Lazaretto (4 page)

AFTER MEDA LEFT
Dr. Miss's and finagled her way into Independence Hall and cried over the president's corpse and her breasts leaked—after she made her way to the orphanage and configured her chores there to tending exclusively to the newborns—she came to understand the meaning of the phrase “peace that passes all understanding.” She should have been raging over her twin tragedies—the president's death and the loss of her own newborn—but instead she felt an astounding sense of peace, velvet-smooth and deep as she fed the babies and rocked them and hummed and sang to them. She even felt giddy at times when she laughed at the sound of their burps, or at the contorted face one or the other made. She shortened the names she'd given them, Lincoln and Abraham, to Linc and Bram, and she enjoyed the feel of their names cooing off her tongue.

On the morning a few days before her last day at the orphanage, Meda and Ann were having tea in the foyer right off of the parlor, as they'd done daily since Meda's arrival. Ann still refused to walk all the way into the parlor and had confessed to Meda that infants did not take to her, such that she avoided their closeness at all costs. Meda pressed Ann to explain, and Ann told her that whenever she'd attempted to care for the infants placed there, the babies died shortly after. It had happened on three separate occasions, and she held herself responsible for their demise, said that she was a type of infant bad-luck charm. Meda told her that could
never be true, that she sensed her goodness, and was sure those babies had as well, that Ann had likely sweetened their brief time on earth. Meda thought that she'd actually seen Ann blush when she said that, though Ann was not the blushing type.

Meda appreciated their interruptions for tea, appreciated Ann's quick sense of humor, her relaxed manner, the way she'd pull off her cap and unpin her hair and let it fall, and had encouraged Meda to remove her cap, and also her top frock if she chose because why must they always be so layered and constrained. She'd train her eyes on Meda and listen intently to what Meda was saying as if Meda was the most important person in the world. Meda told her things then. Told her how she'd once served the president tea, even describing the gold-flecked draperies in his hotel suite; though she'd held back her belief that Lincoln had fathered her—or her hope, sometimes she confused the two. She did tell Ann about her brother, Buddy, whom she loved dearly but who ran card games in his living room and had had the same opportunity as she had to be schooled by the Quakers, but his only desire for education was to learn his numbers so that he could better count his playing cards. Ann had laughed, said their brothers might be related, because Buddy sounded like her brother in Connecticut.

The house was at its quiet time as they sipped their tea. The older boys were at their lessons, the younger ones down for their naps, the aides out of the house doing afternoon errands. And after they chatted about Ann's women's rights meeting the night before, Ann suggested that Meda request of Mr. Benin that she be allowed to stay on for an additional month, and when she did leave, that she be allowed to take the babies with her to be raised in the Benin household.

Meda laughed. “Benin would never allow such a thing, and even if he did, his wife would protest.”

“Why should he not allow it? Does he not owe you?”

Meda put her teacup on the half-moon table lest she splatter it. Though Ann asked the question in a matter-of-fact way, her tone had a knowingness to it that made Meda's hands go to ice. “Owe me in what way, Ann?”

“Well, Meda, the day before, as we sat here and the baby cried and you rushed into the parlor to feed him, I noted that both feeding bottles were in the kitchen, all cleaned up and ready for use, and I concluded that you had recently given birth.”

Meda looked away. Though she'd been careful to nurse in secret, and only had to nurse Linc, the finicky dark-eyed baby, because Bram had a calmer nature and took the feeding bottle with ease, she had in fact erred by leaving the readied bottles in the kitchen. “It was recent,” she said, surprised at how relieved she'd felt saying it. “She did not live long after she was born.”

“Really? A daughter?” Ann's voice rose as a stream of surprise hung on her words, even as she squeezed Meda's hand, and then whispered, “Needed in Heaven, I'd say, to make Heaven a sweeter place.”

Meda nodded and tightened herself against the wave of grief rolling in, then asked Ann why was she surprised that it had been a girl.

“I had a theory,” Ann said, as she retrieved the teapot from the half-moon table and refilled Meda's cup, and then her own. “Part of it was that you had recently given birth, which you have confirmed. Part of it was that Benin was the father, which you have not said, but which I have figured out regardless—”

“Benin? The father?” Meda cut her off.

