Harper remembered one Sunday in particular when she’d seen Lucille emerge from her cottage wearing a purple coat and this purple hat. Harper had been no older than ten. She’d stopped what she’d been doing to stare at the hat, completely agog. In England, showy hats and fascinators were common. Yet Harper had never seen such a hat in New York, and certainly not in the lowcountry. She’d walked over to the cottage porch to get a closer look. Lucille closed her pocketbook and, seeing the girl staring at her, tilted her head and eyed the child with suspicion.
“What you starin’ at, child?”
“Your hat,” Harper replied in her quiet voice.
“What about my hat?” Lucille’s hands went to it. “Is it crooked?”
“It’s so beautiful. Like a queen’s crown.”
Lucille smiled and preened a moment, adjusting the hat on her head. “Why, thank you, Harper. I do love this hat. Purple is my favorite color.”
“Lucille, why do you wear such fancy hats to church?”
Lucille studied Harper’s face a moment, then came down the steps, closer to Harper. “That question deserves a proper answer.” Lucille reached out and cupped Harper’s cheek in her hand and looked deeply into her eyes.
Harper could still feel how dry Lucille’s skin was, and how strong her hand.
“I’m not surprised the question came from you. You might be a quiet little thing, but you never miss a trick, do you, girl? Well”—Lucille shifted her weight—“it goes way, way back. During the time of slavery, and after, many black women worked as maids and servants. We had to wear uniforms during the week. But on Sunday”—she lifted her hands for emphasis—“we broke from our uniforms and showed our individual flair with our hats.”
She laughed then, her unique cackle that always made Harper laugh hearing it. “No matter what material the hat was made from, it was always done up proud with ribbons and feathers and flowers. I reckon over the years the church hats have gotten bigger and bolder.” She smirked. “Like the women who wear them.” She reached up to lightly touch the hat on her head. “We consider our hat to be our crowning glory.”
Harper remembered listening to Lucille and thinking she had never looked more like a queen than she did that day.
Eyes bright with unshed tears, Harper gently returned the elaborate purple hat to the box. “I’d like to keep this hat,” she said to her sisters. “Would that be all right?”
“Mamaw said we could take mementos if we wanted,” Dora replied. “Of course, if there’s anything truly valuable, like her jewelry, we should give it to Mamaw to decide what to do,” she clarified with typical authority.
“No, I don’t want anything else. Just the hat.”
“She left us each a painting, too, don’t forget.” Carson raised her hand. “Dibs on the Jonathan Green.”
As the day wore on and they emptied the bureaus, drawers, closets, and bookshelves, each of the three women found some small personal item to keep that carried special memories. For Harper it was the hat. For Dora, an old fox stole, complete with eyes and a tail, which had been one of Lucille’s prized possessions.
Carson kept the collection of Golden children’s books that Lucille had read to her back when she was young and had lived with Mamaw. She let her hand trace the titles: The Poky Little Puppy, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, Hansel and Gretel. “My favorite was The Happy Family,” she told her sisters. “I remember reading this book over and over. See how worn the pages are? I loved the illustrations most. I used to pore over these drawings of the daddy, mommy, brother, and sister. They were all doing normal, everyday things together . . . working in the garden, saying prayers, eating dinner. I used to stare at the pictures and try to imagine what a normal life like that was like. I hardly had the stereotypical happy family.”
“Neither did I,” said Harper.
“No,” Carson snorted with a roll of her eyes. “You only had to deal with which house you were going to live in.” She held her finger up to tap her chin in mock display. “Let’s see, where shall we go this week? The Hamptons? The Central Park apartment? Or the estate in England?”
“Shut up,” Harper fired back, annoyed. This was far from the first time Carson had made a dig about Harper’s family’s money, and whereas before she had let the comments roll off her back, something about these past few weeks made her suddenly resentful of her older sister’s critique. She’d had enough. “You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Bring my family’s money into it, like it’s the only thing that matters.”
“It helps, that’s for sure. You could’ve been stuck in my cheap apartment in a lousy section of LA, not knowing if your father was going to make rent or if you’d have to move again.”
“I’m sorry you went through that. But you don’t think being schlepped from one house to the next by a nanny was just as bad?”
Carson scoffed as she gathered scarves from the closet. “No.”
Yanking the scarves from Carson’s hands, Harper threw them onto the bed. “Well, it was!” she cried, eyes flashing.
Carson went still, shocked at Harper’s anger. It was so unlike her to explode.
“Hey, time-out,” Dora called out.
“No,” Harper snapped, her hands in fists as she turned on Carson. “You’ve been needling me about my money all summer. All my life! Let’s deal with it right now. What have you got against me?”
Carson appeared hunted, if not remorseful. “I don’t have anything against you.”
“Yes, you do. You’re pissed that I have money.”
“I’m not pissed that you have money. I’m pissed that I don’t have any!”
“But why do you blame me for it?”
Carson ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t.”
“You do. All the time. Even when we were little and hunting for pirate’s gold, you used to say that if we found any, you’d get to keep it all because I didn’t need any more.”
“I was just teasing.”
“It wasn’t funny. And it still isn’t.”
“I guess I was jealous,” Carson admitted.
“Jealous of my money?”