Speak Through the Wind

by Allison K. Pittman

  “I would never claim it as my own,” Kassandra said, choosing her words carefully. “I simply thought we might stay here. Help with the upkeep.”

  “Why?”

  The question stunned her. Who wouldn’t want to stay here? Who, if given the choice whether or not to rise and sleep to the sound of the ocean, would ever willingly walk away?

  “I just … I am just so happy here. So much at peace. I love it.”

  “You think this will give the child a family?”

  “I will be her family. And Mariah.”

  “Servants are not family.”

  “I would be a servant, too.”

  “People here will know exactly who you are. What you are. This is a small town, Kassandra. A little shipping village. Your child will grow up victimized by gossip.” Mrs. Hartmann’s voice grew almost frantic as she spoke. “We have standards here. We don’t forgive.”

  “I have done nothing to require your forgiveness,” Kassandra said. “God has forgiven my sins. I need nothing else.”

  “Perhaps you don’t. But what about your daughter?”

  “I will take care of her.”

  “There’s nothing in your life that has prepared you to raise a child, Kassandra. You simply don’t have the wherewithal to do it properly.” For the first time, Mrs. Hartmann’s voice rose in accusation.

  “You have no right to take my child from me,” Kassandra said, matching Mrs. Hartmann’s volume. But one look down showed the little one to be wincing against the noise, and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “She is mine. I will raise her.”

  “Kassandra, please. Can’t you try to think beyond your own selfishness?”

  “When … when have I ever been selfish?”

  “Think about it. You had a good home, and you left it. Why? Because something better came along. Something a little more exciting.”

  “That’s not why—”

  “And not a word. Not a single letter to the man who raised you, gave you everything. You can’t imagine the heartache and guilt he carries with him because of you.”

  “You do not understand—”

  “How do we know there won’t be some other man who’ll come along and you’ll go running off with him?”

  “I would never do that.”

  “You simply aren’t stable, constantly roaming from one life to another. Now you’ve come traipsing back here—for the second time, I’m told—”

  “I didn’t stay the first time because of you. I did not think I would be welcome.”

  “You probably wouldn’t have been.” Mrs. Hartmann shrugged her shoulders, as if she were as disappointed at this as Kassandra was. “And now, well, you’d be more like an obligation. A chance at his redemption.”

  “You are lying.” Kassandra’s whole body was shaking now, and she clutched the child closer to her until she could be still. “Reverend Joseph does not feel that way.”

  “He’d never say so, of course. He might not even realize it. But really, what other explanation is there?”

  “I cannot go back to the Points.”

  A hint of victory crept into Mrs. Hartmann’s eyes. “I know Joseph would hate that for you, too.”

  “But perhaps,” she gulped and felt her pride fall to her feet, colliding with the rising shame, “I could stay here. Alone.”

  Mrs. Hartmann shook her head slowly. “No, my dear. Next summer I’ll insist Joseph come for the season. This will be our home, too, for part of the year.”

  Kassandra’s mind entertained first one vision and then another. A little redheaded girl rushing into Reverend Joseph’s arms; a little redheaded girl dirty in the alley behind Canal Street. Her child’s eyes watching the full moon dance on the water, hearing the waves lap on the shore; her child’s eyes looking up through a haze of soot and smoke as she tries to see the sky; this bundled baby nestled in Mrs. Hartmann’s arms, sitting in the cozy back parlor by a roaring fire on a cold winter night; this bundled baby in her own arms, huddled in a doorway, hoping not to freeze before finding shelter. “Well then,” she asked, “where would I go?”

  Mrs. Hartmann burst into a smile. “I have given this some thought,” she said. “San Francisco. It’s just perfect for you. It’s a brand-new world for your brand-new life. Just full of promise. Everybody there is starting over, building a new country. Nothing but gold and opportunity—”

  Kassandra laughed out loud. “How in the world would I get to San Francisco?”

  “My Uncle Hiram. He’s run a clipper ship round the Horn to San Francisco several times already. He says he can have you there by the end of October. Just about three months from now.”

  “You seem to have given this a lot of thought,” Kassandra said.

