Imogene turned in a slow circle—seemingly taking in every nook and cranny of the tiny flat with her deep-set brown eyes—and came to a stop, her back to Kassandra. She turned her head to send Kassandra a measured stare over her shoulder.
“You think you quite the mistress of the place, don’t you?”
Kassandra smiled self-consciously and simply stood, barely inside her doorway, and wiped her hands on the front of her skirt.
“Come in here, child,” Imogene said, fully facing Kassandra and beckoning her in with the slightest movement of her little hand.
Kassandra took a few steps away from the door, feeling like an invited guest into Imogene’s court. Solemnly, and a bit uncomfortable in her own home, she followed the older woman’s silent instructions and sat down in the chair Imogene pulled out for her.
“Now I already tell you how Mr. Ben feel about this baby,” Imogene said, standing directly in front of Kassandra, the volume of her tattered skirts keeping her quite a distance from Kassandra’s own. “But now I got to ask you.”
Kassandra had a sudden feeling of being back in school, straight and proper in her desk, prepared to answer any question the unforgiving mistress might toss her way
“So, you tell me, child. You want this baby? You want it alive?”
“Of course I do! Don’t be silly.”
“Phah, no silly there. I see women every day don’t care if their baby live. For that, I don’t care if they live, neither.”
“Well, I do,” Kassandra said, offended at being lumped in with the tragic creatures she saw prowling the neighborhood streets every day.
A slow, thin grin spread across Imogene’s face, causing one eye to close nearly completely while the brow of the other lifted like a thin brown cat arching its back. “You know, this baby tie you to Mr. Ben. This baby make you his forever. Makes this your home. Makes this your life.”
“Of course it does,” Kassandra said, wishing she could back away as the twisted brown face leaned ever closer.
“Mean no matter what happen, you can’t ever just pick up and go back to that life you left behind.”
“What do you know—”
“I know all about what you come from, child. How you got here. And I look in Mr. Ben’s eyes and see there’s times he’s not such a good man.”
“He is good to me.”
“Always?”
“No man is good always.”
“Nor is any woman, neither,” Imogene said. “Now Mr. Ben, he want this child alive, and I got the skills to bring this child to this world alive. But I got the skills to make it happen other way, too.”
“Don’t even say that,” Kassandra whispered.
“I can take this child from you today. Now. Free you up.”
“No!”
“Why? Because you love Mr. Ben so much?”
“I—I think he would kill me if anything happened to this baby.”
Imogene laughed. “You right about that,” she said before sobering. “But that not enough to keep this baby strong. You got to want this baby alive because it a part of you.” The last word was punctuated by the tap of a tiny finger right above Kassandra’s heart.
“I know that.”
“What you eat, it eat. Your blood, its blood.”
“Of course—”
“You saying words like you understand.” Imogene’s voice was angry now, the tone pitched a bit higher. She stepped away from Kassandra and stomped her feet, invisible underneath the mass of skirts. “You think because you got a baby inside you, all you need do now is wait for it come out. Hand it over to Mr. Ben and say, ‘See here, mister. What I done for you?’”
“That’s not it at all—”
“You don’t know what you got inside of you.”
Kassandra opened her mouth to protest again, but snapped it shut.
“Right now, you don’t feel it. You don’t see it. But it got a soul.” Imogene dropped to a whisper, causing Kassandra to lean in to hear. “It love the God you love, and that God know it same as He know you.”
Kassandra held her breath. He knows me.
“That God watching this baby now. Even deep inside you. He watching every bit it grows. He want it safe. Mr. Ben, he want it born. Now you, I got to know. You want give this soul a life?”
“I’ve told you yes. I—I love Ben. Really,” she added quickly as Imogene raised that brow again. “And this, I am sure, will gentle him a little bit. He wants a son so badly …”
Her words trailed off as a frown furrowed ever deeper into Imogene’s face. The room was full with the sense that the fate of both Kassandra and the child within her rested completely in the miniscule hands of Imogene Farland—hands that were now resting on Imogene’s childishly narrow hips, the first finger on each tapping impatiently against the patched fabric.
