Chapter 3. Rosewell
In the high heat of the Georgia summer, Ferolene and Lilun regularly
hauled Carey’s galvanized metal washtubs outdoors, filled them at the pump, and
dragged them by their handles across the sandy yard to a shady spot beneath the
sage trees.
Dressed in their bathing suits, they slid down to their shoulders in the
cool water and splashed as much as the tubs’ confines allowed, while discussing
future enterprises and current projects, the acquisition of a new jump rope,
investigation of a recent news bulletin concerning used, high-top roller skates
for sale at the Tincup grocery.
The tubs full to the brim, each dared the other to duck under all the
way, to practice for the future swimming pool where they would dive and perform
ballet movements beneath the water in emulation of their aquatic heroine from
the picture show.
Ferolene perfected a shoulder stand that allowed her to balance
precisely with her hands pressed against the bottom of the tub, her head and
face fully submerged, her long, skinny legs lifted straight up into the air,
toes straining skyward. She told Lilun
she could see high clouds through the lens of the tub water.
Lilun’s own shoulder stand was precarious, far more wobbly than that of
her friend, and compromised by intense fear of accidentally inhaling water,
something that happened time and again, resulting in coughing, spluttering, and
tears. Ferolene patiently coached and
encouraged, advising Lilun on just how to hold her breath, how to exhale
slowly, praising again the unique beauty of the outside world viewed from
beneath the water.
Carey sat in the kitchen beside the open door, her mending in her lap,
listening to the conversation in the back yard.
She had just made up her mind to intervene lest Lilun finally drown in a
washtub full of water, when an entirely different accident drew her
outdoors.
All at once Ferolene drew her head up out of the water and shrieked,
high and loud. She splashed her feet
straight down into the washtub, jumped over the side, and, clapping one hand to
her bottom, danced up and down, whimpering in pain.
Carey dropped her needle and ran quickly to draw the wet bathing suit
down over the child’s hips. Immediately,
she spotted the tiny, guilty stinger hanging fast in the swelling flesh. Ferolene had been stung on her backside as
she raised it up into the air where the buzzing bees were working the purple
sage blossoms nearby. The bee attacked
the upper thigh just below the edge of the protecting garment.
Above the sting, on Ferolene’s otherwise smooth round buttock, Carey’s
eye fell on a sight that took her breath away.
A scar, a concave rope of pink flesh, shaped in a perfect curve like the
bottom of a small boat, three miniature knots resting above and within its
interior space, like three peas in a row, marked the child’s body, carved into
her skin.
Ferolene heard the sharp intake of breath and looked around over her
shoulder at Carey.
“I’m, I’m, uh….., I’m just gone run in and get the tweezers for to take
out that bad stinger,” Carey stammered.
“An I’m gone bring some salve to make the burn go way. You be a brave
lil’ gal and you stand still one minute – I be right back.”
She reeled toward the kitchen door, grasped the edge of the table
inside, and lowered herself into the chair, her knees trembling. The face of an old woman, framed in a thicket
of snow white hair, hovered before her eyes, her great-great-grandmother, born
into slavery in Gloucester County, Virginia.
Carey was twelve years old in the summer of 1902, when her mother took
her to visit the old woman at the great plantation called Rosewell. Home of the Page family, it was the finest,
most beautiful house ever built in Virginia, she was told. Mister Thomas Jefferson himself had often
come over to stay with Mister John Page, ferrying across the York River from
Williamsburg, where they were both studying at the College of William and
Mary. They used to sit up on the great
lead roof between the glassed-in turrets, all in the dark, watching the stars
through the telescope they kept up there, talking long into the night.
Pictures crowded into her mind, memories of the smoky cabin, the strong
smell of greasy tallow, the sad look of the enormous brick house, the largest
she had ever seen, unhappily altered by time and an irreverent owner, many of
its window panes broken or missing, like eyes put out and left to stare into a
void.
No recollection, however, remained as robust and resilient as that of
the old woman’s admonition, or of the hoarse but imperative tones of her voice. Carey must swear an oath to remember
everything she was told that day, her twice great grandmother had said. It was a sacred trust to know about the sign,
and the knowledge of it a responsibility not to be taken lightly. It was the mark of a great queen, one of
marvelous saving power, a sign passed down from one generation to another since
the beginning of time. Carey would surely see it one day. She was bound to see it. She must know it when she did.
And Carey had just seen it here.
In Tincup, Georgia. On the
backside of Ferolene Ann Banks.
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