  “I simply wanted you to know your options.” Mrs. Hartmann reached over to stroke the sleeping child’s head.

  Kassandra looked down at the face of her sleeping daughter. All at once, her tiny mouth opened for a face-scrunching yawn, though her sleep remained undisturbed. “If I did this,” she said, speaking to the child rather than to Mrs. Hartmann, “I do not know if I could ever live with myself. This is exactly what my mother did to me, you see? She just walked away. I have never really forgiven her for that.”

  “This isn’t the same thing at all,” Mrs. Hartmann said. “Think of Samuel’s mother and the strength of character it must have taken for her to leave her son, even if she was leaving him to the house of God for His service.”

  “She was fulfilling a promise. I have made no such promise to God.”

  “Or Moses’ mother, who had the faith to set her child adrift, knowing that God would take care of him.”

  “Only it is I who will be setting sail.”

  Mrs. Hartmann offered a weak smile. “You have my word, as a Christian woman, that your daughter will be raised with love. She will have everything a little girl could ever want. You know how much Joseph loves children … he’s helped so many of them before. Given so much. Think of what he will do for this little one that he has chosen to be his own.”

  “He has chosen?”

  “Joseph would never be strong enough to ask you to do this, even though it’s clearly what is best for both you and the baby.”

  “And how is this best for me?”

  Mrs. Hartmann crossed back over to the window and looked outside. “Do you realize, Kassandra, that when you get to San Francisco you will be looking at an entirely different ocean? The waters from this one will never touch it. Ever.”

  My sin as far as the east from the west.

  “It’s really quite simple, Kassandra. Do you love this child so much that you would take her to the streets just to have her at your side? Or do you love her enough to spare her from that life?”

  “Would you call her Leyna?” Kassandra asked.

  “Will that make your decision any easier?”

  “Nothing about this is easy,” Kassandra said, wondering just what color eyes hid behind those soft pink lids. “Just let me hold her a little longer.”

  assandra’s utter hatred for sailors had been finely tuned during her years working on the second floor of the Mott Street Tavern. They bore with them always the putrid smell of bile and fish. Their skin was blistered and torn from the sun. Indefinable crusts formed in the crevices of their necks and hands, and their clothes—if such rags could be called such—were stiff with seawater and salt.

  It frightened her at the time to realize that Mott Street, being so far from the docks, actually attracted a higher class of maritime clientele. These were the captains, the first mates, the officers who had enough money to bypass the Water Street whores to venture farther inland for their pleasure. Given that, she couldn’t imagine the condition of the common lout fresh from the decks. Why, they must have been little more than half-rotted carp in trousers.

  Trade the trousers for a skirt, and they must have been in much the same shape that she was in now.

  During her first week at sea, Kassandra managed to keep an air of ho
peful decorum. It wasn’t easy, watching the land slip away as the ship left the dock, knowing somewhere her newborn daughter rested in the arms of a stranger. She’d stood on the deck of the ship, the rails pressed to her empty body, her breasts—still aching and heavy—wrapped tightly beneath her blouse, willing herself with each passing moment not to jump into the ocean and make her way back to shore, to Mrs. Hartmann’s house. To her child. The fact that she couldn’t swim was a minor matter. Surely God would protect her, send a tide to wash her safely onto the beach, a whale to spit her whole upon the sand.

  Then she heard Mrs. Hartmann’s words lodged into her very soul. Didn’t she want the best for her daughter? Wouldn’t she want her little girl to grow up with every advantage? Shielded from the ugliness of this world, protected from the diseases of poverty. Did that baby deserve to grow up in the shadow of illegitimacy and prostitution?

  The only answer, then, was to cross over to the other side of the ship and gaze at the horizon. Focus on that thin, straight line where the sea met the sky and pray that God was on the other side of it, waiting to reward her for her sacrifice.

  That was the first week.

  After that, there was nothing but ocean, for days and weeks and months. Sometimes smooth and glassy, which Kassandra enjoyed despite the crude dissatisfaction such conditions inspired among the sailors. Sometimes wild and tumultuous, tossing her from the bed in her cabin.

