Rose was embraced by a feminine tornado as she stepped down from the train.
“Rose Winter! Cousin May’s girl!”
“You look so much like her! May didn’t tell us in her letter, how pretty you are!”
“I just have to squeeze you again, it’s so good to meet you!”
A cloud of two perfumes enveloped her and brought tears to her eyes, although they may have been forced from her by her auntie's embraces. One would squeeze her, exclaiming, then release her to the arms of the other, who would again squeeze her to the point of breathlessness. Rose had never been so overwhelmingly welcomed ever before, and she wasn’t sure if she enjoyed all the fuss or was embarrassed by it.
Rose turned to find Granny Goins, but she was moving across the platform towards the stairs. She turned back and nodded to Rose.
“Mind what I told you,” she called out, and raised her hand in a wave, then passed down the stairs.
“Did you ride all the way from Gainesville with Mrs. Goins?” the aunt in the plum colored coat asked.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Rose replied, which brought hoots of laughter from her other aunt, who reached out and took her suitcase.
“Ma’am, don’t you ma’am her, Rose, she’ll be bossing you until midnight if you talk to her that way. She’s Auntie or Beauty, same as I’m Happy. And don’t you Ma’am me, I’m no old maid like Beauty here. Did you ride with that old woman for two hours? She give you a spell for love, or teach you to spit between two fingers to protect against witches?” Happy teased.
“Oh, Happy, you just don’t care for Miss Goins because she used to hush you in church all the time. Nothing wrong with her, she’s a good church going woman,” Beauty replied. “Let’s move on home, it’s too cold to dawdle.”
“Now your Aunt Happy, here, she should be home helping Mama with the baking,” Beauty explained to Rose as they began to walk east down the road. “But she can’t ever pass up a chance to wear her new coat, which, I will point out, she made her very own self, and knit those gloves and hat, and aren’t they the prettiest yellow you ever saw? Of course she’s getting awful old to wear bright colors like that, no grown lady ought to be wearing a red coat with a yellow hat, you know I’m right Happy, Mama said so herself,” Beauty told her sister.
“Oh, you go on, Miss Jealousy, you go on, never could believe how jealous you get,” Happy teased Beauty right back.
As Rose listened, surprised at their friendly arguing, the two sisters burst out laughing at her look of confusion.
“Oh, uh oh, mm mmm, look at her face, she must not be used to all of this carrying on! You better get used to it Rose, we’re always fighting! Been fighting since the day we were born! ‘Course, Happy’s been born a lot longer than me, five or six years longer! Don’t you try and deny it, you!”
“Now you just hold on, sister, don’t you believe a word she says, Rose. Old Lady Beauty herself is the older, ten years or so older,” Happy replied, laughing. “She’s the greedy one, you watch her. She’s eyeballing that scarf of yours, I saw you Miss Greedy Pig, I saw you!”
“Oh, go on. Don’t pay her any more attention. Tell us about your trip, was it long? Are you tired? You must be hungry, Rose, coming off the train,” Beauty said, and Rose nodded, shy to have to admit it. She hadn’t had much since she got on the train; she’d been too afraid to leave her things to get off at a station and buy something to eat.
“There’s plenty to eat back home,” Beauty continued. “All the grandbabies will be rolling out of bed soon, so you’ll get to meet everyone then. I just hope you get a chance at that breakfast table before they’re all up. Happy’s not the only one in this family that eats enough for two people. Cook all day, still someone’s always asking ‘Kin you cook me up sumthin’, I need some food, make me some candy, Sister, please, huh?’” Beauty and Happy both laughed.
“Our brother Sylvester has an awful sweet tooth,” Beauty explained. “He’d eat candy every day if he could get us to make some for him. Mama tells him ‘You’ll just have to have sweet dreams tonight, son, I’m not making you any candy’. You watch, he’ll be pestering you to cook him some, begging and nagging until you give in.”
“I can’t cook anything!” Rose exclaimed, and immediately wished she hadn’t said anything when she saw the looks of surprise on her two aunt’s faces. They looked at each other, wide-eyed.
“You can’t cook? Big old girl like you?” Beauty asked, amazed. “Not at all? Not a thing?”
“Mama just said, this very morning. She was so glad she was going to have you to help her in the kitchen,” Happy said.
At this both women burst out laughing, stopped walking and just laughed, and their laughter was so infectious that Rose had to join in. Soon all three were laughing hard, and every time they looked at each other they broke out in another outburst.
Finally all three wound down to giggles and gasps, and they continued on their way, Happy and Beauty chattering, laughing, and Rose listening but mostly looking around at the forest through which the road and the railroad tracks beside it ran.
