Susannah Morrow (3 page)

M
Y FATHER AND
I
SAT SILENT VIGIL AT MY MOTHER’S SIDE
. I’
D BEEN
praying for strength, listening to the soft slough of water and the mewling of the baby as Goody Way washed her by the fire.
Jude had awakened, though it was the middle of the night, and now she sat quietly huddled on the settle, clutching one of
my mother’s chemises tight in her little hands.

“Mama has gone to God, Charity? ’Tis true?” Jude’s small face looked wan and thin, too pale in the candlelight except where
the tracks of her tears shone golden against her skin.

My father made a sound—I could not tell what it was—and when I looked at him, his face was unreadable. I reached for Jude
and said quietly, “’Tis true, Jude. Mama is with God.”

“Will He take our sister too? Like He did baby Isaac?”

Isaac was our brother who had died two years ago—only a few days after he’d been born. In that time, he’d never stopped squalling.
Sometimes I still heard his cries in my dreams, along with Mama’s constant
Hush, child. Hush-a-bye, now.
I did not know what to say to Jude. There had been too many babies lost since my own birth. I remembered how, when Jude was
delivered, I had refused to hold her for the longest time, sure that God would take her too.

“God will do as He sees fit,” Father said. He sounded strained.

Susannah knelt beside Jude. My aunt’s kind smile set a glow upon her countenance that was too beautiful to ignore. “You must
believe that she will stay with us, Jude,” she said. “We can only hope that God—”

“God will do as He sees fit,” Father repeated, this time sternly. “You must have faith, child. The Lord’s wisdom is not for
us to understand.”

Jude nodded, wide-eyed, and I envied her; how easily she accepted his scold. But Jude was quiet and easy; she bore chastisements
with unflinching attention and then put them aside. I had never seen in her the same hunger I felt, the yearning for a kind
word from our father.

Susannah nodded toward Goody Way and my new sister. “The babe will need a name.”

Father drew in a breath slowly. “Will she live?”

“It seems so.”

“Mama liked the name Deliverance,” I said quickly.

“Deliverance?” Father asked.

Jude said, “Can I call her Livvy, Father? Goody Hobbs is Deliverance too, and that’s what Goody Abbott calls her.”

Father shook his head. “We shall call her Faith.” Then he murmured, “Faith” again, as if trying the word on his tongue and
finding it a pleasant taste. “Aye. To remind us of what we could use more of in this household.”

“You’d best find a wet nurse for this one, Lucas, or won’t be enough faith in the world to keep her alive,” Goody Way said
from the fireplace.

“A wet nurse?” Father frowned, and then he leaned his head back on the bedpost as if Goody Way had exhausted him. In only
those few moments, he’d gone from us again, already distant. “God help me, I cannot think of that now.”

I nearly jumped from the bed in my eagerness to help him. “There’s milk in the cellar. Shall I get it?”

He nodded, and I hurried from the parlor to the narrow stairs just inside the front door. I grabbed the nearest betty lamp.
The light gamboled from my hand, sending my own shadow swinging before me. As always, the cellar was dark and filled with
smells: the yeast of brewing beer and the tang of cider, pungent onions, dusty dried apples hanging from strings, the moldy
sharpness of aging cheese, and the faint sourness of milk.

It was my chore each morning and evening to milk Buttercup and to pour off the milk into shallow pans for the cream to rise,
and so even in the dim light, this task did not take long. I heard the talk upstairs, low voices that were only muffled rumblings
through the floor, and I hurried, determined to show my father how quick I could be. ’Twas the most useful I’d felt since
Mama’s labor had begun.

I had just set the milk pan back on the shelf when I heard something.

’Twas a soft sound, like a sigh, but loud enough to hear above the spitting sing of the fermenting cider. I paused, listening,
and then felt…something…the brush of air against my cheek, the faint rise of the hairs on the back of my neck. There was a
presence here, and yet I was not afraid as I turned slowly toward the barrels of small beer lined against the far wall.

There stood my mother.

I gasped, afraid to believe what I saw, more afraid not to. “Mama?” I whispered.

She tried to say something, but I couldn’t hear her words. I reached out to her…and she was gone.

My hands shook on the pail handle; I felt my tears on my cheeks. I stared at the dirt wall, willing her to return. “Come back,
Mama,” I pleaded. “Come back.”

