The Wives of Henry Oades: A Novel

by Johanna Moran

  She laid a trembling hand on her belly. “Poor innocents. I don’t understand.” She crossed her arms and rocked herself, searching the dark ceiling for answers. The sopranos in the next room sang at the top of their lungs. Help of the helpless, O abide with me. “I don’t understand one damn bit of it.”

  Mr. Oades reached, touching her hand briefly, creating in her a small serenity, a sense of surrender. Even the baby seemed to respond.

  “It’s impossible at first,” he said. “You don’t believe it now, but the days shall get easier in time. Don’t punish yourself when they do, Mrs. Foreland; don’t despair the first time you experience a bit of contentment.”

  Mrs. Tillman came in then, chattering sopranos in tow. Mr. Oades stood, nodding greetings. Only now did Nancy notice the singing had stopped. Wraps and hats were doled out. The ladies giggled, fussing over whose was whose, their careless arms flailing. Nancy got up and took the jar from its precarious perch at the edge of the credenza. Mrs. Tillman raised one eyebrow in her direction, as if to say, what is that doing here?

  Nancy clutched the jar to her bosom, guarding Francis, shielding, too, the one possession to her name aside from the black dress and baggy drawstring drawers.

  Mr. Oades said his good-byes shortly after the ladies did. Nancy followed him onto the porch, still cradling the ginger jar. “I can’t begin to adequately thank you, sir. I know my father will want to thank you, too, for standing in for him, watching over me as you have.”

  “Will you be returning to Texas then?”

  She nodded. “After the baby comes.”

  Mr. Oades fumbled behind a lapel for a pencil and paper scrap. He scribbled down his post office number. “Will you write once settled?”

  “If you’d like. I wouldn’t know what to say. My husband was the one. You’d think his letters were written by a college professor.”

  Mr. Oades looked away, squinting into the sun. “It’d do me some good to know that you and your baby arrived safely.” He seemed on the verge of saying more, but didn’t. He stepped off the porch, turning halfway down the walkway, tipping his hat in farewell. Nancy waved, sorry to see him go. He’d made her feel a degree less alone today.

  FINALLY. After weeks of queasy panic, imagining him ill, comatose, dead as a doornail, her father’s letter arrived, along with twenty precious dollars and a promotional circus poster featuring nearly naked Serena, Peerless Fearless Queen of the Serpents. The advertisement put a shiver in Nancy’s slippers. Black snakes slithered all over the tiny woman; a dozen were reared back with their jaws open, as if about to bite her placid, heart-shaped face.

  Mrs. Tillman leaned across the breakfast table, her face pinched in revulsion. “What in the world?”

  On the back of the poster, in his familiar loopy hand, her father had written: The reptiles are old and have had their poison fangs removed. Even so. How desperate would a lady have to be to take up with snakes?

  “I guess my father is acquainted with her,” murmured Nancy, scanning his letter. She started over, disbelieving. The letter was written six weeks ago. He was already long gone.

  New York, NY, October 17, 1898

  My dear daughter Nancy:

  I know this letter will find you full of sorrow at the unexpected loss of your young husband. I regret to hear the news, and hasten to offer you the enclosed twenty dollars, which I hope will provide financial comfort in your time of distress.

  By the time you read this I will be in Europe with the Barnum & Bailey circus. I signed on as a front man, which means I will travel ahead of the show, and see to a number of tasks. I will not bore you with the details at this sad juncture. Suffice it to say I am in no position to care for you and my beloved grandchild. The contract with B & B is binding for two years. My hands are legally tied. Would that I could better assist.

  The Brenham house was sold eight months ago. Your brother Sanford resides now at the Austin State Hospital. He gained a great deal of weight over the years and became too large to manage on my own. He appears much better off where he is.

  How would her father know he was better off? Sanford never spoke. He grunted, squealed, but as hard as her mother tried, she never got him to say the first word.

  Daughter, I know your optimistic nature too well to think that you will remain buried in grief. I have suffered my own black days and have learned firsthand that: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Psalms 30:5.

