The House Girl (19 page)

Night progressed and the sky clouded over, the moonlight dropped away, and Josephine reached the fork in the road. Take the right, the boy had told her, and so she did, pausing only once to look behind her into the gray dark. As she stopped, a single drop of rain fell onto the road. She saw the blackened spot it made, and a cool breeze rose up, chilling the sweat on her face and arms. Josephine hurried along, her hand patting faster against the underside of her belly. The baby no longer twisted but now, she supposed, slept with the rhythm of her steps, her bare feet moving faster, faster over the pebbles and dust.

At last she saw it, yellow as a second moon: a lone lantern in the cool, prestorm night. A barn, the wagons, just as the boy had told her. Josephine approached silently across the grass, not using the path to the main house, and then she saw the wooden boxes laid out against the side of the barn, just under the eaves, stacked one atop the other. Caskets.
The undertaker and his daughter
.

Softly Josephine knocked on the barn door and it swung open wide. A young white woman stood in the doorway, her eyes soft and brown as a horse’s flank, and Josephine stood for a moment outside, the woman inside. Worlds separated them, it seemed to Josephine, and how was she ever to cross that divide, the threshold between the barn and the night? But without a word the woman nodded and smiled and took Josephine’s hand, and pulled her inside. There was a man in the barn, his eyes like the woman’s, the sleeves of his shirt rolled to the elbows, his forearms strong and brown from sun, and he looked once at Josephine, his eyes going to her stomach, and his face changed in a way Josephine could not determine, whether from soft to hard, from certain to hesitant, she couldn’t say, the light was too dim. Then the woman took Josephine’s hand and laid her down to rest on a pallet of straw, the smell of animals comforting and close. This must be the place the boy had spoken of, Josephine had thought. It must be that help could be found here. Josephine had continued in her whispering but now it was the young woman to whom she spoke, not the boy or even the child inside, and the woman looked at her with those soft eyes and stroked her hair, nodding as Josephine told of Bell Creek and her journey away from there. Josephine talked until exhaustion overcame her and it was the woman’s face she saw last as her eyes closed.

On that long-ago night, Josephine had fallen asleep in the undertaker’s barn as though she were rolling off a cliff, a silent and complete surrender, trusting that someone below would catch her.

J
OSEPHINE PLUCKED THE COBS FROM
the hot water and set them, steaming yellow, onto a plate. Inside Mr. Jefferson’s chest of drawers, just a small one, Josephine kept the face of that boy in the field and the sound of his screams. She kept the feel of her own rounded belly, the ghost memory of those movements inside her.

Mister walked through the door, the stench of sweat and earth reeling off him in waves as he moved through the kitchen and into the dining room. Josephine followed him and placed the plate on the table next to the sausages already there. She turned to fetch Missus Lu. Mister and Missus always ate the midday meal together. It was the only time they sat face-to-face, the only time they spoke a word to each other, that Josephine could tell.

“Leave your Missus be for now,” Mister said. “Tell me, what did the doctor say?”

Josephine stopped in the doorway and turned back to face him. Mister’s hands were in his lap and sunlight from the windows cut across the long table and hit his face so every line seemed drawn there with Missus’ sharp pencil. There was no color in his skin, only the grays and browns of exhaustion and physical labor under the sun. His eyes merely suggested blue, the color tending to navy, not the indigo that Missus Lu had spoken of, that had once so bewitched her. Papa Bo’s eyes had been a deep brown; the blue must have come from Mister’s mama. Josephine never heard talk of Mister’s mama, or his dead sisters.

“The doctor, he said Missus is almost certainly dying. He believes she has a tumor, here,” and Josephine touched the back of her neck. “He can’t say how much longer she’ll have, maybe months, maybe more or less. He’ll return in two days and we’re to send for him if her condition changes. We’re to send for him at once.”

Mister said nothing. Steam rose from the corn in great white billows. The smell of the sausages, their drippings visible on Mister’s plate, made Josephine’s stomach grumble, the pangs loud in the silence of the room, the air thick with Mister’s contemplation.

Josephine thought of Lottie’s ghosts who danced by the river. Did Papa Bo dance there too? Did he carry his stick, the one tipped in silver? The one he used to beat Mister? Again her stomach rumbled, or perhaps it was the blood rushing in her ears. Mister’s shoulders bent over the plate, and she saw Papa Bo there with his stick, raising it high above his head to bring it down across Mister’s back.

