A Woman so Bold (16 page)

I looked at her in surprise. It had never occurred to me that she knew what sort of people the Mondays truly were, in spite of their money, and that she had sent me to them nonetheless.

She and Daddy came to an agreement, without my consent, that I would return home and bear the child in secret and that it would be passed off as her own. She did not get up to town often enough for anyone to know different, she insisted. Daddy wanted to send me out West to his sister Sally and for the child to be given to an orphanage, much as I had feared, but Colleen insisted it would destroy me.

“Think of what happened to Simply Walker,” she whispered.

Poor Simply. It seemed her secret was known by everyone, and it was this which kept my stubbornness in check where my child was concerned. To be the talk of idle tongues for years on end, unable to hold my head up in town, was unbearable to me.

The memories of Ezra’s birth and the days surrounding it were ones I would soon have forgotten, but I could never extricate it from my mind. Unlike the events surrounding my mother’s death, it remained clear and vivid. I was only sixteen, and as soon as my labor began, I was terrified. I knew too well the tale of the doctor who had assisted my mother’s breech birth and killed her. The fear made the pain worse. It dragged on for hours as I writhed in bed, tears soaking my pillows. I held my belly and moaned, begging Colleen to send for Lenore. She did, finally, reluctantly. Colleen’s midwife was a stout Irishwoman, with big hands and ungentle ways. I was terrified of her, but Lenore had been kind to me.

She did not arrive for several hours. When she did, she came carrying a canvas bag and a birthing stool. With her was the young girl I had seen milking the goat the day I visited her home, her arms laden with bandages and sheets.

“I was helping a woman bear twins,” she explained. “This is my apprentice, Jill.”

My labor was long and hard, my delivery worse. There were no complications, but there was pain, and plenty of it. My fear made me tense, and the resolve not to scream lasted no longer than the twelfth hour and was forgotten forever by the end. In Ezra’s birth, I felt the loss of my innocence far more keenly than I had at his conception. His advent into the world was a violation of my will, a desecration of my body. I pleaded as I had heard Colleen plead so many times for the pain to stop.

When at last he came, my body was torn, and I was spent. Lenore placed him in my hands; I saw that he was male and his eyes were shut tight against the light, his small mouth open wide in his first cry. She told me I had done well. I felt myself initiated into that sacred rite which bound my mother to me even years after her death. Here was a helpless being that had given me pain beyond any I had ever desired, yet utterly dependent on me to survive. I did not feel love for him, it was too weak a word. My feelings were wild, primal, joyous, terrifying.

After the trials of birth ended, a warm haze descended, and I floated in it, suckling the babe I had labored for so long.

Colleen looked at him and was silent. She seemed sad. I could see the tracks of tears on her cheeks. Her sorrow appeared out of place near so much pain, wonder, and relief. I was angry with her for never partaking in my joys.

“What will you name him?” she asked at length.

“Ezra,” I told her, smiling. “I know how much you love E’s.”

It was not until a few hours later, when I woke, that I understood Colleen’s sorrow. I had felt during my travail that I would never face anything so difficult again, but I had been wrong. The real trial was ahead, for Ezra was not beside me as he had been when I fell asleep. I pulled on my wrapper and stood on shaky legs. I found Colleen in her room. She was nursing him at the window.

“Give him to me,” I said.

“Landra, you know our agreement.”

I shook my head. “At least let me nurse him.” At the sound of my voice, he broke his latch on her nipple and gave a faint wail. “See? He needs
my
milk!”

She closed her eyes and murmured to herself, “How well did I know it would come to this?” then said to me, “Go back to bed. You labored for many hours, and you must rest.”

The room was swimming, and I obeyed, but not for long. The next days were pure agony. My milk came in with full force on the third day, and my swollen breasts ached, seeping each time I heard the baby cry. I lay in bed, hugging myself and weeping, refusing to eat the food Lily brought to me. Ezra also did not eat. Colleen did not have enough milk to nurse for more than a few minutes at a time, and when she ran out, Ezra set up a cry, loud at first, but weak and plaintive after he had gone some hours without enough sustenance. I drifted through the house like a wraith, thinking it would drive me mad. That evening, I burst into her room and tore him from her grasp.

