Speak Through the Wind

by Allison Pittman

  “Just put the sword down,” she said, unwilling to tell him what she thought.

  Ben walked back to the fireplace and rose up on his toes to return the sword to its resting place, not bothering to adjust it to its original angle.

  “You should leave him, Kassie,” he said, leaning against the marble wall, crossing his arms across his chest. “For his own sake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you think he’d like to get married someday?”

  She glanced to the side, to the sofa where her history book lay forgotten on the floor, and envisioned the parade of Friday afternoon visitors—all those hopeful women vying to be mistress of this house. Most were rather sour-looking or timid, but there had been a few, young and pretty, just the type to be a faithful minister’s wife, with sweet dispositions and an aura of kindness that would match Reverend Joseph’s own heart. Sometimes, when these would leave after finishing their tea and cake, it seemed Reverend Joseph lingered a little longer at the closed door, sighed just a bit as he turned to carry the tray back to the kitchen.

  “No woman is going to join herself to this household as long as you’re in it,” Ben said, invading her reverie. “You’re a beautiful young thing. What woman would want to share her husband with the likes of that?”

  “I am his family,” Kassandra replied, a territorial edge to her voice.

  “No, darlin’, you’re not.” He crossed the room and stood close to her again. “No potential wife is going to see it that way. You’re a woman, sharin’ his home. You’re not a daughter, you’re not a servant. You’re not a spinster sister or some distant cousin. You’re a seedlin’ he plucked off the street that grew into something beautiful.” He brought his hand up and stroked her face. “Does he ever tell you you’re beautiful?”

  “It wouldn’t be proper,” she said, trying to turn from his touch, but his other hand was there to capture her, and she remained, locked into his gaze.

  “You deserve to be with someone who thinks you’re beautiful,” he said, “who’ll tell you every day that you are. Ah, Kassie,” he whispered and brought his lips to hers, kissing her with exquisite softness.

  She kept her eyes open and stood, rigid in her boots, unwilling to bend. But her staunch resolve only intensified her longing as Ben’s lips scattered kisses across her face, fluttered against her eyes, trailed sweet promises just outside her ear and then back to her lips, questioning, wondering if they had paid their due, made their case.

  Kassandra welcomed Ben’s mouth to her own, wondering why she would rob herself of this feeling. The memory of their first kiss had been the only thing powerful enough to keep her mourning of Clara at bay, and now here that feeling was again, boldly expressed in the middle of the parlor, in the middle of the afternoon. The scandal of it made it that much more enticing, made her less resistant to Ben’s advances as his hands worked their way across her back, to her waist, laying claim to her body. There were promises in his hands and in his lips, promises more enticing than all the gold in California.

  “Come with me, Kassie. Will you?”

  She knew right then that he would never ask her again.

  “Yes.”

  The next moment was lost in an elated, victorious “Whoop” as Ben lifted Kassandra clean off the carpet, twirling her around the room. She clutched her arms tight around his shoulder, pulling in her feet lest they knock some priceless artifact off the end tables, and watched the room spin around her. Her mind was floating every bit as much as her body, full of the thoughts of endless days just like this afternoon, locked in passion, safe in the arms of this boy—this man, really—who wanted her beyond all reason.

  Too soon, and breathless, Ben set her down again, both of them dizzy from their whirlwind. They laughed and kissed and laughed again. Once he had regained his breath, Ben took Kassandra’s hands in his and looked into her eyes until her breath was as steady and sober as his own.

  “Go upstairs now and get your things,” he said. “I’ll be waitin’ for you at the back door.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Kassandra said. “I have to talk to Reverend Joseph. I have to tell him I am leaving.”

  “He’ll never let you go, Kassie. No more than he’d let me walk out the door with a handful of his silver.”

  Kassandra felt the room spinning again, even though she was locked stock-still in Ben’s grip. “It seems wrong. So sudden.”

  “That’s when we get the best out of life, darlin’,” he said, smiling the smile of that first afternoon. “When we take a chance.”

