The Wilful Daughter (10 page)

“
Child,” her mother turned her back around and brushed her hair again, “people always gonna say something to try to get in your business. I’m your mama and I say the only thing you old enough to do is go into town with your brother and get supplies from the store. Troy is big for twelve and together you can load the wagon.” Bira knew this left her father more time to work the land and her mother to care for the house and the little ones who weren’t in the fields.

“
I don’t care what they say, you a baby and you ain’t white and you ain’t passing and you ain’t marrying no one now, you hear?” Her mother was smiling when she said it. Mama called them all her babies, all six of them.

In the town there was a colored woman who worked in the store by the name of Miss Fannie. It was Miss Fannie’s job to wait on the coloreds and she took a liking to Bira and Troy. Gave them sweets and things when she wasn’t supposed to. They were always hungry after the two hour ride it took to get into town in an old wagon pulled by two of the slowest mules you ever met- Slow and Slower. The children called them that because no matter what you did they wouldn’t go fast at all.

She recalled how one of them would jump out the wagon and go off the road behind a tree to do their business, get finished and they could still catch up with the wagon with a short run that didn’t leave them out of breath.

Then came that day when she was fifteen, just fifteen and had never had a beau, and in town with her brother sucking on sweets in the back of the store where Miss Fannie worked.

“
Fannie, come up here a minute,” the white man had called to their friend. Bira had caught a glimpse of the man who called. She had never cared for him much but he smiled at her that day and sent a chill through her.

“
Come up front and close the door after you.”

Bira and Troy had been in town for only a short time. They were drinking fresh lemonade and eating little sugar cakes. It was a treat being big enough to go into town without their parents.

The adults, colored and white, were whispering on the other side of the door. Troy wasn’t interested in hearing what was being said. He was stuffing his face with Miss Fannie’s food. Bira thought she heard something about ‘robes’ and ‘babies’. She was almost knocked over when Miss Fannie opened the door. They were eye to eye, being the same height. But Bira felt small and childlike as the woman took her hand.

The white man came back with her. Miss Fannie’s husband Leroy, the man who Troy helped load the wagons, came back too.

Bira felt something was wrong for the woman never let go of her hand. Leroy, stood like an oak behind Troy.

Miss Fannie spoke softly. “Something has happened children. Something happened while you two were coming to town.”

Bira couldn’t speak and Troy was fidgeting nervously on the bags of flour that made his seat. “We can’t make them old mules move any faster, Miss Fannie. We try and. . .”

“
She knows that boy. Everybody in town knows bout Slow and Slower.” The white man frowned and his face was red as he spoke. “Just hear her out.”

Troy turned to his sister who was still in the hands of Miss Fannie. Leroy grabbed the boy’s shoulder and Bira felt her heart sink.

“
The robes,” Miss Fannie almost whispered it. “The white robes came in the middle of the day. They burned your father’s fields. They shot your sister Mary and your brother Joseph while they were working in the fields and they hung your father from the big tree in the middle of his land.”

Where we sat everyday to eat lunch and go over the things that he had taught them the night before, Bira thought and turned to look at brother who was struggling to pull away from Leroy.

“
Then they burned him hanging from that tree.”

“
No!” Troy screamed and Bira ran to him. He tried not to let her hold him. But with the grip that Leroy had put on him and the arms that Bira put around him all he could do was scream again and try to move.

“
Mama? The babies?” Bira asked tears streaming down her face.

“
Mister, I can’t. I can’t tell no more.” Miss Fannie was crying on her own. The white man finished what the kind colored woman could not say. His face growing more and more red.

“
By the time the robes got to the house your mother had gathered the babies inside. We heard they was playing outside. She wouldn’t let the robes in. She shot at them hoping they’d go away. So they sat fire to the place.”

“
My home!” Bira’s voice was so small in its pain.

“
And when your mother sent the babies out, so that they would not burn, the white robes showed no mercy and shot them one by one.”

“
No this couldn’t happen. We just got here and. . .”

The white man moved impatiently. “Word got here before you did. Like you said those mules are so slow.”

Troy pulled free of his sister. “What word? Who told you Mister? Seems you saying our family is all dead.” Leroy dropped his hold of the boy. “Did one of them robes come to brag?”

Miss Fannie and Leroy looked at the white man. He pulled on his shirt. “I don’t take to killing children. Didn’t know that was part of the deal,” he sighed. “If your daddy had just sold them the land. . .”

Fannie had interrupted his confession. “I, well me and Leroy, want you to stay with us. Pretend to be our children until the robes, they from another county, believe they have killed all your father’s children.”

His fists balled at his side Troy was screaming he wasn’t going to stay. Leroy was trying to talk some sense into him. The white man was walking away when Bira grabbed his arm. “Mister, my mama. You never said what happened to my mama.”

He had eyed Fannie and Leroy who didn’t open their mouths. Then he looked down at the pretty girl. He knew her mother and she looked so much like her it was hard for him to speak. “She died in the fire.”

Troy had cried like a baby and Bira had fainted for the first time in her life.

When she woke she was in Miss Fannie’s house. “Where’s Troy?” she asked thinking of the only family she had left.

“
He gone. Took a horse and a gun and went looking for them robes, foolish boy.”

Bira sat up in the bed and cried. “My brother is not foolish.”

Fannie didn’t try to comfort her. “Unless our men find him, he’ll be dead by morning.”

In the deepest dead of night Miss Fannie’s husband and some brave colored men snuck out to the farm to bury her family. They also buried Troy whose beaten body they found along the way.

One day, weeks later, they took her out to the place. No dead bodies, no crops in the field, everything gone. Even the big tree was burned down. The only thing she had left was Slow and Slower. They had been her dowry when she had married the Blacksmith months later.

