The House Girl (14 page)

“Oh, but surely you need a nurse? Someone with skills? Or a family member even?”

“No no, Josephine’s been with me since she was just a little thing. She knows all my needs. I swear, sometimes I think she knows me better than I know myself.”

“You spoil her, you do. I can hear it in your voice, Lu Anne. Look at this room, she is not keeping house here very well. Why I took just a casual look round, and there is dust everywhere. Everywhere you place a finger, it comes back gray.”

Josephine stood beside the door and watched as Melly Clayton’s moist mouth spoke these words to Missus.

“Oh, not at all, Melly,” said Missus, but her voice faltered. Josephine could not see Missus’ face but her hands were twisting in her lap, the fingers uncertain in their grasping.

“I am afraid that your condition perhaps has made you too … too forgiving. Please, would you humor me, let me peruse your good home, just so I can assure myself that you are being properly looked after?”

Josephine could not fathom the motive in Melly’s request. But this woman with her crimped eyes and small round shoulders might see what the ailing Missus Lu would not. The food. The shoes. Josephine’s rolled canvases. Items pocketed in corners of the house for Josephine to retrieve later, after Missus and Mister had eaten their dinner, Missus busy or napping, Mister back in the fields. Today like any other day, do what needs doing, until the night, until she visited Lottie and Winton at the cabins. Until she spoke to Nathan about the northward route.

Missus hesitated, her hands knotted together now in her lap. “Well,” Missus began. “Well, I don’t see what could be the harm. You have only my best interests at heart, I am certain of that, Melly.” And Missus stood and turned to Josephine and looked beyond her as though she were another polished table, silent, sturdy, ready for use.

Josephine trailed behind Missus Lu and Melly as they walked the hall in the direction of the kitchen.

Abruptly Melly stopped. “Lu Anne, what a charming picture!” She pointed to a small watercolor hanging on the wall, half-hidden in the shadow cast by the underside of the stairs, one that Josephine had painted some years previously of Bell Creek in early summer, the flower beds awash in color, the sky a flawless blue. Josephine remembered her satisfaction at having captured the flowers in their full glory during those short weeks before the blooms began to droop from the heat, when all was still lush and bright. “You are quite an artist if I do say so. However have you kept it such a secret?” Melly turned to Missus Lu with a primly turned-down mouth, a look of mock disapproval that Josephine imagined she must use on her fearful young students.

“Well, it’s just something I do. To pass the time.” Missus’ face flushed and she gazed to the floor, embarrassed, it seemed, by Melly’s flattery. Then she raised her head with a surer smile; she did not look to Josephine. “But thank you, Melly, I do enjoy it. I’m so glad you find my little hobby pleasing to the eye.”

“Oh, but I do! Now you must move this to a better position, where anyone might admire it. Such modesty.” Melly linked her arm in Missus’ and the two progressed to the kitchen, Missus leaning comfortably against Melly, the two of them fast friends now.

As Josephine passed the watercolor, she too paused to look upon it. At Missus Lu’s acceptance of Melly’s praise, a familiar bitter emptiness sounded within Josephine. An awareness came to her, as it had countless times before, that she possessed nothing, that she moved through the world empty-handed with nothing properly to give, nothing she might lay claim to.
See, you have nothing. See, you are nothing,
said a voice inside her head, and it was not Mister’s or Missus Lu’s, it was her own voice that said those words.
See, you foolish girl
. For one more moment Josephine stood before the frame and in the dim light of the hall she felt herself fading away, diminished as a shadow or a ghost, and it seemed an impossibility that once she had held a brush, chosen a color, put hand to canvas to make anything so material and fine as the painting that hung there on the wall. Perhaps she had been mistaken. Perhaps it had been Missus Lu all along. The blooms pulsed with color across the canvas.

Josephine turned away from the picture and hurried to join the women in the kitchen. As she entered, Melly was circling the room with a slow, methodical pace. The earlier chatter had been replaced by a taut silence that struck Josephine in a physical way, as though she had entered a room filled with water or sand. Missus Lu watched Melly with a look of fearful suspense, and Josephine found herself in strange admiration of this woman, who managed to arouse in others such a desire to please, to not be found wanting.

“It seems tidy enough in here, I suppose,” Melly said as she paced, tracing one finger along the cutting table, the rows of knives stored there in notches in the wood. One notch empty. Melly stopped. “But Lu Anne, where is this knife?”

