by Alix Hawley
—He was not a child.
Daniel’s voice breaks and we both stand helpless to move. I cannot get enough air. I stumble backward, but Daniel catches my shoulder, his face twisting. He says:
—We do not have to talk of it. It will never happen again. I promise you. I promise.
He is kissing my wet cheeks and eyes. My lashes catch between his dry lips. His smell—
I push him from me, but he catches my arms, searching my face.
—We will have a happier life now, Rebecca. Better for us all. Forget everything else, we can forget it. Land for all the children, our own fresh land, not your brothers’ charity.
I look at his eyes, where joy is rising. I twist away from his hands and I say:
—I do know you, and I know you are wrong. We are happy here already, we have a happy life, and you are wrong.
* * *
He begins slowly.
When winter is coming on, he says there is a place some eight miles up the river. We could have it. A safe place all our own. He plans a bigger cabin there. I hear him talking to the children about it. Plank floors. A great tall hearth, taller than Jesse. A chimney of smooth river stones. Several rooms upstairs, with chinked walls between. He has already begun it, just in case. Room for all of us together, he says, more than once. All right, my girl?
His heart beats fast all the time. I can see it through his shirt. He is desperate for plans and busyness, scratching out all he has done before, trying to make things new. His happiness is wild, like an animal that needs trapping.
The children are delighted. A bigger house, flat land, already cleared. No more stones to pick out of the furrows, my big Jesse, though you are as strong as your daddy, you are pony-built like me, says Daniel. And Jesse laughs and loves him.
Closer to the Blue Ridge. Closer to good pelts and good hunting. For Israel. Who laughs and loves him.
Nothing in me wishes to leave this place. Only the children love the idea of the future. They are so happy.
The flat green lawn in my dream. I try to see it. The children playing and sitting on it.
Daniel persuades Will to think of coming upriver and building a house close by, though Susy is bigger with child every day. When I go on a cold Monday to see how she is and help her and Cotty with the washing, I have her sit a moment at her table with her feet up on a chair. She has shadows beneath her eyes but is still lively. Her fingers skip over the tabletop, drumming out a tune.
—Are you never still, Susy?
—Why should I be?
She points and stretches her feet as I go to the window to check the fire is still high under the washpot. I ask her:
—Do you wish to move upriver?
—Why not? I like new houses.
—Do you not like this house?
—I do, but I might like it there better.
—You are your father’s girl.
—I am.
She jumps up, her hand cradling her belly:
—We ought to get Lizzy’s old baby things out and washed, Ma. This one is eager to see the world. Look how it kicks me! It must be a boy.
Another Daniel. Another Jamesie—
I ask:
—Do you really wish to go? Can you see us all there? I cannot.
—Ma, you are too afraid of everything.
She pokes me with her elbow and kisses my cheek. I take a breath and stroke my daughter’s back:
—Well Susy.
—Well Ma. I am never wrong.
I laugh:
—Perhaps a new place is no bad thing for a new little life.
—And no bad thing for you, Ma. We could all use more room, at any rate.
So I carry their plump Lizzy warm and sleepy on my knee when we ride to the new house with all our things in the wagon. It is the day before Christmas. The sky is grey and low, the snow crusty. Daniel has gone ahead, and stands pleased in the doorway to meet us. He has built a big place. He has even scraped the logs clean of bark, so the house shines yellow. He helps the girls down from the wagon and horses. Polly says it is the best house she has ever seen in her life. She throws her arms about him and he dances her in a circle. She is like a cat that once had a home and is determined to get itself another, the same look as Martha always had. The same slipping in to make quiet trouble.
I have Jos’s cider put away in a chest under my linen.
Daniel does not mention that this land is still my granddaddy’s, only none of my brothers is using it and they have told him he can build on it. He is so easily able to make things seem true—and everyone listens.
* * *
Three more births for the women around us over December. I lose none of them. The babies are all fat healthy ones and come head down. The mothers heal quickly and have plenty of milk. No one is ill, not even a cold.
After Twelfth Night I have my birthday, and I am forty years old. Susy makes a fuss and an enormous currant cake. Slicing it, I cut my palm, and I stand watching it bleed a moment, then I bind it up. The cut throbs and I feel quite alive. I cannot stop my smile at the way the children are singing all over the big house. Their faces are red in the firelight when they run up to kiss me.
A draft spills snow from the roof outside the window. My limbs soften into the chair. Daniel sewed a birthday cushion for it with the girls. His big clumsy stitches made me laugh when he handed it to me. Lizzy curls in my lap and reaches up under my cap to feel my hair.
I feel my tiredness. But I feel we are quite safe again, or nearly so. I am not used to feeling this. Daniel keeps across the room, but he smiles at me and I smile also before I think. I tell him it is a good house, and he gives a little bow. He wants to give me things—I shut my eyes as Lizzy’s small fingers rake my hair out of its knot.
* * *
In spring, we plant on all the clear acres. Everything grows tall. The cow has twin calves and makes more thick milk than they can drink. I cannot understand how well it all does, and how huge the children are growing too, as if Daniel has some fresh magic about him. What did he sell for it?
