The House Girl (23 page)

“This case is just begging for some publicity, right? We need those cameras at the courthouse and the plaintiffs are an opportunity to hook them, early and fast. Am I right?” Garrison was saying.

Silence. Dan must have nodded, because Garrison continued.

“So, what if we found a plaintiff who already came with a bagful of built-in publicity. A story that’s already being covered in the kinds of markets, read about by the kinds of people, who are—and might be in the future—clients of this firm. Josephine Bell is that story. I went to this amazing exhibit over the weekend, Dan. Amazing. I’m a big art fan. I love art. And this was something that grabbed me, from the moment I heard about it. An African American artist, never recognized in her time. I know it sounds silly, but looking at those pictures, I felt a kinship with her. I did. I felt her.”

Lina knew she should pull away but was rooted in place by the elemental shock of hearing these words spoken by Garrison. She listened as he told the story of Lu Anne and Josephine, the white mistress, the black house girl, the canonization of Lu Anne by modern art circles, feminists, art historians. And now, behold, it had all been a lie.

Then Dan’s voice: “I like it, I see where you’re going with this. This sounds fantastic, a really great hook. Good work, Garrison.” She could picture Dan, leaning forward in his chair, scratching his red wiry head, his cheeks flushed pink.

Lina knocked. She did not wait for an answer. She opened the door.

“Lina,” Garrison said, turning around, surprise but no shame stamped on his face.

“Lina, good morning, you’re in early,” said Dan, good-natured and oblivious. “Come, join us. Garrison is just filling me in on this exhibit he saw over the weekend. This artist angle, it sounds like just the ticket.”

Lina sat down. She did not look at Garrison.

“And I know, Lina, you mentioned something about this last week—and I know I said hold off. But now, hearing about it from Garrison, he’s done all this extra research—the art exhibit, potential new client base. I think it’s an exciting idea. There’s a lot to recommend it. A lot.” He turned to Garrison.

“So,” Dan said. “Where are her relatives? When can I meet them?”

“Well, umm … we don’t know yet.” Now Garrison paused. Lina noted the return of the welcoming “we.” She did not respond. Garrison cleared his throat. One breath. Two. Part of her wanted him to flounder. Hadn’t she done enough to help the amiable Garrison Hall? But in Dan’s face lived a chance that he would approve a trip to Richmond, that she could advance the search for Josephine. And Lina focused now on this prospect, on what she had come here to accomplish. Garrison, she decided, was peripheral.

Lina said, “Dan, as you can see, Garrison is excited about my idea to locate a Josephine Bell descendant to serve as lead plaintiff. But there’s one hurdle—we still have to find one. There are resources out there that I just can’t access from my desk. I need to go to Virginia.”

Dan looked at her with eyebrows raised. Lina held his gaze.

“Okay, okay. Let’s give this a try,” Dan said. “But we are tight on time, team.
Tight
. So, who’s going to Richmond tomorrow?” Dan tilted his head first toward Garrison, who shifted in his chair. Lina’s cheeks stung as though she’d been slapped.

“Um, I really can’t leave the city,” Garrison said.

“Okay, then.” Dan turned toward Lina. “Lina? How about it?”

“Of course I can go,” she said steadily.

“Great. But listen—here’s the deal. Fly coach, leave first thing tomorrow. Work one day, two max. Be back here Thursday at the latest. I’ll ask Dresser for a few more days to work on the brief. He’ll have a kitten but, hey, it is what it is. And keep expenses to a minimum, Lina. We’re talking the Super 8, not the Four Seasons. Understood?”

Lina nodded and rose from her chair. She felt a sudden pressing need to be far from the company of Garrison Hall and Daniel Oliphant.

“Great work, team!” Dan called after her as she left the office. Lina turned down the hallway, toward the elevator bank, and heard the rustle of Garrison hurrying behind.

“Lina,” Garrison said. She did not turn around. They arrived at the elevator together and she pushed the down button. Garrison eased up beside her.

“Lina, I know what you’re thinking,” he said quietly. “And you’re wrong.”

“What am I thinking?” Lina kept her eyes on the glowing arrow. “That you stole my idea to look good in front of Dan? How could you have done that?”

