Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Gray (11 page)

I raised my foot and she tugged my stocking over my knee.

“Give me the other foot.”

I did so, and Selina glanced around the room. “You want a jacket to go under your coat?”

“Yes.”

Ten minutes later, swathed in so many layers I could barely move, I descended the staircase with Selina and went into the parlor where Mother waited.

“Selina. There you are.” Mother looked up from her book. “I can't seem to find the gravy boat. Have you seen it?”

“Yessum. It had to soak awhile after breakfast, but I washed it up and put it back on the sideboard.”

Mother nodded and glanced at the clock. “I suppose we ought to start for the chapel.” She went to the door and rang her bell, and everyone gathered on the path.

It was a short walk, but very cold. The air was sharp and smelled of ice. The purple shadows of evening tinged the patches of snow still lying in the low places.

Mother shivered. “I do hope this young preacher makes short work of the service. I can't remember the last time I felt so cold.”

Selina grinned up at me. “Maybe his fiery sermon will warm things up.”

Mother frowned, but I couldn't help laughing.

We went inside the chapel and took our seats. The pale-faced preacher, who introduced himself as Mr. Simmons, got right down to business, reading from his Bible in a strong, steady voice. I glanced around to find the Binghams, the Norrises, the Parkses in their usual places. Then I noticed a young man sitting alone in
the back seemingly transfixed, his bare hands gripping the back of the bench in front of him.

Just as we rose for the singing of the children's hymn, the door blew open, letting in a blast of frigid air. The preacher delivered a very hasty benediction.

The servants made for the door, eager to return to the warmth of their fires. Selina waved to me and left with her parents. Mr. Simmons sought out Mother to thank her for the chance to hone his skills, and after a quick word with him I tucked my Bible away and started for home.

The young man I had seen earlier followed me outside. “Miss Mary? You may not remember me. William Burke.”

“William! My goodness. I didn't recognize you.”

“I'm sixteen now. I reckon I've grown some.”

“Indeed. But still reading, I hope.”

He laughed, his breath clouding the air. “Everything I can get my hands on. Missus lends me her religious books from time to time.”

“Dull reading for someone your age. At least I found them so when I was young.”

“No, ma'am. They aren't dull to me. I want to be a preacher one day.”

“I see.”

“I've got a plan to preach outside, like John Wesley did back in the old times. In Missus's book it says he was the best-loved man in all of England.”

We reached the back door of the house. Papa had lit the lamps, and yellow light spilled onto the snow. I was ready to go inside but William lingered, his hands in his pockets.

“I sold the gloves and the scarf I got for Christmas last year,”
he said. “A man at the market gave me a goodly sum for them. Reckon in another year I might can have enough to buy a Bible of my own.” His eyes shone in the lambent light. “I never can thank you enough for showing me how to read. It was the best thing anybody has ever done for me. It's a gift, and I sure don't want to waste it.”

His earnestness was so touching I felt tears welling up. “I'm sure you won't, William.” I handed him my Bible. “Here. It's yours.”

He drew back as if he'd been struck. “I thank you kindly, Miss Mary. The Lord sure does move in mysterious ways.”

“Just don't let your father find it.”

William tucked his new treasure inside his coat. “Don't worry. I got a safe place to keep it.”

Despite the double layer of stockings, my feet had gone numb in the cold. “I must go.”

William bobbed his head and disappeared into the night, whistling a tune under his breath.

B
y the time little Miss Mee came into the world, I had been learning housekeeping for nearly four years. There was more to it than sweeping and dusting. Take the curtains, for instance. Come spring, we took down the heavy winter drapes, washed and pressed them, and stored them in bags with camphor to keep the moths from eating them. Then we had to wash the windows and put up the summer curtains. Soon as summer packed up and moved out, we had to put up the winter curtains again.

