The Kitchen House (3 page)

I gripped Beattie’s prize, my heart pierced with longing. The doll was made of rough brown cloth; her eyes were stitched in black thread, while black wool stood out in braids. I fingered the doll’s shirt, styled like the one the twins and I wore. She wore a red apron, and I recognized it as the same fabric as Mama Mae’s head scarf.

As dark descended, Dory and baby Henry joined us. They had frequently visited the kitchen house, where I had learned that Dory was Mama Mae’s eldest daughter. I liked Dory well enough, for she left me alone, but I wasn’t fond of the baby with his harsh cry.

Although distracted by the girls and their play, I kept a close eye on Mama’s reassuring presence. When the door suddenly opened, a huge dark bear of a man stood framed against the even blacker night sky. I flew to Mama’s side. Fanny and Beattie scrambled to their feet and ran to the man, who scooped them up. “Papa!” they cried. After he released them, they went back to their play, and with Mama’s encouragement, I joined them.

“Evenin’, Dory.” The man’s voice was so deep, he might have been underground, and when he paused by baby Henry’s mama, his large hand covered the top of her head. “How your lil one doin’?”

“Not so good, Papa,” Dory answered, not looking up from the bench where she sat nursing her infant. The child fussed when she gently pulled his swollen hands out to show her father. “When his hands get big like this, he cry all the time,” she said.

Her father leaned down and, with a knuckle, gently stroked the baby’s cheek. When he straightened, he sighed and then took a few giant strides across the floor to Mama Mae. The girls giggled and hid their eyes when their father reached for Mama, pulling her to him and playfully nuzzling her neck. “George!” Mama laughed, then shooed him off. When he stepped back, he caught my eye and nodded at me. I quickly turned away.

Belle was expecting a visitor, Mama Mae said to the man, as though to explain my presence, and the pair exchanged a look before Mama Mae turned back to the fireplace. She scooped out stew from a black pot that hung over the open fire, and Papa set the filled wooden bowls on the narrow table. Then she brushed the coals from the top lid of another black iron pot that was nestled in hot ash, and from it she removed a steaming round corn cake, browned to crispness around the edges.

The three adults pulled up small stools to the table, and Fanny and Beattie had me stand between them as they began to eat. But everything felt strange, and I wanted the familiarity of the kitchen house. With no appetite, I studied the food, and when Mama instructed me to eat, I began to cry.

“Come here, Abinia,” she said, and after I went to her, she hoisted me onto her lap. “Chil’, you got to eat. You need some meat on them bones. Here, I dip this into the gravy for you, and you eat so you get strong as Mama.”

The twins laughed. “You treatin’ her just like a baby, Mama,” Fanny said.

“Well,” Mama said, “maybe she my new baby, and I got to feed her. Now you open your mouth, lil baby.” I so wanted her mothering that I ate the corn bread she dipped into the thick ham gravy. She continued to feed me as she spoke of the captain leaving and how Miss Martha’s nerves were running over again.

Dory said she had to go back up to the big house tonight, no telling what Miss Martha would do when the captain left in the morning. Mama Mae said how she wished she could go stay with Miss Martha so Dory could stay with baby Henry.

Dory answered with a deep sigh, “You know it’s me she be wantin’,” and Mama agreed.

We had almost finished the meal when we heard muffled voices from the outside. Papa George began to rise, and my stomach clenched when Mama quickly set me aside. “No, George!” she said standing. “Me and Dory go. Won’t do nobody no good to throw another man in this stewpot.”

I heard footsteps coming at a run, and when the door flew open, Belle came in gasping for air. Her green head rag was missing, and her usual night braid was undone. Mama Mae pulled Belle inside before she and Dory rushed out. Belle leaned against the wall, panting, then straightened herself before walking over to the table, where she sat across from Papa.

Belle said, “She comes down after him this time. She never do that before. And Marshall, he comes with her. When she sees the new comb and the book he gives me, she takes them up and throws them at me. That starts Marshall pushing and hitting on me. The cap’n grabs him and sends him out the door, but then Miss Martha starts crying and hitting on him. He says, ‘Martha, Martha, get ahold of yourself,’ but she’s so worked up, he tells me to go get Mama.” Belle put her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands.

Papa shook his head. “Did you ask for the free papers?” he asked.

Belle spoke through her fingers. “He says I’ll get them next summer.”

The air clicked with Papa’s anger, and when he stood, he pushed back the table with such force that two of the wooden bowls flew to the floor. “Next year! Next year! Always the next time! Something’s gonna happen here if he don’t get you those papers!”

When the door closed behind him, I was more surprised than anyone that my supper came up without warning. With it, though,
I felt some relief, as my involuntary action seemed to refocus Belle and steady her while she cleaned me.

The twins watched from their pallet, the sleeping baby Henry beside them. After Belle finished with me, she set me with them, then straightened the room. When everything was in order, Belle came to us, eased the sleeping baby into her arms, and nodded for me to join her. We were all startled to hear a loud thunking sound from outside, but as it continued, Fanny identified the source. “Papa choppin’ his wood again,” she whispered.

When we left for Belle’s house, white moonlight offered only shadow on the far side of the cabin where Papa worked.

“Papa?” Belle called softly. “Papa?”

The pounding stopped.

“Papa, don’t worry. I’ll get the papers,” she said into the silence.