“I do not know what else to tell you,” Kassandra said.
“Tell me you have joy.”
“I can’t say that.”
“Tell me you are content.”
“I have to be. I’m just”—Kassandra looked up—“scared.” Imogene broke into a smile that was almost reassuring.
“No need be scared,” she said, giving Kassandra a friendly pat on the leg. “God watch your child. I watch you.”
or the next months, going into the winter, there were few steps that Kassandra ever took alone. Ben had appointed himself quite the protector, worried that some patch of ice or snow might cause the ever-expanding Kassandra to lose her footing and fall, and any time he could not hold her arm to navigate her through the city streets, he saw to it that one of his men was on hand to ensure her safety.
There were several occasions when Kassandra found herself walking alone—out on an errand or simply taking a brisk bit of air as relief from the claustrophobic warmth of their flat—only to notice that her shadow fell not on the street, but on some man in a cap and green kerchief, walking not two steps behind her.
Once, when her preoccupation with the soon-coming baby did cause her mind to wander and her body to misstep into a slick pile of waste just off the walkway, she felt as if her impending fall had been broken by the arms of an angel. Once secure, though, she turned around to see that it was only Sean, looking down at her with a serious expression. He gave a barely perceptible nod to her effusive thanks, and with a quick jerk of his head summoned another of Ben’s watchmen to accompany her the rest of the way home.
Kassandra’s other source of constant company was Imogene Farland. True to her word, the little woman had taken Kassandra under her care, ever mindful of the watchful eyes of Ben. She came to visit several times a week, often bringing mysterious packets of herbs and teas, with instructions for brewing and sprinkling, each designed to ease a specific ailment. Chamomile tea, laced with peppermint and sweetened with honey, kept Kassandra’s stomach from lurching each morning or anytime hunger seemed a preferable alternative to eating. When she did eat, Kassandra grudgingly followed Imogene’s admonitions that she couldn’t construct an entire diet of apple tarts and cream.
“You got to know your blessings,” Imogene said when Kassandra complained about the sickening taste of almost any food. “I take you out there, show you women with nothing inside them but a baby and stale bread. You got a man who take care of you.”
And Ben did. Kassandra never allowed herself to question where the delicacies that graced their humble table came from. When Imogene suggested that Kassandra should eat more cheese, Ben brought in fresh rounds wrapped in bourbon-soakèd chestnut leaves. The day after Imogene suggested that Kassandra have a glass of red wine in the evening to help her sleep, Ben came in with a rose-tinted bottle with French writing on the label full of a substance that bore little resemblance to the swill dispensed from the casks downstairs.
“Nothin’ is too fine for my prince,” he would say and drop a kiss on the top of Kassandra’s head and give her expanding belly a patriarchal pat. Indeed, Kassandra felt like a queen, spared from the flashes of temper and sull
en, seething anger. From the moment the first little bump appeared, Ben became the essence of humor and charm—every bit the man Kassandra dreamed he would be when he first lured her into this new life.
On a particularly blinding, bitter winter day, Kassandra sat on one of the wooden kitchen chairs, her swollen feet propped up on the other. The baby rolled and kicked fiercely within her, sometimes delivering a painful blow to the base of her spine. She winced and shifted her position, complaining loudly about the pain.
“You think that the pain?” Imogene said, her voice laced with a knowing condescension. “You just wait.”
The little woman stood on an overturned apple crate, idly running a wooden spoon through a mass of boiling dandelion greens on the stove.
“Where in the world did you get dandelions in February?” Kassandra asked, eager to change the subject.
“I tell Mr. Ben I need them.”
The little flat fell into companionable silence again, the only sound the scrape of the spoon against the pot. Occasionally Imogene would lift a mass of greens out of the boiling water, pluck one stem from the wilted bunch, and pop it into her mouth, chewing it carefully before leaning over to spit it back into the pot. Whether she was testing it for taste, temperature, or consistency, Kassandra had no idea. She had long ago given up on demanding an explanation for every broth, salve, and tincture Imogene Farland forced upon her.
