Speak Through the Wind

by Allison Pittman

  “I suppose it’s easy to forget that this day was also meant to be a day of worship,” she said.

  “I was not invited to church,” Kassandra said, regretting it immediately “And I’m … I’m just a little more tired these days.”

  Reverend Joseph broke the awkward silence that followed with a gushing compliment about the pie, for which Kassandra took credit for slicing the strawberries. When Reverend Joseph noted that one particular strawberry looked much like the hat Miss Austine wore to church that afternoon, Mrs. Hartmann launched into a report on every dress and bonnet in attendance at Tenth Avenue Methodist Church, and Kassandra found herself surprisingly entertained by the narrated parade.

  The three enjoyed companionable chitchat and silence as the kitchen grew darker with the coming evening. After a time, Mrs. Hartmann took a sip of her tea and set her cup down. “Kassandra,” she said, running her finger along the cup’s rim, “I think we should get you away from here.”

  Kassandra’s held her breath, as if it might be her last.

  “Now, don’t look so shocked, dear,” she continued, with the nerve to look amused. “I don’t mean to put you out on the street.”

  “Listen to her.” Reverend Joseph laid a reassuring hand on Kassandra’s. “We just want the best for you, my dear.”

  “My family has a house in Cape Cod,” Mrs. Hartmann said. “That’s in Massachusetts, dear.”

  “What could that possibly have to do with—”

  “It is a fact that women in your … condition benefit greatly from being by the sea. In truth, I should have taken you there right away, but there have been so many obligations here. But now I am offering to take you to my family home where you can have ready access to that fresh, salty air. You’ll be able to walk on the beach every day. It’s the best thing for you and the baby Very healthy. All the experts say so.”

  “Am I to live there?” Kassandra asked, turning back to Reverend Joseph and searching his clear blue eyes for a sign of disapproval, of being sent away.

  “Don’t be silly, Sparrow.” He looked at her intently, every feature set in a promise. “While you’re away, we’ll be making some changes here.”

  “What kind of changes?”

  “You know we have the little shed at the far end of the garden, but I’ve never taken to employing a full-time gardener. Right now it’s full of some tools and other odds and ends.”

  Kassandra remembered it well. She and Sarah James had often played in that cottage, pretending they were princesses locked away waiting to be found by a handsome, roving knight.

  “While you’re gone I’ll have it cleaned out and painted. We’ll put a little wood-burning stove, some furniture. It will be a lovely little home for you and the child.”

  Kassandra’s hope and heart swelled with each word. Her breath quickened until Reverend Joseph could barely finish his last word before she burst forth with a cry of utter joy. “I can stay then? With you?”

  “Of course, my dear, of course,” he said, squeezing her hand. “It’s just going to be time for my little Sparrow to have her own nest.”

  “And you are not worried about what people will think?”

  Mrs. Hartmann gave a little sniff. “The time has long passed for us to worry about that. You’re not exactly a secret, you know We think this is the best way to make sure you feel you are a part of our … family but still on your own.”

  “I … I don’t know what to say. I will do all that I can to help you here. I’ll work with Jenny—”

  “Now see here, Sparrow,” Reverend Joseph said, “you are not a maid. You are not a servant.”

  “But I am not your daughter, either.”

  “I failed you miserably enough once before. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

  “So why must I go to Cape Cod?”

  “It’s just as I told you, dear,” Mrs. Hartmann said. “Everybody says the sea air is best for a woman in your delicate condition. It opens the lungs. You’ll be far better off there than here, surrounded by all those hammers and nails and paint. Besides,” her voice quickened, “think of the surprise waiting for you when you return!”

  “And you think this is best?” Kassandra said.

  She turned all of her attention to Reverend Joseph, who remained silent as, just over her shoulder, his wife prattled on and on about the virtues of the sea, the spaciousness of the house, the health of the baby, the privacy for the mother, the stillness of the neighbors, the brightness of the future. Not once during the litany did Reverend Joseph’s gaze waver. He continued to hold her hand tightly, as if to transfer to her the strength to make this decision. Kassandra hated the idea of leaving him again—just as much as she hated the idea of spending months alone with Mrs. Hartmann. Even more, she feared what might happen if she refused to take them up on this generous offer. The more Mrs. Hartmann talked, the less likely it seemed that anyone had planned for an alternative.

