Speak Through the Wind (31 page)

he tried not to feel like a prisoner. During her life at Mott Street Tavern, she’d met a lot of prisoners, and she knew they didn’t sleep between crisp linen sheets with their heads on soft feather pillows. Prisoners didn’t push themselves away from the table, too full to eat another bite. Prisoners didn’t complain when their only venture outside consisted of strolling through a lush, albeit dormant, garden, sitting on stone benches with their faces lifted up to the warm sunlight of emerging spring.

Yes, there was an iron gate at the front walk, and she was being asked—nicely—to stay behind it. But Kassandra knew the life that waited on the other side of that gate, and though the constant company of only Reverend Joseph, Mrs. Hartmann, and Jenny sometimes grew tiresome, she knew enough to thank God every day for this haven for her and her unborn child.

By the end of March her pregnancy was obvious, and her presence in the house was by no means a secret to anybody. While she was still not invited to join in any of the social calls paid in the front parlor, she knew she was often the topic of their conversations since she spent many afternoons in the kitchen with Jenny helping her prepare the trays of tea and cookies.

Ooh, you should hear her,” Jenny said, coming through the swinging kitchen door with a tray of empty cups. “She’s goin’ on ‘bout how good it is that you’ve come home. An’ how good
they
are for takin’ you in, knowin’ the life you fallen into.”

“They have done a good thing, you know,” Kassandra said with an indulgent smile. “They did not have to take me in.”

“It’s just nothin’ gets me more than Christians boastin’ ‘bout doin’ good.”

“Perhaps, but that is better than not doing good at all.”

“I don’ know ‘bout that,” Jenny said. “Sometimes you gotta wonder if things wouldn’t be well enough just left alone.”

The women chatted companionably working together to tidy up the kitchen. While she was putting the leftover pastries into the pie safe, Kassandra caught her sleeve on a jagged edge of one of the shelves, tearing a nearly three-inch gash.

“Oh, bother,” she said, pleased with herself at having refrained from cursing. It was one of only two dresses Mrs. Hartmann had requested of her seamstress, and the other was out at the laundry. “Do you have a mending basket handy, Jenny?”

“Well, yes,” the woman said, furrowing her brow with disapproval, “but we can’t be mendin’ that dress while you’re still wearin’ it, less you want that baby to grow up and get its eyes poked out.”

Kassandra laughed. “Now, Jenny. You cannot believe that.”

“Indeed I do. Had a cousin carryin’ a child. She darned up a tear in her sock without takin’ it off. Said it was too cold. That child was born—a boy. He was helpin’ in the workshop, went runnin’ to bring his daddy a hammer, tripped over a wagon spoke and fell down. That hammer handle went clean up into his eye, dug it right out.”

Kassandra cringed at the image. “Now Jenny you expect me to believe all of that, yet you will not let me boil up some of the herbs I need for myself and the baby?”

“It ain’t me sayin’ you can’t cook up your dandelions,” Jenny said, wiping the last dirty cup. “That’s Miz Hartman’s dorn’. I told her what you wanted, and she said she wasn’t goin’ to have no witchcraftin’ in
her
house. Says that’s what probably—” She stopped abruptly and turned away from Kassandra, seeming to concentrate very hard on wiping the cup dry

“Probably what? Jenny?” Kassandra grabbed the woman’s arm and stopped Jenny in midwipe. “What did she say?”

Jenny sighed and looked at Kassandra with her warm brown eyes. “She said that’s probably what killed your first baby.”

Kassandra felt as if her breath had been batted away. “How … how does she even know?”

“Did you tell the reverend? Then, he told her.”

“And she told you?”

“Not really. She just talk. She talk all the time like I ain’t nothin’ more than a little brown piece of furniture pickin’ up after her all the time.”

“Do you think she has told … everybody?”

“Who?” Jenny gestured toward the parlor. “Them? What do you care if she does? There ain’t no shame in losin’ a child. Just gives you twice the love for this next one.”

