by Vicki Delany
She kept her face impassive, although she could have spat on the ground, the way she’d seen soldiers do. Maria was strong. She controlled people, her husband, her children, by pretending to be frail and ill. She tried to control Maggie as well, but she knew full well Maggie saw right through her.
She clambered up the packed earth ramp. He was standing at the top and made no move to get out of her way. He reached out and touched her arm. Weighted down by her place in this life as well as potatoes, she didn’t swat his hand away. As she slid past him, his hand brushed against her breast. She shuddered but kept her face impassive.
Her face burned as his laughter followed her into the house.
He had little to laugh about these days. None of them did. Like boys throwing rocks at a lame old dog, some people thought themselves strong, preying on the weak.
The youngest child, Emily, sat under the table, playing with her doll. “Can I have some bread?” she asked, bobbing the toy up and down as if it were the straw person who was hungry.
“In a minute.”
“Maggie,” a voice whined from the single bedroom at the back of the house. “Come here.”
She put the potatoes on the table, wiped her hands on her apron, and answered the summons. Maria was sitting up in the narrow bed. She waved a hand when Maggie entered, the lace and satin of the sleeves of her nightgown falling back to reveal pure white arms. They had fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and what meager treasures they could carry. But somehow Maria Macgregor had managed to keep her nightgowns and fancy dresses and shoes and hats.
Not that she had anyplace in Fifth Town to wear such dresses. She kept her fine things only to run her fingers through as candlelight flicked in the long winter nights and tell her daughter that one day they’d regain their place in society. Maggie doubted the family had ever had much of a place in society to lose, and she suspected Maria had either stolen the nice clothes or discovered them abandoned. The dresses were too long and too big around the waist. They’d all lost weight, but no one lost height.
She wore the nightgowns to impress Maggie. She certainly wasn’t trying to impress her husband. With only a blanket for a door, Maggie knew more than she wanted of what went on—precious little—in the master’s bed.
“I have one of my headaches,” Maria said, languidly. “Tea, please, Maggie.”
Maggie said nothing. She’d stoked the fire to make breakfast and the kettle was still hot. Tea was a misnomer. The tea, real tea, they’d brought with them had been finished long ago. Now they drank leaves of dandelions or the root of willows steeped in hot water. She peered into the tea tin. Not even much of that left. Maria could wait. Maggie cut a thin slice off a heel of last week’s bread and added a bit of dripping. “Come out now, and sit in a chair like a lady.”
Emily slid out from under the table. She propped her doll against the small pile of potatoes and pretended to share the food.
Maggie gave the girl a smile, and made tea.
The family kept up the pretense that they were caring for their widowed relative out of Christian charity. In reality, Maggie wasn’t much more to them than a servant. A slave, in fact if not in law, because she received no wages and had no place else to go.
She cooked and cleaned, managed the household, farmed the vegetable patch, minded the children, and cared for the lady of the house when she was pretending to be unwell. The only duty Maggie hadn’t yet been expected to perform was to service the master’s needs.
That day, she had no doubt, would come.
What she would do then, she had no idea.
Maria had birthed ten children, yet she wasn’t much past thirty. Two had died in infancy, one of the scarlet fever when he was four years old, two more as war ravaged the countryside and the family starved in their ostracism, one on the long journey north, and then dear, sweet Lucy, only last month. Three children, out of ten, remained. Emily, who liked bread and dripping and loved the straw doll Maggie had made her, and the two boys, Jacob and Caleb, who should have been in school but, aside from the fact that there was no school, were needed to work the hundred acres of wilderness they called a farm.
Maggie didn’t often let herself think about all she had lost. Certainly not during the day when there were chores to be done and people watching. She tried not to snap at useless, whining Maria who seemed to think she was the only person who had suffered.
Maggie had had a husband once. Tall, handsome Hamish Macgregor, always laughing, always finding something in life to smile about. Maggie and Hamish had a child. Flora, who looked exactly like her father with black hair and flashing black eyes and long, long lashes and a full red mouth.
