Bittersweet (10 page)

Sam had opened the Bible to Proverbs, Chapter Five. At the top of the page was the heading: “The Mischiefs of Whoredom.” The faded satin ribbon lay in the crease to mark the place. Sarah leaned her elbows on the table and, digging her fingers into her hair, read:

“For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil:

“But her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.

“Her feet go down to death, her steps take hold on hell.”

Tears drowned the words; she threw herself from the chair and lay crying on the floor until she exhausted herself and was still.

Imogene dismissed class at three-thirty and cleared her desk. The wind, which had been rising steadily since noon, howled under the eaves, making the room creak and the windows rattle. The schoolroom emptied quickly, the children running home like late leaves scudding before the storm. Imogene closed the stove’s damper and sat on one of the small desks, listening to the wind cry and the stove click and pop comfortingly. By four o’clock the light was going. She gathered up a pile of texts and let herself out, hurrying home, head down and shoulders hunched against the cold. Someone called her name and she faced into the cutting wind.

Sarah was huddled in the lee of the school, leaning on the rough wood of the building, her cloak held tight around her. Matted hair half hid her face, but Imogene could see that her eyes were red from crying.

“Sarah Mary? Sarah, what in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

Sarah stumbled away from the shelter of the schoolhouse. Her knees started to buckle. Imogene dropped the books, catching her before she fell. Sliding one arm around Sarah’s waist and the other behind her knees, she lifted her, carrying her like a child. The girl’s cloak fell open and trailed over the ground, riffling the pages of the scattered books. Loose pages, freed, flew up and over the buildings like wild things.

She set Sarah down in the rocker in front of the fireplace. Still in a faint, Sarah slumped against the back, setting the chair rocking. Imogene steadied it with her foot and felt Sarah’s face and hands; they were like ice.

Putting the girl’s hands back in her lap, she started to tend to the fire. Sarah cried out and reached for her, and Imogene held her again. When she was quiet, the schoolteacher knelt in front of her. “Here, blow your nose.” Sarah obediently took the proffered handkerchief, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. Finished, she held it out. “You keep it,” Imogene told her, smiling. “Will you be all right long enough for me to build a fire?” Sarah nodded and wiped her nose again; it was red from the tears and the cold.

When the fire was burning high, Imogene coaxed her out of her cloak and sat her near the blaze with a mug of hot tea and honey. Sarah held it in both hands, blowing on it. “Drink that slowly. I put a bit of rum in it to drive off the chill you took.” Imogene pulled the footstool near Sarah’s feet and sat on it, her dark skirts settling around her like stormclouds. Sleet started to fall and the fire hissed as the first drops blew down the chimney.

The heat and the rum were bringing the color back to Sarah’s cheeks. “Feeling better? You look a little less peaked.”

“I’m better.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Sarah looked up from the fire into Imogene’s gray eyes, and the tears welled up, spilling down her face. Imogene took the tea from her trembling hands and set it on the hearth. “My dear.” She took the weeping girl to her and
hugged her close. Sarah clutched at her, hiding her face in the soft woolen pleats of Imogene’s bodice.

“Sam—Sam wanted the marriage—” She choked on her tears and coughed. “—the marriage act, and I liked it.” She held tight to Imogene’s waist, her eyes squeezed shut. “I liked it like a whore and Sam whipped me. I want to die. I can’t go home.”

“Hush now. Hush. That’s my girl.” She stroked Sarah’s hair, murmuring. “Come on now, sit up. You can lean against me.” The girl rested her head on Imogene’s shoulder, hiccoughing, and Imogene took up the rum-laced tea. “Here, drink this. It’ll make you feel better.” Sarah drank and relaxed against Imogene’s shoulder, flinching as the cuts on the backs of her legs opened.

“He whipped you.”

Sarah nodded.

“Let me see,” Imogene said gently.

Sarah pulled her skirts up and picked gingerly at a black stocking. The wool stuck where the blood had dried. She yanked it partway down, sucking in her breath at the tearing. The back of her thigh was crisscrossed with marks from the willow switches, the broken skin curled back, white and bloodless, from long, shallow cuts. Tufts of black wool stuck to the wounds, and where the flesh was not lacerated, it was bruised. Imogene looked at the leg and her face hardened. Sarah saw and was ashamed.

“Am I bad, Imogene?”

