Mr. David Wentworth must go far beyond the bounds of accepted husbandly rights and privileges to send a pregnant woman running with such determination.
“How long you been runnin’?”
“Five months.”
“That long?” Joshua cocked his head. “He must be a real unpleasant individual. And you must be a real determined lady. Wouldn’t think you could make it that long or this far.”
“I ran out of money.”
“Safe to say he’s lookin’ for you?”
“No. Yes. Not exactly. Me, I mean. He’s looking for the baby. His son.”
“Ahhhh. One of those.”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t technically a criminal offense for a woman to run away from her husband but it was troublesome, just the same.
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Oh, I think the first order of business is for you to have that baby. Don’t you?”
She gave a shaky laugh. “I can’t tell you how ready I am for that to happen.”
“I think you should use Serena. Always easier to stick as close to the truth as possible and you might forget to answer to Sally. Lots of folks wouldn’t notice but believe me, my Mama would. And she wouldn’t be too fond of the idea of an irate Daddy lookin’ for his baby around these parts.”
“I’ll leave as soon as I can, I promise.”
“But I don’t think it’d be a good idea to spread the Wentworth name around. Is Ferris your maiden name?”
“No. It just popped in my head.”
“What is? Your maiden name? Like I said, keep as close to the truth as you can, less chance to slip up.”
“Foxton.”
“Well, Mrs. Serena Foxton, welcome to Gorley House. Now, about your husband. I take it you’d be just as pleased to be a widow?”
“I’m not that lucky.”
“Then right now, just to get us through this, let’s just pretend you are. Welcome to widowhood.”
Joshua rose and got to the doorway before he turned back.
“Oh, there’s just one thing.”
“Anything!”
“If you’re goin’ make a slip, for God’s sake, don’t do it around Mama.”
“That would be Sadie, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be careful. You’re—” she paused and then continued, “very unusual. Aren’t you?”
“You mean for a nigger?” He smiled.
“For a minister. You don’t talk like one and you thought that story up so fast.”
“I had an unusual upbringing. We’ll talk later. Get some rest.”
* * *
Sadie wasn’t happy. She didn’t think Serena was a widow, either. This woman was on the run. And you didn’t run from dead husbands, you ran from live ones. Rich, unpleasant live ones, if the clothes Serena Foxton, or whatever her name was, wore were any indication. Those clothes might be worn out but they’d originally been good quality and very expensive. No point in even trying to argue with Joshua, though. No way would he turn her out while she was carrying that child.
Serena donned a fluffy cotton robe and began moving carefully and slowly around. Most especially, she watched Joshua. By keeping her eyes and ears open, she pieced together his background. Well, at least she pieced together the background Joshua’d put out for public consumption, which wasn’t exactly his true one.
Always proper, she was “Miss Serena” and “ma’am”. For the first time in her life, mostly because of his speech and his striking good looks, skin color played no part in her opinion of another. He wasn’t ‘a good-looking man for a Negro’ nor did he ‘show a lot of sense for a Negro.’ He was simply a good-looking man. Period. And a highly intelligent one. Period. Though damn near any man of any color would be, compared to the one she was running from.
“Miss Serena,” he said one evening, “I think we need to consider what we’re goin’ to do when that baby decides to come.”
“I told you, I’ll leave just as soon as I possibly can.”
“No. I mean what we’re going to do when it decides to actually come. I don’t want to scare you, ma’am, but you’ve had a hard time. You didn’t have much strength left to start with and that fever took what little you had left. I think you’re goin’ to need a doctor, not just a midwife. I’d feel a lot better if you had one, I know that.”
“No! Please, no! There may be fliers out, notices! I can’t take the chance!”
“Now, Miss Serena—”
“You can’t tell me your Mama’s not a good midwife, I know better. I’ve heard things.”
“Yeah, but she’s not a doctor and she’s getting’ on up there, doesn’t get much practice.”
“You’ve done it, too. Delivered babies. I told you, I’ve talked to the people in the shelter, I know you’ve done it!”
“Whoa!” Joshua kept a firm grip on reality, no matter how much Sadie worried he didn’t. In this town, he was a Negro. A Negro man. Serena Foxton was a lady. A white lady. Maybe if they were stranded somewhere together fifty miles from any other available help, society might overlook that. Maybe. In the city limits of Macon, Georgia? Not a chance in hell. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Miss Serena, I call certain facts to your attention. You’re white. I’m black. Delivering a baby involves a certain amount of—bare skin. And if the town found out a black man delivered a white baby—”
“I don’t care. And nobody else would have to know. Let them think Sadie did it.”
He stared at her.
“You honestly don’t, do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Care.”
“I trust you. You’re the only man since Papa died that’s cared what happens to me. I want you to bring my baby. No doctor. Please.”
“Unnhhh!” Joshua moaned. He didn’t want to upset her. He’d just have to cross that bridge when he came to it.
He crossed it the next night. Labor was long and hard. When the time came for transition from labor to delivery, transition didn’t.
“Son, we got to get a doctor. Dat baby goan need forceps. I can’t do dat, and neither can you.”
“No!”
