Or Give Me Death (15 page)

He nodded. "Do you think she's still awake?"

"She walks the floor half the night," I told him.

He sighed heavily.

"Pa, this night she said something terrible to me."

"And what is that, Anne?"

"She said I was dead."

"Well," and he smiled, "you're in good company, then. I'm dead, too, you know."

"Oh, Pa!" I burst out crying, and he held me close to him on the settee. "There, there, child, that is why your mama is in the cellar, among other reasons."

"But she has the sight, Pa. Do you think I shall soon die, then?"

"One day we will all be dead, Anne," he said gravely. "She is right about that. No, I do not think you will soon die, however. I think you grow more comely every day, and shall live a long and happy life."

"Pa, why are things so bad around here?"

"Our family is broken, Anne. It happens betimes with families. So what we must do is know that while other families get to enjoy the whole, we can only enjoy the pieces. But don't hold them too close. Broken pieces have edges and can hurt. Look outside the family for your happiness."

Then he released me, stood up, and separated himself from the shadows, and I saw how tired he looked. "How has she been, Anne? I'll go and see her now, child. Thank you. Go to bed."

***

B
UT
I
DID
not go to bed. I stayed outside the door that led to the cellar.

And that was when I heard it. I know I did.

I heard Mama say it.

When I told Patsy she said no. And that if I breathed a word of what I thought I heard Mama say, or what I had lied about what I heard Mama say, she'd punish me severely.

Miss Importance was so filled up with herself now, she thought nobody else responsible for the good things Pa had done but her.

But Mama said it. I know she did.

***

H
E WAS DOWN
there a long time. I heard their voices, muffled by the thick door so I could not hear the words, but I knew the tones. His low and placating. Hers shrill and begging.

And then her voice became even more shrill. She was screaming something, in begging tones.

It was then that I heard her say it.

"Patrick, Patrick, please, I beg of you, give me my freedom, or let me go to my death!"

Over and over she said it, she sobbed it. And Pa came back with quiet words. For he was looking at a hobgoblin of so frightful an idea that it would throw anyone into fits to look it in the face.

I never went downstairs to see my mama after that night.

"W
HY AIN'T YOU BEEN
down to see your mama?" Pegg asked me two days after.

But I did not answer.

"She askin' fer you."

Still, I did not answer.

We were in the traveler's room, where she was setting out vittles for the others when they came home from church. I had slept late. The last two days I had conjured up a low fever, and Pa did not want me outside, where it was snowing and the sky was so gray and low I wished it would cover me over like a blanket.

"She wants to die," I finally said.

Near the hearth Pegg set down a pewter bowl of steaming biscuits covered with a white linen napkin. "Ask me, I'd say, let her die, poor soul. What she got to live for?"

"Not that," I said. "She wants to die to be free. I'm afraid she'll ask me to give her something to make her die."

"Lord take her when He ready," she told me. Then she left the room. I took a hot biscuit and gazed into the fire, wondering when He was going to be ready.

***

T
HE FAMILY CAME
home in a double gig. Grandma, Aunt Lucy, and Aunt Jane were with them. I jumped up to greet them.

Grandma and the others stayed two days and brought with them the outside world, robust and hearty.

We pulled taffy. We sang sacred music that night around the fire while Pa played his violin. Grandma told stories about Pa as a boy, how he'd made a "slope," a fish trap, across a branch of the Staunton River, and kept his family in fish.

How he loved hunting deer and hollowed out a canoe from a single log.

I didn't think about death when Grandma was around. She knew French, and taught us a game called "Cries of Paris." We children had been taught French by our tutor, though it was not very good.

But with her game, we learned more. Grandma had so many games that had to do with words and learning that I wished she could be our tutor.

What was to be the last evening of their visit, when Pegg went down to bring Mama's supper, Grandma was showing us how to engrave eggshells.

Of a sudden I heard Pegg running up the stairs, through the hall, and out the back door, banging it behind her. I knew something was wrong and went to wait by the back door. Pa was in the barn with MyJohn and John, because one of John's horses was dropping a foal.

