Jacqueline Kelly - The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

“The Baptist church, Harry?” I asked, sweet as pie.

“No.” He hesitated. “She belongs to the Independent Church of Prairie Lea.”

Blessed relief flooded through me. The enemy was mine. “Oh, Harry,” I said, all sisterly concern. “She’s a Leaper ?”

“That’s right. So what?” he said mulishly. “And don’t call them that. They’re Independents.”

“Have you told Mother and Father?” I said.

“Um. No.” He looked edgy. My opening salvo had hit its mark. Then he looked down at the picture, and I watched him go all sappy again.

“How old is she?” I asked, forging ahead. “She looks kind of old.”

“She’s not old,” he said with indignation. “She only came out five years ago.”

I added five to eighteen, the typical age for coming out, and came up with the usual result. “She’s twenty-three ,” I said, aghast—and secretly jubilant. “She’s practically an old maid. Besides, you’re only seventeen .”

“That makes no difference,” he said. He plucked the card from my hand and huffed off.

At dinner that night, Harry mentioned that he might hitch Ulysses to the gig and take him out for exercise.

“Why don’t you ride him?” said Father. “You don’t need the gig.”

“He hasn’t been in harness for a while. It would do him good,” said Harry.

Time to fire off my next round. In a loud voice, I said, “Are you going to see her ?”

The table thought this an interesting inquiry and grew still. Everyone except Granddaddy stopped eating and stared at Harry with interest, even the boys who were too young to understand what was going on. Mother swiveled her head, looking first at me and then at Harry. Granddaddy went on placidly addressing his beefsteak.

Harry flushed and cut me a look to let me know he’d settle with me later. He’d never glared at me like that before. There was something close to hatred in that look. Fear shot through me. I broke out all over in hot prickles.

“And who is her ?” said Mother.

Granddaddy’s knife skreeked against his plate. He patted his mustache with the big white linen napkin that flowed down his chest. He said mildly to his only daughter-in-law, “Good God, Margaret. That’s ‘who is she,’ not ‘who is her.’ The verb to be never takes an object. Surely you know that by now?”

He peered at her and said, “Why, how old are you, Margaret? I reckon you must be close to thirty. Old enough to know better, I should think,” he said, and turned his attention back to his dinner. My mother, aged forty-one, ignored this.

“Harry?” she said. She gave him the gimlet eye. The prickles racing across my skin coalesced into itching pink welts. Our family’s future hung by a thread.

“There’s a girl—a young lady—at the Prairie Lea picnic tonight that I’d like to take for a short drive, ma’am,” Harry stammered. “Only a short one.”

“And,” said Mother, in a frosty voice, “exactly who is this young lady? Have we met her? Have we met her people?”

“Her name is Miss Minerva Goodacre. Her people are in Austin. She’s spending the month with her aunt and uncle in Prairie Lea.”

“And they are . . . ?” said Mother.

The thread pulled taut.

“Reverend and Mrs. Goodacre,” said Harry.

“And are you referring to Reverend Goodacre of the Independent Church of Prairie Lea?” said Mother.

The thread creaked and frayed.

“Yes,” said Harry, flushing deeper. He pushed himself away from the table and bolted from the room, calling over his shoulder with false cheer, “So it’s all right, then. I won’t be late.”

Father looked at Mother and said, “What was all that about?”

Mother noticed the rest of us sitting openmouthed and snapped, “You are so obtuse sometimes, Alfred. We’ll discuss it later.”

Sitting next to me, Sul Ross, who was swift for his age, broke into a chant: “Harry’s got a gur-ull, Harry’s got a gur—”

At this point Mother looked volcanic. I hissed, “Shut up , Sully,” and elbowed him viciously in the short ribs.

Out of the blue, Granddaddy said, “About damned time, too. That boy was starting to worry me. What’s for dessert?” One of the interesting things about Granddaddy was that you couldn’t always tell if he was present or not.

Dinner dragged on forever. Whatever we had for dessert, it was ashes in my mouth. When SanJuanna came in to clear the table, Mother said, “You are all excused. Except for Calpurnia.”

The others trooped out while I hunkered down at my place. Father lit a cigar and poured himself a larger-than-usual glass of port. Mother looked like she badly wanted one and rubbed her temples.

“Now, Calpurnia,” she said, “what is it you know about this . . . this . . . young lady?”

I thought of the way that Harry had glared at me. “Nothing, ma’am,” I said, sounding the retreat and recalling my battalions as fast as I could.

“Come, come. Surely he must have told you something about her.”

“I don’t know anything,” I said.

“Stop this, Calpurnia. How did you find out about her? And what is happening to your face? You look all blotchy.”

“Harry showed me her visiting card, that’s all,” I said.

“Her card?” My mother’s voice rose. “She has a card ? How old is she?”

“I don’t know anything,” I said.

Mother looked at Father and said, “Alfred, she has a card.” My father looked interested but not alarmed. Clearly the significance of this fact escaped him.

My mother got up and started pacing. “She is of an age to have a card, and my son has been calling on her without telling us. He has been courting her, and we’ve never even met her. She’s a Leap —she’s an Independent, Alfred.”

Mother wheeled on me. “She is an Independent, isn’t she? Tell me, Calpurnia.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Ack, you useless child! Go to your room and don’t say a word of this to anyone. Are you breaking out in hives? Did you fall in the nettles again? Get some baking soda and make a compress.”

I slipped from my chair and hurried to the kitchen. Viola sat at her table, taking a short rest while SanJuanna pumped water in preparation to start on the mountain of dishes on the counter.

“Mother sent me for baking soda,” I mumbled.

“Good Lord,” said Viola when she saw my complexion. “How’d you get like that?”

“Nettles,” I lied. “I just need a compress.”

Viola squinted at me and opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. She got up and sprinkled soda on a damp rag and handed it to me without saying a word. SanJuanna eyed me as if I might be contagious.

As I went up the stairs, I could hear my parents’ voices in the dining room, my mother’s raised in outrage, my father’s rumbling in placation.

Sul Ross and Lamar were lying in wait for me on the landing and followed me to my room.

“What’s going on? What happened to Harry? What’s wrong with your face? Tell us.”

I ran past them to my room and slapped the cooling rag on my tingling cheek. What had I set in motion? Something I could no longer control. I was a novice commander, shocked by the destruction my troops had wrought.

I lay awake in bed that night waiting for Harry to come home. The half-moon was up before I heard the creaking of the harness and the crunching of the gig on the gravel drive. I held my breath and listened. The house was suspiciously silent. I imagined Mother and Father lying in their big mahogany bed with its heavy carvings of cherubs and fruit. They would be wide awake, or at least Mother would be.