She wasn't pretty, but she had the capacity to distract men from noticing that. And now that my looks are vanishing with the years, I must borrow that from my sister; I must learn to make men not notice that I am not beautiful. Her dresses are a fine beginning. I will go to my Congressman in my sister's clothes.
I packed in her trunks. I look at my reflection in the window and it's a blurry thing, but I see me as I have never been before. I wear green well. For somehow, too, green is Daddy's Ireland.
Garlic told me the story. He got it from Mammy, who had got it from Planter. Planter ran out of Ireland with the law on his tail, wanted for a murder he had committed. And thieving he had thieved. He couldn't see other people have everything when his family had nothing.
And when things were too hot in that country, he quit it. That was her father and that was mine.
She was like him in that she killed. Miss Priss told me that story.
She, Other, and Mealy Mouth killed the Union soldier, robbed his dead body, and dragged him off in their chemises, all the while making light conversation with the family out the window. I come from a strong people. And I am like him in my willingness to leave my world to find a better one. It is a sister and a family I leave behind, not Other, not some thing.
Once in Georgia I had a sister who loved my mother dearly; she took care of Mama all her life, better care of her than I took. I hated her and buried her, and now I forgive her. Once in Georgia I had a mother I could not find my way to loving. I'm grateful that Other found a way and kept the path clean and brightly used. She made exquisite use of my mother's love.
And now it's my turn to make good use of her mother's love. Lady loved her black man in the bright light of day. If he will have me, I will love Adam, I will love my Congressman that way.
R. writes me letters it would bore me to return. He is someone else's dream. Whose dream I'm not sure. I suppose Beauty's. Beauty stretched the scope of her imagination to see him, to want him. She didn't like men, but she loved him. That's tribute. Other loved him when she had nothing else to love. It was a scrawny little pathetic love, and he wouldn't have it. And me, I loved him because he was the prize, and I wanted the prize to feel and know, taste and see that I could win it, but it was his power I craved, not him.
I tell him, I have been sleeping in my sister's bed. I don't want that anymore.
He tells me, I saw you before I ever saw her, wanted you before her.
But then you chose her because you could and she reminded you of me.
She was your daylight version of me. You betrayed me and I betrayed her on so many succulent occasions, too many succulent occasions. But I no longer have a taste for that meat. It's too rich for me. I want something simple, like a cold joint of ham, a slice of cornbread, and a big glass of buttermilk. I want to love a stranger who knows no one I know. You have been a father to me, and now that you look the part, I don't want you. His eyes well up. I won't give you a divorce. I'll live in sin. Proudly. You taught me that.
"What is your name," he asks me.
"Cynara," I say, walking out his door.
(am traveling unescorted. I feel nauseous. There are rascals of every hue on this train. Whatever remained of my good name will be gone by the time we reach Washington. Why doesn't anyone assume that a woman on her own wants to be?
The Congressman doesn't know I'm coming. The election is fast upon him; he doesn't need anything more to worry him. He can't imagine I will come.
R. imagined I would go. He sent a note 'round to my house. I call it my house because he gave it to me, because my name is on the deed, and because, as Beauty says and it's ugly to admit, I earned it.
R. wrote to say that if I was going to Washington, I could stay at "the house." He doesn't say my house, and he doesn't say ours. His kindness makes me cry. I am touched that he knew, could figure out, what I would do; his kindness makes me cry, but I can't accept it anymore.
Though I had money, they wouldn't rent a hotel room to an unaccompanied woman. I hired a driver to take me to my Congressman's sister's house.
When she opened the door she remembered me.
She is a ball tonight at the university. All the great Negro leaders of the city will be present. The election has come and gone. My Congressman will be Congressman no more when they swear in the new House. His sister has invited me to go with her party to the ball. I have things to tell him. I hope I can find the words.
We danced tonight. But before we danced I made preparations.
I had the slim gap-too the girl, Corinne, over for tea. suspected three or four things about her, one or two of them very important to me. Her flat chest and narrow hips reminded me of Mealy Mouth, only more. It was not easy issues I sidled up to, but I sidled up under the guise of sharing the story of a girl cousin who was married but rocked an empty cradle. She never swelled. The girl shrugged.
Her teeth were pretty, really, little pearls with a tiny little part in the middle of her smile. She was unashamed; things were as God intended them. If she was to live alone, well, she wasn't alone; she was with her parents. And she had the children in the settlement houses. There was important work to do and she was doing it. She knew how much the Negro population had increased since the end of the war.
How many more hungry stomachs and hungry minds. How little helpful political currency remained. "Odd," she said, making a delicate joke to change the subject, "my female trouble is that I have no female trouble." She took the bitter with the sweet and swallowed them both whole. "The only man who should marry me is a widower with five children who need someone to raise them. He would be lucky to get me.”
“What about the Congressman?”
“He wants a family. He kept talking to me about babies, and that's when I pulled away.”
“You love who you love," I say.
"You're blessed with whatever you're blessed with.”
“Wherever it comes from.”
“We're not in very different boats, are we?”
“You could not be more wrong," I say. Of a sudden I am frozen. After all these years she could not be more wrong.
If I find a way to offer my gift, will she find a way to accept?
pressed crushed flowers into the hem of my dress and into its creases. Scent rises in waves from my garment as I move. I tell him that he must marry the gap-too the girl. He laughs. We dance more. He pulls me deeper into the dance; we swirl, and I am drunk on the power that is flowing out of his body back into our country, our America. I look around me at these new Negroes, this talented tenth, this first harvest, the brightest minds, the sustained souls, the ones so beautiful they have received some advantage, and so strong they need not what they did not receive. Folks whose fathers were named Fearless and were freed because their master was afraid to own them. The ones who could intimidate from shackles. These beautiful ones. They are as close to gods as we have seen walk the earth. I dance and I see them dance in the darkening night as clouds roll in, covering the stars that shine upon the ones who survived the culling-out of the middle passage, and the mental shackles of slavery; the group that rose with the first imperfect freedoms to this city, to the Capital, this group of Negroes shining brightly as their-as our-flame burns down as our time passes.
This short night they call Reconstruction is ending. We dance in our twilight, and I know it. It is a secret greater than the secret I carry. Once in north Alabama rose a brilliant black man who no one gave a chance at all, rose and rode to Washington to take his place in the Capital City, a man who stole a woman from the oldest, richest family in the Confederacy. I saw that man. I saw him in the company of the nation's finest men, and I saw him stand toe to toe, and he was taller. But he is leaving the District of Columbia soon, and I don't know how long I will be around. I get too tired to remember. We swirl, the old fiddle sings us tunes, and when he pulls me closest, I tell him he must marry the girl and why. This is our Gotterdammerung.