Tammy out of Time Page 21

  Tammy poured herself some coffee and took one of the sandwiches Osia had made and set aside under a damp white napkin. She stood by the door, looking over the kitchen garden to the field. “He’ll maybe get his money back on them, won’t he, Osia?”

  “Yassum, by the look of the field, I reckon he’ll do that. I just hope this won’t onsettle Steve again. He was counting on them tomatoes, too. Mr. Pete promised him a good share—that’s how-come he got him to stay on last time he set his head on going.”

  With a sigh Tammy set aside her coffee cup and came back to the ironing board. “You sit and rest yourself, Osia. You’ve done a sight of work today.”

  “I done that.” Osia sat down on the chaise longue and kicked off her shoes. “But what got me down is that there slavetime bandanna Mrs. Brent done brought me to put on my head.” She jerked a thumb toward the red kerchief that hung over a chair back.

  “It’s just that everybody’s going back into old times, Osia, dressing up like other days. That’s what we’re all doing.”

  “Don’t make sense to me.”

  “It don’t make much sense, for a fact, Osia.” Tammy ironed on in silence for a while. “On the other hand, it might be good to look back once a year like this and see how far you come. Seems to me you come a long piece since slavery times, Osia. Look how you got all your children up in the world, full of learning and knowing how to get a living, independent and not looking to nobody, and Roots selling a picture to a big New York man.”

  Osia was silent a long time. Then she said, “Yessum, I reckon I gets your drift.” She got up and crossed the room to take up the bandanna and hold it out in her hand, turning it this way and that. “It’s a real pretty red,” she said, accepting it. She smoothed it out and laid it over the chair. “Now I better get the rest of them sandwiches made for you all’s dinner. Mrs. Brent say everybody got to eat hand to mouth today on account of the folks coming and we ain’t got much time, account of the first day being the worst.”

  Tammy was glad when she could go into her room and shut the door and begin to get ready. The dress lay spread wide across her bed, the bonnet beside it, and the collar a little apart. Her hands trembled with eagerness as she bathed and put on clean underclothes. She brushed her dark hair till it was smooth and shining. Then she drew it back, leaving her ears bare. It gave her a start to see how she looked when she got it done. “I never knowed I took so after Grandma,” she said. There was something surprising about her ears, too. She couldn’t make out what it was. Her eyes looked bigger than they should and her eyebrows straighter and blacker than usual. The knot, starting low on her neck and running up like the portrait’s, seemed firm and solid. But she didn’t want it dropping down, so she put in another hairpin for luck and turned to get the dress. Now, at last, she was going to be costumed.

  The dress went on easy, but it came together by the hardest. She could just hook the hook at the waist in the back. Miss Renie would have to do the buttons. The white collar came up neat around her neck and the gray collar rose part way on that. She sure was closed up, but it might be she was more easy that way than she would be all open, like Barbara was going to be. She went barefooted across the passage to Miss Renie’s room, and when she saw Miss Renie she caught her breath. “Miss Renie! You look...you look like the Queen of Sheba! Only I reckon she never had a dress like that.”

  Miss Renie turned from the harp-shaped mirror above her bureau, her long black-and-gold earrings flashing in the light. Her basque was black as her eyes, with a stiff black ruff standing up behind her neck, after the fashion of a queen. The full black skirt was spread out in a stiff round, held out by hoops to show the border of tortoise-shell cats that walked, life-size and proud, their tails curving this way and that in a kind of rhythm.

  “I reckon there never was such a dress in the history of the world,” Tammy said.

  “There wasn’t. Designed it myself.” She held out her arms to show the yellow cat on each wide-flowing sleeve. “I have to have a little fun,” she added and turned Tammy about to pull her dress up and fasten the buttons in the back.

  Tammy held her breath so the buttons would go into their holes. “I better not eat with this on,” she said.

  “You have to expect to make some sacrifice for beauty. Now turn around and let me see you.” She stood back with her hands clasped before her and her eyes half closed.

  Tammy turned all the way around, and Miss Renie said nothing, so she turned again. It must be the dress made her mighty plain, or surely she would say something.

