Olivia, Mourning (37 page)

Olivia stood on Merchant’s Wharf, clutching a first-class ticket and watching a stevedore with a large trunk and both of her wicker baskets stacked on his back make his way over the gang plank onto the
S.S. Walk-in-the-Water
. Her stomach felt as if she had swallowed an angry porcupine. “Later” was here and now she had only the two or three days the trip would take to decide what she was going to tell her family. She closed her eyes. Everything will be all right. Mourning will be back in Five Rocks. He said there are things a girl in trouble can do. He’ll find out what. He’ll tell me where I have to go.

The sun was setting when she straggled aboard to begin her journey home. She had booked the cheapest private cabin they had to offer and a broad-backed porter in a black uniform led her down a steep flight – more like a ladder than stairs – and turned the key in the lock for her. The only furnishings were a straight-back chair and a narrow wooden bed that looked like a long crate with a mattress on top. A raggedy curtain was tacked to its side, and the porter lifted it, revealing that the bed was actually a wooden shelf with her baskets stowed beneath it. The sheet that covered the straw mattress was coarse, but looked clean. In place of a pillow, a folded woolen blanket lay at the head. There was a small shelf on the wall and a kerosene lantern hung next to it.

The bareness of the cabin suited her. She required nothing more than four walls and a deadbolt to shut out the world. Feeling as if she could sleep all the way to Erie, she lay down and stretched out. It didn’t take long, however, for the walls to seem to close in on her rather than offer protection. When she heard the engine snort and growl to life she rose and climbed up to the deck. Passengers crowded the rail and Olivia squeezed in among them.

She soon regretted having left her cave. Everyone around her was talking and laughing, making her feel even more alone. She clutched the rail and held back tears, reminding herself how much she had to be grateful for – food in her stomach, money in her pocket, and a home to go back to. For the time being anyway. Until they realized she had a baby in her belly. Would they toss her out into the snow? She had heard of such things. Perhaps she could make up a lie. Say she had gotten married in Michigan and her husband had died of the fever, just like Aunt Lydia Ann. But what if they believed her and then the baby turned out to be colored? She tried to imagine the look on Mabel’s face and might have laughed, if the prospect hadn’t been so devastating. She descended the stairs to her cabin and once again counted the days. She should get her monthly visitor today or tomorrow, but felt none of the familiar cramping.

She lay down, remembering her father lecturing them about how to make a decision. “Make a list of your choices and the best and worst possible outcome of each.” Her first decision had to be made soon, if she didn’t get her monthly visitor by the time they reached Erie. What were the possibilities? Don’t go home – go straight to a home for wayward girls. Go home, don’t tell them anything, and find out how to get rid of the baby. Go home and tell them about her poor dead husband. Go home, break down in tears, and tell them she had been raped. Or that some young man had promised to marry her and then disappeared.

She tried to consider the outcome of each, if the baby was white and if the baby was black. Most of her options were nothing but disastrous if the baby turned out to be colored. Why had she lied about a husband or beau, or not mentioned that her rapist was black? What black man was she trying to protect? And if she said she had been raped by a black man, a stranger to her, and then the baby was white? It was all too complicated. The first choice – go straight to a home for wayward girls – was the one that made most sense, but the one she could least bear the thought of. She was tired of being alone. The steady drone and thump of the engine, together with the rocking of the boat, eventually lulled her to sleep, though she stirred often during the night.

The next morning she woke to the sound of a downpour and stayed in bed, nibbling at the loaf of bread she had brought. When the rain subsided into a light patter, she rushed up to use the latrine and then bought a cup of the gritty coffee. The sun came out later in the morning and she strolled through the puddles on deck, but did not converse with any of the other passengers.

The dining room offered tasteless fare – a bowl of greasy soup, a slab of fatty meat, fried potatoes, dried out chocolate cake, and more of the bitter coffee. The passengers shared long mess tables and Olivia chose a place next to a family with small children, knowing they would be too busy to make more than a brief attempt at polite conversation with her. Olivia smiled and nodded and rose as soon as she’d finished.

