The House Girl (24 page)

“Evening,” said Josephine.

“Evening.”

“Can I sit with you a minute?”

He spat again, a wetness scudding across the dirt. “Come on,” he said, and sat upon the cabin steps. There were no sounds from within; he slept here alone. A nervousness grabbed her then, a thought that if Jackson saw them together, he might suspect her plan. Josephine had no business speaking to Nathan—a house girl, a hired hand. But he was the only one who could help her. She would have to be quick.

Josephine sat beside Nathan on the steps and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her skirts falling onto the step below. With no fire she saw Nathan only by the ambient light from the row, the moon. His face seemed very dark, the whites of his eyes glowing against the skin, the pupils wide, his hair cut close and jagged. “Nathan, where did you go when you ran? Can you tell me?”

“Why you wanting to know? Are you really going to run?” His voice was hollow and unkind.

“Yes,” Josephine answered firmly. “Tonight. I tried once for the undertaker’s and I reckon I’ll head there again, but I need to be sure of the route. I want to know where I’m headed.”

“The undertaker?” Nathan gave a low chuckle and Josephine saw the yellow of his teeth and the black wad of tobacco as his lips pulled away. “I know the road.” He stood and walked into the darkness behind the cabin. There was the rustling of underbrush, a snap, and he returned holding a stick of dead poplar. He took a grease lantern from a hook by the cabin door and lit the wick, and Josephine saw his face clearly now in its glow. His eyes were cold, set in deep sockets of shadow, as if he stared out from the bottom of a hole.

“Here. Look at this careful. Set it to heart.” Nathan took the pointed end of the stick and began to trace a map in the dirt for Josephine. Bell Creek and the road that ran north-south. To the south, the Stanmores’ place. And to the north, tending west, the road forked, then a second fork, two more farms, and then the undertaker’s. “Here’s where you’re headed.” He marked a big X in the earth. A simple farmhouse, Nathan said. Unpainted, a barn beside it, a low fence of stones, a hen house beside the barn. Seven or eight miles, maybe ten or twelve. This was the one area of uncertainty. “I never made it that far,” Nathan said without emotion. “The undertaker, he’ll take you from there, send you to Philadelphia, or up the Ohio banks.”

Josephine studied the map, memorizing the turns of the road.

“Don’t run, girl, you’re a fool. You know what those patrollers do to a girl like you?” He laughed, a low chuckle that chilled Josephine’s skin as though thunder were coming. “They eat you up, they won’t even bother cutting your heels like they done me, they’ll just tear you up when they catch you.” He brought his face in closer to Josephine and she smelled the earth of the fields on him, the heat of that day’s sun on his skin. His pupils stretched very wide now, only a sliver of white showing.

“Not a one makes it free. Not a one. We all get caught, one way or another, on the road, in town, someone say they help you, but lead you into a trick. Ain’t no difference anyhow, up north and here, no freedom for the likes of us. You a fool to think it.” He spat again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Nathan pulled himself up from the step, walked with his shuffling limp into the cabin. He did not say good night, just shut the door behind him. Josephine stood, smoothed her skirts with her hands, walked away from Nathan’s cabin and up along the path. Her feet sank in the mud as she half-walked, half-ran back to the house.

Tonight. Now
.

It did not shake her, what Nathan had said. Freedom was a curious thing. Were the chickens free, running their fool heads off in the yard? The horse, that still must fit the bit between its teeth? Was Missus free? But what else to dream for? There was no dream of Josephine’s that did not contain a place where she might sit and look upon a field or a bird in flight or a person and ponder the lines of that thing, to capture them in pencil or charcoal or ink or pigment. Just to sit for a moment, herself, no one claiming her time or her thoughts or the product of her mind and hands. What other word to call that if not freedom?
Not a one is free,
Nathan had said, but Josephine did not believe that could be true.

She felt clearheaded, her steps sure. The night air, the chill moist ground, the sliver of moon filtering through streaky clouds, all was as it should be. An owl called and underneath all the night sounds was the hushing rush of the river’s flow. Each step carried her away from the cabins, toward the house for the last time. Never again mount these back steps, open this door with rusty hinge and cracked doorknob, place her hand against this cutting table scarred with knife points and pig’s blood, steady herself, feel her breath come too fast, calm herself. Never again this stone floor chilled and tough against the tough soles of her feet. Never again the enclosing air of this place, the dead air that clogged her throat and made her eyes weep, the still, dusty air that hung around the fine furnishings and the cracked china and seemed full of all those who had come before her, all those the house had sheltered and seen into the ground.

