The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree Read online

  Besides Bessie herself, there were five other ladies living at the Manor at the present time: Dorothy Rogers, Mrs. Sedalius (the one who had heard the Cartwright ghost digging in the Darling Dahlias’ garden), a retired schoolteacher named Leticia Wiggens, Maxine Bechdel, widow of the previous editor of the Dispatch, and Roseanne, the Negro lady who had cooked and cleaned for Bessie’s family for over forty years.

  None of the Magnolia Ladies was “well fixed,” as Leticia put it delicately, and all of them had their own chores at the Manor, to help out with the cost of running the old place. Roseanne did the cooking and the laundry, as she had done for many years. Leticia and Maxine washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen and dining room. Mrs. Sedalius cleaned the upstairs, Miss Rogers dusted the downstairs, and Bessie did the downstairs floors, the shopping, and the outside work.

  In addition, everyone (even Miss Rogers) worked in the garden that supplied the Manor’s table, and they all helped to tend the dozen hens that gave them their breakfast eggs. One year, they had a milk goat named Belle, but while everyone loved Belle for her sweet manners and soft ears, none of them was crazy about her milk (“tastes like old socks,” Miss Rogers said). So Belle lived a lazy life in her backyard pen and Roseanne walked the two blocks to Mr. Wellgood’s barn every morning and brought back a quart of straight-from-the-cow milk for breakfast.

  Magnolia Manor was the name Bessie had given to her family home after her father died, taking with him to the grave the Civil War military pension that had supported them both. Trying to come up with an idea that would earn some money, Bessie turned the place into a boardinghouse, which suited her own minimal needs and brought in enough to pay the taxes, buy coal and electricity, and buy meat and such staples as flour, sugar, coffee, and tea.

  The ladies didn’t pay much, because they didn’t have much. Mrs. Sedalius’ son (a doctor in Mobile) sent a small check once a month (just the check, never a letter). Miss Rogers earned a few dollars a week at the library. Leticia was a Civil War widow and got her husband’s pension, while Maxine owned two small houses and the tenants usually (but not always) paid rent. Roseanne had once lived in Maysville, but after her husband died and her daughters got married, she moved in with Bessie and traded her cooking and laundry talents for board and room. Both Roseanne and Bessie were satisfied with the arrangement, especially Roseanne, who was scared to death of ending up in the poorhouse. Cypress County had a poorhouse, of course—all the counties in the state were required to have one—but there wasn’t enough money to manage it right and nobody in her right mind wanted to end up there.

  Bessie had once read that in England, the government gave its elderly citizens an old-age pension. She thought this was a very good idea and wished that America would do this, too, the sooner the better. In fact, she had recently written an urgent letter to Senator Bankhead, telling him that he ought to get behind Huey P. Long’s proposal that everybody over sixty should receive a pension. But she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t get an answer. Huey Long thought that the government should guarantee every family in the nation five thousand dollars a year, and that nobody should earn more than a million dollars a year. People who had money didn’t like him. They thought he was dangerous, and he probably was, and a Communist and maybe he was that, too (although he said he wasn’t). But Bessie liked his ideas and wished that Huey P. Long could come over and take charge of Alabama, because Louisiana did not deserve him.

  She had even heard Huey P. Long on the radio. Two Christmases before, Mrs. Sedalius’ son (who probably felt guilty because he never came to visit) had sent his mother a Crosley five-tube table model radio. The ladies were scandalized, because Miss Rogers had seen an advertisement in Popular Mechanics and knew that it sold for fifty dollars. “See it, hear it!” exhorted the advertisement. “View the refreshing beauty of its solid mahogany cabinet. Watch the stations, written in on the graphic dial, parade before you and usher in their programs with unerring accuracy. Sharpen the reception with the Crosley Acuminators. Release inspiring volume by means of the Cresendon.”

  It took a while for the ladies to learn how to manage the acuminators and the cresendon and to replace the tubes when they burned out. But they persevered, and now they were very glad to have it. Bessie put the radio on the parlor table, and on warm evenings after supper, they liked to sit out on the front porch with the window open, listening to radio shows. The Aldrich Family was a favorite (they all chimed in with Mrs. Aldrich’s “Henry! Henry Aldrich!” and Henry’s quavery reply: “Coming, Mother.”) They enjoyed popular music, too, particularly the older songs: “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” and “I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time” and “Smilin’ Through.”