“I just thought it was a great idea, and that we should run with it, and I thought that maybe if he heard about it from someone else … I mean you already tried to explain it to him, didn’t you?” Garrison’s voice was level, reasonable, which served only to enrage Lina further. She felt something within her fly loose, the demise not only of her burgeoning friendship with Garrison but of something essential within herself as well, a vision of success here at Clifton and how she would undoubtedly achieve it.

“Garrison, I
trusted
you.” Her voice rose too loud for the small space around them. A young paralegal waiting nearby glanced up and then quickly down when Lina met her eyes.

“And Dresser seemed so taken with the idea,” Garrison continued in the same quiet tone. “I just wanted to redeem myself, show him and Dan that I’m committed to this case. But I should have talked to you first. I’m sorry.”

The elevator opened with a cheerful electronic
ping
. Lina stepped inside. She turned and looked at Garrison, at his wide, intelligent eyes and articulate mouth as it opened to say something more, but his words were lost as the doors closed and Lina faced only a hazy image of herself reflected off the steel.

As the elevator descended, she began to cry with an angry frustration. She had let down her guard and forgotten the math: law firms presented a zero-sum game. How many associates would eventually make partner? Five percent? Two? Dan must have dangled the partner track promise in front of Garrison too. Every case mattered, every client meeting, every hour billed represented a chance for you to shine and your colleagues to stumble.

Lina dried her eyes on the sleeve of her button-down, straightened her back, and stepped forward to examine herself in the door’s dim reflection. Lowering her chin, she wiped away the dark shadows of smudged mascara, tucked her hair behind each ear. She was going to Richmond, Virginia, where she would locate evidence of Josephine Bell’s descendant. And this goal crystallized now within her in a new, harder way. Maybe she wasn’t as cutthroat as Garrison, or as powerful as Dan, but she had what it took to excel here. Wasn’t the law what she
did
? And she did it very, very well.

T
he afternoon reached toward night and Mister did not return. As the sun burned low in an orange-blue sky, Missus wanted to walk and so Josephine took her down the front path to the gate, and back again to the house, and again, and again. Missus wore her everyday slippers; she did not ask again for the boots. Heavier with each pass, Missus leaned on Josephine’s arm, but still she insisted they stay out. “I like to feel the sun on my face,” Missus said. “Motion in my limbs.” A trickle of sweat ran down the valley of Josephine’s spine, where the cloth of her dress pulled away; she felt it like an insect on her skin.

As they walked, Missus gossiped about Melly, the spinster’s shame, and remembered her own oldest sister in Mississippi, homely and bookish, and what ever became of her? Josephine listened and nodded and thought of Nathan and the road to the undertaker’s. Could he tell her the route? She did not trust her memory to find her way again. This time the undertaker would not turn her away. Before, it had been her own fault, waiting so long to run, her belly low and heavy.

And Lottie?
Now is the time,
Josephine would say,
there will be no other
.
I have seen signs of the redemption
. The lump on Missus’ neck growing wider by the day; the sparrow with its head like an arrow; the doctor’s weeping skin, red and cracked, hidden beneath his suit. Did these not point to an escape? What would Lottie accept, what would she believe in?

J
OSEPHINE PREPARED A SIMPLE SUPPER
for Missus Lu, bread and broth, steeped mint and a teaspoonful of brandy, and put her to bed. Still no sign of Mister. An ebbing line of orange hung on the horizon, the emergent night sky luminous and clear. The hours of darkness stretched before her and they seemed immense, immeasurable. How far might she go? How many miles to the city of Philadelphia?

Josephine walked down to the cabins. The night felt thicker here than up by the house. The cooking fires flickered along the row. Shadowy movement and sounds of the field hands preparing their suppers, a piece of meat left from the week’s allotment, pig fat and beans, brown trout from the river, and the cooking smells mixed with the stench of the latrine. Otis worked by torchlight in the side garden where the field hands grew runner beans, carrots, collards, potatoes, squash. His back was bent, his hands in the earth. He looked up and nodded as Josephine passed.

Lottie and Winton sat outside their cabin. Josephine saw the silhouette of Winton’s form on the front steps, and then Lottie as she stood and walked toward the fire, her gait rolling and slow, her shadow long and misshapen in the wavering light. She pulled a spoon from her apron pocket and poked it into the black pot that hung over the flame. Josephine stepped from the shadows into the circle of light thrown by the fire

“Evening, Lottie.”