“Girl, you hesh up!” Sadie commanded. “Doan know whut you sayin’! Dat baby ain’t goan survive dis, even if you do! Not without mo’ help den me and Joshua can give!”
Serena grabbed Joshua’s hand.
“Then let me die! I’d rather die than risk goin’ back!”
Sadie shook her head.
“I knew it,” she said. “I jest knew it.”
Joshua bit his lip.
“I can get you a doctor,” he said slowly. “One that won’t say anything.”
“Son! Whut you thinkin’?
“But you have to promise, you have to swear to me—you’ll never, never tell anyone about him.”
Sadie sank down in the bedside chair and moaned.
Serena lay drenched in sweat, her hair plastered to her face. No one told her childbirth was this. She’d expected sharp pains that cut like glass, not this. Not this unending, dull and relentless cramping starting like the very worst menstrual period from hell and accelerating into these unending, gut-wrenching gigantic waves of pain ripping her apart and drowning her.
“I promise,” she whispered.
“I’ll be back,” he said, and raced out of the room.
Chapter Ten
Serena didn’t know how long he was gone. She just held on with the last shards of determination left from five months of hard running. She saw the face bending over her in a semi-stupor, lamplight glinting off the blond hair.
“You got any forceps?” The voice sounded familiar somehow.
“No. Joshua doan keep ‘em since both of us’d be scared to use ‘em.”
Where was Joshua, why hadn’t he come back with the doctor?
“Chloroform? Morphine?”
“Nuttin’ dat strong.”
“I’ll b
e right back.”
“Son, we ain’t got time to fool around here.”
“Won’t take me two minutes, don’t worry.”
“Where you goan get—”
“Gonna raid Dave Cabot’s office. Hell, he don’t need to be usin’ ‘em anyway, should’ve retired years ago.”
Nothing made any sense to Serena but she was far beyond caring. It seemed only seconds until the strange, oddly familiar voice returned. Something covered her face.
“Breathe deep!” it commanded.
She breathed. And sank gratefully into the waiting dark.
She woke fighting new waves of nausea, nausea of a different type, sweeping up from her stomach.
“Here.”
Joshua’s voice. Thank God. He pulled her head over and held the basin while she gave in to the nausea.
Finally, she lay back. He wiped her forehead and mouth.
“It’s the chloroform,” he said, “makes you real sick.”
“The baby?”
“Miss Serena, I’m sorry. You just both been through too much.”
She sighed, too exhausted to feel much sorrow. “A boy?”
“No, a little girl.”
She smiled. Even David Wentworth didn’t get what he wanted every time. A daughter. The first twinges of loss swept over her. She would have liked a daughter.
“I’m so glad!” she said, and fell back into exhausted sleep.
Sadie leaned over when she woke again.
“So, you back in de land of de living?”
“Seems that way. I’m still not real sure right now.”
Sadie stood. To Serena, Sadie seemed to soar in height until she approached the ceiling.
“Well, I jest wanta say one thing to you, girl. Joshua, he take yo’ word last night ‘bout dat doctor. De one saved yo’ life and doan you make no mistake. He saved yo’ life.”
“I know. I remember. And I’m not supposed to say anything.”
“Dat’s right. You doan say nuttin’ to nobody ‘bout dat man. You make a solemn vow to my boy. But jest in case, lest something come up make dat promise slip yo’ mind, you ‘member dis. Do you even think ‘bout slippin’ up, I goan know. An’ I’ll tear yo’ tongue out by de roots. You unnerstan’ me?”
Serena sank back against her pillows, as frightened by the fierceness of Sadie’s expression as by her words. She nodded.
“Dat’s good.”
* * *
Serena slowly recovered but made no move to leave. She felt curiously at peace at Gorley House and moved into the school rooms. She discovered a natural and unsuspected talent for children and teaching that surprised and pleased her.
Sadie didn’t like her continued presence and she knew it. Just like she knew Joshua did. Everyone in the household carried their own weight, even the children. Chores spread out weren’t a burden on anyone. Serena tried to pull her own weight, even if her presence wasn’t welcomed by everyone.
One early April day she picked a stack of Joshua’s freshly laundered shirts up from the kitchen table and toted them to his room. The door was open but the room was empty. She picked up the picture sitting on the bureau. Joshua in his teens. With a white man and a white woman. Joshua’d had a brother, a white half-brother, she’d heard that from somebody in the shelter, but that brother’d been dead for almost twenty years. She stared at the man in the picture. Light hair, obviously blond. Something about him seemed familiar. And he’d been a doctor.
Joshua’d found her a doctor. She remembered the man’s voice more than anything. Something about it, not the voice so much as the tone, the inflection, the cadence of speech. He’d sounded very much like someone else she knew. Joshua. He’d sounded very much like Joshua.
You have to promise me, you have to swear, that you will never, never tell anybody—
Do you even think ‘bout slippin’ up, I goan know it. An’ I tear yo’ tongue out by de roots.
Impossible. Paul Devlin was dead. Wasn’t he?
“What are doing with that?”
She hadn’t heard Joshua coming up behind her. She started. It hadn’t been her intention to snoop.