For a moment Josephine and Missus Lu both froze, both guilty in the shared secret of Missus Lu’s madness, the cut face, the intended gift from the mistress to the slave. How to explain such a thing?

Then Missus spoke. “Melly, Melly. Robert took that knife to the tool shed.” Missus’ lie was so effortless that for a moment Josephine herself could imagine Mister selecting the handle, testing the blade, striding outside with some purpose in mind, to cut a length of rope, to slaughter a calf. “Please, Melly, let us sit on the porch to visit,” said Missus. “The heat in here is stifling.” She waved a hand toward the embers glowing red in the wide stone hearth. The day neared one o’clock and the sun entered in hard, slanting angles through the back windows. Missus’ cheeks flushed too pink, her brow glistened with an unhealthy sheen.

“Of course, my dear Lu Anne,” said Melly. “I do apologize. How foolish of me!” Her eyes still roamed the room but she began making her way toward the hall.

With weary relief, Josephine started out the door, and then Melly’s voice came, quiet and sure in her success. “And this?”

Josephine turned back and Melly stood with the bundle of food in her hands, prying open the knots, sniffing at the inside. “Is this one of your supper napkins, Lu Anne? And why is good food all done up? Do you think she’s fixing to take it to the field hands? Steal right from under your nose? You know, my mama says they’re all thieves, every one.”

Josephine saw on Melly Clayton’s face the clear fact that she loved the sport of this. Perhaps there was a reason for the inspection deeper than pure enjoyment, but for now it was only that, the pleasure of watching Josephine squirm and twist, the pleasure of controlling the destiny of another with nothing more than a suggestion, a whimsy of a passing thought.

Missus examined the bundle with a frown. “Josephine, what is the meaning of this?” she said. “Why do you keep a bundle of food, just here by the door? Who is this for?”

Josephine stood in the doorway, the heat of the kitchen in her face, Missus Lu and Melly in postures of waiting. Josephine felt her cheeks burn, and then her lie, as effortless as Missus Lu’s from a moment before. “It’s for Mister,” Josephine said, her voice level, her posture sure. “He asked for a bundle made, I don’t know the particulars of why.”

Melly narrowed her eyes. “You can ask him yourself soon enough,” Melly murmured to Missus Lu. “Then you’ll know the truth of it. But looks to me that’s the face of a guilty Negro.”

Slowly Missus Lu shook her head. “And where are my boots, Josephine? My boots?”

Melly inhaled. “Boots? Are you missing your boots, Lu Anne?”

Now Josephine felt a panic rise up, a heat greater than the kitchen and its engulfing sunlight, greater than the red embers themselves. She felt the prickling of fear and a loosening too, as though she might urinate there on the floor while the two ladies watched, a hot stream running down one leg and onto the wide flat paving stones, evidence more than any other of her guilt. She imagined Melly’s triumph, the smile that would unfurl.

Josephine could not speak and the three of them, a tableau of accusation, confusion, terror, stood for what seemed like many minutes or perhaps only a single breath, the time it might take a pair of lungs to empty, to fill again. Josephine said, “Missus. You know yourself Mister took your boots for resoling. He left them with the cobbler’s in town and the cobbler will send them straight back when they are good and done. You must’ve forgotten, Missus. The doctor said it was to be expected, what with your illness, you turning forgetful.”

Neither woman reacted immediately. Josephine did not advance toward them or retreat farther into the hall. Melly turned to Missus. “I—I—I,” said Missus, faltering, as though sure of nothing beyond the fact of her own mere existence. She put a hand on the cutting table and leaned against it.

Melly’s eyes widened. “My dear, I am sorry to be bringing all this up.” She stepped toward Missus. “My senses must have left me. Let’s go on outside.” She half-turned to Josephine. “Girl, get your Missus something cool to drink. Be quick.”

Melly and Missus Lu left the kitchen, stepping around Josephine, and she stood for a moment in the doorway, listening to their footsteps in the hall, the open and shut of the front door, the murmur of Melly’s voice. Outside, a horse neighed and Josephine became aware of the tireless, brittle barking of a far-off dog. Josephine moved. One foot, two. She opened the cellar door and descended on narrow steps.

Downstairs in the semidark, muffled by earth and the floorboards overhead, she poured a glass from the cool water jug for Missus. The task took far longer than it should have. Her hands shook and the water spilled again and again over the lip, leaving a mottled dark stain on the cellar’s dirt floor.

