Chapter One
The Golden Line
A long, long time ago before I became a so-called 'virtuous lady' living first class in a Victorian mansion I was but a poor girl living in a small town—I don't suppose you've heard of it—Bodie, California. But back then that small cabin was a palace and the town was my kingdom.
Bodie was a particularly short-lived town I guess, because last time I came back it was deserted. It was deserted only a few years after they took me back …
Sunshine on my face in the morning I raised my hands to a messy top of red hair and looked out my bedroom window. The street, even way out by the cabin was scurrying with townspeople already. I think I smiled at myself, a fresh day was to be ahead, and with that thought in mind I arose from my ancient straw mattress and went to pull my calico dress over my head and brush out my hair. The smells of the kitchen were leading me up. Momma Hattie and Elsie were there Momma Hattie was holding Elsie up so she could see out the window better. The delicious aroma that had earlier filled my sinuses turned out to be bacon frying with eggs.
"Hullo Momma Hattie, where's Jeremy?" I asked casually.
"Oh I don' know where that man is, but when he gets home he's sure gonna get a whoopin' from me!" I was quite surprised at Momma Hattie; she never spoke of Jeremy that way, even when he had been up drinking at one of the local bars.
"Didn't he come home last night?" I asked, I noticed Elsie's big black eyes were curiously moving from me to Momma.
"Ooh! He came home alrigh' he came home drunk, scarin' little Elsie somethin' wicked as well!" Momma Hattie burst out, her big black face blowing up in anger.
"Momma, are you alright?" I asked in a small voice. Elsie still locked confused, but a little fear, probably memories from yester-night, clouded her dark little eyes.
Momma gave me a look that clearly said "no I'm not alright!" I was concerned, but something told me to get my breakfast and leave it be. So being the gut-follower that I have always been I did …
By the end of the day even Momma Hattie was a little worried about Jeremy through her mutters of "serves 'him right!" or "maybe the alcohol finally got to 'im an' he dropped dead!" I knew she was more worried than either Elsie or me.
Elsie and I sat quiet by the fire, as I tied crimson ribbons into her hair, Elsie clutched June, her little rag doll tightly against herself. Finally the huge pine front door opened with a bang, it was Jeremy, Elsie ripped out of my clutches and ran fast towards the room, evident fear in her eyes, the little red ribbons disengaged them selves from her ebony hair as she flew into our bedroom, as Jeremy concernedly looked towards the path that his small daughter had run.
"Well, what are you sitting and staring for? I'm back!" Jeremy hollered, slowly the smile melted off his face. "What's wrong? Don't tell me you two are not glad to see me," he said a little less confidently.
I answered, "Jeremy, you scared all 'a us … ya didn't come back." I was just realizing that Elsie was peeking from the behind the wall.
What was left of a smile or gleam in his eye completely faded, I only called him Jeremy to his face when I was really angry at him, all other times it was Papa or Father.
"Hattie? Silvia? Didn't mean to scare ya, honest."
That's when Momma Hattie really blew up at him, right in front of little Elsie too! "Well ya did! You really did scare us! And all 'cause you jus' had to get a drink at Frankie's! Well I HOPE YOUR SATIS—" Slam! I carried Elsie into our room and slammed the door, so not to make Elsie listen to it.
"It's alright," I soothed, though I'm quite sure now that Elsie knew it wasn't. One thing I've learned is small children are smarter than we take them for. I rocked Elsie to sleep like Momma Hattie used to do, and lie her down in her bed.
For a few uneventful years after that night, Momma Hattie, Elsie, and I lived in the cabin … without Jeremy. It was quite the scandal for a little while, until some mysterious East-Coast man impregnated Nana Ackerson, then of course the town gossips moved on. I really couldn't blame them; Momma Hattie and Jeremy were the first separated man and wife in the town of Bodie, though I'm really sure they weren't the last.
One faithful December when I was thirteen years old and Elsie was eight, Elsie was diagnosed with Pneumonia, I didn't catch it, but Elsie was a very sick girl … distressing to say but she never recovered.
Momma Hattie was coming up with one of her famous remedies (which somehow always had sugar in it) in the kitchen, and I was cutting out colorful paper dolls for Elsie, it was obvious that this year, we would not have enough money to purchase too many Christmas presents, so I was making some. Elsie was still hot with a fever, we fed her bread along with cheese every once in a moon but otherwise Elsie was not in the mood for eating.