Where are all the houses? she thought. Where are all the people?
Up ahead a white house came into view. Rose could see that it was big, two stories running back eight windows deep. There was a porch running all the way around the house, and a grape arbor in the back. A huge garden patch started beyond the arbor, and four long clotheslines full of wash hung on the far side of the garden.
A mother dog, heavy with milk, came out from under the front steps. She trotted up to Happy, tail low and wagging, ears back and mouth grinning a big doggie grin. She put her nose in first Happy’s, then Beauty’s, hands, then turned to sniff Rose and give her hand a thrust of the snout as well.
“Hey you old girl, hey you sweetie, this is Rose, she’s a good girl and so are you, yes you are, Daisy Dog,” Beauty crooned to the dog. “This is our old sweetie dog, Daisy, she just had puppies, we’ll show you later. Come on in, Mama will be glad to see you’ve arrived. Let’s tell her you can’t wait to start cooking, we’ll tell her it’s your favorite chore.”
Beauty and Happy, laughing at Rose’s dismay, led her up the brick walkway to the front porch. The red front door swung open as they approached, and several children spilled out of the door onto the porch and crowded around Rose and her aunts, stopping them from continuing into the house.
“You hooligans make way for your Cousin Rose!” Beauty scolded the group of children. “Move on back in that house, it’s freezing out here! Rose isn’t going anywhere, she’s just arrived, now let us in the house before we eat you for breakfast!”
“Oh yeah, you come on out here, no shoes, no coats, let’s get you chopping on the woodpile. That’ll warm you up,” Happy laughed at the children as they shivered. “Bare feet all right for winter time, Grandmama say that all the time, isn’t that right? You run back in that house before she catches you.”
The group of children tumbled into the house, talking, laughing, looking at Rose who they pulled into the house as they went.
“Are you ever going to stop staring at her, Baby?” Beauty asked one little girl.
“I’m sorry, Auntie, but tell me, is she a grown up lady?” the little girl asked.
“Miss Rose is eighty-seven years old,” Happy grinned. “She’s older than your Uncle Sylvester, almost. She’s a granny lady, just like your grandmama. She’s here to pick out some of you all, she needs some new grandchildren, because hers all turned into piglets from not washing up regular.”
“No sir! No sir, that’s not true, Auntie Happy!” the children exclaimed.
“Why yes it is! She begged them and begged them to wash up, but they wouldn’t. First the dirt grew so thick in their ears they had tiny tiny ‘taters sprout, and some rutabagas, growing right out of their ears! After a while, they grew so filthy they just turned into piglets. Woke up, they couldn’t talk except to squeal! Couldn’t walk around except on all fours! Had curly little tails sticking right out their rear ends!”
“What happened to those little piglet babies, Auntie?” one of the now quiet group of children asked in a whisper.
“Rose put ‘em out in a pen, out back the house! Where else you gonna put a bunch of filthy piglet babies, won’t wash up proper? Isn’t that right, Rose?”
Rose had no idea what to say to the children, their little faces turned to her for an answer. She was relieved to see a woman with white hair coming through a door at the end of the hall, walking towards the group of children.
“Grandmama, Auntie Happy says this lady turned her grandbabies into piglets! And she’s coming for us now! I don’t want to be a filthy piglet!” one of the group of children squealed as they moved forward to the woman, several of them reaching around her legs and waist to embrace her.
“You know better than to listen to your Auntie Happy’s stories. She’ll make up anything just to stir you all up,” the woman said. “Pay her no mind. She’s just pulling your legs, aren’t you, Happy?” she asked, looking at her daughter with a raised eyebrow and a small frown.
“Yes Ma’am,” Happy replied, grinning.
The woman turned to Rose. “You must be our Rose, welcome to our home. I’m Sarah Carrier, you call me Auntie Sarah, honey,” she said as she reached out to take Rose’s hand.
“Thank you Ma’am,” Rose replied. She was relieved at the kindness she felt she could see in the older woman’s face.
“Your mother and father are special people to us, we’re glad to have you here. Happy, take Rose upstairs and help her unpack. Beauty, you help me round up these children and get them fed and dressed, the chores won’t wait all morning.”
The group of children followed Beauty down the hall. Rose went with Happy upstairs to a bedroom at the end of the long hall. There was a big, whitewashed iron bed, white filmy curtains in the window, and a colorful rag rug on the floor. Happy showed Rose where to put her things and told her she’d be sharing the room with one of the cousins, a girl named Queen.
I hope I like her, Rose thought as she put her things away. I hope she likes me.