Kassandra had hoped to be invited to accompany the reverend and his wife to church on Easter Sunday but she overheard Mrs. Hartmann telling her husband that the seats would be full to the rafters, and surely such a large crowd would make them all uncomfortable. Reverend Joseph’s attempts to sway her opinion were no match for her rapid-fire logic. So on that holy morning, Kassandra sat at her window, watching Reverend Joseph in his best black suit and his wife in a new plum-colored silk gown walk through the gate to join the morning promenade towards the church.

Jenny had been given the day as a holiday, and Kassandra found herself alone in the house for the first time since Clara’s funeral. She wandered from room to room, running her fingers over the highly polished furniture in the front parlor, pausing to look into the faces of the portraits hanging in the hall. She stood in the doorway of Reverend Joseph’s study, too respectful of his privacy to enter the room. She did, however, poke her head in and allow herself to breathe in its aroma—books and pipe smoke and leather. Even with no fire in the grate, the study always carried a warmth not found anywhere else in the house.

Thank You, God, for this man. I would be dead without him; I wouldn’t know You.

She walked up the main staircase, her palms gliding along the silky intricacy of the carved banister. How different this was from the dark and twisting stairs of Ben’s building—from any of the tenements she’d been in. These stairs were wide and covered with a patterned carpet to muffle the sound of clomping steps. She had noticed, though, that she was the only one in the household who tended to clomp. Reverend Joseph moved with the lightness of a long-limbed waterfowl, and Mrs. Hartmann never seemed to walk anywhere. She merely appeared from place to place. Lately, with her ever-protruding stomach, Kassandra felt more ungainly than ever, and she took these unwatched moments to practice taking the stairs with a light step.

Upstairs the two unused bedrooms stood ready for any guest. The beds were made with linens and blankets as fine as any in the occupied rooms, and it was Jenny’s task to air them out weekly, along with running a dust rag over the bureaus and washstands within. When Kassandra lived here before, these rooms were frequently occupied. Sometimes with other children Reverend Joseph took in en route to finding them a permanent home, or by visiting ministers and their families. In the months since she’d come back, however, they had remained vacant. Once, when she was helping Jenny air the bedding, she asked if her presence in the house was the reason for the lack of visitors.

“Oh, no,” Jenny had said. “Miz Hartmann don’t care too much for comp’ny. Likes to keep the reverend to herself.”

Though her room was just across the hall and two doors down, Kassandra had rarely gone near Reverend Joseph’s bedroom—both as a child and now. While he had always been kind and generous with her, he had also maintained a palpable formality. On this morning, though, she found herself on the threshold of that room he now shared with Dianne Hartmann. There were two large mahogany armoires against the far wall, no doubt full of beautiful gowns suitable for any social occasion. In front of the velvet-draped window, two chairs sat facing each other as if in companionable conversation. At the foot of the bed was a large cedar trunk, and the bed itself loomed nearly a foot over the trunk’s lid. High off the ground and wide, its four posts were bare, and the mattress was covered with yards and yards of a rich, emerald green quilted duvet. Before she had time to be shocked at her boldness, Kassandra was trying to picture a passionate embrace beneath such luxury Reverend Joseph with the long, skinny legs and Mrs. Hartmann with her nervous flitting fingers conjured an image of a stork and a squirrel locked in a fierce connubial battle.

She smiled. Ben would have laughed at that.

Just then she felt a forceful jolt from the baby. This wasn’t the soft, slippery movement she’d grown accustomed to, but a purposeful call for Kassandra’s attention. She ran her hands over her stomach. As the child made its presence known more and more each day, her heart and mind constantly returned to little Daniel. She remembered this time with him, the excitement and anticipation of a new life, Ben showering her with attention and affection, Imogene’s careful wisdom and ministration.

But this child was rarely acknowledged at all. Reverend Joseph avoided looking at her stomach, and though Mrs. Hartmann’s gaze often lingered there, her mouth was usually set in a thin-lipped frown. It was only with Jenny, in their cozy afternoons in the kitchen, that Kassandra ever had a chance to muse and wonder at the changes in her body and upcoming promise.

