The Abandoned Heart

by Laura Benedict

  “Sometimes the way you talk, I think you don’t live in the same world the rest of us do, Kiku.”

  They sat on the stairs. There were no chairs on the porch, as there were on Mason and Odette’s porch. Mason had made their chairs—rocking chairs that were so solid that they did not even creak. Both were amazed that Kiku had never seen a rocking chair, let alone sat in one, and had laughed as she rocked, also laughing, like the child she still was.

  “I was walking home from the next village, where my mother had sent me to get incense because the incense seller said it was too much trouble to get to the fishing village where we lived, even though we always gave him a nice welcome. My mother is fond of sandalwood incense, though my father says it is too expensive and that our family’s prayers are not illustrious enough to require an expensive fragrance. But he does not mean it when he says such things. He likes to tease her, the way Mason teases you. But I think you don’t know, sometimes, that he is teasing.”

  Kiku had been looking out at the trees as she spoke, but now turned her eyes to Odette, who looked for a moment as though she might be angry.

  “You say he’s teasing. I say he’s just a rude man.” She smiled in spite of her words, and Kiku smiled as well. Mason was a good man.

  “I thought they were robbers at first. Or monsters. My father had told me of the Europeans and the Indians who came to the port in ships. But the port is almost a day’s walk from my village, and when I had gone there, I never saw these people. I knew that’s who they were when I saw their faces. At first I thought they would rob me for the incense, and I told them they could have it, but they did not listen to me. One of the men spoke a little of my language, but he was not very good, and called me a burning house when I would not walk fast enough for them. I still don’t know what he was trying to say.”

  She told Odette the rest: of being gagged and taken into the port city at night, and smuggled onboard the ship in a large basket that smelled of sea grass and rotted persimmons and mold. What she could not tell her was of the panic that had filled her body when she realized that the ship was moving and no one had come to rescue her. That she understood, but couldn’t admit to herself for days, that she would never see her home again. That her body was no longer her own.

  No, despite having heard her parents make the sounds of love during her whole life, she could not connect them to what the second mate (who always referred to himself as “Tommy” as though he were talking about somebody else) did to her within hours after the ship had set sail from the port.

  She was not alone. The other girl in the second mate’s cabin was Christiana, who, Kiku eventually learned, was English, but had been kidnapped from a country called Australia, where her family had settled, and brought to Japan on a different ship, by different men. At first she and Christiana communicated little, except when obeying the often strange and repellent commands of the second mate. But they were forced to spend long hours together in the grubby cabins of the ships in which they traveled, only being allowed topside when the sea was very calm and it was dark and the watchmen appeared to be asleep or occupied. They had been topside only a handful of times before he told them that they had just gone around the end of the world and were headed toward New York.

  Two weeks before they reached New York, Christiana died of a fever in her sleep.

  Kiku had awakened, shivering, beside her in the bunk. Christiana’s body was cold, and the blanket soaked with sweat and urine. Her eyes were open and staring, no longer glazed with fever. Having seen her grandfather die, and the dead bodies of children who had died in her village, Kiku was not afraid. Her only worry had been that Christiana’s spirit might become confused being on a ship and not be able to leave it.

  When the second mate came in from his watch, he had seemed almost unconcerned, telling Kiku, “English whores are probably a dime a dozen in New York. I’m glad you’re not the one who died.” Christiana had taught her enough English that she understood what he was saying, and she thought him very cruel. She did not say another word until after they reached New York.

  Sometimes Randolph asked her to tell him about the ship and what the second mate had done to her. She was used to Randolph asking such questions, and she answered, embellishing where she knew it would excite him and leaving out the mundane. The truth was that, after Christiana died, the second mate hadn’t used her much, and she spent the days kneeling on his bunk, staring out the tiny window at the endless, rolling ocean, and telling stories to Christiana’s rag doll that she had kept hidden so he couldn’t throw it into the ocean with the rest of Christiana’s things.

  She paused, and Odette looked up from the step at which she had been staring, and turned her gaze to the woods.

  “Shall I tell you about Madame Jewel’s, where Randolph found me?”

  Odette didn’t answer for a moment, then shook her head. “No.”

  “Very well.”

  Odette stood, and Kiku could feel her looking down on her. Finally, without speaking, Odette went into the kitchen.

  The air smelled of burned cornbread. It was the last time Odette would ask her anything about her past.

  For the first time Kiku noticed that some of the leaves on the trees had begun to change color. Only a few leaves here and there had begun to turn, as though the rest were shy, waiting for the others to go first. She had arrived in New York in the early spring and so had only seen the trees budding out with new leaves, but hadn’t seen them fall. At home the trees were mostly shaggy pine trees whose powerful scent in the spring made tears of happiness come to her eyes. In the coldest months, they kept their needles, but didn’t look quite so green. Kiku wasn’t sure that she could bear to live where so many trees, save a few pines that reminded her of home, lost their leaves. No longer would there be shelter for her beneath them.