“I was just putting up your shirts. I didn’t mean—”
“Paul Devlin and his wife,” Joshua said shortly, “I’m sure you’ve heard the story from somebody. Paul’s father Everett Devlin and Sadie raised me as a child. Paul finished the job. He and his wife are dead.”
“Yes, I know the story,” she said.
Joshua heard the slight hesitation.
“You listen to me, Serena,” he said. His tone and his omission of ‘Miss’ got her attention. “Paul Devlin’s dead. You understand?”
“Yes. I understand,” she said. She did indeed. At least, she thought she did. He was no more dead than Joshua but for some reason the world didn’t need to know that.
“Good. Please keep understanding it.” He turned to leave.
“Joshua?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t be angry with me.”
“I’m not.”
“Then can I ask you something?”
“You can ask. Don’t mean I’ll answer.”
“You’re half-white. Aren’t you?”
Joshua smiled. He’d often noticed strangers found that quite obvious but the people he’d grown up with didn’t. “I am.”
“Sadie really is your mother, you don’t just call her mama ‘cause she raised you.”
“Yes.”
“Everett Devlin was your father. You use it because that’s your name, not because they took you in.”
“True. Anything else?”
“That man, the one in the picture?”
“My brother.”
“You must have loved him very much.”
“You have no idea.”
She stared thoughtfully at his back as he walked away. So. Sadie’d raised his brother, too. In her mind, he was her son. And that explained Sadie’s fierceness. Serena wasn’t just an inconvenient problem for Sadie’s living son. She could become a threat to her ‘dead’ son, too. Sadie needn’t worry, but Serena knew there was no way to convince her of that.
Chapter Eleven
Even without Sadie’s constant reminders, Joshua knew Serena couldn’t live in limbo forever. He sought her out the next night.
“Like some evening air? The swing out by Mama’s roses?”
“Very much.” They moved over and sat down.
“Miss Serena—”
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Keep calling me ‘Miss’. Considering the circumstances, I find it a trifle, well, affected.”
He laughed. “I guess in private it wouldn’t hurt nothin’. Serena, what are you going to do now?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Gonna have to eventually. Might be time for you go back to Greenville.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I said go back to Greenville, it’s your home, your roots, your family. I didn’t say go back to David Wentworth.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No. No, it isn’t. Divorce is an ugly word and it’s not all that common, I know, but—”
“Never. I couldn’t fight him and win.”
“Serena, your family has to have money, too. It’s written all over you, the way you move, the way you talk.”
“How conversant you are with genteel womanhood.”
“Well, matter of fact, I am. My brother’s wife. Chloe. I loved her almost as much as I loved him. You remind me of her. A lot. You were raised a society lady, it’s all over you. Your family has to have some influence.”
“Not anymore. It’s why I married David in the first place. Papa liked to play poker.”
“Oh, Lord,” Joshua sighed, knowing what was coming.
“He gambled everything but our house and finally, he gambled that, too. Then he fell over dead. The doctor said it was his heart.”
�
�And he was in a game with David Wentworth at the time.”
“My mother had nothing left, Joshua. Nothing but me and my little brothers and sisters. What was I supposed to do? Where would they have gone? There’s nothing worse than being a poor relation, you know that. And the Wentworths. Such a fine family. And David. He seemed such a gentleman! I had no idea.” Her voice trailed off.
“But you’re stuck in limbo. You deserve a life. A good one. Life’s a great, good thing, Serena. Full of darkness sometimes, but full of love, too. And you could find it, marry a good man—”
“No, thank you!” She shook her head emphatically. “David loved me. He said.”
“You can’t judge all men by David Wentworth.”
“And marriage, men, what they do! Pahhh!” She almost spat and shuddered.
He hurt me. In ways—I don’t want to talk about it. She’d told him that. The first night. The words echoed in his head.
“Serena, it doesn’t have to be like that, it’s not supposed to be like that. It doesn’t have to hurt. It’s supposed to be a great pleasure.”
“Maybe all men don’t hurt on purpose,” she conceded. “But I don’t see how it could ever not hurt. Or how it could be remotely pleasant.”
Joshua shook his head. Damn bastard. He’d scarred her for life, in a place where it couldn’t be fixed. In her mind.
“You should at least think about it. You can’t hide forever.”
“Do you want me to leave? I’m sorry if I’m a lot of trouble, I love working with the children, I hoped it was a help—”
“No! No, I don’t want you to leave because you’re any trouble! I want you to have a chance! A chance at a good life! You are a help, the children love you. I just don’t want you to stay because you think you have nowhere else to go. And if money’s a problem, I have money. Think about it.”
“Oh, no, Joshua! I couldn’t possibly accept—”
“Think about it.”
* * *
She thought about it. As Joshua would say, know the truth and it will set you free. The truth was, she didn’t want to stay just because she had nowhere else to go. Even though she didn’t. She wanted to stay because she wanted to stay. Well, no, that wasn’t right, exactly. She wanted to stay because she didn’t want to leave Joshua. Which meant what? She didn’t know. But she wasn’t leaving until she did.
Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) Page 27