The Gilda Stories Page 5

  “What do you mean?”

  “Watch yourself, is all.” Minta said it softly and would speak no more. The Girl was puzzled and made anxious by the edge in Minta’s voice as well as the silence that followed. Her look of frustration tugged at Minta. “There’s lots of folks down this way believe in ha’nts and such like. Spirits. Creoles, like Miss Gilda, and Indians, they follow all that stuff.” Minta spoke low, bending at the waist as if to make the words come out softer. “I like her fine, even though some folks don’t. Just watch, is all.” She skittered through the garden to the kitchen door.

  The Girl finished her weeding, then went to the kitchen steps to rinse her hands at the pump and dust her clothes. Bernice watched from the back porch.

  “What you say to Minta, she run upstairs?”

  “I ain’t certain. She’s so nervous I can’t get hold to what she sayin’ half a while. I know she wants me to go out there with her to stay with Rachel.”

  “What else?”

  “She afraid of something here. Sometimes I think maybe it’s Miss Gilda. What you think?”

  Bernice’s face closed as if a door had been locked. “You ain’t goin’, is you?”

  “I’m here for the war no matter what, if there’s gonna be one.”

  “Listen gal, you been lucky so far. You got a life, so don’t toss it in the air just to stay ’round here.” Behind Bernice’s voice the Girl could sense her conflict, her words both pushing the Girl away and needing her to stay.

  “My life’s here with you and Miss Gilda and Bird. What would I do in California—wear a hat and play lady?” she said, laughing loudly, nervously. She saw the same wary look on Bernice’s face that had filtered through Minta’s voice.

  “What is it? Why you questioning me with that look?” the Girl asked with a tinge of anger in her voice.

  “Nothin’. They just different. Not like regular people. Maybe that’s good. Who gonna know ’til they know?

  “You sayin’ they bad or somethin’?” The challenge wavered in the Girl’s throat as her own questions about Gilda and Bird slipped into her mind.

  “No.” The solid response reminded the Girl of how long Bernice had been at Woodard’s. “I’m just saying I don’t know who they are. After all the time I been here I still don’t know who Miss Gilda is. Inside I don’t really know what she thinkin’ like you do with most white folks. I don’t know who her people is. White folks is dyin’ to tell each other that. Not her. Now Bird, I got more an idea what she’s up to. She watch over Miss Gilda like… like…” Bernice’s voice trailed off as she struggled for words that spoke to this child who was now almost a woman.

  “That ain’t hurt you none, now has it?” The Girl’s response was hard with loyalty to the women who’d drawn her into their family.

  “Not me. I’m just waitin’ for the river to rise.” Bernice didn’t really worry about who Gilda and Bird were. Her concern was what would become of this Girl on her own.

  On a day soon after Gilda took the Girl and Bird with her to the farmhouse, Minta stood by the empty horse stall nearest the road. Her face was placid, yet she was again bent at the waist as if still whispering. The Girl caught a glimpse of her when the buggy rounded the bend in the road, and she leaned over looking back. She was excited about this journey away from the house, but Minta’s warnings itched her like the crinoline one of the girls had given her last Christmas.

  The evening sky was rolling with clouds as they drove the buggy south to the farm, yet the Girl could feel Gilda’s confidence that there would be no storm. They talked of many things but not the weather. Still, from simply looking into Gilda’s eyes and touching Bird’s hand she knew there was a storm somewhere. She felt a struggle brewing and longed to speak out, to warn them of how much everyone in town would need them when the war came. She knew that would not be the thing to say—Gilda liked to circle her point until she came to a place she thought would be right for speaking. It didn’t come on the road to the farmhouse.

  When the three arrived at the farmhouse, the Girl stored her small traveling box under the eaves in the tiny room she slept in whenever they visited here. She wondered if Minta knew Gilda spoke without speaking. That might be the reason she had cautioned her. But the Girl had no fear. Gilda, more often aloof than familiar, touched the Girl somehow. Words were only one of many ways of stepping inside of someone. The Girl smiled, recollecting her childish notion that Gilda was a man. Perhaps, she thought, living among the whites had given her a secret passage, but knowledge of Gilda came from a deeper place. It was a place kept hidden except from Bird.