I learned to polish the woodwork with a soft cloth and beeswax. Make the wood shine like a new moon. Twice a year I scrubbed everything with a bristle brush to get the dirt out, and then I tackled the chandeliers with rags dipped in ammonia.

Candlesticks and knives and forks and all the other silver things that had belonged to Mister George Washington had to be cleaned and rubbed shiny before putting them back on the sideboard. Missus was forever going on about how the Washington pieces were so important. There was a whale of importance in that room. Besides the silver pieces there were stacks of china dishes and warming plates, and a punch bowl with a sailing ship painted in the bottom of it.

Januarys, Missus would count up all her belongings. She
would hand me paper and a pencil, and we'd start with the china closet. She would tell me what to write.

“Missing one wineglass,” she would say, and I would write it down. “One glass chimney of a lamp, cracked. One white china teapot, missing. One dinner plate, broken. Two goblets, missing.”

I had to write fast to keep up with her.

After that we counted bed linens and the skillets and pans in George's kitchen. Heaven forbid if they was anything missing. Missus wouldn't rest until it was all accounted for.

Besides all the counting up and writing down, I learned where all the different serving pieces supposed to go on the dining table. Charles was the one in charge of the dining room, and he showed me how the bread tray goes between the vegetable platters and how the meat supposed to go at one end with the gravy beside it. Served in a boat. And the soup at the other end of the table, served in a tureen. Boats and tureens looked to me like plain old bowls, but Charles said it was important to know the right names for things, so I learned them.

Keeping a big house, you need a schedule for everything, and we had one. Mondays for doing the wash, Tuesdays for ironing, Wednesdays for beating the dust out of the carpets, and so on all the way to Sunday, which was a day of rest. More or less.

Missus had stopped my reading lessons when I turned ten years old because I could read the Bible as well as anybody, and since that was the main reason for teaching me in the first place, there was no need to keep going. She saw how disappointed I was and told me I could borrow the books she kept on a table in the parlor. But to be honest, they were dry as dirt. Most of them were sermons a preacher wrote down and put into a book. I liked preaching well enough, but not a steady diet of it. I wanted stories
about pirates or the Wild West. Something with a little more excitement to it than a “Treatise upon the Lessons of Saint Paul” or whoever. I still had the book Miss Mary gave me for Christmas, but those stories were for little children and not for a girl about to turn thirteen.

On the day Miss Mary's little daughter, Mee, was born, it was July and hotter than blue blazes. Breathing was like taking in air through a wet blanket. It was a Sunday—supposed to be a day of rest—but Missus kept me busy all morning going up and down the stairs fetching water and linens and liniments and such. The door to the birthing room was shut up tight. I could hear voices in there, Old Nurse and Missus cooing like doves to Miss Mary, who was having a bad time of it, judging from the way she was moaning and crying.

I knew what was happening in that room, and I was partly scared and partly curious. I had got my nature just a few months before, and Mauma, who was waiting for the birthing of her own baby, had sat me down and told me where babies come from and how they get to the outside world. It didn't sound like anything I wanted to try.

Soon as I finished fetching and toting for Missus, I went outside and headed for the summer kitchen. The ground was so hot it scorched the bottoms of my feet. Down in the woods the crows were cawing and the dogs had set up a ruckus. I could smell some of George's tea cakes from clear across the yard. Sure enough there was a pan of them cooling on the sill. I took a couple and got me a gourd and went to get some water from the well. Mauma called it the sweet water of Arlington. There was nothing that could take the heat out of you like a long drink of that pure, cool water.

“Selina Norris.”

I spun around so fast that my tea cakes plopped into the dirt.

The stable boy stood there grinning at me. Thornton Gray wasn't much older than me, but he was taller, and thin as a rake. He smelled like hay and leather and horses. His hair was straight and his face was broad until you got down to his chin, which came to a sharp point.

