Speak Through the Wind

by Allison K. Pittman

  “She always said this was her kitchen.”

  “And so it was. But now she is in the most beautiful house imaginable. Safe with God, and happier than she has ever been in her life. We can be sad at her passing, but she spent a lifetime here waiting to be with God. She’s probably sweeping the streets of gold right now, grumbling that the angels track in too much heavenly mud.”

  Now it was Kassandra’s turn to laugh, softly, and Reverend Joseph seemed to take her laughter as a great reward. She couldn’t rob that joy from him now. She didn’t want to drag his thoughts away from this celestial vision to the mire of what she and Ben had done in this very room—Clara’s kitchen. Instead, she brightened her smile and said, “Thank you, Reverend Joseph,” and stood to place a sweet kiss on the top of his head, where his thinning blond hair revealed a pink scalp.

  Before she could walk away, he grabbed her hand, stopping her by his side.

  “Can I ask one thing of you, Kassandra?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, turning.

  “There’s an empty crate just outside on the back porch. Would you please take it into Clara’s room and pack up her things? I’ll take them to the funeral service and give them to her minister. I’m sure there are many needy people in his congregation who could make good use of them.”

  As it turned out, there wasn’t much for, Kassandra to pack. Two skirts, four blouses, half a dozen aprons, all laundered crisp and clean, even those she’d worn the day before. She’d taken the time to wash out her shirt and socks before lying down to die. One pair of shoes showed all the signs of her heavy step; a wooden-handled brush played host to springs of gray hair.

  There was a well-worn Bible on the small table beside the bed. Kassandra opened it, flipped through the pages now soft with years of touching, turning, but not reading. Clara had many tricks to hide her illiteracy, often making excuses for Kassandra to read aloud. What did she do with this book? Hold it? Look at the words scattered across the page? It seemed unfair, somehow, that Clara would have this book while Kassandra still didn’t have one of her own, reading from Reverend Joseph’s huge leather-bound volume in his library when it was time to have her daily Scripture lesson.

  She folded each item one by one and placed it carefully in the crate, thinking about all the trinkets that had already been given to Clara’s loved ones and hoping that these few items would be put to good use. That’s what Clara would have wanted; she was a generous soul in her own way. The Bible was laid on the top of the pile, surrounded by a nest of starched, clean aprons.

  An entire life packed in one small crate.

  She took the crate into the kitchen and set it on the table—Clara’s table—and was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. It was just after two in the afternoon, and the sleepless night and busy morning finally had the best of her. She was hungry, too, having only had the smallest nibble of toast sometime earlier that morning. But fixing a snack seemed like far too much work, and she hoped to be upstairs and in bed before Reverend Joseph returned from his visit with the funeral director and Clara’s minister with yet another chore for her to do. She started toward the stairs, but paused to run her fingers over the pile of worldly goods Clara left behind.

  “I loved you, Clara,” she spoke into the empty kitchen, and almost heard Clara’s impatient hmph at such frivolous speech. Her hand rested now on Clara’s Bible—gripped it, really—and without much thought she lifted the book, clutched it to her breast, and fairly ran for the stairs.

  Clara never would have allowed much weeping in her kitchen.

  lara’s funeral would not be the first one for Kassandra. As a member of the minister’s household, she was often expected to attend the services and burial of his parishioners. It would, however, be the first time for her to face a corpse of her own creation, and the thought of doing so churned her stomach so that she used the illness as her first excuse to stay home.

  “Nonsense, Sparrow,” Reverend Joseph said as she stood at his elbow, clutching her stomach, hoping the slight squint to her eyes would enhance her greenish complexion. “It’s just nerves. And a little sorrow. You’ll feel better on Monday.”

  Then she pointed out that she didn’t have a black dress; Clara always said it wasn’t proper for such a young girl to wear black.

  “It won’t be the first time you wore your good dark blue to a funeral,” Reverend Joseph told her, surprising Kassandra that he could catalog her wardrobe. “You’ll look just fine.”

