Speak Through the Wind (14 page)

Back at Reverend Joseph’s, the advent of her menstruation meant a supply of soft, white cloths placed discreetly in her top drawer, and just as quietly whisked away by Clara, who would return them, washed and bleached, ready for the next month’s use. Even after two years Kassandra had never developed a sense of calculating her regularity—simply taking for granted that Clara would meet that need—and she had never given thought to the connection between sharing a bed with Ben and the consequences of what happened there.

Now, here they sat, sharing a simple lunch of tart apples and buttered bread—the only thing she seemed capable of keeping down these days—and Ben was speaking about her most private bodily function with a smattering of crumbs on his lower lip and a delighted gleam in his green eyes.

“Ah, now, Kassie,” he said, washing down his last bite with a swig of beer from the keg downstairs, “certainly y’aren’t so innocent as to not know what’s happenin’.”

“This is just not something you should—we should talk about together.”

“Well, my love, I think we made a baby together, now didn’t we?”

Slowly, the truth of her nights with Ben and the truth of his words right now formed a realization that, just days or minutes ago, would have seemed as unimaginable as the idea of sprouting wings and flying away. She shifted her gaze away from Ben, across the room to the china bird figurine perched on the dresser next to their bed, then, letting out a cry, “Oh, God,” clenched her fists and closed her eyes.

“You didn’t know? Seriously?” Ben planted his elbows on the table, his face hovering just inches from her own. She felt his breath on her hot, embarrassed cheek. “Clara never talked with you about it? Or the girls at school?”

But they had talked about it—ceaselessly it seemed. There were constant whispered tales of horrid cousins and shameful servants sent packing with red-rimmed eyes and rounded stomachs. These were wretched, nasty girls who did unspeakable things with filthy, disgusting men in dark corners and back alleys and attic rooms. Kassandra’s mind flipped through the catalog of conversations. Sarah James hissing and giggling behind her white lace gloves. Clara showing her how to fasten the clean white cloth to the belt around her waist, looking up at her with a furrowed brown brow, saying, “Don’t you let no boys mess with you now, Miss Kassandra. There’s no thin’ but trouble in it for you if you do.” But the warning then had seemed pointless. There were no boys to speak of, only the gawky, spot-faced ones whose attention amounted to little more than the calls of “horse-face” and “stork-legs” on the way through the school doors in the mornings.

Now, though, the ominous message of all those rumors and murmurs was patently clear.

“I am a bad girl,” Kassandra said quietly, hanging her head and opening her eyes to stare at the four remaining apple slices on her plate.

Instantly Ben was up and out of his chair, kneeling beside Kassandra. He grabbed both of her hands in his, brought them to his lips, and placed tiny kisses on each finger.

“You’re not, Kassie love,” he said, holding her hands tightly. “How can you say such a thing?”

“But I am.” Kassandra tried to wrench her hands out of his grip, but no vise could have held them tighter. “I am a horrible, dirty girl. That’s why you won’t marry me—”

“Hush now—”

“No,” she said, quelling the hysteria that threatened to overtake her and calling upon every ounce of her strength to appear calm and strong. “No, I won’t hush. You are always saying that. ‘Quiet now, Kassie, me love. Go back to the flat now, Kassie, wait for me, Kassie, wake up now, Kassie girl.’”

Ben seemed amused at her mimicry. He loosened his grip, laying his hand across hers as they rested in her lap, and settled back on his haunches, looking up at her with an indulgent expression, like a man doling out just enough rope to a desperate swimmer floundering just offshore.

“Now look what you have done,” she continued, her voice quiet. “You have turned me into one of those shameful girls. I will get all big and fat, and my baby will be a bastard—”

There was a clattering of wood as, in one swift movement, Ben rose to his feet, grabbing Kassandra’s wrist and bringing her to stand with him as the chair tumbled out from underneath her. She was brought up hard against him, her right arm twisted behind her back until her wrist nearly touched her left shoulder blade. The pain made her cry out, but any maneuver she made only increased the intensity until she was sure the next clattering sound would be that of her very bones ripped from her and tossed across the room.

“Don’t ever say that.” His breath, laced with apples and beer, spread hot across her face.

“Ben, you are hurting me …”

“Don’t you ever use that word about my child again.”

“But it is so, Ben. We aren’t married.”