* * *

At fifteen she had lost her whole family, at fifteen she had gained a loving husband. And even though she could remember with crystal clarity everything that transpired in Tyson, Alabama, she longed to go back there. It was mostly colored now. Miss Fannie and the Blacksmith’s Aunt Ella had built themselves a nice little community of people who didn’t have a need for big city life.

“
Look at that, William,” she said as another car went by. When he didn’t answer she turned and saw he was sleeping in his chair. Soon there would be cars everywhere Fawn told her. Now Bira longed even more for the country but she never got to go there as long as her husband wanted, needed her in Atlanta. She looked at his sleeping face in the red glow of sunset. She was alive because of him. She would stay wherever he wanted her to stay with him, forever.

CHAPTER FIVE

As she sat at the bottom of the hill in back of the house with Willie, staring at the few clouds that floated by, June talked of her chance meeting that afternoon with the Piano Man. “I would have asked him to come over here but guess what? The minister is bringing him to meet papa tonight.”

“
How old is this man? It seems that if Fawn and Jewel are interested in him, he’s got to be pretty old. At least as old as Minnelsa. She hasn’t talked about a man since. . .”

“
She’s not interested in anything but writing those stupid poems and stories of hers. She just heard talk that’s all. She doesn’t want him. No one can have him. Don’t you understand, Willie? He’s got to be mine. We belong together.”

Willie saw a pain on her face, but he didn’t understand. This man had woven some kind of spell over this tiny creature. Most men who fell in love with June felt that way. This was the first time June was smitten with someone else. Willie was not sure if it was right.

“
You in love, June?” he asked softly in case the wind might hear and take the word to Papa.

“
I don’t know, Willie, what being in love really feels like. Do you?” As she looked at his face she regretted she had ever said it. “I’m sorry, Willie. I forgot. I didn’t mean . . .”

He smiled at his sister. “It’s all right, June. You know I was in love. I can tell you it felt bad and good all at the same time. I didn’t want to sleep because that meant I couldn’t think about her. Then when I was dreaming I didn’t want to wake up because the dream would go away.

“
I acted like a fool whenever she was around. I mean I said the stupidest things. And the worse part was I kept trying to be somebody else, just in case she didn’t like me like I was.” He looked at his legs.

“
But I remember how much she liked you. She liked you a lot before papa sent her away.”

“
Papa and mama said she wanted me for my money. Money she thought she’d get if she married me. Papa said that’s why he sent her away.” They were both silent for they had promised never to talk about it or about the times he had spent with the girl. They didn’t have to speak. They were thinking it all along.

“
I guess,” June spoke as she ran her hand through the grass, “I’m not in love yet. It’s just starting to feel like it because I think about him all the time.”

“
How old is he, June?” he asked again as he felt the cool grass beneath him.

She sighed. “He’s thirty-five years old. But he doesn’t look it.”

“
Papa would never let you marry him. He’s an old man. You know you can’t marry him, Juney.” Willie tried to make her smile but she wouldn’t look at him.

“
We’ll see, Willie. We’ll see.”

Fawn ran down the hill past the rose bushes, peach and pear trees, and the fig tree that sometimes bore fruits. Quite undignified for a twenty-eight year old Sunday school teacher Willie thought.

“
He’s here, June.” She was out of breath as she stopped holding her side.

“
Who’s here?” Willie asked.

“
The Piano Man, silly. The preacher brought him over to meet papa.” Her eyes widened. “June, he is so handsome, you should see him.”

Without another word Fawn ran back again and June was not far behind her. She was almost to the fig tree when she turned to see that she had left her crippled brother alone. She turned and ran back to him.

“
Willie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you.”

Willie laughed loudly as she helped him to his crutches. “Yes you did. You know you did. You want to see him and get your clutches into him before the others do. Go ahead.”

“
No.” June folded the blanket as he moved slowly along. “He can meet the whole family and that includes you. I’ll get to see him. Besides, he already knows me.”

Willie hobbled along as fast as he could, sweating to get up to his basket so that he could pull himself up into the house instead of trying to make it up the hill. His sister loved him and would wait for him, but she was impatient to get to the man of her dreams. She didn’t leave his side until they reached the parlor of the house where the preacher sat next to their mother, and their father sat in his big chair while a handsome stranger played the piano.

June squeezed Willie’s shoulder tighter than ever before as she watched her Piano Man. She led her brother to his chair, took his crutches as he sat, then stood dutifully behind him mesmerized, as was the rest of the family, by the music the man played.

From the moment Willie laid eyes on the Piano Man he knew things were going to change. Never before had all his sisters been so infatuated with a figure of a man. Never had his mother’s attention been so drawn to the piano. And never, ever, had his father sat back and smiled so pleased.

His music and his beauty filled the room. He was darker than all of them, and prettier (or was it handsomer?) than any man Willie had ever seen. His hands were not like the Blacksmith’s, hard, big and gnarled, but long and slender. His fingers played the keys with grace gliding back and forth without stretching as Rosa so often did when she tried to play a complicated piece. He did not look from the piano, did not notice the eyes of those watching him. Willie was sure this man and the piano were one the way the sound floated from his long hands into the air.

Willie closed his eyes and listened for that was the only comfort he had left. This way he could enjoy what he heard without fearing what he saw. The look on his father’s face. Calculating, thinking. Willie kept his eyes closed for the music was so soothing, so beautiful. Like the gramophone he had. A present from papa when Willie had been so sick they thought he would die. Lovely tunes full of recorded static had calmed his breathing during the crisis. Now the same music was alive before him and he didn’t want to see it. He wanted to listen to it and be lost in it as it lulled him to sleep.