The Kitchen House (5 page)

“Miss Martha callin’ for you, Dory,” he said. “She want you now.”

Mama Mae took baby Henry from a reluctant Dory. “Go on,” she said, “he gonna sleep now.”

After Dory left, Mama showed Uncle Jacob the baby’s swollen hands and feet. He shook his head. “He not gonna be here long,” he said.

“This be hard on Dory,” said Mama Mae.

“Hard on Jimmy, too,” Belle added. “Don’t forget, he’s the daddy. Every day all he wants to see is his Dory and his baby boy, but he’s got to stay away. The overseer warned Jimmy that if he finds him close to Dory again, he’ll sell him. He says Jimmy’s a field-worker, so he’s got to go with a field woman, and he’s not supposed to have nothing to do with a big-house girl.”

“Don’t nobody ask the cap’n if Dory can jump the broom with Jimmy?” Uncle Jacob asked.

“Rankin say he the overseer. That mean he the boss, and he say
who marry who,” answered Mama Mae. “That Rankin just wantin’ to be ugly.”

When Mama Mae took notice of the three of us, the twins were sent home, and I was sent upstairs to sleep. After Uncle left, Mama Mae stayed with the baby and sat beside the fire to talk with Belle. I fell asleep, comforted by their soft, low voices.

B
ABY
H
ENRY DIED THAT NIGHT.
In the early morning Papa George came with a small board over which Mama and Belle fashioned a small pallet. Dory stood near the door, holding her now quiet baby. Mama went to her. “Give him to me,” she said softly, reaching for baby Henry.

“Mama, no.” Dory turned away with her bundle.

Papa George came over and put his arm around the thin shoulders of his firstborn daughter. “Dory, he okay now, he with the Lawd. You give him to Mama.”

Slowly, Dory held baby Henry out. “Mama, you fix him? You always so good with him, Mama,” she pleaded.

Belle took Dory’s arm and led her outside. I watched from the door as they walked down past the barn and into the woods. Snow was falling, draping a clean sheet of silent white. Mama Mae watched them leave before she came back to Papa George. She placed baby Henry on the pallet, and together, using a long brown cloth, they bound his small body to the wooden board. As they finished wrapping, Mama Mae looked up at Papa. Tears dripped down her round face. “It best for this chil’ that he go, I knows this,” she said, “but I afraid he take Dory’s heart with him.”

“Our girl gonna be all right,” Papa said, and wiped Mama’s face dry with his fingers.

The twins were there, and they were crying, too; I was not. I felt empty, and when they all left for the burial, I stayed back until, terrified of the isolation, I ran after them, down to the cemetery by the quarters.

I stood in the shelter of the trees to watch. Ben was standing beside a small grave he had dug next to other small graves that
were marked by jutting stones. When they lowered baby Henry into the earth, Dory loosed a series of long, wrenching wails. My mind, caught in the rush of her grief, tunneled away. It was as though a veil had been torn back and I’d left this place of sorrow to enter a deeper one, one that held the other me, which had been lost until this day. I was back again on board ship, unable to stand its violent rocking and the desperate nausea of my own sickness.

The shrouded body had become my mother’s. I watched again as they lowered it, deep and away, into the wild water. Days before, my father had led the way; he went in the water, too. I looked around me through the snow for my brother, Cardigan. Certain I heard him calling, I left to find him.

J
IMMY, BABY
H
ENRY’S FATHER, FOUND
me and brought me to the kitchen house. I had been missing all of that day. In the evening after dark, when Jimmy had gone alone to mourn his son, he had stumbled upon me in the woods.

They say I rocked silently for almost two days. Finally, Mama Mae came. She sat down next to me on my pallet, then she told Belle and the twins to leave. “Abinia,” she said firmly, “why you rockin’ like this?”

I rocked wildly as I clung to the memory of pain, to the memory of my mother. I couldn’t release it; I would lose her again.

“Abinia,” she said, trying to hold me still, “you tell Mama Mae why you rockin’ like this.” She held my face and forced my eyes to meet hers. “You talk to Mama. Abinia, you got to talk. Don’t you go away like this. You talk to Mama. You tell her what the trouble is.”

I tried to pull away, needing the force of motion to still the nausea, but Mama took my rocking self to her lap. Pressing me to her strong bosom, she slowed my rhythm to match her own. “Mama gonna take this pain from you,” she said. Rocking back, she breathed deeply, pulling me in to herself, and as we rocked forward, she exhaled in deep guttural moans the sorrow I was holding.

Back and forth she rocked, bringing to the surface the festering
poison of the nightmare I had been hiding. I tried to breathe with her, but my breath came in short rasps, and I felt as though I were drowning.

“Now,” she said. “You tell Mama.”

I whispered the horror. “Baby Henry is in the water.”

“Baby Henry not in the water,” she said, “that baby is with the Lawd. He in a good place. He laughin’ and playin’ with other children of the Lawd. He not hurtin’ no more! He in a good place.”

“My ma is in the water,” I whispered again.

“Abinia, your mama is with the Lawd, just like baby Henry. Matter of fact, she be holdin’ baby Henry, and they playin’ together right now. Listen, you can almost hear them laughin’. This world is not the only home. This world is for practice to get things right. Times, the Lawd say, ‘Nope, that mama, that baby Henry, they too sweet to stay away from Me no more. I brings them home.’ I knows this, Abinia,” she said, her solid arms and words of conviction anchoring me. “Mama sayin’ there are times we got to trust the Lawd.”

