The Spirit Room (35 page)

“
It was a special gift from him,” he’d said. “Now git out of that green stripe one and put on his and wear that black neckband he gave you too and those black mitts I gave you.”

So here she sat, her back to Sam Weston on a striped satin sofa, everything on her except her undergarments—a gift from either Papa or Weston. Now, because of tonight, Papa had made new promises. “Tomorrow we’ll get you one of them whalebone hoop things you been wantin’ and one of those other things grown up women wear, corsets.” It wouldn’t be long before her entire wardrobe, even her shoes and stockings, had something to do with this paramour arrangement with Sam Weston.
Jo-fire
, the whole family would soon be wearing the clothing purchased with Weston’s money.

When Weston finished with the buttons, he got up and asked her to stand and step out of the dress. After that, he laid the dress down so carefully on the back of the sofa someone would have thought he was a tailor admiring his own work. Then he moved around her and unbuttoned her red flannel petticoat. She stepped out of that too and next he lifted her shimmy over her head. All her skin above her waist was out in the chilly air now. He added the shimmy to the growing pile, then set his light brown eyes to traveling all over her, up and down, across and back again. She had that rabbit-in-a-snare feeling again, like the first time in the Spirit Room corner. With her black lace mitts still on, she crossed her arms high over her bosoms, locking a hand on each opposite shoulder.

“
No. Let me look at you. Don’t hide.” He tried to pry her hands off, but she held tight to herself. “Please.” He waited for her to let go, waited with his hands not fighting or tugging, just waiting and waiting. Then it struck her. If she kept stiff-armed like this when he wanted something else, this thing would take all
jo-fired
night and that wasn’t what she wanted at all. She let her arms drop back to her sides and then he swept her hair around to her back. He stared at her chest, his eyes burning branding iron trails slowly across her skin. Stiffening up her arms again, she looked down at the soft shiny stripes on the sofa.

Suddenly, with a thud, he dropped to his knees, pulling her attention away from the blue-and-yellow satin stripes. Then, like he was praying to Jesus Christ, our savior, he bent his head down and placed his hands on her hips at the top of her pantalettes. And there he froze. The smell of half-rotten apples wafted up, making her nauseous. That pomade. Just how much of the stuff did he use anyway? An entire tin?

Then he started whispering, repeating something over and over. She was glad she couldn’t hear what he was saying. Let him keep his dang chanting to himself. Glancing around the room, she searched for something to fixate on in the moments to come. The bedposts would do. There were four of them and they were solid and dark and strong and shiny and upright. She could move her thoughts from one to the other during the evening. Start with one of the far ones, then two, three, four, as things went along. By the time she was at four, it would be over and she could go home to the house that would smell like pumpkin pie. It would be like holding her breath to a very very slow count of four.

She felt his fingers go to the button on the side of her pantalettes and release it. Bedpost number one, far left. Then she felt the cotton start to slide down her legs, and his hands with it, all the way to her ankles. Cool air hit her belly. Her stomach clenched of its own will.

“
Step out of them.”

Tearing herself from bedpost number one to look at the undergarment in a heap around her feet, she raised a foot, then the other as Weston, sitting back on his heels now, slid the pantalettes away. Except for boots, white stockings, and black lace gloves, she stood completely naked. He tossed the pantalettes under the sofa and began to unbutton her boots. When he had taken off each boot and each stocking and stuffed them under the sofa, he straightened up into his prayer position, eyes closed, and began to whisper once more. What the
Hell
was he doing? He was more peculiar than she had ever imagined.

He tipped his face close to her private place. She cringed, expecting his touch, but he only took a few deep breaths. Was he smelling her, sniffing her like a dog? Was this what men and women did with one another?

“
You are the stem of the flower now, perfect, lithe. Hold still,” he said.