  In the end it was the Misses Austine who provided Kassandra sanctuary from her final confrontation with Clara. As she and Reverend Joseph were walking out of their front gate on the way to the funeral that Monday afternoon, the sister spinsters were just arriving with a pot of baked beans.

  “We assumed that with your Clara dead, you may need some help in the kitchen,” one of them—the taller one actually holding the pot—said.

  “Well, that is very kind of you indeed,” Reverend Joseph said, putting an awkwardly protective arm around Kassandra. “Isn’t it, Kassandra?”

  Kassandra nodded.

  “Are you on your way to the funeral?” asked the other sister who had a dish towel-covered pan of what Kassandra really hoped was some sort of cake.

  “Yes, we are,” Reverend Joseph said, turning back toward the gate. “But we can spare a few moments to walk into the kitchen with you to leave the food.”

  The Misses Austine exchanged a glance between the two of them, making no attempt to hide their disapproval.

  “Now, really, Reverend Joseph,” said beans Austine, “do you really think that’s a good idea?”

  “Yes,” chimed her sister. “To take this young girl to where those people—”

  “Now, Miss Austine,” Reverend Joseph said. “Clara was a good Christian woman.”

  “Really?” twittered beans. “I thought she was a Baptist.” The sisters shared a giggle, and Reverend Joseph graced them with a slight smile. “But honestly, Reverend, the church is in a very unsavory neighborhood, I’m sure. And she is just a young girl. Mightn’t she feel a little uncomfortable, out of place?”

  “It is a funeral, Miss Austine,” Reverend Joseph said, swinging the gate wide open, “not a church social.”

  Kassandra had been listening to every word, turning her head back and forth with each addition to the exchange. She didn’t want to capitalize on the Misses Austine’s prejudice, but she couldn’t ignore this final opportunity.

  “Reverend Joseph,” she said, tugging his coat sleeve, looking up at him plaintively, “Clara never wanted me to go to her church.”

  “What are you saying, Sparrow?”

  “I always wanted to go and see. Her church sounded so different from ours,” Kassandra said, drawing a slight snort from the Misses Austine. “But she never wanted me to. Said that it wasn’t a place for a young white girl like me.”

  “Kassandra,” he said, moving his body to create a barricade between her and the Misses Austine, “you never told me this.”

  “It was quite some time ago,” Kassandra said, shifting her feet. “But maybe they wouldn’t want me to be there.”

  Reverend Joseph gave a sigh of resignation and held out his arm, gesturing for the ladies in attendance to go through it into the house. “If you really won’t be comfortable there, I suppose there’s no harm in letting you stay home. We may have more people in to pay their respects.”

  “Oh, thank you, Reverend Joseph,” Kassandra said, hugging him tight around his waist.

  The Misses Austine exchanged yet another disapproving glance as their skirts brushed past her on their way to the front porch.

  And so it was that Kassandra found herself completely alone in Reverend Joseph’s house. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been wholly alone—Clara and the reverend were rarely gone at the same time—and she wasn’t completely sure what to do. The kitchen was no longer comfortable, with so many memories of Clara in every corner, and her upstairs room was uncomfortably stuffy in the late
spring afternoon. Reverend Joseph’s study was out of the question, leaving only the formal dining room or the parlor in which Kassandra could settle down with her schoolbooks. After all, Reverend Joseph had been quick to point out, she had been given permission to miss school to attend the funeral. Now that she wasn’t going, she needed to keep up with her day’s lesson.

  So, trying very hard to concentrate on the Battle of Waterloo, Kassandra curled up on one end of the parlor’s sofa (how Clara would have hated seeing her stocking feet up on such fine upholstery), making herself read and reread whenever her mind trailed off to the circumstances that had brought her to this afternoon alone.

  When she heard the knock at the door, she sighed and put her book down. Her back popped a little as she stretched before crossing the parlor to the door, and she got her face ready to register polite gratitude for the offered flowers or food.

