The Kitchen House (39 page)

About a month after Fanny began to serve us in the dining
room, Marshall and I received a letter from Will Stephens. In it, he offered a great deal of money for Jamie. He said that Belle, in her grief over the loss of her son, had become ill. Will feared for her life and asked for Marshall to exercise compassion in the matter.

“Compassion for a whore!” Marshall tore up the letter.

Still too frightened to speak up for Belle, but feeling guilty for my failure, I decided to take other action. That night I wrote to her. In an attempt to give Belle relief, I told her that I watched over Jamie as I might my own son and that he was safe in my care. I told her, too, of my concern for her and her health. I asked her to be patient and concluded that one day soon, she would be reunited with her son.

I do not know how Rankin got hold of the letter. I had passed it to Fanny, and she had given it to her husband, Eddy. Marshall was furious when Rankin brought the letter to him, and at dinner the next day, my husband informed me that Eddy would be punished for my foolishness. Fanny stood at the sideboard, shocked into silence.

“No, Marshall,” I said. “Please, no. I alone am responsible.”

“You work against me, you undermine me, someone must be held accountable for your disobedience,” he said.

“Be angry with me, Marshall,” I said. “I meant no harm.”

“You correspond with a whore?” he said. “You write that her child is like your own. You sound as mad as my mother!”

Armed with the knowledge of Jamie’s paternity, my anger rose. “I was at his birth,” I said, “of course I care for him. Belle was like a mother to me.”

“Belle!” He slammed the table with his fist. “My father’s whore!”

I rose quickly, giving Uncle Jacob no time to assist with my chair. I rested my hands on the table to steady myself. “As Beattie is a whore to you?” I asked, my voice slow and deliberate, and I saw in his face his shock at my knowledge of his unholy union.

Behind me, Fanny gasped. When Marshall reached for his wineglass, I noted a tremor in his hand, and seeing his momentary
weakness, I struck. “I trust that I can count on you not to punish Eddy for my indiscretion.”

As I left, Marshall called after me, but I did not turn back.

I
N THE MIDDLE OF
J
ANUARY,
Beattie lost her child. I was not there for the birth, but Fanny reported on the difficult labor. She told me that Ida and Mama had feared for Beattie’s life. Inwardly, I was relieved that the baby died.

A week later, we celebrated my darling Elly’s first birthday. That day, when I held my precious child to me, I felt a wave of compassion for Beattie and was guilt-stricken that I had not sent word to her about her loss. I decided to go to the kitchen house to apologize and to see if she had need of anything.

It was late afternoon when I slipped out the back door. Fanny was busy tending to Miss Martha, and Mama was cleaning in the library, so I left Elly in the care of Sukey. I knew Beattie was likely beginning the preparations for supper, so I planned only a short visit. As I made my way to the kitchen house, my thoughts of Bea were warm, and I felt certain that she and I could be friends once more. Surely Marshall was done with her. I would have walked directly through the open kitchen door had I not heard Beattie speaking to someone. “This so pretty,” she said. “I never have somethin’ like this before.”

I froze in place when I heard Marshall’s voice. “I thought you might like it,” he said.

I willed myself to quietly back away. Turning, I saw Papa come around the chicken coop. He waved at me in greeting. My fierce desire to run to him for comfort was overruled by my feelings of shock, then shame. Did he know my husband was back in the kitchen house with Beattie? Did they blame me for not keeping my husband away from her and at my side? I turned my back on Papa and went up to the big house.

I wonder what depths of despair I might have reached had Meg’s letter not been waiting.

Belle

W
ILL
S
TEPHENS GETS TWO MORE
men and sends Lucy up from the fields. We work together good, cleaning the big house and putting food away, but Lucy’s getting big with another baby, and seeing her like that makes me think of my own boy. Will Stephens does everything he can to get my Jamie back, but nothing works. When winter comes and I still don’t have him, the life just goes out of me. Without my Jamie, I don’t care about nothing no more.

When Ben’s holding me one night, he says, “You sure quiet, and you gettin’ skinny.”

I don’t say nothing, because there’s nothing to say.

“Belle,” he says, “is somethin’ wrong?”

“No,” I say.

Next day Lucy says, “Belle, you know you not actin’ like yourself. Somethin’ wrong? You hear somethin’ more ’bout Jamie?”

“No,” I say, “I don’t hear nothing.”

She looks at me hard, but she stays quiet.

A
FEW WEEKS GO BY,
and I keep working, but I’m real tired. All I want to do is sleep. Papa comes with the news that Lavinia’s baby is doing fine, got hair like fire, just like her mama. He tells me that Jamie’s doing real good but Marshall still don’t want to let him go.

That night any fight I got left goes right out of me.

Ben and Lucy tell Will Stephens that I stop eating, so he comes down to ask me if I’m sick.

“I’m fine,” I say, “I’m feeling tired, that’s all.” He’s wanting to get the doctor, but I say, “Thank you. I’ll feel better soon.”

One cold night, Lucy starts to have the baby. Ben comes running for me, banging on the door. “Lucy wantin’ you! Lucy wantin’ you!” He’s yelling so loud, I know he’s scared. I run. She’s in trouble, all right. Ben gets a pass and rides out for the doctor, leaving me alone with Lucy.

