The Wilful Daughter Page 5

“And where would we live?” Willie asked trying not to become involved in the fantasy.

  “Somewhere,” she announced triumphantly. “I’d think of something. Besides,” she touched her brother’s face gently. “If you want you could see Lanney again. You painted your best when Lanney was around. We could take her with us. We could hire her to keep house for us, Willie. And she could be there for you whenever you wanted.”

  She smiled but Willie didn’t speak. He handed her the brush and she took that as a cue that he was tired. That was the bad part. He did tire so easily, even though he was strong as Hercules. June kissed him. “I will see you in a few hours. Tomorrow night I’ll tell you about the piano man. Wait till you meet him.”

  “Why, how would I meet him?” Willie yawned.

  “He’s going to come here. I’m thinking of asking him to give me lessons. Wait and see.” She laughed a little and as she went off to bed she whispered to him: “One day I’ll play better than Fawn or Jewel. And one day I’ll make Ross take you down to his car and we’ll go to Miss Emma’s place . . .”

  “And what will papa say?” Willie leaned on his pillow wishing that what she was saying could come true.

  “Papa won’t ever need to know. You can lower yourself down that rope and we’ll leave our clothes in the hollow of that old tree out there so at dawn when its time to chop the wood we’ll already be outside doing it. They won’t ever know.”

  She grinned at him. “We could do it, Willie. One day you could sit in that dirty little bar and paint like that man you told me about who didn’t have long legs but painted all those French dancers.”

  He yawned again, “Lautrec. Toulouse Lautrec.”

  “Yes, that’s the one. You’ll paint all those people in Miss Emma’s like him. Only there aren’t any dancing girls. Just the Plato sisters wiggling their big butts and people slipping out in the dark to be alone.”

  “I’d like that,” Willie said. It would be nice to start a portfolio of sketches of people moving and dancing and being alive the way he couldn’t. He could take those sketches and bring them back to life with his paints. He stared at the empty easel in the corner. He hadn’t painted since papa had sent Lanney away. Yes, it would be nice.”

  “You need to get out. I don’t care what those old doctors say. You need sun and light and people. You’ll love my piano man. He is so wonderful. And Willie?”

  He turned from his thoughts to her. “Yes?”

  “Willie, the Piano Man is going to marry me. Watch, Willie, just wait and see.” She kissed him and tiptoed off to her room.

  Alone Willie pondered two things: the arrival of the Piano Man into his sister’s life and the exit of Lanney from his. But he had to laugh for although he loved his sister more than anything in the world he knew she was vain and wistful and in love with no one but herself. And maybe her brother. He knew she loved him, she watched over him and protected him from the hate and insults and even the envy of others. It was she who told papa it was cruel to force Willie to stay in Atlanta when the man from Florida had wanted to take the boy under his wing and make him a great artist. Over breakfast one morning when papa had said enough June had replied: “You’re just jealous cause you have no talent. Because all you can do is hit that metal with that hammer. You can’t paint pictures and you can’t sing. You don’t even tell good stories. But Willie does. Willie is good at all those things.”

  The big hand had seemed to come out of nowhere and smacked so hard that when the tiny trickle of blood oozed from her lips the other daughters cringed in horror. Willie couldn’t move. He had been sixteen and she fifteen and for that moment time stood still.

  Papa’s sun-burnt face was reddened with fury. He hurled his words at the last child he would ever father in this world. “I gave you life, I have given you everything. I do not need to be judged by a selfish fifteen year old girl who reads poorly, can barely understand numbers and throws herself like a whore at every man who thinks her almost white looks are a blessing to the race. I am not jealous of your brother. I am here to protect him from people who might use him wrongly. Your brother has no legs. If that white man decided to beat him in Florida who would be there to protect him? How could he run away from the abuse with no legs?”

  Papa hadn’t meant for the question to be answered but June stood, her hands on her tiny hips, the taste of blood still on her lips, cocked her head to one side as she looked down on her father and boldly said loud enough for the entire family to hear: “He’d leave the same way he runs away from you. On his hands when your spiteful words knock the crutches from under him. Or have you been too busy to notice that that’s what you make him do? Drop the crutches from under him?”

