The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose by Susan Wittig Albert Read Free Book Online Page B

refined enough not to require rules, although as time went on, she had learned that older women, even those of refinement and good taste, could be undignified every now and again.
    Mrs. Brewster’s wasn’t the only other boardinghouse in town, of course. Mrs. Meeks rented rooms and cooked supper for single men who worked on the railroad and at Ozzie Sherman’s sawmill, and the Old Alabama Hotel offered quite nice rooms and excellent meals for travelers. But ladies were not allowed at Meeks’, where the men slept two and three to a room, and people of ordinary means couldn’t afford to stay at the hotel for more than a night or two. So Bessie had every reason to hope that refined widows and spinster ladies would realize that the Manor would make a lovely home.
    She was right, as it turned out. Within a couple of weeks, all four of her empty bedrooms were spoken for and stayed that way. It was such a nice place to live that most of the residents remained as long as they could. But there was a waiting list, and when a vacancy did occur, Bessie scarcely had time to clean the room and wash the bedding before somebody new was moving in.
    Unfortunately, Magnolia Manor was not what you’d call a money-making business, since most of Bessie’s boarders were not well fixed. (If they were, they’d likely be living at the hotel or in their own houses, with colored help to cook and clean.) Mrs. Sedalius was better off than the others, for her son was a prominent doctor in Mobile. He sent his mother a monthly check for her room and board and a small allowance so she could buy things she wanted. (His checks, Bessie suspected, were guilt payments: the man rarely darkened his mother’s door.) Leticia Wiggins had a widow’s pension from her husband’s service in the War Between the States—it wasn’t much but it was regular. Miss Rogers earned a few dollars a week as the town librarian. Maxine Bechdel looked to be well off—she owned two rent houses in neighboring Monroeville—but looks were deceiving. Last month, one of her renters had paid her with a bushel of cabbages. The other had paid with a promise. Bessie and Roseanne (the colored lady who cooked and cleaned in return for room and board and spending money) had turned the cabbages into sauerkraut. There wasn’t anything they could do with the promise.
    Bessie would have liked to raise the cost of board and room, but if she did, some of the ladies might have to leave—and where would they go? “You can’t get blood out of a turnip,” she often reminded herself with a sigh. “You just have to be satisfied with the turnip.” And cabbage, if that’s all you had. She had read in the
Dispatch
that Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana—a.k.a. The Kingfish—was proposing that everybody over sixty should get a government pension, the way they did in England. Bessie thought this was the best idea she had heard in a long time and had written to Senator Bankhead, one of their Alabama senators, telling him so. But she wasn’t surprised when the senator didn’t write back. Lots of people were afraid of The Kingfish. They said he was a dangerous demagogue who would drive the country to the brink of ruin if he got his way, and maybe they were right, Bessie didn’t know. But he seemed to get a lot of things done for the little people of Louisiana. Bessie just wished he could get a few things done for the little people of Alabama, too.
    But while the Magnolia Ladies didn’t pay much rent, their money paid the property taxes and bought coal and electricity and food, which meant that Bessie didn’t need much money. And since they couldn’t pay much, the Magnolia Ladies were glad to share the work. Maxine and Leticia washed the dishes and neatened the kitchen and dining room after every meal. The sweeping and dusting was divided between Miss Rogers (downstairs) and Mrs. Sedalius (upstairs). All four helped to plant and weed and harvest the vegetable garden and tend the half-dozen