Cecily didn’t understand, not entirely, not yet. But somewhere, in the center of her chest, a light dimmed.
“You’re coming to the new house, with Lavinia and me. Daddy says you’ll be a wedding gift.”
She closed her eyes, but when she did, she still saw the unraveling of her days. She would not survive a year in Elliott Price’s household, much less a lifetime.
Cecily’s words came out flat. “You’ll have a wife.”
“Yes,” said Elliott, his breath hot on her neck, “but will she grind my corn the way you do?”
Upstairs, Cecily could hear Maria calling for her.
“Your sister’s waiting on me,” she told Elliott.
“She can wait a little longer,” he said as he reached for her.
The floor began to spin, but then someone opened the door to the cellar. “Cecily, are you down there?” came Maria’s shrill voice.
Cecily knew not to say anything. Instead, Elliott answered for her, his voice as cool as the dirt floor beneath their feet. “She isn’t here. Said she was meeting you in the yard.”
Maria didn’t respond. Not right away. One of the risers groaned, but then there was nothing. Cecily could picture Maria, at the top of the stairs, trying to decide what to do. Finally, she said, “Well, if you see her, tell her I’m waiting.” The door to the cellar creaked on its hinges. “And that I don’t want to have to search this house from top to bottom looking for her.”
The door slammed, and they listened to Maria’s footsteps on the floorboards overhead. Elliott loosened his hold on Cecily, and when she whispered, “I should go,” he didn’t argue, just pushed her away, like he’d come up with the idea himself.
A few minutes later, Cecily found Maria in the yard. She was stomping her feet to stay warm, and all Cecily could do was wrap her shawl tight around her shoulders and brace for the torrent she knew was coming. “I swear, Cecily, it’s like you couldn’t be on time for something if you tried.”
Now, as they near the theater, Cecily sees Maria’s friend Louisa waiting outside with a gaggle of girls Cecily recognizes but cannot name. All of them wear short brocaded jackets, the color of jewels, over their pale gowns, which make them look like a bunch of ruby-throated hummingbirds, what with all that color up around their necks. When the girls see Maria cross the street, they wave to her, and she turns to Cecily and hands her a ticket to the gallery. “Meet me out here after the pantomime. I want to stay for the second show.”
Cecily turns the ticket over in her hand. She can’t read the words that are printed on the small scrap of blue paper, but she knows that the ticket cost twenty-five cents, as much as a spool of cotton thread or a quart of burning oil. She’d a whole lot rather Maria had given her the money, and—if she didn’t want to walk back and forth to the theater alone—allowed Cecily to come pick her up at the end of the night.
“Righthere,” says Maria, pointing to the ground beneath her feet, as if Cecily has not understood her instructions. She skips toward her friends,and Cecily watches as the circle of girls swallows her up. The group moves through the doors of the theater, but just before they disappear into the small lobby, Maria turns and calls to her. “Cecily,” she says, her voice a cheerful bell in front of her friends, “it’ll be the new year before you know it.”
Cecily tries to smile, but her eyes remain dull. Maria knows everything, but Cecily doubts she knows about Elliott’s plan to take Cecily with him to his new home.
A Negro man wearing a thin jacket and fingerless gloves stands just inside the gallery door, out of the wind, and waves Cecily inside. When she thrusts her ticket at him, he barely inspects it, just directs her up an enclosed staircase that leads to the second-floor gallery, which freedmen and slaves share with the city’s drunks and prostitutes.
Cecily might have tried to look for someone she knows, but the gallery is packed and the show is about to start. She sees an empty seat, which she realizes—too late—is vacant because of its proximity to the most heavily made-up whore she’s ever encountered.
“Were you holding this seat?” she asks meekly after she’s already sat down. The woman smells heavily of vanilla and cloves, and Cecily begins to hope the answer is yes.
“Please,” she says, gesturing for Cecily to remain where she is. “I’m Augustine Saunders.”
It’s unusual for a white woman to introduce herself like that, and Cecily doesn’t know quite what to make of it. “Cecily Patterson,” she says quickly, then reaches up, self-consciously, to touch the goose egg on her forehead.
She hates Elliott. That he is big enough to overpower her and persistent enough to refuse to let her go. That he can mark her, so that even when she is not with him, she still squirms beneath his weight. Cecily’s mother has taught her not to expect much from the world, but the one thing she counted on was that Elliott Price would eventually leave his parents’ house. Now she realizes how naive she’s been to assume he wouldn’t take her with him, wouldn’t pull the same tricks he relied on as a small boy—crying and kicking and cajoling—until he gets his way.
“Do you know anything aboutThe Father?” asks her seatmate, and Cecily looks up at her in surprise.
“Who’s that?” she says.
“The play.”
It didn’t occur to Cecily to ask Maria what they were seeing.
An attendant extinguishes the wall sconces in the gallery, and as the theater’s lights dim, Cecily can feel herself begin to disappear. She is in the theater and then she is back in the cellar, she is a little girl in the smokehouse and a tiny seed in her mother’s womb. She is all of these things and she is nothing at all, and by the time the curtain lifts, her face is wet with tears.
GILBERT
By the time Gilbert Huntleaves the prayer meeting at the Baptist meetinghouse, it is nine o’clock. In another hour, it will be too late to be out—even with a pass—but Gilbert is unwilling to go to bed without at least attempting to lay eyes on his wife.