  Chapter 12

  KIKU

  October 1878

  Kiku woke to a light tapping on her window, and in her dream she imagined that a giant bird was trying to open an acorn or sunflower seed on a platform high above her head. The bird was getting more and more frustrated and banged louder until she finally woke and sat up, perplexed. The knocking continued and she looked through sleepy eyes to see Odette jumping up to hit at the window with her hand, taptaptap, before she dropped to the ground again. Kiku hit once on the window back at her to let her know she was awake. Once she was out of bed, she pulled on her robe. She thought of the day when the child inside her would be much larger, and wondered if the robe would still wrap around her.

  Odette began talking as soon as Kiku opened the front door.

  “Why isn’t your bedroom window open? Do you want to roast to death? I guess nobody ever told you how to keep your windows open so the cool air comes in at night. Then you can close them during the day to keep the cool air in. If you’re not baking, that is.”

  “Good Lord, Odette. Do you have to tell everyone how to live their lives? Kiku might want to do things different. You can boss me, but you’re not married to everyone else. It was only fifty degrees last night. She’s so skinny she’d freeze to death.” Mason stood beside Odette, who was giving him a look.

  Odette shook her head. “She still has a lot to learn, and somebody has to teach her.”

  “You know how to lay a fire. You should put some of that wood I had cut for you in the fireplace tonight before it gets dark.” Mason gestured to the fireplace directly behind Kiku.

  “Now who’s being bossy?” Odette put a gentle hand on Kiku’s shoulder and eased her out of the way as she came inside. “Get dressed while I get you some breakfast. You do sleep later than a body should, don’t you? We’ve already been to church and back.”

  Kiku knew Odette wasn’t looking for an answer and so said nothing. Odette continued to the kitchen. Mason just shook his head and gave Kiku one of his shy, appealing grins.

  “We got a surprise. Mister Bliss has gone out of town, and none of the workmen are at the house today. It’s safe for you t
o see inside.”

  The news did come as a surprise to Kiku. She had dreamed about the house, trying to make sense of all that Mason and Odette had told her about it. But in her dreams it was always a confusing, dark place, with narrow hallways, and mirrors that seemed to come out of nowhere and turned to mist, beckoning her to step into other, darker rooms. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go inside the real house.

  Yet she watched from behind a boulder just inside the edge of the woods almost every day. There were still people coming and going, but the garden and grass had been planted (which made the house look less stark, though no less unfriendly), and the visitors were of a different sort—drapers and decorators who arrived in carriages and traps. A pair of women dressed in severe but elegant dresses arrived several days in a row, remaining until the late afternoon. At first she had wondered if they were also Randolph’s lovers, but Randolph showed them no special attention and in fact was not always there when they arrived.

  Kiku knew she would go with Odette and Mason. But what if she found that it was such a terrible place that she could no longer bear to live in its shadow?

  “Why aren’t we going through the woods?” It seemed to Kiku that they were going in exactly the wrong direction to get inside the house. She could see the front drive plainly from just inside the woods. The trees had hung onto their leaves, but most had turned a bright red or gold or a brilliant yellow-orange.

  Odette smiled. “Because that’s part of the surprise.”

  “I didn’t think we should tell you about it, you being so young and all. But Odette here says she doesn’t think you’ll be afraid.”

  Kiku’s apprehension grew with the expectation that she would be brave. As they got farther away from the cottage, she wanted to run quickly back, telling them that she didn’t need to see. Didn’t want to see. But she remained quiet and only followed, hoping that she was really as brave as they believed her to be.

  They emerged from the trees well behind Bliss House, closer to Mason and Odette’s house than they were to the big house. In the near distance she could see a small, roofed structure with stone walls beside a creek. When they reached the creek, Mason held out a hand to help her jump across.

  “Is that where we’re going?” She pointed to the springhouse.

  Odette nodded. “Be ready.”

  “I don’t know that it’s something you can be ready for. It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen in my life. Mister Bliss is a man unto himself.” Kiku wasn’t sure if it was admiration in Mason’s voice, or criticism, or perhaps a fearful kind of respect.

  Outside it was a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon, but as soon as they entered the springhouse, Kiku began to shiver. And when, in the light from the single high window in the springhouse, Mason indicated the wall with a second, barely distinguishable door, she wanted to run back into the light. She had never been in a cave or any underground room, and she didn’t understand what this forsaken place had to do with the house many, many yards away. But she made herself stand beside Odette and not move until she did. Odette was not afraid, and she would not be afraid.

  “At least I don’t have to tell you to watch your head.” Mason held the door to the passageway open for the women and told them to wait a moment while he went ahead and lighted the lamps.

  “When he told me about this, I didn’t believe him.” Odette was whispering, and Kiku knew it was not because she didn’t want Mason to hear. “I told him that I wanted to see it for myself. Mister Bliss doesn’t even know that Mason knows about it. One of the foreigners who worked on the grand staircase in the hall got drunk and wandered away from their camp. Mason found him, and he started shooting his mouth out about a secret passage. Thank goodness Mason’s a good listener. He got every detail he could.”

  Of course Randolph would have a secret place. The cottage was a secret hiding in plain sight, but he would want a place that was truly secret. A place where his soul could meet the darkness without interference from the light of day.

  “Close the door.” Mason’s voice sounded hollow as he called from a distance down the passage. “Come on down this way.”