  Such silence Willie had never known. Papa hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken. But wisely June had left the table, kicking the chair as she left. When she got to the door she turned. “One of these days, I’m going to get out of here. And Willie’s going to leave here sooner than you think.”

  The Blacksmith rose, his might and weight rising with him as well as his anger. Bira spoke: “June, go to your room. This house has no use for disrespect.”

  As June opened her mouth again Bira raised a hand and the girl gave her father one of her “looks” then was gone. The Blacksmith stood there only for a second before gaining control and retaking his seat. The other daughters shook in fear barely able to eat. Bira went back to her meal as did Willie.

  The subject was never raised again but from that day forward he knew how much June loved him. She bore the print of papa’s hand on her face for five days. Willie never forgave him.

  It was shortly after that that Lanney had come into their lives. She worked for Miz Patricia, the woman who made the dresses his sisters wore. Her only beauty was the most haunting eyes he had ever seen. A dark gentle woman, she would come to the house to take measurements and do fittings.

  Bira hated the society of Auburn Avenue, as it was called by the well-off coloreds who went there to shop. A tailor, a corsetiere, three dress makers, a cobbler, as well as a printer, hair saloon and barber shop for the men inclined to get their hair cut by a professional. The Blacksmith saw to it that his family had accounts in all the stores and shops.

  She had never enjoyed being the center of attention, but as the Blacksmith’s wife and the mother of five daughters that dressed better than any in Atlanta she would not deny her children the heights of fashion.

  When Fawn was eighteen and excited about the Brotherhood of the Masons Annual Ball, Bira hired a carriage to take them all to Miz Patricia’s for the first fitting of her gown. Getting out of the car, Bira noticed the women who had nothing better to do than shop and then talk about those who could not afford to shop.

  Fawn was standing in the fitting room with Miz Patricia and her assistant, Lanney, measuring and pinning lace and silk about her when a pretty brown girl came into the shop crying in her mother’s arms.

  “Bitches!” The mother entered angrily holding the girl to her chest. “Everyone of them. Daughters of slaves and drunkards. I know all about them. They just married well. But they are nothing more than bitches.”

  Bira had tried to calm the mother who she knew only as the wife of a local mason by no means wealthy. It was the Mason’s ball and his daughter had the right to attend. What had transpired down the street had been mean spirited and evil: women telling her, in front of her child, that she could not afford the proper attire for the girl since the family had no money.

  “Why embarrass the child?” one of the snotty women had told her. “She’ll never be able to . . .” and the woman had laughed a bit as she said it, “Lighten up for the ball.”

  “Unless she uses that white makeup those traveling actors use,” another woman added. “Would make her look a little more white.”

  “Maybe,” the third one giggled. “But then only clowns and (she whispered) whores wear that type of powder on their faces. And the child is still a virgin. I mean you can never tell with one so dark. That’s why
they have so many children.”

  Once Bira heard the story rage sent her into the street. Nothing would stop the Blacksmith’s wife from quickly leaving Miz Patricia’s shop. Not the mother’s lament that she knew Bira was not like that. Not Miz Patricia’s request that she let the men folk handle it. Not Fawn pleading: “Mama, my dress.”

  “I’ll be back in a moment, daughter.” Almost immediately she was on the street. Outside, near the shop the trio was waiting to see how the woman was going to pay for the gown and what kind of gown it would be. Nothing, they knew, as expensive as the Blacksmith’s daughter’s.

  The sweetest smile cleared Bira’s face as they greeted her and she returned the greeting with something they hadn’t expected.

  “Why Clara, I didn’t expect your Sara to be in the ball this year with the note your family owes the bank. What is it now, four months past due?

  “And Lottie? How’s your brothers syphilis? Is he still staying with you or did he go back to that New Orleans place of ill repute he was running? I haven’t seen him lately.

