Antebellum

"Grandmama... tell me about the anty bellum days."
"Antebellum," said Grandmama, demurely crossing her ankles. She fanned herself with an oriental fan in the hot Atlanta heat. Her granddaughter played in the shade of the porch at her feet, dressing and undressing a chipped porcelin doll. Grandmama's old fashioned high-collar dress was still freshly starched and barely moved in the faint breeze.
"Antahbellum. Antybellum. Mother said that you lived in a mansion with servants and dresses and even had your own pony."
Grandmama, who never did anything too quickly, sipped a glass of iced lemon water and said simply "It isn't ladylike to brag, Cecilia."
Cecilia turned from her doll to glance at her grandmother. "But Grandmama, it's just me. I don't care if you tell me a story."
"What's to tell? It was just as hot as it is now. I played with dolls like you do. I had a governess as a tutor, like you do. I wore short dresses until I turned twelve, and occasionally I played with black servant children just like you."
"Freddy said they were slaves."
"A slave and a servant are the same thing, honey. They take orders that aren't their own. When you become a lady, dear one, never do anything unless you decide for yourself."
"Did you have slaves, Grandmama?" Cecilia pulled the shoes off her toy.
"My father had slaves, Cecilia. Not I."
The porch was silent but for the rocking of Grandmama's white swing.
"Were they black slaves?"
"All there are and were were black slaves, ladybug."
"Jemima said that slavery was bad and she's glad it's not still on."
"Many people are glad it's over, but I can't say that it didn't serve a needed purpose."
The small girl thought for a minute. "What purpose?"
"Oh, my my, the economy. Cotton growing, agriculture; collards and wheat and tobacco and indigo. Mostly cotton though. My father treated his slaves well. They could buy their own freedom. If they worked hard, they were just as chained as I or my brothers were."
Celicia lost interest while Grandmama spoke. "Did ya ever have to beat one?"
"Cecilia!" snapped Grandmama disapprovingly. "Even though the slaves were negros and, for the most part, embarassingly uneducable, they were human beings and deserved the basic securites God has us give to one another. My father was a perfect southern gentleman and rarely raised a hand in anger. There were one or two, though..." and the old woman drifted off.
"Tell me about the dresses and the mansion and stuff, Grandmama."
"My house wasn't any bigger than the undertaker's place down the street. It was, though, rather lavish." Grandmama smiled in remembrance. Her thin neck nodded her small head. "Father had it built with a wide, oak staircase. He had the best heartwood pine imported from North Carolina for our floors. He wanted four bedrooms, which was almost unprecedented for a mere farmer, plantation or no, because he was sure that he and Mama were going to have too many children to know what to do with. We almost had every bedroom filled with two children until Samuel died right before the war. I was seventeen, he was only seven."
"I'm seven."
"That's right, ladybug." Grandmama's fan slowed down and her carefully coiffed head rested against the back of her white wooden swing.
"But that was December, or close to it. So many other things happened that year. I went to my first real ball. Papa bought me a beautiful green dress, just like the girls were wearing in Charleston. My older sister was so mad! I couldnt' help that she was such a grouchypuss to father. I was seventeen, and three boys asked me to dance in the first hour! Mama was scandalized. I didn't care a bit though, those were the days; a man was a gentleman or he wasn't a man at all."
Cecilia decided to put her doll in a cotton petticoat.
"Like this, Grandmama?"
"Heavens no. I wouldn't have shown my ankle as much as you won't show your mother when you spill on your dress."
Grandmama's fan sped up, swirling the air and moving the smell of honeysuckle around the porch. Inhaling the sweet scent, she closed her eyes, reminiscing.
"Everything was perfect, then. We didn't think of war, of injustice, of anger. We had no anxieties with the North. We were dacning and laughing and singing together in the land our fathers built, in the parlors that their hands furnished. What were slaves to us? We were providing for them, weren't we? We were allowing them to leave and start life on their own, as desolate as that option seemed. We believed that we were doing those unfortunate savages a service. We believed that God smiled on us like the sun, and that we were in His Camelot. We believed that we had reborn chivalry from the very womb of the land with every new cotton blossom that bloomed. Sometimes I see now the pretenses we hid behind, how we refused to bend and how we insisted on fighting an impossible war in the name of pride."
Grandmama closed her eyes and inhaled deeply as the thick air buzzed and hummed around her.
"But oh, they were lovely pretenses."