She’s at the cemetery one day, talking to Father about this, when she sees a pale, thin man she thinks she recognizes as her half-brother, Richard Booth. He’s walking in her direction, but veers away at the sight of her. She wonders if he was also visiting Father’s grave.
She’s surprised to think he might do this, as she’s never seen him there before and, really, he has good reasons to be angry with Father. The way Father had taken him on tour, shown him a fatherly regard and affection, only to snatch it all away the minute Adelaide arrived. How hurtful that must have been. And then those years when they all lived in Baltimore without Father taking the trouble to see him, find out how he was doing. She can almost understand why he fought so hard to take Father’s estate away from them.
But that evening, just before she goes up to bed, Mother tells her Adelaide has died, so it must have been his mother, not his father, who brought Richard to the cemetery. Mother’s voice is colorless when she delivers the news, poking at the fire with her back turned so her face is hidden. Her posture makes it clear that there will be no conversation regarding this matter.
Although Rosalie has vivid memories of the harridan who followed them, spitting and shouting through the streets, the news of her death softens Rosalie. There’s no denying that Father treated his first wife abominably. What a sad life Adelaide led. She wonders if Mother feels guilty about it. Rosalie has no reason for guilt herself, but she’s ready to acknowledge blame on all sides.
This generosity of spirit vanishes the first time she sees Adelaide’s gravestone. It reads:
Jesus Mary Joseph
pray for the soul of
Marie Christine Adelaide
Delannoy
Wife of
Junius Brutus Booth tragedian
She died in Baltimore
March the 9th, 1858
Aged 66 years
It is a holy and wholesome thought
to pray for the dead
May she rest in peace
Wife of Junius Brutus Booth, indeed! The fact that this stone rests only a short stroll from Father’s own grave, in the same cemetery, under the same poplars, adds to the insult. Here lies Adelaide, reaching out from beyond the grave to spit on them one last time. Her claim to Father is apparently deathless.
So Rosalie’s enmity will be the same. She decides that she will not be praying for this particular soul.
Old Spudge sends them her obituary as it ran in New Orleans under the quite mistaken assumption that they’ll be amused.
No less than three persons died, at Baltimore on Tuesday of disease of the heart. Mrs. Mary Booth, a divorced wife of the celebrated tragedian Booth, aged 65 years; Mr. Joseph Lokey, a messenger at the Mt. Clare Station, rather advanced in life; and a man unknown, apparently 50 years of age, who fell dead in the street.
The obituary goes on to identify Father and “Mary’s” only surviving child as Edwin.
* * *
—
On a sunny afternoon, Rosalie sits in the Exeter kitchen with Joe Hall. They are both drinking coffee—his with two big spoonfuls of sugar, hers with a splash of gin. Joe has stopped by with some of the spring produce for Mother—slender carrots and pale radishes and green onions—but Mother and Asia are out ordering wedding clothes. Rosalie tries to talk Joe into staying until they return, but he says he can’t. He says that Ann would fret. He just has time for the coffee.
“I guess you’ve heard that Asia is to marry Sleeper Clarke,” she says.
“It’s good news,” Joe Hall says. “Mighty good news. Fine man. She’ll be living in Philadelphia then.”
“She will.”
“Do you think she would look in on our Pinkney and our Mary Ellen? I expect they’re in Philadelphia now. Ann and me, we’d sure like to know how they get on. I don’t have an address,” Joe says.
“Of course she will.” This is a lie. Rosalie can’t imagine how Asia would find the two Halls if they’re in hiding. But perhaps they’re not. Perhaps they count on Aunty Rogers and her husband not tracking them down.
Outside there’s a sudden battle, dogs against pigs, by the sound of it, barking and squealing, and several men shouting for it all to stop. The noise moves down the street at a run.
Across from her, Joe Hall has closed his eyes. He sits, swaying slightly, as if he’s gone to sleep while upright at the table, his two hands wrapped around his cup. Since his eyes are closed, Rosalie feels free to examine him closely. The sun is falling hard on him, deepening every line on his face, and there is a mass of those lines, a map of years and worries. One of his front teeth has gone yellow. He’s still a big man, but his chest has caved in and his shoulders curved. Rosalie used to ask him how old he was. That’s something I never did know, he’d say.
She’s known him all the years of her life. His was one of the first faces she’d ever seen, looking down as she lay in the wicker cradle he’d made for her. In that time before memory, his face was already there.
It occurs to Rosalie that someday she’ll see him for the last time and that this could be that very day. What will his grave marker look like? It won’t even have a birth date.
Rosalie will be proved prescient in all of this. He’ll die two years later, neither the date of birth nor death on his stone. He’ll never again see his son and his daughter, the children who fled.
“Do you think there’ll be war, Miss Rose?” He’s opened his eyes again and his fingers now tap on the scarred surface of the table. A song of some sort. She remembers one that he taught her when she was a little girl:
They put John on an island
Hallelujah
They put him there to starve him
Hallelujah
But the angels came and fed him
Hallelujah
They fed him on the bread of heaven
Hallelujah
“No. I don’t think there’ll be war,” Rosalie answers. She doesn’t explain herself, but the truth is that she can easily imagine white men who will fight and die to keep their slaves. She knows these men. Joe Hall knows them, too. They live all around the farm in Bel Air. They went to school with John. John is one of them.
But she can’t think of a single white man she knows who would fight and die to free the slaves. The ones who believe in slavery have so much more conviction than the ones who don’t.
“We surely miss our girl, our boy. They can’t come home; we can’t get there. Change is hard,” says Joe. “But change is life.”
And death, Rosalie thinks. Death is a mighty big change, too.
x
Rosalie has suffered a shock. She’s come to her bedroom and closed the door, hoping to be given some privacy. She’s combing through her wet and tangled hair with more vigor and less care than usual. It’s as if she wants it to hurt.