Heart of the West

by Penelope Williamson

  "Please, Father," she'd said that day, careful to keep her eyes humbly downcast, although her chest felt pinched for air. She wasn't sure what dying meant. "Am I a poor motherless child?"

  "Your mother lies near death," he said, "and all you can think of is yourself. There is a sinfulness in you, daughter. Such a wildness and a willfulness that at times I do fear for your immortal soul. 'If thy eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.' "

  Clementine flung her head up and clenched her fists. "But I've been good. I have been good!" Her chest hitched as she stared up into his face. "And my eyes have been good, too, Father. Truly they have."

  He heaved a deep, sad sigh. "You must remember our Lord sees everything, Clementine. Not only all we do, but what is in our thoughts and in our hearts. Come now, we must pray." He led her into the middle of the room and pressed her onto her knees. He lifted his big, heavy hand and laid it on her head, on the plain rough cotton cap that always covered her hair to keep her from vanity. "Dear Lord, when in thine infinite mercy, thou..." His voice trailed off. His daughter's head was not bent in prayer. His fingers tightened their grip, but he said gently, "Your baby sister has passed on, Clementine. She has gone to the glory of heaven."

  She cocked her head beneath his hand as she considered the meaning of his words. She had never been able to picture heaven very well, but she thought of what Mamma had said about the bleachery and the cauldrons of hell, and she smiled. "Oh, I do hope not, Father. I hope she went to hell instead."

  The reverend's hand jerked off his daughter's head. "What manner of child are you?"

  "I am Clementine," she had said.

  Clementine was forbidden to leave the nursery that day. In the hour before bed, her father came again and read to her from the Bible about a lake of fire and brimstone, and a righteous anger that would show no mercy when she died. Even the angels who had sinned had not been spared, the Reverend told her, but had been cast down into hell to suffer for all eternity.

  Her father came again and again over the next two days, morning, noon, and evening, to read more to her of hell. But it was the upstairs maid who told her that her mother would live.

  On the morning of the funeral all the mirrors and windows of the house were draped in black crepe, and flowers filled the hall, choking the air with their smell. A hearse pulled by horses sporting curling black plumes carried the tiny casket to the Old Granary Burying Ground. The wind stung cold on Clementine's face and slapped dead leaves against the gravestones. She knew all about hell now, and it was nothing like her grandfather's bleachery.

  Sometimes the thoughts would flow on to that Easter when Aunt Etta and the twins came for a visit. These boy cousins, who were seven years older than Clementine, had just returned from a trip to Paris, where they had acquired a miniature guillotine. Clementine was excited to see this marvel, for she was allowed few toys of her own to distract her from her lessons and prayers.

  The boys had offered to show her how the guillotine worked. And she, so pleased with the attention they were paying her, had smiled at the wonder of it. And was smiling still... until they set it up on the table where she took her morning porridge and milk, and they cut off the head of her only doll.

  "Please, stop," she said, careful to be polite and careful not to cry as she watched the porcelain head bouncing bloodless across the white painted surface. "You're hurting her." But her cousins only laughed, the tin blade fell with a shriek, and a pink dimpled arm went rolling onto the floor.

  Clementine didn't hurry, for she was forbidden to run. She didn't cry. Stiff in her starched pinafore and cap, she walked soundlessly through the big house in search of someone to stop the slaughter, while her little chest shuddered, and her eyes stared wide and unblinking.

  Lilting laughter floated out the open doors of the morning room. She stopped at the threshold, so enthralled she forgot about the murder of her doll. Mama and Aunt Etta sat knee to knee in white rattan chairs, heads bent over teacups. Aunt Etta had brought Easter lilies, and their thick sweet smell mixed with the melody of laughter and chatter. Sunlight poured through the tall windows, gilding her mother's hair.

