Tainted Harvest

by E. Denise Billups

  “Rock a bye, my baby bye;

  To take a baby gal so fair,

  To young missus, waitin’ there;

  When all was quiet as a mouse,

  In ole Massa's big fine house . . .”

  The rocker slows and grows still as her image and voice dissolve with sunrise.

  Moments later, Simone breaks through Delphine’s last hours with a loud wheeze, waking in a blanket on the closet floor with Parker crouched in a worried stoop beside her. Lost to her whereabouts, she glances around the empty wardrobe, into the room beyond, and lowers her gaze from the bright ceiling light to her bare feet. At once, aware of her nudity beneath the blanket, she draws her knees to her chest and sits upright, abashed. “Wha . . . how . . . where am I? How did I get here?”

  Parker raises his hands, palm open to show he’s no threat. “Calm down. You’re safe. Nothing happened here. You wandered upstairs into the third-floor bedroom adjoining my suite. I found you a few minutes ago.”

  Simone clutches the blanket to her chest, eyes widening in disbelief. “Oh, God, without clothes? How embarrassing. I’ve never sleepwalked, ever. No one saw me, I hope.”

  “Don’t worry. The closet was too dark to see anything but your outline. I draped you in the comforter at once.”

  “Parker, I’m so sorry.”

  “No apologies needed.”

  “I assure you I’ve never done anything like this before.” Simone drops her face to her knees, mumbling into the blanket. “The last thing I remember is taking a bath . . .” And the rolling peach and eerie quiet. She lifts her head, staring into the room. “What time is it?”

  “Six in the morning―”

  “Six? It was just night. I was taking a bath. Have I been here the entire evening?”

  “Ten minutes at most. Your footsteps woke me.” Parker recalls the patter of feet crossing the creaking floor toward the rustling closet door and the faint weeping and singing. He’d risen from his bed and entered the adjacent room as a figure vanished in the swaying chair. He turned, catching Simone’s nude body inside the closet, and at once covered her with a blanket. Saving her embarrassment, he’d lied, for he’d seen more than he admitted.

  Images of Delphine’s life emerge in Simone’s mind as though she’d lived every abject moment of her existence, even her painful death. She sits straighter under Parker’s gaze. “You must think I’m crazy wandering up here without clothes.”

  His brows crease with a wry grin. “Nah!” he says with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Guests walk around nude all the time.”

  Simone titters and lowers her gaze.

  “And no, I don’t think you’re crazy.”

  She scrunches her face, more uncomfortable with his lie. He’s just being polite like her dad with witty untruths to ease an awkward moment. His behavior suggests he’d seen her body, but he’s too much of a gentleman to admit it. She rejoins with humor to dispel unease. “I descended a watery hole to wonderland and emerged in the wrong place.” Parker's chortle lightens unease for a moment until thoughts of Delphine perturb her again. “I was in the tub and . . .” she says and pauses, afraid she'll appear even crazier.

  “What happened in the tub?”

  “Nothing,” she lies, lifting her gaze from Parker to the slanted ceiling.

  The nursery . . . I’m in Delphine’s room.

  She glances about the space, now a walk-in closet, the place Delphine’s curtained Dutch box bed was located. The area evokes images of Massa Henry pulling the mattress from the creaky wood frame to the floor.

  Yellow damask walls with bluebirds and butterflies perched on green vines are a forgotten memory now painted pastel blue over a tufted platform bed. A spot where white lace flowed over a canopy crib to the floor. The striped, white-and-blue rocking horse Delphine bumped into during her escape remains a precious antique, invoking a poignant farewell. Simone fixes her gaze on a haunting spot dappled in window light, a place where Delphine read to the twins and longed to return, the bright white rocker once a muted green. Lorelei’s raspy voice echoes a ghostly wail from her crimson canopy bed in a Victorian room swathed in green damask harlequin walls and rich Persian rugs now eggshell white with polished wooden floors.

  “The nursery was so real.”

  “It was a nursery years ago.”

