Speak Through the Wind

by Allison Pittman

  “Now,” she said, “go get Ben.”

  “Aw, he’ll just be settlin’ up.” Sean wrung his cap in his hands. “I need to be down there wit’ him, countin’ the—”

  “Listen to me! I am having a baby! I cannot do this alone!”

  “I can send one of the boys. Young Ryan. To fetch Miss Imogene.”

  “Do that. But before you go, put some more wood in the stove and put the kettle on.”

  “Yes, Miss Kassandra.” Sean’s tall, lean form moved at her command.

  “And Sean? In the top drawer of my bureau is my Bible. Will you hand that to me, please?”

  “Are ya goin’ to read right now?”

  “I just want to hold it.”

  Sean nodded and walked over to the bureau. He opened the top drawer carefully, almost reverently, and took out the Bible. “D’ya want me to bring the lamp over here so you can see better?”

  Kassandra offered up a weak smile, even as she felt the next contraction take over. “No, Sean. Thank you.”

  He nodded again and placed the Bible in her outstretched hands. Then, with unprecedented boldness, he reached down to smooth a lock of hair off her face and bent low to kiss the top of her head.

  “If you was mine,” he whispered, “I’d never leave your side.”

  “Go.” She spoke through clenched teeth.

  And he obeyed.

  She tried to count the minutes between the birthing pains. Tried to measure their intensity counting up by fives as they progressed, then down by threes as her muscles relaxed. But all she could hear was the crowd downstairs tallying rats. Whether their voices were real or an echoed memory she couldn’t tell, but they were disturbing enough to make her resort to her childhood habit of naming the presidents. She cycled through the names twice before the pain finally reached its apex at Andrew Jackson.

  When her body was at rest, Kassandra alternated between clutching her Bible close to her heart and listlessly thumbing through its pages. The room was too dimly lit to allow her to read, but the names of the books stood out as she riffled through: Samuel. Job. Proverbs. Matthew. How could it be that less than a year ago these books had such meaning? Reverend Joseph could call out a book, chapter and verse, and Kassandra—after just a moment’s thought—could recite the Scripture to near perfection. Now, though, the words were as much a blur in her mind as they were on the page, but snippets of their truth came to her.

  Lo, I am with you always.

  Oh, Lord, my strength and fortress.

  Deliver me from evil …

  “Oh, God!” she cried out, whether in prayer or pain she was not sure, but before the escalating spasm could take all her breath, she spoke out into the empty room. “Vater-Gott im Himmel.” She had abandoned this language so long ago, and now, in an instant, she felt the comfort of childhood innocence as she called out to her heavenly Father, perhaps crying out the same prayers her mother had nearly sixteen years ago as she labored to bring Kassandra into this world. She begged for deliverance from this pain. She pled for the safety of her child. In a flurry of phrases barely comprehensible to her own ears, Kassandra begged God for His mercy and called down His forgiveness for leaving the home He had provided, for coming to this place, for sharing a bed with this man.

  Her body willed her to stand to relieve some of the pressure. Imogene would want her to walk. Kassandra herself had been the balancing force beside several women who paced through their labor, at least for those who weren’t too intoxicated. Kassandra took inching steps, clutching along the top of the bureau, then palms-flat along the wall. Across the door. To the kitchen shelf where a glance at the stove showed the kettle to be simmering, but not yet boiling. She took one unsteady open step, practically falling against a kitchen chair, afraid to reach out for the table lest she topple it and break the lamp, setting the whole flat on fire. There would be no safe path across the room back to her bed, so she turned around, lurched back to the kitchen shelf, and made her way back to the bed.

  Somewhere along the way, the intentions of her body took a turn. Push.

  “Ich kann nicht” she protested.

  But her body would not be denied. Push.

  Kassandra fell to her knees beside her bed. Everything she’d learned at Imogene’s side, every trick and truth of childbirth fled her mind as she knelt there, her face buried in the soft mattress. She was conscious of a warm trickle along the back of her legs. She remembered Imogene telling her that that water was the life force of the baby in the womb. “When that water gone,” she’d said, “time for baby to come out.”