“Don’t cry, Maggie,” Emily said, and Maggie felt a sticky hand resting against her arm. “I don’t want any more.”
Maggie blinked away tears. She held out her arms, and Emily slipped into them. Nothing but a worn dress and a layer of skin protected the girl’s fragile bones. Emily had almost died over the seemingly endless winter they’d spent in Lachine, waiting, just waiting for the ice to melt and the rivers to open. While Nathanial bristled at his reduced station in life, and Maria wept in despair, Maggie nursed the child without pause to bring her through the fever that wracked the tiny body. She’d been unable to save Lucy, and now cherished Emily all the more.
“Soon the plants will be growing, and we’ll have plenty to eat,” Maggie said, making the effort to sound cheerful. “Won’t that be lovely?”
Emily nodded.
It was spring now. The hens would start laying again, the first of the crops would be in, and the rivers were opening so supplies would be coming from Cataraqui and Montreal.
“Why don’t you take your mother’s tea to her,” Maggie said, embarrassed to have let her tears flow. “I’m sure she’d like to see you looking so pretty this morning.”
The little girl shrugged, not much caring, and Maggie handed her the cup.
***
June 15, 1786
Maggie stood in the yard at the entrance to the root cellar, more mud than vegetation, and watched Nathanial Macgregor and his sons struggle to move a fallen branch of a massive tree. He didn’t talk to her or to Marie about work on the farm, but Maggie knew they’d cleared far less ground than they’d hoped. First the plow had broken, and then Caleb had sliced his leg open with an axe. The boy might have lost the leg had not it been that the midwife had seen such injuries before and she instructed Maggie on how to care for the wound. Caleb was recovering and the cut was healing well, the skin around it pink and healthy, but he had lost a great deal of working time.
Maggie would never, in her worst nightmares, have imagined her life would turn out like this.
Her father owned one of the best farms in the Mohawk Valley. Tenants rented land from him and servants moved silently through the big white house with the stately Greek columns, wide verandah, and sweeping front drive. Maggie’s mother was known far and wide for the quality of her roses and the excellence of her cook. Maggie had three older brothers. Two would study to become lawyers and one would take over management of the farm. Maggie’s parents had come to America as newlyweds, and with a substantial dose of luck, as well as her father’s small inheritance, they’d done extremely well.
Their only daughter had been raised to be a lady. Maggie could play the piano, although poorly, and paint in watercolors, highly amateurish. She was well read, spoke French, was an excellent horsewoman, and could embroider with the tiniest of stitches. She could distinguish one type of English china from another and was able to identify pests and diseases that preyed upon roses.
There had been little doubt that Margaret Reid would marry Hamish Macgregor, son of their closest landowning neighbor. Fortunately Hamish and Maggie had been great friends in their childhood and friendship turned to love as they grew. Their wedding had been the most lav
ish, and best attended, that had been seen in the Valley for many years.
The day before the wedding, Hamish, immaculately dressed in brown breeches, white stockings, gray coat, and spotless white cravat, had called upon Maggie and Mrs. Reid. Despite his formal attire and manner, joy radiated from him. Maggie was nineteen years old, Hamish twenty. She smiled at him, careful not to appear too eager in the presence of her mother, and thought that such happiness would be hers forever.
“I have a gift for you, my love,” he said. He dipped his head and presented her with a small silver box. “This belonged to my mother. Father told me it would be for my bride.” Both of Hamish’s parents were dead, his mother when he was very small, his father only last year, shortly after the announcement of their engagement. The elder Mr. Macgregor had not remarried after the death of his wife, and Hamish had no brothers or sisters. He was delighted, he’d told her, to be part of her family.
Maggie glanced at her mother. Mrs. Reid nodded, and Maggie accepted the box. She opened it with trembling fingers.
