CHAPTER 35

The walnut wardrobe creaked on its hinges. Emily had not opened it since that day three years before when she wrapped her soft batiste nightdress, with its tiny rows of tucks and finely stitched embroidered vines, in tissue and lay it on the upper shelf beside the folded stack of delicate underthings she had abandoned in favor of plain shifts and homespun cotton drawers.

As her fingers traced the undulating pattern of wood grain, Emily stared at her hardened, sunburned hands. She tucked them into her apron pockets and turned her back on the wardrobe. In the kitchen, she picked up the jar of cold bacon grease and rubbed some on the back of her hand.

In the doorway, Ginny stood watching. Without speaking, she broke a leaf of aloe from the old plant by the window. Reaching into the cupboard, Ginny took out a blue patterned saucer. She squeezed the sticky gel from the leaf and stirred in a spoonful of lard, slowly, then with vigor, until a thick cream had formed. Ginny wiped the spoon between her fingers and dropped it into the dishpan.

“Let me see them hands now,” she said, reaching out.

Emily did not move.

“Come on, honey. Let’s see them. They ain’t no secret, you know. Not in this house.”

Emily raised her hands. Ginny’s touch was quiet, but her stroke was firm. The cream felt cool, soothing. Emily laid her cheek against the top of Ginny’s head.

* * *

In the warm autumn sun Emily lay back on the grass, her palms moving over the tips, feeling the soft itch of it. The trees shed their many colors like Joseph robbed of his bloodstained coat. Emily peered into the opening canopy of interlocking branches. Life had become her work now, one that brought a satisfaction and an occasional joy wrapped in the hands of her children. Or in the warm strength of Ginny’s arm. She was surprised now to be surprised, taken unaware that life could touch her so, that joy, however small or fleeting, could find her.

Emily stared at the astonishing blue of the sky, studied the interlocking pieces of it where the bare branches meandered. What she saw were not the branches, but the random pieces of the sky. Fitting together like an intricate puzzle, like a shattered bowl of half-shelled peas, carefully mended, each broken piece in place. The scars of brokenness, she thought, are bold, yet the sky still astonishes. There is beauty in the broken.

At the sound of voices Emily turned her head and raised on her elbow. Ginny sauntered toward her with Lonso on her hip, Rosa Claire running ahead, her voice shrill with excitement, waving sheets of paper in the air.

“Look, Mama, look.” As Rosa Claire neared, one of the papers floated out, offering a glimpse of color in the air like a last leaf falling from the overhanging trees. She stooped to retrieve it and stepped on it in her excitement. Her face fell and she held it up to Ginny with an eruption of tears.

Ginny knelt with Lonso. “It’s just a little smudge there now. Ginny gone wipe that right off for her gal.” Ginny rubbed at the spot with the corner of her apron. “Don’t cry now, honey. Go show your mama what we found.”

Rosa Claire held the papers out to her mother. Emily sorted through them, unsure what she was seeing. It soaked into her that here was her mother. Rosa Claire knelt beside her, watching with fascination. Her little hands stroked her mother’s arm, her cheek against the worn fabric of the work dress. Emily raised her eyes. Ginny stood against the sky, Lonso still on her hip.

“Where did you find these?” Emily said.

“Over to the big house. I got some women cleaning up there. Hannah found this old chest in the attic. Full of these. I told Lucian to bring it on over here.”

“What all is in it, Ginny?”

“Miss Liza’s paintings. You children’s paintings, you and Will, marked on the back in your mama’s hand: your name, date, sometimes a little note. And some paints and paper, left over. Reckon your daddy had them stored away after she died. Don’t reckon he could manage seeing them.”

“My mother’s paintings. I used to sneak into his office and stare at his collection of them hanging there when I was a child. I thought that was all of them.”

“They’s a whole chest full. Stacks of them. She must have had you children painting alongside her when you was mighty little. Seems like I remember some of that.”

Emily pulled Rosa Claire into her lap. “See this,” she said. The image was one of wobbly circles converging on one another in varying colors, bleeding into one another. On the back were Emily’s name and a date that had been smeared. “I did this, Rosa Claire, when I was a little girl like you.”

“Can I do that, Mama?” Rosa Claire traced the image with her finger.

“Of course you can.”

Emily studied the images. Will had painted a man, it seemed: a circle of sorts for the head, lines that appeared to be arms and legs extending out of the head, no body, all in a brilliant yellow. Emily’s pictures consisted generally of multiple circles in a wild array of colors. But one with her name showed a similar figure to Will’s and beside it, another in brown, the lines connected as if the two might be holding hands. On the back was written in delicate script, “Emily and Ginny.”

“Did you see this?” Emily held the paper up to Ginny.

“Yes’m. I seen it.”

“What a long time we have been together, Ginny, you and I.”

Ginny handed her a small book, a sketch pad bound in worn leather. Opening it, she found page after page of loose depictions of slaves: at work in the kitchen and fields, sitting on porch steps visiting, playing fiddle and dancing, walking the quarter path with a child in hand. A loose page slipped out.

She lifted the image: a little girl in a blue dress reaching for something out of sight. Me, she thought. An unexpected sense of being loved enveloped her, a moment of stillness, a stoppage of time.