“Stop with your talk of that!” He released her then, letting her arm drop to her side. “Can I help it, Kassie? Haven’t we been through it a hundred times? Or have you suddenly become a good Catholic without my knowin’?”

“You know I’m not.”

“Then how am I to marry you?”

“You did not think of that before you brought me here? Just look out there.” She pointed toward the open window. “There are countless good Irish girls out there you could have. Why me?”

“Ah, Kassie.” He was pacing now, short circuits like he’d done in the parlor the day he convinced her to come away with him. “How can you ask me that? The moment I saw you, I knew it had to be you.” He stopped, just in front of her, reached for her and took her hand. “Those sluts out there—all of ’em givin’ themselves or sellin’ themselves first chance they get. I couldn’t have no chance of that. But you—I knew the reverend plucked you up, took you home, kept you pure. Like he was savin’ you just for me.”

Ben wasn’t really talking to her anymore. He’d drawn her close to him, his hand tracing abstract patterns on her back as he held her close, his words spoken just over her head. She could feel his breath in her hair. Both his hands and his breath stopped as soon as Kassandra spoke her next words.

“And now I can never go back.”

“Would you want to?”

“I think about it sometimes.”

“When you’re with me?”

Kassandra smiled against his shirt and pulled away just enough to look up into Ben’s face.

“No, not when I am with you. But when I am up here alone, or I have to go out. Sometimes I think about how noisy and dirty everything is here, and I miss—”

“Bein’ rich?”

“Do not start that, Ben. You know I have never cared about money. I just feel far away.”

“From what?”

She took a full step away from him, trying to collect her thoughts, and brushed up against the table. At the sound of the rattling dishes Kassandra put out her hand to steady whatever was in danger of crashing to the floor, and her fingers brushed against something smooth and warm. She looked down and saw her fingers absently caressing the cover of Clara’s Bible. When had she last opened it? Kassandra closed her eyes, having an answer to Ben’s question.

“From God.”

“What do you think?” Ben said with an air of disgust. “The only place you can be near God is if you’re in the sainted company of the good reverend? Didn’t Jesus Himself live among the poor?”

“I only meant that sometimes it feels like when I came here, I left God behind.”

“And you’re blamin’ me for that? Have I ever kept you from Him? I suppose next you’ll be sayin’ that I’ve been stoppin’ your prayers, hidin’ your precious Bible.” He picked up the book, brandishing it just inches from her face. “Well, it’s been sittin’ here since the day you came, Kassie. It’s no fault of mine that you haven’t picked it up.”

“Of course not,” Kassandra said. “But you have to realize that I am quite a different person since I came here. Before you, I never dreamed any of—she gestured helplessly—“this for myself. I never did anything, well, wrong.”

Ben chuckled. “Well, now, love, what’s the use of havin’ the Son of God die for your sins if you never have any sinnin’ to speak of?”

“This is not funny; Ben Connor. Not to me. Not at all.”

“Tsk, my girl.” Ben drew her into his arms again. He kissed the top of her head, lifted her face, kissed her nose, her cheeks, her lips. “D’you really think God loves you any less because you love me?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“You’ve never told me that you do. Tell me now, Kassie. Say it.”

His hands gripped her shoulders now, the throbbing pain from moments ago long subsided and nearly forgotten. With each breath of hesitation, however, the grip grew stronger, willing an answer.

“Of course I do,” she said at last.

“Say the words.”

“I love you, Ben.”

“And I love you, Kassie. And as long as we love each other, there’s no harm in the life we’re livin’ here together.”

Kassandra looked deep into Ben’s eyes, now full of the warmth and humor that could so draw her into whatever web he deemed fit to spin. True, sometimes those eyes were cold and flat, and she learned this afternoon that those arms could be used to hurt as well as hold. But the man himself was a haven from the squalor just outside their tiny apartment. She would hide in him—abide with him—set upon crafting a new life for herself and for the new life she carried within her.

She cupped her hands against her stomach, looked up at Ben, and asked, shyly, “Do you really think I am going to have a baby?”

“Well, I’m hardly an expert, but I know enough.”

“You know more than I do. Ben, I—I am not sure if I can do this.”

Just when Kassandra thought there was nothing Ben could do to surprise her—no side of him that she hadn’t already seen, whether it inspired fear or laughter—he fell to his knees, right there in front of her, and laid his head against her stomach, wrapping his arms around her legs to hold her steady.