A pair of earrings was nestled into a mound of cotton. Mrs. Reid, peeking over Maggie’s shoulder, gasped. The jewels absorbed light from the wax candles in the chandelier and threw it back in a cascade of color. Each earring consisted of three sections, with a single diamond mounted in the base and clusters of smaller diamonds set in silver forming the extensions. Another large diamond was placed in the center of the third, and largest, unit. The silver was decorated with intricate scrolls and flourishes. Mrs. Reid almost snatched the box from Maggie’s hand. She lifted one earring up and held it to the light. The three parts swayed sensuously. At the bottom it was at least an inch wide, perhaps three inches long.
“A fine gift,” Mrs. Reid said, reluctantly replacing the earring in its box, “to begin a fine match.”
Later, alone in her room on the night before her wedding, Maggie counted the stones. Twenty-one diamonds graced each earring.
Maggie and Hamish honeymooned in Charleston, where she had relatives, and she looked forward to nothing but a life of happiness and prosperity. Now, in the rough patch of land they’d carved out of the wilderness, owning nothing but meager supplies provided by the government, she looked back on those sultry summer days as the last genuine happiness she would ever know. The month passed in a blur of dinners and dances and grand balls. Clouds were gathering, although she did not see them: Hamish would leave Maggie with the women and join the men to smoke and talk politics. Always politics.
For the world was intruding on their perfect lives as men sat on the porch smoking and threw out words such as liberty and tyranny and loyalty.
Her husband would come to her bed with a set to his mouth and a darkness behind his eyes. She would turn her face to him with a welcoming smile, and the scowl would flee when he set his eyes upon her.
***
A shriek. Another. I blinked. My entire body shuddered, but from cold not fear. I was leaning against the door of the root cellar and the chill damp leaked through my thin cotton nightgown. I looked down: my bare feet were covered with mud.
What on earth did I think I was doing? Sleepwalking? I’d never walked in my sleep before. I glanced around. Outside, the sun had come out, burning off the thick fog. Enough light reached down here so I could see that an electric bulb—plump, round, and white—was suspended from the ceiling. A long string dangled from it.
No need for candlelight, then.
Of course not.
The yells I’d heard were of laughter and pretend fear. Lily’s voice I recognized, another girl with her. I crept up the ramp and half-crouched in the shadows. The girls were running in circles, around the row of tall poplars that lined the driveway. They had their arms outstretched as if they were airplanes, swooping and ducking. Lily’s friend tripped, rolled over, and bounced back up, howling with laughter. They disappeared around the side of the house, heading for the horse paddock.
I made my way to the house and crept upstairs to my room, seeing no one, feeling like a goddamned fool.
What next? Would they have to guard me like an Alzheimer’s patient to keep me from wandering off? A GPS anklet perhaps?
The very idea frightened me to my core.
Chapter Eleven
Monday morning I had an appointment with the new doctor. Her name was Rebecca Mansour, and she was nothing like I’d expected. Instead of an old biddy, tired of endless rounds of golf and volunteering at the library in her retirement, looking to do something to get out of the house, she was around my age, late thirties, and rather attractive with sharp cheekbones in a bony face, dark hair cropped short, and large brown eyes. Her nose was prominent and her skin the color of warm honey. She looked to be of Middle Eastern descent, but her accent was pure Ontario. She didn’t have an office to speak of, just a remodeled broom closet off the emergency room of the hospital. While I sat in the uncomfortable metal chair she consulted her computer screen and jotted notes on a yellow legal pad. “The headaches aren’t getting any better,” she said. It was not a question, and I answered, “No,” before remembering that I was telling everyone how much better I was feeling.
I hastened to add. “Sometimes they’re better.”
“Sometimes.”
“Yes.”
I’d been told that most of the brain damage I’d suffered as a result of the explosion was to the occipital lobe, located at the back of the head. One of the consequences, along with the narrowing of vision and trouble reading that I experienced, was hallucinations. I hadn’t experienced any hallucinations. Not until recently.