“No. Lie down here by the fire where it’s warmest. I’m going to tend to those cuts.” She helped Sarah out of her clothes, hanging her dress and petticoat on the pegs in the bedroom. The nightgown Sarah had worn underneath was so tattered that Imogene shoved it into the ragbag under the bed and gave her an old wrapper of her own to wear, rolling up the cuffs and pulling the skirt up through the sash so it wouldn’t drag the floor. She brought her another cup of tea and rum, then soaked a cloth in warm water and laid it over Sarah’s stockinged legs, wetting the wool until it pulled easily away from the wounds. Sarah’s legs were slashed from ankles to buttocks.

“What did Sam whip you with?” Imogene’s voice was controlled.

“A willow switch.”

Imogene wrung the cloth with a vicious twist. “This will hurt a little.” She washed the injuries tenderly. “I never knew a willow whip to cut this bad.”

“I guess it was froze.”

“Frozen.”

“Frozen.”

When the cuts were clean, Imogene spread a thick layer of salve over them and helped the girl into an old pair of cotton pantelets. Sarah lay down again by the fire, watching Imogene clean up the pots and rags. “Sam said I was a whore.”

“You’re not a whore, dear.”

“He said I acted like one.”

“He shouldn’t have. Love sometimes expresses itself that way.”

“I don’t think I love Sam,” Sarah said after a while. “Not like I do you or Mam or David. I just felt funny, kind of buzzy inside, and I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see him—just nobody—and feeling that…like when I used to climb the rope in the barn when I was little. I don’t feel funny when I think of Sam.” Sarah finished her tea and stretched her toes under the rocker. Her voice was slow and sleepy. “Sam just grabs at me like I was an old plow.”

Imogene crossed to the window and, pulling aside the curtain, stared out into the dark. The storm was moving east, the sleet pounding against the back of the house. Rivulets rutted the main street, carrying slush down to the ditches that served the town as gutters.

Sarah had fallen asleep in front of the fire. The girl’s face was turned toward the flames, and was clear and rosy in the warm light. Her lashes, darker than her hair, curled against the soft skin, fragile and vulnerable. The sleeve of the wrapper had unrolled and claimed one of her hands; the other lay open on the hearth rug, the fingers slightly curled. Imogene leaned down and tickled the palm with her fingertip. Sarah murmured in her sleep, and the schoolteacher smiled.

Imogene cleared the tea things from the living room and washed them before she roused the sleeping girl. Sarah stirred at her touch and opened her eyes, her lashes dried in dark spikes.

“Can I stay with you?”

“No!” Imogene said, suddenly sharp.

Sarah bit the insides of her cheeks and swallowed hard, but still her eyes filled. She pulled herself awkwardly from the floor and looked vaguely around the room for her clothes.

Imogene caught her by the hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, and glancing at the door, laughed nervously. “The night’s got me in fidgets. I didn’t mean to be harsh.”

Sarah’s legs were shaking so that she could barely stand, and under the pink of the fire and alcohol, her face was pinched. Imo
gene checked her watch for something to do; it was after eleven. The storm pounded, unabated, outside. Steepling her hands, Imogene pressed her fingertips to her lips and nodded to herself shortly. Then, to Sarah, still waiting, still watching: “You can stay—as long as you like.” She smiled and turned Sarah by the shoulders. “Go along to bed now. I’ll be there in a minute.”

As the girl left the room, Imogene bolted the door and checked the windows. The curtains were all drawn tight. A log fell and the fire hissed and sparked. Imogene gasped, starting involuntarily.

“Don’t be a goose,” she said quietly. She set the screen in front of the fire and carried the lamp into the bedroom.

Sarah was already fast asleep. Imogene sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her hair absentmindedly. The last of the firelight from the other room played on the watercolors over the window: fragile yellow buttercups in meadow grass, the tiny white flowers that the people of Calliope called Johnny-jump-ups.

Imogene watched until the fire had burned down to embers and no longer cast its light upon the wall, then rose with a sigh and, taking a blanket from the closet shelf, made herself a bed on the living room floor.

Sam came before dawn the next day, cold and quiet. Imogene said nothing. She wrapped Sarah in her cloak and helped her into the wagon with exaggerated care. Sarah was too frightened to talk, and dully accepted Imogene’s kiss on her cheek. The wagon pulled away, sluggish in the mud, its tracks filling with water. The storm had passed.

They reached the farm as the sun rose, a chill gray light in the east. Sam jerked on the reins and the cart horse stopped, rearing in the traces, trying to back away from the bite of the bit. He pulled the horsewhip from the seat beside him and held it across his knees.

