Mirror Girls by Kelly McWilliams

Author:Kelly McWilliams [Mcwilliams, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2022-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

Why in Sam Hill did you treat Charlie like that, calling her filthy, calling her names?” I demand of my aunt Hilda, speeding away from Colored Town. “She’s not some peasant; she’s my sister!”

Aunt Hilda grips the wheel like she means to strangle it. “Heavens to Betsy, there’s a colored sister in every house in the Confederacy! Why you have to go on and stay with yours is simply beyond me!”

“Did you know all this time that I am colored? Answer me, now.”

The set of her jaw tells me everything: Of course my aunt knew.

Disgusted, I scoff.

“You are not colored, Magnolia. Not truly. You are not some common Negro, but a Heathwood—why, your breedin’, your looks…” Aunt Hilda swerves, hard, to the right. “Blanche and I decided when we took you in that we would not think of you as a Negro. We banished the very thought from our minds.”

“Maybe that trick worked for you, but Grandmother never saw me as full white and you know it.”

“Whatever our failings, Magnolia, we did try. And we didn’t raise you to go traipsin’ around Colored Town, doing who knows what all. We raised you to be white!”

Like she’s trying to kill us, my aunt leans on the gas. We’re speeding so quickly up Plantation Hill we might just fly clear off it.

“Let me get this straight. You thought you could breed the Negro out of me; is that it? And then, once I married Finch Waylon, you thought you’d water my blood down even more. All along, you were only protecting the Heathwood line!”

The car nearly leaps from the hill. I grip my seat belt, praying we get home in one piece.

“I was protecting you, Sugarpie. I still am. Didn’t we raise you to be a person of quality? A woman of substance?”

I glare at my aunt’s profile. “Charlie has more substance than you ever will.”

“Why, I oughta slap you from here to Atlanta!”

At last, the sedan screeches to a halt. Without waiting for my aunt, I slam the car door and hurry inside, moving quickly past the mirrors that refuse to see me.

Though Aunt Hilda was kind to me, she, too, is part of Heathwood’s deep rot, like the mold creeping up its walls. I will never forgive her. Not as long as I live.

“The library, Magnolia!” Aunt Hilda hollers. “The lawyer’s been waitin’ an hour already! Don’t you walk away from your responsibilities, now.”

I turn on my heel at the word lawyer.

I am ready to get this over with—whatever it is.

I follow red-faced Aunt Hilda into the library, where a fleshy older man sits behind Grandmother’s desk, directly beneath her portrait.

In the painting, Blanche Heathwood poses on the lawn. But she does not look to be enjoying herself. She glowers down at me, stern and disapproving. And her eyes… they are frightfully lifelike.

I shut my eyes, telling myself: She is dead. Grandmother is dead. When I open them again, she’s still staring, reproving.

I suppress a shiver.

“Magnolia, meet Mr. Cellars, come all the way from Atlanta.

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