Darkest Hour (Cutler 5)

"Yes, I did," Emily replied proudly. "The new shoes are upstairs, buried at the bottom of my closet."

Undaunted, Mamma held her smile and wondered aloud. "Maybe they would fit Lillian."

That made Papa laugh.

"Hardly," he said. "Emily's got twice the foot."

"Yes," Mamma said dreamily. "Oh well, we'll go to Upland Station first thing in the morning, Lillian honey."

I couldn't wait to tell Eugenia. Most of the time she had her meals brought to her because it made her too tired to have to sit up at the dinner table. All our meals were quite elaborate affairs. Papa would begin by reading from the Bible, and after Emily learned how to read, she would often do it, too. But he would pick the passages. Papa liked to eat and relished each and every morsel. We always had salad or fruit first and then soup, even on hot summer days. Papa liked to wait at the table while the dishes were cleared and the table reset for dessert. Sometimes, he would read the newspaper, especially the business section, and while this went on, Emily, Mamma and I would have to sit and wait, too.

Mamma would jabber on and on about the gossip she had heard or some romance novel she was reading at the time, but Papa rarely heard a word, and Emily always looked distracted with her own thoughts. Consequently, it seemed like Mamma and I were alone. I was her best audience. The trials and turmoil, successes and failures of our neighboring families fascinated me. Every Saturday afternoon, Mamma's lady friends would either come here for lunch and gossip or Mamma would go to one of their homes. It seemed they filled each other's ears with enough news to last the rest of the week.

Mamma was always just remembering something told to her four or five days ago, and bursting out with it as if it was a headline in a newspaper, no matter how small or insignificant the information might seem.

"Martha Hatch broke a toe on her stairwell last Thursday, but she didn't know it was broken until it turned dark blue."

Usually something that happened reminded her of something similar that had happened years and years ago and she would recall it. Occasionally, Papa would remember something, too. If the stories and news were interesting enough, I would bring them back to Eugenia when I stopped to see her after dinner. But the night Mamma declared I would go to school, I had only one topic of conversation to relate. I had heard nothing else. My head was full of excited thoughts.

Now I would meet and become friends with other girls. I would learn to write and cipher.

Eugenia had the only downstairs bedroom that was not assigned to any of the servants. It was decided early on that it would be easier for her than having to go up and down the stairs. As soon as I was excused from the table, I hurried down the corridor. Her bedroom was toward the rear of the house, but it had a nice set of windows that looked out over the west field so she could see the sun go down and the farm workers laboring over the tobacco.

She had just finished her own breakfast when I burst into the room.

"Mamma and Papa have decided I'm going to start school this year!" I cried. Eugenia smiled and looked as excited as she would have had it been her who was to be enrolled. She tugged on her long strands of light brown hair. Sitting up in her big bed with its posts twice my height and its large, thick headboard, Eugenia looked younger even than she was. I knew that her illness had retarded her physical development, but to me it made her seem more precious, like a delicate doll from China or Holland. She was swimming in her nightshirt. It poured around her. Her eyes were her most striking feature. Her cornflower blue eyes looked so happy when she laughed that they nearly seemed to be laughing themselves.

"Mamma's taking me to Nelson's to buy a dress and new shoes," I said, crawling over her thick, soft mattress to sit beside her. "You know what I'll do?" I continued. "I'll bring all my books home and do my homework in your room every day. I'll teach you whatever I learn," I promised. "That way, you'll be ahead of everyone your age when you start."

"Emily says I'll never go to school," Eugenia reported.

"Emily doesn't know anything. She told Mamma I wouldn't be able to make the walk to school, but I'll get there ahead of her every day. Just for spite," I added, and giggled. Eugenia giggled too. I hugged my little sister to me. She always felt so thin and fragile to me, so I barely squeezed. Then I ran off to get ready to go with Mamma to Upland Station to buy my first school dress.

Mamma asked Emily to go with us, but she refused.

I was too excited to care and although it distressed Mamma that Emily took so little interest in what Mamma called "women's things," Mamma was almost as excited as I was and didn't dwell on it more than enough to sigh and say, "She certainly doesn't take after my side."

Well, I certainly did. I loved to go into Mamma and Papa's bedroom when she was alone and sit beside her at her vanity table while she did her hair and her makeup. And Mamma loved to babble incessantly at our images in the marble framed oval mirror, not turning her head as she spoke. It was as if there were four of us, Mamma and me and our twins who reflected our moods and reacted just the way identical twins might.

Mamma had been a debutante. Her parents introduced her to high Southern society with a formal ball. She went to finishing school and had her name in the social columns often, so she knew all about how a young girl should dress and behave and was eager to teach me as much as she could. With me at her side, she would sit at her vanity table and brush her beautiful hair until it looked like spun gold and describe all the fancy parties she had attended, elaborating in great detail about what she had worn from her shoes to her jeweled tiara.

"A woman has a special responsibility toward her own appearance," she told me. "Unlike men, we are always on a stage. Men can comb their hair the same way, wear the same style suit or shoes for years. They don't use makeup, nor do they have to be very concerned about a skin blemish. But a woman . . ." she told me, pausing to turn to me and fix her soft brown eyes on my face, "a woman is always making a grand entrance, from the day she first enters school to the day she walks down that aisle to marry. Every time a woman enters a room, all eyes turn toward her and in that first instant, conclusions about her are immediately drawn. Don't ever diminish the importance of first impressions, Lillian honey." She laughed and turned back to the mirror. "As my mamma used to say, the first splash you make is the one that gets everyone the wettest and the one they remember the longest."

I was getting ready to make my first splash in society. I was going to school. Mamma and I hurried out to the carriage. Henry helped us both in and Mamma opened her parasol to keep the sun off her face, for in those days a tan was something only field laborers had.

Henry got up on the seat and urged Belle and Babe, our carriage horses, to mosey on.

"The Captain ain't had some of these potholes from the last rainstorm filled in yet, Mrs. Booth, so you all hold on back there. It'll be a bit bumpy," he warned.

"You just don't worry about us, Henry," she said.

"I gots to worry," he replied, winking at me. "I got two growed women in my carriage today."

Mamma laughed. I could hardly contain my excitement about my first store-bought dress. The late summer rains had made the gravel driveway rough, but I barely noticed the way we were bounced about as we traveled to Upland Station. The vegetation along the way was as thick as could be. The air had never seemed as full of the pungent scents of the Cherokee roses and wild violets as well as the faint fragrance of the lemon verbena sachet that came from Mamma's silk dress. The cooler nights had not arrived with force enough to turn the leaves. The mockingbirds and jays were in competition for the most comfortable branches on the magnolia trees. It was truly a glorious morning.

Mamma felt it too. She seemed as excited as I was and told me story after story about her first days in school. Unlike me, she had no older brother or sister to take her. But Mamma wasn't an only child. She had had a younger sister, who had died of some mysterious malady. Neither she nor Papa liked to talk about her, and Mamma especially would moan whenever something unpleasant or sad was introduced into any of her conversations. She was always chastising Emily for doing that. Actually, it was more like pleading with her to stop.

"Must you bring up such unpleasant and ugly things, Emily," she would lament. Emily would snap her mouth closed, but never look happy about it.