The Spoils of Sin

by Rebecca Tope

  She sat there, letting her mind wander wherever it wished. It diverted her from the horrible sounds and implications that were taking place on the staircase. Carola, who had been warm and real less than twenty-four hours before, was disappearing forever. It would happen, whatever Fanny thought or felt about it. She chose to permit it, without resistance. It was nothing to worry about, unlike all other matters. Worry was dominant just then. Sadness could wait.

  The men offered information and advice about the need to register the details of the death. Miriam nodded briskly, making it clear that she already knew the procedure. The coffin was loaded onto a cart outside and driven away. There would be a burial later that day. The room should be thoroughly cleaned and all the soiled bedding burned.

  ‘But she died of no disease,’ Fanny blurted.

  ‘Regulations,’ said one of the men. ‘Best be on the safe side.’

  Miriam put a hand on her arm. ‘Before you came here, there was cholera,’ she said. ‘Many people died. Since then, there has been a requirement to ensure no risk of infection. I myself was instrumental in pressing for it. It has had unforeseen benefits. There is a cleansing that runs deeper than the eradication of sickness. Without it, people might cling to soiled garments and bedclothes for reasons of sentiment. Or they simply fail to deal with them in any way, leaving them to fester and stink. Burning is best, believe me.’

  Fanny did not much care. Carola was gone. The words repeated regularly in her head, the fact lodging more securely with every repetition.

  Miriam evidently felt the same. ‘Now, then – the child,’ she said, pushing back her sleeves. ‘I shall go now and find a goat. I think it best if you have one of your own here. Then you can be sure of a good supply, without the need to go seeking it every day. While I am gone, you’re to shift the crib into your own room and make it warm and soft for the little one. Set her down in it while you give yourself a thorough washing. I shall be back before you know it.’

  And she was gone. Stumblingly, resentfully, Fanny did as she had been ordered. The child fell asleep in the cosy crib and the washing Fanny gave herself was another instance of the cleansing that Miriam had spoken of. She sponged warm suds all over herself, standing naked in her room. With every squeeze of the sponge in the bowl, she felt another shred of horror and confusion fall away. When she had finished, many worries remained, but her own sense of taint had faded. She had done nothing to earn reproach. She was a good clean girl, who had come through something terrible and was still standing.

  She brushed her hair. She found fresh garments and pulled them on. She straightened her bed, and pushed the one that had been Carola’s into a corner, leaving a better space for the crib. Minute flickerings of possibility began to dawn.

  The goat was a brown and white individual, with the knowing gaze of her species. Her udder was tight. Without ceremony, Miriam led her to the backyard, watched in amazement by Hugo, and deftly acquired a bowlful of frothing milk. ‘You owe me three dollars,’ she told Fanny.

  The baby’s bottles were filled, enough to last the day and night to come. ‘Warm them on the stove in a pan of water,’ Miriam instructed.

  The child was finally cleaned and clothed, the diapers bulky around its lower body. The black hair was gently washed. ‘She must have a name,’ said Miriam.

  Fanny had yet again slumped wearily into the chair. The day was crawling by, and she craved sleep. But there were many hours and events yet to come. The burial; the burning of Carola’s bedclothes; the transactions with the church minister who would conduct the burial, and also expect to baptise the baby. This last was now uppermost in Miriam’s mind. ‘I will take you to speak to him,’ she offered. ‘I hope to smooth any awkwardness.’

  For the past hour or more, Fanny had forgotten her place in Chemeketa society. She was a whore, she now recollected. She and Carola had not attended church, laughing at the scene that would ensue if they tried. Now she was in need of its ministrations, testing the tolerance of the minister to a high degree. ‘Thank you,’ she said simply.

  ‘The name?’ Miriam prompted.

  ‘Susanna.’ It came as if from on high, announced by a voice unheard. She said it again. ‘She is to be named Susanna.’

  Miriam pursed her lips. ‘A story only acknowledged by Romans,’ she objected. ‘You know it?’

  Fanny nodded. ‘I am a Roman myself,’ she said. ‘My father took particular pleasure in the story. He would warn us against men such as the elders, who were not as they seemed.’

  Miriam flushed. ‘Not a tale to be told to young girls, to my way of thinking.’

  Fanny smiled and looked at the child’s face. ‘It is a name that should remind us all that justice will be done, even in an unequal struggle. The story did much to form my character, I believe.’

  The older woman said nothing, plainly biting back a remark as to the quality of Fanny’s character. Another thought came to her lips. ‘You are a Roman Catholic? And your friend? There could be a difficulty with the church, if she was also of that faith.’

  ‘She was. It will not disqualify her for burial, I hope?’

  Miriam grimaced. ‘By rights, we should seek out a priest of your own persuasion. It surprises me that you should not already have done so. Do you have no fellow Romans of your acquaintance here? The rituals are so wxrewmwly different from any that a Methodist or even Episcopalian might offer you.’

  ‘It does not matter,’ said Fanny dully.