She tried to reason with me, but I shrieked at her, “You’ll kill him! He needs me, let me nurse him!”

She was forced to relent. I crept into my bed and suckled him until he was replete then nestled him beside me and fell asleep. I woke twice more in the early hours, feeding him and resting. I did not think of happiness or of sorrow, only of his need, and my ability to fill it.

I was awakened the next morning when Daddy burst into the room with Colleen trailing after him.

“Get up!” he thundered. Ezra woke with a start and began to wail.

“You’ve woken my child!” I cried, curling round him protectively.

“Be silent and get up! Colleen, take the babe.”

“No!” I held him to my chest, but Daddy took him from me roughly and gave him to Colleen. I went wild then and slashed at his face with my nails, but he cowed me with a slap and pulled me out of bed by my hair.

“Solomon,” Colleen protested, her face stricken, “She’s only just . . .”

“Get dressed, Landra.” He pushed me toward the corner closet where we kept our frocks.

I obeyed him, pulling on my clothes and shoes with shaking fingers, frightened temporarily into obeisance.

“Put your coat on and go outside.”

“Solomon!” cried Colleen.

“Quiet! For
once
in my life, I won’t hear another argument from the women in this house! Get that crying child out of here!”

I found myself being pushed down the breezeway and out the back door as Colleen hurried away. Daddy prodded me all the way up the hill, across the field, toward the pinewoods. We walked the trail past Granny’s cabin, into the deeper woods where the secluded family plot lay, and stopped. Next to the row with Mama’s tombstone and the bare crosses of my dead stepsiblings, a fresh grave had been dug. I stared at it, uncomprehending.

“I dug that grave while you were up there in the house, moaning and screaming to bring forth that bastard child,” Daddy said, “in case it died, or you did. Yet, Providence saw fit to let it live, and you too. So I did not stay the hand of Providence.”

I began to breathe in short, quick breaths, my chest tightening. I felt warm, fresh blood trickling down my inner thighs and soaking my undergarments, brought on by the exertion of the long walk. “Please, Daddy,” I breathed. “How can you be so cruel?”

“Have I not shown you mercy? I could just as easily have taken that brat from you the second it came into this world.”

I gave a shriek, my fear edging me toward hysteria.

Daddy pointed his finger in my face.

“You do as your stepmother tells you, do you hear? She’s to nurse that child, whether it lives or dies. That’s
her
child. That child is no more yours than it is Lily’s or Edith’s.”

I shook my head. “No, no,
no
! He’s mine, and I shall have the raising of him. If you come near him, I’ll murder you! I don’t care if I go to prison for a hundred years!”

Even at the worst of times, my will was a match for his. He took me by the arm and swept a foot under my legs. Before I knew it, I was belly down in the fresh dirt, staring into the abyss of the open grave. His voice was at my ear, and for the first time I smelled that he had been drinking.

“Do not threaten me,” he whispered. “You’ll do as you’re told or be sent away to your aunt and never see the child again.”

He left me then. I lay shivering in the dirt next to the open grave, and wished, not for the last time, that I were in it.

In the end, it was pure chance that saved Ezra. Colleen began him on a supplement of goat’s milk just a few days after he was born, but by then, he had lost weight, and I feared for his survival. I wept morning and night, hovering over his cradle, eating and drinking very little. My milk began to dry up. That grieved me as much as my inability to care for him, so I forced myself to eat again and at night massaged my sore breasts, expelling the excess milk into a basin. When Colleen was resting or doing chores, I snuck into her room to feed him. It hurt so that tears sprung to my eyes, but I bit my lip and kept quiet.

Not a week after Ezra was born, Colleen came down with the grippe, or what they call now the influenza. It was the time of year for it. When the doctor visited, he said the baby and the smaller children should be kept away lest they catch it and die. Ezra could be fed on goat’s milk until Colleen was well. He did not know the baby was mine and that I could care for him perfectly well myself. I’ll never forget the moment Lily carried him from Colleen’s room and placed him in my arms. I unbuttoned my dress and put him to my nipple, and he latched on, sucking hungrily. I caught my breath at the pain of it and sobbed with relief as my milk came down, so plentiful that it soaked my bodice and the blanket he was wrapped in.

