My Confederate Girlhood

I love to picture her in the Clover Hill garden, her head bent over this quilt of many colors, her small mouth drawn still smaller with the effort of the unaccustomed task. Sunlight, oscillating with the leaves, would bring out the ruddy glints in the soft, dark hair framing her chiseled features. Fitting into this picture, I generally imagine an attendant cavalier, and the tenor of his words keeping changing Kate’s expressive grey-blue eyes from grave to lively and back again. Her complexion was a marvel of pink and whiteness, even up to her death, at seventy-five. She never used a grain of powder nor a smear of paint-and why should she? For hers was the opposite of the beaute’ du diable. Her white hair, as she grew older, only intensified her bright complexion, animated manner and clear-cut features. Wrinkles never found the way to her face. Her hands were soft, small, and very expressive and efficient, in spite of her lack of skills as an embroiderer.