CHAPTER 7
The courtship was not an extended one. Emily recovered herself. She brightened when Charles came calling, usually bearing flowers from Adeline’s garden. He told stories at the table that focused the attention on himself and entertained the family, all except Jeremiah, who became more and more distant from all of them as Charles inserted himself into the family. Emily paid her brother little attention. He had never been kind to her, had in fact been domineering and spiteful, even in childhood. Charles was indifferent to Jeremiah’s slights.
“When will you give me an answer?” Charles asked one night as they swayed on the porch swing, its chains creaking.
“When I know myself,” Emily said.
“And what will it take for you to know, Miss Emily?”
“Are you mocking me, sir?” She balled her hand.
“Not at all.” He pressed his palm into hers, compelling her fingers open. “Soft,” he said, rolling her hand over. “You have lovely hands. Hands that have never had to work.”
Emily withdrew her hand and slid it into the folds of her wide skirt.
“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” Charles said, leaning back, rubbing his palms along his thighs.
Emily looked out across the yard to the night sky. He could not see her face.
“Have you ever had a servant, Charles?”
“You mean slaves? No.” He stood and joined his fingers across the back of his head, stretched his elbows. “Emily, I am singularly aware that our lives have been very different. I shouldn’t have thought—”
“No, Charles.” Emily jumped to her feet. “I’ve made you misunderstand me.” She stopped just short of touching his back. “And yes, our lives have been quite different. But I’ve given a lot of thought to my inexperience, you see. Your remark about my hands, and spending time with your mother now, have made me keenly aware of how little I have had to do for myself. I feel ashamed, Charles. My question came from a sudden realization as to how different my life might be if my hands were not smooth and soft, if, in fact, I used them to work. Or had to.”
“You will never need to work, as long as you are my wife. I can provide for us. And you will have the slaves you need to help you. I will certainly be able to buy you all you require. You need not worry.”
“I do not want to buy people, Charles. I want to work, and I want to hire them free.”
“We can do that, too. There are always slaves ‘to let,’ plenty of them.”
“But they are still slaves, Charles. Don’t you see?”
“Your father owns over a hundred, Emily.”
“Yes, but—”
“Yes, but his illegal school for them? His push to set them free? Emily, the liberation of slaves is a fantasy. Manumission was outlawed in Mississippi two years ago. It is not going to happen. Not in our lifetime. And I pray it doesn’t.” He took her by the shoulders. “The economy of the Southern states depends on slavery. Don’t you know that? And the economy of the country depends on the economy of the South. Emancipation will not happen.”
“Then, what?”
“Then, you and I will be good to the slaves in our charge, as your father has been. I do not know that we will be able to buy up all that we see mistreated, as your father has done with Nathan and any number of others. But I will treat them all as well as I have Nathan. I will heal the niggers as I do the whites—what, Emily? What else?”
Emily pulled her hands loose and turned her back to him. Charles stood for a moment, sighed, and laid his hands loosely on her sloping shoulders. He leaned his face into her neck and whispered.
“What?”
“I cannot bear that word, Charles.”
“Niggers? Ah, is that all? Then I will heal the Negroes as I heal the whites.” He hesitated. “It is a cultural familiarity, Emily. I hear it far more frequently than any proper terminology. It’s just a matter of habit. If that offends you, I can be more careful in your presence. For you, Emily. I can promise that. In fact, I will promise anything you want to hear in order for you to be mine.”
Charles pressed on her shoulders, turned her toward him, waited for her averted face to come of her own accord. “Do you hear me, Emily? I will promise you whatever I need to.”
“Yes,” she said.
He took her chin in his hand. She lifted her face to his kiss.
* * *
On a Friday evening in late May of 1859, Judge Matthews presided over his daughter’s marriage to Charles Slate. Ginny adorned the parlor with dogwood branches and forsythia from the edge of the woods. Adeline arrived with an armload of pale-pink saucer magnolias. She handed the flowers to Ginny, but followed her about, rearranging a leaf here, a bloom there. Adeline served as witness for her son, and Will for Emily. In her simple dress, Adeline’s earthy dignity pervaded the room. Hammond, handsome and manly, but giddy as a child, stood close by his mother. Thomas Slate was absent, but there was general relief in that. Charles’s black frock coat appeared abnormally formal for him, but a new white vest beneath softened his square face, accentuated by his almost-auburn sideburns and neat mustache. Whatever misgivings the judge had, he hid well. In spite of his attempted warnings, Emily had made her choice and, indeed, seemed to blossom. He would hold his tongue.
In the end, Jeremiah failed to attend. Knowing his father’s intended gift of acreage to Emily, though it was only a few acres, had somehow enraged him. What did the wife of a doctor need with farmland, however small? Belinda was also absent, even for the marriage of her brother to her closest friend from school. Will’s proposal to Belinda had gone unanswered for weeks into months.
Now Will stood at the back of the room and spoke little, carrying his own private sadness. No one else was present except Ginny, who had stitched the wedding dress of gray silk—a suitable color for her new name, Emily announced with a smile.