Colleen was ill for a fortnight, and by the end of that time, the twins were thoroughly weaned and Ezra was mine. He slept in a cradle at the foot of my bed, and I woke in the night to nurse him. He stayed in a basket at my feet as I did dishes, mending, and needlework. I did not go back to live with Ida. The days when I had dreamed of traveling and attending school were gone. My thoughts were of Ezra. When we had company or went to church, he was Colleen’s child. He sat in her lap and reached his chubby hands out to me, and she made jokes about how he was my pet, the most attached to me of all her children, as she had been ill so long after his birth.

When he was twelve months old, I weaned him, and then he sat in a chair at the table as I fed him mashed peas, sweet potato, and grits and taught him to drink milk from a tin cup. Daddy resented his presence in all things and at all times, but I was fierce as a mother hen in my defense of him, so he was mostly ignored. When he was two, I made him learn to sleep on a cot in the room with Eric and Ephraim, but there were nights when he crept on stockinged feet to climb into my bed, whispering my name.

Chapter 13

Monticello

Colleen returned home from visiting her sister in Massachusetts in January of 1891. I made certain I was the one to meet her at the depot so I could tell her the news of my engagement. She stepped off the train looking healthier than I had seen her in years. The climate in her home state had agreed with her, and she had filled out a bit and lost some of her gauntness, although her face still held the unnatural flush that came with her coughing fits. I kissed her and the baby, and when we had fetched her trunk and were all settled in the buggy, I showed her my ring.

“Will has asked me to marry him,” I told her.

She gave a genuine cry of delight and embraced me, crushing Effie between us until she squealed in protest. When she pulled away, her eyes were brimming with tears.

“You have all of my best wishes,” she breathed. “Didn’t I tell you once that I’d catch you a good husband with your bit of beauty and fine voice?”

“Indeed,” I said dryly, my happiness at her response quelling. Any mention of my bit of beauty only served to make me think of Lily and her trim figure, large green eyes, and raven hair. “Yet he is not a businessman, as you so often admonished me to find.”

“No. But he is a good man.”

“I think he truly loves me,” I added, “and not only for my feminine wiles.”

“Why, of course he does. But dearest, the wiles didn’t do any harm, did they?”

My dearest niece,

I was overjoyed to hear of your engagement. I wish you every happiness in your upcoming marriage.

As I have no children of my own and you are the eldest daughter of my beloved sister, I feel it my duty to extend generosity upon the event of your wedding. Please allow your uncle and myself to provide refreshments, a gown, and any other items, whether finery or necessities, that might be lacking.

As greatly as I admire your modesty in proposing a parlor wedding and your frugal plan to wear my mother’s gown, I must insist that you have a gown of the latest fashion and finest fabrics. You will find enclosed a train ticket to determine the details of your upcoming nuptials.

With greatest affection,

Your doting aunt,

Maude

I both smiled and shook my head at this flowery missive. I had known Aunt Maude would be chomping at the bit to get her hands on my wedding. Much as I appreciated the generosity she had shown to Eric, Lily, and myself as the orphans of her dead sister, I had no desire for the sumptuous church wedding I was certain she envisioned for me. That sort of thing was for Ida. I had to visit, if only to convince her that a parlor wedding would do just as well, and cost far less. I only wished she had enclosed a ticket for Lily as well. The hustle and bustle of that little town, with luxuries like the opera house and the milliners, would mean far more to her at sixteen than they would to me at twenty, about to be married.

For most of my adolescence, when Aunt Maude wrote to me, she signed her letters with a paraphrase of something my mother had written to her upon the event of my birth. “I pray you may treat others with kindness, endure each hardship with patience and humor, and conduct yourself as a lady in each and every situation.”

When Eric saw that, he would joke, “One outta three ain’t too bad. Better than none.”

I would laugh and pinch him, but sometimes, on nights when I couldn’t sleep, those words rankled. Life had not given me many chances to be a lady. Did a lady help butcher hogs in spring until her clothes were stained with blood? Did a lady giggle in church when the minister prayed, “Demolish, oh Lord, the fortresses we
erect
for ourselves”? Did a lady say “damn” when boiling fat leapt out of a pan of frying chicken onto her bare arm? Did a lady read novels in secret, by candlelight? Above all of that, a lady did not have a secret love child passed off as her younger sibling. I did not think a lady did any of the things I had done, except to dance by candlelight with a long train of eligible gentlemen.