How long I waited, I don't know. I heard Grandma's voice from the parlor. "We must let the egg soak in the vinegar until those parts not touched with tallow will stand out from the shell. It is called 'relief.'"

Then I saw the lantern Pa was holding as he came through the snow with Pegg.

"What's happened?" I asked when they came through the door.

Pegg gave me a look. "The window be broken down there. I find a pile of snow on the floor. Your mama huddled in her bed, coughin'."

***

P
A SENT FOR
Dr. Hinde, who first said it was an ague, then a distemper of the throat and chest.

Pa was so agitated we kept out of his way. "Who untied her strait dress?" He gathered us older ones together. Grandma stood between me and Betsy, her hand on our shoulders.

"Anne and Pegg are the only ones who go down there besides you, Pa," Patsy said.

Oh, she was quick to lay blame.

Pa looked at me.

"I haven't been down in two days."

His eyes narrowed. "Why?"

I shrugged and looked at the floor.

"I'm afraid I've been keeping them too busy," Grandma answered for me.

I'd never told anyone but Pa that Mama had said I was dead. I couldn't. If I did, Patsy wouldn't believe I was the one to inherit the bad blood. You had to grow up to inherit it.

I had to keep her believing that, for my own purposes.

I hadn't told anyone but Pegg what Mama had said about wanting her freedom or wanting to die. And Pa didn't know I'd heard it.

"Pegg?" Pa looked at her.

I saw that Pegg's amber eyes were steady, so, too, the voice. "No, Master, I never loosened the dress. But she toP me she knew how to do it."

Was this true? Had Pegg loosened the strait dress to help Mama hurt herself?

If so, it was my fault, for telling her Mama wanted to die, wasn't it?

When do you tell the truth and when do you lie? There it was again. Do you tell a lie, like I did about inheriting the bad blood, to keep someone from harm?

Do you tell the truth, like I told Pegg about Mama wanting to die? And see that truth mayhap come to hurt someone?

Dr. Hinde bled Mama. Pegg was to stay the night with her. Dr. Hinde stayed, too, sleeping in the traveler's room.

Pa sat up in the chair in front of the hearth in the parlor and finally fell asleep there. Everyone else went to bed. The house got quiet, except for the sound of rain now, freezing rain, against the windows.

I sat on the floor with my head leaning on a chair in the same room with Ea. I slept that way all night, waked every so often by visions and voices of my family. Charger sat next to me. When I woke, I'd put another log on the fire.

Early the next morning, in the dimness of a gray-frozen time, I was the one who heard Dr. Hinde come into the parlor. He looked disheveled and tired.

He came to Ea's chair and put a hand on his shoulder. "Mr. Henry," he said.

Pa woke, startled. "Does she still live?"

"She's suffering from a violent inflammation of the membranes of the throat," he said. "Her throat is near closed. The end is near."

Pa called the rest of them from their rooms, and they came, wrapped in sleep as well as their dressing robes. We all went belowstairs to sit around Mama's bed. Patsy must be the closest to her, of course.

Mama could not talk. Her eyes went from one of us to the other. How like a trapped animal she looks, I thought. She does not know us. She wonders who we are. Is my own dear mama somewhere in that feverish body?

John came close and held me. Patsy was praying from the Bible. The sound of Mama's rasping breath filled the room. Then it stopped. And very soon the doctor stepped forward and closed her eyes.

"Oh, my mama, my mama!" Patsy screamed. And she threw herself on Mama. MyJohn had to draw her away.

It was Grandma and I who held little Edward, Betsy, Will, and John. And I thought, well, isn't she our mama, too?

W
E BURIED
M
AMA
in the cemetery at Mount Briliant on a February day that the wind whipped around us the way March wind was supposed to do.

It was Grandma and Grandpa's place. Grandpa had been laid to rest in the same cemetery.

We huddled in the cold together while Reverend Henry read words that were snatched from his mouth, and Pa stood by looking like he was walking in his sleep and trying to figure out how he ended here at his pa's grave.

I wondered if Mama had found her freedom now, if she was happy. I wondered if Pa was thinking that it was the same freedom he went speechifying about, if her words about wanting to die, without it, went through his head.

