Notes
SANNA—A perfectionist and a worrier. Obsessed with idea of finding happiness, and for her, happiness means being first with somebody, having her own home, being loved by a perfect man and perfect, loving children. She will never have to have second place there, will be secure, life will be happily ever after, no more misery or problems. She never feels secure with new people or in new situations—doesn’t want change—and revels in the way Will is easy with people and never fazed by the unexpected. In fact, the harder things are, the more he is excited and challenged. She thought all troubles would be over if she found the right man. Marries Will—hard time of war months—pregnant, etc.
The theme of Sanna is disillusionment—her life is the pursuit of happiness and perfection, but she finds happiness and perfection impossible to obtain—her idea of happiness is constant joy, no changes.
Will’s idea of life is to be challenged. Loves trying anything new, loves change, is impatient with Sanna. Living is a matter of making things work if you can, seeing if you can make things work.
At end of book he is leaving home, happy and excited to have a job, to be able to hope to support his family. Hates leaving Sanna and children, but he’s not just off to Dawson, he’s off on a new adventure.
Soon after arriving in Cold Sassy and causing trouble with Sanna, Loma has a car accident and breaks her back. [Editor’s note: Although there are no written notes on this, Olive Ann said that she wanted Loma to undergo a personality change through her suffering, to be able to walk again and pay all her medical bills, and then to settle down in Cold Sassy and teach elocution.]
Perhaps Miss Love’s father, sick and dying, age 70 to 75, comes to P.C. for her to look after, and she does it. He has to be waited on, bedridden. Sanna helps her.
Sampson falls in love with Precious, child of Lightfoot and Hosie Roach. Used to getting his way, marries her at end of book despite family feelings.
***
Loma tells Sanna, “It’s just common, like po’ white trash, the way you get pregnant every year. Just common. I can’t imagine anybody smart as you think you are not knowing how to keep from getting that way. You’ve embarrassed the whole family.”
SANNA: Well, I’ve got three things to say to you. Number one, you’re crude and mean and your side of my family has just as much to do with it as I do. Will, I mean. Number two, it’s our business, not any of yours. I never wanted a baby every year—I’m tired. But it’s none of your business. And if you want to talk about embarrassing the family, look in the mirror. You think everybody is proud of your smoking and drinking cocktails and getting a divorce?
LOMA: I’ll smoke and drink and get a divorce any time I want to.
SANNA: And Will and I will have babies if we want to. One thing I know, I’ll never have to get a divorce.
LOMA: Don’t you know the talk in town? How often Will goes by to see Carrie Summers?
***
The book will be the story of Sanna and Will, and Sanna and Loma, and Sanna and Miss Love and the boy Sampson, Sanna and the Depression, Sanna and her perfectionism and anxiety and obsessiveness and possessiveness.
It will show Loma doggedly determined not only to walk again, but to repay all medical bills.
It will show Sanna caught in yet another situation where she feels second—except with the children. She centers her life on them. So does Will, so this is their togetherness. Their separateness comes from his being pulled between his family and Sanna, and conflicts over money.
Miss Love is a sort of catalyst. She says things like “I put a dimmer light at my mirror. I don’t like wrinkles.”
She tells Sanna: “Be kind to Will.”
Sanna tells her: “I read some psychology books in college. Everything that’s supposed to warp a child happened to me.”
Miss Love: “Everything that could warp a child happened to me, too. But understanding that doesn’t help. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t help. I figure that what you do with your life now is all that counts. I try not to look back.”
***
About Papa’s affair:
Mama and Papa had been praying for another baby for years, and hadn’t had any, but when I was twenty and Mary Toy fourteen and Mama was forty-two...She was so happy. After it came out about Papa and that young woman, it was like she hated her own baby. She didn’t make any clothes for it, and even before she started showing, she quit going anywhere, not even to church or missionary circle, and she never smiled or hardly ate. She didn’t talk about Papa, of course. But she was too shamed to face anybody, and angry to the core.
