Darkest Hour (Cutler 5)

"The minister makes her do those things, doesn't he?" Eugenia would ask. I knew Mamma had told her some such gibberish so that Eugenia wouldn't have bad thoughts. Mamma probably wanted to believe the things she told Eugenia about Emily. That way she wouldn't have to face the truth either.

"He doesn't tell her to like it," I insisted. "You should see the way her eyes light up. Why she almost looks happy."

"She can't be such a monster, Lillian."

"Oh can't she? Have you forgotten Cotton?" I replied, perhaps more firmly and coldly than I should. I saw how that pained Eugenia and I immediately regretted it. But the spasm of sorrow passed across her face quickly and she smiled again.

"Tell me about Niles now, Lillian. I want to hear about Niles. Please."

"All right," I said, calming myself down. I liked talking about Niles Thompson anyway. With Eugenia, I could reveal my deepest feelings. "He needs a haircut," I said, laughing. "His hair is falling over his eyes and down to his nose. Every time I look at him in class, he's brushing the strands to the sides."

"His hair is very black now," Eugenia said, remembering something I had told her a few days ago. "As black as a crow."

"Yes," I said, smiling. Eugenia popped her eyes open and smiled too.

"Was he staring at you again today? Was he?" she asked excitedly. How her eyes could glow sometimes. If I just looked into her eyes, I could forget she was so sick.

"Every time I looked, he was," I said, almost in a whisper.

"And it made your heart beat faster and faster until you had trouble breathing?" I nodded. "Just like me, only for a better reason," she added. Then she laughed before I could feel bad for her. "What did he say? Tell me again what he said on the way home yesterday."

"He said I have the nicest smile of anyone at the school," I replied, recalling the way Niles had come out with it. We had been walking side by side, a few feet behind Emily and the twins as usual. He kicked a small stone and then he looked up and just blurted it out. He looked down again. For a moment, I didn't know what to say or how to respond. Finally, I muttered, "Thank you."

"That's all I could think of saying," I told Eugenia.

"I should read some of Mamma's romance novels so I'll know how to talk to a boy."

"That's all right. You said the right thing," Eugenia assured me. "That's what I would have said."

"Would you?" I thought about it. "He didn't say anything else until we reached their road. Then he said, 'See you tomorrow, Lillian,' and hurried off. I just know he was embarrassed and wished I had said something more."

"You will," Eugenia assured me. "Next time."

"There won't be a next time. He probably thinks I'm a dumbbell."

"No he doesn't. He can't. You're the smartest girl in school now. You're even smarter than Emily," Eugenia said proudly.

I was. Because of my extra reading, I knew things that students grades ahead of me were supposed to know. I gobbled up our history books, spending hours and hours in Papa's office, perusing his collection of books about ancient Greece and Rome. There were many things Emily wouldn't read, even if Miss Walker suggested it, because Emily thought they were about sinful times and sinful people. Consequently, I knew much more than she did about mythology and ancient times.

And I was faster at multiplying and dividing numbers than Emily was. This only made her more furious. I remember once coming upon her while she was struggling with a column of numbers. I looked over her shoulder and when she put down a total, I told her it

wasn't right.

"You forgot to carry the one here," I said, pointing. She spun around.

"How dare you spy on me and my work? You just want to copy it," she accused.

"Oh no, Emily," I said. "I was just trying to help."

"I don't want your help. Don't you dare tell me what's right and what's wrong. Only Miss Walker can do that," she asserted. I shrugged and left her, but when I looked back, I saw she was vigorously erasing the answer she had placed on the paper.

In a very true sense, the three of us grew up in different worlds even though we lived under the same roof and had the same two people as our parents. No matter how much time I spent with Eugenia, and how many things we did together and I did for her, I knew I could never feel the way she felt or appreciate how hard it was for her to be on the inside looking out most of the time. Emily's God did frighten me; she did make me tremble when she threatened me with His anger and vengeance. How unreasonable He was, I thought, and how capable He must be of great and painful acts if He permitted someone as precious and kind as Eugenia to suffer so while Emily strutted about arrogantly.

Emily lived in her private world, too. Unlike Eugenia, Emily wasn't a helpless, unwilling prisoner; Emily chose to lock herself away, not with real walls of plaster and paint and wood but with walls of anger and hate. She cemented every opening closed with some Biblical quote or story. I used to think that even the minister was afraid of her, afraid that she would discover some deep, dark and secret sin he had committed once and tell God.

And then, of course, there was I, the only one perhaps who truly lived at The Meadows, who ran over its fields and threw rocks in its streams, who went out to smell the flowers and inhale the sweet scent of the tobacco crops, who passed time with the laborers and knew everyone who worked on the plantation by their first names. I didn't lock myself willingly in a section of the great house and ignore the rest.

Yes, despite the dark cloud of pain that the truth of my birth held over me and despite having a sister like Emily, for the most part, I enjoyed my adolescence at The Meadows.