When I showed the letter to Colleen, she said, “Of course you must go. It would be rude not to. I know you have a hope chest, but if Maude offers to help with your trousseau, let her, for she’s more money than she knows what to do with.”

Aunt Maude was waiting at the depot for me as I arrived in Monticello. She was a stunning woman, like my mother had been: full-figured and well-dressed, with rouged lips and cheeks. Her dark mass of hair was piled atop her head in a pompadour that was elegant without being ostentatious; a streak of silver ran through her hairline and formed a stark contrast to the sable waves.

She kissed my cheek and held me away from her, inspecting my face.

“More like Muriel Andrews every time I see you,” she said, “but fairer. Such a severe woman, that.”

I smiled, thinking this a strange criticism from someone who comported herself like a queen.

“Lily is like Mama,” I said.

“Don’t I know it? I wonder your father can bear to look at her.”

With this cheerful statement upon her lips, we departed the depot. Upon our arrival at her home, she gave her hat to her maid, a girl of about fourteen, and led me into the parlor.

“Uncle Horace is at the office,” she said dismissively, “and now, for a repast.”

I had barely begun on my refreshments when Aunt Maude said, “Is he a good man? This farmer you’ve chosen?”

I looked up from my cucumber sandwich, too startled to respond.

“I don’t trust that Yankee woman Solomon married to judge his character.”

I covered my mouth with a napkin, hiding a smirk. “He’s a good man,” I said. “Kind and honorable, and forgiving.”

“He’s a gentleman, but he has no wealth, is that correct?”

I swallowed, embarrassed by my lack of knowledge
in regard to Will’s finances. “One might say that.”

She regarded me with severity. “He shall make you happy?”

I nodded.

“Hmm. I’ll say but one thing and hold my peace on the matter. He shall, perhaps, please you. Nonetheless, I’ve found the best philosophy is not to expect a thing, not only from men but from life, for you shan’t get it. Even if he makes every joy yours, which he won’t, there will be other disappointments. For instance, a beloved sibling might marry someone you entirely dislike.”

After this speech, she continued to regard me from beneath her slanting black brows. I knew she was referring to Daddy, but I didn’t say so. I merely nodded my assent.

“Well, then,” she continued, “I’ve laid some things out for your wedding dress, some fashion plates, and a few sketches of classic gowns I had done by my tailor.”

I swallowed a bite of teacake too quickly in an attempt to respond to this and choked. She watched impassively as I coughed and gulped lemonade.

“Aunt, I’m flattered,” I said at last, “but I don’t deserve such generosity. I am determined to wear something old. Mother’s gown, most likely.”

“I cannot allow you to wear Elizabeth’s gown.”

Maude put down her glass and wiped imaginary crumbs from her mouth, inspecting the stain of rouge on the linen napkin. I felt a pang of sympathy for her scullery maid. “For one thing, it will never fit you. It shall be too long and too narrow in the waist. Girls don’t corset the way they did in our day. Especially not a farm girl, I warrant.”

I ignored this jab at my appearance and said, “I can hem it and let it out.”

“No, no. You see, our mother wore it first. It’s an heirloom, to be saved and passed down, not worn. A miracle it survived the war. If Lizzie hadn’t sewn it up in that mattress, it would’ve gone for a blasted fool Confederate battle flag. Anyhow, you’re young, you’ll want something that’s in style.”

“But I don’t like the latest fashions. I hate the big sleeves and short skirts. They’re unbecoming to a woman’s figure. They look clownish.”

She narrowed her eyes and studied me. “The truth is I don’t think much of the latest fashions, either. They’re hideous, in my opinion. Well, what
did
you have in mind?”

“Something old, with a classic shape, from the seventies or eighties. I always loved Hannah Monday’s gowns when I was a girl. I remember going to a wedding when I was twelve or so, and the bride had on a simple white polonaise.”

“Oh! I know just the thing! Come with me.”

She rose and strode from the room, and I followed her, confused. “Just the thing? Here?”

I tramped up the stairs behind her, holding my dress up in front so as not to trip. She led me into a simply furnished spare room.

