Speak Through the Wind

by Allison K. Pittman

  “Yes, Mrs.—”

  “In the meantime, do you have a sleeping gown she could wear? I certainly don’t have anything that would fit—or suit her.”

  “I’ll take care of everything, Mrs. Hartmann,” Jenny said.

  The whole conversation took place in such rapid-fire succession that neither Kassandra nor Reverend Joseph had any chance to intervene. By the time it was over, Reverend Joseph was somehow on the other side of the kitchen door, Jenny was at the stove, and Kassandra was sitting at the table again, teacup in her hand.

  “Then,” Mrs. Hartmann said, poised at the swinging door, “take her up to the guest room to lie down. Poor thing looks like she hasn’t slept all night.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hartmann,” Jenny said to the swinging door.

  She poked her arms out from under the pile of soft quilts to indulge in a long, back-arching stretch before burrowing down deep again. There was no separating the initial thrill of being here—being back—from the tragic contrast of what she left behind and the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

  Once Mrs. Hartmann had swept Reverend Joseph into the dining room for breakfast, Kassandra had no opportunity to see or speak with him again. After she had wolfed down plates full of warm food in the kitchen, Kassandra had been taken back to the washroom where a new linen-draped tub awaited. There, in an eerily familiar reenactment of her first arrival to this house, she submitted herself to Jenny, who scrubbed her skin and washed her hair—rinsing and rinsing and rinsing until every trace of soot and smoke and city was washed away.

  She’d confessed to Jenny that it had been over a year since she’d taken an all-over bath, and the woman scowled her acknowledgement when Kassandra stood up for her final rinsing, leaving below a tub full of water so thick with grime she could not see her own feet.

  But she was deliciously clean now, wearing somebody’s warm flannel nightgown. She studied the slit of morning light peeking through the curtains and decided she must have been asleep for nearly twenty hours.

  The soft knocking she heard on the door was a mere formality because it swung open before the third rap and Jenny stepped through. She was carrying a breakfast tray with a pretty china teapot and cup, which she set on the small table next to the bed before going back to carefully close the door.

  “Miz Hartmann’s gonna be in here in just a minute. Wanted to make sure you was awake.”

  “And good morning to you,” Kassandra said, sitting up.

  “Well, ain’t you the sassy one?” Jenny took a muslin-wrapped warming brick off the tray and slipped it under the covers near Kassandra’s feet. “If I was you, I’d lose some of that sass before talkin’ to Miz Hartmann. She don’t go much for that.”

  “Does he love her?” Kassandra asked. “Do you think he is happy?”

  “She’s a good wife, don’t you worry about that. You got your own business to worry ‘bout. You ain’t gonna be able to hide that much longer.”

  “I am not trying to hide anything.”

  “Guess you didn’t have time to mention it yet.” Jenny poured tea from the china teapot into a matching cup and handed it over to Kassandra, who was surprised to realize her hands shook a bit, causing the cup to rattle against its saucer. “But if I was you,” she continued, with a pointed glance at Kassandra’s shaking hand, “I’d wait and tell him first, once you get a chance to talk to him alone. He’s got a soft spot for you, girl. The wife might throw you right straight out again.”

  “Just what are you talking about?” Kassandra demanded, lowering her voice only at Jenny’s warning hush to do so.

  “The baby,” Jenny said. “Now, like I told you—”

  “I … I do not have a baby. My baby died three years ago.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that. I’m talkin’ about this baby right here,” She poked her long brown finger into the comforter, just above Kassandra’s stomach.