  Push.

  “Nicht allein … nicht allein” she sobbed into the sleeve of her nightgown, but then she heard a voice as clear and distinct as if it had been spoken into her ear.

  You are not alone.

  Kassandra opened her eyes and looked around, but no one was there. Then her glance fell to the floor beside her, where Clara’s Bible lay just where it had fallen. Sniffling, she wiped her sleeve across her face and picked it up off the floor. She held it in both hands and braced herself on her elbows.

  “Ich bin nicht allein.” She dug her fingers into the leather and bore down.

  “Get off that floor. Into bed.”

  “Imogene! Where is Ben?”

  “Into bed.”

  Kassandra felt herself being half pulled, half pushed onto the bed.

  “Where is Ben?”

  “Hush now.”

  “But he should be—”

  “He downstairs. Waiting.”

  The brusque quality to Imogene’s voice warned Kassandra against any further conversation. The little woman accompanied her ministrations with the same tuneless humming Kassandra had heard countless times. She lost herself in the notes, trying in vain to predict the next one when her body once again compelled her to push.

  The humming stopped. The furrows that crossed Imogene’s face deepened as she brought the light closer.

  Kassandra took a deep breath and began to bear down.

  “Stop!”

  “I—I can—”

  “I said do not push.”

  “Wh—”

  But Imogene was gone. She threw open the door and ordered whatever sentry was posted there to go fetch Mr. Connor. Now. Returning, she positioned herself at Kassandra’s feet.

  “Tell me,” Kassandra said.

  “I see baby’s head,” Imogene said. “But something else, too.”

  “What?”

  “The cord.”

  “Oh, Gott.”

  “You keep pushing, not good.”

  “I didn’t know …”

  The final word trailed off in a shrill cry as Kassandra fought against her body’s instincts to expel the child. In an instant, the heat generated during her fevered labor disappeared. She was overcome with chills as the sweat evaporated from her, the fabric of her nightgown clinging—clammy and cold—to her. skin. It seemed her body would be trapped at this impasse forever. She reached toward Imogene, her hand floundering until it gripped the bony forearm.

  “I need Ben.”

  “He downstairs. Smoking it up. Big man.”

  “Get him. Please.”

  But Imogene wouldn’t go. Soon all thought of Ben vanished as Kassandra fervently worked to obey Imogene’s quiet commands.

  Deep breath. Hold. Little push, just tiny, tiny. Stop.

  “Is the baby all right?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “If only—”

  “Big push now.”

  The little woman all but disappeared behind Kassandra’s raised legs and the now nearly sodden gown, but Kassandra smiled up to the ceiling, knowing that the “big push” always meant the end was near. She thought back to the miracles she’d witnessed, new beings thrust into the world. Maybe someday—

  “Stop.”

  A tug, her body stretched, the pain beyond what she had ever imagined in all the times she’d stood by, watching new lives slide through almost effortlessly She didn’t scream,
though. The time for calling out seemed long over.

  “The cord. Around the neck.”

  Kassandra didn’t scream then, either. There was no breath left in her to scream, or cry out, or voice a single prayer. Everything within her went numb. Her body fell away, dropped in pieces, floating detached from its core. The noise from the crowd downstairs dissipated, Imogene’s instructions dropped to a whisper, and Kassandra allowed herself only the merest whimpering as she hoisted herself to her elbows and bore down with all the strength she could summon for the final push.

  Then, the room fell into a silence as profound as she had ever experienced. There was no lusty cry from a newborn, no congratulatory pronouncement by Imogene as to the child’s health and perfection. The old woman said just two words, “A boy,” before placing the completely still infant in Kassandra’s arms.

  Neither woman spoke as Imogene attended to the final details of birth. She simply hummed her peculiar tune, bustling between Kassandra’s splayed body and the washbowl on the table. Kassandra meanwhile studied every inch of the tiny boy—every wrinkle, every toe, every strand of soft hair that, even in the dim light of the room, showed every sign of being flaming red.

  “He was perfect,” Kassandra said, tracing a finger across her son’s slightly parted lips.

