11. Scarlett

One day it seemed important that I read my mother's memoirs, her personal accounts of day to day life at Tara. They'd been stuffed into a massive trunk of her belongings and those of Pa, cast into the oblivion of the attic by a zealous Suellen during a cleaning frenzy. I had known that these papers had existed; I had most likely been the one who had ordered Mammy to put them away. Mother, to me, was about as accessible as the Blessed Virgin, and as holy. I don't know why I made that comparison, for obviously she had to have sinned somewhere along the line. Perfection could never have yielded Suellen and myself. Careen, perhaps, could qualify…

I did reread her memoirs. What happened to her is this, I'll summarize: Phillipe Robillard, her daring young cousin, has been condemned by the State of Louisiana to die. Her father has interceded, gaining a promise from the young man that he will accept deportation and return to France immediately. Phillipe approaches Mother and his family in vain, begging for her hand in marriage. Her father refuses. He dies, of course, in a barroom brawl, not a week later. He was twenty-seven years old. After a good deal of wailing, Mother decides to forever distance herself Grandfather Robillard and anyone else who had had a hand in her misery. No one steps in to save her. She dies, at length, at the hands of my sweet, darling Pa. She acquiesces to his every whim, just as she has been taught, and he behaves in every way badly. He bellows and gets drunk and shouts and clumsily fulfills his husbandly duties. She remains remote, other. She brings children into the world, six total. She does not offer a word in her own defense, nor in self-pity. She views her situation as some kind of errant Purgatory, a temporary state of corporal punishment by which she will ultimately prove worthy of her lost love.

If I wasn't Gerald O'Hara's daughter, the memoir ends happily.

This was not my memory of Mother, which suggested that I was already given, from the earliest stages of childhood, to gifting those whom I either admired or did not understand with superhuman qualities. The principle divergences between the pages and my memory appear toward the end when Mother is sick and realizes that she is actually going to die. She does not speak about me, Suellen, or Careen … or even Pa. Pa, for his part, seems to have pressed her, at which point, to his distress, since what she turns out to have on her mind are those lingering feelings for Phillipe, she does speak. I don't need to read further to know what happened. Pa, alarmed, shuts off the prospect of hearing more by drinking himself into a stupor. Mother has the best of it. She's back with her beloved, again young Ellen Robillard, the belle of Savannah.

But the ending (which has somehow taken on the double meaning of "my" ending, as well) could not be construed as happy.

In some ways, it was better that she died. It "worked out" for her, so to speak. If she had survived the war, for instance, she would have had to endure the hell and agony of poverty and defeat. I would have had to face her. Could I have faced her? I was devastated when she died, but do I believe that I could have faced her today, if she had lived? I don't.

Pa.

Pa looked back and saw omens, messages from Mother that he had missed. He remembered her earbobs, the bandage with which she wrapped his knee so tenderly. He lived by the symbols. The voice in his head was Mother's, and if he had stopped listening, it would have been the most grievous betrayal.

I tell you that I shall not live for two whole years in Clayton County. Not so long as I am perpetually with child. A babe at fifteen and another at sixteen. I tell you that I shall not live through it.

Later that summer I was again reminded of Mother. The curtainless windows cried out for dressing. Will wouldn't hear of taking a penny for them and Suellen blamed me for the loss of the portieres. Yes, I want to say, the portieres are gone, but you have a roof over your head.

I walked through the halls of Tara. I found the house darker than I had remembered it. I reread Mother's memoirs, this time finding them a sunnier version of my own life. If I just exchanged the names, it could have been me in her stead, Ashley, Phillipe, and Pa would have been Rhett.

When I shared with Rhett my thoughts, he laughed at me before telling me that I did not sufficiently appreciate the irony.

Something else had happened toward the end of the summer, and Ashley was the first to draw it to my attention.

In August there was a memorial service for the County boys who had perished in the war (this was not the "something else" that happened). The service was on the Tarleton's lawn at Fairhill.

I met Mr. O'Hara at Fairhill, coming directly from dear Charles's memorial at Twelve Oaks. Scarlett accompanied me, and as we sat there under the hot August sun, death was very much on my mind. Not my own death, of course, nor even the deaths of the young gentlemen who so valiantly sacrificed themselves for our Cause, but for the death of P. Beloved. I looked down at my daughter on my left, sick with the nausea of a first pregnancy. Stuck in a false mourning for a young man for whom she had no feeling. A moment of terror overwhelmed me as I realized the inevitable outcome of her life, the eternal darkness that will plague her. And I realized that I had done nothing to prevent it. What wouldn't I do to have prevented it? The service ended at three in the afternoon and Pork brought the carriage round to convey us home. As we drove away, Scarlett said, "Mother, I'm frightened."

There had not been an appropriate moment to address the impending event which was becoming more and more obvious day by day. "Whatever are you frightened of, dearest?" What wouldn't she be frightened of?

"Everything," she whimpered.

"It will be alright, dearest," I said.

When we had reached home, I sent Scarlett to bed. When I reflected further about her future, I began to cry. On that occasion, I realized that her fate would be more unhappy than even my own.

Mother's words haunted me. Was that what she experienced as she herself gave birth to my sisters and I? Did we represent the eternal darkness that plagued her until death took her away from us?

How could she have experienced that sort of dull apathy? She was perfection. She loved us. Better than I loved my own children, that much was certain. But it occurs to me as I write this that Mother presented a far more unattainable standard of motherhood than anyone else would ever hope to achieve, even under the best of circumstances. I had none of her advantages, and I make no apologies for not pampering my children. They saw me for what I was, I will say that much in my defense…they will not have to decipher my real thoughts after my death.

Even still, I promised to love them more.

The "something else" that happened toward the end of that summer of 1874 was the series of events that followed the memorial service at Fairhill and the appointment with Doctor Meade back in Atlanta. A week or so later, and my suspicion was confirmed. Or my prayers had been answered - however one wants to look at it. "It is regrettable, Scarlett. I would have preferred for you to have not…" Meade later said to me. The results after two more weeks (it was by then September, still raging hot out) confirmed that it was safe to share the news with Rhett. Another two weeks went by before I was able to do it. As I saw it, the timing had been providential. Nearly a year after sweet Melly had been taken from us, I had been given another chance at motherhood. Not that I was aiming for perfection this time around, but it never hurts to be optimistic. Rhett and I took very different views on this point. He saw it as a potential death sentence, one of his own making. You no more know how you're going to die than I do or anyone else does, I recall saying.

"Its all my fault." Rhett said, then left me standing there in the darkness, wondering if it was eternal, wishing that I had one day more to talk to Mother in person.