  I will write again soon. Meanwhile you are in my daily thoughts and prayers.

  Your loving father,

  Herbert “Hick” Hickey

  Nancy excused herself from the table. She scooped up the money, letter, and poster, and waddled up to her chilly little room. Under the covers she read his letter again, still thinking she’d missed the instructions regarding her future. But she had not.

  Two weeks later, on December 16th, after a full day and night of grueling labor, bald-headed, blue-eyed, red-faced Gertrude came howling into the world. Five weeks after her birth, the Tillmans’ son returned from missionary work in China and assumed his room, Nancy’s room until now. She and the cranky baby had long since worn out their welcome, anyway. The reverend wrote a letter of introduction, attesting to Nancy’s good reputation, which he gave to Mrs. Osgood, the owner of the boardinghouse. After four nights there she was asked to leave due to the infant’s endless squalling. Nancy begged Mrs. Osgood for time to make other arrangements. When the woman begrudgingly consented, Nancy sent a messenger to Mr. Oades.

  Gertrude had just burped up her afternoon bottle when he arrived. Nancy ushered him inside, messy drooling baby on her shoulder. She couldn’t afford to offer him anything. A greasy breakfast and supper came with the room. Beyond that, she was charged extra.

  Mr. Oades held out his arms. “May I?”

  “You want to hold her?”

  “Oh, please,” he said.

  The fancy parlor was crammed with plush furniture. Nancy was afraid to put the baby down anywhere in the house for fear she’d leak or worse. She carried Gertrude around the livelong day, keeping her in a dresser drawer at night. “Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Oades. Your nice suit.”

  “Not to worry,” he said. He had a red mark on his neck, a shaving nick, probably. Francis was always nicking himself.

  Nancy shifted Gertrude, frowning down on her baby, trying to read her wants. She was peaceful now, but that wouldn’t last. “She’s been bawling her head off all morning. Maybe I’m doing something wrong.”

  Mr. Oades eased the sticky baby from her hands. “Let’s have a cross lass.”

  “Look at her poor splotched face.”

  “It’ll fade in due course,” he said. “My Josephine was the same.”

  “She looks all right to you then? She looks like a normal baby?”

  He smiled. “She’s a lovely girl, a perfect girl.” Gertrude stared up at him, seemingly transfixed by his beard. He began humming to her.

  With empty arms, Nancy collapsed on the settee, bone-weary and cockeyed from lack of sleep. She hadn’t felt clean since before Gertrude’s birth. Her unproductive, sour-smelling breasts ached, and she was still wearing rags to sop the disgusting bloody discharge that wouldn’t quit.

  Mr. Oades paced to the far wall and turned, at home with her baby, singing a lullaby now.

  She told him about her father. “Like a little boy running off to the join the circus! I’m at my wit’s end, Mr. Oades. I didn’t know what to do next. I thought on it and thought on it. Yesterday it came to me, and so I sent for you. You’ve been such a helpful friend, sir. I’ll just come out and ask…could I come and keep house for you? I’m not the best cook in the world, but I’m not the worst either. You wouldn’t have to pay much. Room and board are my main concern.”

  He came to her. “Mrs. Foreland.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “Don’t look at me that way, please. You think I’m off my rocker. I knew it was a crazy idea. I can’t think straight anymore.”
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br />   He sat down beside her. She studied her wedding band, refusing to meet his eyes. “Crazy ideas are my specialty these days,” she murmured.

  Gertrude gurgled, suckling a tiny fist. “Marry me, Mrs. Foreland.” He said it so softly she almost didn’t hear. She looked at him and knew at once the offer was sincere. He had a nice mouth and honest eyes, a hound dog’s beseeching liquid eyes.

  “You take your pity a step too far, Mr. Oades. But I thank you just the same.”

  “I realize I’m too old for you…”

  Just how old was he? Thirty-five? Forty? Not impossibly old.

  “…But I’d move mountains to make you and Gertrude happy.”

  “You don’t mean it,” she said. But she knew that he did.

  “I do.”

  “We barely know each other.”

