The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

Bessie climbed up the back steps and opened the door to the screened-in back porch. The Magnolia Manor was the only home she had ever known. She had lived in the old two-story house for decades, first with her mother and father and brothers and then with her father, whom she cared for until he died. And now with the Magnolia Ladies, as they called themselves, four of them, bless ’em. Her boarders.

Of course, the house hadn’t had a name back when her father (who owned and operated the town’s mortuary) was still alive. But it hadn’t had a mortgage, either, and after his death, it was Bessie’s only real asset, except for the few dollars she got every month from Mr. Noonan, who had purchased her father’s funeral parlor business.

First, she gave the house a name. Second, she got Beulah Trivette to paint a nice wooden sign for the front yard, featuring the words MAGNOLIA MANOR in fancy script, encircled by magnolia blossoms and leaves. Third, she put an ad in the Darling Dispatch for “older unmarried and widowed ladies of refinement and good taste, to occupy spacious bedrooms at the Magnolia Manor.” She’d been afraid that if the house didn’t have a name of its own, people would start calling it Bessie Bloodworth’s Home for Old Ladies to distinguish it from Mrs. Brewster’s Home for Young Ladies, over on West Plum, whose residents were so unruly that Mrs. Brewster had to set strict rules for their behavior. Bessie hoped that her residents would be dignified and refined enough not to require rules, although as time went on, she had learned that older women, even those of refinement and good taste, could be undignified every now and again.

Mrs. Brewster’s wasn’t the only other boardinghouse in town, of course. Mrs. Meeks rented rooms and cooked supper for single men who worked on the railroad and at Ozzie Sherman’s sawmill, and the Old Alabama Hotel offered quite nice rooms and excellent meals for travelers. But ladies were not allowed at Meeks’, where the men slept two and three to a room, and people of ordinary means couldn’t afford to stay at the hotel for more than a night or two. So Bessie had every reason to hope that refined widows and spinster ladies would realize that the Manor would make a lovely home.

She was right, as it turned out. Within a couple of weeks, all four of her empty bedrooms were spoken for and stayed that way. It was such a nice place to live that most of the residents remained as long as they could. But there was a waiting list, and when a vacancy did occur, Bessie scarcely had time to clean the room and wash the bedding before somebody new was moving in.

Unfortunately, Magnolia Manor was not what you’d call a money-making business, since most of Bessie’s boarders were not well fixed. (If they were, they’d likely be living at the hotel or in their own houses, with colored help to cook and clean.) Mrs. Sedalius was better off than the others, for her son was a prominent doctor in Mobile. He sent his mother a monthly check for her room and board and a small allowance so she could buy things she wanted. (His checks, Bessie suspected, were guilt payments: the man rarely darkened his mother’s door.) Leticia Wiggins had a widow’s pension from her husband’s service in the War Between the States—it wasn’t much but it was regular. Miss Rogers earned a few dollars a week as the town librarian. Maxine Bechdel looked to be well off—she owned two rent houses in neighboring Monroeville—but looks were deceiving. Last month, one of her renters had paid her with a bushel of cabbages. The other had paid with a promise. Bessie and Roseanne (the colored lady who cooked and cleaned in return for room and board and spending money) had turned the cabbages into sauerkraut. There wasn’t anything they could do with the promise.