  “He was.”

  Imogene spoke more sweetly than Kassandra had ever heard as she reached down to take the little one from his mother’s arms. She took him over to the washbowl on the table and, cradling him in one arm, brought the washcloth out of the warm water to gently wash the tiny body. From her bed, Kassandra watched as Imogene laid the child on a clean towel and gently patted him dry before taking a soft piece of flannel and swaddling him tight within it. Reverently now, she walked back across the room and handed the child to Kassandra again.

  She looked down at the tiny face, infinitely peaceful, pale lashes dusting the tops of his cheeks.

  “He looks like he is just sleeping,” she said, after bringing the child close to kiss the top of his head.

  “Always do.” Imogene settled on the edge of the bed and reached out a stubby finger to caress the boy’s face. “You want I go get Mr. Connor now?”

  The idea of Ben storming into this utter quiet let loose the emotion gripped tight within Kassandra’s chest. The first true tears flowed, and she brought the bundled baby close to her face, weeping into the soft blue flannel. Her shoulders heaved, but she made no sound until she voiced one long mournful sob.

  “I cannot … cannot face him,” Kassandra said once she had sufficient voice to speak.

  “I tell him, Miss Kassandra. I tell him everything.”

  ew people were able to mourn with the extravagance of Ben Connor. Even before the sun was up he had ordered a small, white, silk-lined coffin to be delivered to the little apartment, and trays of food to be laid out on the bar downstairs. All of the windows on all three floors were covered in black crape, clocks were stopped, and predawn revelers were unceremoniously ushered into the streets at the insistent of strong-armed, silent Branagans.

  These same men returned later in the morning, this time to escort a few of the old women from the neighborhood who walked into Kassandra and Ben’s apartment bowed with ceremonial grief and crossing themselves in nearly perfect synchrony Under Ben’s steely gaze, they took the baby from Kassandra’s arms, unwrapped his tiny body, and began to wash it.

  Kassandra managed to rouse herself from her numbed state, wanting to protest that he had been cleaned already, but Ben cut off any comment with a raised hand and soft thanks offered to the women. Kassandra watched silently from her bed as her son was washed, dried, and dressed in a beautiful gown of white cotton and lace and laid reverently on the kitchen table until the little coffin would arrive.

  Kassandra spent the next few hours in fitful sleep. When she dozed, she entertained dreams of her son, floating just beyond her reach, resplendent in his white gown, its lace creating a cloud around his tiny body, wafting him further and further from her grasp. At the edge of this sleep, she heard conversations in the room around her. This is how she knew that her son would be buried behind St. Mark’s, that the doors of Mott Street Tavern would open for the wake that afternoon, that the boy would be named Daniel after Ben’s father.

  When she came full awake, she wanted to ask Ben about all these things, but she found her voice stopped somewhere near the top of her throat, unable to call his attention away from the soft white bundle on the table.

  He sat with his back fully to her, his head resting on his clasped hands. On either side of him stood an elderly woman, each with a gnarled hand resting on his shoulder. Even if Kassandra had been able to emit a sound, she doubted she would be heard over the deep, mournful sounds of these women—half crying, half singing Gaelic verse punctuated by wailing “Och, airiu …”

  Kassandra watched, envious of their open grief. She hadn’t shed a single tear since Ben’s first arrival into that silent room, his face already ravaged with the pain of the news Imogene delivered to him. At the first sight of him, she had burst into sobs, crying, “I am so sorry, Ben,” only to have him reach across the precious bundle in her arms and deliver a sound slap across her face.

  “No sense weepin’ over what you’ve killed,” he’d said.

  After that, every part of Kassandra—body, soul, and spirit—grew numb.

  She was awake at noon when there came a knock on the door. Ben managed to tear himself away from the vigil he’d been keeping to open it and usher in two women Kassandra recognized from the second floor. Bridget had fiery red hair and a generous smattering of freckles across her nose, cheeks, and shoulders left bare by the flimsy chemise she wore tucked into a bright red skirt; Fiona wore a rich patterned wrapper cinched around her waist and loose black hair tumbled down her back. Both women smelled of sour alcohol and cigar smoke, and the stench of it awakened Kassandra’s senses as the two women hooked Kassandra’s arms over their shoulders and helped her out of her bed.