“You’ll not be running off like that again.”

Sarah felt the sting of the salve in her wounds, felt her own fragility next to the bulk of her husband. In the summertime, before her marriage, she and Imogene had looked up the word “husband” in the teacher’s dictionary: to cultivate, to nurture, to husband.

Sam cracked the whip against the footboard and Sarah jumped half a foot. “Sarah, you’ll not be running off again.” His eyes bored into her, and she could feel the tears hot in her throat. With an effort, she swallowed them; she was done crying in front of Sam Ebbitt.

“I won’t, Sam,” she managed.

SAM NEVER RAISED HIS HAND TO SARAH AGAIN, AND SHE NEVER GAVE
him cause. When he took her she lay as still as a corpse, her lips forming silent numbers as her eyes slid methodically from crack to crack down the roof and walls. Sam was not unkind to her, and had a neighbor woman in once a week to help with the cleaning until her legs healed.

Walter worked at the Ebbitt farm nearly every day through the winter months, walking the miles to and from home in most weathers. He was learning to be as taciturn as Sam and, except for the brief messages he carried for Mam, proved to be no companionship for the young Mrs. Ebbitt. Finally spring came, and the lonely days of being confined by the weather were past.

On a Saturday in early June, Sam Ebbitt’s carryall rattled down the narrow track into the Tolstonadges’ yard, the dog trotting behind on a long lead. Mam came out of the house and hollered a welcome.

“Come in. I’ll see if there’s not something cool to drink.” The dog, pulling loose lips away from his teeth and growling, slunk under the wheels into the shade of the wagon. Mam stayed well out of reach. “You oughtn’t to bring that dog, Sam. One of the little girls could get bit bad.”

“Dog don’t bite,” he returned.

Sarah jumped free of the wagon. Her face had filled out, her cheeks rounded. Her figure, too, was fuller, more womanly than it had been the year before. The bosom of her neat shirtwaist swelled attractively and was balanced by the merest trace of a bustle. “We’re going to town, Mam. I got some shopping to do, and Sam said I could charge yardage at the dry goods if I saw something I liked.”

“I expect you’ll find something in that store to buy.” Mam smiled over her head at Sam. He grunted.

“Where’s Emmanuel?”

“To the mine. I expect him home any minute,” Mam replied.

“I guess I’ll go on down the road a ways. Meet him.”

“That’d be good of you, Sam. He’s not so young as he used to be, and come weekend he’s wore out.”

“Walter?”

“He’s off being a boy somewhere, I expect.”

Sam shook the reins and the shade rolled off the dog, warning him to his feet before the tether jerked.

Sarah followed her mother sedately into the house. Margaret watched her out of the sides of her eyes. Under the girl’s bonnet, wisps of hair, escaping the coronet of light braids, framed her face. A quirk of a smile dimpled in the corners of her mouth. “You look like the fox been in the chickens,” Mam said. “Here, spread this over your lap and make yourself useful.” She handed her daughter a dishcloth and shoved a bowl of peas to the center of the kitchen table. Sarah opened a pod and, picking out the peas one by one, popped them into her mouth. “Don’t you go eating these,” Mam protested. “Not so many you can go eating them raw. It’s early yet.” Margaret dragged the bowl away, but not before Sarah had grabbed a handful. “What’s got into you?” Mam chided.

A dog barked and Mam leaned to see out the door. Emmanuel was riding in with Sam. “Guess your pa was just about home.” She looked at her daughter. “You and Sam seem to be getting on better.” Sarah shrugged indifferently and ate another pea. “It’ll come,” Margaret said.

Walter, wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt and wool trousers that fell down over his boots, emerged from the shade behind the shed. His boyish grace was gone, and at seventeen he was a stocky, lumpish young man already red in the face and turned down at the mouth. He joined his father and Sam by the gate.

Mam sighed. “Walter’s a good boy, works harder than any boy
I know, but somehow Davie got all the fire. Maybe burnt himself up with it—I ain’t heard.” Sarah quit eating the peas and started shucking them properly.

“Mam, I missed.”

“Well, pick it up and dust it off. A little dirt never did anybody harm.” She pushed the half-filled bowl nearer Sarah.

“No, Mam. I missed.”