Miss Mabry went back home and married an old man who’d been after her, and nobody would have known the scandal if Miss Mabry hadn’t got so upset she told his best friend. After Mama heard the baby was a healthy boy, she cleaned a big closet. Lifting and reaching up to high shelves. She thought the reaching did it. That night the pains started and the baby was born dead, the cord around his neck. She never forgave herself. If she’d wanted to punish Papa, she did it. Punished all of us. I’d have loved having a little brother.
***
There are the family scandals that hurt so—Papa’s baby; Papa dies, had life insurance for the other woman.
Then Brother Henry writes letter so Will marries Sanna even though he realizes it as a mistake, and he tries to be a good husband. (Papa got a special delivery letter from Brother Henry saying if I put off the wedding again, he would send the sheriff after me to put me in jail and sue me for breach of promise.) He will never hurt her, he vows to her and himself. At first he transfers his love from Trulu to Sanna. Only after he is engaged does he realize she doesn’t provoke the wild passion Trulu did. He’s sorry he acted in haste, but knows he couldn’t have trusted Trulu.
Talking to Sanna after Jefferson, he doesn’t tell her that the grand party was celebrating his engagement to Trulu. He sat to Mrs. Philpot’s right—there was an orchestra (give its name).
Loma divorces finally, comes home after Will and Sanna’s marriage, miserable—accuses Sanna of being snobbish, above everybody else. Sanna judging Loma for divorce and smoking and drinking.
Loma says awful things to Sanna. When Loma breaks her back, Sanna has to ride in ambulance with her.
Will thinks he won Sanna. Really it’s that she broke up with Hugh—drinking, near-rape. Will learns this after engaged. Hugh becomes politician, runs for government. Sanna doesn’t know about Brother Henry’s letter, believes Army duties caused two postponements of wedding.
Will is proud of Sanna, feels great tenderness and appreciation of Sanna, enjoys being with her. Kind of girl he’d always hoped to marry. He is also challenged by her being hard to get—first kiss is dynamic. After he proposes, he meets Sanna’s family—prejudiced—loses that feeling on next date. Always remembers Trulu, how she made him feel, how he still yearns for her. He sees her in Athens and is bitter: knew he couldn’t trust her, knew she was no good, but wishes...All through the years he longs for her.
She marries an aviator; he is killed in air crash in WWI. Will goes to see her when she invites him. This is after he quits farming, maybe 1929—her father has lost his money.
***
In Dawson, Will rents room and takes meals with couple who have no children. She fascinates him. Husband mean. “I never did anythin’, but I’m sure the attraction was mutual. Of course I didn’t dare let her husband know.” But Sanna came down with him for a week and she knew. Didn’t say anything, but Will knew she knew.
Trulu, who has married again (first husband killed in war) and lives in Milledgeville, no money, comes back into his life (like Norma). Will hides behind Sanna’s skirts—can’t divorce and hurt her.
Sanna finds out, breaks it up, decides divorce better than living like that, but if the affair ends she will be happier in an imperfect marriage than most divorcees.
Old man decided he was going to die, no use bothering to eat. Turned on his side, facing wall. Two days later, when he hadn’t died,
he decided to eat again. Got well.
***
Old lady had such tender feet, hospital attendants investigated—doctor had told her twenty-five years before to stay in bed. She never asked if she could get up, he never told her to, and now she really couldn’t.
***
It’s not hard to forgive a person after he’s no longer a threat.—Sanna
***
Story of two people who marry, love, respect, appreciate, but are not in love.
Toward end of book (maybe at the end) Will goes home for weekend. Sanna has settled his “affair,” which he insists to her and to readers was just bad judgment, not really an affair. She says: “I’m sorry you married me. You would be much happier with a modern woman. It disappoints you that I don’t drive, I don’t wear tailored clothes, and I don’t wear jewelry or make-up. I don’t get permanent waves, my skin breaks out, and I itch and scratch. I don’t dance. I watch you dancing with other women at parties and see how much you enjoy dancing. A lot of what I don’t do is because we can’t afford it. I don’t have dinner parties because it costs money, but mostly, I guess, because I go to pieces worrying about whether the food will taste good and will it be enough and we don’t have fine china and lace tablecloths, and because by the time I do all the housework and look after the children, I’m worn out. But I know some women could do all I do and have time and energy to entertain. I don’t really care about all that, but I’d like to because you enjoy people so. I wish I didn’t worry about time or dirt or money. I wish I weren’t anxious all the time, afraid of what tomorrow will bring.
