Shadow of an Angel - By Mignon F. Ballard Page 0,3
teacher at Angel Heights Elementary School when she left to have her baby, and my grandmother had surprised me by offering the family home to me, still partially furnished, after she downsized to a condominium. But she was still miffed at me, I could tell, for finally accepting my dad's second wife.
I was still in high school when my father remarried, less than a year after Mom died, and I came to live with Vesta. I'm still not wild about Dad's wife, Roberta, but I've come to terms with their relationship. When Jarvis died, Dad was there for me more than he'd ever been when we lost Mom, and I loved him for that. Although Vesta hadn't actually said anything, her displeasure was obvious.
Now she was holding out a tentative olive branch.
"I'm not ready to let it go out of the family," my grandmother had said. "And I'd hate to see the old place empty after all these years; besides, it is part of your heritage, Minda."
Heritage. Right now I could do without it, I thought. But even here I couldn't escape. My great-grandmother, Lucy Westbrook, and her sister, Annie Rose, who was only sixteen when she drowned in the Saluda River, had both attended Minerva Academy.
While still a schoolgirl, Lucy had written and stitched the school's alma mater that hung, I noticed, to the right of the mantel. A talented artist, musician, and seamstress, Lucy seemed to excel at everything. Our family home was filled with her paintings, and the local paper had published her verses on a regular basis.
The room seemed suddenly silent, and I glanced about to find myself alone. Someone was pounding on the front door, and Gertrude and her brother had gone to let them in. I supposed it was the coroner and I should go as well, but I held back. I couldn't bear to look at Cousin Otto again.
Instead I wandered over to examine my ancestor's handiwork. I had been in this building on several occasions, yet I had never taken the time to read it.
The words were bordered in tiny six-petaled flowers, and at the bottom a larger flower of the same design held a star in its center. It seemed vaguely familiar, and then I remembered where I'd seen that emblem before. It was the design on the gold earring I'd found on the floor in the ladies' room. When I took it out to examine it, I found it wasn't an earring at all, but a pin. The gold six-pointed star in the center sat on a tiny circle of onyx; this was surrounded by six mother-of-pearl flower petals on an onyx circle rimmed in gold.
This was no ordinary bauble. I dropped it back into my pocket. Obviously it had significance or my great-grandmother wouldn't have incorporated it into her handiwork. But what was it doing here now almost a hundred years later on the floor of a toilet stall!
My great-grandmother had stitched her name, LUCY ARMINDA WESTBROOK, neatly at the bottom, along with the date, may 21, 1915. She would have been about sixteen or seventeen when she wrote it. I had inherited her middle name, but shared few of her talents, it seemed.
The verse was written in the style of the period and was sung, I'm told, during assemblies and other school functions, but the tune had been forgotten over the years.
The simple words portrayed a time of innocence, virtue, and unquestioning trust, and I felt a pang of jealousy for something my generation had seldom experienced.
WE SING THY PRAISE, MINERVA
WITH EVERLASTING PRIDE.
OF THY STATELY HALLS AND CHAMBERS
WHERE KNOWLEDGE DOTH ABIDE.
AGAINST THE GENTLE HILLSIDE,
BENEATH THE WILLOW'S SHADE,
YOUR WINDING PATHWAYS LEAD US
IN A NOBLE CAVALCADE.
BESIDE THE SWIFT SALUDA,
THAT DAILY SINGS YOUR NAME,
IN FRIENDSHIP AND IN WISDOM,
MINERVA, WE ACCLAIM!
The "swift Saluda" was where my great-grandmother's sister drowned, probably about a year after this verse was written. Annie Rose—and so like a rose according to family stories—sweet and pretty, just beginning to bloom.
And soon after that, a classroom building burned at the academy taking the brave young professor with it.
Minerva's alma mater didn't seem so guileless anymore.
Local legend claimed the town of Angel Heights took its name from the stone outcropping that was supposed to resemble an angel on the hill behind the village. It seemed to me if there really was an angel in Angel Heights it was time for her to flap down from her heavenly hill and "wing it" with the rest of us.