  The fields to the north and west of the farmhouse lay fallow, trimmed but unworked. It was land much like the rest in the Delta sphere, warm and moist, almost blue in its richness—blood soil, some said. The not-tall house over the shallow root cellar seemed odd with its distinct aura of life set in the emptiness of the field. Gilda stood at the window looking out to the evening dark as Bird moved around her placing clothes in chests. Gilda tried to pull the strands together, to make a pattern of her life that was recognizable, therefore reinforceable. The farmhouse offered her peace but no answers. It was simply privacy away from the dissembling of the city and relief from the tides, which each noon and night pulled her energy, sucking her breath and leaving her lighter than air. The quietness of the house and its eagerness to hold her safe were like a firm hand on her shoulder. Here Gilda could relax enough to think. She had hardly come through the door before she let go of the world of Woodard’s. Still her thoughts always turned back toward the open sea and the burning sun.

  The final tie was Bird. Bird, the gentle, stern one who rarely flinched yet held on to her as if she were drowning in life. Too few of their own kind had passed through Woodard’s, and none had stayed very long. On their one trip west to visit Sorel, neither could tolerate the dust and noise of his town for more than several weeks. And until the Girl’s arrival, Gilda had met no one she sensed was the right one. To leave Bird alone in this world without others like herself would be more cruel than Gilda could ever be. The Girl must stay. She pushed back all doubts: Was the Girl too young? Would she grow to hate the life she’d be given? Would she abandon Bird? The answer was there in the child’s eyes. The decision loosened the tight muscles of Gilda’s back as if the deed were already done.

  The Girl did not know why they had included her in the trip to the farmhouse this time. They rarely brought her along at mid-season. The thought that they might want her to leave them made her more anxious than Minta’s soft voice. Yet each day Bird and she sat down for their lessons, and in the evening, when Gilda and Bird talked quietly together, they sought her out to join them. She would curl up in the corner, not speaking, only listening to the words that poured from them as they talked of the women back at the house, the politics in town, the war, and told adventurous stories. The Girl thought, at first, that they were made up, but she soon heard in the passion of their voices the truth of the stories Gilda and Bird had lived.

  Sometimes one of them would say, “Listen here, this is something you should know.” But there was no need for that. The Girl, now tall and lean with adulthood, clung to their words. She enjoyed the contrasting rhythms of their voices and the worlds of mystery they revealed.

  She sensed an urgency in Gilda—the stories had to be told, let free from her. And Bird, who also felt the urgency, did not become preoccupied with it but was happy that she and Gilda were spending time together again as it had been before. She unfolded her own history like soft deerskin. Bird gazed at the Girl, wrapped in a cotton shirt, her legs tucked under her on the floor, and felt that her presence gave them an unspoken completeness.

  She spoke before she thought. “This is like many times before the fire in my village.”

  “Ah, and who’s to play the part of your toothless elders, me or the Girl?” Gilda asked, smiling widely.

  The Girl laughed softly as Bird replied, “Both.”

  Gilda rose from the dark velve
t couch. Her face disappeared out of the low lamplight into the shadow. She stooped, lifted the Girl in her arms, and lay her on the couch. She sat down again and rested the Girl’s head in her lap. She stroked the Girl’s thick braids as Bird and she continued talking.

  In the next silence she asked the Girl, “What do you remember of your mother and sisters?” The Girl did not think of them except at night, just before sleeping, their memory her nightly prayers. She’d never spoken of them to Gilda, only to Bird when they exchanged stories during their reading lessons. Now the litany of names served as memory: Minerva, small, full of energy and questions; Florine, two years older than the Girl, unable to ever meet anyone’s eyes; and Martha, the oldest, broad-shouldered like their mother but more solemn. She described the feel of the pallet where she slept with her mother, rising early for breakfast duties—stirring porridge and setting out the rolls. She described the smell of bread, shiny with butter, and the snow-white raw cotton tinged with blood from her fingers.