“Well,
is
he?” Ann asked it with an insistent tone, even as her eyes went soft the way Meda always felt Ann's eyes go soft when she looked at her.

“What makes you think that he is?” Meda asked, stalling, not ready to admit to having lain with Benin because the shame was
so large. If she just resisted more when she heard the grunt of air as he pushed open her bedroom door, and the shriek of air as he called her name with a question; if she just searched herself more to determine what it was about her that invited it; if she could just figure that out, she could change that thing about herself and he would leave her alone.

“He has sent messages daily asking about you . . .”

“And from that you claim to discern that I, I—for goodness sakes, I am part of his household staff, of course he would inquire—”

“And besides that, we had never before benefited from his benevolence.”

“He prides himself on his charity, he has lists of causes that he—”

“I am sure he does. And perhaps we may have eventually landed on his list as well. But not in such a haphazard way. These things are usually handled in a more formal way. I mean, Benin actually showed up here.”

Meda's mouth dropped. “Showed up here? When?”

“Earlier in the day before you arrived. He and his fine carriage and beautiful horses and ostentatious pocketwatch. I only noticed the watch because everything else about him was so refined and the watch was out of place and he kept pulling it out and looking at it and my thought was if time is that much of a concern, why are you here? Why not send a messenger? And he seemed to read my mind because he got straight to the point and asked if we had infants in our care.”

Meda clasped her hands in her lap lest they start shaking.

“He said he wanted to make a donation in honor of our slain president,” Ann continued, “but he wanted to know that boys who may have lost fathers fighting for the Union would be the beneficiaries. I stretched the truth and told him that we'd just taken in
two infants who'd lost fathers in the war. That's when he asked to see them and I pointed him to the parlor, and he actually walked in. And then he said that his help would arrive the next day in the form of his best employee. That he could allow her here for two weeks. And I told him plainly, ‘Mr. Benin, we do appreciate you sending your help, but we could also use support in the form of funds,' and I proceeded to list for him our major needs, including a new water pump. Shortly he sent over a considerable donation, which is why we now have running water and all of the boys are in new shoes. And later that night you arrived, Meda. You carried yourself with such grace. But there was an undeniable aura of grief that hung over you.”

She paused and set her teacup on the half-moon table next to Meda's cup. Meda took in her expression as she waited for her to continue. Ann's hair was swept behind her ear on one side; the other side hung along her face and practically hid her eye. Her head was tilted and her face, which generally seemed ready for laughter, had a pointed intensity about it. “I pondered the cause for your broken heart. I know now the cause since you have told me that you recently lost your newborn. And I think I have correctly put it together that Benin fathered your child. But the last part of my theory has gone awry as I thought that one of those babies in the parlor was actually the one you bore, since Benin took an interest in looking at them, but you have told me that it was a girl”—she whispered the word “girl”—“who is now a beautiful angel. So I rather speculate that Benin simply searched out an orphanage serving infants. And sending you here to care for them was merely his fumbling attempt to clear his conscience of his unconscionable behavior that left you bearing his child.”

Meda looked at the coal-stained floor, at the half-moon table where their teacups touched each other at the rims, then she looked at Ann. Ann had pushed her hair back from her face. Her
dark eyes drank in Meda's presence, and Meda knew that it would be impossible to deny what Ann had already reasoned.

“He did not expect a living, breathing baby to be the outcome,” Meda said in a voice that trembled, and Ann took both of Meda's hands in her own and squeezed them. “He accompanied me to the midwife thinking the midwife could just wash things away. She is apparently known in his circles for doing such things. But I had hid it the whole while, and I was much too far along. I suppose my hope was that once I had the baby, and held it, that other options would appear. But that was not to be.”

“Aha, that explains his urgency,” Ann said. “He had not been prepared for the result. I still think the man is a reprehensible boar, but perhaps slightly less so now, since at least he did a favorable thing in sending you here. He knew that caring for the babies would ease the pain of your loss a bit.”

