The Kitchen House (9 page)

“Can Marshall see the baby?” Sally asked Belle.

“You go ahead,” Belle directed her. “Dory’s in the kitchen house.”

Marshall looked embarrassed but showed interest when Dory brought the baby to the door of the kitchen house for him to view. “It’s nice,” he said, sounding genuine.

“Thank you, Masta Marshall,” Dory answered.

“Will our baby be like this?” Sally asked Marshall.

After a silence, Marshall shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Why not?” asked Sally, surprised.

“It just won’t,” he mumbled as he turned pink.

“But I want a baby just like this one.”

“Well, you can’t have one,” Marshall said, short with her now.

Sally began to wail. “I want a baby like this one.”

Belle set aside the stirring paddle and came to hunch down by Sally. “Where’d you get this pretty thing you have on your arm?” she asked in an effort to distract the child. It worked.

“My daddy gave it to me for Christmas. Look,” Sally said, “it’s a picture of him.” She turned the painted miniature so Belle could have a better look. The charm was edged in gold and tied to her wrist with a pink velvet ribbon.

“This is so pretty,” Belle said quietly.

“Come on, Sally, let’s go.” Marshall was impatient, tugging at her arm.

The little girl remembered the baby and pushed back at her brother. “Belle, can I have a baby like this one?” she said.

Belle reassured her, “Your mama’s gonna have a pretty baby, nice as this one.”

“Will she, Belle?” Sally asked.

Belle nodded. “Yes, she do.”

“See,” Sally said. “See. Belle said it will be just like this one.”

Marshall glared at Belle, then walked away. His little sister, alert to her brother’s unhappiness, ran after him. Fanny followed, but Beattie and I stayed back at the woodpile with Ben, watching them go up toward the big house. Sally reached the oak tree and scrambled onto her swing. “Marshall! Push me,” she called, kicking out her feet. Marshall ignored her and continued on toward the house.

Fanny went to her, but the child insisted that she wanted her brother. “Marshall! Come! Push me on the swing,” she called to him.

He disregarded her appeals. Then the little girl caught sight
of the tutor, standing at the back door of the big house, and she changed tactic.

“Mr. Waters, Mr. Waters,” she called, “tell Marshall to push me on the swing.”

Marshall stopped and looked up. He saw the tutor taking steps and quickly turned back toward Sally. When he reached the swing, Marshall grabbed hold of the seat and pushed fiercely, almost unseating the child.

“Marshall,” the little girl called, “not so hard.”

He pushed her again, harder still. Frightened, Sally kicked at him and called for him to stop, but he shoved again, as if fueled by his sister’s cry. When Sally let out a shrill scream, Belle came running up the hill. Ben came, too, sprinting behind her. Belle called out for Marshall to stop, stop! Fanny ran at him and used the force of her body to throw him to the ground, but not before he was successful in a last hard shove. The swing flew and reached a pivotal height, then jerked before its descent.

No one was sure whether the child fell or jumped. When she landed, there was an audible snap; she lay still, her head pitched back from her body and her little arms stretched open as though to welcome the heavens.

Even the birds stopped singing.

Belle

T
HE FIRST TIME
I
SEE
that little Sally, I don’t like her just for being who she is. She’s my sister, but I can’t tell her that. And just because she’s all white, she’s never gonna be moved to the kitchen house like me. But this summer, after I come to know the child, I see she got the same ways as Beattie, smiling and happy to give what she has. After a time I come to like her and think, Maybe when she gets older, I’ll tell her myself that we’re sisters. But then, just like that, she’s gone. After she dies, before the doctor gets here, Mama tells me to wash Sally and put on her best dress.

I say, “No, please, Mama, let Dory,” but Mama Mae says, “Belle, you know how much Dory love that chil’. Besides, she nursin’, and that maybe stop her milk.” Then Mama looks at me real good before she says, “But you still want Dory to do it. I get her up here.”

“No, Mama, you’re right. I just don’t like to touch something that don’t have life in it.”

“Nobody do,” says Mama.

When I was washing that child, she feels soft like a baby bird. It don’t seem right that she’s going in the ground. When I clean her little arm, I take off the bracelet that has a likeness of the cap’n. I put it in my pocket, thinking it’s mine now, but I start to cry and take it out again, because I know that thing was never mine, just like living in the big house is never gonna be mine. When Uncle comes, I’m crying so hard I jump when he touches my shoulder.

“Come, Belle,” he says, “everybody die sometime or ’nother.”
But his own eyes was wet by the time we finish. “She a good lil girl,” he says over and over. When we get done, I give him the bracelet. He looks at it, then he looks at me. He shakes his head real sad, like he knows everything I’m thinking, before he puts it in his pocket.

Lavinia

I
T WAS SAID THAT
M
ISS
Martha’s screams for her daughter were heard by the workers all the way out in the fields. Immediately after Mama gave her the terrible news, Miss Martha went into labor.

Fanny, sure that she was the cause of Sally’s death, couldn’t stop shaking and wouldn’t let go of Beattie. Mama had Dory take them down to the kitchen to give Fanny a drink of brandy, then to stay with her. Papa carried Miss Sally to the house, while the tutor took a stunned Marshall to his room. Uncle Jacob and Belle stayed with the child’s lifeless body and waited while Ben rode out for the doctor. I was the only one left to help Mama when baby Campbell was born.

I stood back at the doorway, trembling, unsure if Miss Martha’s agonized cries were for Sally or from the spasms that arched her swollen abdomen. Mama called me to her side, but when Miss Martha gave another ear-piercing scream, I froze, and my hands flew to my ears. Mama came to me and grabbed my arm. She whispered into my ear, “Miss Martha just lose one chil’, you want her to lose this baby? You here to help, and you helpin’ nobody when you actin’ like this.”