  “When will we be leaving?” Kassandra said.

  “I have a hired coach scheduled to come for us Tuesday morning,” Mrs. Hartmann said.

  he sand was warm in the late afternoon, and Kassandra never tired of the glorious feeling of it between her bare toes. Her walk down the beach was a daily ritual, greatly encouraged by Mrs. Hartmann, who seemed to share with Kassandra a need for solitude. The only sound was the constant exhalation across the sea grass; when the wind was high, this breath drowned out even the lapping of the sea, and this day the wind was strong enough to keep the grass bowed down, creating soft, rolling green waves as far as Kassandra could see.

  All the promises of the improved well-being for both herself and the baby proved to be true, as Kassandra fell in love with the salt-ridden sea air the minute she stepped out of the hired coach in which she had spent too many uncomfortable, claustrophobic days.

  The home Mrs. Hartmann brought her to spoke of her family’s fortune, gained during her grandfather’s Chinese shipping trade with Perkins and Company. Now, with the family’s fortune dispersed into a local mill and three small freight ships operated by Mrs. Hartmann’s uncles, the family home—willed to her at her father’s death—sat vacant for most of the year.

  “I’ve tried to get Joseph to come here every summer,” she’d told Kassandra as the women alighted from the coach, “but he simply won’t tear himself away from the church for that long.”

  “Why would you ever leave this place?” Kassandra asked, enthralled by the expanse of grass and beach and sea.

  “The people here are essentially animals. No culture. No breeding. I wasn’t about to spend my life wondering if my husband is coming home at the end of the season.”

  “But why New York?”

  “It was my mother’s choice,” Mrs. Hartmann said in the clipped manner she had of closing conversation.

  The Weathersby home was deceptively worn on the outside with its battered clapboard exterior. A single, narrow door sat in the exact center of the front of the house, and four dormer windows jutted in perfect symmetry under the steep, black-shingled roof. There was no ornamentation on the house—no gables, no porch. Even the shutters had been taken down, Mrs. Hartmann observed, to be repaired during the summer season.

  It wasn’t until the women walked through the front door that Kassandra had any clue as to the wealth the house represented. Inside, floors she would later learn were solid oak shone to mirrored perfection. The walls were pristinely whitewashed and interrupted by aesthetically spaced oak paneling. The entry-way seemed to run half the length of the front of the house, with a stairway at the far end leading to the second floor.

  “We’ll go upstairs in a moment,” Mrs. Hartmann said, walking briskly through the door leading to the front parlor. At a loss, Kassandra remained in the entryway until her hostess’s voice beckoned.

  “We keep help year-round,” she said, her little footsteps echoing on the wood floors. “The Brown family has been here in service to our family for as long as our family has had the house. Why nob
ody was out to greet the coach I simply can’t understand. Mariah?”

  Mrs. Hartmann continued calling out the name of the elusive Mariah throughout the tour of the first floor. Just half a step behind her, Kassandra poked her head into a dining room fashioned after how she had always imagined a ship’s galley to look, with a mahogany table big enough to sit twelve people dominating the room. Hanging just over its center was a crystal chandelier, and at the far end, a sideboard boasted a set of gleaming silver serving dishes. They zipped past and through an elegant front parlor with an ornate fireplace inlaid with marble, and a back sitting room where a series of four French doors guaranteed light and air on even this warm summer day Still, no Mariah.

  The kitchen was small and designed for utility, for it had only a small table tucked into a back corner. A pot of something wonderfully fishy bubbled on the black iron stove, prompting Mrs. Hartmann to observe that Mariah mustn’t be too far off, unless she’d purposefully left the oyster stew to boil over and burn the house down. She even gave a couple of brisk raps to the door that led to Mariah’s room off the kitchen, calling through the wood, but no answer there, either. Up the back stairs the women went, to a rather narrow hallway dimly lit by the two windows at each end.