  It was a lucky gesture as it put her hand in the perfect place to catch the teacup and saucer when Kassandra’s body went numb and she lost her grip.

  here never was any question that Kassandra was a welcome guest in Reverend Joseph’s home. She was, after all, given her old room, a place at the table, and an open invitation to join the reverend and Mrs. Hartmann when the couple spent a long winter evening in the parlor. Mrs. Hartmann was quite deft at keeping the conversation lively, speaking at such a quick pace and of such trivialities that the life Kassandra had been living never became a focal point. Too often, Kassandra’s contributions made it obvious that she had lived too long outside the influence of genteel company, and she would interject a comment or a laugh too bawdy and loud for a fireside chat in a reverend’s parlor. At these times, Mrs. Hartmann would deliver a silent, smirking admonition—though Reverend Joseph often seemed to be both captivated and relieved at Kassandra’s outbursts.

  When not engaged in artful conversation, Mrs. Hartmann pursued her second talent, which was keeping Reverend Joseph out of the house. Several times each day he was summoned from his study, from his bedroom, from the kitchen to the front parlor where Mrs. Hartmann stood holding his coat, ready to stand tiptoe and smooth it over his slim shoulders. The Ladies’ Aid Society was waiting for him to test its cookies for the baked goods sale in the church kitchen. The ailing Mrs. Farnsworth was depending on a visit. The Christian Temperance Union needed someone to deliver the opening prayer for its meeting.

  During her moments alone—and Mrs. Hartmann saw to it that she had several moments alone—Kassandra would sit in the pretty wing-backed chair in front of her bedroom window, or on the comfortable horsehair sofa in the dayroom, or in the warm, fragrant kitchen, wondering how she would possibly tell Reverend Joseph about this baby. It was enough that he had welcomed her into his home unquestioningly. How could she expect him to accept an illegitimate child as well? And, even when she was alone, Kassandra’s face stung as a preview to the humiliation she would feel when Mrs. Hartmann received the news.

  For nearly a week, Kassandra had to carry this burden under the watchful eye of Jenny. And it was getting harder to carry.

  It wasn’t until a Saturday afternoon when, according to Jenny, the ailing Mrs. Farnsworth would take no comforting visit unless it was the delightful Mrs. Hartmann, that Kassandra had a moment to talk alone with Reverend Joseph.

  He invited her into his study, a privilege not offered to her since her return; neither, as far as she could tell, was it ever offered to Mrs. Hartmann. Kassandra hesitated at its threshold. She would be more worthy of walking into the house of God Himself than into this shrine. There was the rug on which she had learned God’s Word. There, the desk and on it his well-worn Bible. And on the bookshelf—where it had been the first time he’d taught her about God’s watchfulness—the tiny sparrow figurine.

  “Come sit, Sparrow,” Reverend Joseph said, gesturing to one of the deep leather chairs flanking the fireplace.

  She did, and he settled himself across from her. He picked up his pipe and tobacco pouch from the small table between the two chairs.

  “Dianne won’t have me smoking in any other part of the house,” he said, lighting the pipe.

  “It is a different household indeed,” Kassandra said, smiling.

  “My darling Kassandra, I have been waiting for an opportunity to speak with you. I must ask you, will you ever—” his lips quivered in their perch around his pipe, “will you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?”

  “Forgive you? What could I ever have to forgive you for?”

  Reverend Joseph clamped his jaw on his pipe and looked away for just a moment before answering.

  “For weeks before you left home, Clara had been warning me about that young man. She said he was entirely too familiar with you, and she had great concern for your virtue as far as he was concerned.”

  “She was—”

  “Please. I have waited years to tell you all of this, Sparrow. Let me speak. The moment I realized you were gone, I knew that young man had some hand in it. H
ad I taken my carriage and left the house immediately, it is likely I could have overtaken the two of you on the street and brought you home. Indeed, that is exactly what I planned to do.”

  If only you had …

  “But I allowed myself to listen to the counsel of others who, I believe now as I did then, spoke to me out of a genuine, if misguided, concern. I allowed them to turn my heart against you. They convinced me that you were ungrateful and undeserving. They led me to believe that you were a young woman of questionable morals even at that age, and that having you under my roof would be a liability to my ministry and to my own status in the religious community.”

  The exact lies I was told …

  “And so you must forgive me for not being willing to risk my life for your sake as you were for mine.”