Thornton would tell anybody who would listen that his people was Indians and he was planning to head out West just soon as he was free. We didn't talk too much, me and Thornton, because he usually sneaked away from Sunday night preaching, and during the week he was busy sunup to sundown helping with the horses and the carriages, or else helping the men with the planting. And I was up at the house with my beeswax and candlesticks.

“What do you want, Thornton Gray?”

“I
was
going to ask for one of them tea cakes.” He looked down at them, just about as sad as if he was on his way to a burying. “But not now.”

I filled my water gourd and took another long drink.

Thornton shook the dust off his bare feet. “Can I at least have some water?”

I handed him the gourd. “How come you're not down at the stables with Daniel?”

“Too hot in there right now.”

“You better not let Missus see you standing here doing nothing. She says we must practice great industry at all times.”

He filled the gourd and drank it empty again. “Industry. What a word.”

“It means we are supposed to stay busy all the time. Because idleness is the devil's workshop.”

He laughed, showing perfect teeth. “Missus ain't never seen a workshop in all her born days. And anyway, why don't she just say
busy
?”

“White people like big words, I reckon. I wouldn't mind knowing more of them.”

“More white folks?”

“Don't act dumb. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do.” He filled the gourd again. “Everybody says you the best reader on the place.”

It surprised me, how much his words pleased me. My stomach dipped and rose like a rowboat in big waves. “I guess so.”

“You a pretty girl too,” he said. “Be even prettier if you wasn't frowning all the time.”

“I don't frown.”

“Yes, you do.”

“How would you know what I do? You don't even stay to preaching on Sundays.”

“I might, if you would sit with me.”

There went that dip in my stomach again.

Just then Kitty come running from the house. “Selina, Missus looking all over for you. Miss Mary's baby has come, and we got to wash up her bedsheets.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl. Now she and Mister Robert got them one of each. A matched set, Missus says.”

Thornton headed back to the stables. “Next Sunday night, Selina.”

Kitty glanced at him over her shoulder. “What's he want?”

“Nothing.”

“Huh. Boys always want something.”

When we got to the back door I stole a look toward the stables, but Thornton was already gone. We went inside and finished everything Missus told us to do. I wanted to see the baby, but Missus said not to disturb Miss Mary, so I went on about my business.

As it turned out, I didn't see much of Miss Mary for a long time because she come down sick in August and Missus packed up and took her and her babies away. They didn't come back until the leaves were gone from the trees and the frost had turned the garden to a brown mess. Then there was quite the commotion: doctors coming and going and Mister Robert pacing and frowning and the little boy, Boo, crying for his mama and she was too sick to pay attention.

One Tuesday when the ironing was done, I folded Miss Mary's things and carried them upstairs to her room. Missus told me to leave them on the chair in the hallway so I wouldn't wake up Miss Mary if she was resting. But the door to her room was partly open and the curtains was pulled back, and Miss Mary called out, “Who is that in the hallway?”

“Selina. Brought your clean washing.”

“Well, come in then.”

I went in. The room smelled like medicine and the leavings from a breakfast tray still sitting beside her bed. Miss Mary looked white as a ghost, but she smiled at me. “I haven't seen you lately.”

“Missus told me not to bother you. She said you need to get your strength back.”

“I do, but I am happy to see you.” She motioned for me to set down her laundry on the chest beside the window. “I hear you are doing well, learning to look after the house.”

“It's a lot to it.”

“Yes, that's true. But it is important to learn something useful.”

“I got to go. Missus says it's a sin to waste time.”

“She won't mind if you sit with me a minute. I am so tired of being bedfast. I am bored silly, Selina. Tell me, what is going on these days? I am starved for news.”

“That's why you so skinny?”

She laughed. “I must look awful.”

“I got to be honest. You've seen better days, Miss Mary.”

“Undoubtedly.” She folded her hands on top of her quilts and waited for me to give her the news.

Downstairs there was seven kinds of noise going on. Mister Robert was laughing with Boo. Mister Custis was practicing on his violin. Charles was in the dining room and the dishes was clattering.