Meda nodded as she thought about Linc and Bram, what a beautiful distraction they had proved. “I have gotten quite attached to them.”

“And not to me?” Ann asked

Meda felt her heart race. She looked away, looked down again at the coal-stained floor. There opened a gaping silence between them, and after what felt like a decade, Meda sputtered, “Uh, well yes, you, Ann, yes, the babies and you.” She felt dizzy, first as the words left her mouth, then from the heat of Ann's body as Ann leaned in and propped her hand under Meda's chin and tilted it up so that they were eye-to-eye. She moved her face in so close to Meda's that Meda could almost taste the tea clinging to Ann's breath, which smelled of ginger and berries. “I was hoping it was me also that you got attached to,” Ann whispered.

Ann kissed her then. It was a soft, insistent kiss that lingered. Meda thought that she might cry that this woman was kissing
her mouth the way her mouth had only ever been kissed by a man. And the most recent man's kiss, Benin's, had made everything about her, even down to her essence, recoil. She didn't recoil, though, from the press of Ann's mouth; she was confused and also ashamed that she did not recoil. And then she felt something else beyond the confusion and shame. She didn't have a word for that something else, or maybe she didn't want to assign it a word because that would contain it, diminish it; she just knew that this wordless thing felt the opposite of confusion and shame. She pulled away. She covered her mouth as if her mouth was a naked part of her body caught exposed. “Uh, uh,” she said, and then she jumped up.

“It's all right, Meda,” Ann said. “I promise you it is.”

Meda shook her hand loose. “The baby, I hear the baby,” she said, as she ran into the parlor and closed the door.

Linc was still sleeping and Meda woke him to feed him. Then she woke Bram and fed him, too. She had to keep busy to shut down her complex web of feelings. She started making a list for the next person who would be charged with caring for Linc and Bram. She wrote that Bram had sensitive skin and should not be left in the sun for long. Linc's skin, on the other hand, gobbled up the sunlight. Bram liked to be left alone to fall asleep. Linc needed to be held closely and rocked first. She vacillated between compiling the list and thinking about Ann. Tried to shake off that feeling that had no name, telling herself that she was a human being, and a human being might have a hundred different feelings in the course of a day.

Linc was starting to make that scratchy sound that was a precursor to his cry. Meda didn't know why, she'd just fed him, dried him. She guessed he sensed that she would soon leave. She was certain that Linc would cry nonstop for her, that he would refuse
to drink from that rubber tube. Bram would fare better in her absence; Bram was easy, adaptable. But Linc was irascible. And though his nature charmed Meda, the next caretaker might not be so easily won over by him the way that Meda was; the next caretaker might just allow him to cry nonstop, might allow his needs to go unmet. She felt her eyes spill over. She laid the pen down and covered her face and sobbed into her hands. Her sobs grew in intensity and stretched to accommodate the grief over her own dead child that being here with Bram and Linc had assuaged some. Linc had worked himself up to a full-throttle cry. Meda remained where she was, sobbing in her hands. He needed to wait; needed to get accustomed to her absence. And she needed to get accustomed to his.

A tap on the door and Meda heard Ann calling her, projecting her voice over the sound of Linc's cries. Then Ann cracked open the door and peeped in and asked Meda if she could please enter. Meda sniffed, but otherwise did not reply, and Ann eased the door all the way open, walked all the way into the parlor, straight to the cradle where Linc was now hollering almost convulsively. “Is he fed? What is it?” Ann asked as she started to reach her hand into the cradle and then pulled her hand back as if she had stuck it into a flame. She pressed her eyes shut and leaned all the way in and lifted the baby awkwardly, holding him at arm's length—and his cries grew even louder.

“You can cuddle him,” Meda said, as she dried her face and got up and walked to where they were. Ann's expression was so filled with terror that Meda had to keep herself from either grabbing the baby or hugging Ann. She settled on spreading a length of cotton over Ann's shoulder, and gently nudging Ann to bend her arms. Ann pulled Linc all the way to her chest, and there Linc rested and, just like that, sighed contentedly and settled down.