  While they listened, Leticia and Maxine played games—Parcheesi, pinochle, canasta. Tonight they were playing checkers, betting heavily with pieces of colored cardboard marked as ones, fives, and tens. Roseanne, piecing another quilt, sat on the porch swing next to Mrs. Sedalius, who was knitting caps for the poor children at her church. Since the yarn was donated, it came in wild colors that nobody else wanted, and since Mrs. Sedalius didn’t have much color sense, the caps were even wilder combinations. Bessie always wondered whether even the poor children would wear them. Miss Rogers sat off to one side, reading a library book. Bessie herself brought out a small table and worked on her local history scrapbook.

  It was nice that the ladies were such a companionable lot, Bessie thought as she turned the pages of her scrapbook. Oh, there was the usual good-natured bickering about the checkers game, and Miss Rogers was always imploring someone to Please! Turn the radio down, if you don’t mind, But they had lived together for several years now and they were more like sisters than housemates—although of course, sisters had their differences. Even Miss Rogers (who Bessie knew was disappointed in the way her life had turned out and would have preferred to live alone if she could have afforded it) usually managed to keep her contrary opinions to herself in the evenings.

  So by unspoken agreement, they all sat together on the porch for an hour or two before bed, while the softly scented evening grew darker and the birds sang themselves to sleep in the cucumber tree in front of the Dahlias’ clubhouse next door. It was at this time in the evening that Bessie missed old Dahlia Blackstone very much, for she had often come through the gap in the cherry laurel hedge (Prunus caroliniana, according to Miss Rogers) to listen to the radio with them, bringing along her knitting or crocheting.

  Of all the Darling Dahlias, Bessie herself had probably been the closest to the old lady, which was only right, seeing that they had been next-door neighbors as long as they could remember. Of course, they were more than just neighbors, for they had shared a love of local history and of gardening. Bessie had spent a great many pleasant mornings in Mrs. Blackstone’s garden, listening to her stories about the old days and helping her with various garden chores, until she became so infirm that she couldn’t manage a rake or a hoe or a pair of clippers. Mrs. Blackstone was a good teacher and generous with garden advice.

  Now Bessie always felt sad when she glanced out her bedroom window at Mrs. Blackstone’s overgrown back garden, or out her parlor window at the cucumber tree in front of Mrs. Blackstone’s house. The old lady had loved that tree so much and always looked forward to its blooms. This spring was the first in over eighty years that the cucumber tree would dress itself in all its beautiful blossoms and Mrs. Blackstone wouldn’t be here to see and appreciate it.

  A noisy automobile went past on Camellia Street, coughing out a cloud of oily white smoke. Miss Rogers lifted her head and sniffed the air distastefully. Bessie sighed. It wasn’t just the passing of Mrs. Blackstone that made her sad these days. It was the inexorable passage of time, and the many changes time had brought to Darling, unwelcome changes, in her opinion. She remembered when people could sit out on their front porches in the evening—or during the day, for that matter—and not hear any noise at all, except for the laughter of the children at their games, or the barkin
g of one of the neighborhood dogs, or the soft clop-clop of a horse’s hooves in the dust of the street. Oh, they might hear the railroad train, but the tracks were on the other side of town, and the train ran only once a day.

  Now the motor cars were everywhere, and trucks, too, and motorcycles. And even airplanes flying low overhead on their way between Mobile and Montgomery, or landing at the grassy airstrip out at the county fairgrounds. Barnstormers might delight the young boys in town, but when the planes did loop-the-loops over the town, the earsplitting noise rattled everybody’s windows and scared the horses and dogs. And while Bessie liked their own radio, she wasn’t all that fond of the across-the-street neighbors’ choice in music. Jazz, and they turned it up so loudly that half the neighborhood complained. Bessie often longed for the days before the Great War, when the world seemed so much quieter and slower than it did now. But she was enough of a realist to know that modern life was upon them. The world was whirling like a kaleidoscope, faster and faster, everything blurring together. Nobody could stop what was happening—and worse, nobody seemed to want to.