  Kassandra closed her eyes. Hadn’t Reverend Joseph said that very thing just a few days ago? She felt a brief, gentle kiss on her forehead, and opened her eyes.

  “Like I said, I’ll be waitin’ at the back door. For just about ten minutes.” He pulled a gold watch from his pocket—a very nice piece for a butcher’s delivery boy. “After ten minutes, love, I’ll be leavin’.” Another brief kiss on her cheek. “And you’ll never see me again.”

  Precious minutes ticked by as Kassandra stood alone, frozen to the parlor’s Persian carpet, her own eyes drinking in every bit of this home, seeing it for the first and last time simultaneously. She would come back soon, maybe as a Friday afternoon visitor, and explain everything.

  She crept up to her room, moving in unnecessary silence as she opened her drawers, taking out her clean undergarments and stockings, laying them on top of the skirts and shirtwaists that covered the bed. In the center of the pile, she placed Clara’s Bible and her bone-handled hairbrush. Her hair was plaited into one single braid that hung down her back; she coiled it into a knot and secured it with the pretty tiara comb. Finally, she took the tiny porcelain bird and wrapped it inside her winter nightgown, hoping the soft flannel would keep it safe on whatever journey lay ahead.

  “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?” she said to the darkening room. “Please, God, if I am falling, promise to catch me.”

  assandra hadn’t known what to expect as she followed Ben, trotting to meet his stride, through the backstreets and alleys of Reverend Joseph’s neighborhood.

  “We don’t want anybody to think I’ve just come in and nabbed you,” he’d said, hoisting her little bundle, of belongings over his shoulder and grasping her arm to keep her close to his side. “We’d best make our way outside the pryin’ eyes of the windows.”

  It seemed they walked forever, but Ben kept her amused and entertained with every step. He knew the family and story behind most of the houses they passed. There was a state senator with a mistress on the side. Ten blocks later—in a much seedier neighborhood—was the house of the actual mistress. There were mansions built from secret profits of the slave trade and humble cottages built with the sweat and dreams of the hopeful.

  “Think about it, Kassie,” he said pausing momentarily at a gated yard. “There’s a story behind every door.”

  “How do you know them all?”

  “I talk to the people. No man’s too rich to tip my cap to.” To prove this, he offered a friendly greeting to the obvious owner of the home. “An’ if I don’t talk to the owners, I talk to the servants. When nobody talks to me, I listen. You see, when you’re poor, you become invisible. Them rich folks, they don’t see me as bein’ much more than a lump of dirt doin’ their biddin’. We blend into the bricks.”

  “That is not true,” Kassandra said, trying to keep his face in focus as she bounced beside him. “You completely captured my attention.”

  “How many times you reckon you walked right past me in the street? With your little hair ribbons and your snooty friends, gigglin’ and carryin’ on?”

  “You—you saw me?”

  “Stay there.” He let go of her arm and walked ahead of her about twelve paces, then turned back. “Can you see me?”

  “Of course I can, silly.”

  “I’m not too far away? Not hidin’ behind a bush? It’s not too dark?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I w
as workin’ day labor, buildin’ the livery at the corner—”

  “I remember.”

  “You remember the construction, maybe. But you don’t remember me. You passed by every mornin’ and afternoon on your way to school. You and that other girl—”

  “Sarah James,” she whispered.

  “I remember you recitin’ some poem about the saints gathered round Christ in heaven—”

  “That was nearly two years ago!”

  “And I’d hear your voice from half a block off, stop workin’—got in trouble for it more than once, I’ll tell you—and watch you. Heard that poem so many times I learned some of it myself. There was one day you forgot a line, and I said it for you. You weren’t any farther away from me than you are right now.”

  Kassandra felt her very breath go ice-cold. “I—I did not hear you.”

  “Nor see me, either. Like I said, us poor, we blend in.”

  “I am sorry Ben.”

  “I’m not,” he said, planting a quick kiss on her temple without breaking stride. “It gave me time to learn all about you. Where you’re from. The poor little girl who got kicked by the horse and brought back to life in the reverend’s fine home.”