  “Now Doris, you must be very glad Hector is no longer seeing that girl from Macon you found out was your very own cousin. And glad she isn’t pregnant. What a scandal that would have been.”

  The men standing near them didn’t cover their laughter. The women passing grinned. The trio had no words for the things, true though they were, that Bira had said about them and in front of mere working people loudly enough, louder than Bira’s normal church mouse voice, for the whole block to hear.

  “Well, I guess everything is all right and you have nothing to fear at the ball this year. Good day, ladies.”

  Bira had paid for the entire wardrobe of the girl, not as charity, but as a birthday present. ”Whenever that is or was,” she told the mother. And she made sure that, at the Cotillion, Fawn and the girl would be introduced together. After that she refused to go back to the avenue.

  Word got back to the Blacksmith of his wife’s actions on Auburn Avenue through all the working class people who found the wealthy Blacksmith’s wife down to earth. So he paid extra for Lanney to come to the house and fit and measure and sometimes mend and sew things that Bira didn’t have time to do.

  The first time Willie had looked at her he had quickly turned away. But she had said, “Mr. Brown, come back. I’m just waiting to finish fitting Jewel and Fawn. How are you today?”

  He fell in love with her immediately as she sat before him with her thick kinky hair pulled back into a severe bun and her simple clothes, not nearly as fancy as those she made. He talked to her and she to him as if old friends. And each time she came he sketched her without her knowledge. But not in the clothes that she wore. No, they were not good enough for his Lanney. He drew her in ball gowns, in silks and satins dresses like a queen.

  One day he boldly showed them to her.

  She smiled her appreciation. “They are beautiful. You actually think I look like this? This beautiful? I am nothing beside the beauty of your sisters.”

  “No,” he had told her. “My sisters are beautiful. But when I paint you, I see how kindness and charm and inner strength can show up on a canvas when mere looks can easily fade.”

  Lanney had kissed him, kissed him hard. Then she left. The days dragged by slowly until her next visit when he kissed her back and struggled not to touch her.

  But Lanney had understood, she felt him struggle. That changed everything between them.

  She came to the house on a day she knew Willie would be alone for a long while: the sisters teaching or in school and the mother visiting a sick friend. She claimed, at the front door, that she was there to measure but when he said no one was at home she feigned embarrassment. He didn’t want to turn her away and asked her in for some tea.

  “I’ll make it.” She knew her way about the place and led him to the kitchen. The water never made it to the stove to boil.

  When he kissed her she suggested that he touch her in places he had never dreamed of touching a woman. Only men with legs had the privilege of getting a woman. But Lanney was completely naked before he knew what happened.

  “I want to paint you this way,” he told her. He had never seen a woman’s body undressed. He breathed strangely as she had helped him to his bed. Once his breath was regular and he could kiss her and touch her again she made love to him.

  It was the first of many times.

  The moments he knew were short but they felt like an eternity of pleasure and each time she stood to dress and go, he grabbed his crutches and went straight to a blank canvas to paint her, his beautiful Lanney. Tall and dark like a tree, full breasts with tiny, black nipples jutting out at him. A small patch of hair in the place that had given him so much pleasure. All something he had never seen before she entered his life. Brother painted a nude.

  No one questioned him painting, locked in his tiny cell for hours. It was what Brother did. And no one noticed what he had done until one morning when mama came in to awaken him and saw the nude on the easel. She asked him when he painted it. She asked him why he painted it. Then she asked how he painted it. “What did that woman do to you?” For the only time in his life that he could remember, his mother was angry at him. She was talking loudly to him in a strained voice. “This woman is luring you with false promises.”

  “Mother, I want to marry her. I want to be her. . .”

  “Marry her? You would marry a woman who would trick you this way? She’s trying to get pregnant, Willie, don’t you see?”

  “She loves me!”

  ‘She pities you!” Bira shouted and the Blacksmith arrived and saw the painting. He called it vile and contemptible. He would not hear Brother’s pleas that this woman made him happy, that she loved him until Bira said: “She used to tell me she felt so sorry for you and wished there was something she could do to make you happy for a little while. A little while brother. If she marries you she’ll leave you. Son, its just pity.”

