Miss Varina’s betrothed was soon to arrive. They waited. Every one of Marse Charles’s colored slaves stood in the yard of the House, assembled in the same manner they’d listened to the exploding cannonballs in the distance weeks earlier, a gathered awkward collection of black folks and their two white owners. But unlike that war-torn morning, this noontime was hot and quiet, a stillness punctuated now and then by heat-drunk flies and one or the other of the slaves fidgeting, quelling the urge to swat.
Varina waited on the veranda, which offered no shade at this time of day. Rue stood beside her holding up a white lace parasol, her arms aching. Varina was not satisfied. Halfway through their waiting she’d sent Sarah into the house to run and bring to her a small white hand fan. Now Varina was working herself into a sweaty anxiousness with that fan, flapping it about her flushed face, her madness burning hotter than the sun could. Marse Charles hovered in the doorway, looked like he’d like to snatch that fan straight out of his daughter’s hand.
Because of their gathered stillness they heard the carriage rumbling up through the gravel road from a great distance, but they could not see it at all through the thick of the trees, and so they were left to stand there in anticipation, listening to the horses’ hooves beating the ground and the strain of the wagon rolling over craggy land. The assembled slaves had long, strange minutes to imagine their new master inside, perhaps sitting with his head in his hand and his hat in his lap and his leg across his knee, his foot tapping in nervous but eager anticipation, deep in thoughts of his new bride. Would she look like her photograph, hair tugged back tight, and center parted, cheeks pinked? Would her voice be soft and sweet when they sang at the piano at night? Would she make him lots of children, boys preferably but a girl too that they might name after his mama? Would she love him for all the rest of her God-given days, and his?
When the wagon turned the corner, it was obvious it was empty. There was only a sad, thin-looking black man at its helm, old as creation, with a straw hat and a bad limp. He said nothing but disembarked and hobbled his way over to them, looking sorry about the time it took him to cross those few yards.
“Got a letter here for the mistress a’ this house?”
Varina stepped forward through the crowd of her slaves and took the letter as if the paper alone was a badge of shame that ought not see the light of day. She unfolded the letter at its crisp lines. The envelope bore an emblem of the Confederate army, and after she’d read the letter, her lips moving furiously, her gloved finger slipping and shaking over the handwritten lines, she dropped it to the ground and let the wind take it and none of them knew whether to go after it—so they didn’t, just watched the emblem swirl away. The old negro messenger was watching even with his eyes downcast. Perhaps he’d been told to report back on her reaction; perhaps he was only waiting to have his pass marked, his old bones being unsure of how and where to move without being dismissed.
Varina’s low keening was explanation enough. It was a sound like a sick cow might make. She turned and fled into the house, and Marse Charles did not follow her but sighed as though this was an eventuality he’d been wise enough to see coming.
“Go and see to her.”
Rue didn’t know if he had meant her. She was the only slave on the veranda. She tried to look out at the crowd for her mama, but if Miss May Belle was there she was just another black sweating body, waiting and tense.
“Go on,” Marse Charles hollered and Rue went, taking the stairs through the house two at a time with the aid of the folded-up parasol as a cane, all the faster to propel her.
She found Varina in her room, panting and yowling and ripping off her clothes like she couldn’t get them away from herself fast