But when the house came in sight, she let out a cry of despair. “Will, what happened?” The front of Tara was covered by vines, ugly cords hung with dead leaves; four windows had sagging shutters, two had no shutters at all.

“Nothing happened except summer, Scarlett. I do the fixing up for the house in winter when there’s no crops to tend. I’ll be starting on those shutters in a few more weeks. It’s not October yet.”

“Oh, Will, why on earth won’t you let me give you some money? You could hire some help. Why, you can see the brick through the whitewash. It looks downright trashy.”

Will’s reply was patient. “There’s no help to be had for love nor money. Those that wants work has plenty of it, and those that don’t wouldn’t do me no good. We make out all right, Big Sam and me. Your money ain’t needed.”

Scarlett bit her lip and swallowed the words she wanted to say. She had run up against Will’s pride often before, and she knew that he was unbendable. He was right that the crops and the stock had to come first. Their demands couldn’t be put off; a fresh coat of whitewash could. She could see the fields now, stretching out behind the house. They were weedless, newly harrowed, and there was a faint, rich smell of the manure tilled in to prepare them for the next planting. The red earth looked warm and fertile, and she relaxed. This was the heart of Tara, the soul.

“You’re right,” she said to Will.

The door to the house flew open, and the porch filled with people. Suellen stood in front, holding her youngest child in her arms above the swollen belly that strained the seams of her faded cotton dress. Her shawl had fallen down over one arm. Scarlett forced a gaiety she didn’t feel. “Good Lord, Will, is Suellen having another baby? You’re going to have to build on some more rooms.”

Will chuckled. “We’re still trying for a boy.” He lifted a hand in greeting to his wife and three daughters.

Scarlett waved too, wishing she’d thought to buy some toys to bring the children. Oh, Lord, look at all of them. Suellen was scowling. Scarlett’s eyes ran over the other faces, searching out the black ones . . . Prissy was there; Wade and Ella were hiding behind her skirts . . . and Big Sam’s wife, Delilah, holding the spoon she must have been stirring with . . . There was—what was her name?—oh, yes, Lutie, the Tara children’s mammy. But where was Mammy? Scarlett called out to her children. “Hello, darlings, Mother’s here.” Then she turned back to Will, put a hand on his arm.

“Where’s Mammy, Will? She’s not so old that she can’t come to meet me.” Fear pinched the words in Scarlett’s throat.

“She’s sick in bed, Scarlett.”

Scarlett jumped down from the still-moving wagon, stumbled, caught herself and ran to the house. “Where’s Mammy?” she said to Suellen, deaf to the excited greetings of the children.

“A fine hello that is, Scarlett, but no worse than I’d expect from you. What did you think you were doing, sending Prissy and your children here without so much as a by your leave, when you know that I’ve got my hands full and then some?”

Scarlett raised her hand, ready to slap her sister. “Suellen, if you don’t tell me where Mammy is, I’ll scream.”

Prissy pulled on Scarlett’s sleeve. “I knows where Mammy is, Miss Scarlett, I knows. She’s powerful sick, so we fixed up that little room next the kitchen for her, the one what used to be where all the hams was hung when there was a lot of hams. It’s nice and warm there, next to the chimney. She was already there when I come, so I can’t exactly say we fixed up the room altogether, but I brung in a chair so as there’d be a place to sit if she wanted to get up or if there was a visitor . . .”

Prissy was talking to air. Scarlett was at the door to Mammy’s sickroom, holding on to the framework for support.

That . . . that . . . thing in the bed wasn’t her Mammy. Mammy was a big woman, strong and fleshy, with warm brown skin. It had been hardly more than six months since Mammy left Atlanta, not long enough to have wasted away like this. It couldn’t be. Scarlett couldn’t bear it. This wasn’t Mammy, she wouldn’t believe it. This creature was gray and shrivelled, hardly making a rise under the faded patchwork quilts that covered it, twisted fingers moving weakly across the folds. Scarlett’s skin crawled.

Then she heard Mammy’s voice. Thin and halting, but Mammy’s beloved, loving voice. “Now, Missy, ain’t I done tole you and tole you not to set foot outside without you wears a bonnet and carries a sunshade . . . Tole you and tole you . . .”

“Mammy!” Scarlett fell to her knees beside the bed. “Mammy, it’s Scarlett. Your Scarlett. Please don’t be sick, Mammy, I can’t bear it, not you.” She put her head down on the bed beside the bony thin shoulders and wept stormily, like a child.

A weightless hand smoothed her bent head. “Don’t cry, chile. Ain’t nothing so bad that it can’t be fixed.”

“Everything,” Scarlett wailed. “Everything’s gone wrong, Mammy.”