A mess from the supper she had prepared earlier for Missus Lu greeted Josephine in the kitchen, a pile of washing in a basket, the fire going cold. She walked past it all, then up the stairs.

As Josephine neared the attic steps, she heard a creak of floor from within the studio, a rustling. She turned and saw a light burning from beneath the closed door. Missus. Missus must have woken.

Josephine hesitated. The attic steps were close, her pack nearly ready. She could go now, leave Missus working alone, tread lightly and be out the door, down the road, fast and silent. But Missus might call for her and what then? If Josephine did not answer, would Missus go to the cabins? Would she ask Jackson for help? Or would she wait for Mister to return and then send him to track Josephine down? How much time would she have?

Josephine opened the studio door and a fog of heat hit her. The windows were closed, a fire burned in the grate. Missus stood in her nightdress before the easel, a canvas propped against it, and her hand held a brush dripping with red.

“Missus, it’s late. This room is stifling. You need to keep your strength, the doctor said. Please let me get you to bed.”

“But I was so cold in my bed, Josephine,” Missus said with a child’s petulance. She did not turn to face Josephine. “I needed to warm myself.”

“Missus, I will fetch another blanket. Please now, come on with me.” Josephine spoke too as though Missus were a child, with a tolerant calm.

“But look at this. I must finish it, look.” Missus gestured toward the canvas before her: a still life, a scattering of potatoes and chestnuts, an apple and two pears grouped without symmetry or grace. “There are so many I have never finished. This one, I must finish just this one.”

“Hush, there’s time tomorrow, and the day after that.”

Missus Lu turned away from the canvas, and her face appeared shadowy and bright in equal measure from the light thrown by the fire. “Josephine, I will be gone tomorrow. I can feel it. I can’t keep my thoughts straight, I ache here, and here, and here.” Missus touched her neck, her forehead, her breast. “There is something I must tell you, Josephine, and you will hate me for it. I am afraid you will hate me, and nothing I can do now will save me.”

“Missus, salvation belongs to us all,” Josephine said and her thoughts were of Lottie, the hope that such a belief was true.

“Does it? Does it, Josephine?” Missus laughed, her mood shifting, Josephine saw the flash of her eyes, the tears swallowed back. “You have no idea. You do not even have God, you never have. I hoped you’d read the Bible, that is why I taught you your letters. I wanted you to understand the natural order, that God wants us all to be true to our place in life. But you refused Him.”

Missus dropped her brush to the floor. It fell with a soft
whoosh,
splattering red paint against her ankles, the floor, the wall.

“Shush now,” Josephine said, frustration cornering its way into her voice. She could not stop the rising urge to run from this room, before Mister returned, before the night progressed too far toward dawn. “Missus Lu, come to bed.”

“Yes, take me to bed, I must lay back now. I can’t stand any longer. Josephine, there’s something I must tell you. I must tell you.”

They staggered from the studio, Missus leaning heavily on Josephine’s shoulder, her feet dragging behind. Josephine led Missus to her bed and laid her down. Missus’ chest rose and fell with her breathing, her hair was damp with sweat, her cheeks flushed pink. Josephine took a blanket from the chest at the foot of the bed and folded the bedclothes, the extra blanket, neatly under Missus Lu’s chin. Neither spoke. Only creaks and groans as the house settled into night.

As Josephine stood to leave, Missus grabbed her hand. “Josephine, I must ask your forgiveness. I cannot leave this world without it. Please, please.”

Josephine paused and sat down again upon the bed. A flush of power filled her, as it would in the studio when she stood with brush in hand, Missus hovering over her shoulder, watching every stroke, breathless. “Why, Missus? What cause would I have to provide forgiveness? You have offered me only kindness.”

“Truly, Josephine? Is that truly how you feel? You know that all this, I have no part in it. I can’t even bring a child into this world. I’ve only ever had you, and I know you’re going to run. I know you’ll leave me soon. I won’t tell Robert. I won’t tell a soul.” Missus twisted her head sharply to the side, exposing the reddened lump to Josephine. “Just scratch it please, would you? It itches so, I cannot bear it.”