  “Your lines. I never would have suspected it in those baggy things you’ve been wearing. Your ears, too—never cover them again. Oh, yes, the comb.” She found it on the bed and placed it just above the knot of Tammy’s dark hair. It felt like a hat sitting there, with its teeth clamped onto her head. “Now,” Miss Renie said, “a little lipstick—not too much. Hold your mouth still. Do your lips so.” Again Miss Renie stepped back and looked at her. “Amazing.”

  “Do I look...all right?”

  “Here, see yourself.” She drew her to the mirror. “What do you think?”

  “It...it is a stranger! It is a picture of somebody else.” She lifted her hands, moving them to make sure of herself. “No, it’s me.” Her eyes followed the line of the waist down and she put her arms quickly over her breast, turning away.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I never seen my figger so plain out to be seen. Is it...is it decent?”

  Miss Renie laughed. “It’s charming.”

  Tammy turned to her again. “Do I look growed?”

  “You definitely look grown. Grown is the word.”

  “Am I—” her voice sank, but she had to know—“am I pretty?”

  Miss Renie gave a terrible snort. “Pretty! Don’t insult yourself. You have great distinction. That is much better. Pretty indeed! You have dignity.” Miss Renie went to her bureau drawer and got out a gold necklace and fastened it around her long thin neck. It hung down in a tasseled square, black-figured like the earrings.

  Tammy stood motionless, thinking about Pete. Would he like distinction? Would he like dignity? Then she heard Barbara’s laugh and her quick steps running through the hall toward the room where her beautiful dress was waiting. “I’ll be dressed in a minute, Pete, in no time flat.” And Pete answered, “It would be a miracle—but you almost make me believe in miracles.”

  Then Barbara said, “I suppose the hail got your tomatoes the way it did everybody else’s around here.”

  “Yep. They’re about done for.”

  “Well—” Tammy could almost see her shrug her shoulders as she said it—“luckily there are other things you can do in the world.”

  “So I’m beginning to see.”

  Then her quick steps went on. Except for missing the money, Tammy thought, she was likely pleased.

  Miss Renie said, “You must have a breastpin for the front of your dress.” She searched in the drawer and brought one out. It was made of black hair, finely plaited and set behind glass and bound with a silver band. Three little hair pendants hung down, silver-wrapped, like three black tears. “My grandmother Cratcher’s pin, made of her father’s hair. Fine as a woman’s. You need no more ornament than this.” She pinned it at Tammy’s throat. “It is a mourning pin.”

  Tammy shook her head. “No. I would not wish to mourn. I’ve done enough of that already this day.”

  “Nonsense, don’t be superstitious. The mourning’s run out of it before this and there’s only the love left in it, the silver and the black hair.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. You can sing ‘Black Is the Color of My Truelove’s Hair.’”

  “I can sing it. And my truelove’s hair is black,” Tammy said with gravity.

  “Then you’d better go make hay while the sun shines. Go on out and let...let them see you. Find out just what Ena wants you to do. And speaking of Ena, here’s the sunbonnet. Just carry it in your hand. No shoes, remembe
r. This is going to be good.”

  Tammy went out by the passageway and turned into the hall. It was empty. So was the parlor, but the long mirror gave back her reflection, slender, whole and strange to her eyes, save for the look of Grandma. She went out by the big front door, her long skirts limp around her legs, and came to the front gallery. Pete was not there. Old Prater was down by the front gate. She could see his white coat through the shrubbery. Then she turned and found Pete standing in the doorway, watching her.

  “Tammy,” he said with wonder in his tone. His eyes had a light in them as they went over her and came back to her face.

  She stood straight and proud, her hands at her sides, one hand holding her bonnet and swinging it by the strings. Pete liked the way she looked. She knew it without his saying another word and, knowing it, she had a liveliness come over her, possessing her, showing her how she might turn his mind to merriment so he would forget his loss for a while. “I come from Virginny,” she said, “walking all the way, alongside the wagon, ox-drawn. I been sleeping on the ground by night and walking all the day. I come to the great house to sell fresh eggs, atoting them in my bonnet and singing, ‘Black Is the Color of My Truelove’s Hair.’”