“I’m mostly sorry I can’t approve of everything you say or do. I can’t say I’m glad you paid thirty-five dollars for a pedigreed bird dog when we owe so much money. I can’t say it was all right for you to plan for us to move in with your mother without consulting her or me. I can’t say I’m willing to move into a boarding house with old men because it’s cheaper.
“I can say I love your zest for life. I love and appreciate how hard you work to make a living for us. I envy your talent with people. I love to go places with you. I marvel that you never meet a stranger. I love your having so many friends.
“I’ve thought about divorce. It would set you free to marry the kind of person who would suit you better. But I know you care deeply about your family. You would be embarrassed to be divorced even though you wouldn’t be lonely long. The women would swarm, and you’d revel in the attention, and you’d marry quickly.
“But you love your family and your children, and most second wives don’t like to give time and energy and divide money with a man’s children. Her resentment would make you miserable. I’ve noticed most men who remarry get weaned away from their own children, even other kinfolks, because they spend more time with the second wife’s relatives than their own and the second wife’s children and grandchildren.
“As for myself, I see that women who divorce are no happier than I am. I was so miserable when the jeweler said my diamond had cracked. Now I know that an imperfect marriage is better than divorce. I got to the point I couldn’t live with you and the other woman, but with that over, I can settle for imperfection. If you can.”
Papa and the Bull
(Sanna in a conversation with Will)
“I WAS eight years old and quiet, shy. I had drawn a bucket of cold well water and was standing at the shelf on the back porch, drinking from the tin dipper and watching Papa. He was working just inside the nearby pasture, hammering a loose board on the milk shed.
“Papa was small and stringy. He wasn’t old, but his hair was white and silky, and so was his long beard, which he had tied in a loose knot that afternoon to keep out of his way. I adored him.
“When he looked up and saw I was home from school, he waved, and I waved the dipper, sloshing water everywhere. I decided to take Papa a drink, and poured some water into a fruit jar.
“I saw that our big Jersey bull was plodding towards him, but I wasn’t alarmed. Shoot, that was just old Sultan. I laughed when the bull nudged Papa from behind. Papa turned around, smiled, and scratched Sultan between his horns, where he liked it. Then he wiped his forehead on his shirt sleeve, took off his big straw hat, and commenced fanning himself with it.
“Everyone agreed later, it must have been the movement of the hat that aroused the bull.
“Sultan backed off, lowered his head, and snorted. I could tell that my papa hadn’t noticed. He had gone back to his work and was bent over picking up nails when Sultan hooked him in the stomach and tossed him like a sack of potatoes onto the tin roof of the milk shed. Papa rolled down like a log. He tried to grab something, but there was nothing to grab and he dropped right back onto those horns, as if they were loving arms waiting to receive him.
“I still don’t know if I was crying or screaming, or what, but I saw the bull toss him up again, higher, almost over the roof peak.
“Afterwards I told Sister Maggie it was like Sultan thought he’d made up a game. Like he thought Papa was a play-pretty. When Papa hit the ground, Sultan turned away and ambled off towards his cows standing in the creek to get cool.
“I was halfway to Papa when I tripped over a root and fell, but as I was getting up I thought to run back and ring the big farm bell. We had a bell that called the field hands to dinner and called quitting time at sundown. It would never be rung at four in the evening unless for something awful. I grabbed the bell rope, jerked it hard, and with each clang screamed, ‘Papa! Papa!’
“Mama came running from the side yard, carrying Tattie, who was four then, and she saw immediately what had happened. She set Tattie down among the chickens and the cats and raced towards the milk shed. Violet and Daisy came out on the back porch and Zinnie ran from the privy. Scrawny, bow-legged Possum rushed out of the kitchen and down the steps. Her husband, called Christmas for being so slow, hobbled up from the back of the barn.
