The Rowlett Family Tree
When nonagenarian Loralee Rowlett Judson woke to the early morning rays of the sun creeping through her window, a smile appeared on her face. The day was not a special one, but at her age just making it through another night was an accomplishment. She put her feet into the slippers beside her bed and reached for her cane. Ninety years had taken a toll on her body and left her with numerous aches and pains. Soon, no doubt, she would need a walker just to get around.
At least my mind is still sharp as a tack, she often thought. Thank God!
After a trip to the bathroom, she headed for the kitchen. She no longer slept in the master bedroom on the second floor. Mobility issues had forced her to convert her father's former den into a bedroom, allowing her convenient access to the main rooms of the house, which were all located on the first floor.
"Morning, Miz Loralee," housekeeper Addie Washington greeted her employer. "I've got your coffee all ready for you. Would you like some eggs for breakfast?"
"That would be nice. I am a bit hungry this morning."
The old woman took a seat at the kitchen table. There was a time when a Rowlett eating anywhere other than the formal dining room would be unheard of. If one went back even further in time, Sycamore Hall would be run by house workers—a common term for slaves that were not forced to toil in the cotton fields. Of course, those fields themselves were a victim of the past, and the once-grand plantation home sat on a mere ten acres of property, the rest of the land and outer buildings having been gradually sold off to developers to pay for the upkeep of the house.
Sycamore Hall's current owner, ninety-year-old Loralee, was one of a long line of Rowletts. Her ancestors not only built the house, but they also fought and died to hold on to it. Portraits of notable Rowletts lined the second-floor gallery—all except Forrest Rowlett, a colonel in the Confederate Army who was killed fighting for the Glorious Cause. His portrait held a place of honor above the fireplace mantel in the sitting room.
Postwar Rowletts took great pride in the fact that Sycamore Hall survived the war unscathed. Located north of Atlanta, it was not in the path of Sherman's march to Savannah. Furthermore, Zebulon Rowlett, Forrest's father, had wisely invested his money in diverse business ventures in England, France and, yes, even New York and Philadelphia. His shrewd financial dealings kept the plantation safe from Reconstruction era carpetbaggers and scalawags who would have been delighted to purchase it at a bargain price. Due to Zebulon's willingness to trade with the Yankees, his portrait had once been removed from the gallery and banished to the attic. However, during the Great Depression, Loralee's father decided it was time to forgive his ancestor and restore the painting to its rightful place.
"I suppose it's time to wax the floors," Loralee announced when Addie put a plate of fried eggs down in front of her.
"I'll see if the Yeager gals would like to make some money."
"Good idea. The Yeagers are hard workers, not like the mayor's daughters. Those girls are plum lazy."
The housekeeper went about her morning chores, leaving her employer to eat her breakfast alone in the kitchen. As usual, the old woman's thoughts were centered on her house. Not only was it her pride and joy, but it was virtually all she had left. Her husband had been dead for more than twenty years, and her son passed on twelve years ago. Matt Judson, her grandson and only surviving relative, after studying law at Harvard, remained in the North. When Loralee eventually died, Sycamore Hall would go to him.
What will he do with it? she wondered.
It was a question that had plagued her ever since Matt announced his intention of practicing law in Boston. She doubted he would give up his lucrative career as one of the city's most successful criminal defense attorneys and return to Georgia. The thought of his selling the house broke the old woman's heart. Sycamore Hall in the hands of someone other than a Rowlett—the very idea was outrageous! Rather than selling the property to a stranger, perhaps Matt would open the house to the public or even donate it to the state historical society. Many antebellum homes throughout the Old South were now museums.
Loralee shuddered at the idea of strangers walking through Sycamore Hall, gawking at the portraits of her ancestors, taking photographs with their cell phones and inevitably criticizing the fact that the family's wealth was built on slavery. The old woman, who did not consider herself a racist, took offense at the frequent reminders that the Rowletts were once slave owners. During the Civil Rights era, she had supported Martin Luther King's fight for racial equality and, more recently, had voted for Barrack Obama, not once but twice. Hell! Matt was married to an African-American woman, and Loralee had warmly and sincerely welcomed her to the family.
