Bloom

Lilacs and Cotton

The wind whipped in Adeline's face, flushing her cheeks as the wind's long fingers pulled at her hair. The grass beneath Charlotte's galloping hooves appeared as though they were waves, bending and rising with the wind's every demand. The dimming sun, just beginning to set in the far west, erupted the sky into a bright, blinding pink. However, another front slowly began inching its' way across the darkening sky, its' black clouds beginning to block out the sun's sinking form.

"We won't be out too long, will we Charlotte?" The horse shook her head side to side, as though she was agreeing. Adeline ducked her head just in time to avoid a low hanging tree branch as the two plunged into the forest at the edge of the Johnson's land. The evening seemed to have come upon them already since the tree's full branches blocked out so much of the setting sunlight.

Adeline closed her eyes, breathing in deeply the intoxicating scent of spring. She pulled on Charlotte's reins to halt her for a moment as she absorbed her surroundings. The buzz of the black and yellow bumblebees, their sides covered in pollen. The graceful flap of a Monarch's wings as it dyed the sky orange and black. The fast paced wings of the hummingbird, their wings making the air vibrate around them.

She sighed contently as the visions of spring played behind her eyelids, Charlotte's labored breathing breaking her thoughts. Adeline opened her eyes in surprise as the weakening sun was able to peek through the trees.

But what she saw surprised her even more, there was a meadow, its' green grass bright and luscious as the breeze bent it ever so slightly. A lone lilac tree stood proudly in the center of the meadow, its' pure white petals looking like tiny balls of cotton.

Cotton, of all the silly reasons to fight over...

She lightly nudged Charlotte in the side and the horse began walking towards the tree. With a sickening drop of her stomach, she glanced down at the slabs of stone that marked her family members.

My family's cemetery.

Charlotte slowly walked past each piece of stone as Adeline read the dates, both of birth and death.

She stopped in front of her mother's parents, their two headstones set right by each other. Of course, their bodies are not here. They are buried deep in the depths of the Tennessee forest. Her mother had specifically asked that her grandparents actual location be added, so that there was no confusion.

Adeline's mother long ago, when she was sixteen to be exact, had decided that she longed to leave her Southern Bell life. Always doing what she was being told and never questioning what was right and what was wrong had grown tiring for her restless soul.

"Why must we hurt our workers when they are so similar to us?" Her mother had asked Adeline's grandfather the day she was set to leave, a tale she had told her daughter's many times.

"They," he had spat the word, "are not like us."

"The only thing that separates us is our skin color."

"Only? It is much more then that, my dear."

"I must say that you are wrong, Father. And this is quite wrong, what we are doing to these people. They are just like us," she had paused, not sure how to tell him. "I plan to leave."

"What?! Harriet, please come out here!" Adeline's grandmother bustled out of the house, her porcelain-like skin flushed red with heat. She hurriedly wiped her hands on her apron and made her way to the family's lavish garden where Adeline's grandfather and mother sat.

"Yes?"

"Do you know what your daughter had just told me?"

"No, do enlighten me, please." The grandmother smiled jokingly, winking at her daughter. This of course just made Adeline's grandfather more upset.

"She wants to leave." At this the woman blanched but quickly masked her surprise.

"But of course she wants to leave, every woman must leave the house eventually."

Adeline's grandfather glowered at his wife. "No, my dear, she wants to leave Tennessee and move up North!" At this the grandmother shrieked in fury, her good humor evaporating away like boiling water.

"What?! How could you say such a thing? To go up North and live with those negro sympathizers?" She looked at Adeline's mother as if she had grown another head.

"I feel-"

"What you feel and what is expected of you are two very different things. And I feel that as a family and to stay together as a family, you must swallow your pride and accept our way of life."

"My pride?! If anyone has pride it is you!" Adeline's mother pointed accusingly at her parents. "I have always felt uncomfortable about the way you treat our workers-"

"Slaves," Adeline's grandfather interjected.

His daughter glared at him before she continued. "And so once I discovered that negroes are not enslaved in the North, I have since then dreamed of going there."

"My daughter will not become a Northerner!" The grandmother pulled her mother into a tight hug.

"Yes, I want to be!" She broke away from the hug and ran into the mansion as she frantically picked out dresses and jewels, stuffing them into a random trunk. "Sadie!" Her maid came immediately, her dark brown eyes looking at her curiously.

"Carry this down stairs and tell Robert to prepare a carriage for my departure." The maid looked at her curiously before scuttling out of the room.

"And after I met your father," their mother would always say at the end of her tale, "that is how you came to be."

Adeline hopped off Charlotte, her boots making a light thump sound when they hit the grass. "But Mother was of course was not even allowed to attend her parents' funeral," she told the horse, "so instead we had headstones made to represent their lives." Taking the reins in her hand, she slowly led Charlotte around the family cemetery, stopping every so often to read the dates on the fading stone.

Stopping underneath the lilac tree before they headed home, Adeline ripped off a handful of the lilac's petals and stroked them against her cheek.

"Can you imagine having a war over cotton, Charlotte?" The horse shook her head, seeming to agree that such a preposterous thing could never occur.

"My sentiments precisely." She said, throwing the petals up into the air as they floated down like snowflakes.