  When nine o’clock came, Miss Rogers (always the first to leave, since she wanted first turn in the bathroom) closed her book, and went upstairs. Mrs. Sedalius yawned and said that tomorrow was going to be busy, since the visiting nurse would be in town and it was her day to volunteer. “And with the Cartwright ghost wandering around, we’d all better get into our beds,” she warned, stuffing her knitting into her bag.

  “I’d personally be more concerned about that escaped convict,” Maxine said. “He could be hiding out in half a dozen places around town.”

  “Why would he hang around here, where somebody could catch him?” Leticia asked reasonably. “He’s probably in Memphis or Nashville by now. Or Chicago.” She jotted some numbers on a slip of paper. “You owe me thirty-seven dollars, Maxine.”

  Maxine, who hated to lose, scowled at the piece of paper. “I thought it was thirty-four. You’d better add it again, Let-tie. Don’t forget what happened last time.”

  “What happened last time was that you added wrong,” Leticia replied. She grinned amiably. “Come on, Max. Don’t be a sore loser. Fork it over. Thirty-seven dollars.”

  “Not until you add it up again,” Maxine retorted, but she began counting her pieces of colored cardboard.

  Mrs. Sedalius got up. “You girls can sit here and argue all you want. I am going to make my nightcap and go to my room, where I don’t have to worry about that ghost.” She went off to the kitchen to heat up a pan of milk on the gas range and make herself a cup of Ovaltine. It helped her sleep, she claimed, although everybody knew it was really the bootleg rum that she kept under her bed that put her to sleep.

  The business about the ghost was nonsense of course, although Bessie didn’t contradict her. Roseanne, however, was deathly afraid of ghosts, so she went quickly to her room and shut the door and put a chair against it—a practice Bessie discouraged (in case of fire) but could not stop.

  By the time Mrs. Sedalius carried her nightly cup of Ovaltine out of the kitchen, Leticia and Maxine were headed in that direction to make the toasted cheese sandwiches and cocoa that they enjoyed before bedtime. Bessie and Roseanne were partial to popcorn, and they always made sure that there were enough of these little treats on hand so that everyone could have what she wanted. The world might be going to hell in a handbasket, as Bessie’s father liked to put it—in fact, judging from the stories she read in the Dispatch about people losing their jobs and their houses, that was exactly what was happening. But if they could afford just a few little treats, Bessie told herself, maybe they could fool themselves into feeling that they were rich. Or at least, not poor. You couldn’t be poor if you had a toasted cheese sandwich and cocoa every night.

  Bessie herself always put up her gray hair in spit curls before she went to sleep, sitting at her dressing table and twisting the hair neatly around her finger and pinning the curls to her scalp with bobby pins. She used a setting lotion made of boiled flaxseed and always set two rows in the front, three over each ear, two in the back. Then she covered the curls carefully with a ruffled pink net cap, put on a pair of pink cotton summer pajamas, cold-creamed her face with Pond’s in a ritual battle against wrinkles, and opened the window, enjoying the wafting fragrance of the moonflowers and nicotiana blooming in the garden. The window open, she crawled into bed and went to sleep.

  But not for long.

  It was not quite midnight, according to the clock on her bedside table, when she heard it. The clank-clank-clank of a spade against stone—muffled, as if whoever was digging was trying to be quiet. She lay there for a moment, pretending that she wasn’t hearing it. But then there was a hesitant rap on her door.

  “Bessie?” asked a voice. “Are you awake? It’s Leticia.”

  “And Maxine,” said another voice.

  Bessie got out of bed and opened the door. Leticia was wearing a red plaid flannel dressing gown, belted around her thick middle. Maxine’s dressing gown was the same style, but flowered blue and purple. Maxine’s hair was twisted up in rags. Leticia’s long gray hair was braided into a single braid, over her shoulder.

  “Somebody’s digging,” Leticia said in a low voice. “In our garden.”

  “We heard him from our window,” Maxine added. The two of them shared the largest room at the far end of the hall.

  “Not in our garden,” amended Miss Rogers, coming out of her room. “In the Dahlias’ garden, next door.” She was wearing a silky gray gown and her hair was down around her shoulders. Bessie thought she looked ten years younger.