Mister cut into the sausage and raised the fork. He opened his mouth but then stopped and threw the knife and fork down with a clatter that made Josephine start. He pushed his chair away and stepped toward the door, looking up at Josephine with a deep confusion, as though nothing she had said could be true, as though the world that had once seemed so bright—a lovely young wife, an inheritance, a farm of his very own—was now shrouded in mist and peopled only with ghostly apparitions.

He is a good man, Missus Lu believed. Josephine did not know how goodness came to a person. Papa Bo’s preaching voice had rung loud and heavy day in, day out, as if a battle raged within his chest between God and the devil himself. Was he now up in heaven with the angels and the Lord? Had he found his salvation in the end? Perhaps if Mister’s mama had lived, perhaps if he had not come to Virginia, to Bell Creek where the earth was worn out, where Missus would never be happy. Perhaps if he had never married Missus, never even glimpsed her round cheek, the sly arching brow of her at sixteen, itching to flout her daddy’s will.

Mister was beside Josephine and then gone, her skirts ruffled by the breeze of his passing. She heard the rattle of the door latch and his boots booming across the porch and down the front steps to the dirt path. Josephine followed and watched as he emerged from the barn, leading his horse. He mounted and spurred the horse along the road to town.

As he disappeared from view, she heard Missus’ voice calling from inside, “Josephine! Josephine! What has happened?”

Josephine returned to the hall and Missus was descending the stairs. She had combed her own hair and fixed it up in back.

“Whatever happened? Why all this slamming?” Missus had returned to herself. Though the cut blazed raw on her face and the back buttons on her dress were not fully fastened, she spoke now as mistress of her house. “Josephine, why did Mister see fit to gallop away like the hounds of hell chased after him?”

Josephine hesitated. How was she to answer?
Keep her calm,
Dr. Vickers had said. Josephine searched her mind for an explanation that would not see another knife gone from the kitchen, another afternoon of fits and rages.

“He was sorry at having missed the doctor’s visit, not having time to see the doctor,” Josephine said with care. “He wished to see Dr. Vickers himself.”

“And what will your Mister do then? Shout and scold? It will do no good, I will still be as I am now.”

Missus gazed out the open front door, at the spot by the barn where the dust thrown by Mister’s horse still lingered, clouding the air. “The weather is fine today for working,” she said. “Jackson is keeping them in the fields then?”

“I believe so, yes, Missus.”

“Widow Price has had troubles aplenty, so I hear.” She turned to Josephine. “I want you to go to Jackson, tell him they are to work as usual, there is to be no relaxing just because Mister has left on an urgent errand. Tell him Mister has left on an urgent errand, and he will return shortly …” Missus’ voice trailed off. “Go, Josephine. Now.”

T
HE FIELD HANDS WERE WORKING
some distance from the house. A hazy sun shimmered overhead and the day’s heat lay heavy across the fields as Josephine struggled through the rows of leaves, a forest of green tobacco stalks reaching almost to her shoulders. All the field hands were there, even Therese, whose back bent almost parallel to the ground, a dark blue cloth wrapped around her head so that Josephine could not see her face. Her working days could not be many more, Josephine thought, and then what would become of her?

Josephine called to Jackson and he lifted his head. He stood beside Therese, who lagged behind the others at the far end of the row.

Jackson called, “Nathan!” and pointed to Josephine, as though his business with Therese could not be interrupted by traversing the length of the field to where Josephine stood.

Nathan laid down his bundle of leaves and walked to her, flicking sweat off his face with the fingers on his right hand. He limped with slow jerky movements as if learning to walk anew with each step. The others kept on, backs stooped, arms pumping in a constant awkward rhythm of
grasp pull drop
. Winton moved between the rows, picking up the stacks of leaves, twisting the stems to secure each bundle, each like a fan of many hands, palms pressed together and wrists tied.

“Uh-huh,” Nathan said.

“Missus wants me to say that Mister’s been called away on an urgent errand, and y’all should stay in the fields till suppertime as usual. She wanted me to tell Jackson that.”

