Sins of the Seventh Sister: A Novel Based on a True Story of the Gothic South

May 10, 1929

My Journal Begins*

One evening early in the summer, conversation was going around Grandmother Curtiss's dinner table, as it was wont to do. Earlier dinner conversations had turned into yelling matches, with each person talking louder than the last and sometimes pounding the table. As there were always at least twelve of us at the table on Friday nights, it made quite a clamor. So my grandmother had instigated new rules.

Starting with Papa Curtiss, each person got his chance to tell what he had done in the previous week, followed by a short question-and-answer period, before the attention moved on to the next person. Papa Curtiss sat at the end of the table with his chair pushed back to make room for his expanding girth. He liked the look of my mother in the candlelight, with her long, thin patrician neck and her head crowned by a massive braid of golden hair. It had never been cut.

Papa Curtiss spoke of the wisdom of converting all our liquid assets into stock, and he named the stock of the moment. Then he made a little "humph" that meant "The master has spoken," and he nodded to my mother, giving her the floor. But tonight my mother seemed hesitant to speak. She hemmed and hawed, which was unusual for her, and we all pretended not to notice. Finally she said, "I'll stand up. I want you all to hear me." By now she had everyone's full attention, even that of my father, who was on his third glass of wine, in spite of my grandmother's disapproving looks.

"As you know, I've been spending Friday afternoons at the county orphanage." My grandmother nodded her approval. "The school year's almost over, and the state doesn't educate children beyond their sixteenth year. Then it pushes them out to the waiting vultures." My mother was given to dramatic turns of phrase.

Here my grandmother interrupted, disobeying her own rule. "You're not going to ask me to take in another of those children. I've already got one of your girls in my kitchen and a boy delivering for the store."

Papa Curtiss echoed, "No more; enough!"

"Let me go on. This year there are six children too old to stay according to that dreadful state law, which should be changed." Here she looked directly at our county judge, Judge Brown, who was tonight's guest of honor. My mother became more resolute and raised her voice, which was unnecessary since it carried like a deep-toned bell. "There's a boy, I'm sure you'll recognize his name: Stanley Black. He's sixteen, and I'm going to take him home."

There was dead silence. Judge Brown was the first to recover; nothing shocked him anymore. "Isn't he the kid who killed his father?"

My mother's voice now turned from a bell to a very sharp knife. "You know very well he went through your court. At the hearing, he was never even accused. He was just a ten-year-old unlucky enough to be in the room when his father stabbed his mother and then killed himself."

Now it was just my mother and Judge Brown. "The sheriff said the kid had blood all over him." It was an unfortunate time to mention blood, as Matthew's knife was just then cutting through the rare beef roast.

"Your inquest decreed that Stanley's father killed himself."

Judge Brown shrugged. "It was the easiest thing to do. What are you going to do with a ten-year-old boy, send him to the electric chair?"

My father was now unpleasantly drunk and ignored everyone but my mother. "You might have talked to me about this."

"I need someone to help train the horses for Lexington." My mother seemed to be talking to herself. "You know Zeke and Hannibal aren't up to the job."

"And I suppose I'm not?" My father's slurred words could hardly reach the far end of the table. Grandmother Curtiss pulled him back into his seat and emptied his wineglass into the floral arrangement.

"We'll talk about it on the way home." My mother helped herself to the green beans and began to cut her meat. "Assuming you're coming home tonight."

"Who's running the farm, anyway?" My father was now belligerent. My mother went on chewing her green beans.

My grandmother leaned close to my father's ear. Her lips were pulled back, and I thought she was going to bite him. "You know very well that Billy-Pearl runs that farm while you chase every whore in the county. Now, sit down and be still or leave my table." She turned back to her guests and smiled, patting the sides of her shining black hair. "I had my hair bobbed today, and not one of you said a thing." A murmur of belated compliments went around the table. "I want to look like the times and not some old fuddy-duddy, and the next time you see me, I'm going to have horn-rimmed glasses." She turned to her younger half brother, my great-uncle Alvin, for help.

Alvin had been trained by an expert to pick up the social ball. "It's just what you need to set off your raven hair." Smiling, he gave the whole table the benefit of his charm. "I've decided to have my portrait painted."

My Aunt Opal's specialty was needling Alvin. "What a surprise. Do you think there's enough gold paint in town to do it?"

For just a moment I thought everyone at the table was angry with him, jealous because he really was golden: golden hair, golden skin, golden eyes.

"I'm going to have Eddie Horner do it. He's quite good."

Papa Curtiss sputtered until the bloody beef juices ran down his chin. "I've heard he's a fairy."

Alvin kept his tone level. "His personal sex habits have nothing to do with his ability as a painter. After all, I'm not going to sleep with him. You should have him do your portrait, Billy, you'd make a beautiful subject." My mother only smiled. I knew why he admired her: it was a kind of ego, since she was golden-haired like he was, and everyone else at the table was dark-haired except for me and Aunt Emma. Emma was Alvin's sister, but she didn't count, for she was a ghost of a woman. Their mother must have saved up her color for her golden boy, for Emma had none at all. She was albino, completely white, with no pigment in her hair or skin. Even the long sweep of her lashes was white, framing the kind of blue in her eyes that you could paint with watercolors only if you added a great deal of water. Emma never went out, except for these Friday night dinners. She was afraid of the sidewalks and the streets and would not have come even here, except that she and Alvin lived in a great house on Park Avenue, back to back with the Curtiss house, and she could come through the orchard they shared.

Now my grandmother smiled at me. "Hughie." (I was Hughie, my father was Hugh, and my grandfather was Huston, so we didn't have to be one, two, and three.) "Would you like to tell us what you did this week?"

I felt my father's sudden apprehension, for quite often my recitals involved him. I stood up. It was my moment. "Yesterday I went swimming down at the cement bridge with four of my cousins." (My father was alert now, reaching for his money clip.) "We were all up on the bridge, lookin' down, when here comes a boat, just drifting, and guess who was in it?"

Opal looked impatient. "Tell us, Hughie. This isn't a guessing game."

My father was showing the corner of a dollar bill in his vest pocket. "It was Sylvia Tingler--all by herself, floating down the river."

My grandmother said, "I don't want that woman's name spoken at this table!"

I sat down. The strawberry tarts were being served. I could still feel the shame of the day before. My...