I try to remember what Mama tells me. “Lucy,” I say, “this gonna hurt.” Then I get to work. That baby’s head needs some help coming out, so Lucy pushes and I pull, and when we finally get him out, I don’t know who’s more tired, Lucy or me. But when we see the baby, we start to laugh. That boy looks just like Ben. How a fat little baby looks like a big old man, we don’t know, but he do.

“You get him out, you got to take care a him,” Lucy says. “What you gonna call him?”

“How about George?” I say. “Like Papa.”

“George?” she says. “That a name for a growed man.”

“Well,” I say, “look at this boy. He’s almost as big as Papa.”

We start to laugh again, till the last of her pains clean the rest of her out.

When Ben comes with the doctor, Lucy’s sleeping, and I’m sitting by the fire, holding George. I don’t know how it happens, but somehow, this child feels like he’s my own.

Food is looking good, and I’m starting to eat again. I’m thinking that I got to stay around, make sure somebody takes care of this sweet boy.

Lavinia

C
OME AND OPEN THEM!
C
OME
and open them!” Sukey met me at the door and pulled me in, dancing with excitement. While I had been down at the kitchen house, overhearing the conversation between Marshall and Beattie, parcels and a letter had arrived from Meg.

Sukey led me to my room, pressed me onto a chair, and placed the packages in my lap. She begged me to open them before I read the letter. To satisfy her, I unwrapped the first. It was a large picture book of trees.

“What does it say?” Sukey asked. She lightly traced the copper-plated illustration with her fingertips and repeated after me, “Quercus, Quercus,” in her eagerness to learn.

Sukey then opened the larger package, and amid excited exclamations, she pulled from it a vasculum. The tin box was painted green and adorned with my initials in gold leaf. I remembered how Meg, with such pride, had shown me her own.

Her gifts were always generous, but Meg’s correspondence that day was my salvation. She began by referencing my letters of last autumn in which I had described the sewing parties held under our oak. She wrote how this homey picture gave her and her mother much discussion over the past winter season. Now they wondered if they might visit this fall to be part of that very scene. My heart leaped at her request. Meg was as committed to her studies as ever, and she had become particularly interested in oak trees. Did we have a variety in our area? she wondered. Would I collect some leaves and bark, catalog my finds, and hold them for
her visit? Then she ended the letter with another question: Was I as happy as she envisioned?

I set her letter aside. I gazed over at Sukey studying the book, and then at Elly asleep in her cradle. But my thoughts did not settle on them. I could not remove the image of Marshall watching Beattie as she opened her treasure, and I heard over and over her words of pleasure. I longed to speak to someone of my outrage, my sorrow, and my confusion. Dared I write to Meg? Might I confide in her? But even as I asked myself these questions, I knew that I would not. How could I tell her of this evil twist in my marriage?

When Jamie came to the door, Sukey glanced up. She held her finger to her mouth and pointed to Elly, who lay fast asleep. Jamie nodded his understanding and tiptoed over to Sukey to have a look at the book she held. He had grown little this past year and was small for a seven-year-old. Miss Martha insisted we allow his sandy curls to grow to shoulder length, and but for his bad eye, he was a pretty child. He was exceptionally precocious, and perhaps because of it, there was something disconcerting about the boy. He had already learned to use his disability to his advantage. When he was particularly determined, he fixed his eyes on you. One could not ignore the unseeing white eye, while the blue intensity of the other bore through.

This day he looked at me over Sukey’s head, then came to slip his hand in mine. “Are you sad, Miss Abby?” he asked, using the name the children had given me.

I cupped his serious small face and kissed it twice. His presence reminded me again of Belle, and in that instant I decided where I would turn. Why hadn’t I thought of this sooner?

Fully aware that Marshall would never give me permission to see Belle, I began to plot my visit.

“I
WANT TO LEARN TO
ride,” I told Marshall the next day at dinner. “And it would please me a great deal if Sukey could be my companion.” I gave no hint of my unhappiness, instead acting light
and gay. I told him of Meg’s letter and, presenting her latest gifts, informed him of her request that I gather certain leaf species. I needed a horse, I explained, to travel out a bit. Did he not think this a good pastime for me?

Yes, Marshall agreed, this was excellent diversion—provided, of course, that I use caution. George, he said, had taught Miss Martha to ride, and he would have George teach me to ride as well. There was a fine sidesaddle in the stables that his father had provided for his mother; would that suit me? He would choose the horse, an older, quiet one, one that would not get away from me. Happily, he was also in agreement that Sukey should act as my attendant.

I thanked him for his generosity, then read aloud Meg’s letter. Though Marshall did not voice an opinion, I noted that he was not entirely pleased when I read to him of Meg and her family’s upcoming visit.

S
UKEY DID NOT NEED A
riding lesson. She approached her pony confidently, took hold of his reins, patted his nose, and led him to the mounting block. There, she slid easily onto his back. She clicked her tongue and walked her small horse around me while she and Papa George laughed at my surprise. Sukey explained that Papa had taught her to ride when she was “just a lil chil’.”

“Oh,” I said to Sukey, winking at Papa, “I suppose that now, at the age of eleven, you consider yourself a grown woman?”

“Well,” she said soberly, “I’m not as old as you!”

At that, Papa laughed, and I gently poked his arm in reprimand.

“Miss Abby, how old are you?” Sukey asked.

Papa pointed to the hills in the distance. “You see those hills, Sukey gal?”