Alice Randall: The wind done gone

Garlic was wearing the watch that I wanted for mine. I saw the golden keys hanging from it. "I was with Planter the night he won this place in a card game. Way back when.

Ain't nobody on this place know what I know 'cept Sister-that's what I came to call her-and now she gone. What I have to say I say for her.

And I say it for me, 'cause when it comes time to lay me in this ground, ain't none of ya'll be knowin' what to say.

"Planter won me in a poker game. My old master was a rich young planter from St. Simon's island. Good-looking, good-mannered, we went everywhere, Charleston, Njawlins, Washington, D.C. I been to Marse Jefferson's Monticello; you name it, I been there. I was with him when he went to Harvard. I stood in the square and got me some education while he graduated on time, not like those twins from 'round here who tumbled in and out of every college. Young Marse was something else.

So much so I couldn't be nothing. I stood in the Yard and he went to the classrooms. Yeah. Now this man heah" (tapping his toe on Planter's grave) "was a different matter. He didn't know nothing. He didn't have nothing but his white skin, spirit, and work-hard. He needed me. And I needed him, 'cause I had a vision of a place I wanted to live.

"So I mixed my young master's drinks heavy and poured my hoped-to-be-master's drink light. Wasn't good luck won Planter me. It was me poisoning Young Marse's cup. Later, Young Marse offered twice the money to get me back, and I was scared. But my new master, my soon-to-be Planter, was too proud of his first slave to let me go. I played the same trick when we won this land, but Planter was in on it. And it was me who told him when it was time for us to find a wife with a good group of house Negroes. I knew Mammy. When we first came to Savannah, Mammy told me all 'bout Lady and her troubles, and I told Planter what he need to know. I wanted Mammy for this place.

"There was no architect here. There was me and what I remembered of all the great houses on great plantations I had seen. Bremo. Rattle-and-Snap. The Hermitage. Belgrove. Tudor Place. Sabine Hall.

I built this place with my hands and I saw it in my mind before my hands built it. Mammy and me, we saved it from the Yankees not for them but for us. She knew. She knew this house stood proud and tall when we couldn't. Every column fluted was a monument to the slaves and the whips our bodies had received. Every slave being beat looked at the column and knew his beating would be remembered. I stole for this place and I got shot doing it. We, Mammy and me, kept this place together because it was ours. Here I raised my family. Right this morning we're burying the real mistress of the house." Right then I cried.

Later we had the official funeral. Other cried and cried. We were a pathetic band. Dreamy Gentleman bereft of Mealy Mouth, and Other absolutely confused, confused as to why R. wasn't there. She believed it to have something to do with Beauty, that "waddling woman, with the powdered face and the colored hair." Dreamy Gentleman had come, of course, bringing his heir and his baby; bringing Other's surviving children. There was the most exquisite kind of pain in Dreamy Gentleman's eyes when he looked into Miss Priss's face. Other saw Dreamy Gentleman looking at Priss and almost hissed.

Then she saw, with her memory, what he saw: a beautiful boy's face from long ago. The face of Miss Priss's brother appeared in his sister's face when she flared her nostrils in any show of arrogance or anger.

For the very first time, Other saw it, and I saw her see it. Other didn't see me at all; it was as if I didn't exist.

R. couldn't come because I was there. So Other looked down the road for him, harder than she had ever looked for Dreamy Gentleman. And she had looked hard down that road when the war was over and nobody knew who was coming home alive and with what body parts.

Dreamy Gentleman read properly from the Book of Common Prayer and gave a little talk about how we were laying to rest the last of a vanished species and culture-the loyal old servant who, Christ-like, sacrificed herself for others. He believed every word. He believed my mother to be an unselfish woman. He believed her to be a loving beast of burden without sex or resentment. He knew nothing of her at all.

And Other knew only bits more. Now, as I think back on what I saw of her at the grave, I am struck by the truth of her grief. I wonder what she would feel now if she knew, if I told her, if she ever come to understand that Mammy used her, used her to torment white men. Other was Mammy's revenge on a world of white men who would not marry her dark self and who had not loved her Lady. Did Other see how she had been weaned to pick up hearts and trained to dash them down, both with casual ease? Who convinced her to conquer? Had Mammy ever told Other the truth about Dreamy Gentleman? No. Watching Other stand by the grave, I knew for sure that Mammy had stopped wearing the mask and the mask had worn her. By the time we were born, choosing between Other and me was like choosing between paper dolls, and Other had the prettier clothes.

When the service was over, Other was awarded pride of place at the head of the line of mourners. I was to follow right behind. She marched straight ahead to the house, allowing the wind to carry her words back to me. "You should be ashamed of neglecting Mammy." I went back in the house, sneaked into Lady's room, crawled into our bed, and cried.

n the afternoon, Other and Dreamy Gentleman went out driving in her carriage. When the driver come back, he say he took them over to where the house we called Twelve Slaves Strong as Trees once stood. I have forgotten their name for it. What I remember is this: there were twelve columns across the front of that slave-built house. They stood for the original twelve dark men who cleared the land. And the lines, the flutes, on those columns stood for the stripes on those slaves' backs. They didn't know any of that, but we did. The last sermon I heard my preacher in Atlanta preach, he said, "We don't need any new members; we need disciples!" Twelve slaves, twelve columns, twelve disciples. Twelve memories. The driver overheard Other say to Dreamy Gentleman she's going to build that house back up again, for him, in remembrance of what had been.

The driver say, "Dey ack jcs lak brut ha 'n sista now, not lak how she usta ack." There's a new understanding between them, and I'm not the only one to see it.

I take my rest in the overseer's house. Miss Priss watches Dreamy Gentleman's children. Lord have mercy! Other's son and daughter keep quietly to themselves. For the boy, born after his father died, every funeral is his father's funeral. For the girl, so young when her father was killed riding out with the Klan, every funeral is her father's funeral. And though their fathers were different men, this grief, more than their mother's blood, has become the bond between them.

Soon they will all be deeply asleep, sleep they need, asleep for the whole long night. After all this sorrow, God knows they need the comfort of Garlic's soup. And if God doesn't know, Garlic knows. And I need the house to grieve.

We were sitting together at the kitchen table, me, Garlic, Mrs. Garlic, and Miss Priss. The rest of them had gone to sleep, won't wake till morning. Was Mrs. Garlic's kitchen now. Mammy's cap and Mammy's apron had been removed, and were already washed, folded, and put away; she had been sick a spell. Eating cornbread straight out of a skillet, drinking coffee from cracked cups. These events had never occurred in Mammy's kitchen. Chitlins on the stove were stinking up the place. If Mammy had ever wanted to eat chitlins, she would have cooked them out in the cabins. Freedom had a flavor, and we were tasting it. I breathe in the pungent aroma of change.