When Grandmamma Was New: The Story of a Virginia Childhood

The Tragedy of Rozillah

UST look at her now, Molly! Isn't she the sweetest thing you ever saw?"

Molly, that is, Myself, sitting on the door-step, elbows on knees and shoulders hunched sullenly up to my ears, did not budge or speak.

Before my gloomy eyes was the kitchen yard, a gray and gritty expanse, with never a tree or bush to shade it except the lilac hedge bounding it on the garden side, and one sickly peach tree growing at the corner of "the house." Three hens and one rooster were scratching about the flat stone at the kitchen door.

On the other three sides of the house were rustling boughs and cool grass and flower-beds. It suited my humor to sit in the scanty strip of shadow cast by the eaves, my feet upon the step that had soaked in the noonday heat, and to be as wretched as a five-year-old could make herself, with a sharp sense of injury boring like a bit of steel into her small soul. The room behind me was my mother's-the "chamber" of the Southern home. A big four-poster, hung with dimity curtains, stood in the farther corner. The dimity valance, trimmed, like the curtains, with ball fringe, hid the trundle-bed that was pulled out at night for Mary 'Liza and me to sleep in. At the foot of the bed was my baby brother's cradle. As Mam' Chloe was walking with him in the garden, it should have been empty. Whereas, Mary 'Liza was putting her doll-baby to sleep in it. We said "doll-baby" in those days. There was Musidora, my rag-baby, who was a beauty when she was new.

She was not old now, but Fate had been unkind to her. Twice I had left her out-of-doors all night. The first time was when I laid her at the foot of a particularly tall corn-stalk, telling her that I would return presently, but could not find her at all when I went back. I was up and out early next morning and "found her indeed, but it made my heart bleed," for a field mouse-with six acres of roasting-ears to choose from-had made his supper on the bran that served my poor Musidora for brains, nibbling a hole in the exact region of the medulla oblongata. My mother plugged the cranium with raw cotton and stitched up the wound, and the dear patient was doing better than could be expected, when there was a thunder-storm and Musidora was on a bench in the summer-house. The rain lasted all night, and I could not go out again.

One immediate and obvious consequence of this adventure was that there was nothing left of Musidora's features except her eyebrows, which were laid on with indelible ink instead of water-colors. She hung, head downward, in front of the kitchen fire for twelve hours before she was thoroughly dry. My mother "indicated" eyes, nose, and mouth with pen-and-ink, but the effect was flat and mournful.

While I sat in the door that evening, putting on Musidora's night-gown, I overheard Mam' Chloe say to my mother:-

"I declar' to gracious, Miss Ma'y Anna, you ought to buy that chile a sure-'nough doll-baby while you are in town. It f'yar breaks my heart to see how much store she sets by that po' wrack of a rag thing she's got thar."

My mother's reply was so low that I did not catch it, but her tone was not unpromising. I said nothing to her, or to anybody of what I had heard. Only, of course, Musidora and I talked it all over. I assured her that she was going to have a beautiful sister who would love her and play with her and tell her stories of the wonderful city, and of how happy we three should be together.

My father and mother went away to Richmond. They took the baby with them, and Mary 'Liza and I were sent to my Aunt Eliza Carter's to stay until they returned, when Cousin Molly Belle took us back home and told my mother before my face that I had been as "good as gold."

"I am very glad to hear it," said my mother, giving me a squeeze and kiss. "I was afraid she might be troublesome. She is not as steady as Mary 'Liza, you know. I have something nice in my trunk for each of my daughters."

She always spoke of us in that way, although Mary 'Liza was her niece, and an orphan. She was seven now, and the pattern child of the county. Pretty, too, with a fair skin and shiny braids of golden hair, and innocent blue eyes, and dimpled arms, and fluffy, kittenish ways, while I was as lean as a snake, as brown as a chinquapin, and as wild as a hawk. I was used to hearing myself compared to all three. Mary 'Liza could read in the New Testament without stopping to spell a word, at three, and write in a copy-book at five, and do sums on the slate at six, and at seven was as much company to my mother as if she had been seventeen. In a word, my cousin was "a comfort." I was often called "a plague."