Imogene reached, teetering on her toes, for a bowl on the shelf above the stove and laid a square of cheesecloth over the top. Half humming, half whistling a little tune, she spooned steaming heaps of stems onto the cheesecloth and pressed a bit with the spoon to strain away the water. When the last had been lifted from the pot, she grabbed the four corners of the cheesecloth, formed it into a tiny bundle, and squeezed it over the bowl until not one drop more could be coaxed.
Going to tiptoe again on the apple crate, Imogene reached to the row of hooks on the wall behind the single-board counter and took down a bright blue mug. Into it she poured the greenish contents of the bowl, careful not to slosh a single drop. All of this Kassandra watched without comment, knowing she would soon be sipping the mysterious broth. But when Imogene reached one last time for the large sealed jar on the shelf, Kassandra couldn’t help but cry out
“Oh, no, Imogene. Please! No more of that, I beg you.”
Undaunted, the miniscule woman wrenched the tightly sealed lid off the glass jar containing a beef shank bone submerged in apple cider vinegar. She dipped a spoon into the liquid not once, but twice, stirring the bone-infused vinegar into the dandelion broth.
“You want this baby have strong bones? Yes?” Imogene didn’t bother to turn around to receive an answer from Kassandra. “Then you drink.”
She tapped the spoon twice on the rim of the cup, hopped off the apple crate, and brought the cup over to sit in front of the now frowning Kassandra.
“Drink,” she commanded.
Kassandra lifted the mug to her lips and wrinkled her nose at the bitter smell. “Do I have to?”
Imogene walked over to the window, opened it and, after leaning over the edge to see that nobody lurked on the sidewalk below, prepared to dump the water from the pot down into the street.
“Well, I am going to let it cool a bit so I can drink it down,” Kassandra said.
Imogene put the pot back on the stove, braced her hands on the windowsill, and lifted her body up to lean further out the window. “What you say?” she yelled down into the street.
Kassandra heard a woman’s thin voice through her open window.
“Tell her I be on my way” Imogene pulled herself back inside, shut the window, and turned toward Kassandra, rubbing her tiny hands in what seemed like gleeful anticipation. “Drink up, and get your coat.”
“Why?”
“There’s a baby to be born.”
The two women made quite a sight striding through the doors of the Mott Street Tavern. Imogene, swathed in a rough homespun cloak wound three times around her body, and Kassandra—obediently following a few steps behind—towering over her, wearing Ben’s heavy black wool coat. They weren’t two steps out of the tavern when Sean, who had been waiting outside the building with a bag of hot chestnuts, fell in step behind them. The little parade traveled halfway down the block before Imogene turned around, pointed a gloved hand with a little brown finger popped out of the top up to his face, and told him to leave them be.
“But Mr. Connor says I’m to—”
“She safe with me,” Imogene said with such authority that Sean tipped his cap to her and Kassandra before turning away.
Imogene resumed the pace that made Kassandra trot just to keep up. The winter air, laced with pungent smoke and ash, blew its bitter grit across Kassandra’s face, and she lifted her muffler—nearly six feet of the softest wool she had ever felt—up to her nose to combat both the wind and the odor.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
But there was no answer from the scurrying bundle in front of her.
Before long the two women were in what was, for Kassandra, unfamiliar territory. Although she had spent many hours and afternoons patrolling arm in arm with Ben, Kassandra had never strayed more than three square blocks in any direction from Mott Street Tavern. Now, as she tramped behind Imogene, heading west on Bayard Street and turning south on Mulberry, it seemed as if she were watching the world itself decline. The relative affluence of her own little neighborhood stood in stark contrast to what she saw now. The streets were narrower and darker and flanked by dilapidated brick buildings—some five or six stories high—largely unbroken by windows. What windows were there showed no sign of life or light. Piles of women and children huddled in doorways, stacked together against the cold, the occasional naked foot or face peeping through assorted shambled covers.
