The Wilful Daughter by Georgia Daniels Page B

daughter’s.
    The sweetest smile cleared Bira’s face as they greeted her and she returned the greeting with something they hadn’t expected.
    “ Why Clara, I didn’t expect your Sara to be in the ball this year with the note your family owes the bank. What is it now, four months past due?
    “ And Lottie? How’s your brothers syphilis? Is he still staying with you or did he go back to that New Orleans place of ill repute he was running? I haven’t seen him lately.
    “ Now Doris, you must be very glad Hector is no longer seeing that girl from Macon you found out was your very own cousin. And glad she isn’t pregnant. What a scandal that would have been.”
    The men standing near them didn’t cover their laughter. The women passing grinned. The trio had no words for the things, true though they were, that Bira had said about them and in front of mere working people loudly enough, louder than Bira’s normal church mouse voice, for the whole block to hear.
    “ Well, I guess everything is all right and you have nothing to fear at the ball this year. Good day, ladies.”
    Bira had paid for the entire wardrobe of the girl, not as charity, but as a birthday present. ”Whenever that is or was,” she told the mother. And she made sure that, at the Cotillion, Fawn and the girl would be introduced together. After that she refused to go back to the avenue.
    Word got back to the Blacksmith of his wife’s actions on Auburn Avenue through all the working class people who found the wealthy Blacksmith’s wife down to earth. So he paid extra for Lanney to come to the house and fit and measure and sometimes mend and sew things that Bira didn’t have time to do.
    The first time Willie had looked at her he had quickly turned away. But she had said, “Mr. Brown, come back. I’m just waiting to finish fitting Jewel and Fawn. How are you today?”
    He fell in love with her immediately as she sat before him with her thick kinky hair pulled back into a severe bun and her simple clothes, not nearly as fancy as those she made. He talked to her and she to him as if old friends. And each time she came he sketched her without her knowledge. But not in the clothes that she wore. No, they were not good enough for his Lanney. He drew her in ball gowns, in silks and satins dresses like a queen.
    One day he boldly showed them to her.
    She smiled her appreciation. “They are beautiful. You actually think I look like this? This beautiful? I am nothing beside the beauty of your sisters.”
    “ No,” he had told her. “My sisters are beautiful. But when I paint you, I see how kindness and charm and inner strength can show up on a canvas when mere looks can easily fade.”
    Lanney had kissed him, kissed him hard. Then she left. The days dragged by slowly until her next visit when he kissed her back and struggled not to touch her.
    But Lanney had understood, she felt him struggle. That changed everything between them.
    She came to the house on a day she knew Willie would be alone for a long while: the sisters teaching or in school and the mother visiting a sick friend. She claimed, at the front door, that she was there to measure but when he said no one was at home she feigned embarrassment. He didn’t want to turn her away and asked her in for some tea.
    “ I’ll make it.” She knew her way about the place and led him to the kitchen. The water never made it to the stove to boil.
    When he kissed her she suggested that he touch her in places he had never dreamed of touching a woman. Only men with legs had the privilege of getting a woman. But Lanney was completely naked before he knew what happened.
    “ I want to paint you this way,” he told her. He had never seen a woman’s body undressed. He breathed strangely as she had helped him to his bed. Once his breath was regular and he could kiss her and touch her again she made love to him.
    It was the first of many times.
    The moments he knew were short but they felt like an eternity of