The House Girl (43 page)
Authors: Tara Conklin
A great unease came over me. I considered then that perhaps Josephine believed me akin to Mr. Rust, that she had fled from my company and now wandered the streets alone. I moved to the window and looked down to the street below, my feelings now so far removed from the peace of those moments I had lingered there with Josephine. Frantically I searched the street for Josephine’s form, for Bo, Josiah, and Mr. Rust. But I saw only the passing faces of strangers.
I turned from the window, thinking I must go out to find her, but I saw then her shoes, the ones I had purchased just that day, set neatly beside the bed. For a moment I stood in the center of the room in a state of confusion and despair. Where had she gone? It was only then I remembered the washroom adjacent. A narrow door on the far side of the room allowed admittance and this door was closed. I walked to it and knocked once, then twice with no response. I held my ear to the wood and heard at first silence but then a gentle lapping of water. Josephine? I said and my voice, hoarse from my previous calling, rang rough and hollow in the room’s still air. There was no reply. I did not want to impose upon her modesty, but I longed to explain myself and the need to leave this district, perhaps even the city, at once. And so I opened the door.
She was there, in the tub, the water full against the edge. The red of her blood colored the water a dark crimson close to her arms and across her chest but flowed into a lighter red and then pink as it traveled down her legs and feet and into the open end of the bath. Her bone-handled knife rested on the tiled floor, its blade shining as though afterwards she had rinsed it clean. Her eyes flickered open as I entered and she turned to look at me and smile. It was like the smile of gratitude she had given me earlier that day, but fuller: full of exhaustion and forgiveness and escape. I thought of the open window and the unmistakable figures of Bo and Josiah, the pistols that hung at their belts, their loud angry calls as they chased me through the streets. The reward poster with her name and description. Josephine had believed we were found. And her illness, the blood in her cupped palm: she could run no further. Her resolve never to return to Bell Creek had been absolute, and this I understood.
I kneeled against the cold tiles and took one hand from the bath; it was cool and wet and slippery from the blood that still coursed from her opened wrist. I held her fingers gently as though they were the greatest of treasures. I held her hand until it went slack.
In that tavern room Josephine left for me a request. A note on the bed. She had written:
Stanmore plantation, Charlotte County, Virginia, a mulatto boy of four years old, my son. Deliver him from that place
.
There is a certain kind of man who is forever searching. He wanders from place to place, he looks hard into the eyes of women and men in every town, maybe he scratches the earth or wields a gun, remedies illness or writes books, and there is always a vague emptiness within him. It is the emptiness that drives him and he does not know even how to name the thing that might fill it. No idea of home or love or peace comes to him. He does not know, so he cannot stop. On and on he moves. And the emptiness blinds him and pulls at him and he is like a newborn baby searching for the teat, knowing it is there, but where?
And sometimes such a man is handed a gift. A gift of direction. A path that is marked for him and there, yes, this will ease your suffering, it is sure. This will cure you, it will fill you up, at least for a time. There will be a home, and love, there will no longer be the sorrow when you look at a cold night sky, the sorrow as the sun rises and the mist burns away. This is what Josephine gave to me. The love I felt for her found its purpose in you.
I traveled to Charlotte County. I saw the deserted Bell Creek, the place she had left. It was empty save for squirrels fat from the unused seed. No one could tell me where Robert Bell had gone, only that his wife was buried there, in a poplar grove beside the mounds of her dead children.
I saw the fence, the river, the slave shacks where Josephine began her life. Only God above knows what became of the ones left after Mrs. Bell’s death, Lottie, Winton, and the others Josephine described to me, their names already gone from my memory.
I queried those I met as to the location of the Stanmore place. They pointed me there and, finally, I found you.
You have your mother’s eyes, the turn of her lips and long graceful arch of her neck, and the instant I laid eyes upon you I knew you were her son. Mr. Justice Stanmore was a wealthy man, a very fat, very pale man whose eyes seemed to grow in size and sheen as he realized the extent of my interest in you.
At the Stanmore place they called you Joseph, they said it was the name you came with, and so this reminder of your mother Josephine you keep every day.