"Are you done with your breakfast, Miz Loralee?" Addie asked from the hall doorway.
"Yes, I am."
"Would you like some help gettin' dressed?"
"No, thank you. I think I can manage by myself."
"I suppose you'll be goin' outside to read then."
"Indeed, I am. The sun is shining, and there's not a cloud in the sky."
"Not yet, but the forecast calls for a storm later in the mornin' or early afternoon."
"Then I might as well enjoy the good weather while I can."
"I'll have Roscoe set up your chair under the tree," the housekeeper announced and went in search of her husband, who served as Sycamore Hall's handyman.
There were more than a dozen varieties of trees on the property, including maple, hickory, beech, ash and pine; but when Addie spoke of "the tree," she invariably meant the sweetgum that grew in the garden formed by the house's circular driveway. The large shade tree was Loralee's favorite, especially in the autumn months when its leaves turned color.
Once she was dressed, the aged Southern belle made her way outside, relying on her cane for support. Pat Conroy novel in hand, she crossed the driveway and sat down in her cushioned folding chair. Weather permitting, she would read throughout the morning. Addie would make at least one appearance, bringing her employer something cool to drink. The nonagenarian would return to the house at noon, eat lunch and then take a nap. It was a boring life, but what did one expect at ninety?
After opening the novel at her monogrammed bookmark, she proceeded to read. Normally, she became engrossed in the plot. That morning, however, her mind kept drifting. When she reached the bottom of the page, she realized she had not comprehended what she read. Her eyes returned to the top of the page and she reread the paragraphs. Still, she had trouble following the storyline. After a third unsuccessful attempt, she closed the book.
Loralee put her head back and looked up at the branches of the sweetgum. She did not know for certain how old the tree was but correctly assumed it had stood on the property before Sycamore Hall was built. It was as much a part of the Rowlett family as the old woman herself—more so, since it had lived longer.
"I wonder, if you could talk, what stories you would tell."
The sweetgum's leaves rustled as though in response to her musing.
The elderly woman daydreamed about the days when Sycamore Hall was a working plantation. Although her ancestors relied on slaves to work the cotton fields and run the house, she imagined the relationship between the Rowletts and their servants mirrored that of the O'Haras and their slaves in Gone with the Wind. Mammy, Pork, Prissy and Big Sam were treated with kindness and were loyal to the family in return. It had never occurred to her that any Rowlett would mistreat a fellow human being.
The branches above her shook with greater force, and the sunny blue sky took on a darker hue.
I best get inside before the rain starts.
* * *
Addie made her employer a light lunch: half a tuna sandwich and a cup of tomato basil soup. Loralee ate it quickly and then sought the sanctuary of the sitting room.
Outside, the rain started to fall. Fortunately, Roscoe had brought in her chair from under the sweetgum tree. Not for the first time—and probably not the last—she gave silent thanks for the Washingtons. She honestly did not know what she would do without them.
I'm sure my ancestors felt the same way about their house workers as I do about Addie and Roscoe, she thought as she sat down on the sitting room sofa. I wonder how many of them remained here at Sycamore Hall after the war. I really ought to read the old family journals and diaries upstairs in the library. Perhaps when I'm done with my novel, I'll ask Roscoe to bring them down for me.
Before her advanced age had forced Loralee to confine herself to the first floor of the house, she could walk along the second-floor gallery and identify the subject of each of the family portraits by name. However, she knew little else about them—all except for Colonel Forrest Rowlett, whose service to the Confederacy was a great source of pride in the family. Every Rowlett child from 1862 onward was told tales of his bravery at Bull Run and Antietam in place of bedtime stories.