  “But … your letter. You said that you did try to look for me.”

  “And so I did, but I allowed myself to be detained for several days. I did know where to find you, my darling child. Indeed, I was quite close to you at one time, in my carriage.”

  “When was that?”

  “It was summer, more than a month after you left. I saw you walking with that young man. I must say you seemed quite happy and content, but I wanted to be sure, so I left my carriage and attempted to capture your attention.”

  Kassandra closed her eyes and tried to remember such a moment. She remembered the first summer with Ben, their walks around the neighborhood as he introduced her to the people and places. Surely she would have noticed the tall figure of her beloved caregiver calling out her name.

  “Of course,” Reverend Joseph continued, “you didn’t see me. As soon as I was close enough to call out to you, a tall man with a shaved head came to me and—suggested—that I leave you two alone. There were others with him—”

  “The Branagans,” Kassandra said.

  “Hmm? Yes, well, they were quite insistent that I leave their neighborhood quickly, and that it would be best for all concerned—myself especially—if I were to leave you alone.”

  Kassandra heard the shame in Reverend Joseph’s voice, and she reached across to lay a comforting hand on his arm.

  “I was happy then. I probably would not have gone back if you asked me.”

  He smiled. “I intended to go back frequently, hoping to catch a glimpse of you alone. But soon after that first encounter I was struck quite ill with fever, and by the time I had recovered sufficiently to permit another visit, it was late in the fall.”

  When I was pregnant.

  “I was met just outside of your building by one of those men—quite tall, he was, with a kind face and a rather hooked nose—”

  Sean.

  “—who made it quite clear that it was your own safety at stake if I were to try to contact you and bring you home. I had written the letter and asked if he would be so kind as to give it to you at some opportune time. I see he did.”

  “He did.”

  A few minutes passed as they sat quietly lost in their own thoughts. Reverend Joseph puffed on his pipe; Kassandra picked at her skirt.

  “It is never an easy thing for a man to admit to being a coward, Kassandra.”

  “Now, stop that. You did what you thought was best.”

  “No, I did what I thought was safe and convenient. But to do what is right in this world, to follow God’s directive is rarely that.”

  He studied his. pipe for a moment before setting it down on the table next to his chair. Leaning forward, he reached for Kassandra’s hands and held them tightly as he spoke.

  “I have already asked God to forgive me of my shortcomings, for my failure to care for what He entrusted to me. But I must know that you forgive me as well.”

  “How could I—” she began, though her throat was nearly too choked to speak, “how could I ever be one to forgive? I am so …” Defiled? Beaten? Unworthy?

  “Do not forget, my child, that no matter what you may think of yourself, you are still a child of God. Do you know that?”

  “No,” she said, her eyes burning like they hadn’t since the fire.

  “Then there is another way I have failed you, if I did not instill that truth.”

  “You do not understand,” she said, tearing her hands from his grip and pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes in a vain attempt to stop her tears. “You don’t know what all I’ve done. Been.”

  “You’ve nothing to confess to me, Kassandra. And there is no sin too grievous for God to forgive. He loves you.”

  “He could not possibly love me.”

  “Remember what the Bible tells us: It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not They are new every morning. We may feel that we have failed Him, but—”

  “I mean He could not possibly love me and allow such horrible things …”

  “Oh, now, Sparrow …”

  He reached for her hand again, and she took it, allowing herself to be pulled from her chair and brought closer to him. Then, just as she had all those precious evenings as a child, she sat on the woven rug at his feet, her head resting against the cool leather of his chair, and every bit of the past four years poured out of her, unchecked. She told of dancing with Ben in the parlor the afternoon just before she left. That he hadn’t married her; that she hadn’t insisted. Imogene and the babies—all those beautiful, poor, doomed babies. And her own. Not the one inside her now—there would be time enough for that later—but Daniel. The screeching rats in the cellar the night he was born. The horrible silence the morning he died. His funeral; her flight. Rape.

