Cutler 05 - Darkest Hour

Emily retorted.
    "You didn't want to go shopping with me, but I made you wear the new shoes and new dress I bought for you, don't you remember?" Mamma asked, smiling.
    "They pinched my feet and I took them off and changed into my older shoes as soon as I left the house," Emily revealed.
    Papa's eyes widened and he shifted his aimless gaze in her direction as he chewed, a strange look of curious interest on his face.
    "You didn't?" Mamma said. Whenever something terrible or outrageous occurred, Mamma always thought it was untrue first, and then, when she had to face it, simply forgot it.
    "Yes, I did," Emily replied proudly. "The new shoes are upstairs, buried at the bottom of my closet."
    Undaunted, Mamma held her smile and wondered aloud. "Maybe they would fit Lillian."
    That made Papa laugh.
    "Hardly," he said. "Emily's got twice the foot."
    "Yes," Mamma said dreamily. "Oh well, we'll go to Upland Station first thing in the morning, Lillian honey."
    I couldn't wait to tell Eugenia. Most of the time she had her meals brought to her because it made her too tired to have to sit up at the dinner table. All our meals were quite elaborate affairs. Papa would begin by reading from the Bible, and after Emily learned how to read, she would often do it, too. But he would pick the passages. Papa liked to eat and relished each and every morsel. We always had salad or fruit first and then soup, even on hot summer days. Papa liked to wait at the table while the dishes were cleared and the table reset for dessert. Sometimes, he would read the newspaper, especially the business section, and while this went on, Emily, Mamma and I would have to sit and wait, too.
    Mamma would jabber on and on about the gossip she had heard or some romance novel she was reading at the time, but Papa rarely heard a word, and Emily always looked distracted with her own thoughts. Consequently, it seemed like Mamma and I were alone. I was her best audience. The trials and turmoil, successes and failures of our neighboring families fascinated me. Every Saturday afternoon, Mamma's lady friends would either come here for lunch and gossip or Mamma would go to one of their homes. It seemed they filled each other's ears with enough news to last the rest of the week.
    Mamma was always just remembering something told to her four or five days ago, and bursting out with it as if it was a headline in a newspaper, no matter how small or insignificant the information might seem.
    "Martha Hatch broke a toe on her stairwell last Thursday, but she didn't know it was broken until it turned dark blue."
    Usually something that happened reminded her of something similar that had happened years and years ago and she would recall it. Occasionally, Papa would remember something, too. If the stories and news were interesting enough, I would bring them back to Eugenia when I stopped to see her after dinner. But the night Mamma declared I would go to school, I had only one topic of conversation to relate. I had heard nothing else. My head was full of excited thoughts.
    Now I would meet and become friends with other girls. I would learn to write and cipher.
    Eugenia had the only downstairs bedroom that was not assigned to any of the servants. It was decided early on that it would be easier for her than having to go up and down the stairs. As soon as I was excused from the table, I hurried down the corridor. Her bedroom was toward the rear of the house, but it had a nice set of windows that looked out over the west field so she could see the sun go down and the farm workers laboring over the tobacco.
    She had just finished her own breakfast when I burst into the room.
    "Mamma and Papa have decided I'm going to start school this year!" I cried. Eugenia smiled and looked as excited as she would have had it been her who was to be enrolled. She tugged on her long strands of light brown hair. Sitting up in her big bed with its posts twice my height and its large, thick headboard, Eugenia looked younger even than she was. I knew that her illness had retarded her physical development, but to me it made her seem more precious, like a delicate doll from China or Holland. She was swimming in her nightshirt. It poured around her. Her eyes were her most striking feature. Her cornflower blue eyes looked so happy when she laughed that they nearly seemed to be laughing themselves.
    "Mamma's taking me to Nelson's to buy a dress and new shoes," I said, crawling over her thick, soft mattress to sit