I peer into the mirror and sigh. The beautiful reflection staring back at me only serves to further dampen my spirits; if only Philippe were to see me tonight. But it is naught to be, for such a man, dashing and tantalizingly "dangerous" will never be welcomed into my parent's home, my cousin though he may be. I let my cheeks fill with air and blow it out exasperatedly, and the buzzing sound brings Mammy waddling in from the next room.
"What you be doin', Ellen Robillard? You ain't fantasizin' none over dat boy, is ya?"
Mammy knows me too well for me to lie, and I simply bow my head, knowing that protests will only strike blows at my dignity. She shakes her head at me, wanting me to be a well respected, proper lady just as much as my parents do but knowing me well enough to see that that part of me is only a façade, raised and lowered with as much ease as a delicate fan. Mammy clicks her tongue and busies herself rearranging the many petticoats under my skirt. She's already done this, after pulling my stays tight and yanking my bell shaped dress over my smoothly arranged hair, but I let her do it again, knowing she's trying to keep herself busy to keep from saying anything she shouldn't about Philippe. She'll scold me later, as she always does, but I know she doesn't want to risk upsetting me before the party. Even I, master at maintaining an image of genteel serenity, can't descend that winding staircase having hidden red, puffy eyes. So Mammy makes do with my skirts, knowing full well that I know exactly what she is thinking. Mammy is so dear to me; never, even in my anguish, can I raise my voice at her. Though I don't raise my voice much at all; not everything my parents see is false. The sweet, "ladylike" compassion– it's the lack of independence, the subdued front that isn't. Aside from Mammy, it is only Philippe that sees all of me.
Philippe, with his dark eyes that swing open into a soul of raging passion, of past wrongs and future dreams and present destruction.
I shake thoughts of Philippe off my mind; I can giggle and daydream all I want later. But right now I have to be the Ellen that my father knows. The Ellen that serves as a replacement for his deceased wife, who is to fill her shoes with her own lady like deportment and genteel manners.
Hours later, stiff necked and light headed, I am able to glide up the stairs buoyed by the knowledge that I will see my darling tomorrow. Tomorrow. The thought of tomorrow has bolstered me throughout all of today, and keeps me standing ramrod straight and smiling even as Mammy berates me for my forbidden love. Nothing she says can hurt me, as she well knows, and I go to sleep with a secret smile across my lips that, if seen, would reveal everything I am thinking more expressively than any words ever could.
I wake up with a feeling of warmth, knowing that today I will see Philippe, and that is all I need.
My euphoria doesn't last, for when I finally go downstairs and meet the family at the table, I am met by twin smirks on my sisters' creamy faces and a look of smug satisfaction on my father's. What have they done? My corset seems to narrow in width as Father opens his mouth, each lace giving a vicious yank at every word he says. And the next thing I know, I am lying weakly on my bed, staring up and sinking down with the knowledge that Philippe is gone.
Gone to Louisiana at the coercion of my father. My father and this stifling place, this place of rigidity and law. This place that I must escape, now, for if I'm to live without Philippe I am to live without my father and his restraint. Mind made up, I swirl back down into darkness.
Life continues a shadow of what it had been, the outline of hope following me throughout my daily life as I am stuck, oppressed in Savannah. Could he come back? Could I go to him? He must still love me.
But even this fragile hope is more than destroyed the night that Mammy brings me the package. The package that I will remember for the rest of my days, that may as well have been a casket for all it conveyed. I am brushing out my hair when Mammy tiptoes in, unleashing my pent up fury at the tangled areas on my scalp. Mammy's tread alerts me; she is never afraid of anything and knows that she, not I, am in charge here, even though she is the slave and I the master. I turn to her with trepidation, and her arm extends mutely holding a package, addressed to me from New Orleans in an indecipherable hand. Heart falling alternately down to my feet and zipping up to my scalp, I pry open the passage before pitching it onto the floor with a violent cry. In opening the package, my eyes had been met by a miniature of myself, one I'd give to Philippe, as well as four letters I had written him and a letter from a priest detailing the death of my beloved cousin in a courteous manner that made my fingers on the paper prickle with fury. A barroom brawl. My precious Philippe had died like a lowlife in a barroom brawl because of my family, my cursed father and Eulalie and Pauline. "They drove him away," I cry, "I hate them. I hate them all. I never want to see them again. I want to get away. I will go away where I'll never see them again, or this town, or anyone who reminds me of – of - him." And then I collapse onto my bed and sob thick, ugly tears, hearing Mammy join in weeping above me.
My life is like a black and white cameo, sucked of its joys and driven by nothing but the intense desire to escape. So when that escape comes in the form of a 43 year old Irishman, I take it, knowing that marrying kind hearted Gerald O'Hara will scandalize my father and repay him in part for the irreparable damage he has inflicted upon his daughter. My only response, again and again to my father's outrage, is that "I will do it. He is a kind man. I will do it or go into the convent at Charleston." Both are almost the same to me, escape from Savannah yet no closer to Philippe. And so Father caves and allows me to marry the middle aged man who stands only as tall as I sit and never dreams that there is something hidden inside of me that he cannot see.
Maybe…maybe someday I can train myself to really be this woman, this exquisite lady of whom everyone squints and sees that I already am. There's no reason not to, anymore. No reason to maintain the fire that once danced inside of me, or to laugh and cry with the intensity of raging life, to hope and dream of things no longer possible. Nothing to keep me straining at the bonds that hold me back, for where could I possibly want to go? No. Now, my role is wife, my role is mother, and I will rear my children as the ladies and gentlemen that I was to be and will soon be. I won't let them fly away like I only to come crashing back down. I need to hone this despair inside of me and use it to fuel domesticity, maternity, gentility, healing, and grace, must convert it to elegance and delicacy and ladyship.
And Philippe…though right now my mind and body are calling out to him with all that I am and all that I was and will be, I must never think of him again.