  Kassandra stopped. “You know all about that?”

  “Darlin’ Kassie,“ he said, shifting the weight of her bundle higher on his shoulder. “Do you see? You were nothin’ more than another cobblestone. C’mon, it’s gettin’ late.”

  They walked in silence through the duration of Park Avenue prosperity and shared a snack of roasted peanuts and lemonade bought from a street vendor at the edge of Union Square. There wasn’t much opportunity for talk, either, as they battled their way south on Broadway where the tangled mass of carriages, carts, and horses made any form of conversation a dangerous distraction.’

  When they did talk, however, Kassandra continued to marvel at Ben’s ease with the city. Just as he knew the stories behind the mansion doors, he could narrate the story behind the massive structures that lined the wide, paved streets of the city. He knew the name of the architect, the foreman of the construction crew, the legitimacy of the construction cost. He narrated—with exquisite detail and drama—the fiery circumstances behind piles of burned rubble. Block after block he brought life to every brick and stone, pointing out the passersby who lived in them, worked in them, built them. The tone of the stories shifted with each intersection. Eleventh Street, Tenth, Ninth—as the numbers descended, so did the evidence of economic prosperity. Fourth, Second, Third—and the numbers ran out.

  “I have to stop,” Kassandra said.

  Some time before they hit the intersection of Broadway and Second Street, the city had gone full dark. Lamplighters were igniting the street torches, but Kassandra and Ben were the only motionless forms in a bustling block of shadows. Skirts swished by, heedless of the girl collapsed—exhausted—on the walkway, her aching feet spread straight out into the street, heedless of the carriage wheels passing precariously close to her pointed toes. She leaned her shoulder against the lamppost and sighed.

  Ben dropped her bundle on the sidewalk and sat next to it. “It’s not much farther now, Kassie. We’re more than halfway home.”

  Home.

  “You did not tell me how far away you lived. You worked for Sampson’s Butcher. I thought you lived … closer.”

  “What? On Fifth Avenue? You think I went back to my castle every day after droppin’ off two pounds of bratwurst and a beef tongue?”

  Before she could respond, Kassandra was jostled into Ben’s lap as a man wedged himself between her and the lamppost, clumping his heavy boot in the lowest protruding rung and climbing to the top.

  “Hey, watch out for the lady!” Ben reached across the bundle to put a protective arm around Kassandra.

  “Shaddup,” replied the lamplighter, without much energy or anger at all. In just a second he was gone, and Kassandra and Ben were bathed in the eerie glow of the gaslight.

  “You walked this far?” Kassandra asked. “Every day?”

  “Not every day, love. Just on Fridays. Just to see you.”

  “I just do not know if I can go back there.” She gazed past Ben, down the dark narrowing street.

  “Back to the Points?” he asked. “Or back to bein’ poor? ‘Cause there’s no shame in poverty, my love.”

  “I know that—”

  “And for all that fine house, the kind reverend never took you out of it. He may have brought you out of the Points, but he never made you rich. That’s nothin’ one man can do for another. Now,” he stood towering over her, blocking the steady glow of the streetlight and casting her in shadow, “you can come an’ be poor with me, or stay here on this street and go it alone. But I’ve got a home waitin’ for me—for us—an’ it’s not as fancy as what you’ve known, but it’s not as dire as what you’re thinkin’.”

  He held out his hand, and even as she allowed him to pull her up from the street, she wasn’t entirely sure of the choice she would make. But as Ben once again shouldered the bundle containing all her earthly possessions, there seemed to be little option but to take the first, then second step behind him, joining the flow of humanity as they headed further south to Canal Street.

  She was back in Five Points, but at least she wasn’t alone.

