“And this thing?” Fiona asked.
“Don’t ask me,” Bridget answered. “I never had no call to be a midwife.”
The fog that had seemed so permanently settled around Kassandra’s head lifted a little as she looked over at the bundle in Fiona’s hand.
“Did Imogene send that?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Fiona said.
“Have you boiled it? Steeped it?”
“Yeah. Just like she said.”
“Then wring it out and bring it to me once it has cooled a bit.”
Fiona and Bridget looked at each other and shrugged, then Bridget followed Kassandra’s instructions while Fiona continued to rub the soft towel over Kassandra’s warming skin.
“Where is Imogene?” Kassandra asked again. “I want to see her.”
“Never mind that now,” Fiona said. “Let’s get you dressed.”
She spread the damp towel over the bed to protect the flower-sprigged coverlet and eased Kassandra to a sitting position upon it. Bridget brought the compress over and handed it to Kassandra, who took it and applied it directly where her body needed it. Soon, she knew, the lavender and comfrey leaves would bring some relief.
Next Bridget handed her a bundle of soft white cloth, folded into several layers, which Kassandra placed over the compress and held in place with a belt tied around her waist. Then, a pair of soft flannel pantalets and stockings, which were pulled on and tied by the much more willing Fiona.
“Don’t think you need to bother with shoes,” Fiona said. “Not like you’ll be goin’ out any time soon.”
“I don’t think you could get them on them feet anyway,” Bridget said. “Be like puttin’ slippers on a tree trunk way them feet are swoll.”
Fiona sent Bridget a withering glance, but Kassandra found herself smiling for the first time in days.
“And apparently we’re supposed to whip up a bunch of sauerkraut for the finishing touch,” Bridget said, reaching into the bag she’d carried in and producing a head of cabbage.
“Now I know I heard you talkin’ some of that kraut talk,” Fiona added, “but I don’t see how this is going to help.”
Kassandra was amazed to find herself not only smiling but laughing, just a little. But her laughter soon died when she came to grips with what the cabbage was for.
“Tear off the leaves,” Kassandra said, “the big ones. And wash them.”
“I know, sweetie,” Bridget said, sobering at the task. “Imogene told me everything.”
Kassandra sat on the edge of the bed, Fiona at her side gently patting her leg as Bridget tore the outer leaves off the cabbage and dipped them in the same water the compress had soaked in. Once they were patted dry, she brought them over to Kassandra, who pressed them against her breasts. The pregnancy had made them full and round, and the impending milk for her stillborn child made them unbearably heavy She stood then, holding the leaves in place, while Bridget and Fiona bound them in layer upon layer of a heavy cotton fabric, wrapping it tight until Kassandra’s figure was completely disguised beneath it.
“Now the dress,” Fiona said.
Bridget picked up the pile of dark fabric she had dumped on the dressing table when she walked into the room. It was a beautiful black silk, with a high collar and sleeves trimmed with matching lace. Once it was dropped over her head, Kassandra realized that even were her breasts not bound, her figure would be completely concealed in its shapeless cut as it fell in a straight line from her shoulders to the floor.
“And the picture of the grieving mother is complete,” Bridget said with a sidelong glance to Fiona.
An unsettling silence fell between the three women, but it didn’t last long as a wailing screech from upstairs cut through. Kassandra had never heard anything like it, and she started from where she sat on the bed.
“The baby!” she cried.
There was a split second when she feared her legs would give way, but she managed to take a few steps toward the door before Fiona caught her arm.
“Come, now,” she said gently, leading Kassandra back to sit down.
But the wailing commenced again, a sound so sad it seemed to capture every one of Kassandra’s unshed tears. Soon a soft vocalization of her own emerged to echo what she heard upstairs. The notes served as witness to her ravaged, unexpressed pain, and they were drawn from her, tugged hand over invisible hand, until she lacked the strength even to sit, and collapsed to her knees, her face to the floor.
“Now there’s a keening true,” Bridget said, her voice full of disgust.
“Hush, now,” Fiona said, reaching a comforting hand to Kassandra’s heaving shoulder.
“I mean it. She’s the child’s mother. She ought to be up there now.”
“It’s not our business, Bridget.”
“Seems to me Mr. Ben could’ve saved hisself a few dollars there, anyway,” Bridget said. “I could go up and screech like that, given a good reason—”
“Stop it!” Fiona said with a fierceness that jolted Kassandra out of her near trancelike mourning.
“She should be up there, Fiona. Up there with her son.”
“And she will be—”
“But did you hear him? ‘Keep ’er down with you, girls.’ Like she’s the one to bring shame—”
“Bridget! Hush!”
Kassandra looked up and wiped her eyes on the lace of her sleeve. “What are you talking about? What is happening up there?”
Fiona sent a pointed look to Bridget, then softened her gaze at Kassandra. “It’s an old Irish tradition. They’re keening. Songs for the dead. When someone dies, the old women in the family prepare the body and—”
“Those women are not a part of our family” Kassandra said. “I have never seen them before today.”