  Not that the word cabin did any justice to the tiny space allotted to her on the Sea Crest. A narrow cot was bolted to the floor, with merely a door’s width between it and the opposing wall. There would have been no place to store any extra clothing, had she brought any. As it was, the few things she had in her bag—one other dress, three pairs of stockings, a nightgown, and Imogene’s shawl—remained folded in her small bag and stored underneath the cot. She hadn’t bothered to change her clothing since boarding, as the room afforded no space for the maneuvering required to do so. There was no ventilation, and the recurring images from the Mott Street inferno kept her from bringing any open flame into such a coffinlike box.

  Uncomfortable as the cabin was, she knew she was lucky to have it at all. The Sea Crest was a clipper ship, not a passenger vessel, and her presence in this room left the first mate to sleep dangling in a hammock next to his subordinates. That was the first hint that her presence wasn’t entirely welcome.

  Hiram Weathersby captain of the Sea Crest and Mrs. Hartmann’s uncle, had taken great pains to make Kassandra’s voyage as pleasant as possible. A tall, broad-chested man with neatly trimmed whiskers framing his otherwise clean-shaven face, he had introduced Kassandra to the crew gathered on the dock for their instructions before the ship launched.

  “This woman here,” he said, his Massachusetts accent adding to his air of authority, “is traveling as a personal guest.” The lascivious nudging and laughter by the men gathered on deck was soon quelled with a single glare from Captain Weathersby’s piercing eyes under thick brows. “She is not to be harassed or molested in any way, do you hear?”

  “Aye, aye,” the crew replied, though halfheartedly

  “As far as you are concerned,” Captain Weathersby continued, pacing back and forth in front of his assembled men, “she is another bit of cargo. I’ve been charged with her safe delivery to San Francisco, and she will be delivered. Is that clear?”

  “Aye, aye,” they chorused, with slightly more enthusiasm.

  At first the men fairly ignored the order, and she was met daily with crude remarks and propositions any time she found herself alone on deck or in some dark crevice below But when these elicited neither her interest nor her ire, the remarks disappeared. After a while Kassandra moved about freely as if surrounded by an aura of inaccessibility.

  Most days the sea was choppy, juvenile waves slapping at the sides of the ship, giving continuous bits of encouragement as it followed its course. The older men said they’d never seen such a fine stretch of good sailing, gloating as if they had some hand in creating the favorable conditions. The fastest ship ever to make this voyage was the Flying Cloud—just eighty-nine days from Boston to San Francisco. The sailors figured if the weather would hold, the Sea Crest just might beat it.

  Kassandra wasn’t interested in breaking any records. As far as she was concerned, they could never spend too many days at sea. Yes, reddened skin pulled away from her face after hours in the sun. Yes, her eyes burned from the glare off the water. The steady diet of weevil-infested biscuits and dried beef left her weak and listless. She’d grown tired of picking insects out of the foul-tasting water dipped from barrels in the bowels of the ship and diluted with molasses and vinegar. Now she simply swallowed them, trying to ignore the passing scratch of a wing or leg in her throat.

  None of this, though, would she trade for the uncertain future awaiting her once they reached land. None of Mrs. Hartmann’s conversations—or any of her own thoughts—extended beyond disembarking in San Francisco. As long as she was on the Sea Crest, she was under God’s care. There was no bustle of humanity to obscure her from His view Surely He could look down from heaven and see her, a tiny speck surrounded by miles and miles of ocean. Not lost. She’d been lost in the city, out of His view, out of His care. She’d had to look straight up to see a patch of sky, and that was often black with smoke and sick with smell.

  But here, the sky was endless and clear and blue. She didn’t have to look up at all. The humblest glance to the left, to the right, and the majesty of God’s presence unfolded. Perhaps she couldn’t see Him, but when she stood alone and exposed on the deck, He could see her, and she relished that exposure even if it meant the burning and tearing of her flesh from the sun and salt and wind.

  One hundred and twenty-eight days later, the Sea Crest sat in perfectly still water just off the coast of California, waiting for one last good wind to usher her into the San Francisco Bay. Everybody on board carried with them a disposition as sour as the small, tart fruit they picked up after a brief stop on the St. Christian Islands.