  Ben and Kassandra picked their way carefully, stepping over bundles of drunken rags and dodging both flying fists and staggering revelers. Kassandra’s relief at arriving at the place Ben called “home” was tempered when she looked up and saw the swinging placard above the door. Mott Street Tavern. Inside, the cavernous room was dimly lit by a series of lamps lining three of the four walls. The entire length of one side was taken up by a wooden bar with shelves behind it holding a variety of glass bottles and large wooden barrels stationed at each end. In between the bodies of milling men and women she saw glimpses of tables and chairs, but they were mostly abandoned as the crowd engaged in a frantic display of dance, desperately trying to match the tempo of the musicians on a platform in the far corner. There was no grace or fluidity to their movements—how could there be when notes of the straining fiddle and the rhythmless jangle of the tambourine could barely be heard above the raucous laughter and shouted conversation of what had to be nearly two hundred human souls?

  Ben gripped her hand tighter and led her through the crowd, which parted for him much as she imagined the Red Sea did as Moses led his people out of their bondage. Men on either side clapped Ben’s shoulder, shouting, “And who’ve we bagged tonight, eh, Bennie?” Women in brightly colored skirts and scandalously low-cut blouses stepped out of the sea entirely, standing square in front of him, leaning in to whisper. Kassandra couldn’t hear what they said, but whatever it was, it brought Ben to smile like Kassandra had never seen before.

  As they made their way to the back of the room, the notes of the musicians became clearer, the tune distinct, and Kassandra recognized it as one Ben often whistled to himself on the path between Reverend Joseph’s back door and the gate. When he came to a door at the far end, he turned and motioned to her to stay put while he opened the door just a crack and peered in. Seeming satisfied, he opened it wide and ushered her through into utter darkness.

  “The stairs are right here,” he said, still needing to raise his voice above the barely muffled din behind them. “Stay close.”

  He needn’t have warned her. Kassandra wished there were some way to meld her feet to his, lest she be left alone in this blackness. With one hand she grabbed a handful of his shirt and braced the other against the wall as they made their way up a narrow passage. When they got to the landing on the second floor, she was relieved to see a dimly lit hallway.

  “You stay off this floor,” Ben said, not pausing in his stride. “This is where some of the girls from downstairs bring their men.”

  “Their men? Oh …” The warning was clear when she saw three women clad only in chemises and pantalets lounging in open doorways.

  The hallway on the third floor was com
pletely dark, and the noise downstairs had diminished to a low, consistent rumble. Kassandra stepped onto the landing, never letting go of her grip on Ben’s shirt, and allowed him to lead her down, down, down the narrow hallway. She followed so closely that when he did stop, she nearly knocked him over.

  “Sorry” she said.

  “Wait here.” He reached behind him to pry his shirt out of her grip.

  Kassandra heard the sound of a doorknob, then found herself alone in utter darkness for just a moment, until the sound of a striking match brought welcome illumination.

  “Now then,” Ben said, returning to her at the door’s threshold, “seems only fittin’ that I carry you across.”

  The entire room could fit within Reverend Joseph’s parlor. Ben nearly ran the few steps it took to cross the room to the opposite wall. “We got two windows. Two! We’ll get sunlight durin’ the day, and a nice little breeze at night.” As if in response, the thin fabric hanging on either side of the pane gave a faint ripple.

  A shelf ran the length of the shortest wall, holding Ben’s meager supply of cookware and dishes, and in the corner opposite the door was a small cookstove. In the middle of the room sat a small table covered by a faded floral cloth and two chairs. In the middle of the table, a single kerosene lamp now burned, bathing the entire room in warm light.

  Then, in the farthest corner, the bed. It had an ornate iron headboard and a colorful quilt. According to Ben’s current chatter, his mother had brought it over from Ireland. Next to the bed stood a dresser—four drawers and a washbasin on top—but Kassandra’s eyes fell back on the bed.

  “Where am I to sleep?”

  “Ah, now, Kassie dear, surely you know the answer to that.”

  She did, of course, although all the fantasies stemming from Bens kisses fell short of the piece of furniture glaring at her from the corner of the darkened room.

  “Right now? Tonight?”

  “Ach,” he said, uttering a noise that captured a mixture of amusement and frustration, “you’re spent now. C’mon. Sit.”