Ask Daddy soon. I am not too young. And Mother loves you so. I hear her call, her greeting, "Sweet son of own departed sister." How she does go on, Mamma. This house is neither cool enough nor hot enough.
Take me away from it to some place where the air is not the temperature of my skin-where mosquito bites are not the only thing I feel.
Dearest Girl, Darling E
Dearest and darling are your name. Belonging to you alone. There are other Elizabeths, other Emilys, other E s, but there is only one dearest girl, you. I shall give you fire and ice when we are married.
I'll rub ice on your wrists in July and build great big fires in December. Don't you swoon.
P.P.
Mother found your last letter and took to weeping. "What does he mean, what does he mean? " When I tried to explain, she interrupted me, saying, "Oh, it's all too clear, all too clear." I have no idea what she's so upset about. You should ask Daddy at once. I think they don't believe you really want to marry me.
Your E.
My dear E
Your father refuses to let me marry you. I asked him to state his reservation, and he could say only that your mother disapproves of the match. I must talk to my Aunt.
P.P.
Mother does nothing but cry. She took me on her lap and whispered, between sobs, "If it was possible, I would allow it." If I do more than bow in your direction at church, she will remove me from the city.
She says the curse of Haiti is upon us.
P.
What does Haiti have to do with this? I have my little income from there and you have yours. It should buy us a little freedom. This all sounds like a nightmare my old Mammy used to tell me about ill-used slaves coming to haunt families that were cruel to them. Sometimes they scared the people so bad, their hearts beat right out of their chests, then stopped beating at all.
E
Darling,
Your mother, my aunt, refuses to see me at all. I'm just about to go to the graveyard to talk with my mother.
P.P.
You must write. It's been days since I spoke with you. I come to your house and am refused entrance. Have the gates of hell opened and swallowed you whole?
P.P.
What do you know of Haiti? I don't believe I've ever seen it on a map.
I don't believe I'll ever take another teaspoon of sugar in my life.
Mother doesn't know that I know why she believes we can't marry. The reason doesn't constrain me. Doesn't shackle my heart from yours. But my tongue is locked in the prison of my mouth. You would have to make your own decision, and I do not know what you would decide, and if I tell you what I know, you will never be yourself again, and if I do not tell you, we will never be what we might be. If you wish to know, send word and I will tell you.
Your cousin E.
Darling E.
Was our great-grandmother a murderess? Did she kill a hundred slaves because one displeased her? I refuse to be afraid or ashamed of decades-old indiscretions of my progenitors. Tell me at once, and I will be as I remain, who I am, the man who wants to marry you.
P.P.
Our great-grandmother was not a murderess. She was a Negresse.
E.
Dear E.
I am surprised you put those words to paper. I am proud of you, very proud, and I should still like to marry you. I spoke with Aunt. Your mother sees no life for us that will not destroy the rest of the family. She says her confinement and the confinement of her sister, my mother, were agony, greatly lessened but not ended by the arrival of perfect pink infants. She says they watched the tips of our ears and ridge of skin around our fingers every night for signs of darkening. I asked her what she would have done if she had seen the tip of your ear turn the color of one of the walnuts just falling. Even if you had turned the color of butter, if she had turned the color of butter, I would have put the pillow on her face and I would have cried. Color comes in so slow over a period of ten days, if you do it quick even the Daddy don't see the dark in the baby. Of course the Mammy knows. They've seen all manner of white-looking nigger children.
What farce this is. It's a pity Moliere didn't live in this city and this part of the country. Instead of writing the Imaginary Invalid, he could have written the ... what would we call ourselves? Niggers Who Knew Not? Can you be a Negro if you don't know you're a Negro? I would have said a nigger knows he's a nigger. Always. Absolutely. But what if he doesn't? So ... we are each to pour a little more milk in the coffee and not tell. We were the ones who were not supposed ever to know-the first to be white not black with a secret. See how well our love serves us. If we had not fallen in love, we might never have discovered our darkness.
P. P.
Write to me. I know you're in New Orleans. Everyone says you're drinking too much, fighting, dueling with anyone willing to walk across your shadow. You said you would never marry anyone but me-but you did not say you would marry me. Of course I wish I did not know what I know now. I wish I was not what I am now, but if I had to do it over again and I could either stay innocent or love you and hold for a minute the possibility of being your bride, I would choose knowledge and agony over innocence and no hope of marrying you. Could we not go someplace where no one knows us and be who we are?
E.
Dear E.
Strange as it may seem, it is not as hard for me to imagine having a Negresse for my bride as it is for me to imagine you having a Negro for your husband and in your bed. It feels blasphemous. Even when I know the Negro so well and know his desire for you to be as hot and pure as fire. If you will marry me, I will marry you when I return. Perhaps we will move to a plantation down in the Indies. I have been sniffing around for possibilities down here. Port cities are good for possibilities.
P.
Inside the last of the envelopes were two folded yellowing newspaper articles. One told the story of a deadly duel between hotheaded dandies down in the Quarter. The other the story of the premature death of a well loved son of Savannah under mysterious circumstances. Same story, different tellers; only the fact of death remained. at her never knew. R. received the letters from Garlic; he got the letters from Mammy. She got the letters from Lady. How Lady came to possess both sides of the most important correspondence of her life is not hard to imagine-she kept those he sent her and, rather than destroy anything her hand had touched or risk disclosure, he had returned hers to her. I could only imagine how many times Lady had read and re-read the words that did and didn't change her life. The pleasure must have been exquisite for her, to take so much risk with her daughters' lives, to risk the damage "an unveiling" would have done to her life. I can only imagine that when she handed the letters to Mammy, she expected Mammy to burn them. She expected the secret her mother never wished to tell her to die with her. She left her daughters to carry their babies without fear of their own children darkening up.