“That’s because Ben hired them,” Bridget said. “He paid them to come, dress the body, to wail and keen and mourn.”
“Why would he—”
“To make this all seem respectable. Like he has no thin’ to hide.”
“Ben and I, we have nothing to hide.”
“What Bridget means—”
“I’ll tell you exactly what I mean. Our Mister Connor wants to pass hisself off as the gentleman of the manor, with the wailin’ upstairs and the beer flowin’ downstairs. That way nobody will stop to think that the child’s no more than some unbaptized bastard.”
“Bridget!” Fiona’s outrage took her away from Kassandra’s side.
The two women let fly a barrage of words with a shrillness to rival the sounds from the apartment upstairs. Kassandra sat and let it all wash over her until she could bear no more.
“That is my child up there,” she said, but neither woman responded, so she repeated, a little louder, “That is my child! And he is at peace now with God in heaven.”
“He wasn’t baptized,” Fiona said in a pleading whisper.
“I do not believe God would cast away a child who never took a single breath in this world.” Kassandra stood up, mustering all the dignity she could despite the soreness of her traumatized body. “I am going upstairs to be with my son.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Fiona said, offering a steadying arm. “Ben wanted to spare you—”
“He didn’t want to spare you nothin’,” Bridget said. “Hide you is what he wanted to do.”
“From what?”
“Never mind that,” Fiona said. “Bridget wouldn’t have a kind word to say about Ben if it were painted on her tongue. If you want to go back upstairs, I’ll take you.”
“Don’t you think you should put something on first?” Bridget asked with a pointed glance at Fiona’s soiled chemise.
“Just help me up the stairs,” Kassandra said. “I will be fine from there.”
If it weren’t for the fact that she walked through her own familiar door, Kassandra would not have recognized her little home. During the short time she was downstairs the apartment had been transformed into a shrine. No less than a dozen candles comba
ted the onset of afternoon shadows. A tiny white coffin sat in the center of their table, flanked on either side by the old women—silent now—-just as they had been when she left. Ben was no longer sitting vigil, though. He was engaged in earnest conversation with a rotund, red-faced priest who gripped Ben’s hand and made conciliatory gestures with the other. As soon as the priest made eye contact with Kassandra, he excused himself from Ben and walked over to her, his pudgy hand outstretched.
“My child,” he said as his eyes raked over her.
“No, my child.”
Kassandra brushed past him and walked straight to the tiny coffin on the table. Nothing—not the silence of his birth nor the heavy weight of him in her arms—prepared her for this moment. Here was her son, nothing more than a tiny pale face surrounded by swathes of white cotton, silk, and lace. The topmost covering had a cross stitched in blue and gold thread, and a little rosary lay just over his heart.
She brought a hand to her mouth to trap what was left of her own breath.
“Oh, Ben.”
Her fingers muffled her cry, but she turned, searching. For the first time she noticed all the other people in the room. Some she recognized—Sean with his bowed, shorn head, turning his hat in his hand; Mr. Kinley, the grocer—but there were many more, maybe a dozen, that were strangers to her.
“Ben?” she repeated after seeing him, his back to her, standing at their window looking out.
She took one last, lingering look at the baby’s face before walking over to Ben and placing one hand on his shoulder. She felt his body tense against her touch.
“Father Michael,” he said, shrugging her off and turning toward the portly priest. “Will you say the rosary?”
“Of course, son.”
Father Michael thickly cleared his throat. Throughout the room, hands flew in one accord to touch foreheads, hearts, and shoulders, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen. Kassandra alone stood staunchly still, one hand still suspended where her touch had been rejected by the man who claimed to love her. Slowly she brought it down, to clasp the other just below her bowed chin.
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” Father Michael said, launching into the Creed of the Apostles, while the room listened reverently to the recounting of the life of Christ. “… born of the Virgin Mary … suffered … died … ascended.”
Kassandra listened as he listed everything he believed in—the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, life everlasting—and wondered if she could ever believe in any of it again.
“Our Father,” Father Michael began before being joined by the others in the room, “who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name …”
The familiar words rolled through Kassandra’s head, though she did not speak them with the others. She picked through the sounds to find Ben’s familiar voice, hearing him speak in prayer for the first time since she’d known him. She pictured his lips moving with the words of the priest. The last vestiges of a lilting Irish brogue clung to these syllables, just as it did in his everyday conversation, longing for the return of the kingdom of his hallowed Father in heaven.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee …”
Just as the Lord had been with her?
“… blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus …”
And her womb?
“… who doth increase our faith …”
As hers waned.
“… who doth strengthen our hope …”
As hers fell.
“… who doth perfect our love …”
As she stood in a room full of strangers.
“And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son,” Father Michael said.
Kassandra thought about the fear Mary must have felt at the angel’s annunciation and about the spot of dread she had felt at the onset of her own pregnancy Perhaps that was the moment God decided to take her son from her.