As she closed her eyes and listened to the patter of rain on the sitting room window, it occurred to her with some shock that she knew very little about the rest of her family—even her own father. She had been raised by a black governess, rarely seeing either of her parents. At age seventeen, she married and went to live in Atlanta with her husband, only returning to Sycamore Hall in the early Eighties when her father died and she inherited the house.
The soporific melody of the rain on the windowpane lulled her to sleep. Her dream took her to a warm summer evening decades before she was born. Sycamore Hall was aglow with lights, and music drifted outside from the grand ballroom. Several of the county's wealthiest gentlemen and ladies dressed in their finest gowns were either strolling on the grounds or sitting on the veranda to get a breath of fresh air. Meanwhile, slaves tiptoed in and out of the house, carrying out their assigned duties. One young girl carried a tray of mint juleps. When she leaned over and silently offered one to a laughing belle, she lost her balance and dropped the tray. She trembled and her doe-like brown eyes filled with fear when she saw the drinks spill on the lady's dress.
For some unknown reason, the sight upset Loralee, and she woke with a start. The odd dream left her feeling uneasy, so she looked outside the sitting room window to the comforting vision of her beloved sweetgum tree. The rain came down harder, and the wind increased in velocity, causing the tree's branches to sway. Soon the room became darker. When she turned on the lamp beside the couch, she seemed to see beyond the veil of memories for the first time.
"There's a crack in the wall," she realized with alarm when she noticed a nearly four-foot-long fissure in the plaster. "I'd better have that taken care of."
The first flash of lightning, followed by a low, rumbling thunder, was a preview of the squall that would soon follow. As the storm drew closer to Sycamore Hall, the atmospheric disturbance worsened. Although she had never been afraid of thunderstorms in the past, this one filled Loralee with foreboding. It was not the loudness of the thunder that made her heart race with apprehension or the fear that lightning might cause a fire. Rather, it was the momentary flashes of light that illuminated the sitting room. Each time the lightning chased away the late afternoon shadows it revealed another flaw in the house. The wooden floor was scratched, the upholstery on the antique chair was frayed, the fabric of the drapes was worn thin and there were chips in the plaster ceiling.
Why didn't I notice all these things before? she wondered. I always thought the house was in immaculate condition.
With the storm seemingly directly above the house, the frequency of the lightning and the clamor of the thunder were at their peak. For brief periods of time, the portrait of Colonel Forrest Rowlett was illuminated. His was a face she had long ago committed to memory, yet it was as though she were seeing it for the first time. Her ancestor's features were harsh and implacable, and his steely gray eyes revealed a man who was cruel and unforgiving.
An involuntary scream escaped the old woman's lips. Moments later she fainted, her mind unable to take any more unpleasant revelations.
* * *
"I tell you I'm all right!" Loralee insisted as Addie fussed over her. "I don't need a blanket. I'm not cold."
Matt Judson, who had flown down from Boston after his grandmother's collapse, was also worried about the old woman's health.
"You ought to sell this place," he said, "and move into an assisted living home."
"Never!"
The suggestion was ludicrous.
"Not only is the house too big for you and the Washingtons, but it needs a lot of work as well. Although the real estate market is down at the moment, you might still be able to get a good price for it. The land alone ought to be worth at least a few hundred thousand."
"Sell Sycamore Hall? But it's been in our family for generations. And when I die, it will go to you."
"What am I going to do with a house in Georgia? My family and I live in Boston."
"Well, maybe you can open it to the public. And then there's your children. This is their heritage."
"Are you forgetting my kids are biracial? Why would they want to own a house that was built on the blood, sweat and tears of black slaves? I'm sorry, Grandma. I know you hate to be reminded of our family's unsavory past, but ...."
"You don't know what you're talking about," Loralee cried. "The Rowletts may have owned slaves, but they always treated them well."
Her eyes were drawn to the crack in the sitting room wall. Was it longer and wider than before?