  “Well, I guess it’s up to me to show you to your room,” Mrs. Hartmann said, as if the chore were tantamount to chopping the wood for the morning fire. “You’ll be in the last on the left.”

  Kassandra followed, her stomach rumbling after having had a whiff of the stew. All of the upstairs doors were shut, so she had no idea what to expect when Mrs. Hartmann opened the door to her future room.

  “Mariah!”

  Kassandra, ever on Mrs. Hartmann’s heels, stumbled over the room’s threshold in time to see the supposed Mariah lounged on the bed, deeply engrossed in a book. Judging by the swiftness with which she stashed the tome under her apron, it must have been one of the French novels Mrs. Hartmann’s Ladies’ Society spoke so vehemently against.

  “Mrs. Hartmann!” said the flustered woman, scrambling to get off the bed. “I wasn’t expecting you so early.”

  “I find that hard to believe, considering I sent you a letter nearly a month ago telling you we would be here on precisely this date.”

  “I guess I was thinking it might be a little later in the afternoon.”

  Mariah was smoothing her hair back now. She was pretty if plain and probably around thirty years old, not much older than Mrs. Hartmann. And she was not nearly as flustered as Mrs. Hartmann would have wanted her to be. In fact, Mariah had quite the mischievous glint in her eye.

  “But you know how it is, Mrs. Hartmann. You’ve always enjoyed a leisurely afternoon.”

  Mrs. Hartmann seemed to be trying her best to remain composed. “Please go downstairs and get our bags. The driver has been paid.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Hartmann,” Mariah said, affecting an exaggerated curtsy. “But knowing you I’ll get some money from the kitchen jar to tip the driver.”

  Mariah Brown’s speech was an exaggeration of the same pattern that sometimes overtook Mrs. Hartmann’s before she caught and corrected herself. Jar sounded like jah, and this dialect combined with the woman’s lack of repentance gave her an air of unabashed cheekiness that Kassandra found amusing.

  “And you must be the little mother?” Mariah said, reaching out to pat Kassandra’s stomach on her way out, ignoring the fuming Mrs. Hartmann.

  That afternoon had been nearly two months ago, and the memory of it still brought a smile to Kassandra’s face. She looked back over her shoulder and saw the roof of the house peeking out from behind the grass-covered dunes. If she stayed out much longer, walked much farther, Mariah and Mrs. Hartmann would be in a state when she got back. The baby—according to the pompous Dr. Hilton, who had been the Weathersby family physician for two generations—was due any moment, though Kassandra felt she had nearly a week left before she would hold the child in her arms.

  She bent down the little she was able and gathered her skirts around her knees before taking a few steps into the ocean water. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the feeling of the wet sand being washed away beneath her feet—the little bit of sinking each time—then more again. This is what it felt like to be restored to God. His goodness is new every morning, and every morning she woke up with the memories of those torrid years with Ben washed further and further away.

  Out on the horizon she saw ships, and the Weathersby family docks were visible just a few miles down the beach, though none of Mrs. Hartmann’s family had ever come to pay her a visit.

  “I’ve chosen a life apart,” Mrs. Hartmann had said when Kassandra questioned her about their absence, her Cape Cod shipping roots coming to life in her speech. Apaht. Kassandra hadn’t asked again.

  The sun was beginning to disappear over the dunes, so she turned and headed back home. She walked through the grass on her way up to the house, scooching her feet to dislodge as much sand as possible and walked inside.

  “You shouldn’t stay out so late,” Mrs. Hartmann said. She was sitting in the front parlor at the window, reading by the waning light. “It’s nearly dark.”

  “I know,” Kassandra answered. “I am sorry if I made you worry It just feels so good to walk.” She sat down in the chair opposite Mrs. Hartmann and waited for the other woman to look up and give her full attention. “Thank you so much for bringing me here.”

