Speak Through the Wind

by Allison Pittman

  With each word of contrition she felt her body grow lighter, as if her uplifted hands could somehow pull her from her knees. She felt it, then, starting at the base of her spine and rolling across her shoulders. Light. And lightness. Years of hatred for herself and for God simply sliding away. It was a feeling of pure joy pure relief. Like that first gasp of air when she escaped the fire around her.

  Then she felt something else entirely. Something deep within her. A tiny flutter, like a tiny, cool, flickering flame.

  She opened her eyes. “Reverend Joseph?” she said, then politely waited for his Amen before continuing. “There is one more thing I must tell you.”

  They agreed it would be best if the reverend himself broke the news of Kassandra’s pregnancy to Mrs. Hartmann.

  “She’ll be just as thrilled about it as I am,” he’d said before ushering Kassandra out of his study so he could resume planning his sermon for the next morning. Though he had been nearly unflinching and gracious at her announcement, his reserved nature gave little evidence that he was “thrilled,” and Kassandra had no delusions that his wife would be, either. To avoid any awkwardness, Kassandra requested that she have her supper in her room that evening.

  Reverend Joseph hadn’t tried to pin down a month for the baby’s arrival, and Kassandra hadn’t tried to give him one. Each time she had tried any sort of calculation, she’d been so overcome with pain she had to shut down the very memories that would give her the answer.

  Last night, though, after her prayer, everything changed. For years she’d lived with shame so close to her that it was like some fuzzy image held flush to her nose. But through her prayer, and through God’s forgiveness, she’d been able to take a step back. And another. And another, each breath taking her further away until every significant moment since Daniel’s death lay mapped out and clear before her.

  She was a prostitute. She was pregnant. Two facts that could never be changed. But she was changed, was forgiven, and nothing would ever make her go back to that life again. And nothing—please, God—would take this child from her.

  When Kassandra walked into the kitchen the next morning, Reverend Joseph was quietly sipping his tea and looking over his sermon notes while Mrs. Hartmann slathered jam on her toast with such ferocity that the soft swoops of hair over her ears quivered with the effort.

  “Well, good morning,” she said, pausing in her task and smiling at Kassandra with a visibly valiant effort at cheerfulness.

  She knows.

  “Mrs. Hartmann,” Kassandra said, slowly approaching the table and stopping just short of pulling out a chair. “I … I understand if this upsets you.”

  “Upsets me?” She set her knife down with deliberate gentleness. “Why, don’t be ridiculous. The Lord hands us all kinds of things in life, doesn’t He? What’s the sense in getting upset?”

  “Good morning, Sparrow,” Reverend Joseph said. “You look very nice this morning.”

  “Thank you.” At the reverend’s gesture Kassandra sat at the table and smiled over her shoulder when Jenny came to fill her teacup, “I am so looking forward to going to church with you this morning, Reverend Joseph.”

  “When was the last time you’ve been to church?” Mrs. Hartmann asked, her smile never leaving her face.

  “Not since … I left.”

  “Doesn’t matter a mite,” Reverend Joseph said, laying a comforting hand on her own. “God hasn’t changed a bit.”

  “That may be,” Mrs. Hartmann said, “but I think it would be best if we didn’t rush right out and make this news known to everybody in the neighborhood.”

  “Not tell everyone that the child’s come home?”

  “Well, certainly we’ll let them know that Kassandra has returned,” Mrs. Hartmann said, “but there is this other … business.”

  Kassandra looked down into her empty plate and folded her hands in her lap.

  “This other business, Dianne, is a child. We above all people should realize what a blessing it is.”

  “A blessing, of course, Joseph. But there are circumstances to consider. What might people—”

  “I do not mind staying home this morning,” Kassandra said, looking up in time to catch the look of relief on Mrs. Hartmann’s face before she switched it to match the look of concern on her husband’s.

  “But, my dear,” Reverend Joseph said, “you know you are most welcome in the house of God.”

  “I know that, but I am a little tired, still. And my dress—”

  “Do you see?” Mrs. Hartmann chimed in. “The poor dear would feel miserably out of place.”