  Kiku flinched as the door closed and the sunlight disappeared. By the lantern light, she could see that it was not a cave but a kind of rude hallway. Short beams crossed the ceiling, holding up the dirt roof. The walls were dirt as well but when she touched them, they were smooth, as though built from some finer material.

  “The workman said the walls were done some special way by a man who learned it in Russia. Some queen there had tunnels built underground so she wouldn’t have to go outside in the winter at all if she didn’t want to.”

  At some point Kiku had unconsciously taken Odette’s hand, and Odette hadn’t rejected it. Her palm against Odette’s was the only warm part of her body.

  Something about the passageway demanded that they whisper. Kiku had the sense that someone was listening to them. Odette had told her a terrifying story: that the big house had been built on the place where a family and some slaves that they had been helping to run away had been murdered, burned alive in a house. The story had confirmed for Kiku that this was a bad place. A dangerous place. What if those spirits were waiting for someone like her, someone small and weak, to take their revenge? As they walked, the floor sloped downward. Truly they might be going into the underworld itself.

  “Mason, the child is freezing to death. Why didn’t you say it would be so cold down here?”

  “If I had been here before I would’ve known it, wouldn’t I?” When they reached Mason, he took off his jacket and put it around Kiku’s shoulders. She tried to protest, but Odette told her to be quiet and to get warm, and that she hoped there wouldn’t be much to see, and maybe they would be out quickly.

  Odette’s face glowed a rich warm brown in the lamplight. Mason was tense, but looked at his wife with approval in his eyes. His love for her was always obvious, even when they argued. Kiku had once asked Odette how she had met Mason, how they had fallen in love, and she had told her that she and her father had worked with him in an orchard operation in Pennsylvania. Mason was several years older than she, and she had agreed to marry him when he was promoted to manager. They had been together six years when Randolph hired him as his orchard keeper and brought them to Virginia.

  They continued to walk. It seemed a very long way, and Mason went ahead to light another lantern. Kiku felt the faintest touch of air moving over her face. Later, Mason said that there were hidden vents in the ceiling where it joined the walls.

  “Look out on your right. The man said there’s a staircase up to the house. But we don’t want to go up it just yet.”

  They didn’t see a staircase, but there was a door ahead. As they got closer Kiku felt her throat constrict.

  “I don’t want to go in there.” She squeezed Odette’s hand, and Odette squeezed back.

  “Maybe it’s not open.” Odette sounded hopeful. “I don’t much want to go in there, either. Let’s just go on up into the house.”

  Mason spoke. “There’s no one or nothing down here. The man said Mister Bliss was going to use it for storage, but there’s nothing inside yet.”

  Odette shook her head as though to say it didn’t sound right to her, but Kiku was the only one who saw. Still, Odette continued to follow Mason, and even when they found that the stairway was immediately to the right of the open door, she didn’t turn to go up it.

  The wooden door was heavy and thick and looked as though it had been made to withstand a battering ram. There were no locks on the front of it, but there was a bolt on one edge and a place for it to rest in the door’s heavy frame.

  “Never seen anything like that.” Mason shook his head.

  Kiku hadn’t, either.

  He lighted one more lamp on the other side of the door.

  “What is this place?” Odette’s voice was quiet now, as though they were in a church, but there was nothing the least bit holy about the hallway or the rooms off of it. There were two r
ooms in the vicinity of the wall lamp, and another open door separating them from the rest of the hall. “I want to look in here.” Odette put her head into the first room. She let go of Kiku’s hand and leaned inside.

  Kiku wanted to pull Odette back, but instead she pressed herself against the wall beneath the burning lamp.

  Mason came forward with his lantern, and he and Odette went inside together while Kiku watched from the hallway.

  The room was slightly larger than the parlor of the cottage, and a bit deeper than it was wide. When Mason held up his light, they could see a large crack in the far wall where it was buckling. Kiku had a momentary vision of the wall crumbling and bringing down the ceiling, and then the entire tunnel. She felt the feathery brush of the dirt as it covered her face. Closing her eyes briefly in a shudder, she opened them to find that she could no longer see Odette.

  “What’s this here?” Odette asked Mason to hold up the light.

  Even though she couldn’t bear to go inside the room, Kiku stepped forward quickly to stand in the doorway so she could keep her friends in sight.

  The room was empty except for two lamps on the wall, and a single faucet that led to a rude basin on a stand. A pipe led away from the stand and into a hole in the wall.

  “I wonder why he would want running water down here?” Mason seemed genuinely perplexed, but Odette looked at him with her you should know better look.

  “He’s obviously planning to have somebody using water down here. And, see? There’s one of those vents way up near the ceiling.”

  Kiku could not rid herself of the idea that the wall would crumble and they would be killed. “I want to go up into the house now. Please, Mason. I want to leave this place.” Hearing the tears in her voice, Odette came to put a comforting arm around her.

  “That’s fine. We don’t need to stay another minute.”

  Odette waited with her while Mason opened the hallway’s second door and briefly explored the pair of rooms beyond. They were unfinished and contained only some tools and pallets of bricks.