The Vanishing Point (32 page)

O
NE EVENING
, oppressively warm and full of mosquitoes, May sat spinning on the porch while Nathan dozed in his chair. Gabriel was busy honing the metal jaws of his traps, preparing them for the coming season. He seemed to sense how the sound grated on her, sending an awful shiver through her bones, but he went on running his whetstone over the metal, over and over, as if to make her suffer. Had she truly sworn to obey this man and cleave to him forever? If Adele were here, she would not feel so desolate. She would put her spinning aside and give Adele her lesson. By now the girl could write the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23 by heart. She could read aloud from the Bible. But Adele had been acting strange and troubled. That evening she had vanished after scouring the pots.

May held her breath as the baby kicked her beneath the heart. Lately the premonition had gripped her that this infant would be the death of her. Though she had two more months to endure, she could scarcely stomach another week. If she sat for one more second on this hard stool, she thought her belly would burst. Letting the spinning wheel whirl to a halt, she rose laboriously, hands in the small of her back. Without a word to her husband, she lumbered down the porch steps. Nathan slept on.

"Where do you go?" Gabriel called, his voice full of the usual mistrust.

"I am burning to piss," she replied tartly.

Before he could say anything more, she escaped down the path. But she did not go to the privy. In her condition, she could not bear the stench. Instead she squatted behind a bush and lifted her skirts. In this heat, she wore no underlinen. The sinking sun suffused the undergrowth in an unearthly orange light.
Used as a whore's cunny,
she thought as she pissed. Once she had heard Joan say that to her friends. They had been laughing about something May could no longer remember. What wouldn't she give to be with Joan now.

Wetness gathered under her armpits, sour as vinegar. At least the smell kept the mosquitoes off her. She longed to dunk her head in the river, let the coolness wash over her. Strip off everything and jump into the current, never mind that she couldn't swim. On Sunday last, she had seen James and Patrick swimming, naked bodies gleaming in the water. Since James had gone off her, the two of them had become tight friends.

She went instead to the creek, which was more private than the river, less deep and dangerous. When she reached the clay bank, she knelt down, not caring if she stained her skirt. She unlaced her bodice and chemise, wet her kerchief, then rubbed it against her skin. She wrung out the water over her hair, but it hardly offered relief. Finally she plunged her head underwater. Everything went dark. When she raised herself up again, her dripping hair spread coolness over her breasts, grotesquely swollen and sore.

Tugging off her shoes, she lifted her skirt and squatted in the creekbed, let the flow rock her gently. The water gushed between her legs and thighs, relieving her of her belly's weight. She could forget her puffy ankles and pretend she was a child again, playing in the creekbed with little Hannah, back when splashing naked in the water had been an innocent pastime.

She was well aware that she was courting danger. The sun had gone down. One by one, the night creatures would emerge. She might meet a prowling bear. Snakes hunted in the dark. Still, she
was not eager to go back to the house. What would Gabriel say when she returned with a wet head? She flinched at the thought of him appraising her. Lurching to her feet, she wound her dripping hair in a knot, then closed her chemise and laced her bodice. Her legs were deliciously cool and wet, but her skirt was bedraggled and marked with clay.
Cold clay means death.
Her body was a dead weight. When she looked into the future, she saw a great wall of pain. She could not imagine herself as a mother with a rosy babe in her arms. Mothers were good. She was not.

Heading up the path, she passed near the Irishmen's shack, where she heard James's unmistakable laughter. Once she would have been bold enough to enter their circle and join the merriment. Hidden from sight, she hung back behind the sycamores and tiptoed toward the fork in the path that led to the house. She had to return before Nathan awoke in his chair to find her missing. Before he sent Gabriel out to look for her.
Lost your wife again, eh?
Gabriel would think she had been with a man, as if any of them would care to look at her now that she had grown so huge.

She followed the left fork to Adele's shack. She thought she could go on enduring her lot only if Adele would give her a few kind words. The full moon allowed her to pick her way along. She hoped that Adele had not already gone to sleep.