  The image she saw through the clouded glass door, however, stopped her dead in her tracks. She recognized the silhouette of that cap and the cocky posture—shoulders thrown back, hands in jacket pockets—and the familiar whistled tune. Her hand went cold as it reached for the knob and opened the door to Ben.

  “I saw the reverend leave a while ago,” he said by way of greeting. “Without you with him.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Went to the back door like always. Guess you didn’t hear me knockin’.”

  “You should not be here,” Kassandra said, but even as she spoke Ben was shouldering his way past her into the entryway never looking back as he walked straight into the front parlor.

  “Blast, but this is a fine house,” he said, never turning to look at Kassandra. He walked the perimeter of the room, his eyes taking in every inch of the furnishings, the paintings on the walls, the carpet. “And you with this all to yourself?”

  “You should not be here,” Kassandra repeated, following him. “It is not proper, us being here alone.”

  “Oh, now, Kassie,” Ben said, moving toward one of the high-backed chairs facing the sofa, “aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”

  “No.”

  He sat anyway, stretching his legs out in front of him and settling himself back in the cushions.

  “I was just worried about you is all,” he said, his eyes still roving around the room. “I heard about what happened. Poor woman. I thought she didn’t look well.”

  “How could you have heard?”

  “People talk. One maid tells another, who tells another, who comes to the Points to visit some relative. I hear things. Now sit down, Kassie girl. You’re makin’ me nervous standin’ there.”

  Kassandra wasn’t sure whether she should feel flattered or frightened that Ben took such pains to know what was happening in her life, so she forced herself to ignore the cautionary knot forming in the pit of her stomach. She picked up her abandoned history text from the sofa and clutched it to her as she perched nervously on the edge of the sofa.

  “So tell me, darlin’. How are you holdin’ up?”

  “Just fine.”

  “You don’t look fine, Kassie. You don’t look fine at all. You look a little … scared.”

  “Not at all.” She clutched her book more tightly to her.

  “I saw how angry that woman—Clara, wasn’t it?—looked when I left here the other day. You two must have had quite the argument.”

  “Not really,” Kassandra said, Clara’s accusations ringing in her head.

  “That kind of anger? And the woman not feelin’ well to begin with?” Ben punctuated his thoughts with a shrug that made the conclusion obvious.

  In that one simple gesture he expressed every thought that had been haunting her since Reverend Joseph came to her room. For just a moment she felt relieved, grateful for a chance to unburden her soul to somebody who understood, but she stopped herself short of a full confession, knowing that voicing the suspicion would make it undeniably true. She hadn’t been able to even look at herself in a mirror since awakening to Clara’s death, being unable to face her accuser, and every silent second spent in that parlor took Ben from confidant to conspirator, and she was suddenly unable to face him, either.

  “Please, Ben,” she said, her eyes closed against him, “do not say that.”

  “Now, don’t fret about it.”

  She couldn’t see him, but his voice was coming closer, until it was just outside her ear, and his hand was resting on her shoulder.

  “It can’t be entirely your fault, can it? For a heart to just stop like that—no matter how agitated a person might get—there was probably somethin’ wrong to begin with.”

  “No, no.” She trembled under his touch, and the tears that needed to be shed for days finally began a slow, painful course down her face.

  “I’m just tryin’ to make you feel better. Don’t cry, Kassie. Hush now.”

  Kassandra’s arms went slack around her book as Ben’s arm snaked across her shoulders. The tome was lifted out of her grip and dropped to the ground, and his other arm brought her into a full embrace. She felt the coarse material of his shirt against her skin, her tears soaking his shoulder. When he spoke again, softly just above her ear, she felt the vibrations of his throat against her face.

  “You didn’t tell him, did you,” he said. “About what we—why Clara was so angry.”

  She shook her head against him.

  “Of course you didn’t. And why should ya, knowin’ how he’d feel?” He scooted back from her, held her at arm’s length, and she opened her eyes. “Do you remember what it felt like? To kiss me?”