’Twas then I heard little Faith upstairs, starting to cry, a high-pitched wailing that did not sound healthy to me, as if
she could not get enough air into her lungs. I heard my father call, “Charity? What keeps you?” and with a final look back
at the place my mother’s spirit had been, I took the milk upstairs.

When I reached the hall, Goody Way stared at me oddly. “What ails you, child? You look pale.”

“She’s just lost her mother. I’d think ’twould be reason enough for paleness, don’t you?” Susannah asked.

I tried to gather my wits. “I’m well enough,” I said hastily, another lie to add to my sins. “Truly I am.”

“Well then, bring the milk over,” Goody Way told me. “Have you a rag? A clean one, mind you.”

I ran to get that too, and when I brought it back, the midwife sat on the settle and pulled the pail of milk close. I watched
as she twisted the rag and dipped the end into the milk and tried to dribble it into the babe’s mouth. Most of it trickled
over Faith’s red little cheeks. Her screaming grew louder.

“You’d best start thinking now, Lucas,” Goody Way said. “Even if she takes to this, she won’t survive on it. She needs mother’s
milk to thrive.”

I so rarely saw my father look helpless. I looked up at him, standing next to the bed he’d shared with my mother, her body
only a shadow beyond the curtains that looked gray in the darkness. I thought I saw hesitation and uncertainty in his eyes.
And fear. Fear in my fearless father, in the man who I knew was afraid of nothing but God.

He looked so bereft, I longed to comfort him, to be comforted.

Perhaps he feels the same way.
The thought came to me suddenly. I looked at him—yes, he needed me now that Mama was gone. Perhaps he would need me so much
that he would love me at last.…

“Is there no one who’s had a babe lately?” Susannah asked.

“Hannah Penney,” I said. “Her Johnnie’s but a month old.”

My father started. His dark brows came together. “No child of mine will be in that home.”

I had displeased him again.

Susannah asked, “Who is Hannah Penney?”

“A neighbor,” my father answered.

“Charity is right, Lucas,” Goody Way said. Her voice was mild, and it reminded me of the way my mother talked to him, that
easy voice that always calmed him and made him listen. The voice I had never been able to copy, and would never have dared
to use, in any case. “Hannah’s loyalty is to her husband now.”

“George Penney is involved enough with Tom Putnam for the both of them,” Father said. “And Hannah’s father has too much invested
in Putnam to let his son-in-law make his own decisions. Who do you think was behind George’s purchase of those three acres
next to Putnam’s land? ’Twas John Tyler. He’s got his nose into everything George does.”

Goody Way sighed. “Lucas—”

“George and Sam Nurse were arguing over a boundary just last week. ’Tis sure that Tom Putnam’s involved in all that too. There’s
bad blood enough between him and Sam.”

“That’s all in the past,” Goody Way protested.

“Aye. But ’twill cause trouble in the Village Committee, and there’s enough argument there as it is. I won’t have my daughter
exposed to it.”

I wished I had kept quiet.

Goody Way only shrugged as if she’d heard these things too often to care. “Will you be the one trying to feed this child,
Lucas? She’ll be safe enough with Hannah, and you only a few hundred yards away. Thomas Putnam won’t be involving any infants
in this, and well you know it. You send this babe over to Hannah, Lucas—’twill be the best thing all around.”

My father didn’t answer. I saw him look to Mama’s body again, and then he glanced at me and rubbed the small beard on his
chin, sighing as if I troubled him, and I wanted to creep into the darkest corner of the room. But then he turned to Goody
Way and said reluctantly, “Very well. We’ll deliver her to Hannah when I take you home again. But ’twill have to be after
the storm passes. The babe will drown in this weather before we can get half a mile.”

Goody Way nodded. “’Tis the best thing, Lucas.”

“’Twill give the child a better chance,” Susannah said softly. Her voice was low, like my mother’s, and there was a cadence
to it that matched Mama’s rhythm; so for just a moment, I was confused. I found myself searching again for the spirit—’twas
my mother I heard, and Susannah I saw, and I could not reconcile the two.