  Julia leaned forward and gripped her sister's arm. "Then Dr. Osgood said in that gruff-kind voice of his. 'If you want to go on living, madam, you are not to try to have any more babies. I've told Mr. Kennicutt that if he cannot reconcile his conscience to birth control, then he must reconcile himself to abstinence. To behave otherwise is tantamount to murder, and I have told him that as well.' Oh, Etta, the good doctor broke this news as if it were a tragedy. How could he know the utter, utter relief! felt?" Julia laughed, then her shoulders hunched. Aunt Etta gathered her into her arms. "The utter relief," she sobbed into Aunt Etta's plump bosom. "The utter, utter relief."

  "Hush, Jule, hush. At least from now on, you'll be spared his bed."

  Clementine hadn't understood the words they spoke, but she so had wished she could be Aunt Etta. She wanted fiercely to be able to wrap her arms around her mother and make her smile. But she wanted to be Mama too, to be stroked and held and comforted, to feel safe and loved. She wanted, wanted, wanted... Yet she had no words to describe the things she wanted.

  That was the first time she could remember feeling them, those yearnings that were to come to her more often as she grew older. She felt and wanted things, but she didn't know what they were. At times she would be almost choked with a tumult of feelings, of wantings, she couldn't name.

  She was nine when she first learned about the cowboys.

  It came about when Cook hired a new scullery maid. Shona MacDonald was her name, and she had hair the bright red of a fire wagon and a smile that beamed from her face like the summer sun.

  The first time they met, Shona knelt and pulled Clementine to her breast in a crushing hug. The smell of lavender water filled Clementine's nose almost making her sneeze, and rough, work-chapped hands rubbed circles on her shoulders. Then Shona gripped her arms and leaned back, smiling. "My, what a bonnie lassie ye be," she said. "Never have I seen such eyes. Like a loch at dusk, they are. All stormy green and brooding, and filled with secrets and mysteries."

  Clementine stared at her, mesmerized by the lilting words and the brightness of her smile. No one had ever hugged her before; she wished the girl would do it again. She tried a smile of her own. "What is a loch?"

  "Why, a loch is a... a gret big puddle of water, ye ken?"

  Shona laughed. The sound was like rose petals, sweet and soft. Clementine studied the shiny black toes of her shoes, afraid to look, almost afraid to ask. "Do you think you could be my friend?" she said.

  Shona's strong, bony arms enveloped her again. "Och, ye puir wee thing. Of course I'll be yer friend." And Clementine was almost giddy from the happiness that came from these words.

  Sunday afternoon was Cook's time off. It was a quiet time in the house, between church services, and Clementine was supposed to spend the hours at prayer. Instead she spent them in the kitchen with her friend. My friend. How she loved the sound of those words. She would say them to herself as she crept down the servants' stairs: My friend, my friend... I am going to visit my friend.

  Shona had a passion for yellowback novels, and she spent most of her meager salary on weekly editions of the Five Cent Wide Awake Library's Wild West series. The books were a treasure trove of dreams, and she didn't mind sharing them on those secret Sunday afternoons.

  Clementine would sit on top the flour bin, swinging her legs, reading aloud these tales filled with gun-toting cowboys and wild mustangs, wicked cattle rustlers and scalping Indians. Shona would scrub the copper pans with a paste of lemon juice and salt, stopping to peer at the pictures and interject comments in her Scottish burr. "And who cares whether that cowboy was caught red-handed thievin' them horses? The man is too bonnie to hang. A guid woman is what he needs. A wife to love him and turn him away from the pathways of sin."

  "I think I should like to marry a cowboy when I grow up," Clementine said, almost shiverin
g with the wonder of the idea.

  "Och, wouldna we all, Miss Clementine? But cowboys, they're like wild horses, them mustangs. They love their roamin' ways too much. There's no harm in dreamin' about lassoin' such a man, though, no harm t'all."

  The odor of the lemon paste would mix with the other kitchen smells, of yeast and coffee beans and salted cod. But Clementine's nose wouldn't be in Boston. It would be on the prairie and filled with the smell of sagebrush and buffalo hides and woodsmoke carried on the western wind.

  One Sunday Shona was given the day off to be with her family, who lived a ferry ride across the Charles River. Clementine spent the precious hours that they normally shared by herself in the kitchen. She sat at the block table, her elbows on the knife-scarred wood, her cheeks on her fists, poring over Sho-na's collection of souvenir cards of famous bandits and cowboys. And dreaming.

