Ghosts of Robert E. Lee

We are not related to Robert E. Lee and everyone knows it. Everyone but my sister Glenna. She is just sure that the missing piece of our family puzzle is Robert E. Lee. Really, she tells everyone about it and they used to be polite and they would nod their heads and says things like "uh-huh" and "...ummm, ok". Now when they see her coming they just try to avoid her. Eufala is a small town and everyone knows everything about everyone else. I can't tell you how many times I have been walking down the street with her and it seems like people are ducking into stores and suddenly; turning corners or hiding behind newspapers just so Glenna doesn't start to talking about Robert E. Lee. Now, they don't think she is crazy, least they don't say it out loud, but I think she is bound to drive someone else crazy. Really, I have to agree. In fact, it was her talking about Robert E. Lee that caused my uncle Nate to burn his own house down.

She didn't start out to try to kill us all, but I could tell in the beginning of spring that it was going to be a long summer. It was the summer I turned 13 and it was a year after our parents died. We were living with Uncle Nate and Auntie Ernie, and Glenna and I were forever sulking around the house getting on each other's nerves. I thought she should ask Uncle Nate to help her get her driver's license, but she wouldn't. She said "Elizabeth, I can walk wherever I need to go in this little bitty town, and there is no where I need to go anyway." I tried to get her to change her mind, but I suppose she got tired of hearing me because one day when I said "Glenna, you do have places you need to go," for the hundredth time, she smacked me on the top of my head with her book because she knew it was me that had places I needed go. She didn't smack me hard, really, just hard enough to get my attention. She didn't say anything after she did it, she just looked at me calm as could be. I just looked back because there really wasn't anything that needed to be said but I didn't bring it up after that. I tried to give Glenna a lot of space after that, because this was only the beginning of summer and there was no telling what might happen by the middle of August when we couldn't get away from feeling hot and sweaty and like the air was starting to weigh a million pounds.

It was about a week after she smacked me with the book that she told me we were related to Robert E. Lee. I told her she ought to be in bed if she was feverish or of she was having some sort of fit, but she just looked straight at me and showed me a picture from the history book she was reading, and then she held up an old tattered black and white picture of some relative or other and said, "See, look at the resemblance." I told her I saw no resemblance at all and if she could prove we were related to Robert E. Lee I would walk from here to Georgia on my hands and whistle Dixie the whole way. She shrugged her shoulders and raised her eyebrows and told me to do what I liked but she would show me that we were related. Then she went off to show Uncle Nate.

Well, I should have known then that there was something wrong with Glenna because before that day she never even cared about who we were related to. She used to roll her eyes and make sucking sounds with her teeth whenever momma or daddy would tell stories about relative we didn't even know. Momma would say, "Stop now, Glenna, it's important to know who your people are and we have some very interesting people in our family." And then she would always tell us about the cousin she had that went crazy and took to walking around her house naked which would not have been a big deal to the people in Eufala, except that she also chose that time to take down all her window coverings. Momma said everyone in town was too polite to say anything so she just kept walking around naked until the day she died. Well, Glenna didn't care about momma's cousins or anyone else. I liked to imagine the looks on the old folks' faces when that cousin sat naked in the rocking chair near the picture window, or I could see some middle school students peeking in the window and giggling and staring. Glenna didn't care about any of that, she would just keep rolling her eyes and sucking on her teeth and after while she would just get up and wander out even if momma was still talking. And up until that day when she told me we were related to Robert E. Lee I figured she still couldn't care less who we were related to.

Now when she told Uncle Nate we were related to Robert E. Lee, he told her he was pretty sure she was wrong. He said he knew who all of his people were and he was sure that old Robert was not one them. She showed him the picture in the book she'd been reading and then she pulled out the old picture she had shown me and said, "See, I found this in your very attic and if that doesn't mean we are related to Robert E. Lee I don't know what it does mean." Uncle Nate looked at the picture real close, he even put on his old round reading glasses, and he told her that was a picture of his great, great grandfather Harrison Goodard. Glenna just stared at him, and said, "Well, you can just go look at those pictures up there in the attic and you will see that they all look like Mr. Robert E. Lee". Then she sulked off and went back to reading her book. Uncle Nate gave me a funny sort of look and then he went back to reading his newspaper. As I was leaving he was muttering something about not having any people that would have surrendered to the north.