“Not mine, of course. It belonged to my maid’s daughter. I had it made up for her when she was married to a blacksmith. It’s very simple, of course, no frills. Oh dear, do you object to wearing a dress worn by a servant’s daughter?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m well acquainted with Ida Monday’s companion and . . . I suspect, half-sister.”

“Oh dear, I do feel for them so, not fit for their society or ours.”

I sighed. I suspected from my mother’s early journal entries that she leaned toward abolition, but Aunt Maude was older and did not share her views. Her prejudices ran deep. “Why is it in your possession?” I asked, changing the subject. “The dress, I mean.”

“I had it made, as a gift to her mother, who was in my service for many years. The silly thing wore it in her wedding and then refused to keep it! Said she didn’t wish to be beholden to me for anything. Gracious, what notions they get into their heads. It’s not as if it cost much to have made. It’s a simple day dress, muslin, with no frills. She was married in 1880, in the afternoon.”

She opened the closet and pulled out a white day dress with three-quarter-length sleeves and a small bustle. Mother of pearl buttons ran up the front of the bodice. The only other embellishments were an eyelet hem and plain ruffles around the sleeves. Aunt Maude unpinned the Wedgwood rose cameo she wore at her throat and held it against the collar.

“Something blue?” she said.

“It’s the most perfect thing,” I gasped. “I never imagined I’d find anything so like what I wanted.”

She looked at me as if I were a lunatic, but she lay the dress out on the bed and fastened the cameo to the collar.

“It’s very plain, not even silk . . .” she said uncertainly.

“A poor man’s wife doesn’t need a silk wedding gown. I insist you take it back once I’ve worn it, for it isn’t mine.”

“Tosh, you ought to keep it and give it to your daughter. That girl isn’t coming back for it, I warrant.”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

She nipped at my chin with her knuckles, but she smiled. “Not yet! Now I shall insist, in spite of this, that you let Uncle pay for you to honeymoon in White Springs. And while you’re here, you must go to the new opera house.”

A few weeks before the wedding, Colleen took it into her head to instruct me in the ways of marriage: work, duty, patience, and love. When she came to the last one, I stopped her. “Leen, you don’t have to explain all that. I know how it goes.”

“You were little more than a child then. I thought perhaps…”

I thanked her and assured her she need say no more, but she continued. “I know you don’t see a house full of children as a blessing, but it’s the gift that comes of wifely duty…of giving your husband all he needs.”

“All he needs? Does any man
need
ten or twelve children worth of satisfaction? He has a hand, doesn’t he?”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

I pursed my lips. “I’m to be married in a fortnight. I thought we were discussing facts.”

She blushed, embarrassed by my frankness.

“Colleen, I’ve assisted you in each lying in. Your marriage bedroom shared a wall with my girlhood one. Can’t we speak openly with one another?”

She shook her head vehemently. “Some things don’t bear mentioning by decent people. I’ve said all I will say.”

We were interrupted then by Lily’s entrance into the kitchen. She held a letter in one shaking hand and threw it into the fireplace as if its contents were poisonous to her.

“What’s the matter?” asked Colleen.

“From Emmett. He has broken our engagement.”

“You were engaged? Why do I never know anything of your goings on with that boy?” cried Colleen.

Lily shrugged. “It was a secret. He asked me in a letter, and now he’s ended it in a letter. He met someone in Columbus.”

I put my arms around her. “It’s just as well. You can meet someone here whom you see above three times a year.”

With my wedding night looming, my thoughts inevitably turned to my limited experience with the act of love. Ezra’s conception had been a mere accident in a moment of passion. Henry and I had been playing at lovemaking for months, kissing and exploring one another through our clothing when we could steal a moment alone. Necking, the youngsters call it now. One day we were in his father’s cornfield, and it went further than that. He had torn my underthings, rough in his eagerness and inexperience, and I had let him do as he liked. It hurt and was over quickly, and in my room that night, I wept. People speak of losing one’s virginity, but that has always struck me as a vague concept. There was no blood on my petticoat as I had thought there would be. Nothing was as I expected, and I felt no different, but I knew if anyone would have learned of what had happened, they would see me as a whore. My blamelessness was gone, and that was what I cried for, that and the fact that it had hurt. I had wanted so badly for it not to.