  “Stop it,” she said, worming out of his arms and standing to tower above him. When he, too, stood, she turned and started to walk away.

  “Ah, Kassie,” Ben said, grabbing her arm. “I loved you the first time I saw you. Don’t you love me, too? Just a little bit?”

  “How could I know that?” she said, not turning around until the slightest twist of her arm forced her to.

  “Kassie, come away with me. Right now.”

  There was no glint of humor in his voice or in his eyes. No impish grin of a little boy planning an adventurous lark. Until this moment, that was exactly how she had thought of him—childlike and fun, always quick with some silly joke to make her laugh. But now she saw him as a man, a man with an entire life lived beyond this house and their playful encounters in the kitchen. A life he was offering to her.

  “Go upstairs,” his voice intensified. “Get your things.”

  “I could never leave Reverend Joseph. He needs me to—”

  “To what? Waste your life shufflin’ around here? Breakin’ your back servin’ him for the next twenty years until your heart just stops in the middle of the night and you die in your little room off the kitchen?”

  “And what would my life be with you?”

  “Whatever you want it to be, Kassie girl. They’re pullin’ gold out of the ground in California. Got ships leavin’ the docks every day takin’ people there to find their fortune.”

  “I’ve never been on a boat.”

  “We could leave the city Buy a little farm. Have hundreds of cows and dozens of children and breathe in that sweet country air doctors are always screamin’ about.”

  The ghost of the imp was back, and she giggled despite the growing discomfort of his grip on her arm.

  “Or we could go down south. I’ve spent a few winters workin’ down there. The place is bustin’ with—”

  “Reverend Joseph is an abolitionist,” she said. “He’d never allow—”

  “He won’t be part of it! He’s got no claim to you, Kassie. He doesn’t love you like I do.”

  “He does love me.”

  “Yeah,” he said, finally releasing her and gesturing grandly about the room, “like this fine furniture and these fancy carpets. You’re a thing he has, one he doesn’t know what to do with.”

  He stopped dead in the center of the room and adopted a perfect pose of Reverend Joseph, somehow transforming himself to the revere
nd’s height and making his compact, muscled body take on a gaunt bearing. He brought one hand to his chin, stroked it thoughtfully, and spoke in a voice devoid of his slight Irish brogue and rich with the deep tones of her beloved companion.

  “Should I adopt her? Marry her? Better move her down to the kitchen before I forget myself and creep into her bed one night—”

  “Stop it,” Kassandra said, offended at the reverend’s portrayal, but strangely fascinated and amused at Ben’s ease of imitation.

  “He wouldn’t fight for you, Kassie,” Ben said, very much himself again. “Not like I would.”

  He bounded across the room to the large marbled fireplace against the far wall. Above the mantle, two ceremonial swords hung on the wall, crossed in a grand elegance. In a swift heroic gesture, Ben grasped the handle of one of the swords, sliding it off of its perch with a screech of steel across iron and swung it through the air in a frantic simulation of a duel.

  Kassandra burst out now in full laughter. Ben hopped around the room, fully lost in his mock thrusts and parries, making “clink, clink” sounds as his sword contacted that of his imaginary foe. She had been to the theater with Reverend Joseph, had seen trained actors on stage engaged in the ballet of battle, and the sight of this redheaded, freckled comedian attempting to capture that fervor was immensely funny, until the blade came hazardously close to the drapes, threatening to tear a nasty snag in the heavy silk brocade.

  “Ben!” she called out through her laughter. “Ben! Stop it.”

  “By God, Kassie,” he said, breathless, but not pausing, “I swear I would run him through if he came between us.” He punctuated his words with a final, brutish jab. “But tell me, darlin’, can you see him fighting back?”

  “Just put the sword down,” she said, unwilling to tell him what she thought.

  Ben walked back to the fireplace and rose up on his toes to return the sword to its resting place, not bothering to adjust it to its original angle.

  “You should leave him, Kassie,” he said, leaning against the marble wall, crossing his arms across his chest. “For his own sake.”