  His father had destroyed the painting. Willie had reached for it but had fallen as the big man tore the still wet canvas to shreds. As he watched the colors of his love go into the kitchen fire he took heart in the sketches that he had hidden beneath his bed. Willie did not come out of his room the rest of the day and papa, he heard from his sisters, gave Lanney money to go north and far, far away.

  He had never been able to ask if she loved him or pitied him so he dreamed about her now so he could go back to sleep. He covered the ugliness of his legs and closed his eyes. Soon he was dancing with Lanney’s naked body.

  It was June who woke him before dawn. He smelled coffee brewing and felt the swift peck on his cheek. “Get up, sleepy head. We need to cut some more wood for the stove.”

  Rubbing the sleep from his eyes like a child he tried to forget his dreams, tried to forget June slipping into the house with his help only a few hours earlier. He was tired and his arms sore but he would never let his family down. He had to chop some wood.

  Pulling on his pants, forgetting his shoes, he reached for his crutches and headed for the kitchen. Papa was in the bathroom humming as he relieved himself. Mama stood in the middle of the kitchen at the big table cutting onions and potatoes. Jewel was rolling out biscuits.

  “Morning, Brother.” Jewel smiled at him a touch of flour on her check.

  “Morning, Jewel.” He slipped next to her and kissed her cheek taking the time to brush the flour away. She giggled a little. Jewel was twenty-five and needed to be married he thought. She would make someone a good wife. Fawn was coming in from the porch with a huge slab of bacon. She dropped it on the table.

  “I see June beat you up this morning, Brother. Getting lazy in your old age?” she laughed. That’s when mama turned to look at him.

  “Brother, you feeling all right?” With a look of concern she came to him and touched his face.

  “Fine mama,” he said giving her a kiss. “Just oversleep a little around here and everybody thinks you’ve aged fifty years.” They smiled at each other and he he
aded out the door to the porch.

  Slinging the crutches over his shoulders he grabbed the rope and got in the wooden box he used to go to the back yard. Carefully he lowered himself down to where June was crudely and slowly cutting the wood for the stove. Her hair was in a braid down her back and she had put on an apron over her gown, for modesty’s sake. Something she seldom remembered to do.

  “Let me do that.” Willie took the ax with one powerful arm and began splintering as he leaned on his crutches, surer and faster than she had when she stood on two steady feet and used two small hands. “Who’s this Piano Man, June?”

  “You remembered!” she grinned then whispered: “Keep your voice down. Papa will meet him soon enough.”

  Willie stopped the ax mid air. He held it posed and felt the tightness in his muscles. A pain entered his chest but it wasn’t his heart. It was worry. “June, how are you gonna manage that?”

  “He’s coming here tonight to introduce himself to papa.” Willie lowered the ax quickly. Splinters flew and June jumped back. “Watch it, Willie. You want to put my eye out?”

  “Better than having papa knock your head off. He’s not gonna let you court a piano playing man.” He kept at his work, a slight stream of sweat coming down his face. “You sneak out and stay out all night. You sell paintings I give you to buy dresses they’ll never see. You hang out with ruffians like Ross. You’re heading for nothing but trouble. And papa? Papa’s gonna kill you. Besides ain’t nobody getting married until Minnelsa does. Papa’s said.”

  June gathered the wood and put it into the box. Working hard she pulled on the rope to raise it to the porch then turned to her brother. “Papa may have his rules but I’m not gonna be an old maid like the rest of them. I want to get out of this place with a fine, handsome man. Not some old geezer like Minnelsa’s gonna marry.”

  “She would have married. . .” Willie started.

  “Not likely. Papa wasn’t about to let her marry that man. John Woods may not have had money, but he wanted to be a writer, a dreamer just like Minnelsa. Always in books and writing her love letters and poems. They were a match made in heaven. But not in papa’s eyes.”