  She didn't know her father had come into the room until his shadow fell across the table. She tried to hide the cards beneath a pile of freshly laundered towels. He said nothing, simply snapped his fingers and held out his hand until she put the cards into it.

  She stared at the tabletop while her father slowly assessed her crime, shuffling through the souvenir cards one by one.

  "I trusted you to be at your prayers, and instead I find you here, looking at this... this..." His fists crushed the cards, and the stiff pasteboard cracked and popped. "Where did you get these? Who dared to give you this lurid filth?"

  She lifted her head. "Nobody. I found them."

  The air began to shiver as if a wind had stolen into the sun-bright kitchen. "Recite Proverbs Twelve: Thirteen, daughter."

  " 'The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips.' "

  "Proverbs Twelve: Twenty-two."

  " 'Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.' But I found them. Father. Truly I did. On the back stoop. Maybe the ragman left them there. He's always looking at lurid filth."

  He said nothing more, only pointed up the back stairs. She walked past his outstretched arm. "I found them," she said, not caring if the lie would damn her soul forever to the lake of fire and brimstone.

  In her room Clementine knelt on the seat before her window and watched the gulls dip and soar among the elms and over the gray slate rooftops. Slowly the sunshine was washed from the day. A lamplighter walked down the street with his long pole, and small points of light began to appear behind him one after the other, like a string of dancing fireflies. She heard the sound of a door opening and closing below and heels clicking on the granite steps of the servants' entrance. The frayed crown of a straw hat topped the wrought-iron railing below, followed by a fat red braid bouncing against the back of a faded Indian shawl. A cheap straw suitcase dangled from a work-chapped hand.

  "Shona!" Clementine threw open the window, shouting at the green and blue plaid shawl as it disappeared into the dusk. "Shona!" She leaned so far out that the edge of the wooden sill bit into her stomach. "I didn't tell him. Shona, wait—I didn't tell!"

  Shona picked up her pace, almost running, and the straw suitcase bounced against her legs. Although Clementine continued to scream her name, she didn't once look back.

  "Clementine."

  She spun around, almost falling off the window seat. Her father stood over her and he had his cane with him. "Stand up and hold out your hands, daughter."

  It was the punishment he meted out for the direst transgressions. Three lashes across the palms of her hands with his ma-lacca cane. It hurt terribly, but she had borne it before and she thought that this time she would not cry. She wouldn't cry because this time she wasn't sorry.

  She held out her hands, palms up, and they only trembled a little.

  The cane rose and fell, cutting through the air with a hiss, lashing her flesh. Clementine swayed and she nearly bit through her lip. But she didn't cry out. The whiplike rattan left a red and fiery welt.

  My friend, she said to herself with each blow, my friend, my friend. The words came like an incantation. Or a prayer.

  When he was done, he blew the air out of his chest in a great gust and tossed the hair back from his eyes. "Onto your knees now and beg forgiveness of the Lord."

  Her hands burned. She stared up at him, mute, her eyes wide open and unblinking.

  "Clementine, daughter... The face of the Almighty turns against you when you give in to the wildness in your heart."

  "But I am not sorry! I would do it again and again and again. I am not sorry."

  His fingers gripped the cane so tightly it trembled. "Put out your hands, then, for I am not done."

  She held out her hands.

  The fifth stroke, two more than she'd ever been given before, broke the skin. Her whole body shuddered. But she didn't utter a sound. Again and again the cane slashed across her lacerated hands. She knew that all she had to do was scream or plead that she was sorry, but she wasn't going to give in to him, never would she give in to him, and so the cane rose and fell, again and again and again.

  "Theo, stop! Oh, God, stop, stop!"

  "I cannot stop. For her soul's sake I must not stop!"

  "But she's only a child. Look what you've done..... She's only a child."

  Clementine heard the shouting voices through a thick rushing in her ears. Shudder after shudder racked her thin body. The flesh of her palms gaped open in long cuts. Blood welled up, splashing onto the shell-patterned carpet. She thought she could taste the blood in the back of her throat, strong and hot.