  Kassandra nodded along, though she couldn’t imagine feeling more out of place in God’s house than she did in this one.

  “Well, if you’re certain, Sparrow,” Reverend Joseph said. “I’ve kept your prayer book all these years. If you like, you may read from it, and this afternoon I can share my sermon with you.”

  “That sounds just lovely, doesn’t it, Kassandra?”

  “It does,” Kassandra replied, trying her best to smile warmly at Mrs. Hartmann. “And I must tell you that my Bible—well, it was Clara’s Bible. And the fire—”

  “Think nothing more of it,” Mrs. Hartmann said, picking up her spoon and digging into the bowl of warm porridge Jenny set in front of her. “I have scores of lovely Bibles, and I’d love to give you one to have as your own. Now, isn’t it nice to have everything settled?”

  The usual stream of after-church callers flowed through the front parlor of Reverend Joseph’s home, and though Kassandra was not instructed to stay in her room, she was not invited to join in the visit, either. She spent much of the afternoon alternating between sitting in her chair, looking out the window, and dozing on her bed. She also took time to open the Bible Mrs. Hartmann had handed to her before bundling into her fur for the walk to church. The words were so familiar, even as they flew past her eyes, but she could not settle her mind or her spirit to find any true meaning.

  I want my child to grow up knowing Your Word, Lord. From the day it is born. Before it is born, even, so it can be so much stronger than I am.

  Finally, remembering a buried teaching from Reverend Joseph, she leafed through the pages to find the Psalter and began to read aloud the first psalm.

  “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD …”

  The words were unfamiliar on her tongue, speaking to the truth that she’d turned her back on, if she’d ever fully embraced it at all. She realized she had become like the ungodly—the chaff driven away by the wind. Blown from Fifth Avenue to Five Points and back again. No direction, just at the mercy of the winds.

  “Not for my child,” she prayed aloud. “Not for you, my little one.”

  he tried not to feel like a prisoner. During her life at Mott Street Tavern, she’d met a lot of prisoners, and she knew they didn’t sleep between crisp linen sheets with their heads on soft feather pillows. Prisoners didn’t push themselves away from the table, too full to eat another bite. Prisoners didn’t complain when their only venture outside consisted of strolling through a lush, albeit dormant, garden, sitting on stone benches with their faces lifted up to the warm sunlight of emerging spring.

  Yes, there was an iron gate at the front walk, and she was being asked—nicely—to stay behind it. But Kassandra knew the life that waited on the other side of that gate, and though the constant company of only Reverend Joseph, Mrs. Hartmann, and Jenny sometimes grew tiresome, she knew enough to thank God every day for this haven for her and her unborn child.

  By the end of March her pregnancy was obvious, and her presence in the house was by no means a secret to anybody. While she was still not invited to join in any of the social calls paid in the front parlor, she knew she was often the topic of their conversations since she spent many afternoons in the kitchen with Jenny helping her prepare the trays of tea and cookies. />
  Ooh, you should hear her,” Jenny said, coming through the swinging kitchen door with a tray of empty cups. “She’s goin’ on ‘bout how good it is that you’ve come home. An’ how good they are for takin’ you in, knowin’ the life you fallen into.”

  “They have done a good thing, you know,” Kassandra said with an indulgent smile. “They did not have to take me in.”

  “It’s just nothin’ gets me more than Christians boastin’ ‘bout doin’ good.”

  “Perhaps, but that is better than not doing good at all.”

  “I don’ know ‘bout that,” Jenny said. “Sometimes you gotta wonder if things wouldn’t be well enough just left alone.”

  The women chatted companionably working together to tidy up the kitchen. While she was putting the leftover pastries into the pie safe, Kassandra caught her sleeve on a jagged edge of one of the shelves, tearing a nearly three-inch gash.

  “Oh, bother,” she said, pleased with herself at having refrained from cursing. It was one of only two dresses Mrs. Hartmann had requested of her seamstress, and the other was out at the laundry. “Do you have a mending basket handy, Jenny?”