Margaret looked up and Sarah nodded. “I been expecting it!” the older woman crowed. “Lord! No wonder you look so pretty, filling out.” She laughed, dumping the unshucked peas off her lap and back into the bucket. “How you feeling? You sick mornings?”

“Some. Not much, though.”

“Who’d’ve thought it? Not sick much.” Mam glowed. “You’re going to have a baby, hon. I’m pretty sure.”

Sarah clutched her mother’s arm. “You think so, Mam? You really think so? I thought maybe that was it, I been feeling so good. I feel full inside, like there was a hole in me that I never knew was there, and now what was missing ain’t.” Jumping from her chair, she caught her mother unawares and swung her around. “I can’t believe it! I been praying every chance I got.” Suddenly worried, she stopped herself. “Mam, ought I be doing this? I mean jumping around?”

Margaret hugged her. “Well, you might stop a bit, as much for me as for the baby. You use your head, and your stomach will tell you when you should stop doing what. It’ll just plain get in the way.”

“I’m going to have a baby.” Sarah sat down with her palms on her cheeks and as quickly bounced up. “I’ve got to tell Imogene.”

“Don’t you think you better tell Sam?” Sarah looked blank. “If he’s going to be a father, he might want to know. You don’t think you got that baby all by yourself, do you?” Mam teased. “Sit down now. Another minute’s going to make no difference. We’ve got some figuring to do. When did you last bleed?” Sarah’s eyes rolled toward the ceiling as she ran over the weeks. “You weren’t at Easter service. Sam said it was female trouble,” Mam suggested, and Sarah looked immensely relieved.

“That was it, the last of March.”

Mam counted on her fingers, naming the months. “Looks like December, or maybe even November.”

Sarah hugged herself. “Maybe the winter won’t seem so long.”

Sam called from outside, and Mam gave Sarah another quick squeeze. “I’m so happy for you, Sare. For you and Sam.”

“Don’t say nothing, Mam.”

“ ’Course I won’t. The news is yours to tell, and rightly so.”

“Grandma Tolstonadge.”

“Oh! My, I hadn’t thought. Sounds just right. Old—but good to my heart.”

Sam called again.

“Will you two quit pulling taffy?” Emmanuel added. “Man’s got business in town.”

Mam helped Sarah into the wagon with elaborate care, twittering and poking her daughter gently in the ribs. Once she caught Sam’s eye and winked broadly; Sam jerked his head back as if she had spit in his eye, but never changed expression.

Sarah untied her bonnet strings and let the breeze carry them. The sky was a flawless blue, and the fullness of summer swelled under it in shades of brown and green. Underbrush crowded the edges of the wagon track, rustling with small birds foraging for their young, hidden in nests overhead. Oblivious of the damage to her complexion, Sarah lifted her face to the sun and breathed deep of the warm, scented air. Cupping her hands over her stomach, she petted it. Sam stared out between the horse’s ears, his eyes fixed on nothing, his chin echoing the dogged tread of the cart horse. Glancing at him, Sarah smiled a secret smile to herself.

As they approached a ragged burst of rock, thrusting through the creepers, a cottontail bunny, frightened by the noise of the wagon, darted out from the safety of the brush. The dog bounded from between the rear wheels and caught the terrified animal in its jaws.

“Sam.” Sarah grabbed his arm. “You’ve got to stop.”

Sam Ebbitt looked over at his young wife and pulled up on the reins.

“Dog’s got a rabbit, Sam.”

He leaned across her to look. “His rope tangled in something?”

“Take it away from him,” she pleaded.

“Rabbits are thick this year, Sare. Be eating the crops.”

“Please.”

“Why’re you taking on over a rabbit? You’ve cleaned and et ’em plenty of times.” He clucked to the horse.

“Please,” she begged.

Sam blew air noisily out between loose lips and, shaking his head and muttering, climbed out of the wagon. “C’mere, boy. Lemme see what you got.” The dog looked suspiciously over the inert form of the rabbit and growled. Sam cuffed him. “You don’t by-God growl at me.” The dog dropped the rabbit and ran under the wagon. “Looks like the neck’s broke, Sare. No sense wasting it.” He whistled and the dog pricked up his ears.

“Wait.” She jumped from the wagon and scooped the little body from the ground. “It ain’t dead, Sam, feel.” He laid a finger on the rabbit’s neck where a pulse beat rapidly. “Just stunned, you think?”

“We been long enough now. Leave it be.”

“Let me take it. It ain’t dead, Sam.”