Josephine remembered the boy in the field: a good deed for a dying boy. Josephine reached for Missus’ hand and guided it to the spot. “See, Missus, you can reach. Here.” And Missus’ fingernails scrabbled at the raised hump, the skin pinking in thin strips beneath the pull.

“That is all, Josephine. Thank you. Good night, my dear. Go. You can go on now.” Missus’ eyes closed, her breaths lengthened.

As she watched Missus Lu settle into sleep, a pure rage gripped Josephine, at Missus’ granting of permission, at her presumed powers of release. Would Missus deny her even the authority of her own escape? It was the sighted beggar stealing from the blind and Josephine felt a fracture open in her chest, a sliver of space that grew wider with each breath and a darkness spilled forth into the room. Missus’ eyes danced behind the thin skin of her lids, and Josephine wondered what dreams dwelled there, memories of her suppers and her rich daddy, of Mister courting with flowers, of Papa Bo’s sermons and his promise to them all, everyone who bowed to the Lord’s will, of heavenly redemption. Josephine placed her hand above Missus’ mouth and nose, the fingers hovering just above the skin so that Missus’ heat was on her palm and the breath moist in the cupped hollow of her hand. To smother Missus would be an easy thing. She had no strength, there was no one to hear it done. The darkness flowed from Josephine, and for a moment she let herself be carried by its spirit of vengeance. Never had she felt this way before and wasn’t it thrilling, wasn’t it right, the power of her hate.

Josephine lowered her hand. It was Missus’ face, stricken even in sleep, sallow even by lamplight, the scabbed gash like a bristling insect on her cheek, that stopped Josephine. Her face no longer young or beautiful, her wasted face. And it seemed Josephine’s heart pulsed with the skittering movement of Missus’ eyes, that the two of them lay prostrate together before the same cruel God. The two of them not so different after all, Josephine realized. All this time, these long, hungry years, each of them alone beside the other.

T
he run-in with Garrison earlier that day had left Lina feeling scoured clean, lighter, and somehow more self-assured. This, Lina thought, was what she needed, a blanket thrown off, a curtain lifted. Something truthful and necessary had happened that gave her this sense of simple resolve, clarified purpose, as she walked the Clifton halls, rode the Clifton elevators, made bland and proper chitchat with Meredith at the shared copy machine, told Sherri to book a hotel for her Richmond trip. The woman who performed these tasks seemed a simplified version of the old Lina. Lina improved, Lina redacted.

And it was this Lina who looked forward to tonight, the opening of Oscar’s show,
Pictures of Grace
. Her fears and suspicions had receded, and she was left with a straightforward wish to see the pictures and be done with them. Oscar’s lie about Marie, those random, contextless notes written by her mother, had muddled her thinking, confused and upset her. Oscar’s pictures of Grace were nothing more than pigment, canvas, wood. That was all. No magic, no mystery. Her father was an artist, and he drew inspiration from his life, as all artists did.
I want to show you some things about your mother,
Oscar had said that first night in the studio, and now Lina felt ready to look, with calm reason, with dignified reserve. The visceral reaction she had experienced at home, when she saw the
Enough
portrait and those first raw images of Grace, would not happen again. Of this, Lina felt sure.

Outside Natalie’s gallery, people crowded the sidewalk and leaned against the front windows. They held small paper plates loaded with cheese cubes and little salamis, glasses of wine, cigarettes. Festivities had been going for an hour already and the mood was celebratory, voices loud and off-key. Lina edged through the door, holding her bag sideways, and wove her way through the bodies. Everyone towered tall, outfitted in high heels and attitude.

The first picture Lina saw stopped her cold; she felt a flip in her belly, a stumble in her gait, a faltering of her new resolve. It was not a picture Oscar had shown her. It was Grace, naked from the waist up. Her breasts were beautiful, the nipples dark, hair falling to her shoulders, her mouth open. Lina looked away.

Her eyes fell next on a triptych, and in each panel Grace seemed a different woman. From this painting, Lina did not turn away. In the left-hand panel, Grace stared straight out, realistically rendered in a simple blue dress, the skirt just grazing her knees, her face flat and composed, hands hanging loose at her sides. The right panel portrayed the same woman, but her mouth was opened wide, wider than a mouth should open, her eyes looming large and wild as though she sought to devour everything before her. In the large central panel, Grace appeared in profile, and the side view filled the frame, just half a nose, a sliver of lip curled cruelly, one black eye staring out, trapped and enraged.