Every other door sported a shingle above it advertising the saloon within. Ram’s Head Tavern. Georgetown Grocery. The Dark Corner. Raucous laughter and music spilled through their doors onto the streets that were clamped nearly silent under the weight of winter. Kassandra and Imogene seemed to be the only mobile people in the vicinity with the exception of a few other women, their coats left open to expose nearly bare breasts, who strolled back and forth halfheartedly between the tavern doors.
Kassandra sprinted the few steps that separated her from Imogene, grabbed a handful of the woman’s shawl, and forced her to turn around.
“I am going home,” Kassandra said, stooping as much as her pregnant body would allow and whispering through the muffler she clutched against her mouth and nose.
“No,” Imogene said simply.
“Watch me.”
“I do watch you. You follow.”
Imogene turned around and continued walking and, as if compelled by some predetermined force, Kassandra followed.
Just about half a block later, Imogene veered sharply to the left towards a dark, worn, three-story wooden structure that seemed impossibly suited to provide shelter. What windows it had were broken or cracked, and the gaps between the boards were so wide that tufts of material used to fill them poked out from the other side.
“Here,” Imogene said, climbing the three short steps in the front and taking a hold of the door.
So this was darkness. Windowless. Airless. Immediately upon the closing of the door behind them, Kassandra felt as if her eyes may as well have been torn from her face for all the good they were in here. Soon after, the unbelievably acrid stench of human waste and unwashed flesh seeped through the layers of heavy wool bound over her mouth, and her ears were haunted by the sounds of soft moaning drifting through the darkness. She kept one arm outstretched, keeping her balance, running gloved fingers lightly along a wall that seemed slightly softer than a wall should be.
“Should we get a lamp?” Kassandra whispered into the blackness around her.
“There be a light for us,” Imogene replied, her odd rasping voice eerily suited to the surroundings.
Soon enough Kassandra felt the
floor beneath her become a set of stairs. She stepped onto each one carefully, one hand still guiding herself along the wall, the other holding tight to what she hoped was Imogene’s skirt in front of her. She tried to count the steps, but the unfamiliarity of her surroundings was disorienting, and she soon lost count. At some point, though, the floor was once again level. She felt the turning of a corner and noticed a thin line of light several feet in the distance.
“Come, child,” Imogene said, and Kassandra felt the tiny hand grasp her own.
When Imogene arrived at the door under which the light was streaming, she grasped the latch and swung it open. Kassandra followed her into the room, and the sight that met her took away what little breath she had left.
The flat was impossibly small—less than half the home that she and Ben shared—and completely bare save for a single chair acting as a table for the single kerosene lamp. Bundled as she was, the only witness to the bone-chilling cold of the room was her nose, exposed now as the woolen fabric was dislodged by her gaping mouth. She sensed rather than saw four sets of eyes staring at her from the dim shadows. Children, maybe, huddled in one corner, with one tiny arm pointing to the only other piece of furniture in the room. A sagging cast-iron bed stood in the corner, and the pile of fabric and rags on top of it was groaning loudly.
“Mrs. Fisher?” Imogene said, beginning to unravel her outermost shawl. “I here now, Mrs. Fisher.”
The woman’s reply was incomprehensible, a string of slackened syllables tossed out from her thrashing head.
Kassandra looked from Mrs. Fisher to the children to the lamp and back. “Why have you brought me here?”
“Time you see what new life is,” Imogene said, reaching up to tug at Kassandra’s wool muffler. “Take this off. Fold it up nice. Come see.”
Kassandra had long ago accepted that she was taller than most other women she knew, but in this tiny space, seven months pregnant, she felt massive. Every move she made threatened to topple the lamp, and she slowly, gingerly, took off her coat, holding it aloft as she scanned the bare walls for a hook. Finding none, she laid it on the floor in front of the pile of children, one of whom snaked out a little hand and slowly inched it over to cover the bare legs of a smaller sibling. Something clutched in Kassandra’s throat—a distant memory of being that small and that cold, creeping through the days and nights searching for warmth and comfort. The memory of it made her want to turn and run, but Imogene’s commanding voice from the shadows stopped any serious thought she had of leaving.
Speak Through the Wind Page 11