“Leave it be now. We fiddled enough of the day.” Sarah held it cradled in her arms. “You don’t have to let the dog have it if you don’t want to,” he conceded. She walked back down the road and put the bunny out of reach of the dog, under the overhanging brambles of a chokecherry bush.

“Sare,” Sam said without looking back, “I said enough now.” She ran back to the wagon and scrambled onto the seat.

Sam let her off in front of Imogene’s. As soon as his back was turned, she caught up her skirts and ran up the path. Clay had pounded planks into the earth that spring to give Imogene footing through the mud, and Sarah’s boots rang loud on the wood. Pulling up the latch of the door, she threw it open. Imogene was standing in the middle of the room; she turned when the door banged.

Sarah was through it and in her arms in a moment. “Imogene!” she cried. “We’re going to have a baby!”

“Sarah, that’s wonderful!” Imogene hugged her and held her away, resting her hands lightly on the girl’s narrow hips. “We’re going to do this right.” She pulled her nose thoughtfully, her face grave. Sarah waited while Imogene paced, lost in thought.

“Shall I put on some water to boil?” Sarah asked in a timid voice.

“Not yet.” Imogene looked at her and smiled for the first time since she’d received the news. “I think we’ve got a few months yet. We will learn. Everything.”

“I meant for tea.”

Imogene went with her into the kitchen and was measuring tea into the pot while Sarah put the kettle on. She put the canister down with a bump and turned to the young woman. Sarah was
kneeling in front of the stove, striking a match. “Sarah, you must promise you will send for me the minute you feel anything. The moment. You must promise to make someone come for me.”

The kindling caught and flared up. “I’ll send for you, Imogene.”

Imogene knelt and took her by the shoulders. “Promise.”

“I promise.”

“There are other things, too. We should start now. You mustn’t let Sam make you do heavy work. And maybe you should eat certain things. I don’t know.” She stood and brushed off her skirts. “I’ll find out. I’ll get books.”

Sarah put the kettle where the blaze was highest. “Women have babies every day. You oughtn’t to worry so.” She pulled her small mouth into a stern line, but still she looked pleased. “I’m going to have to call you Papa Grelznik.”

They carried their tea into the front room and settled themselves near a window where the breeze blew in.

“I’ve wanted this so much,” Sarah said. “When I was coming into town today, sitting up there beside Sam, I couldn’t help thinking I’d stole something from him. All those times he thought he was taking from me, I was really taking from him.

“Something’s mine. My baby. I look at everything—trees and birds, everything—and I feel a part of it. Like I was always skimming along just above, and now I’m down in it.” She smoothed her hands over her belly. “Do I sound crazy? I don’t talk like that in front of people.”

“You sound a little crazy, but it is lovely. I wish everyone were as crazy as you.” Imogene laughed uncertainly. “Papa Grelznik will take care of you, then it will be my baby, too. Would you mind?”

Sarah took the spinster’s hand and pressed it to her stomach, though it was far too soon for life to show. “I wouldn’t mind.”

Sam came for Sarah at six o’clock, and she took her place beside him. Imogene watched until a bend in the road took them.

“You forget your packages?” Sam asked. “I ain’t going back for them now. It’ll have to wait till next trip.”

“I never bought anything.” She waited for a reply, but none was forthcoming. “Don’t you want to know why?”

“You don’t want a new dress, that’s your business.” Sam sounded nettled.

“I never got to the dry goods. I was talking with Imogene. The
whole time.” Sam wouldn’t take his cue. He squinted uninterestedly, eyes front. The sun’s last rays, knifing through the trees, barred the road with orange light. “Don’t you want to know what we talked about?” Sarah asked.

“You’re going to tell me anyways.”

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Sam looked over at her and a slow smile illuminated his beard. He slapped his knee and the horse put its ears back. He reached over and slapped Sarah’s knee. “Good girl.” Smiling, he lapsed back into silence. As the sun touched the horizon, he addressed her again. “You going to have a boy?”

“I don’t know.” Sarah’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know, Sam.”

“You have a boy and I’ll get you a present. A cart and your own pony to pull. You have a boy.” Smiling, he slapped her knee again.

The wagon jolted around a bend in the road, bypassing the rock that had sheltered the rabbit earlier. The dog ran to thrust his long nose into the tangled underbrush where Sarah had hidden the cottontail. Whimpering with excitement, he pushed his face deep into the bushes but emerged empty-mouthed.