With this letter I enclose your mother’s pictures of the boy Louis, Lottie and Winton, and Josephine’s mistress, Lu Anne Bell. The stone that reflects the colors of Josephine’s eyes, I have kept for myself and trust that you will forgive me this small liberty.
I know that I can never be so deserving as to call you son. My sins pile up around me, voices of those men and women sold back into enslavement by my hand call to me at night, and I know that peace is beyond me now. The happiest days I have known were the ones with your mother and the summer spent with my brother and his Dorothea. That is why I leave you here with Jack. I know that he will be the best of fathers to you, that you will thrive in the new western lands. I know that your mother watches over you. I know that you will lead a good and happy life and grow to be a far better man than ever I could be.
Yours most faithfully,
Caleb T. Harper
Lina sat unmoving in her twilit room. She had not thought to light a lamp as she read and now she sat with the pages close to her face, resting against the tops of her legs, her knees drawn up, her back against a pillow on the bed. She had forgotten she wore socks on her hands, she had become so adept at turning the pages with them, but now the scratchy feel of the thin cotton surprised her when she reached up to wipe her eyes. Outside the street seemed hushed, as though the modern world had, for the moment, gracefully retreated.
Caleb wrote about Josephine’s pictures, the ones that Jasper now held: Louis, Lottie and Winton, Lu Anne Bell. But Nora had said that Caleb’s letter was sealed when it came to her. Did Joseph ever know the truth about his mother? Was this why the meaning of those drawings had been lost to time?
Lina removed the tidy, frail pages of Caleb’s letter from her lap and replaced them into the envelope Nora had given her. She needed nothing more. The path ahead was easy. The 1870 Oregon census, Jack Harper, Joseph Harper, marriages recorded, births announced, deaths noted. Lina could now trace from Josephine’s son to the next generation and the next and the next; now she would know Josephine’s descendants, their names, where they lived, their occupations, when they died, who they married, who they left behind.
It was silly to think of this as a loss but Lina felt it nonetheless. She had known that Josephine was dead, of course she had, but for Lina, Josephine had breathed and planned and run. She had run away to someplace better, but she hadn’t found it, and Lina felt this as an aimless sort of grief, the kind she had felt in her father’s studio, looking at the pictures of a Grace she didn’t want to see. She felt cheated of a possible past that had never been. Lina wanted to write a different history and, for a time, she thought that she had.
UESDAY
Gray-faced, rumpled, and staring, Lina and Garrison slouched in their usual chairs in Dan’s office. Neither had slept more than three straight hours of the previous seventy-two. The reparations brief, all 112 pages of it, sat on Dan’s desk.
Dan and Dresser walked in, the two of them chuckling as though one had just finished telling a discreetly clever joke. Dresser wore uncharacteristically casual clothes—a pale pink button-down shirt tucked into stiff dark-blue jeans, and the look made him seem smaller, somehow less authoritative. Dan walked to his desk, and Dresser folded himself into the chair beside Lina. Dresser’s assistant, also in jeans, entered last, closed the door, and perched on the edge of a chair by the window. Lina still had never heard the man’s name.
“I’m afraid Jasper has been delayed,” Lina said. “Jasper Battle, the plaintiff. He just called me and said he got stuck underground, some problems with the subway, but he’s only a few blocks away now.”
“No problem,” Dan said. “Gives me a chance to say to the two of you, well done.” He patted the brief as though it were a small dog. “I know you worked hard on this and it shows. Excellent work.”
“Yes, I must agree,” Dresser said.
Movement outside drew Lina’s attention away from Dresser. On the other side of the windows, a cleaner edged into view, pulling his platform of gray aluminum farther into Dan’s hard-earned Manhattan view. The cleaner floated: wiper, hard hat, sky.
“I’m particularly pleased that we managed to find Josephine Bell’s descendant,” Dan continued. “I was just reading about her in the
Times
—Ron, did you see that piece? I understand the Stanmore Foundation is issuing a claim against the gallery. It’s all great publicity for us. Josephine Bell will be the most famous slave since … since … Well, she’ll be famous! Regardless of where this whole authorship question ends up. It’s a fantastic controversy. Fantastic.”