She was however always in the mood for storytelling, which I seemed to be good at (at least in Elsie's opinion) so I said or sang fairytales and myths to her a few times per day.
This time I told the story of Cinderella which was read out of an old book … "…and then Ella and the prince lived happily ever after, the end." I read, Elsie's little face bagged for more, but I was through for the night. Something told me not to go to sleep that night, yet I did. Sad to say little Elsie got worse and worse and by morning she was positively on fire with her eyes glued shut and her heartbeat weak.
Momma Hattie begged me to go to the Doctor's house. She didn't have to, for before she could finish I dashed out the door, wetting and soiling my pretty dress in the snow on the way to the Doctor's house all the long way across town. I didn't even notice that it was cold as new ice, and the sky was a particularly hideous shade of grey or even that the wind was raging like wild coyotes. All that mattered was Elsie and getting to the doctors.
Upon arrival at the doctor's house, I was quite cold and out of breath, it took me a long moment to get enough air up to tell the doctor what was wrong.
"D—doctor, it's my sister, Elsie, pneumonia—she's really—really sick …" I said too fast.
"What happened?" he asked in a doctor sort of voice.
"Well we woke up, and she was real hot and sweaty though it's real cold, and her eyes are glued shut and she's got just barely a wisp of a heartbeat …"
"Show me the way," he said simply, and then we left together, but not before he put on a coat and boots and grabbed his medical bag, which at the time I thought pointless considering if he caught a cold or fever he could cure himself. Being older as well as wiser, I know it's a little more difficult than that.
At the cabin, Doctor looked grimly at my baby stepsister, checking her over and over. Not forgetting to make Momma Hattie and I thoroughly nervous. Using the cold, cold stethoscope and such things that doctors do.
Over the howling of the wind outside, the doctor told us she was as good as dead. That was a terrible day, the day I spent not outside having snow fights with my friends as I had expected, but at Elsie's bedside … holding her clammy little hand. Any time now I thought, any time … but such a miracle happened that Elsie's eyelids began to flutter, I looked up she groaned.
"Momma Hattie! Momma Hattie! Come look! Come and see! She's wakin' up!" I yelled, moving closer to poor Elsie, holding her hand a might tighter.
Momma Hattie came in, Elsie had gone limp again. I looked closer … she had stopped breathing … no, I thought, no … but it was too late. Elsie was dead.
The days became long, dull after Elsie had gone. Without the childlike laughter and the scatter of paper dolls Momma Hattie and I became listless.
Going to school was a dread instead of a pleasure. I could barely even hear myself say answers or recite the presidents. Church got duller too; I suppose since Elsie's death I lost a tiny bit of faith in God.
The first morning of my fourteenth year began with Momma Hattie's ecstatic shouts "Get up child, listen here! Were rich and movin' into the big house on the main street!" she said shaking me awake for a dreamless slumber.
At first I couldn't realize what was going on, such things are not usually announced so bluntly, at least not in books.
I pulled my head up, didn't want to get up, but—wait … "Momma, you just say what I thought …" I asked, turning my head toward her glowing face. "Momma?" I repeated.
"Of course! Were movin' Jeremy's back to save us! He's got a big house on Main Street for us!"
"The one by the church?" I asked uncertainly.
"Course! Get up, we haft 'a get packing!"
With a moment to process that in my weary mind, I finally awoke and understood. A joyous day that was with many more to come.
The reason Jeremy could afford this was because he struck gold, just outside of town, and enough of it to make us one of the richest families in Bodie. I do not deny that it was rather awkward, bearing in mind we went from well, rags to riches as they say.
The moving was a simple process, in view of the fact that we had very few things to pack up. There couldn't have been a better birthday present … except maybe to get Elsie back.
"Isn't it a wonderful day, Silvia?" Momma Hattie chirped. Most of the townspeople found it quite amusing for one reason or another that we had become so suddenly rich, especially since Momma was the only black someone besides Ana Marie's little servant boy, Richard in town.
After I had been living in the Main Street house for a few weeks I decided to go out back to collect wild roses, it really was a perfect day, the sun was shining as bright as a copper penny, and the grass seemed as green as could be. Even weeds seemed more beautiful. It was thoughts of sweet little Elsie, and how much she would enjoy this that dulled the grass and tarnished the copper of the sun.