A few yards from the shack, May froze at the sound of a blade scraping wood. A tall shadowy form loomed in front of Adele's door. Trapped in her terror like a fly in a web, her palms dripped sweat. Beyond the curtain of trees, the Irishmen laughed as though this were a night like any other.

Taking a breath, May charged forward. She told herself that she had little to lose. One act of courage for Adele's sake. One act of courage was all she had to give. At the sound of her footsteps, the thing in front of the door cried out, then fell to the ground. Just as quickly, it scrambled to its feet. Moonlight glinted on the knife blade pointing at May. Adele's once familiar face was a horrible mask.

The girl stifled a cry, then lowered the knife. "You should
not creep in the dark like that." Before May had the chance to exhale, Adele's voice hardened. "Why are you about so late? Did you come now from the men's quarters?"

"You begin to sound like my husband. Pray, Adele, put away that knife. You gave me such a fright." She looked at the doorway, where she could just make out the stool on which Adele had been standing. The moonlight revealed Adele's handiwork—a carving of a heart with three lines passing through it.

"What is this? Do you work witchcraft?" The thrice-pierced heart disturbed her even more than the knife had. "Is this a curse, Adele?"

The girl grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the lintel. "Do not touch it." Her voice was tight with alarm. "Why do you come here in the dark? Your husband he will be looking for you. Let me walk you back."

May refused to budge. "Tell me the meaning of this carving, Adele."

"I did it for you. For to protect you."

"Protect me?" The sense of unease did not lift. "Protect me from
what,
Adele?" May's throat was so constricted, she found it hard to breathe. "From peril in childbirth?" When Adele remained silent, May fought the urge to shake her. "Have mercy on me, would you? Just spit it out."

The girl lifted her face to the moonlight. "I have terrible dreams." She paused. "In your condition, I do not want to say things that will make you sad."

May tried to keep from snapping at her. "Adele, I am as lost as a soul can be. Hearing of your dreams and portents cannot make things worse. If you are my friend, please speak."

"You are in danger." She spoke very softly, her voice nearly swallowed by the noise of the cicadas. "You must take better care. You ruin yourself going out in the night. You push the young master too far. In time, you might ruin us all."

"So if there is ruin, I am to blame. Do you condemn me, Adele? Have you grown to hate me, just like the rest of them?"

"You did make them hate you. It was your doing. You never loved no one. It was only a game to you, no? You made them burn for you. But you are cold. They say you have no heart."

Cold?
Sweat dripped off May's face like tears. Was her need to be cherished so hateful? After James and Gabriel had begun to hate her, she had sought comfort from those who still cared. Did she not deserve a scrap of joy? But now she was a huge cow, her beauty vanished. She stank, nothing but a piece of rank flesh. She felt herself cracking, breaking, a raw egg smashed on a stone. How hot this night was. She recalled the cool English air, her sister begging her not to board the ship.
What if he is a beast?
For all she knew, Father and Joan might be dead. Her sister was probably the only soul alive who truly loved her. She wondered if she would ever see her again.

May no longer had the strength to stand. When her legs gave way, she found herself on her hands and knees in the dirt. She had to laugh at what a ridiculous creature she had become—a pregnant woman on all fours. Adele reached to help her, but May grabbed the doorframe and hauled herself up. Everything went dark as the blood rushed out of her head. Was it like this when Hannah had her fits? she wondered. Gulping for air, she prayed for the dizziness to pass. In the distance, James kept laughing. Maybe he was telling the others about her. She thought of the song that boys at home used to sing, following close behind her as she walked through the village on some errand.
Cherry-red like a slut's own bed.

Still clinging to the doorframe, she looked again at the carving on the lintel. "The heart. Was that the purpose of your magic? To give me a new heart?" A noise came out of May's throat. She never cried, never let herself cry. Yet she was sobbing.

"You asked me to speak the truth." Adele held her the way Hannah used to, and May felt herself treasured once more. She was made human again, no longer a soulless, used-up whore.
Sweetness,
she thought, remembering a passage from the Bible.
The balm of Gilead.
If Adele still cared for her, then redemption
might be within reach, even for someone as wretched as she was. But that hope vanished when the foreboding descended again.