  Of the home their mother spoke about, the Girl was less certain. It was always a dream place—distant, unreal. Except the talk of dancing. The Girl could close her eyes and almost hear the rhythmic shuffling of feet, the bells and gourds. All kept beat inside her body, and the feel of heat from an open fire made the dream place real. Talking of it now, her body rocked slightly as if she had been rewoven into that old circle of dancers. She poured out the images and names, proud of her own ability to weave a story. Bird smiled at her pupil who claimed her past, reassuring her silently.

  Each of the days at the farmhouse was much like the others. The Girl rose a bit later than when they were in the city, for there was little work to be done here. She dusted or read, walked in the field watching birds and rabbits. In the late afternoon she would hear Bird and Gilda stirring. They came out to speak to her from the shadows of the porch, but then they returned to their room, where the Girl heard the steady sound of their voices or the quiet scratching of pen on paper.

  The special quality of their life did not escape the Girl; it seemed more pronounced at the farmhouse, away from the activity of Woodard’s. She had found the large feed bags filled with dirt in the root cellar where she hid so long ago. She had felt the thin depth of soil beneath the carpets and weighted in their cloaks. Although they kept the dinner hour as a gathering time, they had never eaten in front of her. The Girl cooked her own meals, often eating alone, except when Bird prepared a corn pudding or a rabbit she had killed. Then they sat together as the Girl ate and Bird sipped tea. She had seen Gilda and Bird go out late in the night, both wearing breeches and woolen shirts. Sometimes they went together, other times separately. And both spoke to her without voices.

  The warning from Minta and the whispers of the secret religion, vodun, still did not frighten her. She had known deep fear and knew she could protect herself when she must. But there was no cause for fear of these two who slept so soundly in each other’s arms and treated her with such tenderness.

  On the afternoon of the eighth day at the farmhouse the Girl returned from a walk through the fields to get a drink of water from the back pump. She was surprised to hear, through the kitchen window, Gilda’s voice drawn tight in argument with Bird. There was silence from the rest of the room, then a burst of laughter from Gilda.

  “Do you see that we’re fighting only because we love each other? I insist we stop right this minute. I won’t have it on such a glorious evening.”

  The Girl could hear her moving around the small wooden table, pulling back a chair. Gilda did not sit in the chair, instead lowering herself onto Bird’s lap. Bird’s expression of surprise turned into a laugh, but the tension beneath it was not totally dispelled.

  “I’m sick of this talk. You go on about this leaving as if there is somewhere in the world you could go without me.”

  Her next words were cut short by Gilda’s hand on her mouth. And then Gilda’s soft, thin lips pressed her back in the chair.

  “Please, my love, let’s go to our room so I can feel the weight of your body on mine. Let’s compare the tones of our skin as we did when we were young.”

  Bird laughed just as she was expected to do. The little joking references to time and age were their private game. Even knowing there was more to the kisses and games right now, she longed to feel Gilda’s skin pressed tightly to her own. She stood up, still clasping Gilda to her breasts, and walked up the stairs with her as if she were a child.

  The Girl remained on the porch looking out into the field as the sun dropped quickly behind the trees. She loved the sound of Gilda and Bird laughing, but it seemed they did so only when they thought no others were listening. When it was fully dark she went into the kitchen to make supper for herself. She put on the kettle for tea, certain that Bird and Gilda would want some when they came down. She rooted through the clay jars until she had pulled together a collection of sweet-smelling herbs she thought worthy. She was eager to hear their laughter again.

  That evening Bird took the buggy out and called to the Girl to help load the laundry bags inside. The Girl was silent as she lifted the bags up to the buckboard platform to Bird, who kept glancing up at the windows.

  “Tell Minta I said hello.” The Girl spoke tentatively when the quiet seemed too large. “Tell her not to leave without me.” She figured that was a good enough joke since Minta had been deviling everybody with her dreamtalk of going west.

  Bird stood straight, dropping the final bundle on the floor of the buckboard, and looked down at the Girl. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m teasin’. She keep talkin’ about movin’ out there with Rachel like I goin’ with her.”

