she has the vitality, the vigor, and the pragmatism of a slave, and into this water you stir as much refinement as you can pour without leaving any grains of sugar at the bottom of the glass. She was a slave in a white woman's body, and that's a sweet drink of co
ld water. In more ways than one, she thought and didn't think I was her sister. Just like in the Bible, I played Mary to her Martha, but many days it feels that it is I who have chosen the lesser part. Truth to tell, it's the lesser part what chose me. When it comes right down to it, I am Lady's child and she is Mammy's.

  My mother, Lady, lost her man, Feleepe, at fifteen. When her family refused to accept him as a suitor, he ran off to some port city and was killed in a duel. Other's mother, Mammy, lived with her man all of her life, taking no public part, giving no private corner. Lady lay with Planter only the nights that were needed to bring babies. The girls who still walk this earth with me, and the boys who lay sleeping in the graveyard. Planter slept with Mammy in pleasure all their lives. In truth of body, I was the passion fruit, and Other was the bloom of civil rape. In truth of soul, Other was raised in the humidity of desire sucking boldly at Mammy's breast, and I was raised in the cool restraint of Lady's boudoir, the place to which you retreat with dignity, a place of private sorrows and private consolations, the touch of Lady's soft hand lavished on my hapless head. So Other was a child of pleasure and I a child of cold chastity, willing to be bred.

  25

  Garlic dug the grave. We had our service early in the morning, Garlic, his wife, Miss Priss, and me. Just dawn. The time of day when even servants rest. Maybe. I wanted an hour she had been at rest on earth, and I couldn't find one. Only in the lazy drag of her feet, the slow trifling ramble on any one of so many errands, did she save herself just a little from work-hard-work-long exertion, a slave's exertion.

  There are two cemeteries on the place. Out back of where the cabins used to be, over a mile from the house, there is a slave cemetery. A concentration of round field-stones (some still in stacks) and branches lashed together to create crude crosses mark for still blinking eyes the territory of the enslaved dead. It helps to squint. The ground is soft here, damp. Some suspect an underground spring. A blanket of wild grass and wild flowers covers this ground most of the year, protecting, concealing.

  Closer to the house—you can see it from the porch—is the family burial ground: a rising mound of red earth beneath a tall, limb-spreading tree. In this mound are carved stones of pink Etowah marble. Pink stones, head and feet, red earth, green tree, sprigs, and odd blades of grass. Nothing much could grow in that shade. Nothing grows in this shade but names and dates and ghosts. A low wall of flat stones piled one on top of the other, a slave wall, hedges the ghost in, hedges the visitors out.

  We buried her in the family plot.

  Of course, Other wants Mammy buried beside Lady. What she doesn't know is a long time ago Lady's grave and Planter's were changed, looking toward just this day. Mammy be lying down beside Planter. He got himself in the middle, in death just like in life. Only the folk at the early service know that—Garlic, his wife, Miss Priss, and me.

  Garlic spoke over the body. When Lady and Mammy come to the place, Garlic was there. He had chaperoned their entire journey from Savannah to the grave. He brought them to this side of the piney woods where both women got knocked up so big and quick. Everybody suppose Garlic put it to Mammy; the master's valet follows the master and chooses the mistress's maid. Oh, peculiar economy! It was a way of making sure there was milk for the baby. Somebody plants a seed in the going-to-be-wet-nurse, and then you starve that child if you have to, like they starved Miss Priss's younger brother. Garlic knew what not to say and what to say so that people would say less.

  He braided what he could remember of the words from the Episcopal prayer book with his own words.

  "You might could say we was the whole Trinity around this place, me, Mammy, and Miss Priss." His wife frowned, but we all knew what he meant. Garlic was right. Mrs. Garlic had bearing, height, and a kind of beauty that grew with age, but she had changed nothing of significance in any of our lives. Her stature was only apparent. Mrs. Garlic always stood in a kind of second command to Mammy, a shadow echo of a greater strength. Ultimately it was Miss Priss, so insignificant-seeming, so shrill, so silly, who completed the triangle that walled Cotton Farm off from the world.

  Garlic was wearing the watch that I wanted for mine. I saw the golden keys hanging from it. "I was with Planter the night he won this place in a card game. Way back when. Ain't nobody on this place know what I know 'cept Sister—that's what I came to call her—and now she gone. What I have to say I say for her. And I say it for me, 'cause when it comes time to lay me in this ground, ain't none of ya'll be knowin' what to say.