  “Child. My child,” Reverend Joseph said, his long fingers gently stroking the top of Kassandra’s head. “Why did you not come home to me?”

  “I was at the church the day you married Mrs. Hartmann,” Kassandra said, taking a moment to wipe her tears and blow her nose with the handkerchief Reverend Joseph had given her some time ago. “But Ben was there, too. And I just could not imagine how I would fit into your new life.”

  “How did you fit into his?”

  “I am sure you know.”

  She couldn’t give voice to the humiliation of her years spent above Mott Street Tavern. Couldn’t bring to life all of those men—those who survived her alcohol-clouded memory.

  “So you see,” she said; shrugging, “I do not see how God and I could ever truly love each other.”

  Reverend Joseph laughed. “Aren’t we lucky, then, that God is capable of so much more than we are?” He leaned forward in his chair and, with one finger hooked beneath her chin, forced Kassandra to turn and look at him. “We can never be sure why God doesn’t choose to rescue us from our mistakes. But we can be sure it’s not for lack of love for us. There is always a reason, kleinen Spatz, for the trials we endure, even if those trials are the consequences of our own poor judgment.”

  “And do you really think He can forgive all I’ve done?”

  “If He could not, the death of His Son would have been in vain. You are His child, Kassandra. You prayed to Him in this very room many years ago and made Him the Lord of your life. He has never left you, not in all this time.”

  She tried to look away, filled with shame at all she had asked God to endure with her, but Reverend Joseph would not allow her to.

  “I came to you this afternoon,” he continued, “asking you to forgive me for my sins against you. I did that knowing you would. You must believe, too, that God will grant you grace, my child. Then simply confess to Him and ask for His grace to bring comfort to your heart. I am guessing that your heart has not known such comfort in quite some time.”

  “Not since … not since Ben.”

  “And can we expect that Ben will be coming back to reclaim you?”

  Kassandra closed her eyes and saw the blazing inferno that had consumed what had been her home for so many years. For just a moment she could once again sense the acrid smoke at the back of her throat and feel the heat on her face. Most of all, though, she saw Ben leaning out of the little second flo
or window to throw down her boots, then disappearing into the black.

  “No,” she said.

  “Well, then,” Reverend Joseph said, holding his smile long enough for Kassandra to notice the deepening of the lines at the corners of his eyes, “you must remember that when God forgives our sins, He takes them fror our hearts and throws them as far away as the east is from the west. You must try to do that, too, Sparrow. Hold on to the fond memories, but toss the others away. You are home again now This is a new life for you, if you would like to make it here.”

  “I would,” she said, standing.

  Reverend Joseph stood with her and folded her into his long arms. She felt like a very little girl again—exhausted from crying, weak from confession—being held aloft by a father’s embrace.

  “Reverend Joseph?”

  He moved his hands to her shoulders and stepped back to look down into her face. “Yes, my child?”

  “Will you pray with me?”

  “Nothing else could be such an honor.”

  She felt a twinge of guilt as Reverend Joseph braced his hand on the back of the chair to lower himself to his knees on the rug, but that feeling soon disappeared when she felt the enormous power of having him there beside her as she lifted her voice to God.

  “Heavenly Father,” she prayed. Then stopped.

  How could she begin to list all she must confess? Her body went cold though her face was flushed, and soon the hands clasped so fervently at her breast could no longer stay interlocked. She felt her fingers unclasping, felt her arms unfolding as she lifted her hands high above her head. An offering. Of herself. Of her sin.

  “My Father,” she began again, “You know my sins. You know even those I cannot name …”

  With each word of contrition she felt her body grow lighter, as if her uplifted hands could somehow pull her from her knees. She felt it, then, starting at the base of her spine and rolling across her shoulders. Light. And lightness. Years of hatred for herself and for God simply sliding away. It was a feeling of pure joy pure relief. Like that first gasp of air when she escaped the fire around her.