His happiness is still wild, but he controls it. He works and works when he is not off hunting with Israel in the mountains, showing him the grounds of his youth, as he says. He always says it. He kisses my cheek in the mornings. He takes care to do no more.
Perhaps this place will be a good one for us. A good home for many years. My heart wishes to believe it. Often I dream of this yellow house as I sleep in it.
* * *
A warm day, high thin clouds. I think of making a green where the house faces the creek. We are tending the garden between our houses, tying up the long bean vines, when Susy stops and stands, arching her back, and frowns.
—Ma, I think this baby is ready today.
I had thought it might be my girl’s time. Over the last week, the baby has dropped low, and Susy’s breasts have begun to leak in the night. Her face cramps now with her womb, which I can see from the shifting of her belly under her skirt. I say:
—I think you are right. Come indoors.
Polly has been weeding with Cotty and hears everything, as she always does. She pops her head up and says she will help midwife. She might be a help, we have no one else near, but her curiosity chafes at me. I say:
—No, Polly. You keep at your work here.
She thinks to argue, but seeing Israel and Daniel coming downriver from the mountain trail, she only turns and bends with her backside high in the air for their benefit. I tell my Becky to watch the little ones, and I take Susy in to her bedroom.
The pains grip Susy very fast this time. I tell her the baby is impatient to see its ma and its big sister, but there is almost no rest between the cramps, great waves that seize her and make her gasp. Daniel knocks and asks if he should send for some of my sisters and aunts to help, but there is no time. He hears my worry, and hovers outside. I hear him thinking he might help, he might deliver this one himself as he insisted on trying to do when my Jesse was born. Watching between my legs
for his child—his child—to come into the world.
I tell him we are all right. He says, If you are sure, and I say Yes, we are all right, Daniel, do not worry yourself.
He goes. The pupils of Susy’s eyes are large, her hair gummed to her forehead. She cannot keep from groaning with the pains. I can only hold her hands and stroke her face. But I will have no one else here. I want only us, and quiet. I tell her:
—All the births this year have been good. Your baby will be here soon to join the rest.
—Ma, I cannot—
—You can, sweet.
She is still very small. Her hips are narrow, a small forked branch.
I move her from the bed to the birth stool and have her open her thighs wide. I rub between them with grease, pressing with my thumbs to soften her. It has been so quick and she is already exhausted, with no rest at all from the pains.
—Ma—Ma—
—Not long now, Susy. It will not be much longer.
I am kneeling to see. The baby’s head shows a moment, then is pulled back up inside into the dark. This happens again. Again.
—Ma, please—
She twists on the stool. Her knuckles are pale and shaking on the armrests. My hand inside her makes her howl, I cannot grip the baby. I am helpless. I cannot bear to watch.
We need no ghosts in this new-smelling house.
—Please—
I stretch Susy’s opening down hard with my thumb. A great burst of a pain tears down her, and in a gush of warm red water the baby is born, slipping quietly out all at once.
It is blue.
It is perfect. And perfectly still—
I fetch a cloth, I rub at it with my hands, roll it onto its side and press on its chest and stomach. The smell is of damp, tired air.
—It is all right, Ma?
It has fair hair, fair little lashes. Soft skin. I bend over it and whisper:
—You must not go. You must stay. We will all stay here.
When I make it this promise, it shudders under my palm and moves its head. Its tiny mouth opens with a sputter and a mew. Good girl. She breathes in and out, in and out. I smooth her cheeks. Susy is laughing and crying on the stool, shuddering with the after-pains. I tell her she has a daughter, a little swan.
Not another Jamesie, not another Daniel. Her own fair little self.
Once the afterbirth has come, I help Susy back to the bed. I give her the baby once I have cleaned and wrapped the girl. My poor daughter looks at the small thing cradled in her arm. After a time she says with a thin smile:
—A girl. I am glad. Are you happy, Ma?
—I am.
And I am happy watching the two of them. I am thankful for the quiet and peace that have come into the house with the child. She has made it a new house, truly.
Until the door bangs open and Polly strides in without knocking.
—Polly, have you been indoors listening all this time?
—No. Let me see the baby. What is it?
She is saucier than ever, going to stroke the baby’s head and coo in its small face. She wants to hold it but I tell her no. Susy tells her it is a girl, and she runs back out, tugging up her skirts and calling like a trumpet:
—Daddy Daddy, you have another granddaughter! Susy has a girl!
I hear Daniel’s voice, his proud laughter. Well well. Another little miss for the new country.
ONE NIGHT soon afterwards in the dark new house, I realize I did not ask my Susy in her labour who the father was.
I have never forgotten the midwife’s question before. Maybe I am getting old. But of course the father is Will. I see him in the tiny girl’s cautious look. My new granddaughter keeps her feathery white hair and lashes, and watches about her all the time. She is light as a bird, with a long slender neck. Her ma has named her for Jemima, but I call her Swan. Perhaps I saw one once in a book, when I was very young. I have a dream that she flies off, her tiny feet kicking at the air behind her. When I go to see Susy, I hold the little one and keep her feet in my hands.