  "Planter won me in a poker game. My old master was a rich young planter from St. Simon's island. Good-looking, good-mannered, we went everywhere, Charleston, N'awlins, Washington, D.C. I been to Marse Jefferson's Monticello; you name it, I been there. I was with him when he went to Harvard. I stood in the square and got me some education while he graduated on time, not like those twins from 'round here who tumbled in and out of every college. Young Marse was something else. So much so I couldn't be nothing. I stood in the Yard and he went to the classrooms. Yeah. Now this man heah" (tapping his toe on Planter's grave) "was a different matter. He didn't know nothing. He didn't have nothing but his white skin, spirit, and work-hard. He needed me. And I needed him, 'cause I had a vision of a place I wanted to live.

  "So I mixed my young master's drinks heavy and poured my hoped-to-be-master's drink light. Wasn't good luck won Planter me. It was me poisoning Young Marse's cup. Later, Young Marse offered twice the money to get me back, and I was scared. But my new master, my soon-to-be Planter, was too proud of his first slave to let me go. I played the same trick when we won this land, but Planter was in on it. And it was me who told him when it was time for us to find a wife with a good group of house Negroes. I knew Mammy. When we first came to Savannah, Mammy told me all 'bout Lady and her troubles, and I told Planter what he need to know. I wanted Mammy for this place.

  "There was no architect here. There was me and what I remembered of all the great houses on great plantations I had seen. Bremo. Rattle-and-Snap. The Hermitage. Belgrove. Tudor Place. Sabine Hall. I built this place with my hands and I saw it in my mind before my hands built it. Mammy and me, we saved it from the Yankees not for them but for us. She knew. She knew this house stood proud and tall when we couldn't. Every column fluted was a monument to the slaves and the whips our bodies had received. Every slave being beat looked at the column and knew his beating would be remembered. I stole for this place and I got shot doing it. We, Mammy and me, kept this place together because it was ours. Here I raised my family. Right this morning we're burying the real mistress of the house."

  Right then I cried.

  ***

  Later we had the official funeral. Other cried and cried. We were a pathetic band. Dreamy Gentleman bereft of Mealy Mouth, and Other absolutely confused, confused as to why R. wasn't there. She believed it to have something to do with Beauty, that "waddling woman, with the powdered face and the colored hair."

  Dreamy Gentleman had come, of course, bringing his heir and his baby; bringing Other's surviving children. There was the most exquisite kind of pain in Dreamy Gentleman's eyes when he looked into Miss Priss's face. Other saw Dreamy Gentleman looking at Priss and almost hissed. Then she saw, with her memory, what he saw: a beautiful boy's face from long ago. The face of Miss Priss's brother appeared in his sister's face when she flared her nostrils in any show of arrogance or anger. For the very first time, Other saw it, and I saw her see it. Other didn't see me at all; it was as if I didn't exist.

  R. couldn't come because I was there. So Other looked down the road for him, harder than she had ever looked for Dreamy Gentleman. And she had looked hard down that road when the war was over and nobody knew who was coming home alive and with what body parts.

  Dreamy Gentleman read properly from the Book of Common Prayer and gave a little talk about how we were laying to rest the last of a vanished species and culture—the loyal old servant who, Christ-like, sacrificed herself for others. He believed every word. He believed my mothe
r to be an unselfish woman. He believed her to be a loving beast of burden without sex or resentment. He knew nothing of her at all.

  And Other knew only bits more. Now, as I think back on what I saw of her at the grave, I am struck by the truth of her grief. I wonder what she would feel now if she knew, if I told her, if she ever come to understand that Mammy used her, used her to torment white men. Other was Mammy's revenge on a world of white men who would not marry her dark self and who had not loved her Lady. Did Other see how she had been weaned to pick up hearts and trained to dash them down, both with casual ease? Who convinced her to conquer? Had Mammy ever told Other the truth about Dreamy Gentleman? No. Watching Other stand by the grave, I knew for sure that Mammy had stopped wearing the mask and the mask had worn her. By the time we were born, choosing between Other and me was like choosing between paper dolls, and Other had the prettier clothes.

  When the service was over, Other was awarded pride of place at the head of the line of mourners. I was to follow right behind. She marched straight ahead to the house, allowing the wind to carry her words back to me. "You should be ashamed of neglecting Mammy."

  I went back in the house, sneaked into Lady's room, crawled into our bed, and cried.

  26

  In the afternoon, Other and Dreamy Gentleman went out driving in her carriage. When the driver come back, he say he took them over to where the house we called Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees once stood. I have forgotten their name for it. What I remember is this: there were twelve columns across the front of that slave-built house. They stood for the original twelve dark men who cleared the land. And the lines, the flutes, on those columns stood for the stripes on those slaves' backs. They didn't know any of that, but we did. The last sermon I heard my preacher in Atlanta preach, he said, "We don't need any new members; we need disciples!" Twelve slaves, twelve columns, twelve disciples. Twelve memories. The driver overheard Other say to Dreamy Gentleman she's going to build that house back up again, for him, in remembrance of what had been.