He stood up, stepped back, crossed his arms over his bunches-of-grapes vest, and began to stare at every inch of her. For a moment she watched him and his brown eyes, until she started to feel the sinking again. She looked away, searching for the bedpost, but she got trapped on the sight of the two of them in the mirror, her naked body with her two small bosoms, her young woman hips, his broad back, his billowy white shirt sleeves, his fancy satin vest. Next to him, she looked tiny, like a midget in the circus, even though she wasn’t short and he wasn’t especially tall.

He noticed that she was looking at them in the mirror. Turning around to face the mirror, he lodged his hands on his hips, and smiling, caught her eye there in the glass.

“
You see? You are perfect, young and perfect. Nothing has touched you yet. I wish I were an artist. I’d paint your picture on a big canvas and put it in one of those ornate gold frames.”

“
Will it be much longer? Papa is waiting out in the cold.”

His smile fell.
Dang
, she shouldn’t have said that. She ruined it. She wouldn’t say anything else the rest of the evening, wouldn’t open her mouth, unless it was something he wanted her to say.

“
Don’t worry about your father. He takes care of himself. I want you to think about me right now.”

She nodded. He was the one thing she was trying not to think about, trying with all her heart, all her mind, but he was strange, big, confusing. Ignoring him was harder than she had expected.

“
Can you think about me?”

She nodded.

“
That’s better, but I wish you would smile. You’ve not smiled once since you’ve been here.”

“
I apologize. I’m nervous, Mr. Weston.”

His grin flashed up again. “Yes. That’s natural.”

He reached down and opened the buttons on his trousers, then withdrew his prick. It was already large.

Stepping toward her, he embraced her tightly and picked her up. He held her in the air a moment, then carried her around to the side of the bed. Slowly he let her down onto her back, her legs dangling off the side. Her pulse began to pound. She felt like she might vomit. Taking one of her feet in a hand, he pulled her leg up and rested her ankle on his shoulder, then he did the same with the other. He grabbed her hips and slid them just off the edge of the bed toward his prick. Then she felt his hand putting his prick between her legs, the prick press into her, then plunge inside her.

Pain shot through her. It felt like he was going to bust her open from the inside out. His hands digging into the skin at her waist, he lifted her hips up and thrust himself into her again and again, each time hurting, each time bouncing her on the bed. After the third thrust, she searched for bedpost number two and pondered on it so hard that she couldn’t move on to number three and four as she had planned. She stared at it, concentrated on the dark brown wood, the particular set of curves toward its top, smooth round carved shapes, shining with polish, a larger one, then a smaller one, then a third smaller one, trying to get him away, get him out of her.

When he finally withdrew, she left the bedpost, came back down into herself on the bed. She felt scorched and raw. It was over. Her body was hers again, no one in it, no one praying to it or smelling it. It was just hers.

She lay still, eyes closed, legs hanging off the side of the bed where he had left her. She listened to him shuffling about the room. Tucking her knees up against her, she rolled over and lay on her side. A blanket landed softly on her, then drifted up onto her shoulders. There was a slight rustling noise on the bed near her. She wouldn’t open her eyes to see. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want to see the mirror. Please, please don’t ask for a smile, she begged in silence. Water splashed in the basin, then more fussing and rustling, then the door creaked opened and clicked shut. He was gone. Under the blanket she held the sore place between her legs. It was over, finally over.

In a long while, when she was sure he was gone, she opened her eyes and searched the bed for whatever had been left there. A folded piece of paper lay on the pillow. Draping the blanket around her, she sat up and opened the paper with hands still wearing black lace mitts. A gold dollar coin plopped from the folds of a note onto the white bed spread, the Indian head facing her.

My Dearest Clara,

This is for you, and only you, to do with what you please. I will not tell your father about it. It is our secret. Please tell no one about us or this gift. There will be more. Now that you are my paramour, I am the richest man in the world.

Your Devoted Lover, S.W.

CLARA DID NOT WANT to have a heart-to-heart talk with Minnie Stewart behind the Dutch door, so she slipped out as quietly as she could. The grandfather clock read ten fifteen. If Papa had really waited in the cold wind for two hours, he would be chilled deep to his bones. As she opened the door into the night, she felt ugly inside, ugly and withered, not a flower blossoming into womanhood, but a flower expired, lying on the ground all thirsty and tired and limp.