  Bird turned silent, sat, and grasped the reins of the restless horse. The Girl felt more compelled to fill the air. “I’m not goin’. ”

  “You could, you might want to. Eventually you’ll want to start your own life, your own family somewhere.” Bird’s voice was even, but the Girl recognized a false quiet in it from the times she had heard her arguing with Gilda or talking to drunken clients.

  “Any family startin’ to do will be done right here.” The Girl felt safe having finally said what she wanted out loud. She looked up at Bird’s face shyly and was pleased to see the flash of Bird’s teeth sparking her grin.

  Bird climbed up to the seat and spoke casually, the voice of the woman who always kept the house. “I’ll stay in town tonight and return tomorrow evening for tea. If there is any danger, you have only to call out to me.”

  Bird drew the horse out onto the road, leaving the Girl on the porch wondering what danger there might be. Her warning not to have concern was more frightening to her than Minta’s cautionary words.

  Upstairs, Gilda was silent in her room. She did not join the Girl after Bird was gone but came down later in the evening. She moved about the parlor, making a circle before resting on the arm of the sofa across from the Girl who sat in Bird’s favored chair. The Girl’s dark face was smooth, her brow wide and square under the braided rows that drew her thick, springy hair to the nape of her neck. Gilda wore pants and a shirt cinched tightly at her waist by soft leather studded with small white beads. She spoke to the Girl in silence. Do you know how many years I have lived?

  “Many more years than anyone.”

  Gilda rose and stood over the Girl. “I have Bird’s love and yours, I think?” The end of the sentence curled upward in a question.

  The Girl had not thought of love until the word was spoken. Yes, she loved them both. The remembered face of her mother was all she had loved until now. Tears slipped down her cheeks. Gilda’s sadness washed over her, and she felt the loss of her mother, new and cutting.

  “We can talk when I return.” Gilda closed the door and was lost in the darkness.

  The Girl walked through the house looking at their belongings as if it were the first time she had seen them—their dresses folded smoothly and the delicate linens, the chest that held small tailored breeches and flannel shirts that smelled of earth and lav
ender water.

  She touched the leather spines of the books which she longed to read; some were in languages she did not recognize. Sitting on the edge of the bed that Gilda and Bird shared, she looked patiently at each item in the room, inhaling their scent. The brushes, combs, and jars sat neatly aligned on the dressing table. The coverlet, rugs, and draperies felt thick, luxurious, yet the room was plain. Without Gilda and Bird in the house the rooms seemed incomplete. The Girl walked slowly through each one as if it were new to her, crossing back and forth, searching for something to soothe the unease that crept up into her. Everything appeared just as it had during all the days she had been with Gilda and Bird, except that she felt someone had gone before her as she did now, examining objects, replacing them, pulling out memories, laying them aside.

  When the house became cold, the Girl built a fire and curled up on the sofa under her cotton sheet. She fingered the small wooden frame with its rows of beads that Bird had been using to teach her accounting. The clicking of wood on wood was comforting. When Gilda returned she found the Girl asleep, clutching the abacus to her breast as she might a doll. The Girl woke up feeling Gilda’s eyes on her and knew it was late by the chill of the air. The fire glowed faintly under fresh logs.

  “We can talk now,” Gilda said as if she’d never gone out. She sat beside the Girl and held her hand.

  “There’s a war coming. It’s here already, truth be told…” She stopped. The effort of getting out those few words left her weary.

  “Do you understand when I tell you I can live through no more?”

  The Girl did not speak but thought of the night she decided to escape from the plantation.

  Gilda continued. “I’ve been afraid of living too long, and now is the end of my time. The night I found you in the cellar seems only a minute ago. But you were such a child, so full of terror, your journey had been more than the miles of road. When I picked you up your body relaxed into mine, knowing part of your fight was done. I sensed in you a spirit and understanding of the world; that you were the voice lacking among us. Seeing this world with you has given me wonderful years of pleasure. Now my only fear is leaving Bird alone. It’s you she needs here with her.”