  “Delphine showed me . . .” Simone pivots toward the loose plank in the corner. “The carving’s still here,” she mumbles, running her finger over imperceptible words faded into the wood.

  “So, Delphine’s presented herself to you, too?”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  Parker nods again. “When I returned to the States several years ago, I woke in the spot where you’re sitting just as disturbed, holding that antique writing box,” he divulges. “Every time I removed it from the closet, Delphine placed it back under the planks, where she wants it to stay.” Parker turns the closet light on and reads, “The twins were born to Delphine Randolph in 1862.” “No matter how many times I read this, I still sense her angry, firm grip on the vibrating knife craving into the planks. Amelia and I found the nursery furniture in the attic, and just as she’d showed me in dreams, she’d chiseled those same words into the crib,” he explains.

  Images of Delphine snaking beneath the high Dutch box bed flash before her as if she’d performed the actions, now a permanent memory. Simone lifts the loose plank and examines the empty hollow. “Are the books inside the box?” she asks, lifting the box at her side.

  “Yes, where they’ve remained since Delphine fled to Union camps.”

  Three distressed books stacked atop each other lie inside, the top book spotted. “It’s wet,” she mutters, wary of lifting the fragile books with unraveling bindings.

  Parker clears his throat, recalling the weeping moments ago, an event that happens every dawn. “Those are your tears.”

  “Mine?”

  “Well, Delphine’s tears manifested through your eyes. She brought you to where most mornings she weeps over those books.”

  She hadn’t removed her makeup last night. Picturing her mascara-smudged face, she wipes under her eyes and over her cheeks. “You sure I was crying?”

  “Your eyes are red.”

  Simone blinks away the blurriness she’d assumed was remnants of sleep. “This happened to you?”

  Parker nods. “Amelia found me bewildered with bloodshot eyes in the same spot. For a moment, relief washed over me as though I, not Delphine, had escaped the contraband camp. Delphine knew she’d died, but in death she found freedom, although now she is stuck between two worlds. The place where her bones exist and the home she desired here with the twins.”

  “The images were so real . . . Her soul remains with us.”

  “So we can tell her story and never forget.”

  Simone lifts one book at a time from the box. Stories she’d read many times as a child. The Night Before Christmas. The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard, and her Dog. Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “Delphine learned to read and write from these stories.”

  “They comforted her when troubled.”

  She lifts an antique fountain pen from the bottom of the box.

  Parker narrows his gaze. “She used the pen to write, but I never found evidence of her script. She must have discarded note pads or whatever she used to write fearing Lorelei’s discovery.” Parker sits on the floor with a heavy sigh and folds his legs, steepling his fingers at his chin.

  Alert to the shift in his body language, Simone places the books back in the box and grips her knees closer to her chest with raised brows. “Is something wrong?”

  He releases a breath, holding Simone’s gaze for a quiet moment. No matter how many times he’s divulged this story to others, it still gives him pause, apprehensive of their reaction. “Delphine wanted others to recognize she not Lorelei Randolph was the children’s mother. It’s the reason you’re here, Simone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you asked what happe
ned to Delphine at her portrait yesterday, I wasn’t ready to divulge such an intricate story, one I’d planned to explain today.” He lifts his head toward the wardrobe ceiling and glances around the space with a wry grin. “I couldn’t have chosen a better spot to share our history.”

  “Our history?”

  Parker nods. “Soon after I returned from London to assume ownership of Magnolia, on my first night back, Delphine’s visitations began, and they didn’t stop until I told her story.

  “Wait a minute. It just dawned on me we’re experiencing the same dreams. Why you and me?”

  Parker cups his mouth, blowing air into his hands, and states straightforwardly, “Only her offspring have these dreams. We’re Delphine’s descendants. Her connection is powerful, even in death.” Parker pauses, expecting a reaction, but not a wrinkle creases her face. He perceives the next revelation will rouse a response and heartache. “Your mother was just as silent.”

  “Mom? Lily?”