I finished picking wild roses so I could display them in the kitchen window later. School seemed better, I suppose. I thought the rich children might better like me, but no, I was still but an outsider, always was, always would be. I wouldn't make a big something out of it though. At least I still had my best friends Mary Ellen Anderson and Henry Baker. We had quite a lot of fun at my new house, it was a lot larger and now it was a lot less embarrassing to have them call on me.
Those days were brighter and full with more colours. Sunsets were more vivid and the world brighter. What I didn't know was what was to happen a year later. For a year later something was to happen to turn the blue horizons to grey.
Lying on the grass on a summer day … though nowadays I know it would be rather improper for a "lady" to lounge about like a common boy, but back then, you must understand that at least in Bodie, it didn't matter really, anyway I was too happy. It was a full week before my fifteenth birthday, which meant I could attend the festival tomorrow, I was happy enough to burst.
Bodie's yearly festival in the town was usually a drab, noting day to me but that one was great because it was the first time that I could actually go. I had spent the last night dreaming of what it would be like. Before I could continue this reverie, Momma Hattie came out with a worried look on her broad black face.
"Silvia …" she said, stretching her lips into a bleak line.
"Momma Hattie?" I asked seeing this look, my half smile melted, and I sat up strait. Momma Hattie thrust a letter into my open hands.
Dear Hattie May Lewis,
The day I gave Silvia to you
I said that I would only need you to take care of her until we were well off
enough to handle her on our own. We are pleased to inform you that we are now some
of the richest in Denver, Colderado, not to mention some of the most respected
there.
Furthermore, with due thanks
we should like to have our daughter back, we will gladly pay you your fee, and
much, much more. We insist she takes the 5:00 am train into Colderado. We will
be waiting eagerly until then for her arrival.
We send many thanks and
respects, Sincerely,
Mr. & Mrs. Bernard Aarons
Not one thing could have wiped a smile off my face quicker. I looked up at Momma Hattie for help. Yes I had always known that she wasn't my true mother, seeing that she was black, and I was white, but I had always assumed that she would, well … be my mother forever.
"Momma?" I asked simply, and she embraced me in dismal sobs.
Later Momma Hattie told me the full story, of my mother and father being much to young to keep me, and giving me to her, the midwife that had delivered me. So in a way, Hattie was my mother, having delivered me. I felt better knowing we had some connection. Buckets of tears I cried that day, not only for heartbreak of being taken from the only family I had ever known, but childish disappointment of not being able to go to the festival.
So once more I packed my belongings into the trunk without handles only to greet a rich family I had never known, or even dreamed of. The sun went down as if it were filled with overwhelming sorrow of my leaving too, and the night was cloudy and dismal. As I went into a troubled sleep, afraid to awaken and face the world the next day.
The sky was cloudy and dismal upon the morning that I was to ride the train my first time back to Denver, Colorado. Where I could live wealthily and lavishly in a home much larger than that I lived in right now. Some how it seemed that nowhere could be as wonderful as here in Bodie though. To me it seemed as if no other window but the one in my current bedroom would let me awaken to such a wonderful view of sunlight, nor trace the patterns of the shadows over my walls at twilight.
Tearful goodbyes were held in the carriage and Momma Hattie told me that no matter what the rich people said, she would always be my real Momma. I cried real tears, of Momma Hattie and of the only town I had known for all my life … for the only town that would remember little Elsie or snowy days in the park. The only town I had ever called home. The only town I ever would call home.
I boarded the train unwillingly, my soiled hankie underneath my eyes as Momma cried and waved standing next to Jeremy. Leaning outside the window, putting my face into the cold pelts of rain, I waved furiously until I could see them no more, then I sat back and sighed, many gloomy thoughts blurring my mind with the memories of the family, the home I had just lost minutes ago. About an hour later for some reason, something pulled my eyes to the window I looked up and out of it, and at that moment the clouds shifted … as if by magic, so I could see that golden line. I remembered Momma Hattie's words. "Don't look for the silver lining, look for the line of gold beneath the clouds."
"Thank you, Momma," I whispered to the heavens, and to think, I hadn't even had to look for it.
Look for Chapter two!!! I Felt Like a Princess …