Yet, as I can honestly affirm, I had never known, until this black day when Cousin Molly Belle took me home, what it was to be envious. I was not exactly fond of my cousin, yet we seldom disagreed openly. She wore clean frocks and liked to stay indoors and piece bedquilts and knit stockings and read aloud to my mother. I never willingly spent an hour in the house when I could get out, and had odd plays of my own which I kept secret from Mary 'Liza because I was sure she would be shocked, or laugh at them. I fully recognized the claims of orphanhood to the buttered side of life, and that a girl who had no father or mother deserved to be cared for by everybody else.

My parents had arrived late at night, and the trunk was unpacked with much ceremony the next morning. Under my mother's best new dresses was a long pasteboard box which she opened, smiling at our expectant faces. From it she drew the biggest, prettiest doll-baby we had ever seen, in a blue silk frock with a sash to match. She had real hair, curly and black as a coal, and round black eyes and a cherry-ripe mouth. I reached out both hands, and a cry of rapture rushed from my heart to my lips-an inarticulate gurgle of ineffable happiness.

My mother did not see my gesture. I hope she did not hear the cry. She laid the doll-baby in Mary 'Liza's arms.

"Mrs. Hutcheson, who was your mother's dearest friend, sent that to you with her love."

For me there was a trumpery book, with very few pictures, and a good deal of reading in it-also from Mrs. Hutcheson.

"She thought it might coax you to learn how to read. I was ashamed to have to say that my little girl does not know her letters yet," said my much-tried parent. "And your father brought you a Noah's Ark."

I received book and Ark without a word, and marched toward the door, my heart ready to break.

"What do you say for your presents, Molly?"

I stood stock-still, my eyes on the floor.

My mother quietly and sorrowfully took the painted Ark from my hand.

"When you can say 'thank you,' and stop pouting, you can have it back," she said, in gentle severity.

I dashed from the room around the house to the end porch. It was high enough for me to stand upright under it and the sides were screened by a climbing sweetbrier. I had often played Daniel in the lion's den there, assisted by a caste of small colored children. They were the lions, I, with the choice of parts, electing invariably to play the persecuted and finally triumphant biped. The fury of forty wild beasts was in my heart, as I pushed aside the prickly branches and crept into my lair. The den was paved with bricks, loosely laid. With a pointed stick I pried one up, and scooped out with my hands a grave deep enough to hold the hateful book with the few pictures and the much reading. I thrust it in without benefit of clergy, hustled the earth back upon it, pounded the brick into place, and lay flat down upon the dishonored tomb.

Mam' Chloe found me there at dinner-time, fast asleep. She dragged me back to consciousness and the open air by the heels. Not in wanton cruelty, but she was a large woman, and could get at me in no other way. While she washed and made me decent in clean frock, apron, and pantalettes, she scolded me for my "low-lived, onladylike ways," and warned me of her solemn intention to "tell my mother on me," the next time such a disgraceful thing happened. I did not mind the lecture. I knew Mam' Chloe, and she (Heaven rest her white, faithful soul in the Kingdom where the bond are free!) knew me, I verily believe, better than the mother that bore me.

Toilet and tirade ended, she slid me, as she might a proscribed book, through a crack in the side-door into the dining room, where Uncle Ike, her husband, was in waiting. He, in turn, smuggled me behind my mother's back to the side-table, there being no room for us children at the main board that day.

None of the dozen grown-up diners noticed me, or that Mary 'Liza, sitting prim and dainty on her side of our table, had her doll by her in another chair, and interrupted her meal, once in a while, to caress her or to re-arrange her curls and skirts. I affected not to see the pantomime, which I chose to assume was enacted for my further exasperation. I was apparently as indifferent to Uncle Ike's shameless partiality in loading my plate with choice tidbits, such as a gizzard, a merry-thought, or a cheese-cake, while Mary 'Liza had to ask twice for what she wanted. What was not tasteless was bitter to my palate. I wondered, dully, why the sight of the doll-baby and the fuss her owner made over her, turned me sick. As soon as I could get away, I slipped down, and out at the friendly side-door, and went to find Musidora. There was a new bond of union between us. She had no beautiful sister, I no beautiful daughter. Sitting down upon the hot step, before the kitchen yard, I hugged her hard and cried a little over her, in a brief, stormy way. The tears hurt me, as they came, and did not ease the hot ache in my chest or the lump in my throat.