  Parker nods. “We spoke days before she passed. I’m sorry for your loss, Simone. Lily was interested in knowing more and planned to meet me here at Magnolia. When she explained her daughter worked for Happy Brides Magazine, owned by one of my dearest friends, I concluded the universe intervened. Such schemes aren’t mere chance. Bridgette and I contrived a pretense to bring you here. I apologize for the deception. There is a story, but not the one you’d planned to write.” Parker perceives trouble beneath her stoic expression. He’d hug her, but she might reject his comfort.

  “I wondered why Bridgette sent me on another assignment so soon. What if I had refused the job?”

  “Then I would have phoned you.” His brows knit, wondering if she's always phlegmatic when receiving shocking news?

  Noticing Parker's furrowed brows, she shakes her head, patting his hand for reassurance. "I'm not angry just relieved to have answers and my sanity," she says with a quiet chuckle. "Why didn’t Mom or Dad tell me?”

  “I suspect Lily didn’t have time to tell either of you before her death.”

  “Mom tried to tell me about Delphine in my dreams. She wants me here to know my relation to her.” Simone wraps her arms tighter about her legs with a grieved sigh. “Such pain. Delphine lamented till her last breath about abandoning the twins." She gazes toward the area where the crib once stood. The spot where Delphine said farewell to the twins. "What became of the children?”

  “Henry Randolph accepted the boys and Delphine’s firstborn as his own . . .”

  “As he should. They were his babies.”

  “He accepted his responsibility. Whether out of love or obligation, we will never know. But the children inherited the plantation, and so did their descendants.”

  “How did you tell her story?”

  “Do you recall the hymns rising from the bluff in the dream?”

  “How can I forget? It’s ingrained forever.”

  “At the university, I dabbled in poetry a bit but gave it up, saving the world from another bad poet,” he says with a titter and headshake. “When I started writing her story, words flowed from my pen in stanzas, the guide I believe Delphine. When the dreams persisted, I knew they’d continue unless I shared the poem. At Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture’s front desk, I left the poem with an anonymous letter for the director. Months later, a permanent display on thousands of freed slaves who lost their lives behind contraband camps in the Devil’s Punchbowl hung on the museum wall.”

  Parker?! He’s Ella’s anonymous poet. “Did the dreams stop?”

  “Yes, but Delphine’s children’s posterity still haunted me. Through genealogy, I uncovered the twins and her firstborn’s descendants, which led to you and your mother.”

  Parker's rapid eye blinks call attention to his thick lashes, which resemble Delphine’s, and now she realizes, her mother’s. Ah, she thinks. He hugged her when she arrived because she's his long-lost relative. “We're distant cousins?” she asks in a tone more like a statement.

  “We're kin through a long bloodline. We might have lived our entire lives unaware if not for Delphine.”

  “Anyone with a drop of her blood could have these dreams.”

  “Delphine’s descendants might be extensive.”

  Simone gathers the blanket around her breast, squeezes her thighs together, and pushes herself off the floor. Folding the comforter more tightly around her body, she strolls from the closet toward the rocker glowing in the soft morning light. The spot where Delphine read to the twins and had many times considered leaping through the open window. “She was a prisoner here.”

  “Every slave was a prisoner, living an awful existence. Though Delphine never toiled the fields, she suffered a shameful ignominy under Lorelei and Henry's roof. This suite will forever belong to Delphine and her descendants. My wife, Amelia, is four months pregnant.”

  “Congratulations. A boy?”

  Parker’s brows arch.

  “Baby blue,” she says, glancing at the wall.

  “Ahh, the color. I stripped and painted the walls last month when we decided to restore the room as a nursery and dragged the rocking horse and rocking chair from the attic.”

  “Is that wise . . . I mean, with Delphine’s visitations?”

  “She’d never harm her blood, family. Simone, Delphine only wants kin to recognize their heritage and to tell others what happened after she escaped the plantation. For days, she haunted my dreams until I yielded. Unfortunately, Lily’s heart wasn’t strong enough to handle the dreams. Several of our ancestors died from heart arrhythmias, which I believe Lily also had. I’m surprised doctors hadn’t caught it before her death.”