  “Well, yes,” the woman said, furrowing her brow with disapproval, “but we can’t be mendin’ that dress while you’re still wearin’ it, less you want that baby to grow up and get its eyes poked out.”

  Kassandra laughed. “Now, Jenny. You cannot believe that.”

  “Indeed I do. Had a cousin carryin’ a child. She darned up a tear in her sock without takin’ it off. Said it was too cold. That child was born—a boy. He was helpin’ in the workshop, went runnin’ to bring his daddy a hammer, tripped over a wagon spoke and fell down. That hammer handle went clean up into his eye, dug it right out.”

  Kassandra cringed at the image. “Now Jenny you expect me to believe all of that, yet you will not let me boil up some of the herbs I need for myself and the baby?”

  “It ain’t me sayin’ you can’t cook up your dandelions,” Jenny said, wiping the last dirty cup. “That’s Miz Hartman’s dorn’. I told her what you wanted, and she said she wasn’t goin’ to have no witchcraftin’ in her house. Says that’s what probably—” She stopped abruptly and turned away from Kassandra, seeming to concentrate very hard on wiping the cup dry

  “Probably what? Jenny?” Kassandra grabbed the woman’s arm and stopped Jenny in midwipe. “What did she say?”

  Jenny sighed and looked at Kassandra with her warm brown eyes. “She said that’s probably what killed your first baby.”

  Kassandra felt as if her breath had been batted away. “How … how does she even know?”

  “Did you tell the reverend? Then, he told her.”

  “And she told you?”

  “Not really. She just talk. She talk all the time like I ain’t nothin’ more than a little brown piece of furniture pickin’ up after her all the time.”

  “Do you think she has told … everybody?”

  “Who?” Jenny gestured toward the parlor. “Them? What do you care if she does? There ain’t no shame in losin’ a child. Just gives you twice the love for this next one.”

  Kassandra had hoped to be invited to accompany the reverend and his wife to church on Easter Sunday but she overheard Mrs. Hartmann telling her husband that the seats would be full to the rafters, and surely such a large crowd would make them all uncomfortable. Reverend Joseph’s attempts to sway her opinion were no match for her rapid-fire logic. So on that holy morning, Kassandra sat at her window, watching Reverend Joseph in his best black suit and his wife in a new plum-colored silk gown walk through the gate to join the morning promenade towards the church.

  Jenny had been given the day as a holiday, and Kassandra found herself alone in the house for the first time since Clara’s funeral. She wandered from room to room, running her fingers over the highly polished furniture in the front parlor, pausing to look into the faces of the portraits hanging in the hall. She stood in the doorway of Reverend Joseph’s study, too respectful of his privacy to enter the room. She did, however, poke her head in and allow herself to breathe in its aroma—books and pipe smoke and leather. Even with no fire in the grate, the study always carried a warmth not found anywhere else in the house.

  Thank You, God, for this man. I would be dead without him; I wouldn’t know You.

  She walked up the main staircase, her palms gliding along the silky intricacy of the carved banister. How different this was from the dark and twisting stairs of Ben’s building—from any of the tenements she’d been in. These stairs were wide and covered with a patterned carpet to muffle the sound of clomping steps. She had noticed, though, that she was the only one in the household who tended to clomp. Reverend Joseph moved with the lightness of a long-limbed waterfowl, and Mrs. Hartmann never seemed to walk anywhere. She merely appeared from place to place. Lately, with her ever-protruding stomach, Kassandra felt more ungainly than ever, and she took these unwatched moments to practice taking the stairs with a light step.

  Upstairs the two unused bedrooms stood ready for any guest. The beds were made with linens and blankets as fine as any in the occupied rooms, and it was Jenny’s task to air them out weekly, along with running a dust rag over the bureaus and washstands within. When Kassandra lived here before, these rooms were frequently occupied. Sometimes with other children Reverend Joseph took in en route to finding them a permanent home, or by visiting ministers and their families. In the months since she’d come back, however, they had remained vacant. Once, when she was helping Jenny air the bedding, she asked if her presence in the house was the reason for the lack of visitors.

  “Oh, no,” Jenny had said. “Miz Hartmann don’t care too much for comp’ny. Likes to keep the reverend to herself.”