  “Come in,” Pete said with a bow, falling in with her play. “We have need of eggs. And would you like to see the great house and what’s in it, and how fine a man can live with slaves to wait on him?”

  “It would pleasure me, sir, for sure,” she said and put her hand in the crook of his arm when he offered it.

  They came into the hall, laughing over their pretending, and Tammy heard Professor Brent saying, “Did you hear that, Ena? Sounds authentic.”

  Mrs. Brent said, “Yes, I heard, but, Joel, please, will you slide that ladder back into the corner where it belongs? I don’t want it here for people to trip on.”

  Pete, keeping to his pretending, took Tammy on a tour of the parlors, pointing out the mirrors and the carving on the sofas and the carpet under their feet. He led her to the dining room and let her see how people ate in elegance off dishes thin enough to see through, with flowers and birds painted on them. He showed her the sideboard and the silver teapot and pitcher and sugar bowl set on a silver tray. Then he took her across the hall to the library.

  Mrs. Brent was still there, her golden-brown net skirts so wide they came near to filling the room. Her arms and shoulders were bare and her hair, caught up on the top of her head, fell in a cascade of curls. She was standing as close to Professor Brent as she could get with her hoops and she was saying, “And truly, Joel, are you sure you wouldn’t notice my teeth?”

  He bent and put a kiss on her bare shoulder. “You’ll always be young and fair to me, Ena.”

  Pete turned to Tammy, still on his arm. “They aren’t born yet, Susannah, but they don’t know it.”

  Mrs. Brent whirled her skirts around. “Tammy——” Then she was struck dumb by the sight of her.

  “Great-grandmother Cratcher, just come from Virginny to take the Pilgrimage,” Pete said.

  Mrs. Brent blinked her red-brown eyes. “Why...why...that dress doesn’t look as disgraceful as I thought.”

  “Grandmother Cratcher never looked as handsome as this,” Professor Brent said, “or the artist should have been slain for slander, painting her the way he did. I have——”

  “Hush, Joel, I almost had an idea.” Mrs. Brent cocked her head on one side and studied Tammy.

  But he went on just the same: “I have often wondered why my grandfather fell for her, as we say on the campus. Now I know. She had not the face to launch a thousand ships, but oh, her form divine!”

  “Really, Joel! It’s the dress. It’s quaint, and actually charming.”

  “You mean Tammy’s charming,” Pete said.

  Mrs. Brent seemed to notice him now for the first time. “Peter, will you please go and call to Barbara to hurry. The cars will be coming in a minute. Come, Tammy, I want to show you what you are to do. Joel, the ladder...”

  On the ell porch, Mrs. Brent looked at the goatskin hickory chair that had come from the Ellen B. “That isn’t right here. It will be in the way. Peter, come take it down into the garden. Put it on the brick walk on the path at the side. No, the other side—under the dining-room window.”

  Miss Renie came out in her wide black-and-gold gown. She waved a hand toward the garden square where a cut-glass bowl and glasses were set on a lace-covered table. “Ridiculous, Ena, having that fine lace and glass bowl. Spoils the picture. I’m amazed at you. Tammy should be dipping ice water from the old brassbound tub, dipping it out with a gourd dipper, into the earthenware cups.”

  For once Mrs. Brent took a suggestion. She called everyone to come quick and make the change. She even found an old red-checkered cloth with a fringe, to cover the table. Then she told Tammy how to dip and serve and where to stand on the walk. She was hurrying back along the ell porch as the sound of the first cars came from the drive, when all at once she whirled about, clapped her hands and cried, “I’ve got a wonderful idea.”

  “You haven’t time for another,” Miss Renie told her, straightening one of the pictures on the porch wall.

  “But it’s this—for Tammy.” She tripped back to the top of the steps. “Listen, Tammy, I heard you talking a while ago, pretending you were somebody else. I want you to keep on being old time. Just talk naturally and you will be. Pretend you play the part of a woman out of long ago. Do you understand?”

  “Be Grandmother Cratcher, that’s who,” Miss Renie said.

  “No, no, it isn’t necessary to call names—people aren’t interested in that kind of thing. Just play a part, or make people think you’re playing a part. Don’t you understand?” She was terribly eager.

