I nodded. “Her eyes . . .”
“Eyes, hair, nose, chin. Boy, she’s Mama through and through. Sometimes I think I should have gone ahead and named her Deborah after Mama, but you know Mama asked me to name her Emmaline after her mama. Think I’m going to add Deborah to her name now, though, because every time I look at her, I see Mama.” Cassie pulled herself up and began to clear the table. She was pregnant again and expected the new baby in the summer.
“Wait a minute, Cassie,” I said, starting to stand. “I’ll give you a hand.”
“Ah, boy, sit down and play with your niece. You haven’t seen her in a while. You need to spend as much time as you can with her.”
Then, without Cassie’s asking, Howard got up and began to help with the table. It seemed a job he was accustomed to doing, and a job he seemed not to mind. The two of them cleared the dishes and the two of them washed and dried the dishes, all while I played with Emmaline. I got on the floor, lay on my stomach, and let her crawl over my back. I gave her horseback rides, stood and lifted her into the air, and let her fly like a bird in my arms. She giggled and had a great time, unaware of the sadness of the day. I laughed too, but the laughter was only for her.
When Emmaline finally fell asleep and was in her bed for the night, Howard decided to take a walk, and Cassie and I were left alone to comfort each other. “I never told her, Cassie,” I said, soon after Howard was gone, “I never told our mama I was sorry for those things I said about her and our daddy . . . you remember.”
“I do.”
“I was sorry . . . I am sorry . . . but I never told her.”
“Mama probably figured you were. You didn’t have to say it.”
“You were right, you know. I had no business trying to be her judge.” I then broke down crying and Cassie held me. She took me into her arms and consoled me like the little mother she’d always been to me.
“No, you didn’t,” she agreed when my tears subsided and I pulled away. “You were too young to go judging anybody. You know, Mama told us both our daddy was the only one. She’d been with only him, and she told me that was to her as if she’d been his sworn wife.”
“You think he cared about that?”
“I don’t know. I can’t get inside our daddy’s head.”
“Well, whether he did or he didn’t, I know one thing, Cassie. I ever have a daughter, I’ll never let her go with a white man.”
“You said that before.”
“I mean it. There’s just too much sorrow to it.”
“I suppose,” she said, her voice dropping. She sighed and then spoke of other things. “You know that box of Mama’s, Paul, the one she showed us a few years back? Well, she had me take it to Atlanta with me last time I was here . . . almost like she knew. . . . Anyway, there’re things in there belong to you.”
“You hold on to them, Cassie. I’ve got no need for them right now.”
“I can bring them next time I come, though I don’t know when that’ll be, now that Mama’s gone. Course, you could come to Atlanta and get them. Honey, Howard and I, we’ve talked about it. You could stay with us. You’re my family, and you know how much I’d love it—”
“I know. I know, Cass. But I figure to stay here, at least for a while.” I didn’t say it to Cassie then, and I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t yet ready to leave my daddy’s land. Even though I spent much of my time in Macon, I still considered this place home. “Don’t worry about it, Cassie. Just you take care of what Mama wanted me to have.”
After some while I left Cassie and went down to the grave-yard to say good-bye to my mama alone, but when I got there, I saw my daddy standing over her grave. His hat was in his hands, and I thought I heard the sound of weeping. Maybe I was wrong about that. Anyhow, I didn’t want him to see me, so I backed off and I left. I wanted to say good-bye to my mama alone.
I walked for some while in the misty rain and ended up on the slope that overlooked my daddy’s land. I sat down on a stump and surveyed the valley before me. My daddy’s house was right below and, beyond the house, the yard and flower garden, and beyond the backyard, the vegetable garden. The stables and the pasture weren’t all that far from the house. My daddy always liked to have his horses near. Beyond the pasturelands where the horses and cattle grazed were the forests. The cotton fields could not be seen. They, along with all the sharecropping shanties and the people in them, were on the other side of the woods, hidden from view. So was my mama’s house. It was mid-spring, and all the grasses were emerald green and all the plants were in bloom. There was only beauty before me.