Somehow I heard Mama Mae’s truth, and my heart believed her. Having found my past, I clung to this mother who now gave me my future. “ Ma!” I keened. “Ma!” and my cries finally released the tears I had stored since my arrival.

“Mama’s here,” I was reassured. “Mama’s here.”

Belle

T
O TELL THE TRUTH, WHEN
baby Henry passes, he’s suffering so much, it’s the best thing that he goes. Poor Dory’s wanting to save him, but Mama says she sees this before in the quarters and it always ends bad. Now Dory’s eyes look like Miss Martha’s after she loses her babies.

When Lavinia sees baby Henry going in the ground, she goes off her head. When Jimmy brings her back, I can’t do nothing with her, but Mama knows what to do. Then Lavinia remembers being on the ship and seeing her mama and papa dying and them being dropped in the water. What are those men thinking, letting a little one see that?

Now she knows where she comes from, Ireland, but she says that her mama and papa had nothing there and come here looking to work. She says she has a brother, Cardigan.

Funny name, Cardigan. I don’t ask more because I see she still have a hard time talking about him.

Since her day of remembering, it’s hard to believe the change in that chil’, though she’s still like a mouse, skittery and scared of the world. She makes a big thing of doing her chores, and when she’s done, she always comes for me to look. When I say “good job,” her little face has a smile to light up the kitchen house.

I got to say, when the twins tell me that she’s bringing food to Ben, that little girl warms my heart. She don’t know why I give her extra to take down, but I got to laugh when I think that we both got our eye on the same man.

Lavinia

A
FTER
I
REMEMBERED THE DEATH
of my parents, other memories began to surface. Of course, at that tender age, I had few years to draw from, but when a sound or a scent brought forth another image, it was often enough to leave me devastated. Overcome by loss, I could do nothing but grieve. I had kind parents, though both were under strain at the time we boarded the ship. My ma did not want to leave Castlebar, the city in Ireland where both of her parents still lived. But my da, with no relations that I could recall, was determined to provide a better life for his family. I had memories of the two often arguing, but I could not forget my ma’s terrible grief when my da died. And then I lost her. For the rest of the voyage, I clung desperately to my brother. My last recall of Cardigan was his helplessness to respond to my imploring screams as the captain took me from him.

I eased the pain of these memories by making a promise to myself: One day I would find my brother.

My health was returning, and though I was now deeply attached to Mama, I also was beginning to look to Belle for comfort. Her attitude toward me had changed since baby Henry’s death—so much so that one night, when she heard me crying, she brought me into her own bed. There she put her arms around me and stroked my back until I slept. From then on I was often granted permission to climb into her bed at night.

W
HEN THE CAPTAIN ARRIVED HOME
in time for Christmas, we in the kitchen were told how Miss Martha had once again come to life. These past months, while the captain had been away, the mistress
had her meals served in the upper sitting room adjoining her bedroom. The children were there with her for dinner, but for other meals they ate with the tutor in the study. Since the captain’s arrival, and with the approach of the holidays, meals had taken on a festive air and were served once again in the dining room.

With extra help needed in the kitchen, to my delight, Beattie was brought down to the kitchen house, while Fanny stayed up to work alongside Dory. Everyone was kept busy baking for the holidays, and even Ben came up from the barns to help. He chopped the wood that kept the kitchen fires burning hot, as well as supplying fuel for the fireplaces in the big house. Beattie and I were thrilled when we were given the chore to help Ben carry wood. We ran outdoors to greet him, eager to please.

“You too little for work,” he teased both of us.

“No, we’re not,” we assured him.

He gave each of us a small piece of kindling. “More,” we begged, “more,” until he packed our arms. We stumbled from the woodpile, determined to show our strength, but when we arrived in the kitchen, Mama Mae called out to him, “Ben! Ben, you come here!”

Ben stood so tall that he had to lean forward when he came through the kitchen door. He straightened and smiled. “You call me, Mama?” he asked.

Belle turned to look, and Ben acknowledged her with a nod. Belle, whose face had taken on a pink glow, returned the nod, then turned quickly back to measuring a pound of sugar. Belle was thin, but I noticed that when she leaned forward to cut from the sugar block, her waist curved up to show a generous bosom, giving her a graceful shape. Glancing at Ben, I saw that he was noticing, too.

“Ben,” Mama said, “what you doin’ with these girls, makin’ them carry so much wood?”

He winked at us. “Mama, they my big strong helpers.”

We ran proudly to his side, ready for more. “We’re helping him, Mama,” we said.

“Ben,” Mama said, laughing, “you sure gots the way with the women.”

He chuckled and looked directly at Belle. “You think so, Mama?”

Belle turned her back to him, but the vigor with which she put pestle to mortar, grinding the solid sugar, gave evidence of a response.

“So, Abinia. Belle take care of you like a good mama?” Ben asked me.

I looked to Belle, and when she met my eyes, she smiled. I turned back to Ben and nodded.

“That Belle got herself a baby pretty as her. You need yourself a daddy?” he asked.

“No,” I said, confident in my answer. “I have Papa George.”

The adults laughed.

“That my daddy, too,” he teased.

“I know,” I said proudly, “and Dory’s and Fanny’s and Beattie’s and Belle’s.”

“Well,” he said, “Belle, your mama. Papa, your daddy. Then who is Mama Mae?”

“She’s the big mama,” I said, surprised he didn’t know.