Was that all it was? Hallucinations caused by my physical injuries? Had reading old letters up in the attic inspired my poor damaged brain to think I was seeing those people?
The woman in the root cellar, in a long brown dress with a ragged and dusty hem.
The root cellar wasn’t a spooky place, just dark and dirty and damp and the ceiling was too low. It wasn’t really even all that old. I’d spent a lot of time in the Middle East: nothing in North America could be considered to be old compared to the ancient civilizations. The smell perhaps, that rot which it seemed only I could detect, was setting off something in my damaged head.
I felt a bit better thinking that I wasn’t going totally nuts.
But not enough to confide in this doctor.
Every doctor I’d consulted had told me, with a shake of the head as if it were a professional failing, that the working of the brain was a mysterious thing.
Doctor Mansour studied my face. I imagined she was checking to see if Omar watched her from behind my eyes. I shoved aside thoughts of the root cellar, in case she could read my mind, and examined my hands in my lap.
“You don’t have to pretend,” she said. “The brain is a fragile, mysterious thing. Yours has had an enormous shock.”
To my surprise, and some degree of horror, I felt tears welling up behind my eyes. “Am I always going to be like this? Afraid of the sun? Afraid to run or to jump? Afraid that my nephew is going to leap out from behind a chair and yell boo?” Afraid of images of people that are not there? Of wandering off in the night?
“Are those the things that set off the headaches?”
“Almost anything can set them off. Shock or surprise most of all, I guess. Bright light in particular. ”
“What makes them go away?”
“Quiet. Dark. No, that’s wrong, not dark. He, I mean it, comes on in the night. Not often, but sometimes. I find the woods peaceful. Now that the leaves are coming in and the forest is full of shade.” And the damp darkness of the root cellar.
She ran her eyes over my body. “You’ve lost a lot of weight since the attack. At a guess, I’d say you’ve lost a lot of muscle mass as well. Do you get any exercise?”
I considered lying. But her penetrating eyes were back on my face. “Not much.”
“You need to. I’m sure Doctor Singh told you that.”
I shrugged.
“There’s a pool at the rec center. I swim there most mornings. Why don’t you give it a try?”
I shook my head.
“You’re living out in the country, that’s good. There are studies showing that the more exposure to nature, trees in particular, one has, the quicker the recovery.”
“Is that true?”
She nodded, “Fascinating research. Simply looking at a tree through a window apparently does a person good. Your sister’s farm is near the lake, isn’t it? Lots of opportunity for walking. You said you like the woods, and the beaches aren’t crowded at this time of year.”
“Sometimes,” I said, feeling the words in my mouth, “it all just seems like too much trouble.”
“Lethargy isn’t uncommon with severe brain trauma. The brain is afraid of another shock, so it wants to shut down and heal. But that’s not good for the mind, is it?”
“No.”
“What do you want, Hannah?”
I was surprised at the question. No doctor had ever asked me before what I wanted. Didn’t they all just assume that I wanted to get better?
I didn’t answer.
She made a steeple out of her fingers and leaned back in her chair. Out in the hallway a child began to cry and a woman made soothing noises. Feet walked rapidly past. The siren of an ambulance got louder as it approached. No doctor had ever waited for me to speak. They were always in such a rush to get onto the next patient.
“I want my life back,” I said at last. “I want to get back to work. I want to care about what happens in the world. I want to care about something.” I scrambled in my bag for a tissue. I blew my nose.
“That’s good. You’d be surprised at the number of people I’ve seen who simply decide to give up. It’s hard to heal. Your life isn’t going to come back to you on a platter, Hannah. Not without help. I can help you. I can adjust your medication. I can send you for tests so we can see how the physical healing process is advancing. But I can’t give you much more than that. If you want to get better, you have to do the hard work yourself.”