  “That’s what I said to Dad. Arrhythmias?”

  “Yes. Genealogical research showed several relatives died from sudden heart attacks. For my own peace of mind, I had my heart examined. Doctors explained familial heart conditions can skip a generation, as it did mine. I believe Delphine’s low body fat from starvation, exposure, and giving birth triggered heart failure while she slept. Have you been tested?”

  “Yes, Dad and I saw doctors after Mom passed. Test results came back good. No heart issues.” Simone recalls Lily clutching her chest in the dream. She was trying to tell her. “I didn’t believe Mom died from heart failure. Now I know the truth. The dreams triggered the heart attack.”

  “Simone, the dreams won’t stop until you tell her tragedy. How you communicate the narrative is your choice. With your writing experience, you’ll find the proper forum.”

  Simone slides her hand along the rocker, tilting it back and forth, recalling what she’d learned in school about slavery. “I’d never heard of the Devil’s Punchbowl. Why isn’t the forced starvation of thousands of freed slaves written in history books?”

  “Why aren’t the stories of Black Wall Street or Native Americans told? Such atrocities are stains on this country’s history. No one wrote about our ancestor’s past, unrecorded narratives told by word of mouth for generations. Growing up in Natchez, various versions resonated as more myth than fact. But after Delphine’s dreams, the truth is undeniable.”

  Simone nods in agreement, despite never hearing the term Black Wall Street. But given the context of the conversation, she presumes it’s another historical tragedy, one she’ll research later, too embarrassed to ask. “I wish others could see what we saw.”

  “Delphine’s bloodline is sizable and still growing. Many more will know the truth.”

  Simone walks to the window and gazes at the colorful garden where slave cabins once existed. “What happened to Delphine’s firstborn, the twins, and Josie?”

  Parker rises from the floor toward Simone and stares at the yard. “The twins designed the garden.”

  “The twins?”

  Parker nods. “They demolished the cabins and extended Josie’s garden. Amelia and I had a brick walkway paved around the periphery and placed benches alongside the live oaks. We strove to maintain the twin’s original design and added a few more annuals and pe
rennials to expand Josie’s garden and eradicate an ugly history. The twins planted many herbs over the years: basil, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme, sorrel, onions, chives, just to name a few. Our chef picks fresh herbs and vegetables for meals just as Josie had for Lorelei and as she did later when she was the mistress of the house.”

  “The garden looks like a colorful quilt.”

  “Hmm, yea, I’ve never seen it that way, but you’re right.” Parker throws her a side glance, then gazes at a trail he’s observed many evenings. “It might console you to know I’ve glimpsed Delphine near the garden at night. Whenever she materializes, fireflies assemble near the trees,” he says, pointing at the overgrown passage through which she had escaped with Benoit. “She raced from the woods toward a petite woman and young man standing in the garden.”

  “Josie and Benoit?”

  “Yes. I near bawled when a young girl, I believe her firstborn, ran toward Delphine. Then the most miraculous thing happened. Two identical men drifted from the house toward them.”

  “The twins?”

  “Yes. The five gathered in a hug, then Delphine lifted her firstborn in a joyous twirl. A swarm of fireflies bathed them in light right before they vanished. I’ve seen these flashes only twice, but it’s a comfort knowing they’ve reunited.”

  Simone’s eyes mist over envisioning the six together. “She’s reunited with her family and firstborn in death.”

  “Yes. I believe so.”

  “Don’t her visits frighten you?”

  “The first time, but not anymore. I’ve grown as accustomed to Delphine as I have this creaking home and its persistent cool spots. She’s a harmless essence in the woodwork. And to answer your question about their fate, Josie held Delphine's place in the home after her escape. A year later, consumption took Lorelei. Josie wasn’t just a cook or mammy to Delphine’s children. She was Henry’s common-law wife until he died at seventy-five. They raised the children together. Josie passed soon after Henry, leaving Delphine’s offspring as Magnolia’s lawful heirs.”