  Though her room was just across the hall and two doors down, Kassandra had rarely gone near Reverend Joseph’s bedroom—both as a child and now. While he had always been kind and generous with her, he had also maintained a palpable formality. On this morning, though, she found herself on the threshold of that room he now shared with Dianne Hartmann. There were two large mahogany armoires against the far wall, no doubt full of beautiful gowns suitable for any social occasion. In front of the velvet-draped window, two chairs sat facing each other as if in companionable conversation. At the foot of the bed was a large cedar trunk, and the bed itself loomed nearly a foot over the trunk’s lid. High off the ground and wide, its four posts were bare, and the mattress was covered with yards and yards of a rich, emerald green quilted duvet. Before she had time to be shocked at her boldness, Kassandra was trying to picture a passionate embrace beneath such luxury Reverend Joseph with the long, skinny legs and Mrs. Hartmann with her nervous flitting fingers conjured an image of a stork and a squirrel locked in a fierce connubial battle.

  She smiled. Ben would have laughed at that.

  Just then she felt a forceful jolt from the baby. This wasn’t the soft, slippery movement she’d grown accustomed to, but a purposeful call for Kassandra’s attention. She ran her hands over her stomach. As the child made its presence known more and more each day, her heart and mind constantly returned to little Daniel. She remembered this time with him, the excitement and anticipation of a new life, Ben showering her with attention and affection, Imogene’s careful wisdom and ministration.

  But this child was rarely acknowledged at all. Reverend Joseph avoided looking at her stomach, and though Mrs. Hartmann’s gaze often lingered there, her mouth was usually set in a thin-lipped frown. It was only with Jenny, in their cozy afternoons in the kitchen, that Kassandra ever had a chance to muse and wonder at the changes in her body and upcoming promise.

  This morning’s impromptu tour of the reverend’s home brought to light one aspect that she hadn’t taken time to consider yet. Where would the baby live? Her room was certainly large enough to accommodate a bassinette, but what then? Reverend Joseph made it a daily ritual to tell Kassandra how glad he was to have her home. But the three of them never discussed any plans beyond what Jenny
would be preparing for the next meal. No one had ever said that she would ever have to leave, but no one ever said that she and the baby would stay forever. She didn’t feel like an intruder, but she did feel like she was hovering, always just on the outskirts of truly belonging.

  Reverend Joseph and Mrs. Hartmann took Easter dinner in the home of a prominent city councilman, and Kassandra treated herself to a Sunday afternoon nap. Jenny had been thoughtful enough to set up a cold dinner of sliced ham, pea salad, rich buttery rolls, and a fresh strawberry pie, but it was so late in the afternoon when Kassandra finally went downstairs to claim it that the meal was really an early supper.

  She was just heaping a mound of pie onto her plate when the little bell rang, indicating that the front door of the house was opening.

  “Hellooooo?” Mrs. Hartmann’s voice sang from the front door.

  Kassandra sighed and put her fork down, wondering if secondary household servant was going to be her place after all.

  The woman did manage to put away her shoulder wrap without assistance (unless Reverend Joseph did that for her), and she breezed into the kitchen resplendent in her Easter finery.

  “Are you just now having your dinner?” Mrs. Hartmann asked, her disapproval thinly veiled behind a Sunday smile, which seemed quite genuine by the time Reverend Joseph entered the room.

  “Good afternoon, Sparrow,” he said, briefly laying his hand on top of her head. “Is that strawberry pie?”

  “It is, and it’s delicious. Can I cut you a slice?”

  “Of course not,” Mrs. Hartmann said. “We’ve just come from a lovely Easter dinner.”

  “Where the carrot cake was as dry as dust.” Reverend Joseph took a plate down from the cupboard and cut himself a thick slice of the pie, spooning out extra filling. “Tell me, Kassandra dear, did you enjoy your day of rest?”

  “I did. In fact, I spent most of the day resting.”

  Mrs. Hartmann poured two cups of tea and set one in front of Reverend Joseph. She pulled out a chair and took her accustomed place to his right.