Chapter 3

Memories and Teardrops in the Moonlight

After braving through dinner and prayer without shedding a single tear, Ellen made her way to her room, her safe haven. She bounded up the stairs as quickly as she could in her billowing dress and entered her room at the top of the stairs. By some miracle, she had not broken down in her father's presence, but Ellen was more than ready to at this point. She leaned against the door until she heard the tiny click and then slid down to the floor. In the privacy of her enclosed room, she was free to sob as long and as hard as she wanted to. Hot tears finally spilled from her eyes. She recklessly began pulling everything that held her hair so elegantly at the nape of her neck in the French hairstyle Mammy had created for Philippe's arrival that morning and threw it on the floor by her dressing table. She interwove her fingers in her tangled hair and let her whole body melt into the floorboards.

Her sobs overtook her being and shook her to the core. She was sobbing so hard, that after only a few minutes, she couldn't breathe. Her stays began cutting into her ribs and made her unable to get enough air to her lungs. It was all coming in little ragged gasps now; it was more than she could bear. The tears stopped and she managed to pull herself up off the floor. She wanted desperately to call for Mammy, but she couldn't make out the words. Her throat began to burn like wildfire. She reached behind her to feel for the lacing on her dress, but her fingers found nothing. If she couldn't get the dress off, she wouldn't be able to get her stays off. The air that was catching in her esophagus felt like knives sliding up and down. She clenched the neck of her dress and was about to rip the dress off when Mammy walked in.

Ellen pointed erratically at her stays and Mammy caught on quicker than Ellen thought she would. She spun Ellen around and began unlacing as fast as she could. "It's alright chile. I'm gon' get this off of yeh." Ellen felt her head begin to swim. She grabbed the bedpost and laid her forehead against it. She just knew she was dying.

As soon as Mammy had pried the corset from her body, she sunk to the ground and let the air fill her lungs. Relief flooded her being. The tears began to stream down her face once more. Mammy slipped the nightgown over her head as she sat in a heap on the floor. "Go on Miss Ellen, don' lay on dat ole' hard floor."

Ellen felt her body move to the bed, but she didn't know how. "Oh Mammy, it's terrible. I love him, I do." Mammy quieted her and stroked her hair that still lay tangled. "Iss gon be ok. I know it is." Ellen tossed about and anger welled up inside of her. She doubled over and held her stomach as if the anger was clenching her insides. "I can't do it. I can't." The sobs still shook her tiny frame, but at least she could breathe now.

"Mammy, I need him. There is no way that I can tell him I can't see him anymore. I hate Father."

"Oh no chile, you mustn't think like that." Ellen wasn't listening to Mammy's reprimanding. She was simply thinking of Philippe's sandy-colored hair and the way it felt as it slid between her fingers, or the way his blue eyes looked into her green ones as he leaned in to kiss her cheek. Her body began to tremble as she thought of his hot breath upon her cheek. She loved when he touched her hand or grazed her cheek with his soft lips. It set something on fire in her heart; something that she knew was love.

"I can't just forget him. I can't cut him out of my life. I love him. "

Another round of tears began to stream down her pallid face. She buried her head in her pillow and wished she could be anywhere but her father's home. "If mother were still alive she would defend me, she wouldn't let Eulalie and Pauline talk about the person I love like that. If only she were here."

After a few more hours, her head began to torment her after the crying spell and she lay in the darkness staring at the sliver of a moon outside her window. She stopped thinking, stopped feeling, and stopped remembering. Ellen simply lay in a tiny ball in the center of her large bed with the elegant, French carving in the headboard and footboard, under covers of the finest material her father could buy, with her head buried in pillows of eiderdown and lay numb lulling herself to sleep with dreams of being anywhere else but Savannah.