Josephine brought the glass to Missus on the porch, who accepted it without a word, and then she stepped back and waited. The air hung heavy over the road and the dry yellowed grass had begun to shimmer as it did in the hottest part of the day, the sun causing it to buckle and bend. Josephine’s heart knocked hard against her chest and she felt a snaking poison in her blood that worked with the heat upon her muscles and her mind like a drug of dismay. The shoes, the food, her small pictures, these were hardly enough to sustain the journey she must take. Who was she to think of escape? Who was she to imagine a world beyond Bell Creek?
You foolish girl
. Standing on the porch, the sharp smell of a distant fire, her dress stiff with dust and damp, the groan of old wood as Missus Lu leaned the rocker forward and back, forward and back, and Josephine felt as though roots had long ago forged themselves beneath her, securing her forever to this small piece of earth, and it was not within her power to release them. Only when she, Josephine, died would these roots wither and die with her.

Missus Lu laughed with a sharp bark and Josephine’s attention returned to the women. They were talking now of Melly’s prospects, the disappointment of a departing suitor, a blacksmith in town who had it in him to try California and the gold said to grow in the rivers there, set in glistening clumps like eyes on a school of fish.

“You must be so happy here,” Melly said, placing a hand on Missus’ arm. “Such a well-appointed home. And a handsome husband.”

“Mmm. Happy, yes, of course,” said Missus. The tone was airy, far-off. Josephine could tell Missus was tiring.

“Is Mr. Bell in town for the day?” Melly said.

“Why no, he’s—he’s attending to some business here. He’s in the fields.”

“Oh? Well, that’s a comfort. Widow Price has had troubles aplenty. They run her every which way, with no man to take charge. Soon as the master’s off, it’s like a week of Sundays in the fields.”

“Is that so?”

“And runaways. Widow Price has had three gone in the last few months. And that boy over at the Broadmoors’, a patroller hauled him back just last week, but you know how the taste for it gets under their skin. He’ll run again, no doubt. Mrs. Broadmoor says they keep him in shackles day and night. She can hardly abide the racket they make.”

“The Broadmoors? Do you mean Louis? We sold that boy on. I didn’t know he’d run.”

With the name
Louis,
Josephine’s heart turned and, in that instant, her heaviness lifted and she became a sensitive, waiting, listening thing, every inch of her attuned to the women’s conversation, to the timbre of their voices, the rise and fall in Melly Clayton’s tone. Louis, her Louis. She recalled Mrs. Broadmoor from calls to Missus Lu, a tall, gangly woman, too big in the knees and the elbows, a horsey face and coarse dark hair. Sickly too, with a dry persistent cough. She had seemed neither kind nor horrid, so far as Josephine could remember. That was where Louis had gone, sold to the Broadmoors. Carefully, Josephine inclined her head toward the women and inched her feet forward half a step.

“He didn’t make it very far. Josiah picked him up just outside of Lynnhurst town,” Melly said, seeming pleased to possess information that Missus Lu did not.

“Oh, that’s lucky then,” said Missus Lu. “He’s a very good worker. I’m surprised he’d ever do a thing like run.” Josephine saw a flash of Missus’ brown eyes as she glanced sideways at Josephine.

Again Josephine found herself beside Lottie’s fire with Louis, the soft pink of his tongue as he opened his mouth wide with laughter.
Come with me?
he had asked.

“Oh, but don’t you worry, Lu Anne.” Melly waved her hand in the air. “I can scarcely believe yours will give you and Mr. Bell any trouble.”

“No, I’m sure they won’t,” said Missus Lu.

“Mr. Bell seems a fine master, very efficient. Very circumspect,” said Melly.

Mr. Bell. Josephine realized then Melly’s interest, her cataloguing and snooping. Her attention to Missus’ illness. Perhaps Dr. Vickers had spoken of her prognosis. Perhaps there had been only a suggestion of gravity, but Melly nonetheless had smelled it out. Melly knew that soon Missus Lu would be gone, and Mister still young enough, a landowner, a slave owner, a fine catch.

Missus leaned back in the rocker and closed her eyes. The chair just moved with the barest push of her toes.

“Well, I should leave you now,” said Melly, discomfited, it appeared, by Missus’ silence and the purple-blue tint of her eyelids.