“Hush, now, it’s only one cup. And you got another tea set anyhow, just as pretty. You kin still have your tea party just like Mammy promised you.”

Scarlett drew back, horrified. She stared at Mammy’s face and saw the shining love in the sunken eyes, eyes that did not see her.

“No,” she whispered. She couldn’t stand it. First Melanie, then Rhett, and now Mammy; everyone she loved had left her. It was too cruel. It couldn’t be.

“Mammy,” she said loudly, “Mammy, listen to me. It’s Scarlett.” She grabbed the edge of the mattress and tried to shake it. “Look at me,” she sobbed, “me, my face. You’ve got to know me, Mammy. It’s me, Scarlett.”

Will’s big hands closed around her wrists. “You don’t want to do that,” he said. His voice was soft, but his grip was like iron. “She’s happy when she’s like that, Scarlett. She’s back in Savannah taking care of your mother when she was a little girl. Those were happy times for her. She was young; she was strong; she wasn’t in pain. Let her be.”

Scarlett struggled to get free. “But I want her to know me, Will. I never told her how much she means to me. I have to tell her.”

“You’ll have your chance. Lots of times she’s different, knows everybody. Knows she’s dying, too. These times are better. Now you come on with me. Everybody’s waiting for you. Delilah listens out for Mammy from the kitchen.”

Scarlett allowed Will to help her to her feet. She was numb all over, even her heart. She followed him silently to the living room. Suellen started immediately to berate her, taking up her complaints where she had left off, but Will hushed her. “Scarlett’s suffered a deep blow, Sue, leave her alone.” He poured whiskey into a glass and placed it in Scarlett’s hand.

The whiskey helped. It burned the familiar path through her body, dulling her pain. She held out her empty glass to Will, and he poured some more whiskey into it.

“Hello, darlings,” she said to her children, “come give Mother a hug.” Scarlett heard her own voice; it sounded as if it belonged to someone else, but at least it was saying the right thing.


She spent all the time she could in Mammy’s room, at Mammy’s side. She had fastened all her hopes on the comfort of Mammy’s arms around her, but now it was her strong young arms that held the dying old black woman. Scarlett lifted the wasted form to bathe Mammy, to change Mammy’s linen, to help her when breathing was too hard, to coax a few spoonfuls of broth between her lips. She sang the lullabies Mammy had so often sung to her, and when Mammy talked in delirium to Scarlett’s dead mother, Scarlett answered with the words she thought her mother might have said.

Sometimes Mammy’s rheumy eyes recognized her, and the old woman’s cracked lips smiled at the sight of her favorite. Then her quavering voice would scold Scarlett, as she had scolded her since Scarlett was a baby. “Your hair looks purely a mess, Miss Scarlett, now you go brush a hundred strokes like Mammy taught you.” Or, “You ain’t got no call to be wearing a frock all crumpled up like that. Go put on something fresh before folks see you.” Or, “You looks pale as a ghost, Miss Scarlett. Is you putting powder on your face? Wash it off this minute.”

Whatever Mammy commanded, Scarlett promised to do. There was never time enough to obey before Mammy slid back into unconsciousness, or that other world where Scarlett did not exist.

During the day and evening Suellen or Lutie or even Will would share the work of the sickroom, and Scarlett could snatch a half hour’s sleep, curled in the sagging rocking chair. But at night Scarlett kept solitary vigil. She lowered the flame in the oil lamp and held Mammy’s thin dry hand in hers. While the house slept and Mammy slept, she was able at last to cry, and her heartbroken tears eased her pain a little.

Once, in the small quiet hour before dawn, Mammy woke. “What for is you weeping, honey?” she whispered. “Old Mammy is ready to lay down her load and rest in the arms of the Lord. There ain’t no call to take on so.” Her hand stirred in Scarlett’s, freed itself, stroked Scarlett’s bent head. “Hush, now. Nothing’s so bad as you think.”

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed, “I just can’t stop crying.”

Mammy’s bent fingers pushed Scarlett’s tangled hair away from her face. “Tell old Mammy what’s troubling her lamb.”

Scarlett looked into the old, wise, loving eyes and felt the most profound pain she had ever known. “I’ve done everything wrong, Mammy. I don’t know how I could have made so many mistakes. I don’t understand.”

“Miss Scarlett, you done what you had to do. Can’t nobody do more than that. The good Lord sent you some heavy burdens, and you carried them. No sense asking why they was laid on you or what it took out of you to tote them. What’s done is done. Don’t fret yourself now.” Mammy’s heavy eyelids closed over tears that glistened in the dim light, and her ragged breathing slowed in sleep.