“Everybody’s eyes were on me, ringing the bell. They didn’t see Papa bleeding on the pasture grass or Mama running towards him out of the milk shed, holding a pitchfork to slay whatever had got him down.
“‘It’s Papa! Sultan hurt him!’ I pointed, and all eyes followed my finger. The girls ran for the shed. Old Christmas followed them, but Possum stayed with me, and we rang in everybody from the cotton fields—the colored wages hands and sharecroppers, their wives, their children, some with cotton sacks still slung over their shoulders.
“I was still ringing the bell, and crying for my papa not to die, when Violet came back from the pasture and twisted the bell rope out of my hands. ‘Stop it! Stop rangin’ that bell! They all comin’ now, honey. Gimme the rope. Turn it loose.’ She picked me up and ran towards the pasture.
“Little Tattie was left alone, bawling, wandering about the yard. Mama heard her and yelled, ‘Daisy? Sanna Maria? One a-y’all go git the baby!’ But not one of us went, cause Papa had started groaning. I leaned over the fence and saw that the front of his overalls was soaked with blood. There was a red spot on the white beard where it was knotted.
“He suddenly rolled onto his side, facing us, and pulled his knees up. Vi whispered to me, ‘He’s bent double with pain.’
“Papa was mumbling. ‘Don’t...let nobody...hurt...my bull. We...need him...’ Then he went limp.
“I buried my face against Vi’s stomach and screamed again. Mama glared at me. ‘Shut up, young’un.’
“‘Papa’s dead!’ I wailed.
“Mama said, ‘No, he ain’t.’
“I begged her not to let him die and she said, ‘He ain’t a-go’n to.’ Then Mama turned to the field hands. ‘How come all y’all standin’ there like fence posts? I got to git him in the house.’
“Mama hadn’t seen old Christmas standing behind her, his hat off. ‘I’m here, Miss Flo,’ said Christmas. Christmas lifted Papa like he would a hurt dog. With Mama leading the way, he carried him out through the shed and past the silent watchers.
“I ran and grabbed Mama’s skirt. She slapped my hand.
‘Turn me loose, Sanna Maria!’ she said, and rushed to pick up Tattie, who was squalling. ‘Po’ li’l lamb,’ she crooned. ‘Ain’t anybody got sense enough to see to you? Here, Lily, take her. Possum? Don’t just stand there wringin’ your hands. Go be gittin’ out some clean rags and some turp’mtime, and th’ow a clean sheet over my bed.’
“I pulled at Mama’s arm and said, ‘Don’t let him die, hear, Mama?’
“Mama said, ‘Git out of the way, girl. Yore pa ain’t go’n die.’”
“And he didn’t. He lived five more years. But he was never the same after that day.
“And nothing was ever the same again for me either, Will. That was the day I realized that I was yesterday’s child.
“I had got slapped. Tattie had got comforted.
“Joe Pye, sixteen, had to come home from Gordon Military School to run the farm. Papa supervised. He scheduled the plowing and plantings and kept the books. But he never again nailed a board or plowed a field. He just got weaker and weaker. No doctor guessed why. I heard him say to Mama, ‘Miss Flora, we could make it if we’d had nine boys and one girl instead of nine girls and one boy.’ If a man owned his land, his daughters couldn’t work in the fields or go to market or do carpentry or fix fences. I helped him put on his shirt and socks and shoes, but he finally got so he couldn’t walk alone.
“My mama, harder worked than ever, turned me over to my big sister Zinnie. Zinnie did all the sewing for the family—the sheets, the dresses, Papa’s shirts, everything. She was nineteen years old, beautiful, the way all my sisters were beautiful, with dark eyes and black hair, and a bright mind and agile fingers. But Sister Zinnie had no beaus and no hope. Never would have a beau out there in the country, and no way to meet anybody. Sometimes I think my mama wanted to keep her there. She had finished the seven grades of school at thirteen and had been minding children and sewing ever since. As soon as Zinnie was big enough to hold a bolt of cloth, Mama put her to making sheets, then Papa’s shirts, and then dresses. I think she felt trapped by the sewing machine.