  Her mother's arms, the smell of roses... She wanted to press her face to that rose-scented breast, but she couldn't seem to make any part of her body move. Her father still held the cane gripped tightly in both hands, but tears ran from his eyes into his beard. His voice trembled. " 'Thou shalt beat thy child with the rod, and thou shalt deliver a soul from hell.' What kind of father would I be if I allowed her to take these paths of wickedness? She is wild and full of sin—"

  "But, Theo, you go too far."

  A sob tore out his throat. The cane clattered to the floor, and he fell to his knees. His hands groped the air. "Come, daughter, we must pray. Hell is a lake of fire that can never be quenched, but I will show you the way to the Lord—"

  "But I'm not sorry! I'm not sorry!" She screamed the words. But she didn't cry.

  "I don't want to pray." To pray was to admit that she was sorry.

  The mattress sighed, and her father's frock coat rustled as he shifted his weight. He sat beside her on the bed. She lay on her back with her hands outside the covers. Her mother had smoothed ointment on the cuts and bandaged them, but even her mother's tears hadn't stopped them from hurting. She hadn't cried, though. She had set her will to the thought that she would never cry again.

  He shifted again and sighed himself. "Child, child..." He rarely touched her, but now he cupped her cheek with his big hand. "What I have done, what I do, is for love of you. So that you may grow up pure in the eyes of the Lord."

  Clementine stared up at her father's face. She didn't believe him, for how could he truly love her when she remained wicked and full of wildness? And she wasn't even sorry for it.

  "I don't want to pray," she said again.

  He bowed his head. He was silent for so long she thought he must be praying to himself. But then he said, "Kiss me good night, then, daughter."

  He leaned over her, bringing his face so close she could smell the spice of his shaving soap and the starch in his shirt. She lifted her head and brushed her lips across the soft black whiskers on his cheek. She lay back on the pillows and held herself still until he left the room, and then she rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand, over and over until her lips burned.

  She slid a cracked and bent souvenir card from beneath her pillow. Again and again she tried to smooth it with her fingertips, which were swaddled in bandages. A cowboy's smiling face looked back at her. A cowboy in a fringed shirt and a ten-gallon hat, swinging a lariat with a loop as big as a haystack over his head.

  She stared at him so long
and hard that it seemed with just a little more effort she ought to be able to conjure him into full-blooded, laughing life.

  "You are a woman grown."

  So her mother said on the day Clementine turned sixteen. That morning she was allowed to pin up her hair in a thick roll at the back of her neck. A woman grown. She peered at her face in the beveled mirror of her dressing table, but she saw only herself.

  But no more caps! she thought with a sudden smile. Wrinkling her nose, she picked up the one she had worn only yesterday and flung it into the fire. No more caps and a woman grown. She spun around on her toes and laughed.

  It was her birthday and the day before Christmas, and they were going to a photographic gallery to have their portraits taken. They made a family outing of it, her father doing the driving himself in his new black brougham. The roofs and tree-tops all wore white bonnets. The winter air pinched her nose and chaffed her cheeks and smelled of the holidays—of wood fires and roasting chestnuts and evergreen boughs.

  They passed the Common, where children raced their sleds down ice-crusted paths. One, a girl, must have struck a root, for her sled stopped but she kept going, tumbling head over heels, turning into a squall of blue skirts, red stockings, and flying snow. Her shrieking laughter bounced against the flat winter sky, and, oh, how Clementine yearned to be that girl. She longed for it with a fierce ache that pressed onto her heart like a pile of stones. She had never ridden a sled, never ice-skated on Jamaica-Pond or thrown snowballs, and now she was too old, a woman grown. It made her think of all the things she had already missed in her life. All the things she was missing now.

  Her father stopped the surrey to let a beer wagon cross in front of them. In the corner house, a boy and a woman stood in a big bow window pooled in yellow gaslight. The woman's hands rested on the boy's shoulders as they watched the snow fall. A man came up behind them, and the woman lifted her head and turned her face around, and Clementine held her breath, for she thought the man was going to kiss the woman, there in the window for all the world to see.