It seems like just about the time Glenna found that picture, she decided she did have some places she needed to go and everywhere she went she was showing people that picture. The funny thing is, she never look at any other pictures or read any other books but after a few days she had a whole story to go with the picture she was carrying around. A few days after she talked to Uncle Nate I was sitting on the front porch waiting for the mailman to come and through the hedged I could hear her talking to old Ms. Gretchen that lived next door. Glenna was telling her that Robert E. Lee was our great, great grandfather and I could hear Ms. Gretchen saying "Hm-hmmm...." and after a while another old lady came by and it sounded like Glenna just sort of wandered away. I heard Ms. Gretchen say it was so sad that we had lost our parents like we did and she said that if daddy hadn't been drinking that night he never would have crashed the car into that light pole like he had. I sat very still and listened. I was sure she didn't know I was there because no one ever talked about our parents in front of us anymore, and I was afraid that if she knew I was there she would clam up just like everyone else did when Glenna and I surprised them.

Ms. Gretchen kept talking, and she said how it must be so hard for girls our ae and she hoped that Glenna wasn't going to be off her whole life because it would be such a waste. Hopefully this was just a spell, she said to the other old lady. They didn't say anything at all about me and for a minute I was glad and I started to smile but then I started to wonder if my feelings should be hurt. I was just about to get up and tell them that Glenna wasn't off, and they should mind their own business when Ms. Gretchen said she was surprised Uncle Nate had let us come live there at all. Well then I just couldn't move and my heart started beating so that I was sure they could hear it and I had to keep listening even though I was sure I didn't want to hear what she was going to say.

In her old soft voice she told that other lady how Uncle Nate never liked my daddy. He thought his sister deserved better and after the wedding momma and Uncle Nate stopped speaking. Ms. Gretchen said she knew about momma and daddy getting killed but she was sure surprised when she looked out her window and saw two little girls walking up the sidewalk with suitcases. She said when she saw Glenna it was clear as day who we were because Glenna is the splitting image of momma and she was sure that was the only reason Nate would let us come live here. Well, Glenna does bear a resemblance to momz5682222222ma, but she sure doesn't act like her. And anyway, I look just like Daddy and he lets me live here. I figured Ms. Gretchen just didn't have enough to do if she could spend so much time talking about other people and I decided to go tell Uncle Nate that he was right when he called Ms. Gretchen an old busybody. Uncle Nate laughed when I told him what I thought about Ms. Gretchen and he said, "Elizabeth, you sure are right." He did not ask how I had formed this opinion, and I didn't volunteer because I already figured what Uncle Nate would say about listening to other peoples' conversations.

The more Glenna talked about her great grandpa old Robert E. Lee, the bugger her story got. I know for a fact that she told Mr. William down at the drug store that we had an attic full of letters Robert E. Lee had written to our mother. She did spend a lot of time up there looking through boxes of old pictures but I went up there with her one day and the only letters I saw were the letters my grandmother had written to my grandmother when he was in the army. Uncle Nate and Auntie Ernestine tried to be patient about the whole thing but after a while Auntie Ernestine started talking about taking Glenna to see someone she could talk to. It was the middle of the night and they thought I was sleeping but I wasn't, and even over Glenna's snoring I could hear them talking. Uncle Nate said that Glenna was just going through some growing pains, but he then he said he would have a talk with her.