  The woman gave her a probing look. ‘You are not yourself, if you can say that. Faith is not so easily relinquished. The fate of your friend’s immortal soul is at stake. It matters more than mere mortals can comprehend.’

  She meant well, Fanny supposed. The creed in which she and Carola had both been raised was crystal clear on the subject of the soul’s progression after death. But Carola had made no last confession. She had not been shriven. The prayers and pomp surrounding the disposal of her body might well come too late. ‘I know of no priest,’ she said.

  ‘I will speak to the minister at the Mission,’ said Miriam Myles. ‘Under these very unusual circumstances, I dare say he will have something to offer you.’

  The circumstances were not, of course, so very unusual. Women regularly died in childbed. But very few of them, in Chemeketa anyway, were whores.

  Miriam seemed almost light-hearted throughout this exchange, which seemed extraordinary to Fanny. But it served to raise her own spirits, if slightly. Every impediment and anxiety was confronted and removed by this woman’s capable actions. Her certainty as to the right behaviour was both reassuring and irritating. She brooked no arguments and thereby caused Fanny to forget some of her own instinctive resistance. The baby meekly took half a bottle of goat’s milk, before settling quietly in the crib. A copper kettle was set to boil for the first of what Miriam warned would be an everlasting mountain of washing. The small garments that Carola had stitched were collected and put to air in front of the stove.

  The burial was somehow arranged between Miriam and her minister, and its appointed time was quickly upon them, before Fanny felt ready for it. The haste felt unseemly, bundling the corpse away before it could cause more embarrassment. Few, if any, mourners would turn out. Despite the robust town gossip, there would be only a minority of people who knew what had taken place. Carrying the sleeping child, she followed Miriam to the churchyard, and watched in numb silence as the disposal took place. The minister said prayers that felt brief and insincere. A man with a spade began to fill the hole with soil. It was as if the same hole had been bored through Fanny’s heart and was now filling with the ordinary demands of the day, blotting Carola out of existence for ever.

  She recalled another burial, three years earlier. Mr Fields’ wife had died in the final days of the migration, and been buried in Oregon City, when they arrived. Nobody had been especially sorry to lose her. Her sister Charity had married the widower almost immediately afterwards. The ground had closed over that woman’s head as if she h
ad never been.

  Miriam left her alone, then. Alone with her devoted dog and unfathomable little ward. Somewhere during the day, without her conscious agreement, it had become the case that she was indeed foster mother to little Susanna. The careless selection of a name had cemented a relationship she had not sought and could barely understand. Miriam would visit daily, with help and advice and encouragement. But Fanny was now responsible.

  At two o’clock in the morning, a single day after Carola had expired, the baby woke with a scream. Confusedly, Fanny lit the lamp, then blundered to the crib and lifted her out. Hunger, she supposed, and went down for a bottle, already prepared and waiting, though not warmed.

  The child sucked without enthusiasm, turning its face away after barely a quarter was consumed. Sleepily, Fanny slid down in the bed, the child tucked against her. But then she found herself crisply awake. In the light from the lamp, she stared at the little face, examining it properly for the first time. Only one day old, and already such a large element in Fanny’s life. This was the child of her brother, its veins flowing with some of the same blood as her own. She searched for any sign of likeness, imagining Reuben’s features for comparison.

  There was none. The black hair was utterly unlike his. The eyes, dark and close together, were as different from his wide blue orbs as could be. They were also in no way like Carola’s. The chin was strong, the ears close against the head. Susanna was more like a Mexican, or even an Indian than either of her parents. Fanny frowned in puzzlement. Could it be that all infants looked like this? She thought back to when her sister Naomi had been tiny. While uninterested, at the age of seven, in the details of child rearing, Fanny had a clear image of how Nam had resembled their father. Her hairline was his, and her ears had the same comical fold at the top.

  And had the doctor not said that Susanna was a large child, well formed and strong? Was this likely for a baby born three or four weeks before its time? She had assumed that Carola was more ignorant of the time a baby took to grow than she would admit. But could it be, could it be, that this was not Reuben’s child at all? Had Carola’s sponge slipped aside one night, shortly before their journey to the homestead? The story of her awkward and incomplete coupling with Reuben had not seemed one that would be likely to result in pregnancy. Had there been a man with black hair and square jaw, amongst Carola’s customers, back at the end of January?

  A faint memory of just such a man floated into her mind. He had been big and loud and cheerful, a Canadian of French origins, with a great black beard. Impossible, then, to assess the shape of his jaw. But his eyes had been close-set. And when the girls had been alone again, Carola had confided that he was of immense proportions down below. From her own experience, Fanny knew that this might easily have dislodged the protective sponge.

  She did not know whether to laugh or despair. The certainty grew that the Canadian was indeed the sire of this child, this girl who would perhaps grow to be tall and strong and good-humoured, like he was. It seemed a fair destiny, perhaps preferable to that provided by the gentle Reuben, for whom so much had gone wrong.

  ‘Oh, Susanna,’ she sighed. ‘I guess we can only wait and see.’

  END