  “I simply thought it would be best.” Mrs. Hartmann took off her reading glasses and set them aside. “Mariah has already gone home for the evening, so if you want a snack before you go to bed you’ll have to get it yourself. There’s a bit of sponge cake left from supper.”

  “I am not very hungry,” Kassandra said.

  How could the two of them still be so wary of each other after all this time together? When they left New York, Kassandra hadn’t entertained any visions of their becoming bosom friends, but Mrs. Hartmann barely showed any less disdain than she had that first morning in her kitchen. So in the growing shadows of the front parlor, Kassandra stood up and said, “Good night.”

  She must have slept through the first pains, because the one that finally did wake her was so severe she nearly cried out into the darkness of her room. She lay in bed, long enough to clear her head, to make sure what she’d felt wasn’t a dream. She heard the clock downstairs chime the quarter hour. Then the half. When it chimed again, her body seized up in that tight band that could mean only one thing.

  It was time.

  Her window was wide open, and the white lace curtains billowed with the sea breeze. When the contraction subsided she climbed out of bed and walked over to the window. She knelt in front of it and propped her elbows on the sill, clasped her hands together, and bowed her head.

  “This is the day, Lord, that my child will be born.” The lapping waves filled the silence as Kassandra searched for words. “You have my son. Please, my Father, let me bring this child into the world.”

  Her answer was the continuous motion of the sea.

  She thought about that night, months and months ago, when she knelt at another open window, flames raging behind her, smoke filling her lungs. Not a day went by that she didn’t thank God for saving her that night—saving her from the hell she had created for herself. Every day she thanked Him, too, for His forgiveness for the sin that nearly consumed her every bit as much as that fire. Now she asked to be saved one more time.

  “Protect me, Lord,” she prayed, “from the pain of losing this child. Keep me strong, and bless me with this life.”

  She felt the tugging of the next pain across her back and braced herself to stand, clutching her bedpost and breathing deep, until it subsided. The moon was bright and full, casting an iridescent glow on the sandy beaches. She thought back to all those other women she and Imogene had helped through their labor, and one directive was constant. Walk.

  She knew the plan was to call for Doctor Hilton, even though Kassandra said time and again that she would be fine, as long as
Mrs. Hartmann was present to assist. But Mrs. Hartmann said she had no intention of helping with the birth of this baby, and Mariah Brown’s offer to be of support was overlooked in favor of calling in the trusted family physician. But Kassandra did, after all, know a few things about the progression of labor, and as her water hadn’t yet broken, there might still be hours before the doctor’s presence would be needed.

  Kassandra took Imogene’s shawl from the chair it was draped on and wrapped it around her shoulders. She made no noise on her way through the house, pausing just long enough to smile at the slight snoring coming from the other side of Mrs. Hartmann’s door.

  Outside, she promised herself that she would not walk far, always keeping the house in her sight. The sand was cool beneath her toes, and the effort it took to walk through it energized her muscles. She counted the laps of the ocean between contractions, their numbers decreasing as the sky grew gray. She walked, her hand braced to her back when the pain intensified. Then, just as the first pink of dawn peeked into the sky, she made her way back to the house and into the kitchen where Mariah was already up, making breakfast.

  “Mariah?” Kassandra said, surprised at the calmness of her voice. “You need to go into the village for the doctor.”

  “What were you thinking? Out there on that beach all alone in the dead of night? With the … the baby coming?”

  “Walking is good, Mrs. Hartmann,” Kassandra reassured the pacing woman. They were in Kassandra’s room now, and Kassandra was safe in her own bed, obeying what Mrs. Hartmann was sure would be the doctor’s orders once he arrived.

  “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t acknowledge you as an expert on such things,” Mrs. Hartmann said.

  “I think I know more than—”

  Kassandra’s words were lost in the onslaught of a new birthing pain, the strongest one yet.

  God help me, God help me, God help me.

  She distinctly remembered those hours alone in her flat, waiting for Imogene, not knowing the grave danger her baby was in.