She made her way to the back of the boat, to the deck over the engine, and stood watching the coloreds huddled there. They sat on their baggage and spoke in soft tones. One of the mothers noticed Olivia staring at them and pulled her little girl closer. Others also began casting suspicious glances her way, lowering their eyes to avoid Olivia’s timid smile. She sighed, shook her head, and turned away.

Back in the white section she stood at the rail and thought what it must have been like for Mourning, growing up the only black-skinned person in town. She bent to rest her forehead on her knuckles and allowed thoughts of him to fill her mind – working under the hot sun with his shirt off, sweat trickling down his shiny back; balanced on a roof beam, calling down to her to toss him a sack of nails; humming while he lit the fire, his voice as smooth as coffee with cream. For a brief moment she even allowed herself to remember his hands on her body, but the magic of that memory had been almost entirely eradicated, buried beneath the sludge of a different type of physical contact.

When the boat docked in Erie she marched to the stagecoach office.

“Just in time,” the man behind the caged window said. “Got one leaving in about twenty minutes. It’ll be going through Five Rocks before dark.”

“Is that the only one?”

“Only passenger coach with regular stops.”

“What else is there?”

“All else we got is a delivery wagon going to Reuben’s Bend, passes through Five Rocks. But it ain’t leaving for three-four hours. Won’t get you there till after ten at night. ’Sides, it ain’t no passenger coach. Sometimes a body might sit in the back, with all the sacks of feed and whatnot, but it ain’t no place for a lady.”

“Has anyone else asked to ride in it today?”

“No, but –”

“Then I’d like a ticket for that, please.”

“I told you, miss, it ain’t a regular coach. That ride will shake you so you don’t remember which way’s up. And everything’ll be closed that time of night. He’d have to let you off in the street, all alone.”

“No one meets it in Five Rocks?”

“No, like I told you, it normally don’t stop at all, just passes through.”

“Is there room for me and my things?”

“Well, yes, but –”

“Then it will be perfectly all right. As long as the driver will help me on and off with my things, I’ll be fine.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “All right, you say so, lady. You be back here, right out there on that sidewalk,” he said, jabbing his finger at the door, “at a quarter to six. You might gotta wait an hour. Like I been tryin’ to tell you, it ain’t a coach with a regular schedule. Leaves when it’s ready. Gets here when it gets here.” He paused, apparently waiting for her to change her mind. Then he sighed and scribbled something on a piece of paper. “I ain’t gonna charge ya nothin’. You give this to the driver.” He handed her the paper. “Name’s Sully. He’s a great big fella with a wild bush of rusty hair. Wears one a them buckskin jackets with long fringes. Slow as they come, but ain’t no one got a better nature. You don’t gotta worry nothin’ about him. He’ll see you standin’ there and stop. You tell him Jonas said it was all right.”

Olivia told Jonas she would arrange to have her belongings delivered to the stagecoach office and he promised to move them out to the sidewalk before he closed for the day at half past five. She returned to the boat and looked through her wicker baskets for the hateful poke bonnet she’d bought in Detroit and her black hooded cloak. She didn’t want anyone in Five Rocks recognizing her before she’d had time to talk with her family.

The ride wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. It was too bumpy to try to nap, so she’d spent it sitting up front next to Sully, mostly trying to teach him his multiplication tables. When they approached Five Rocks, Olivia reached for the hood of her cloak and pulled it over her poke bonnet, casting her face so deep in shadows she wouldn’t have been able to recognize herself.

Sully reined in the horses outside Ferguson’s Livery, across from the Episcopalian church. The moon was bright enough for her to read the big sign that declared, “Fear not if you have sinned and repented – A step backward often precedes a great leap forward.”
Tell that to Mabel Mears
, she thought.

The street was empty. She climbed down and whispered to Sully, “Could you please shove my baskets into those bushes over there behind that sign, but be real quiet about it? No one knows I’m coming. It’s a big surprise for my family.” His face lit up and he gladly obliged. She had a time convincing him that she would be perfectly safe walking home alone, but he finally drove off. Olivia turned onto Main Street, but in the opposite direction of her brother’s home.