  He stroked Gertrude’s bald head. “I feel as though we do,” he said.

  She liked him fine, gentle as he was, and she trusted him. But that was not saying she was even remotely in love with him. He couldn’t suppose that she was. Though what did love mean or matter at this stage, anyway? Just a bunch of heart-fluttery nonsense. She was hot and confused, on the verge of yet more useless tears. What else in God’s name was she to do?

  His cheeks were flushed, his look hopeful. “Will you give it thought, madam?”

  She whispered “yes,” glancing toward the stairs. The house was full of busybodies, the queen of whom, with her razor-sharp voice, was salty Mrs. Osgood herself.

  Mr. Oades returned sleepy Gertrude to her arms. He stood, taking his hat and coat from the tree. “Will you send word? Either way?”

  “Of course, Mr. Oades.”

  They shook hands at the door, both smiling shyly.

  That evening before bed she took it up with Francis, who rested inside his ornate jar on top of the chest of drawers. She swore he’d remain first in her heart always.

  She married Mr. Oades the following week and moved to his farm, where a brand-new crib and highchair were waiting for Gertrude. It was a good-size house, with a spare room slated to become her sewing room. There was a garden, and a girl to help with the chores and the baby. Nancy found contentment eventually, and when she did, she took her new husband’s advice and didn’t despair.

  North Island

  1895

  CANNIBALS, every last one of them, the women no exception.”

  The hyperbolic Mr. Wylie from Surrey, a man who shoe-blacked his whiskers, had claimed it of the Maori. Three years into their captivity, Margaret Oades still recalled his bluster.

  They’d been in the social room after services. “The savage have a name for a human roast,” he’d said, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. “Long pig, they call it.”

  “Ah, go on,” said someone else. “That was then.”

  “They’ve come to know the Lord since,” said another.

  “Not all of them,” Mr. Wylie said.

  John had piped up. “Do they boil people alive, sir?”

  Henry and Margaret had shushed him. Such an imagination, they murmured to each other. Such a brilliant curiosity. He gets it from you.

  No, he most definitely gets it from you, Henry.

  Later, alone with Henry, she’d asked, “There’s no truth to it, is there?”

  Henry laughed. “Not to worry. You haven’t enough meat to make a decent roast.”

  Heading toward the latrine pits this afternoon, Margaret thought about that silly conversation, imposing upon it meaning, a sign that her husband would be coming for them soon. He began, not for the first time, turning up everywhere.

  That same night he appeared dressed in a set of old drawers, the set she’d mended the day they were taken. He sat at the edge of her sleeping mat and spoke in his normal tone, engaging her in an ordinary conversation. Her roses were doing splendidly, he distinctly said, but sorry to say the gardenias were on the small and shriveled side.

  Two mornings later, while tending the crops, Margaret heard him calling her name. She took a demented half moment to mourn her appearance before charging across the field in the direction of his voice. Josephine, hoeing thirty feet away, called to her. “Mum!” The old humpbacked woman stepped into her path, wooden spade raised like a spear. “Kaati!” Stay. Motes of vivid green light danced in Margaret’s vision. She ducked to the side, with a laugh in her throat. Two of the nimble young ones were on her in the next instant, wrestling her back to work.

  The hopelessness would set in soon enough, a long episode of it typically, followed by some semblance of acceptance, followed by more hopelessness, followed by yet another bout of arbitrary euphoria. Margaret recognized the periodic madness for what it was. She only regretted her ability to sustain it.

  SHE’D KNOWN Maori people in Wellington—not intimately, but well enough to discern profound differences between their tribes now. Several Maori families had attended church. One man in particular stood out in her memory. He sang in the choir, an angelic tenor, incapable, seemingly, of murder and enslavement.

  Their captors were not Christians. The people were governed by various gods and by the promise of Reinga, a heavenly reward of a sort. Of tantamount importance were their tapus—taboos, more or less. All conduct was regulated by one tapu or another.