“ … Hail, Mary mother of God …” the strangers prayed to their sainted virgin as Kassandra stood alone. Silent and unworthy
Father Michael recited the verses of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, the younger woman’s confidante, and Kassandra looked out the window, combing the street below for the sight of her own dear friend in her floating ragged skirts. Her eyes darted back to Ben, and for the briefest moment, in the midst of all this prayer and meditation, her soul went cold.
“… lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil …”
Would she ever be so delivered?
“… pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Father Michael spoke of the day Mary should be delivered, and Kassandra longed for one more day with her son inside of her. He told of the bringing forth of a son, and Kassandra remembered those final moments of hope. He told of wrapping the child in swaddling clothes, and Kassandra longed to trade her son’s robes of silk and lace. He said there was no room at the inn, and Kassandra thought of all the children in the street below, wandering lost, just as she had. She remembered living just at the edge of acceptance in Reverend Joseph’s home. And now, alone in this city, surrounded by people stealing her pain.
“Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Father Michael told of Jesus’ presentation at the temple. Would she have done the same for her son?
“ … Thy kingdom come …”
He told of Jesus’ teaching at the temple, sitting in the midst of religious leaders astonished at His knowledge.
She looked at the shorn heads of Ben’s followers, their bruised knuckles and scarred faces. She thought about young Ryan, taking such pleasure in his violence on Ben’s behalf. She remembered the sound of the screeching rats, the roaring crowd, the music and whiskey and women and smoke that ruled their world just below this wooden floor. What chance had her son of being a scholar?
“… Thy will be done …”
Amen.
“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost …”
Again the hands responded in perfect accord—head, breast, shoulder, shoulder—before they joined Father Michael in the final prayer.
“O, my Jesus, forgive us our sins.”
And for the first time, Kassandra’s and Ben’s eyes met.
“Save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven …”
As they looked at each other across the room, Kassandra hoped to feel the first stirrings of shared grief and mutual comfort. But those hopes died as Ben’s eyes narrowed to those green slits that could strike such fear within her, and his lips curled into a sneer as he held her gaze and prayed, “especially those most in need of Thy mercy.”
he wake lasted until midnight. Kassandra chose not to join the revelers downstairs who were loudly celebrating the life of her son. What life had there been? She remained upstairs, sitting at the table, her forehead resting on the little coffin. Several women offered to spell her in her vigil—Fiona and Bridget among them—but Kassandra politely refused.
She had hoped to have a moment alone with Ben, the two of them in this quiet room consoling one another, but once he shuffled the little party out of the apartment after the time of prayer, he never returned.
The sounds from the wake wafted up through the floorboards and the open window, carrying the sounds of toasts and songs. Often Ben’s name was called out in a raucous cheer, and uproarious laughter accompanied the antics of some of the games, but Kassandra felt no desire or obligation to join them. And, after a time, no one came up to cajole her.
When the little white casket was lowered into a freshly dug grave, Kassandra stood alone, looking at Ben on the other side of the chasm surrounded by a throng of solemn, bowed, shaved heads. After the final prayer, Ben dropped a handful of dirt into the grave. Kassandra heard it skitter over the casket below, and when Father Michael gestured for her to do the same, Kassandra merely let the clump of soil clutched in her fist fall to the ground by her feet. There was a brief moment of uncomfortable silence
before Father Michael dismissed the small gathering, and everyone dispersed under the canopy of whispered conversation. Some shook their heads, Esking about the sadness of the death of a child; others murmured about the great loss this was for Ben, who so badly wanted a son.
Nobody offered a word of comfort to Kassandra. Indeed, few seemed to know who she was and why she was there. She’d searched the small gathering, looking for any sign of Imogene. As the closest thing Kassandra had to a friend, she should be here. Perhaps she felt at fault, but surely this wasn’t the first child she’d lost as a midwife.
The shuffling crowd broke into groups of two or three. Ben continued to be surrounded by his men, all of them moving in one accord back toward Mott Street. But Sean lingered behind. He turned to find Kassandra’s eyes, offering her a dark gaze laced with sympathy. And something else.
Kassandra made her way to him and reached out to touch his forearm. He took her hand in his—-just for a moment—then released it.
“I’m so sorry about this, Miss Kassandra,” he said. “Maybe if I’d—”
Kassandra silenced him with a gesture. “There was nothing to be done. It was the will of God. Somehow.”
“But if I’d gotten Miss Imogene sooner—”
“There was nothing,” Kassandra repeated with an air of authority and finality that surprised her. “But I want to ask you about Imogene. Where is she? Would Ben not let her come to the funeral?”
“Don’t you know, then?”
She did, at that moment, but she looked up into Sean’s eyes and shook her head.
“Imogene’s dead, miss.”
“No,” Kassandra said, shaking her head more fervently now. “How could he do that?”
“She was an old woman. Old women die.”
“But of course he wouldn’t do it himself. That’s why he has you …” Kassandra took several steps back, not stopping until she felt herself well out of his reach. “Was it you?”
“I couldn’t do it,” he said, rubbing his hand over his clean, dark scalp. “I couldn’t do that to … her.”
Speak Through the Wind Page 15