She glanced up the street. Papa was there in the shadow of the street light where she had left him, coat collar turned up around his neck, shoulders up to his ears, hands holding something at his waist. He watched her walk toward him, but when she got close, he looked down at the thing in his hands, his empty pipe. Even though he only smoked a pipe once in a while, he often had one in his coat. He clutched its bowl, twisting the mouthpiece one way, then the other.

He smelled like pipe tobacco, but not liquor. Had he really been standing there for two hours without going to one of his taverns?

“
You all right?” He lifted his eyes just enough to see her face.

Even though she was as far from all right as she could get, she nodded. Lowering his eyes as soon as he saw her answer, he stared at that pipe like it was the inside of a fine watch he was set on repairing. He shivered, then started to clomp along the wooden sidewalk. She stepped in stride with him.

The whole walk home he never looked away from that pipe. It seemed he might snap it in two. Even though there were things she wanted to know like had he seen Weston, spoken to him, gotten his fifty dollars, she was glad for Papa’s silence, glad for the darkness. Wrapping herself in her shawl as best she could, she longed for it to be a thick wool blanket all around her from head to toe.

She had some trouble walking right. Her feet didn’t seem to connect properly to her legs and with each step she took, she felt heavy—legs heavy, arms heavy—and there was the rawness between her legs. Papa didn’t ask her anything and that was just fine, because she didn’t want to explain anything.

When they entered the house, there was just the one small lamp burning low in the parlor. Papa slipped his pipe into his coat pocket and when it was gone from her sight, from his crazy twisting, she relaxed her grip on her shawl. Now, finally, the evening really was over. She could go to bed and wake up and it would be tomorrow. Papa took the lamp from the parlor and carried it upstairs with them. After putting it on the upright crate by her bed where Euphora was soundly sleeping, he shuffled off, eyes fixed downward, toward his bedchamber. There was no “goodnight, Little Plum,” no anything. Just as his door was nearly shut, he pulled it back open, and said, “God bless you,” then closed it gently.

Clara sat for a while on the side of the bed so tired and dizzy she couldn’t rise up to undress. After a long time listening to Billy and Euphora sleep, she untied her bonnet, took it off, and dropped it on the floor. Then dress, boots, shawl, and gloves still on, she lay down next to her little sister and reached over to turn off the oil lamp.

Billy lifted his head and looked at her just as she was dousing the light. “You all right, Clara? It’s late.”

“
I’m tired out is all.”

“
You sure?”

She nodded, then Billy burrowed under his blanket. She wanted to rustle him and tell him what Papa made her do, but she never would. First of all, she couldn’t. She was too ashamed, but second of all, Billy might go right into Papa’s room and stab him with his hunting knife.

If Izzie were here, she would scream at Papa and Weston and tell them both to go to Hell forever. And if Mamma were here, none of this paramour business would have happened in the first place. Mamma never would have let Papa and Weston agree to these awful things. Why did Mamma have to die and let Papa get so peculiar and mean?

Reaching a hand into her dress pocket, she grasped the gold dollar. It was still cold from the walk home. As it warmed inside her fist, she fell asleep.

<><><>

THE MORNING SUN STREAMING INTO THE KITCHEN seemed awfully bright. Clara stood at the worktable peeling potatoes with a small knife. Her tongue like a dusty farm road after months of drought, she swigged down her fourth full glass of water. Just as she had expected, she was weary but it was comforting to be following Mrs. Purcell’s orders in the warm kitchen and knowing that last night was the past. It was today now and Mrs. Purcell, working at the other end of the table, was still Mrs. Purcell, round, white-haired, sweet as her own canned peaches, and Euphora leaning over the stove, sticking her nose over a pot of beans, was still Euphora, strong, eager, bright as a candle.