At this juncture, when my misery was at its height, I heard Mary 'Liza in the chamber behind me, cooing to, and hushing her doll-baby, with tones and words copied faithfully from my mother's talk over my brother's cradle.

"Wouldn't you like to rock her a little while?" she called presently. "I wouldn't mind if you'd promise not to touch her. Sometimes your hands are not clean, you know."

I set my jaws savagely outside of my leaping tongue, not moving or looking up when I felt her standing close by me. Musidora had dropped from my lap, and lay, face downward, on the step. Mary 'Liza picked her up, and brushed the dust from her inexpressive visage.

"Poor thing!" purred she. "I hope nothing will ever happen to Rozillah. Isn't that a love-el-ly? I made it out of my own head from Rosa and Zillah, two love-el-ly girls I read of in a book."

"I think it is a nasty name," was my deliberate reply.

She recoiled with a fine horror which stung me like a nettle.

"Oh, Molly! what a word for a little lady to use!"

I looked up at her for the first time, my eyes burning in dry sockets.

"I think your doll-baby is nasty, and Rozillah is a nigger name! So there!"

I could command no worse language, for I knew none.

Mary 'Liza looked shocked and terrified. She glanced right and left and upward nervously, as fearing the punishment of heaven upon me.

"I am afraid that you are in a very bad humor," she faltered, her self-possession forsaking her for a moment. "I'd better leave you."

She had gone a dozen paces when she glanced over her shoulder to say, in her most grown-up and judicial manner:-

"I hope you will not make any noise and wake Rozillah up."

I rose and went straight to the cradle as soon as my cousin was out of sight. Cold, deadly fury possessed and filled me, casting out fear of consequences and routing the weakling conscience engendered and nourished by parental counsel. I plucked Rozillah from her downy bed and bore her into the air, cuffing her polished red cheeks soundly on the way. Then I stripped off her gay raiment and knotted the ribbon sash about her smooth neck. I had never tied a knot before, but this held, as did the loop I cast over a projecting branch of the sickly peach-sapling. Naked and forlorn, Rozillah dangled a foot and more from the ground. I fetched my father's riding-whip from the hall table, and the last feeble check upon my fury was released.

The next I knew a pair of cool, white arms closed about me and the whip together, and Cousin Molly Belle's voice, half-laughing, half-horrified, cried through the roaring in my ears:-

"Dear little Namesake! what has got into you?"

All at once, red mists parted and rolled away from my eyes, and I became conscious that Mary 'Liza was jumping up and down and screaming piteously, that everybody was on the spot-my father and mother and all the dinner company, and Mam' Chloe with the baby in her arms, and a ring of my small black servitors on the outside of the group; also that all eyes were focussed on me and what was left of Rozillah.

The lash had drawn sawdust at every blow. One arm and both legs were torn off and weltered in the scattered stuffing beneath; the crop of black curls was tangled in the topmost limb of the sapling. The blue silk gown would never fit the pliant waist again. Rozillah was beyond the possibility of reconstruction.

I threw my arms around Cousin Molly Belle's neck, and burst into a torrent of childish tears.

I think I must have been whipped for that afternoon's work. I ought to have been, and Solomon, as a disciplinarian, was in high repute in the family connection. I am sure that I was put forthwith to bed and left alone for an eternity without even Musidora to bear me company. I had an indefinite impression that they feared the effect of association with such a wicked child upon her morals and manners.

I recollect that my mother brought me the bread and milk which was all the supper I was to have, and talked me tenderly into tears.

But most vividly do I recall the apparition which stole into my solitude after supper-which I had scented longingly from afar. A wraith all in white-gown and neck and arms and face, the masses of fluffy hair making this last more wraith-like. It sank to the floor beside my low bed, and gathered me, miserable culprit, in a cuddling embrace, and bade me "tell Cousin all about it-the whole truly truth."

I could always talk to her, and I began at the beginning and went straight and steadfastly through to the nauseous end.

I did not cry while I talked, and when struck by her silence I raised a timid hand to her dear cheek and found it wet, I was surprised.

"Why, Cousin Molly Belle!" I stammered. "Are you so angry with me as that?"

"Angry? yes, Namesake, but not with you, poor little sinner! You and I are always getting into scrapes-aren't we? Maybe that is why I am going to ask your mother to let you sleep with me to-night."

Which delicious cup of happiness consoled the outgoing of the first tragical day of my life.

* * *