Beauty led the group of children up as Rose and Happy came down the stairs. Rose peeked into the rooms she and Happy passed down the hall. The first room was a parlor, with dark wood furniture, a large fireplace and a piano.
That’s so nice! Rose thought with surprise. There’s a piano here!
Across from the parlor was a room that appeared to be used for sewing. A treadle machine was under the front window, next to a large table covered in fabric and sewing tools. The room beyond the sewing room had a bed in it, covered with a brightly colored quilt. Across the hall was the dining room, nearly filled by a table and fourteen chairs. Rose smiled at how pretty the dishes were, blue with a willow pattern, and admired how the glassware in the corner cabinets gleamed.
What a beautiful house, she thought.
Happy opened a door under the stairs, reached in and pulled out a pair of boots and a worn looking sweater.
“Go on ahead,” she told Rose. “I’m going out to care for my chickens.”
Aunt Sarah was at the big black stove when Rose came through the swinging door to the kitchen. She crossed over to Rose, smiling.
“You must be hungry, Rose, I’m going to fix you something to eat. You wash up at the sink, I’ll be quick.”
Rose sat at one of the two big tables after she washed up. She thought that watching Sarah Carrier cook was like watching someone dance. Sarah moved around the kitchen, moving quickly from task to task, silent but smiling at Rose whenever she caught her eye. Delicious smells filled the air, and soon she brought a plate of food to Rose, passed over to one of the cabinets against the front wall of the kitchen, removed a jar of preserves and lifted a plate of biscuits from the pie safe, both of which she placed on the table for Rose.
“You want some pie, Rose?” she asked. “I have a good peach and a nice apple.”
“No Ma’am, thank you,” Rose replied, dismayed at the amount of food on her plate. There were eggs, and ham, and fried potatoes, and grits on her plate. Back home she had always been hungry, it seemed, back when she and Mama had been struggling along. She was always wishing for one more piece of bread, one more spoon of jam. The amount of food on this plate was more than she and her mother would have had to share between them, and they had never had a whole pie in any kitchen where they lived. In a funny way, so much food after all the years of so little seemed to take her appetite.
“Thank you Ma’am, this looks wonderful. I don’t know if I can eat all of this,” Rose told Sarah, who was watching Rose carefully, looking at the tears which filled the girl’s eyes but didn’t spill over.
“Hmm, not so good that you’re eating it, I see. No, don’t worry, now, you go ahead and eat all you want. There’s plenty more, and the pigs will be happy to get anything you leave. You want some biscuits, get them now, I hear those children coming down. They’ll gobble every one.”
The children came pouring in the kitchen and climbed up on the chairs by Rose as she started to eat.
“Grandmama can we eat these biscuits?” one little girl asked as several hands reached out for biscuits.
“You get on out of this kitchen now!” Sarah cried, smiling but shooing the children off the chairs and out the back door to the porch. “Leave Rose in peace and get busy with your chores! ”
A tall young man came in the back door, followed by a younger boy. Rose looked at the tall one, and her heart leaped inside her chest, a funny thump she couldn’t identify because it was a new thing.
The young man was handsome, with dark shining eyes. He was big, tall and solid looking. When he turned to her and said, “Hey, you must be Cousin Rose,” she could only look down at her plate and hope she didn’t have any food on her face.
Sarah was looking at Rose and smiling a little. Rose could feel her face warming and was grateful when Sarah said, “Come on, Daniel, let’s look out back and see what needs to be done today. You come too, A.T., come on and listen so you can be in charge when you’re older.”
Rose finished her breakfast as Sarah talked to the boys. She was full, nice and full for the first time in days. She thought of her Mama and hoped she was full, and happy, and she felt a deep lonesome longing for her mother to be here in this new place with her.
Rose looked around the kitchen and thought it was the nicest room she’d seen in the house. The kitchen was very clean, nothing in disarray. The table legs and chairs were waxed and polished so they gave off a deep glow in the sunlight coming through the windows. The red linoleum looked new, and spotlessly clean.
It’s so pretty in here, and so bright, Rose thought. Here I am, in Rosewood. Finally. I’d sure like to take these boots off. I’d like to have a real wash up. I’m so full! I’m so tired. On the train, I hardly slept for two days. Can’t sleep sitting up. I wonder if Miss Sarah will let me take a nap. Maybe I need to start my chores.
Rose closed her eyes as her mind drifted.
“You boys go ahead now, get those children picking up kindling first. A.T., no rabbits this morning.”
“Yes, Grandmama,” the boys chorused as they went out the back door.
Sarah turned back to see Rose asleep, her head on her arms, at the kitchen table.