Perhaps my daughter Jemima has a child now too in Kentucky. I wonder if I will ever know it. I do not ask Daniel if his Shawnee wife has children.
I do not ask him about her at all. I do not wish to know any more. I will forget what he said and look at my little granddaughter and have my own thoughts.
He lets me be private. He is always courteous with me, and is often off hunting. When he is here, he plays with the children and talks with Will about making money. And he visits my brothers downriver, getting the news, he says. He has never been a great friend of theirs, but he must always be busy now, and he is happy in that. He does not talk often of Kentucky, though Israel and the other boys are forever asking him about it, the fort, the fighting and killing. He tells Jesse once that he set the children there to gather bullets after the fight. They picked up a woman’s body-weight of lead from the fort and fields. Another hundredweight dug out of the walls.
He lowers his arms and curls them to mime the heaviness, and staggers about in a circle, grinning. When he sees me watching, he stands straight and talks instead of how well the corn is coming on here, what a fine crop it will be.
I know he is trying to keep me happy. I tidy the yellow house. The grass is growing. We are staying here.
* * *
He is happy still, though I see him twitch when the horses make any noise in the barn and his eyes are always moving. He kisses me one morning and goes off without a word. He is gone five nights, then six, then eleven. The longest he has left us since he returned. Jesse and Morgan go about frowning and pretending to shoot each other with long sticks. Israel goes off to hunt on his own, impatient and irritated. Polly hardly speaks to me, as though it were all my doing.
The days grow longer. July is dry and hot. We scythe the hay twice, and the flax is already cut and soaking. The river goes down a few inches but is still high. Daniel is still gone, and I find myself worrying after him in the old way, when I do not wish to.
It is twilight and I am cleaning pots when Susy’s Will comes to the door. His face is cold and strained. My chest goes tight.
—Will?
—Lizzy. Have you seen her?
Her little round face leaps before my eyes:
—She is not here. Is she, Becky? Levina? Polly? Have you seen her today?
The girls all shake their heads. I tell Becky to look upstairs, and she runs up with Levina, but is down again in a minute, saying no, not there.
—Will, where did you see her last?
—Susy had her in the garden and went in to feed the baby. We have seen nothing of her since.
—Oh God—
This bursts from me before I can stop it. My heart is racing. I walk outside though my feet feel cold and unsteady, and my heart pounds faster in the outdoor warmth. The girls follow at my heels, but I tell them to look round the garden and the fields.
—Do it now.
Following me, Will says:
—Where are you going?
I do not answer. I begin to run now, down past the barn to the river. The spot Lizzy likes to stand throwing pebbles in. The shallow clear place where we wash when it is warm. Before the bend, where it slides off into a deep pool.
As I run stumbling over the rough hay stubble I can see her, my round little girl standing with her apron full of stones, scattering them all at once into the water with her eyes screwed shut. I see bears, wolves, water, the face of that Cherokee they called Jim—
—Lizzy!
In the birches along the river I keep calling. Will is behind me now, crashing, calling too, as loud as he can. His hoarse voice is terrible. I turn and tell him to hush. The hoofbeats I could feel through the ground without knowing it catch up to our hearing.
—Will—
At my side now he nods, he hears them too, some distance away down the river. He yells:
—Who is there?
He fires a shot high. The flash brightens his wild cold face. At the bang a bird flies
into the air. I think of my dream, my little bird flying off—only not this bird, not Lizzy.
The noise does not stop the rider. Will is loading again but his hands are shaking, he is cursing into his powder. I stand where I am, watching the horse come towards us, trying to see. The rider calls:
—I have her.
All I can think of is the Cherokee who killed my boy, and those who took my girl Jemima.
I have her. Daniel called this across the fort to me when they came back with her and the Callaway girls. My eyes ache, looking. And again it is Daniel’s voice, Daniel on the horse, now beside us with his beard grown in again and his eyes pale in the dusk. Lizzy is astride in front of him, her fat little legs bumping the saddle. She turns her face to me and reaches down—Gramama—and I take her in my arms and breathe her in, her own sweet coppery scent.
Daniel dismounts too and bends over, hands on knees. Will says:
—Where did you find her?
—I ran into her walking downriver. Going to Grandmama’s house on her own, without that baby, she said.
—Oh Lizzy, you must not do such things without telling your ma.
She pulls her cheek away from mine and begins to cry, a tired sound.
Daniel stands to pat her hand and says:
—She was right as a little soldier marching along. You are Granddaddy’s own flesh and blood, are you not, my wandering Eliza?
He reaches to take her, but I hold on:
—She is not a soldier. And that is not her name.
—Well. I did find her.
—You were gone again.
—But here I am, and with her.
—You do not know a thing about her.
Lizzy tips her head back and cries harder, and I am crying with her. I feel how tired I am as well, tired of the old fear that is always with me, even when I think it has gone. Daniel squats again and coughs dryly. Will goes to him. I spin and walk back towards the hayfield with my granddaughter heavy in my arms.
* * *
