She went on, “Make you a young lady of society. Instead of a scarecrow.”
I ignored this last ungracious remark and thought for a minute. “Did Mother come out?”
“They put her name down for it. But she never did.”
“Why not?”
Viola looked at me. “You should ask her.”
“The War?” I said, puzzled. Viola nodded.
“But it was over by then. Mother must have been . . .” I counted on my fingers.
“There was no money left, that’s all,” said Viola. “And then her daddy die of typhus, and that was the end of that.”
“So I have to come out? Because she missed her turn?”
“I’m telling you, you got to ask her yourself. Go get cleaned up. You a mess. I got to rest my heart—it’s beating like a kitten. Lord help me.”
I left her fanning herself.
My mother had got one girl out of seven tries at it. I guess I wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind, a dainty daughter to help her bail against the rising tide of the rough-and-tumble boyish energy that always threatened to engulf the house. It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d been hoping for an ally and then didn’t get one. So I didn’t like to talk patterns and recipes and pour tea in the parlor. Did that make me selfish? Did it make me odd? Worst of all, did it make me a disappointment? I could probably live with being thought selfish or odd. But a disappointment—that was another matter, a harder matter. I tried not to think about this, but it tailed me about the house all afternoon like a bothersome, bad-smelling dog demanding attention.
I sat in my room and looked out at the trees and paid the matter some mind, turning it this way and that. I hadn’t intended to be this way. Could I be blamed for my nature? Could the leopard change her spots? And, if so, what were my spots? It all seemed so muddled. I came up with no conclusions, but I did get a middling headache. Maybe I needed some Lydia Pinkham’s like Mother. Maybe I was more like her than I thought.
Would coming out as a debutante be so bad? Maybe I wouldn’t mind it so much. Eventually. Meanwhile, I would have to find out more about it.
Granddaddy had taught me that the important questions could not be answered without the best scholarship you could lay your hands on, along with plenty of time to weigh and measure the alternatives. I had another six or seven years to think about it. That might be enough time. I didn’t know anyone who could tell me about such things except Mother, but if I asked her, wouldn’t that just get her hopes up, hopes that might have to be dashed later on? My head ached, and my neck started to itch.
Hives again.
THE NEXT MORNING, I found Mother outside examining the rows in the kitchen garden, a wide straw hat shading her face and a pair of white cotton gloves on her hands, following her own dictum that a lady always hid her hands and face from the sun. I approached her cautiously in case Viola had told her of my apparently shameful public experiment, but there was no special alarm in her eyes. No more than usual.
“Where’s your bonnet?” Mother called out. “Go inside and get it.”
I ran back inside for it. There was no point in starting this conversation off on the wrong foot. I grabbed it from the peg inside the back door and went out again.
“That’s better,” she said. “Are you coming to help me with the flowers?”
“I wanted to ask you something,” I said. “Viola told me . . . Viola told me you were supposed to come out when you were a girl but that you didn’t get to. Is that true?”
A shadow of something—surprise, annoyance, regret maybe—passed over her face. She stooped and clipped a Cherokee rose. “Yes. That’s true.”
“So what happened?”
“The War ruined us. It ruined many families. People were starving. Making one’s debut would have been . . . unseemly.”
“But you met Father anyway.”
She smiled. “I did. I was one of the lucky ones. Your aunt Aggie wasn’t so lucky.”
My mother’s sister Agatha lived unmarried and alone in Harwood in a house that smelled of cats and mildew.
“So you didn’t need to be a debutante,” I said, pulling a stray weed.
“No, I guess I didn’t. But lots of girls still do.” She looked at me.
I couldn’t avoid the question any longer, so I squared up to it. “Do I have to come out?”
“You’re the only daughter, Calpurnia.”
I didn’t want to be rude and point out that she hadn’t answered the question. “Well, what does it mean? Exactly?”
Mother’s eyes lit up. “It means that a girl from a good family has become a young lady and is ready to be introduced into Society. That she is ready to take her appointed place. That she can be introduced to young men from good families. It means cotillions and entertainments and a new gown for each one.”
“How long does it last?” I said.
“A year.”
“A whole year?” I didn’t much care for the sound of that. “And then what happens?”
She looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“You said it lasts for a year, and then what?”
“Well, usually the young lady has found a husband by that time.”
“So it’s a lot of fancy parties to marry off girls.”
Mother clucked. “Goodness, I wouldn’t put it that way.”
Why not? I thought. There was no disguising it.
“Mother?”
“Yes, dear?”
“So . . . do I have to come out?” Her face fell. I quickly added, “Do you want me to come out?”
She studied me. “Callie, I think there’s lots of time to think about it. But yes, I would be glad if you had the opportunity I missed. Many young girls would be glad of the chance.”
“What does Father think? It sounds expensive, a new gown and all every time.”
She looked disapproving. “One doesn’t speak of money like that. It isn’t done. Your father is an excellent provider. I am sure he would be proud to present you.”
“Hmm.” So there lay the matter. For now.
Later it occurred to me that I could ask Granddaddy his thoughts about it. But then I realized I didn’t need to. I could just imagine his opinion on the matter.
Chapter 15
A SEA OF COTTON
Linnaeus has calculated that if an annual plant produced only two seeds . . . and their seedlings next year produced two, and so on, then in twenty years there would be a million plants.
A COUPLE OF WEEKS LATER, my father met with the other major landholders at the Moose Lodge and declared the cotton harvest date, by far the most important event in our entire county.
An army of colored workers from three counties around descended on our acreage and picked from first light until complete dark, men and women and children, stopping only at midday for a meal and a short Bible reading by a preacher, one of their number.
Viola recruited three of the women to help her cook in the old stone kitchen in back of the house. Such a prodigious quantity of grits and fatback and beans and biscuits and syrup flowed out of there, all loaded into the buckboard in giant hampers and driven out to the fields, along with a barrel of fresh water and a huge pail of coffee. Mother temporarily moved into the kitchen to feed us. She also kept busy nursing the pickers’ cuts and blisters and other injuries deemed too small to be sent to Dr. Walker.
Harry drove the wagon back and forth to the store for cornmeal, sugar, flour, and other supplies. Sam Houston and Lamar scurried with messages from the scale house to the tally board and were sometimes rewarded with a penny, which translated into ten pieces of candy or a new pencil at the general store. Being a tally messenger was a highly coveted position.