"No, they didn't," Matt replied, correcting her misconception. "I don't want to upset you, but I believe it's time you learned what your ancestors were really like. When I was a teenager, I read the family journals upstairs in the library. They told of the harsh treatment of the field hands and house workers alike: the beatings and whippings, the sexual abuse, the occasional execution ...."
"Stop it! I don't want to hear another word."
"I'm sorry, but it's all true."
"Slavery was wrong. I admit that, but it was a way of life back in the early 1800s. After the war ...."
"You might not be a racist, Grandma, but your father was a member of the Klan."
"No. Please stop," she moaned.
Hoping to keep the truth at bay, the old woman clasped her hands over her ears.
Matt hated to torment his grandmother. She was a good woman, and he loved her dearly. However, her refusal to remove the rose-colored glasses and see the Rowlett family for what they really were was keeping her prisoner in a deteriorating house and masking reality with false memories.
"Your father was KKK as were all the Rowlett men going back to Reconstruction."
"That's not true. It can't be true!"
"It's all in the journals and diaries, every last disgusting detail. Why, Kenton Rowlett even boasted of having lynched several young black men in the old sweetgum tree in the garden back in the Twenties and Thirties."
"That's a downright lie!" the old woman screamed with rising anger. "That's what comes from your living in the North where people think Southerners are all a pack of ignorant, Bible-toting, gun-loving rednecks."
"You're forgetting I was born and raised right here in Georgia."
"I haven't forgotten it, but apparently you have. How could you come here now and tell such lies about the family?"
"They're not lies."
"I think it's time you went back home to Boston. No doubt they appreciate a good liar up there, especially in a courtroom where you help put criminals back on the street."
The derisive reference to his profession did not offend Matt. He knew his grandmother was only striking out at him as a means of self-defense. It hurt her less to believe that her grandson was an unscrupulous shyster than to admit that so many of the branches of the Rowlett family tree had born rotten fruit.
* * *
Loralee woke to a gray, gloomy day, missing the early rays of sun that usually crept through her window. There was no smile on her face as she put her feet into the slippers beside her bed and reached for her cane. Since her grandson's recent visit, there was no joy in waking up or in her continued existence.
"Good morning, Miss Loralee," Addie called cheerfully when her employer entered the kitchen. "What would you like for breakfast?"
"Just coffee."
"You ought to eat somethin'. Ever since Mr. Matt went back up North, you've been eatin' like a bird."
"I'm not hungry."
"The weatherman says we're in for another bad storm," the housekeeper announced as she placed a cup of coffee in front of the old woman. "No sitting outside under the tree today. Would you like to watch some TV instead?"
"Good God, no! Those morning talk shows are horrendous!"
Once Loralee finished her coffee, she headed to the sitting room where the portrait of Colonel Forrest Rowlett glared at her from above the fireplace mantel.
Could he really have been as bad as Matt—No, no, no, NO! she thought, stopping herself from delving into a subject better left unexplored.
She took her usual seat on the sofa and picked up her novel from off the coffee table. The bookmark was still at the same page as it was three weeks earlier.
"Now, where was I?" she asked herself, trying to remember the storyline, but without success. "I might as well start reading this again from the beginning."
Four pages into the book, she heard the first raindrops strike the panes of the sitting room window. A steady rain fell throughout the morning and continued after Addie brought in her lunch.
"Will you be okay alone here for a couple of hours?" the housekeeper asked.
"Why? Where are you going?"
"Me and Roscoe have to go to a funeral. If you want, I could ask one of the Yeager gals to come stay with you while we're gone."
"Don't be silly. I don't need a babysitter. I'll be perfectly fine here by myself."
An hour later when the front door clicked shut behind Addie, Loralee stopped reading and listened for the sound of Roscoe's old Chevy truck backing down the driveway. She could not remember the last time she was left alone in the house. Usually Addie, Roscoe or both of them were nearby.
"It's so quiet in here," she said, used to the sounds of the housekeeper's vacuum cleaner or the handyman's lawnmower. "This is the perfect opportunity for me to take a nap."