“This means the world to me, Kassie. D’you understand?”

“Of course, Ben,” she said, too afraid to say anything else.

“Just give me a son,” he said, still on his knees but looking straight up into her eyes. “Give me a son, and the day after we’ll marry I’ll give you and him my name.”

“Do you mean it, Ben?”

“Just give me a son, Kassie. That’s all I ask.”

She knelt down with him then, right next to the forgotten toppled chair, their hands clasped, their heads bowed.
Dear God
, Kassandra prayed, neither knowing or caring if Ben was praying too,
I’ll never get through this alone. I am frightened, dear Lord.
I
don’t know how to have a baby …

She waited for a rush of comfort to fall around her. Instead, only tiny phrases swirled through her confusion—
Trust in Me. Abide in Me. Look to Me.
She hoped it would be enough, but when she opened her eyes, all she saw were Ben’s own green, ones, looking at her with a mixture of pride, acceptance, expectation. The tiny voice inviting her trust a mere echo of a long-forgotten promise.

“I will not be able to do this alone, Ben,” she said, gripping his hands.

“You won’t be alone, love. I’ll be right here with you. You know that.”

“That is not enough.” She was pleading, hoping to convey the sheer terror she felt.

“I know, Kassie. I know,” he said, pulling her into an embrace. “No fears, love. I’ll fetch Miss Imogene to you directly.”

Imogene Farland was quite a legend in the Five Points. A miniscule woman—-just over four feet tall and weighing less than the largest fish tossed in the market on any given day—she moved through the streets largely ignored by men. Her hair was sparse and gray, worn in two loose braids that she occasionally pinned to the top of hei head, her skin an indeterminate cocoa color that defied any explanation of her origins. She might claim, in a single day, to be a slave escaped from a Virginia plantation, or the product of a torrid affair between a Jamaican sailor and the captain’s daughter, or a Pawnee squaw hiding from her insane French trapper husband. Her age could have been anything between thirty and sixty, for she claimed to have memories of events that predated the turning of the century, but she conducted herself with a youthful gait—spry and quick—like a homely, ragged sprite weaving through a sea of lumbering humans.

But if the men of the city passed over Imogene with little more than a slightly bemused expression, the women of the Points sought her out, following her every move as she passed through doorways and under lampposts. They listened for her distinctive tiny step in the dark stairwells of their tenements, strained to hear her voice—high-pitched and rasping—with its undefined accent floating through their crowded halls. She lived in a tiny wooden structure, squashed between a dry goods store and a brothel that specialized in luring (and robbing) foreign businessmen, on Water Street. Any passerby would know when Imogene was home to receive callers, because there would be a gathering of women just outside her door, huddled in groups of two or three, some furtively searching up and down the street as if in terror of being found here, others proudly displaying a burgeoning figure, their bellies high above their hips, hands resting on their majestic mounds.

Imogene was a midwife. Or an abortionist, depending on the state of mind and body of the woman in question. She excelled at both, never having had a death of both a mother and a child at any single birthing. Or abortion, for that matter. She kept her secrets close at hand, but those women who gave themselves over to her ministrations reported a mixture of powders and potions with chanting and prayer—all very mysterious and well worth the fee, which varied with Imogene’s innate ability to know how much a woman could afford.

Of course Kassandra knew Imogene Farland just as anybody might know a local legend, but the two women didn’t meet face-to-face until the following day when Kassandra was spending a rare afternoon downstairs in the Mott Street Tavern enjoying a baked apple tart with cream—a special Saturday treat from the baker at the corner. When the door burst open, ushering in an onslaught of late autumn sunshine, Kassandra could make out little more than silhouettes in the doorway. At first glance it seemed to be a small, bent child swathed in an impossible amount of skirts holding the arm of a man whose cap seemed to dangle nearly two feet above her own small head. When the door closed and Kassandra’s eyes had a chance to readjust to the dimmer light, she realized the tiny creature was this woman of legend. And she was not holding the arm of the taller man, but rather was being held by him, for it was none other than Sean who clutched the arm of Imogene Farland in much the same way as he had the young James nearly a month before, with little obvious deference to the woman’s age or fragility. He kept his grip on her, steering her through the maze of tables, causing conversations to stop midjoke as the oddly matched pair walked past.