"So you have the premonition, too." May spoke in a strangled voice, her mouth to Adele's ear. "I have seen it coming. Master Gabriel does not seem very frightful, and yet I fear him. I know I am to leave this world soon, if not in childbed, then in some other fashion."

"
No.
" Adele clasped her hands. "I will not allow it." Her voice rose loud and ardent. "I will curse him. I will strike him dead."

Her words hung in the air as the lantern shone on their faces. He had crept up so quietly. Blinded, May covered her eyes. Why did he need a lantern when he saw too much already? The shy innocent boy she had married had grown into such a bitter man.

"What do you speak of, Adele?" When he shone the light in her face, the girl bent her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Then he held the lantern to May's skirt, filthy with dirt and clay. To him it must look as though she had been rolling in the muck with a lover. His lantern picked out the knife lying on the ground and the carving on the lintel. "This is witchcraft." His voice was stark with accusation. "You both have been working witchcraft."

May thought fast. If Nathan found out, he would whip the girl.

"What nonsense, Gabriel!" Still faint, she needed his arm to make it back to the house, but she was afraid to touch him. She closed her eyes as he held the lantern in her face.

"Were you weeping, May?" he asked, a bit surprised, but without pity.

Adele took May's arm. "She misses her sister. She misses her home."

Ignoring her, Gabriel took hold of May's other arm. "Have you lost your tongue? Why do you not speak for yourself? Why are you out so late, if not to work mischief?"

"Madame came to me for medicine," Adele said. "A spider did bite her." She spoke so earnestly, striving to make Gabriel believe her, that May burst into tears again.

"Is that so?" Gabriel asked. "Show me where the spider bit you, May."

She could only hang her head and cry.

"It must be a painful bite."

"Let me be." She shrieked the words in his face. Abruptly the laughter from the men's shack died. They were listening to her bawl at her husband like a madwoman. "In my condition, I may weep if it pleases me. I know not if I will even have a midwife when my time comes."

Her outburst left her so weak that she would have collapsed had Adele and Gabriel not been holding her arms.

"I will sleep in the house from this night on," said Adele, "in case her time does come early."

Gabriel was about to say something when his father appeared. "By whose leave?" The light of his lantern illuminated his stern, tired face. "What makes you think you can simply decree—"

"By my leave, sir," said May. "When my time comes, I will need her there."

"Your time," said Nathan, "won't come until October."

"Mayhap I counted wrong, sir. Would you look at me, Mr. Washbrook? Can you not see how big I am?" Having never wept in his presence before, she had his full attention. "This night I felt pains in my belly, which is why I sought out Adele, sir." If Nathan believed her story, then it didn't matter what Gabriel believed. "You want your heir, do you not? You want me and the baby to live."

"May, you do pity yourself," said Gabriel.

"Please, Nathan." May dared to address him by his Christian name. She looked into his eyes.

"Very well," he said at last. "But anon I will have everyone abed so I might bolt the door. This ruckus has carried on far too late."

Before Nathan could turn to leave, Gabriel spoke up. "Father, there is something you must know."

When May saw the intent on his face, she thought she would fall to her knees. What she dreaded most would come crashing down. Adele pressed her face against her shoulder. Gabriel only had to shine his light on the carving and tell Nathan that Adele had threatened to curse him.

"Well?" his father asked. "What is it?"

Gabriel clenched his jaw. Releasing May's arm, he held up the lantern, then lowered it again. The light bounced off May's skirt, his father's boots.

"Out with it, boy!"

Gabriel shook his head. "It is nothing, Father. Nothing." Turning his back on them all, he headed for the house.

T
HE TIME HAD COME
to put May's demise behind her. Living in peace with Gabriel was more important than mourning the past. Indeed she had little leisure for fretting. Daniel claimed all her attention, all her time. His crying shattered her sleep. She dragged herself from bed at dawn, which came earlier as winter lost its grip. She nursed the baby and boiled corn mush for breakfast. When Gabriel left to do his chores, she did hers, the same as before, except it took her at least twice as long, for Daniel had colic and she kept interrupting her sweeping and cooking to tend to his cramps. She lay chamomile compresses on his belly and gave him peppermint gripe water.