  One cardinal tapu concerned property. A man’s belongings, particularly a chieftain’s belongings—his tools, his weapons, even the basket that held his food—were tapu. To come in contact with his personal property was to interfere with his mana and the mana of his family. Mana, as Margaret came to understand it, was a rather ethereal quality, critical to one’s success and happiness, but not to be depended upon. One might lose one’s mana, or be deserted by one’s mana, as she once observed.

  When two sons of a young warrior died within days of each other, it was said that the man’s mana, his good fortune, had deserted him. The villagers were then free to pillage his house, which they did, taking everything of value, leaving him with a food basket and two sleeping mats.

  To speak to certain people at critical times was also tapu. Not even his wife spoke to a man while he was having his facial tattoo, his moko, chiseled. Margaret never witnessed the actual surgery, but she’d glimpsed the crusty scabs often enough. The majority looked in need of a sugar tit afterward, or their mum’s own.

  The moko was done in stages, the procedure beginning as boy turned to man, and taking years to complete. The forehead was carved first, the cheeks last. The pattern applied to the cheeks was unique to the individual. It became his family crest in a manner of speaking. The same pattern was then carved on his doorpost with great ceremony.

  Margaret and the children were never in any danger of breaking the speaking tapu, for at no time did they speak first. As slaves, they were the lowest of the low. Margaret made the mistake of straying too close to the burial ground once and was chastised, but that was the worst of it to date. She might have been whipped that time if not for a Maori child with an old woman’s face. The wizened girl yanked on Margaret’s skirt in warning, shaking a fist and stamping her feet. The small theatrics made the girl tapu, though she did not remain so for long. She was absolved in a cleansing rite down by the river. Margaret did not understand it all fully, any more than she understood the quid pro quo of her own faith. One takes communion every single Sunday for thirty-odd years. One humbles herself, embraces every last dogmatic note, and no good comes of it, no help when one needs it most. That is not to say she did not continue to pray. She prayed constantly, babbling both to God and Henry. Please come today. The fervency might vary depending on the degree of desperation, but the words did not. She breathed the selfsame mantra all day, every day, never once letting up. Please come today.

  Escape was constantly on Margaret’s mind in the beginning. About a month into their captivity she discovered a rotting spot in the wooden fence surrounding the settlement. She quickly jabbed her fist while backs were turned, creating a hole, a thrilling accomplishment. Some days later, she buried a sharp dig
ging stone close by, to be used when the time came. She inspected the hole every chance. Weeks went by without repair, telling her the damage had gone unnoticed. She’d been about to take John into her confidence when a slave boy was caught and killed.

  The child could not have been more than twelve or thirteen. He lived with other Maori slaves, relatives, Margaret surmised, given the ardent degree of their mourning. The boy had attempted to scale the wall and was brought down with a greenstone mere, the simplest and deadliest of hand weapons. Margaret remained prepared to move swiftly, to gather the children and rush toward their rescuers, but only in her most delirious moments did she contemplate escape on their own after that—the risk was too great.

  The days ran together. She and the children toiled hard and long, though no harder or longer than anyone else. Even the chief’s wives did their share. Except for the gravely ill, all souls worked, even the ancient.

  She rose before dawn every day to help with the fire and the cooking of the morning meal. Normally there was plenty to eat. The tribe grew potatoes and kumara, a tasty enough sweet potato. There were eel and fish, delicious perch, which were dried and eaten with the fingers. The clams and mussels were eaten raw, though not by Margaret and her children after the first day or two. The Maori ate the shellfish putrid, until they were gone, with seemingly no ill effect. They also made cakes, horrible little indigestible lumps extracted from fern root. And there was an abundance of wild pig, so much, too much, pig.

  She thought it cruel the sneaky way the men went about the pig hunt, starting out after dark. They set fires, smoking the resting pigs from thickets and caves, falling upon the startled animals with spears. Mind, these were not the familiar docile farm creatures, but hideous beasts, grotesque beyond imagination, particularly the boars with their deadly tusks. Margaret and Josephine were regularly assigned the task of preparing the roasting pit. A solid day of digging was required for a monster so large, another three to lay the stones and cook it properly.