CHAPTER 16
June 10 of 1861 brought the first land battle of the war at Big Bethel. Given another ten days, West Virginia would secede from Virginia to side with the Union. July arrived and with it what should have been a celebration of unity and freedom. Instead, there was celebration of secession and the new union of the Confederacy. Charles insisted on taking Emily with him into the streets of town. He cheered the secession and waved a makeshift Confederate flag. There were loyalist protesters and some of the celebration went ugly, some bawdy, some verging on evil, and in a case or two, verging on deadly, though responsibility in either direction never solidified. Emily cringed at the fighting and insults, some hurled her direction. At last, Charles, half-drunk, relented and let Benjamin take her home. The day of the Fourth passed, as did the night. Emily hid in her bedroom in tears. Two days later, Charles returned home, looking scrappy.
“Lots of injuries to see after,” he said. “Pretty wild celebration there.”
Emily did not answer.
“Are you upset?” Charles asked. She had decided to cook breakfast herself in the house kitchen. At his entrance she had dropped the spatula, picked it up with impatience, only to drop it again. Emily stood with her back to him, her hands pushing against the counter, elbows locked. He wrapped his hands around her stiffened wrists. His freckled hands affected her like the sight of dirty snow.
“Angry?”
“No,” Emily said, pulling away from him, plunging her hands into the dishpan, scrubbing at the already clean surface of a platter, a ring of soap around her wrists. “Yes. Yes, I am,” she said. She whirled to face him. “Where have you been, Charles? Not just these two days. Where have you been all these other times? How do you spend so much time away, Charles?”
Charles put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her toward him, disregarding the greasy water dripping on them both.
“People get sick, Emily. You know that. You knew that when we married.”
“Apparently there were a lot fewer sick then than there are now, Charles.”
“Or perhaps my practice has grown that much. What is the matter with you?”
“I saw Mrs. Bellingham in town and said how glad I was to see her feeling better. She had no idea what I was talking about. Said fortunately she hadn’t been sick in a year. I said I was glad to know she was doing so well and I didn’t ask why you were at her house half the night last week.”
“Maybe you just confused her name with Mrs. Melton, Emily.” He dropped his hands and stepped away. “Maybe you’re confused about a lot of things. You haven’t been yourself lately.”
“Perhaps,” Emily said, returning to the dishpan, where her hands went limp. “And perhaps I’m not confused at all. Maybe it is you who think you can confuse the truth.”
“Goddammit, Emily. I’m getting tired of this. How would you even know the truth?”
“The truth, Charles? All right, here’s the truth.” Her breath caught in her throat. “The truth is I’m afraid, Charles. I’m terrified.”
Charles came back, stood close beside her. “Afraid of what, Emily. Just what do you have to be afraid of?”
“Of war. Of life. Of death. Of bringing another child into such a world as this. I was afraid with Rosa Claire,” she said. “Of course I was. How could I not be afraid? But with this new one on the way, I don’t know. It feels like madness.”
He held her shoulders steady, her wet hands draped around his arms, soaking the blue stripes of his shirt.
“After Will—” She dropped her head, shook it twice. “Oh God, Charles, he never harmed one living soul. So young, so kind, so alive. If Will could die like that, then so could I, like my mother. And so could you, for that matter. This war terrifies me. So many people will die so horribly. So many of us, Charles.”
“Yes, people will die, Emily. I see it every day. It’s what I do. But most of us live. And I’m here.”
“Are you here, Charles?” Emily stared him in the face. “Did your being here save Will? Or prevent my father from blaming you? Here is not where you are most of the time. And now this war at our doorstep. And Belinda acting so strange, not just grief, but something I don’t understand. Maybe she blames herself. Maybe she knows my father—Oh, Charles, everything is flying apart. I don’t know how to hold on.”
Charles picked up a towel, wiped her hands and arms with it, ignoring his sleeves, stained with gravy and dishwater. He waited while Emily caught her breath, then led her to the porch.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said quietly. Brushing her brown work skirt aside, he settled in the swing beside her and pushed back. The chains creaked as he let go. “You wear too many petticoats, Mrs. Slate,” he said, but Emily did not smile.