This morning’s impromptu tour of the reverend’s home brought to light one aspect that she hadn’t taken time to consider yet. Where would the baby live? Her room was certainly large enough to accommodate a bassinette, but what then? Reverend Joseph made it a daily ritual to tell Kassandra how glad he was to have her home. But the three of them never discussed any plans beyond what Jenny would be preparing for the next meal. No one had ever said that she would ever have to leave, but no one ever said that she and the baby would stay forever. She didn’t feel like an intruder, but she did feel like she was hovering, always just on the outskirts of truly belonging.

Reverend Joseph and Mrs. Hartmann took Easter dinner in the home of a prominent city councilman, and Kassandra treated herself to a Sunday afternoon nap. Jenny had been thoughtful enough to set up a cold dinner of sliced ham, pea salad, rich buttery rolls, and a fresh strawberry pie, but it was so late in the afternoon when Kassandra finally went downstairs to claim it that the meal was really an early supper.

She was just heaping a mound of pie onto her plate when the little bell rang, indicating that the front door of the house was opening.

“Hellooooo?” Mrs. Hartmann’s voice sang from the front door.

Kassandra sighed and put her fork down, wondering if secondary household servant was going to be her place after all.

The woman did manage to put away her shoulder wrap without assistance (unless Reverend Joseph did that for her), and she breezed into the kitchen resplendent in her Easter finery.

“Are you just now having your dinner?” Mrs. Hartmann asked, her disapproval thinly veiled behind a Sunday smile, which seemed quite genuine by the time Reverend Joseph entered the room.

“Good afternoon, Sparrow,” he said, briefly laying his hand on top of her head. “Is that strawberry pie?”

“It is, and it’s delicious. Can I cut you a slice?”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Hartmann said. “We’ve just come from a lovely Easter dinner.”

“Where the carrot cake was as dry as dust.” Reverend Joseph took a plate down from the cupboard and cut himself a thick slice of the pie, spooning out extra filling. “Tell me, Kassandra dear, did you enjoy your day of rest?”

“I did. In fact, I spent most of the day resting.”

Mrs. Hartmann poured two cups of tea and set one in front of Reverend Joseph. She pulled out a chair and took her accustomed place to his right.

“I suppose it’s easy to forget that this day was also meant to be a day of worship,” she said.

“I was not invited to church,” Kassandra said, regretting it immediately “And I’m … I’m just a little more tired these days.”

Reverend Joseph broke the awkward silence that followed with a gushing compliment about the pie, for which Kassandra took credit for slicing the strawberries. When Reverend Joseph noted that one particular strawberry looked much like the hat Miss Austine wore to church that afternoon, Mrs. Hartmann launched into a report on every dress and bonnet in attendance at Tenth Avenue Methodist Church, and Kassandra found herself surprisingly entertained by the narrated parade.

The three enjoyed companionable chitchat and silence as the kitchen grew darker with the coming evening. After a time, Mrs. Hartmann took a sip of her tea and set her cup down. “Kassandra,” she said, running her finger along the cup’s rim, “I think we should get you away from here.”

Kassandra’s held her breath, as if it might be her last.

“Now, don’t look so shocked, dear,” she continued, with the nerve to look amused. “I don’t mean to put you out on the street.”

“Listen to her.” Reverend Joseph laid a reassuring hand on Kassandra’s. “We just want the best for you, my dear.”

“My family has a house in Cape Cod,” Mrs. Hartmann said. “That’s in Massachusetts, dear.”

“What could that possibly have to do with—”

“It is a fact that women in your … condition benefit greatly from being by the sea. In truth, I should have taken you there right away, but there have been so many obligations here. But now I am offering to take you to my family home where you can have ready access to that fresh, salty air. You’ll be able to walk on the beach every day. It’s the best thing for you and the baby Very healthy. All the experts say so.”

“Am I to live there?” Kassandra asked, turning back to Reverend Joseph and searching his clear blue eyes for a sign of disapproval, of being sent away.