Mama’s anger affected me more than the terror of Miss Martha’s screams, so I accepted the damp cloth that Mama handed me. “Go dry her head, Abinia. Easy now, Miss Martha. Easy with the push, easy with the push, there we go.”

From what I have since learned, it was a quick birth, but that afternoon Miss Martha’s agony seemed to go on forever. Finally, the baby came.

“Abinia, give me the string, now take the scissor, cut here, don’t worry, you not hurtin’ him. All right, give me the blanket.” My hands shook, but I was able to follow through.

The baby coughed and choked as Mama cleaned him, then he began to cry. Tears of relief and wonder rolled down my face, and helpless to stop them, I wiped them away with the back of my hand. Mama wrapped him in a blanket and took him to his mother. “It a boy, Miss Martha,” she said, “it a big strong boy.”

“No!” Miss Martha pushed away Mama and the crying baby. She turned her face and closed her eyes.

“Here, Abinia, you hold him.” Mama nodded me toward a chair. I sniffed loudly, and she whispered urgently, “Abinia. This no time for cryin’. You got to hold this baby tight. Come. I needin’ you here.”

Again I sobered. Determined to win Mama’s approval, I reached for the baby. “I can hold him, Mama,” I said. Instinctively, I began to rock him back and forth until he quieted. While Mama cared for Miss Martha, I looked at my charge. As his hands moved in the air, I noted his tiny fingernails and watched their purple color turn pink. I couldn’t quite believe his miniature features, and when his eyes opened, they focused on me. His little mouth worked as though trying to speak, and from deep within me, love took hold.

Mama tried again and again to get Miss Martha to take her child; each time she rejected him, I couldn’t wait to have him back in my arms. Mama’s relief was evident when the doctor’s carriage arrived. He stopped first at the nursery to see Miss Sally, then he came, white-faced, to see Miss Martha. He examined her, though all the while she did not respond to his questions. After, the doctor took Mama aside. He pulled a brown bottle of dark liquid from his case and gave instructions. “You know how to use the drops, Mae,” he said. “Give her enough to let her sleep until…” He nodded toward the nursery.

The baby began to fuss, and the doctor came over to where we sat. “You’ll have to bring someone up from the quarters to feed him. Do you have anyone?” he asked Mama.

“My girl Dory got a new baby,” said Mama quickly, “she feed this one, too.”

The doctor examined the newborn; he rubbed the baby’s fine blond hair, and I wondered if Miss Sally was going to think this baby was as pretty as Dory’s. With a shock, I remembered that Miss Sally was dead.

“Masta Marshall needs lookin’ at,” Mama told the doctor. She led him across the hall and knocked until the tutor opened the door. Mr. Waters invited the doctor in but shut the door, leaving Mama Mae out. She returned, her face grim. A short while later, we heard both the doctor and tutor speaking as they went downstairs. When they closed the doors of the library behind them, Mama went across the hall to check on Marshall but came back to say that he was sleeping. Then she took the baby from me and sent me to get Dory.

I don’t know why I didn’t go out the back door but went out through the front. Perhaps because it stood open; certainly, I was disoriented from the day’s trauma. I stopped for a minute on the front porch, surprised at the normalcy of a golden sunset. I walked down the front steps past the side of the house, then hung back, frightened to turn the corner. I knew the oak tree with the hanging swing waited there, and I didn’t want to see it. I paused under the open window of the library. The boxwoods had grown high, and although no one inside could see me, I was able to clearly distinguish the voice of Mr. Waters.

“It was that Ben fellow from the barns,” he said. “He has no business with the children, but there is no one, it seems, who can control him. He has the run of the place, and more times than not, he is sitting behind that woodpile, sleeping. I don’t know why he took it upon himself to put that little girl on the swing and push her like that. I don’t suppose he meant to kill her, but the way he was pushing that swing, I don’t know what he was trying to do.”

I ran then to the kitchen, wanting to tell Dory about the tutor’s conversation with the doctor, but when I arrived, Dory, still in shock from Sally’s death, was in such a state that she told
me to shush. I remembered my original purpose. “Dory, Mama wants you,” I said urgently. Dory was trying to prepare the evening meal while her own baby, Sukey, was fussing to be fed. “What!” she asked. “What she wantin’? She know I got enough to do, tryin’ to keep up down here!”

I insisted that Mama needed her up in the big house to feed the new baby. Dory glared at me, slammed down a bowl, then picked up her own baby and left for the big house with me following close behind.

The cry of Miss Martha’s newborn greeted us. Mama had him in her arms when she met us in the blue sitting room directly off the mistress’s bedroom. There, at Mama’s instruction, Dory reluctantly put Miss Martha’s baby to her breast. I went over, anxious to see him fed. As he eagerly suckled, Sukey began to fuss in Mama’s arms.

“Mama,” Dory said, “how this can be? My Henry gone, lil Sally gone, and now this one.” She looked over at her own child, crying in her mother’s arms. Angrily, she looked down at the nursing infant. “He nursin’ like this his right.” She began to sob. “I don’t wanna do this, Mama.”

Mama pulled her chair close. She spoke quietly but firmly. “Come on, chil’. Don’t you forget, this all workin’ for you. It keep them needin’ you up in this house. Stop your cryin’ now. He got a right to live, same as you and me. A baby don’t need you cryin’ when you feeds him. You don’t want nobody sayin’ that your milk no good. Next thing you know, they get somebody else in here. You sing to him. That make the milk settle good.” Mama rocked Sukey until she quieted. “You feed this new baby first, he need the milk. Then you feed your own sweet chil’,” she said, hugging Dory’s baby. “You got plenty to give the two of them. All you got to do is eat more.”