  Another door opened and Mrs. Sedalius joined them, her roly-poly self engulfed in a voluminous gold wrapper. “It’s not a him; it’s a her!” Mrs. Sedalius squeaked excitedly. “It’s the ghost! I saw her. Just now! Out my window!”

  “We thought you went to bed and covered up your head,” Maxine said. She flicked on the hallway ceiling light, and Bessie reached over quickly and flicked it off.

  “No lights,” she warned. “Whoever that is out there, we don’t want him to know we’re awake. Or her,” she added.

  “What ghost?” Leticia asked with interest. “The Cartwright ghost again?”

  “The one looking for her buried baby,” Mrs. Sedalius said mournfully. “Buried in a little wood box.”

  “Or the Cartwright family treasure,” Bessie replied, remembering the story Dahlia had told her once. “It was buried.”

  “Or her shoes,” Maxine said. “I heard that the ghost lost her shoes. That’s what she’s looking for.”

  “With a shovel?” Leticia asked. “Why does she need a shovel to look for her shoes?”

  There was the sound of a chair scraping, and Roseanne, her brown face almost gray with fright, came into the hall, clutching her flannel nightgown to her. “I heard y‘all talkin’ ‘bout that ghost,” she said tearfully. “Is that po’ Miz Cornelia out there agin, diggin’ for that sweet lit’le chile?” She shivered.

  “It’s all right, Roseanne,” Maxine said in a comforting tone, and put an arm around her. “Whatever it is, it’s out there, not in here. You’re safe.”

  Roseanne whimpered.

  “This is all nonsense, you know,” Bessie said firmly. “There are no such things as ghosts.”

  “That is not necessarily true,” Miss Rogers put in, in her dry, precise tone. “Ghosts are a phenomenon of the imagination. To the person who believes that there is such a thing, it is a fact, not a fancy. However, in this case, it was the Cartwright family silver that was buried, not a baby.”

  “It wa’n’t no silver, it was a baby!” Roseanne cried. Despite Maxine’s steadying arm, she was trembling. “Her baby! The one Miz Cornelia birthed while Miz Dahlia was down there in Mobile.”

  “Oh, really?” Bessie asked, interested. “I’ve never heard that. What Mrs. Blackstone told me was that she was sent to Mobile because her mother had consumption.”

  “It’s a tale ain’t often told,” Roseanne retorted,
“an’ maybe the white folks don’ know it. But it’s true. My grandma tol’ me, an’ she was there. Miz Cartwright birthed that baby while her husband was off to the War. Miz Dahlia was sent away so she wouldn’t know nothin’ ’bout it.” She shook her head. “She knew all the same, though. She knew.”

  “Ah,” Bessie said, remembering that Dahlia had never liked to talk about what happened during the war years. She always said it was too painful. Bessie had assumed that it was the pain of the armed conflict the old lady was referring to, but of course pain came in all shapes and sizes.

  Maxine released Roseanne and regarded her curiously. “If Colonel Cartwright was off killing Yankees with General Lee, who was the father of the baby?” She paused. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

  Roseanne pressed her lips together.

  “Come on, Roseanne,” Leticia coaxed. “You brought it up. You have to tell the rest of it. Who was he?”

  “Please, Roseanne,” Bessie said. “This could be important. It’s a bit of local history that people don’t know.” Everyone always said that the colored help knew more about their white folks’ families than the white folks’ friends and relations. And if this story about Cornelia Cartwright were true, she could understand why Dahlia didn’t like to talk about the ghost.

  “Yes, Roseanne,” Mrs. Sedalius said. “You have to tell us.”

  There was a long silence. “Well, I reckon they’s all dead now, even Miz Dahlia, so they ain’t no point in keepin’ it hid,” Roseanne said finally. “Baby’s daddy was the colonel’s plantation manager.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Name of Adam. He had a white daddy, colored mama. Was a slave, ’til Mr. Lincoln set him free. Handsomest man ever was in this world, they say. Won Miz Cornelia’s heart.”

  “Oh, my goodness gracious!” Miss Rogers recoiled in horror. “How could she?”

  Maxine looked at Miss Rogers and shook her head. “I guess you don’t know about love,” she said quietly.