My father turned back to the darkness, to my mother. He had already forgotten us—me and Jude and even my new sister, Faith.
I knew because of the way he stood, that familiar stance. I felt as I had when I was thirteen and he’d come home one day to
tell me that he’d made arrangements to send me out to the Andrewses’ home in Salem Town. I was past old enough to leave home,
and they needed a servant. I had cried and begged him not to do it. I had run to him, throwing my arms around his knees to
make him listen, and for just a moment, I had thought I’d changed his mind. I felt him soften, felt his hand on my hair. But
then he’d pushed me away and gone outside, closing the door softly behind him.

I remember turning to my silent mother, crying that he cared nothing for me, for any of us, and she admonished me in a soft
voice that stung even more, and said, “He loves you, Charity. More than you know.” Then she had gone after him. I never knew
what she said or what she did, but I didn’t go to the Andrewses’, and he never threatened to send me out again.

Those things came back to me now, as real as if they’d just happened, and suddenly I felt the dearth of my mother’s presence
like an icy chill in the damp, smoky air of the hall. Even baby Faith seemed to feel the cold, because she quieted, so that
when Father spoke again, his voice sounded too loud. “I’ll make the coffin myself. There’s a goodly amount of white pine in
the barn.”

Mama had always loved the smell of pine and the feel of it when my father had planed and shaped it. She had exclaimed over
a corner cupboard he’d made only a few days before—the memory came back to me sweetly, and I felt again like crying. When
I met my father’s eyes, he nodded as if he remembered it too, and the shared memory became, for just a moment, something like
a kiss between us, a tenderness that made me long for more, and then it was gone.

“She’ll need to be laid out,” he said.

I blinked away my tears. “I’ll dress her in the green—”

My father looked startled. “’Tis no job for a child.”

“I am not a child. I am nearly sixteen.” I stepped to where Father stood and reached for the blanket covering my mother. My
voice trembled with the need to make him understand. “I can do this, Father. You’ll see. I—”

He gave me a long sad look that took my voice. He lifted his hand—he was going to hold me at last. I let my mother’s blanket
fall and turned.…His hand dropped to his side, and his voice was a little rough when he said, “You’re still a child. Let your
aunt take care of it.”

My tears came; I could not stop them. I had misjudged him once again. I could not be the good, righteous girl he wanted, no
matter how hard I tried, and my lack settled into me like a stain only the two of us could see.

“You could help me, Charity,” my aunt said, but I shook my head—the gift was too scant. It was not what I wanted.

“No, Father’s right,” I said bitterly. “I am just a child.”

“Charity,” Father warned, and I could not stand it any longer. I could not bear my own longing for his comfort. I ran from
the room, racing for the freezing bedroom I shared with Jude, angry that my father still thought me the smallest of children,
that he would not allow me to do the things that were my right.…But more than that, I was angry at my mother for dying, for
leaving me alone here without allies or friends. Hell was not fire, as Master Parris said. Hell was cold as ice and barren
as winter, and it was a place I knew too well. Hell was the distance in my father’s eyes whenever he looked at me.

The next day, the storm was gone, taking with it the clouds and the wind, leaving behind bitter cold under clear skies. In
those first moments after waking, it felt like any other morning, but then I remembered Susannah, and Jude was out of the
trundle and curled like a hard little ball into my side, and I remembered that the world had changed overnight.

Mama was gone.

I remembered the cellar and the sad way her specter had looked at me, and now, with the fresh eyes of a night’s rest, I recognized
that it had been a waking dream, and the realization brought a terrible sadness. I could not imagine a world without her.

I got out of bed and fell to my knees in prayer, desperate for the balm of God’s presence, but I felt no reassurance, and
’twas with a sore heart that I woke Jude and we dressed to go downstairs.

My father had already left, and Goody Way too, along with the new baby. Susannah was readying to lay out my mother. As we
watched, she poured water into a tub and hefted it. At the parlor doorway, Susannah stopped and looked over her shoulder at
me. “Are you coming?”

She expected me to watch, and since I could not do the tasks that were mine to do, I consoled myself with the thought that
I could make sure my aunt made no mistakes. So I followed her into the parlor. No fire had been laid to corrupt Mama’s body,
so the room was dark and cold. I lit a candle and saw that the bed was mussed, as if someone had lain beside her, and I wondered
then where my father had slept last night, if he had spent the hours cradling her lifeless body, praying for her soul. I could
not imagine it.