The next day he went up to the attic while Glenna was up there and together they dragged down three big boxes of pictures. Uncle Nate sat on the floor looking at the pictures all that day and for a while Glenna and I sat with him listening while he told us who all the people were. After a while, though, Glenna sort of wandered away and it was just Uncle Nate and me sitting there looking at pictures and it didn't make any difference to Glenna anyway because for weeks after that she kept on telling those stories and Uncle Nate and Auntie Ernestine kept on trying to be patient. And they were until the day we came home from church and found Glenna sitting on the floor in the middle of rows and rows of pictures. She had them all laid out in neat little rows and it looked like they were arranged according to who had beards, and who had on hats, and in the front row were all the pictures of the women. When we walked in she looked up and said she said, "See, we are related to Robert E. Lee, and look here at this one, this one looks just like my momma, doesn't it?" She held it up and then she let it flutter back to the floor.

We all just stared at her and the rows of pictures and then we looked at each other. Uncle Nate looked very tired and sad and Auntie Ernestine looked scared - her eyes bulged out and she was blinking like crazy and her one hand was covering her mouth like she might just go ahead and throw up. When I looked back at Glenna she was still sitting there in the middle of all those pictures only now there were tears rolling down her cheeks and her hands were laying in her lap, palms up, helpless looking, as if to say that she couldn't do any more to change the history of our family. Uncle Nate let out sort of groan and he walked over to Glenna and the rows of pictures and he picked her up and he held her in his arms and he just kept saying that he was sorry, so sorry that he had not seen before this. He carried her upstairs and he left Auntie Ernestine and I there standing with the rows of pictures and we didn't know what to do with ourselves so we started to scoop up the rows and stack them up and put them back in the boxes and I noticed that Glenna was right, the picture she had held up did look just like momma.

Uncle Nate was upstairs for a long time and when he came back down he picked up the boxed of pictures and he brought them outside to the front porch. He told Auntie Ernestine and I to go ahead and get Sunday dinner going, and then he wouldn't be long. Then he disappeared out the back door. We heard him out there in the shed rattling around and then we heard him stomp up the steps to the front porch and then everything was quiet for a while. Auntie Ernestine was sitting at the kitchen table and I was standing by the counter looking out the kitchen window thinking about the picture and momma and after a while I could smell smoke. I turned around to look at Auntie Ernestine and she was looking surprised and confused and sad all at the same time. Uncle Nate walked in and said, "There, now no one will be worrying about those goddamn pictures anymore," and Auntie Ernestine said, "Nate, what have you done? Don't you know the pictures were never the problem?" But Nate just shook his head and said that if those pictures were going to cause Glenna pain then he was going to get rid of them. Auntie Ernestine just shook her head, but I thought that that might be the kindest thig anyone had ever done for Glenna or me.

We were standing there staring at Uncle Nate and he was staring at the floor when all of a sudden Glenna started screaming that the house was burning down and we all ran to the living room where she was screaming and sure enough the front porch and part of the front door were on fire. Uncle Nate started in to cursing and running around, and Auntie Ernestine started crying I was just frozen in the place I was standing. Glenna was running around yelling for us to do something before the whole house burns down but it seemed like Uncle Nate couldn't stop running around in circles. It was Glenna who finally grabbed him by the arm and screamed right in his face, "GO CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT!" Then she grabbed Auntie Ernestine and me and we ran out the back door.

Uncle Nate met us out on the front lawn and told us all to stay calm, but I knew this was not the time for me to suggest he listen to his own advice. So I just stood there while he went and grabbed the garden hose and started spraying. The fire was already on the roof by then and anyway the fire department was screaming to stop right in front of the house so the hose just fell to the ground out of his hands. By the time they started spraying the house with water the flames were wrapping around the posts of the front porch and had spread to surround the picture window. The whole while the house was burning, Glenna just kept saying how sorry she was and Auntie Ernestine was saying it wasn't her fault and Uncle Nate was just standing still, staring, calm as could be as his house was going up in flames. I didn't know what I should do or how I should act or feel, so I just went and sat down under a tree. While I was sitting there watching that house burn I heard Ms. Gretchen say that she had been so surprised when Uncle Nate had allowed us to come live there, and now look how it had all turned out. I didn't even say anything to her about minding her own business because I was thinking that she might be right after all, that things were not turning out very well at all.