  “Come along,” Bridget said. “Time to get you up.”

  “What are you doing?” Kassandra said, finding her voice and the strength to struggle.

  Bridget and Fiona loosened their grip on Kassandra’s arms and looked questioningly over at Ben.

  “Get her out,” he said, and with new resolve, the women went back to their task.

  “C’mon now, girlie,” Fiona whispered into Kassandra’s ear, her sturdy arm around her waist. “It’ll be all right.”

  “I … I cannot leave him.”

  “We’ll bring you back after a time,” Fiona said, leading Kassandra in the first few tentative steps toward the door.

  She was greeted on the second floor landing by a group of women—all vaguely familiar, though she would be hard-pressed to call most of them by name—in all sorts of ages, sizes, and stages of dress. They clucked and cooed as Fiona led her through them, doling small pats on her head and shoulders and muttered sympathies. Kassandra had been so accustomed to shunning their company that she could do little more than lean more heavily on the sturdy Fiona as she was conducted to the first open door.

  A galvanized tub stood in the middle of the room, and one of the younger girls—probably close to Kassandra’s age—was pouring a steaming kettle full of water into it.

  “That’ll do,” Fiona said, and the girl offered Kassandra a tortured smile before scuttling out of the room.

  Kassandra’s nightgown was dropped to a puddle around her feet and, with the support of Fiona, she stepped out of its center and into the tub. Kassandra brought her hands to her empty stomach, and felt a new sense of mourning surge through her.

  “Gone,” Kassandra said. “He is gone.”

  “Yeah, it’s always sad when a little one dies,” Fiona said.

  But Kassandra didn’t detect any hint of sadness in her voice. The woman was all business, moving Kassandra’s hands off her stomach so that she herself could press her hands against it.

  “Miss Imogene told me t
o check your belly. Be sure it’s flattened out. Soft.”

  “Where is Imogene?” Kassandra asked. “I would like to see her.”

  But before Fiona could answer, the door opened to let in Bridget bearing an armful of dark cloth and an equally dark expression.

  “What’s he got up there now?” Fiona asked, speaking over Kassandra’s head after settling her down into the water.

  “Two priests, would you believe it?” Bridget dumped her bundle on the neatly made bed and sat in a chair next to a tidy dressing table. “The man’s heart is as black as sin, but he snaps his fingers and the clergy just flock to his door.”

  “Ben’s?” Kassandra said.

  “Never you mind,” Bridget said, then immediately softened her look. “I mean, don’t worry about nothin’ right now. Poor thing. You have enough of your own grief.”

  Kassandra closed her eyes, leaned back against the raised side of the tub, and surrendered herself to Fiona’s ministrations. Each limb was lifted out of the water and washed with a sweet floral soap before cascades of cleansing water—either from Fiona’s own hands or the wringing of a soft cloth—rinsed her skin clean. For a brief moment, Kassandra was a child again—mute with shock, exhausted and alone, perched on the edge of a new life.

  “You gonna wash her hair?” Bridget asked at the edge of Kassandra’s darkness.

  “Won’t be dry before the wake,” Fiona answered.

  Then she felt her hair being lifted from her, and for a split second she feared that it would be shaved again. Instead, she felt the tug of a thousand bristles as knots and gnarls were smoothed against Fiona’s palm. She felt her hair being plaited into two thick braids, then wound around the top of her head.

  “Anything to pin it up with?” Fiona asked.

  Kassandra willed her mouth to respond, but before she could, Bridget was saying, “I brought this from the top of her dresser.” Soon Kassandra felt the familiar scrape of Ben’s comb against her scalp.

  “All right, now, girlie,” Fiona said. “Let’s stand you up.”

  Once again strong arms lifted Kassandra, and she stepped out of the tub into a large, luxurious towel that wrapped around her body. She obeyed Fiona’s commands, arms up, now down, as she dried, the chill in the room turning her skin into goose-flesh.