Edward and Betsy stood close to me. Every so often one of them would whimper, and I'd hand them a piece of the home-pulled taffy I had in my pocket. Edward had promised to eat it quietly, so nobody could see. Betsy had not promised anything. She never did.

Neighbors and friends came. I saw Dorothea Dandridge standing with her father. Her petticoat was black silk and draped over a flannel underskirt. It made almost as much noise as the wind. I saw her smile at John, and his look returned. It was a look I'd never seen on John's face before. And I thought, you can't return something unless it was first given to you.

Grandma fed everyone afterward and hugged us children and rubbed our hands. She was brisk and businesslike and cheerful. She'd seen too much death on the frontier.

After everyone had eaten, Pa, Patsy, and MyJohn went home. We children stayed. And when we arrived home the next day, there was a giant bonfire in the yard.

"What is it for?" Will asked.

Pegg looked at us. "These are your mama's things."

I stood, horror-struck. "What things?"

"Everythin'," Pegg said. "Your pa, he want nothin' from your mama left."

I stood watching the leaping flames against the gold and red sunset of the sky, with bits and pieces of paper or ash in them. And I heard the crackling, and thought, I hope the wind takes the smoke to heaven, where Mama is. Then I ran into the house. Down through the hall to Mama's old room, which was now Patsy and MyJohn's.

It was stripped of curtains, bed hangings, rugs, everything that had belonged to my mother. Patsy stood folding some old fabric that had been imported from England.

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"Pa wants everything of Mama's burned."

"But to what end?"

"Because he can't bear to look at her things! When you grow up someday and love someone, you'll understand, Anne."

"But mayhap I want to keep something of Mama's."

"Well, you can't. Everything is gone."

On a small side table I spotted a brooch and some hair combs. My eyes sought them out, then met Patsy's.

"They're mine," she said.

"By what right?"

"By Pa's."

"It isn't fair!"

"I'm the oldest, Anne. I remember Mama longer than any of you. As the oldest daughter, Pa said I get to pick what I want. It's due me. And don't you go running to Pa. He's sore grieving."

I ran to her and snatched out of her hands the fabric from England.

"Come back here with that!"

I ran down the hall and bumped into MyJohn. "Here, where are you going? What's wrong?" He held me gently.

"Let me go!" I pounded on him. But he wouldn't.

Skirts raised to keep from tripping, Patsy came upon us and retrieved the fabric.

"It's mine!" I kicked at her then and hit her.

"You do inherit Mama's bad blood!" she shouted at me. "If you're not careful, I'll put
you
in the cellar."

"What is this?"

Pa came out of another room down the hall, which he now slept in. We stood quiet, all of us.

He came toward us, quiet and dignified. "We have just buried your mother. Can't we have some respect for the dead?"

"I was going to burn the fabric, Pa," Patsy said, "and she took it from me. It was Mama's. You wanted everything burned."

Pa held out his hand. Patsy gave him the folded fabric. It was of good cotton, cream-colored, with small red and blue flowers. He stroked it softly. "She held off making a dress of this because it was from England," he said. "She wanted to have a new dress for after Edward was born. She held this fabric, and measured it and draped it, this way and that."

Nobody said anything.

"You may have it, Anne," he said. And he handed the fabric to me.

"Pa!" Patsy started to protest, but his look silenced her.

I held close the fabric that Mama had held and measured and draped. "Thank you, Pa," I said.

Then Pa looked at MyJohn. "I want that room downstairs stripped clean and sealed up."

"Yes sir. I'll see to it."

And to Patsy, "And no more mention of anyone being put there!" he said sternly. "Haven't these children borne enough?"

Patsy's face flamed. And I knew I'd suffer for this the next time Pa went away.

***

H
AD
P
EGG LOOSENED
Mama's strait dress and given her the chance to end her own life?

It was a question I dared not dwell upon, and of course Pegg offered nothing in the way of any intelligence about the matter. In the days that followed, she went about her duties as usual. If anything, she stayed away from me, and I from her.