It was already evening when the first faint rumblings of thunder caused her eyes to open. She reached over to the end table and turned on the light.
"Addie? Are you here?" she called out, but the housekeeper and her husband had yet to return.
The storm moved in swiftly and with an intensity that surpassed the one three weeks earlier. The lightning struck with the frequency of a Fourth of July fireworks display, its pyrotechnics accompanied by the din of booming thunder. Suddenly the power went out, and Loralee found herself in near total darkness, interrupted by intermittent strobe-like flashes of lightning.
Where on earth does Addie keep the candles?
Loralee picked up her cane and headed toward the kitchen. As she passed through the foyer, the front door blew open with the gale-like force of the wind.
The rain will ruin the hardwood floor.
With rain pelting her face, she stood on the threshold. Intent on closing the door, she stretched out her arm, reaching for the brass knob. A bolt of lightning rent the sky and struck the sweetgum tree in the garden. In the brief moments before it burst into flames, its trunk split open wide and the souls of slaves hanged by their owners and free black men lynched from its branches in the years after the war were released. Seeing the terrifying sight with her own eyes, the nonagenarian could no longer deny the truth of her grandson's claims.
With all her long-held delusions gone, Loralee walked out of the house and into the raging storm, unmindful of the danger it presented. She walked down the driveway, past the burning sweetgum tree that was blazing despite the pouring rain that should have extinguished the flames.
Behind her, several bolts of lightning struck the house in quick succession. It was as though Zeus and Thor had joined forces to attack Sycamore Hall. The old woman kept her eyes firmly on the pavement beneath her feet, never once turning to see her family home being destroyed.
* * *
Visibility hampered by the pelting rain and darkness of night, Roscoe drove slowly through the downpour.
"Poor Miz Loralee," his wife said. "All alone in that great big house in this dreadful storm."
"She'll be fine."
"I should have had one of the Yeager gals keep an eye on her."
"You offered; she refused. She can be a stubborn old woman when she wants to be."
Suddenly, Roscoe spotted a figure in the Chevy's headlights.
"What the ...?"
He jammed on his breaks.
"It's Miz Loralee!" Addie exclaimed.
"What the hell is she doing out in this storm?"
The housekeeper threw open the passenger side door and hurried her elderly employer into the cab of the truck.
"Have you lost your mind?" she cried. "Roscoe might have run you over."
"I'm ... s-sorry," Loralee answered, shivering from the cold.
"You'll catch your death out here in this rain. When we get back to Sycamore Hall, I'm puttin' you into a hot bath."
"N-no. You ... c-can't."
"Yes, I can, and I will. So, don't you go givin' me a hard time, ya here?"
"I'm n-not. You ... c-can't t-take ... me b-back to Sycamore Hall. It's ...n-not there any ...m-more."
After spending the night at a nearby Holiday Inn, Addie and Roscoe returned to Sycamore Hall the next day.
"There's not much left of it," the housekeeper observed, seeing the smoldering remains of the former plantation house.
"The old place must have been struck by lightning and gone up like a bunch of kindlin' wood," her husband theorized.
"Miz Loralee will be heartbroken when she finds out."
However, the nonagenarian surprised everyone by her calm acceptance of Sycamore Hall's destruction.
"It needed a lot of work anyway," she reasoned.
As Matt Judson had predicted, the land on which the house was built brought his grandmother a great deal of money. After the sale was finalized, she gave the Washingtons, who had both served her loyally for decades, enough money to buy a small home in Florida where they retired to enjoy the golden years of their lives.
Loralee herself moved into an assisted living development not far from Boston where her grandson, his wife and their children could visit her regularly. She lived for another eight years, dying peacefully in her sleep one night, two months shy of here ninety-ninth birthday. Before death closed her eyes for the final time, Loralee's last thoughts were of Sycamore Hall and the sweetgum tree that once grew in the garden.
When Salem explored his family tree, the local fire department had to be called in to get him down.