With the name Emily Slate official, the judge presented her an envelope containing the deed to forty-two acres and a newly finished log house, complete with summer kitchen and outbuildings. In addition, the envelope contained documents conveying to Emily ownership of three slaves: Ginny, who had essentially raised her; Benjamin, whose skills ranged from house service to all aspects of the farm; and his son, Lucian, a sturdy young man of burgeoning intelligence. The three could reliably manage Emily’s farm and chores while Charles attended to his medical practice.
When the moment for departure came, Emily cried. How would her father pass the evenings without her? Alone by the fire in winter and alone in summer rocking on the porch? Her brothers would hardly be at home of an evening to keep their father company as she had done. William would surely marry again, though apparently not to Belinda. Even then he would come and go more than Jeremiah, who would be as erratic as ever. Emily saw that her tears saddened her father. Blinking, she kissed his cheek and caressed the soft white waves of his beard. Emily took Charles’s hand, her smile timid and affectionate, as he lifted her into the buckboard, filled with bright quilts she and Ginny had stitched.
The rhythm of the horse’s hooves lulled her. She leaned against her husband’s arm. Charles was silent. When the horses halted at the new house, he took the quilts, kissed Emily, and told her to wait while he lit the lamps. Arching her neck, she studied the stars. Although she marveled to think, Emily also mistrusted herself for the night and the things to come, of which she had only hints, gleaned from glimpses of farm animals mating, scenes from which someone had inevitably whisked her away. But her body gave her hint enough: the longing to be touched; the way her breath caught at the thought of his skin against hers; the hardening of her nipples and the flush of moist warmth in her privates; a tingling mystery at the thing not known, yet secretly held in the recesses of her body. She gazed into the depths of the sky, marveling at the clarity of the stars. Like cottonwood in the fall, she wafted nowhere and everywhere. Emily startled when Charles put his arm around her. He slipped his other arm beneath her knees, the gray silk of her skirts rustling in the dark, her hoops awry. Her trance held through the jostling in his arms across the porch, through the door, and the other doors beyond.
When Charles laid her on the bed, she had little sense of shifting. She murmured to the sound of the silk as he lifted her skirts, spread her pantaloons, touched her, pressed his lips and tongue to her. Her body rose of its own accord. Charles untied the hoops and dropped them to the floor. The wide ruffles of gray silk billowed over her face, smothering her, and the corset inhibited her breath. She struggled against the fabric and gasped at the sudden pain, the stillness, then a slow undulation in herself, filling her, drawing her with it. He quickened and his pace outstripped her. “Wait,” she said, “please wait for me,” but he did not. Faster and harder, he went, leaving her. At his peak, she turned her head aside. With his breath, harsh and warm, against her neck, Emily lay still, then pulled herself from beneath the unfamiliar weight of his arm. He was asleep. She struggled out of the dress and the confines of the corset. What to do with them? Everything here was unaccustomed. Lifting the hoops, she dropped her heavy garments in a corner. Charles was spread across the bed, his face buried in the bedding. She lifted a corner of the covers and slid into the space left her, still in her pantaloons and shift.
* * *
When morning came, Emily sensed the pale coral-gray light through her lids. Married, she felt herself other, enlarged into a new and unaccustomed life, yet simultaneously diminished, no longer belonging to herself. Now she belonged to this man she did not know. Emily opened her eyes to dispel the feeling and stroked the edge of the wedding ring quilt, remembering her hand and Ginny’s as they stitched the pieces together from the her mother’s clothing they had found in an old chest. She turned, her lips deliberate on Charles’s cheek, feeling the rough chafe of his morning stubble. He stirred. She gave her breath to him. He mumbled something unintelligible and threw his legs over the side of the bed, rubbing at his face. She stretched her hand out to touch his back. After a moment he rose without another word or glance, pulled on his clothes, and went out of the room. She turned her face to the window’s light and sighed. This was her new life. With no more to fill her than the old.
Caught in a cobweb, a skein of dust wafted across the morning light. This is my house, she thought. Home felt far removed. A realization of ordinary life flashed into her mind: her newly built house still holding sawdust from construction, the edges of its logs and boards still rough, unsettled, uninhabited somehow. A house like any other, demanding constant attention to keep it comfortable, respectable, clean. And in her, a sudden sense of vigilance toward this man who was now her husband. So unlike her father. Something in that difference had appealed to her, and yet she had assumed that the same kindly attentiveness her father provided would form the foundation of any marriage. That would be a given. And to that familiar comfort, with marriage there would be the excitement of something more dynamic and stimulating, something enticing to her senses. Something alive. Such was her expectation and such it would remain until it could no longer.
The cobweb floated across her vision again. She rose and reached for it, pulling it with gentle care from its attachment to the window frame. So fragile, she thought. So easily destroyed. She held out her open palm and let the cobweb drift into it, settle in the cradle of her hand. So fragile. And yet it holds. She lifted one end and watched the dust moats separate and sparkle in the morning light. She tossed the insubstantial thread into the air and bent to retrieve her discarded garments from the corner. A soft knock at the door diverted her. In the quiet Ginny’s welcome face appeared.
“Morning, Mrs. Slate.” Ginny smiled and entered with a small tray. “It is Mrs. Slate, I believe?” She set the tray on a side table.
“Yes, Ginny. For better or worse, it is Mrs. Slate.” Emily let herself be enveloped in Ginny’s arms. Her embrace was firm, solid, stable. Neither woman spoke.