“The baby will be fine, Emily, and so will we,” he said. “We will prevail. Our life will not change. The war will be done soon. It cannot last. The Union doesn’t have the will and commitment of the South. They haven’t the economic motivation to pursue this very far. We will see a return of prosperity and freedom to conduct our commerce as we see fit. Life will go on as is.”
“But, Charles, it must not go on as it is,” Emily said. She half turned in shock. “That is the point. This culture is not fit. Everything is so wrong. The country is coming apart. And you are never here. We have no right—”
“No right?”
“We have no right to enslave—” she said.
“The Bible disagrees with you, my dear.” He pushed the swing back with his feet, let it go again. “Even your father, in the end, for all his exalted ideals and rhetoric, has not freed his slaves. He prefers to keep his Judgeship and his high position.” The chains of the swing creaked. He took her hand. “And, besides, he won’t buck the law, at least not far, and freeing slaves is illegal. He won’t go further than teaching them to read and write. Which is also illegal. Or reading that Helper book. That’s crime enough for him.”
“My father despises slavery. And the breakup of our nation is—”
“Breakup of what nation, Emily? We are citizens of a new nation, or have you yet to realize that? And as for you, Emily, how many slaves do you own?” Charles said.
“I am ashamed to say.” She withdrew her hand.
“But they work your land, and cook your food, and tend your crops, wash your clothes, and feed your chickens. And how much else?” He stared across the fields. His jaw was set. “Well, be that as it may, Emily, we now have a country that will maintain our ideals and our way of life. We will see the preservation of the South, of the land, and good things to come.”
“In a land soaked with blood?”
“For God’s sake, Emily, will you stop? What do you want? Poverty? Poverty for this new baby, for us? Or do you really just want what you have, disguised in high-minded rhetoric, like your father?”
The swing jerked erratically when Emily stood. There was a long silence.
“There is poverty, Charles, and there is poverty.” She brushed his shoulder as she left him there. He did not look up.
* * *
The day passed. The sun set and night came. Ginny tucked Rosa Claire in bed. Emily did not know when, or if, Charles came to bed, when or if he rose. At daybreak, she stretched her hand into the empty place beside her.
At her dressing table, Emily paused with the hairbrush in her hand, laid it on the lace dresser cloth, and stared into her reflection. I am plain, she thought, but I am not unattractive. She picked up the brush again, gave her hair a few more strokes. With her comb, she straightened the center part, then pulled the weight of the hair behind her into a twist, pinned it, and pulled a fine net around the knot. As she stood, she let the embroidered batiste gown fall to the floor and examined her body. The rounding belly that had never fully flattened since her pregnancy, the breasts that had remained more full since nursing, the curve of her back into the width of her hips. She had no comparison for herself, no knowledge of how other women looked, no concept of how she was supposed to look. But in her reflection, critical as she might be, she saw nothing unattractive.
Emily picked up the nightdress and slipped on her clothes for the day just as a soft knock came at the door and Ginny peaked in.
“Wanting this day to get started, are you, Miss Emily?”
“Or wanting it already over, Ginny.” She came and let herself be held in Ginny’s arms, felt the reassuring caress of these familiar fingers between her shoulder blades.
“What’s got hold of you now, honey?” When no answer came, Ginny leaned back, her fingers under Emily’s chin. “You want to say it or not?”
“No, I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to make it real.” Emily half turned, stared out the window, where the pasture was coming into full daylight. “I don’t know if I am amiss or my husband is amiss. Well, there it is, Ginny.”
Ginny dropped her hands, picked up the edge of her apron, and studied it. “Well, Miss Emily, I’m not going to say that he is amiss. I don’t have no proof of that. But I am going to say this. It ain’t you who is amiss. And that’s all I’m going to say.”
Emily brought her head upright and nodded.
“You want your breakfast now?” Ginny nodded and turned for the door.