Lottie raised the spoon. “Oh, you gave me a fright. Don’t go sneaking up on me like that.”

“I’m sorry, Lottie, didn’t mean nothing. Will you come inside?” Josephine tilted her head to the cabin. Lottie opened her mouth as if to speak but said nothing, just nodded and followed Josephine.

They sat on three-legged stools, the cabin lit only by the firelight that winked from a square window cut into the wall. In winter the window was covered with burlap, but now it was left open to the air and insects, smoke and light. Two sleeping pallets lay against the far wall, covered by Lottie’s quilt. A small rough table sat beside the door and, upon it, a brown glass bottle held the bluebell stems that Lottie had picked that morning.

Lottie said, “Josephine, is it true the doctor came today for Missus? Calla seen him.”

“Yes, the doctor came. He said Missus is dying. And Mister run off, I don’t know where he went to. I am going, Lottie. I can’t wait. Please come with me, won’t you and Winton come?” Josephine heard the words come in a rush and they sounded simple and weak, not as she had hoped. She did not talk about signs of the redemption; there were no signs, just things that she saw without grand design or divine meaning, and she could not pretend now to Lottie that she believed otherwise. Fact was they all knew that a death meant sales. Who would be sold after Missus Lu was gone? Who would stay? Would Mister keep on at Bell Creek? They might all be sold, scattered to different parts.

Lottie shifted where she sat and looked away from Josephine, then back. “Oh child, how can we go? Winton’s leg barely serves him now, Jackson keep saying he’ll bring the whip down on account of it. And me, I’m too old for it.”

Josephine took hold of Lottie’s hand. “Please,” she said. “Please, Lottie.” She squeezed Lottie’s fingers, hoping to convey the truth that she found herself now unable to speak: I do not want to go alone. “Please. Come with me.” But Josephine saw no shift in Lottie’s eyes, no change in the thin line of her mouth. Josephine released Lottie’s hand; she knew what the answer would be.

“You go,” Lottie said, her voice soft but certain. “Papa Bo always said he’d never sell Winton and me, we’d always stay together, right here. We’ll stay. Jesus looking after me, don’t you worry none. You go on.”

“Lottie.”

“You run fast and get yourself up north. I’ll know how you’re getting on. Jesus’ll tell me, He will.”

The moonlight glowed on Lottie’s cheeks. “Good-bye,” Josephine said.

She reached forward and hugged Lottie. There was nothing else to expect, Lottie would never leave. She knew how to get by, her quick fingers, her careful heart. Jesus coming for her, Lottie was waiting. But Josephine could not wait, not another day.

Josephine felt light-headed now, her skin stretched too tight across her face. She stepped out of the cabin into the night air.

Winton still sat on the step, and she stopped there, placed a hand on his shoulder. “Good night, good Winton. You take care now.”

He nodded at her, winked. “Night, Josephine. We’ll be seeing you.”

Josephine walked past the fire and down the row of cabins, looking for where Nathan slept. It was not often that she came this way. She visited only with Lottie and Winton and whoever might be sharing their supper that night, but never with the others. Now there was only Jackson; Calla; young Otis; Therese; and Nathan, for a time, until his owner called him back. But the empty cabins echoed with the sounds of the others: Calla’s children, Lottie’s Hap, Jonas, Nora, Louis, Annie, Constance, May, the children Josephine had played with, James and Solomon and Harriet and Sue, all dead or sold, gone far off, who knew where. Apart from Lottie, Winton, and Louis, Josephine held no feeling for any of them. She had not known their fears or joys. Over the years she’d hear of a baby born, a broken leg; she’d hear of these things but took no part in them.

Lottie always said Missus looked to Josephine as a daughter of sorts, but Josephine didn’t see it that way. She was just like the horse, the chicken or cow, something to be fed and housed, to do what it was born and raised to do. Josephine was not of one world or the other, neither the house nor the fields. This she could not explain to them, not even to Lottie or Winton, that she belonged nowhere.

Nathan stood outside a cabin, his mouth rolled in chewing though he held no plate in his hand and there was no cooking fire lit. Josephine approached him slowly across the hard-packed earth, but he gave no notice of her until she stood just before him. He shifted his eyes toward her, spat onto the ground, nodded his head.