Just a few more days till we totter in the road--"
"No matter, 'twill never be light"--she took the words to her tired mind. Would her load never be light? Was coming home to Tara to mean, not blessed surcease, but only more loads to carry? She slipped from Mammy's arms and, reaching up, patted the wrinkled black face.
"Honey, yo' han's!" Mammy took the small hands with their blisters and blood clots in hers and looked at them with horrified disapproval. "Miss Scarlett, Ah done tole you an' tole you dat you kin allus tell a lady by her han's an'--yo' face sunbuhnt too!"
Poor Mammy, still the martinet about such unimportant things even though war and death
had just passed over her head! In another moment she would be saying that young Misses with blistered hands and freckles most generally didn't never catch husbands and Scarlett forestalled the remark.
"Mammy, I want you to tell me about Mother. I couldn't bear to hear Pa talk about her."
Tears started from Mammy's eyes as she leaned down to pick up the buckets. In silence
she carried them to the bedside and, turning down the sheet, began pulling up the night clothes of Suellen and Carreen. Scarlett, peering at her sisters in the dim flaring light, saw that Carreen wore a nightgown, clean but in tatters, and Suellen lay wrapped in an old negligee, a brown linen garment heavy with tagging ends of Irish lace. Mammy cried silently as she sponged the gaunt bodies, using the remnant of an old apron as a cloth.
"Miss Scarlett, it wuz dem Slatterys, dem trashy, no-good, lowdown po'-w'ite Slatterys dat kilt Miss Ellen. Ah done tole her an' tole her it doan do no good doin' things fer trashy folks, but Miss Ellen wuz so sot in her ways an' her heart so sof' she couldn' never say no ter nobody whut needed her."
"Slatterys?" questioned Scarlett, bewildered. "How do they come in?"
"Dey wuz sick wid disyere thing," Mammy gestured with her rag to the two naked girls, dripping with water on their damp sheet. "Ole Miss Slattery's gal, Emmie, come down wid it an'
Miss Slattery come hotfootin' it up hyah affer Miss Ellen, lak she allus done w'en anything wrong. Why din' she nuss her own? Miss Ellen had mo'n she could tote anyways. But Miss Ellen she went down dar an' she nuss Emmie. An' Miss Ellen wuzn' well a-tall herseff, Miss Scarlett.
Yo' ma hadn' been well fer de longes'. Dey ain' been too much ter eat roun' hyah, wid de
commissary stealin' eve'y thing us growed. An' Miss Ellen eat lak a bird anyways. An' Ah tole her an' tole her ter let dem w'ite trash alone, but she din' pay me no mine. Well'm, "bout de time Emmie look lak she gittin' better, Miss Carreen come down wid it. Yas'm, de typhoy fly right up de road an' ketch Miss Carreen, an' den down come Miss Suellen. So Miss Ellen, she tuck an'
nuss dem too.
"Wid all de fightin' up de road an' de Yankees 'cross de river an' us not knowin' whut wuz gwine ter happen ter us an' de fe'el han's runnin" off eve'y night, Ah's 'bout crazy. But Miss Ellen jes' as cool as a cucumber. 'Cept she wuz worried ter a ghos' 'bout de young Misses kase we couldn' git no medicines nor nuthin'. An' one night she say ter me affer we done sponge off de
young Misses 'bout ten times, she say, 'Mammy, effen Ah could sell mah soul, Ah'd sell it fer some ice ter put on mah gals' haids.'
"She wouldn't let Mist' Gerald come in hyah, nor Rosa nor Teena, nobody but me, kase Ah done had de typhoy. An' den it tuck her, Miss Scarlett, an' Ah seed right off dat twarnt no use."
Mammy straightened up and, raising her apron, dried her streaming eyes.
"She went fas', Miss Scarlett, an' even dat nice Yankee doctah couldn' do nuthin' fer her.
She din' know nuthin' a-tall. Ah call ter her an' talk ter her but she din' even know her own Mammy."
"Did she--did she ever mention me--call for me?"
"No, honey. She think she is lil gal back in Savannah, She din' call nobody by name."
Dilcey stirred and laid the sleeping baby across her knees.
"Yes'm, she did. She did call somebody."
"You hesh yo' mouf, you Injun-nigger!" Mammy turned with threatening violence on Dilcey.
"Hush, Mammy! Who did she call, Dilcey? Pa?"
"No'm. Not yo' pa. It wuz the night the cotton buhnt--"
"Has the cotton gone--tell me quickly!"
"Yes'm, it buhnt up. The sojers rolls it out of the shed into the back yard and hollers, 'Here the bigges' bonfiah in Georgia,' and tech it off."
Three years of stored cotton--one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, all in one blaze!