Nathan nodded and looked to her with dead eyes. Josephine said, “Nathan, I heard you ran before. Did the undertaker help you?” The recklessness of saying these words here in the fields with Jackson so near made Josephine’s face hot and her throat ache with a stiffness as though she’d tried to swallow something too big to go down. She scratched at the inside of her right wrist, shot a glance to Jackson who stood with one hand on hip, one knee bent, his eyes on Therese. Certainly Nathan must hear the pounding of her heart.

Nathan tipped his head to the side a little, shifted his weight with a wince of pain. “I ran before but no more, they cut my heels.” He spoke slowly. “I ain’t got nothing to say to you, girl. Go on back.” Josephine held his eyes for just a moment, hoping for a nod, a blink, some encouragement that she should try again, that he had something more to tell her. But he looked back at her stony and mute, then turned and limped away toward Jackson. She could not hear Nathan speak but Jackson looked to him as though listening and then shifted his gaze to Josephine. She nodded but he did not respond, only stared at her for a moment more and then down again at Therese as she bent to pull a leaf away.

Josephine crossed again through the tobacco and toward the back of the house. She would speak to Nathan tonight, down by the cabins. Of course they could not speak in the fields, with Jackson so close. It had been foolish of Josephine to try. What if Jackson became suspicious? What if he spoke to Missus? Josephine waved away an insect that buzzed in her ear and wished she could return to the moment with Nathan and take back the words she had said, stop her carelessness before it happened, and she scratched again at the inside of her wrist until her fingernails drew blood.

Once out of the tobacco Josephine stopped. She did not want to return to Missus Lu, to whatever mood might have struck her in Josephine’s absence and the tasks that lay ahead for the day. Impulsively she left the path and cut through the tall grasses of the far lawn and around toward the front of the house, toward the road and the open plain of wild grass beyond. Her feet were already restless, reckless, and speaking like that to Nathan—the foolishness! What if her chance already was dashed? Without a backward glance, Josephine crossed the dusty road. She strode farther and farther away from Bell Creek, the grass growing wilder with brambles and ivy, a persistent deerfly buzzing at the sweat on her bare arms, her face and neck. The air seemed wilder here too, smelling of dry grass and old manure, nothing of the flower beds’ perfume or house smells—lye from the wash, grease from the cooking.

Finally, her breath labored, Josephine turned and looked back at Bell Creek, the only place she’d ever known. The white walls, the gray-green roof, the slope of the earth so familiar to her, the way the house stood up just a little from the surrounds, the porch jutting out like a bottom lip from a face. The flower beds looked frivolous and showy, flouncy skirts around a stout middle. The close-together windows of the second floor were so many eyes staring out toward the windblown treetops and far-off foothills.

For a moment Josephine watched Bell Creek and she imagined that if she ran now, the house surely would lift from its foundations and chase her down. Those window-eyes saw her standing there, so far from her usual places, well beyond the permissible limits of where she might go. The house’s gaze was reproachful and accusing. It beckoned her back and Josephine lifted one foot, then the next, retracing her steps through the field.

As Josephine walked, the full memory of the night she had run came to her: of the boy’s instructions,
look for the wagons,
the undertaker and his daughter. She remembered the woman, brown hair hanging loose around a face like a heart, pointed at the bottom. She remembered the woman stroking her arm, and then sleep had come, a blessed thing after the boy’s screams, the unrelenting fear, the constant forward motion. And then suddenly Josephine had been awake in the dark. The woman and the man were arguing, the woman’s voice so young and strong:
We cannot send her back. Would you have us send her back?
But the man had answered in anger:
She is with child, the risk is too great. We cannot help her
.

A fear had cut through Josephine as she heard those words, just as pain spooned deep within her belly. The two seemed linked, the understanding that these people would not help her and the twisting inside. Josephine waited, pretending still to sleep. She heard the man and the woman move farther into the barn, and then she crept away, out a side door, stepping through matted straw and then mud and then cool grass, back to Bell Creek. Where else was she to go? She kept off the road as best she could, cutting through grassy fields, corn rows, pastures with dry turned earth lying fallow and acre after acre of ripe, greening plants nearly ready for the harvest. As the pains came through her, she would stop and bend forward, the posture somehow easing the force of them. The sky boiled with black clouds shot through with brilliant lightning and claps that each time made Josephine start and move her legs faster, faster to arrive before the rains began to fall.