Three long days on that boat and she still had no idea what she was going to do. She felt sick to her stomach, dreading facing her family. She would have to knock on the front door like a stranger. Tobey might not even live there any more. Mabel and Avis were most likely married by now. Good luck waking Avis. Mabel would be the one getting out of bed and tromping down the stairs, not knowing whether to be annoyed or alarmed. Now Olivia understood the real charm of a big city. They had hotels.

She found herself walking toward The Circle, where the road curved around on itself, forming the
cul de sac
on which Jettie Place’s house and bakery shop stood. She told herself she just needed a short walk to clear her head, but knew that wasn’t true. It wasn’t by chance that she’d chosen this path for her walk, past the home of her father’s mistress, the one person in Five Rocks who might not judge her.

A light was burning in one of the downstairs windows. Olivia thought Mrs. Place’s home should have been sad and lonely-looking, the only house down there, all by itself. Its light gray paint was peeling off and dead leaves blew across its saggy front porch, but that glowing window somehow managed to look cheerful and inviting. Olivia had been standing in the road for a long while, trying to imagine herself climbing up those steps and knocking on the front door, when Mrs. Place opened it and called out.

“Angel! Angel! Come here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” Mrs. Place paced the length of the porch, clutching her flannel robe. Then she looked up and noticed the hooded figure.

“Oh hullo there. You ain’t seen a little white kitten?”

“No, ma’am, I haven’t.” Olivia raised a hand to swipe the hood from her head and then untied and removed the poke bonnet.

“Olivia Killion?” Mrs. Place squinted at her. “Is that you?” She descended the first step and Olivia saw that her feet were in slippers made of rags, similar to the ones Mrs. Hardaway wore.

“Yes, ma’am.” Olivia took a few hesitant steps toward the infamous “fancy lady.”

“Why, indeed it is. I ain’t heard nothing about you being back in town. Wondered what become of you. All kinds of stories been going around. How long you been back?”

Olivia was grateful for the casual tone of the woman’s voice, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to find Seborn Killion’s daughter lurking outside her house.

“I just got here,” Olivia said. “A delivery wagon let me off by Ferguson’s Livery.”

Mrs. Place frowned through a long silence, one eyebrow raised. “I see. So you ain’t been to see your family yet?”

“No, ma’am. I felt like taking a little walk first.”

“I see.” Mrs. Place studied Olivia for another moment. “Well, you sure look to me like someone what could use a hot drink. And I’m getting right chilled out here. Can’t believe the nights are this cool in July. Strangest weather we been having. Can I invite you in?”

Olivia’s stuttered response was unintelligible.

Mrs. Place descended the last two steps and walked over to take Olivia by the arm. “Come along now. You don’t gotta worry. Ain’t nobody coulda recognized you with that blanket you had draped over your head. No one’s gonna know you been keeping company with ‘that woman.’”

She led Olivia toward the house. “Oh look, there’s my little Angel, right there under the steps.” She stooped to scoop up a fluffy white kitten. “Ain’t you the sweetest thing?” She held the kitten up and rubbed its nose to her own. “And so smart. You’re gonna be the best mouser I ever had.” She held the kitten to her chest with one hand, opened the front door with the other, and reverted to her adult speaking voice.

“Found this poor little thing out by the barn. Throw your wrap on that rack there. Make yourself to home here in the parlor while I put the kettle on. Get acquainted with Angel.” She handed the kitten to Olivia and disappeared through an arched doorway that led to the back of the house.

Olivia kept her cloak on and perched on the seat of one of the ladder-back chairs. She nervously petted Angel and wondered how she had dared come here. And why? What did she think she was going to say to this woman? Well, at least she could count on Mrs. Place’s discretion. If there was anyone in Five Rocks a person could trust to keep a secret, it was Mrs. Jettie Place. No one in town spoke to her, so who was she going to tell?