The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

Man can hardly select, or only with much difficulty, any deviation of structure excepting such as is externally visible; and indeed he rarely cares for what is internal.

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, all the children, even down to Jim Bowie, were allowed to stay up to count the chimes of the clock at midnight on New Year’s Eve, a wildly exciting event, at least in theory. It was also nerve-racking, as there had been talk by some religious societies that the world was going to end on the first day of the millennium. The newspapers reported that there were wild, bearded men parading the streets in Austin, dressed in long robes and carrying big signs that read REPENT, THE END IS NIGH. Father had pooh-poohed the men as a bunch of cranks, but Travis had taken it seriously and asked me after some thought, “Callie, is the world really going to end tonight?”

“No, silly. Granddaddy explained it to me. The century is merely the marking of the passage of time. Time is man-made and comes from England.”

“But what if it does come to an end? Who will look after Jesse James? Who will feed Bunny?”

I could see only one way out of this discussion. “Don’t worry, Travis. I will.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks, Callie.”

We went downstairs to an enormous dinner at six o’clock. The weather was dismal, but there were roaring fires in every room. Mother looked flushed and relaxed, and I noticed she was sipping bubbly wine that seemed to agree with her. Afterward, Father made several toasts and reassured us that the world was not coming to an end; that he was a fortunate man to be surrounded by his loving family, his own father, his own wife, his own children. There was a catch in his voice.

Then we all retired to our rooms to rest for the long evening ahead, to say our prayers and to consider our resolutions. Traditionally, we each had to stand up in turn and recite our resolutions, which Mother wrote down on a paper that she kept pressed in the family Bible until the next year, when the old ones were replaced with new ones.

I lay on my bed and stared out the window at the lowering sky. Part of me wanted our lives to go on as they always had, with all of us living together in our teeming old house. The other part of me yearned for desperate and dramatic change, to leave Fentress far behind. What good was it to have a hairy vetch “mootant” named after me, if my whole life was to be spent in Caldwell County, bounded by Lockhart and San Marcos, pecan trees and cotton fields? Granddaddy had told me I could make whatever I wished of my life. Some days I believed him, and other days I did not. This gloomy overcast afternoon, this last day of the dying century, was definitely turning into a “not” day. There were so many things I wanted to see and do in my lifetime, but how many of them were within my reach? I wrote a list of them on the last page of my Notebook. The red leather cover was creased and the deckled pages were getting grubby. My Notebook, my faithful friend for the past six months. I put it aside and fell asleep and dreamed that I was floating on a river. But it was not my own river. The water was pale green instead of blue, and, strangely, the riverbanks were covered in sand.

Viola sounded the gong at nine o’clock and woke me. We trooped downstairs to bowls of dangerously hot Apple Brown Betty that seared the mouth. We each were given a party cracker to pull, inside of which was a paper crown, a noisemaker, and a miniature tin toy. A brisk market in these favors emerged, with much trading and dealing. Then it was just a matter of sitting and waiting. The younger boys, who had never been up this late, responded to the generalized slackening of discipline by either tearing up and down the stairs or falling fast asleep on the parlor rug.

I ate half of my Christmas orange with ostentatious enjoyment, much to the annoyance of those who had already finished theirs. I saved the other half to eat in a different century. Would an 1899 orange taste different in 1900?

By ten o’clock, we were all exhausted and craving our beds but determined to make it to the magic hour. At eleven, it was time for the annual resolutions. Mother pulled our old resolutions out of the Bible and read them aloud to much laughter and then burned them in the fireplace. My last resolution had been to master darning and spinning. I had made it a lifetime ago, before the hot summer month when my grandfather and I had first recognized each other.