  Captain Weathersby occasionally allowed Kassandra to look through his glass at the bustling port, and each time she did, her heart sank a little. Back east, California was thought to be paradise itself, a land of golden opportunity. Perhaps she’d been spoiled, misled by the exotic ports on the journey here, where beautiful brown-skinned men and women appeared on the beaches like characters in some glamorous dream. She saw nothing dreamlike through Captain Weathersby’s glass. Row upon row of cheap-looking wooden structures lined the shore just past where what seemed like hundreds of ships choked the harbor. It seemed that once the Sea Crest came alongside the outermost ship, Kassandra could simply hop from one to another until she reached land, the muddled, muddy mess with no beach to speak of, no trees, no grass.

  Kassandra hadn’t stepped a single foot off the boat, and already she was lost.

  There was no ceremony afforded to the docking of the Sea Crest. Kassandra had been asleep in her cabin and woke up to the shouting of sailors about to shed themselves of the sea.

  Four purposeful raps sounded at her door. “Miss Kassandra?” Captain Weathersby paused for just a few seconds before knocking again. “Miss Kassandra, we’ve made shore.”

  The thin slits of light streaming through the cabin’s wall did little to illuminate the room, so Kassandra made her preparations in the dark. It had been months since she’d bathed, days since she’d combed her hair, years since she had any real reason to care about her appearance. The only mirror on board had been crowded by the sailors, shaving their whiskers in anticipation of a day’s leave on shore. No matter. She fumbled through her bag and found her brush, raking it through her ratted locks before braiding, coiling, and securing it with the tortoiseshell comb Ben had given her.

  There was neither light nor room to change her dress, so she simply smoothed the material as best she could, mindful of the odor she emitted even to herself. She’d overheard the men talking about the bathhouses—perhaps that would be her first stop.r />
  The weather had turned cool of late, so she wrapped Imogene’s shawl around her shoulders, grateful to have at least that to hide some of the more prominent stains and mending places of her tattered dress. She squeezed her swollen feet into shoes for the first time in weeks, tapping the heels on the floor to reorient herself to the feeling of a false sole.

  The shouts of the sailors outside became more urgent and purposeful. They were eager to unload their cargo—including her, she was sure—and disembark.

  When she emerged from below deck, the crew shouldered past her, carrying crates and boxes, rolling barrels, marching them down a feeble-looking wooden plank that extended between the Sea Crest and the dock. Nobody took any notice of Kassandra at all, unless she stood squarely in his path, In which case she was shoved aside with a muttered curse mixed with a profane prayer of thanks to be rid of her.

  After one such assault, she found herself stumbling backwards until she collided with Captain Weathersby, who reached for her arm to steady her.

  “Miss Kassandra,” he said, tipping his cap, “you are hereby delivered.”

  He kept hold of her arm as he escorted her down the plank, through the milling wharf where well-dressed merchants met with the cargo-toting sailors to purchase their goods sight unseen for prices that made Kassandra turn and gasp. One crate full of men’s shirts was handed over for five hundred dollars. A case of straw-packed dinnerware went to a dapper man in a tall silk hat for over a thousand dollars. One man sat with a basket of tiny mewling kittens, lifting them up by the scruffs of their necks to start an impromptu auction with the bids starting at ten dollars each. There could be only one reason for such a price: a city full of rats.

  Captain Weathersby kept hold of her arm, steering her through all of this, until they were no longer on the dock at all but squishing through mud. At the edge of the first solid structure they came to, he tipped his cap again, turned, and disappeared into the crowd.

  Kassandra clutched the shawl a little more tightly to her, gripped the handle of her bag a little stronger, and backed against the wall. She looked up the street and down and saw nothing but one unadorned building after the other standing sentry over a wide, muddy street. She tried to keep count of the people who passed by. Men dressed in brushed wool coats and silk brocade vests crossed with thick watch chains; men dressed in filthy, torn shirts and tattered boots; the occasional Chinese with his long, thin braid—all rushing by, calling out to others just beyond her sight. Nobody offered her so much as a passing glance. Even if she found the courage to reach out, touch an arm … what would she ask? She had nowhere to go. Knew no one.