  Tammy nodded. “That will be easy. I won’t be shy of folks, pretending I’m someone else.”

  Mrs. Brent drew a long breath of relief. “An inspiration. Don’t you see, Aunt Renie?” she added, hurrying toward the hall. “It will cover up grammar, everything. Really I do think I’m clever.” She rapped on Barbara’s door as she passed, calling, “Time, Barbara. Do hurry.”

  “Ena’s mother was frightened by a cyclone,” Miss Renie said, walking back and forth on the long gallery. “Just think, Fernan may be among those coming in the gate right now! Oh, be still, my heart.”

  Then Barbara came out and stood a moment for Miss Renie and Tammy to admire her. She was a dream, a vision, beautiful beyond words, Tammy thought, staring open-mouthed. Barbara smiled. Her rose-pink dress ruffled into a tiny waist; it ruffled out in tier on tier, spreading wide over the hoops. Her bare arms, her white shoulders, the line of her throat—it made Tammy ache to see how lovely her body was. Barbara laughed and dropped a curtsy and Miss Renie said, “You’ll pop out in the front, if you don’t watch yourself.”

  “I’ll watch,” Barbara called back laughing, as she swept away toward the back hall door, her skirts jouncing, her ruffles rippling and her head high.

  Tammy drew a long sigh, thinking that now Barbara was going into the front hall where Pete would see her. Then Miss Renie came to the head of the steps. “There’s more art in truth than in fiction—don’t ever forget that, Tammy.”

  Tammy shook her head. She did not want art, she just wanted Pete.

  17.

  TAMMY stood in the shady side garden where the brick walk widened to a square, and waited for the first pilgrims, her heart beating hard and fast. She was costumed, she was a part of the Pilgrimage, she had something important to do, and Mrs. Brent had taken back what she’d told her yesterday about not talking to anyone. With the gourd dipper she scooped up water and poured it over the block of ice in the brassbound tub, cooling it. The cups stood ready on the table, arranged neatly on the red-and-white checkered cloth with fringe hanging down low on the table legs.

  She could hear the roll of cars on the drive, the slamming of car doors. Some of the guests were already in the house and more were coming every minute for Pete to welcome in by the big front door. T
he murmur of their talk was like the sound of bees in a blossoming locust tree. Barbara’s gay voice drifted out through the dining-room windows and Tammy caught snatches of her talk—“The silver was the old judge’s gift to his bride....The plates came from Paris and match the dinner service in the cabinet....”

  Now and then Mrs. Brent’s high-pitched company voice could be heard in the parlor. “Yes, the fifth generation under this roof....You are now in the main part of the house, built in 1832....Note the carving, done by a slave artist....The furniture...”

  Suddenly panic came over Tammy. Everyone else had something to tell. Mrs. Brent had told her how to talk, but nobody had told her what to say. Goshamighty, what could she do? She gathered her long skirts and threw them over her arm as she tore up the step to find Miss Renie. Barefoot and noiseless she sped along the ell gallery toward the back hall door. She was turning into the passageway when she saw Ernie alone in the hall, just outside the dining-room door. Something in his face stopped her short. What could he be looking at with that steady, serious gaze, with that longing in his eyes?

  Tammy tiptoed into the hall without a sound, looked where he was looking, and saw Barbara in her lovely rose dress, lovelier than ever in the candlelit dining room. She stood by the long sideboard, showing off the silver and the dishes and herself. Tammy drew a sigh as Ernie’s sadness spread out and enveloped her. She began to understand now the things that had been beneath his words that night when he and Pete had talked beside the car. It was Barbara they were fighting over, really. But Ernie didn’t have a chance and, knowing that, she felt a kinship with him. The weight of his longing and her own lay heavy on her as she went through the batik-hung passageway to Miss Renie’s door.

  Miss Renie sat in the low rocker beside the window with her black-and-gold skirts spread like a tent around her. She was bowed over with her head in her hands so that all Tammy could see was the top of her head and the black ruff rising up at the back of her neck. “Miss Renie,” she cried, “what’s the matter?”