As Dan spoke, Dresser shifted in his chair and momentously cleared his throat. His lips parted in preparation for speech.
Just then the door opened and Mary’s head popped through. “Sorry to interrupt. Jasper Battle is here.”
Jasper had worn a suit, though Lina hadn’t asked him to, and it was just a touch too short in the sleeves and ankles, making him seem boyish and, to Lina, charming. He was pink-cheeked and damp around the temples from his crosstown dash to make the meeting. Hovering in the doorway, he bobbed his head in a general way toward the assembled group and smiled awkwardly, his eyes scanning for Lina, and then he saw her and the smile broadened. He stepped fully into the room.
“Jasper, come in,” Lina said and rose to greet him. The others stood as he entered and there was the rustle of trouser legs straightening, the crack of knee joints bending, the squeak of chairs releasing their occupants, and then complete silence.
“This is Jasper Battle, Josephine Bell’s great-great-great-great-grandson,” Lina said. No one spoke. Garrison, Dan, and Dresser all stared at Jasper, who smiled back at them with some confusion.
“Nice to meet you all,” Jasper said.
Lina glanced at Dan. His face was grim, the face of a man who suspects that his perfect win record may soon be coming to an end.
“Mr. Battle,” Dan said, reaching out his hand. “A pleasure to meet you. Thanks for coming down, but we’ll have to do some thinking on this one.” He glanced at Dresser. “I’m not sure you’re quite what we need for the lawsuit.”
“He’s Josephine Bell’s direct descendant,” Lina said. “I’ve fully verified him with public records.”
“Mr. Battle—” Dan began.
“Please, call me Jasper.”
“Jasper. You’re too white. What else can I say? We can’t have a white guy leading a lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of African American slaves! I don’t care who you’re related to!” Lina could almost see Dan’s blood pressure rising beneath his blue shirt, his enlarged heart pumping furiously. “And the earrings? And I see you’ve got some
tattoos
? No, this isn’t going to fly.”
Jasper’s face, open until that point, now hardened. “I—” he began, but Garrison interrupted him.
“I agree with Dan. You’re not black enough.” Garrison’s hands were in his pockets, and his chin was angled down. “It just won’t work,” he said and slowly shook his head.
“Friends, friends—” Dresser held up a hand, palm outward in the universal symbol for
Stop
. Lina realized she had been wrong about the jeans; wardrobe notwithstanding, Dresser presided over a room with supreme authority. “Please, let’s all sit down. Regardless of Mr. Battle’s skin tone and whether it is the appropriate shade for our purposes, I’m afraid I must call a temporary end to our work on the reparations lawsuit.”
“What?” Dan lowered himself heavily into his chair.
“Unfortunately, I can’t go into the specifics. I’m afraid certain high-ranking government officials, on both sides of the political and racial divide, have expressed some … concern about Dresser Tech being associated with a lawsuit of this type. I understand that the federal apology for slavery will
not
be forthcoming. Not anytime soon. That will leave us without any sort of pressure against the corporate defendants, and with no graceful exit from the federal suit. And
that
will leave Dresser Tech high and dry. I can’t sue my biggest customer, now can I? I’m sorry, but that’s all I can say. I thought that we had an opening, some leverage where we needed it, but I was … overly optimistic.”
Lina glanced at Dan, who was watching Dresser with a look of dismay.
“We need to wait,” Dresser continued. “Bide our time. We’ll come back to it when the circumstances in Washington are more amenable to the idea of
repair
. When my personal business interests won’t be so negatively impacted. I won’t let this case disappear, I promise you that, but I can’t say when we’ll be back. It may take some time.”
Dan’s door slammed shut, and Lina realized that Jasper had left the room. She ran to the hall and saw his tall back receding. “Jasper,” she called. He stopped and turned and they faced each other down the gray carpeted passage, empty but full of the muffled
pat-pat
sound of typing, the incessant electronic beeping of an unattended phone. The space between them stretched long under the cold light and then a side door opened, a meeting spilled out, suits and khakis and cardigans, and when they cleared away, Jasper was gone.
Lina slipped back into Dan’s office, into her chair, her feet pressed firmly to the floor, her arms gripping the side rests.