2. What the Eggs Hatched

Mama was in the parlor, practicing a sad-sounding Schubert piece on the Chickering square piano. At least I thought it was Schubert. The piano needed a tuning so badly, it made me think of a drunkard trying to sing opera.

We stepped with care around pillars of books that teetered on the floor. More columns sprouted against the walls, between furniture, beside the piano.

“Leave those, please,” Mama said as Anshel gathered a few books from the top of the nearest tower. “I won’t be able to find them if you move them.”

“Tante Laurencia, won’t it be easier for you to find them if they’re where they belong?” He glanced at the cedar bookcases that Papa had built into the walls. One or two lone volumes languished on their side. Aside from that, the shelves were empty.

Mama played several measures over and over again. “There’s nothing wrong with where they are.”

Anshel shrugged, placed the books back atop their monolith. He asked Mama if she wanted him to do anything. She said no. He asked us to excuse him; he was retiring to his room to study.

A carding comb waited on the piano lid, next to the music stand, a clump of wool impaled on its skinny nails. The comb had been there ever since Mama said she was bored of carding and she sat down at the piano. That was a month ago. Should I card the wool myself? The last time I did that, she got angry. She never said why.

With the drapes pulled tight and the room lit only by the lamp atop the piano, the place had the attitude of the first day of winter. It was the second week in April. I guessed Mama would feel better if she saw the velvety lawn, the trees with their knots of delicate green buds. I opened the drapes as far as they could go. The storm clouds might have sucked out the sunshine, but there was enough natural light to revive me like a slap of fresh air. Mama paid no mind. She continued to play the same pages. The raw light faded her farther than the easy chair she had left on the porch all summer.

My stomach mewed. I needed breakfast. I failed to recall Mama eating anything that morning too.

“I’ll fry some eggs, Mama? Does that sound good?”

“I’ll do it, babe. Give me a few moments. I’ve almost got this.”

“It doesn’t need to be perfect, Mama. We like it no matter how you play it.”

“It’s got to be perfect for the recital.”

“Which recital?”

“For the soldiers.”

I remembered the visit from Mrs. Hollingshead, who lived near Moss Neck, a few miles away.

“Mama, that recital’s for the Confederate boys. Daddy’s fighting for the Union.”

“They’re daddies too, Lodie. And sons … brothers … cousins … uncles …”

“Yes, Mama. I’ll fry some eggs for you.”

She seemed not to hear me. I closed the door, leaving her alone with her music. At least, with the drapes open, the room looked less funereal.

The ruckus on the stairs was Anshel. He flew through the door with a bang and accosted me as I labored to turn the runny offering in the frying pan. His sidecurls jiggled against his cheekbones. “The eggs!”

Ah yes, leave it to food to lure him away from those books: fat, leather-bound things with exotic printing stamped in gold on the covers. “I’ll do yours as soon as I finish these for Mama.” I was delighted to make him wait, especially after the peremptory manner in which he had demanded to be fed.

“Nonononono, I don’t want to eat eggs. I want to bring them to Mr. B.”

"Fried eggs?" I confess to not being able to understand what the dairyman had to do with our breakfast.

"Nono, the eggs. Your mother pays him with eggs from the henhouse."

We had forgotent the eggs in our haste to avoid the storm.

"He'll be back tomorrow morning. We can give him the eggs then."

“We’ve got to do it now. If we don’t, we’ll forget again.”

"Now? Before breakfast?"

"Finish the eggs for your mother. Then we can go."

“It’s a long walk. We really should have something first.”

“Eat now, and you'll make yourself sick rushing. Breakfast will taste better if you can eat knowing you’ve done the right thing.”

The right thing would have been to go to the dairy in an ironclad carriage with an armed guard. Cavalry coursed around the distant copse of trees that separated the neighboring farm from Mr. B’s. If they saw us gripping the basket between us, the eggs would be as good as broken.

I grabbed my skirts in my free hand and lurched ahead, leaving Anshel a few paces behind. He skipped to my side. The eggs jiggled beneath the protective towels. “Wait! What are you doing?”

“Soldiers ... in the trees,” I said, not daring to point.

“Did they see us?”

“I don’t know. If they did, I hope they think we’ve got nothing but laundry in here.”

“Don’t hope, Loydie. Trust. Hope, and you want everything to happen as you want. Trust, and you know that what happens, happens because HaShem meant it to happen.”

He used the old Hebrew name for God. I think he knew it annoyed me.

We had gone out without umbrellas, confident the storm was several hours away. Now a thick, lazy rain poked our eyes. Anshel wiped his face on his sodden sleeve. “This is good, Loydie. If we can’t see, the soldiers can’t see. Maybe they’ll wait somewhere for the rain to stop, yes?”

“Yes. Under the trees,” I said as lightning licked the landscape.

In an instant, April had the sort of fit that turns it from the promise of summer to the spoiled runt-child of winter. Icy air smacked our faces. The wind slathered us in snow so thick we could have been bricks beneath mortar. The road, the grass along the sides of the roads, and the fields lost their character and natural divisions; all were obliterated, and in their stead lay a smooth white plane that seemed to swell, sneaky as a river rising into a flood.

The snow that covered the eggs could have been a pile of rocks. The weight forced me to grip the basket handle with two hands. I had worn woolen mitts, not fully formed gloves. My fingers stung. They were bright pink in some spots and dusty blue in others.

I lowered my side of the basket as Anshel lowered his. The ground beneath the basket must have been uneven. The laden thing tilted like a colander atop a pan of soaking dishes.

“What are you doing?”

I confess, it was more of a shout than a civil question. We were lashed to a storm, and Anshel was pulling off his gloves.

A steady pattern of soft thuds suggested we were not alone on the road. “We had better step aside before we’re trampled,” I said as Anshel gave me the gloves.

But step aside where? We could barely see each other, let alone three, six or ten feet away in any direction around us.

Anshel closed his eyes. He made the same sound a person makes when starting to speak but then thinks better.

I challenged the performance. “Well?”

”There’s one horse, only one horse. It’s slowing down, yes. This is good. Horses know, Loydie. They won’t run a person down, if they can help it. Didn’t you ever notice how people stop runaways? They stand in front of them with their arms spread out like scarecrows. The horse stops. The horse always stops.”

The noise itself had stopped.

“We should move aside, anyway.”

We lifted the basket. Anshel’s gloves were a little large for me. I grabbed more wool than basket handle. Again, I was compelled to use both hands. We edged aside.

Without warning, the thuds reappeared. They were behind us. So was the voice.

“What are you doing, children?”

It was not an idle question, and the tone suggested the speaker would not take kindly to being ignored.

Together, Anshel and I looked over our shoulders. The soldier on horseback waited no more than an arm’s length away.

We were about to lose our eggs after all.