Belle

M
AMA SAYS, “ONE MORE TIME
the cap’n home just long enough to get the place upside down.”

And she’s right, like always. What’s he doing, giving me this sick child? During the day she can’t keep her food down, and at night she scares me, sitting there in the dark, looking off.

’Course, the cap’n is known for this, coming and going, telling nobody nothing. That’s the way he always is, says Mama. She is right, ’cause I know what she knows. When I was little, when I was living up at the big house, I’d wait at the front door for his carriage, and sure enough he comes riding up the back way, sitting on a horse. Next time I wait for the horse, he comes pulling a loaded-up cart.

I’d never know when he was coming, and I’d never know how he’d come. For sure, though, always, one way or another, he shows up.

Back then my white grandma, Mrs. Pyke, was running this place. The cap’n’s daddy died early on. He fell off a horse, Grandma said. The cap’n was just a little boy, nine years old, and he was hit hard, so the next year Mrs. Pyke sent him to school, to London, hoping he’d be a lawyer, but when he came home at nineteen, all he wanted was to get back on the water.

“Why don’t he stay?” I asked her every time he left, and she’d say he has his business with his ship, so he’s doing his part to keep this place going. When he did come home, she’d always tell him everything is fine here. She didn’t say anything about him staying to help with the place.

Mrs. Pyke raised me in the big house and taught me everything,
just like a white girl. She even shows me how to read and write. She says there’s no reason to act like I don’t know better, just because I’m half Negro. We sit at the table, her and me, with Mama Mae bringing in the food. Mrs. Pyke shows me how to use a napkin and to sit up straight. She takes me out riding with her to see that the fields got worked. Then one day just like every other, I go to wake her. There she is, passed on without saying good-bye. I screamed and cried until I can’t no more. For seven years that woman was like my whole world.

After she’s gone, the cap’n, old already and never been married, decides to bring home a young wife, twenty years to his forty. They move me out of the big house because the cap’n don’t want Miss Martha to know about me.

Down in the kitchen house, Mama Mae don’t care that the cap’n is my daddy. She tells me it won’t do me no good and maybe even makes it harder if I hold it up for anybody to see. “You learn to cook,” she says, “that way they don’t get rid of you.” Time passes and I do like Mama says, but that don’t mean I think the cap’n is doing right by me.

T
HIS TIME
D
ORY AND
M
AMA
say it’s going to take a long time before Miss Martha settles down. But then she always takes it hard when the cap’n leaves. Of course, almost every time he comes home, she gets caught with a baby. Trouble is, those babies don’t live too long. She’s buried two already. Each time another one comes and goes, she takes more of those drops. Once the cap’n is gone, Miss Martha just stays up in that house, wandering around from room to room. Then, too, soon as his daddy goes, Marshall gets back to pestering me, throwing rocks when I’m working in the garden. He’s a sly one. He only acts up when nobody sees him. I know he’s thinking that I’m the problem with his mama. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I’d sit him down and say, “Hey, boy, do you know you are throwing rocks at your big sister?” But I guess that’s the cap’n’s business.

Against everything that’s right, I’ve got to cook for Miss Martha
and my brother and sister up in the big house, and sometimes, especially when the cap’n’s home, I get to thinking how wrong this is. Then watch out! Pots go flying all over the place.

I’m eighteen now and old enough to know what I want. This kitchen house is my home, and no matter what, I’m not leaving here for nobody. I don’t care what they say. I don’t want no free papers. They’re just a way for the cap’n to get me out of here.

Lavinia

W
HEN
B
ELLE FOUND
B
EATTIE’S STOLEN
doll under my upstairs pallet, she was furious and insisted I take it down to the kitchen immediately.

“Why you take this?” Mama Mae asked when I handed it to her.

I cowered, my thumb in my mouth.

“I told you, she’s a sly—” Belle began.

“Belle!” Mama checked her. “This be Beattie’s best thing,” she said sternly to me.

Unable to stand her anger, I ran out to the back of the kitchen house and hid myself behind the woodpile for the rest of the morning. Later, I crept back in, up the stairs, and fell asleep while I waited for Mama Mae to leave.

I wouldn’t come down until the next morning, when Mama Mae called for me in a voice that wouldn’t accept no. Slowly, I descended the stairs to where the twins waited beside their mother. Beattie stepped forward to hand me a package wrapped in a kitchen cloth. Inside was a doll that had red braids and a body made of white cloth; it wore a brown dress and an apron made from the same green calico as Belle’s head rag.

“Mama make her for you,” Fanny offered.

I held the doll, afraid to believe Fanny, and looked to Mama Mae. She nodded. “Now you got somethin’ of your own,” she said.

B
Y
J
ULY OF THAT FIRST
year, my health was returning, though my memory was not. I was quiet but encouraged to speak, as everyone found my Irish dialect amusing. My appearance was often a topic of discussion. Fanny hoped that the freckles across my nose would
fill in to give my pale skin more color. Beattie was always trying to fluff my red hair over my pointed ears, and even Belle commented on my oddly colored amber eyes. When Mama overheard their criticisms, she told me not to worry, assuring me that one day I would grow into myself. By this time I was devoted to Mama, and I lived for her notice of me. I kept a distance from Belle, sharing her rooms but watching her closely; she saw to my care, but she was no more at ease with me than I was with her.