Lazaretto

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

  “I could cut it myself,” Vergie said as she eased over to the other side of the steps, closer to where the scissors gleamed in the new morning air. “Could you teach me?”

  “Nuttin’ to teach. You either know how or don’t. Main thing is keep your fingers outnin the way.”

  Vergie touched the scissors and then pulled her hand back as if Miss Ma would strike her hand, but Miss Ma was concentrating on the thread; she’d managed to edge the tip just through the needle eye and she barely breathed as she worked her fingers to pull it all the way through. Vergie took full advantage of Miss Ma’s absorption and reached in the sewing box and grabbed the scissors and darted into the crawl space under the steps. She sat on the ground. The dirt was soft and warm under her. Her hair hung around her shoulders in crinkled waves. She took a deep breath and pulled a fistful up and snipped it. She was surprised at how easily it separated as she watched it fall, much of it landing in the lap of her slip. She stretched out another section and cut at that. She moved through her hair, randomly cutting, imagining that when she was finished she’d finally look like the rest of her family and not have to worry about things happening to her like what had happened to her two weeks before.

  She’d just returned from spending four wonderful days with her father on the Chesapeake, where her father’s newest gal lived. Sylvia had planned that she and Vergie would spend the entire Saturday together to make up to Vergie for giving her practically no attention because Sylvia’s schoolwork had demanded her unwavering focus of late. She dressed Vergie in her prettiest clothes, and Vergie was ebullient as they left the house in the carriage Nevada had arranged through her special friendship with a man who worked at Brown’s Livery. They would start at the Haberdashery Fabric store, one of Vergie’s favorite places owing to the way the bolts of fabric lined the shelves that seemed to stretch for miles. She’d simultaneously practice her numbers and colors as she walked from one end of the block-long store to the other, counting all the bolts that were red, then blue, then yellow. By the time she got to white, Sylvia was generally finished having the fabric she was purchasing measured and cut. But this day the store was abustle; the clerks were unusually slow; Vergie had gotten to the other end of the store for a third time and had to figure out a new color to count when a tall white man approached her. He was smiling and complimented her on her gloves. “They have a pink border,” she said, proud that she had learned her colors so well. “They match the pink ribbons on my hat.”

  He asked her name and she told him, and then he asked her if her maid was treating her well today. She, thinking it a joke, laughed.

  “Isn’t the colored lady you are with your maid?” he said and stooped so that he was looking in her eyes.

  “She is my cousin. Sylvia. I do not have a maid,” she said, as if he were a silly boy who needed correcting.

  “You do not? Well, a pretty lass like you deserves her own maid, you could come home with me and have a maid and a pony, and you could swim in the lake every morning because my house sits right on the lake.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “I live in a place called Poughkeepsie.”

  Vergie giggled at the sound of the name.

  “So what do you say? Would you like to visit Poughkeepsie? We could teach you to swim.” He stood and held out his hand.

  Vergie stared up at the man. Her father had already taught her to swim when he’d take her on fishing trips from the time she could walk. He had complimented her on her swimming just last week, complimented her generally on how proud he was of how smart she was getting. He’d said he admired how she was learning to call on her good senses, and that as she got older, and started moving around in the world without Sylvia or Maze or him to guide her, she would find times when she wouldn’t know for sure which direction to tell her feet to carry her. When that day comes, he said, you just say, “Come on, good sense, show me the way.” Vergie had laughed at the prospect of literally calling on her good sense like that, though she thought that’s what she should do in that moment as the man whispered for her to take his hand so that they could sneak out of the side door. But then her good sense was clouded when he mentioned the pony again, and she asked him what was the pony’s name.

  “Well, of course it doesn’t have a name; it’s waiting for you to give it a name when it belongs to only you. You may take it for walks and feed it blocks of sugar and brush its back and it will go ‘Neigh, neigh, thank you, Vergie.’”

  She gushed at the thought as he told her that the pony was right outside. “Do you want to meet it?” he asked. She looked down at the other end of the block-long store where Sylvia was awaiting her turn in line. “Your cousin will not even know you are gone,” he said as Vergie allowed him to take her hand and pull her into the shock of the outside light. A carriage waited, and at first Vergie thought that it was the same carriage she and Sylvia had taken to get there. The horses were stamping their hooves as if saying “Hurry, we’re past ready to run,” and then Vergie realized that this wasn’t her carriage, and she heard her good sense tell her to yank her hand away from this man and run back into the store. But it was too late as she felt herself swooped up into the air. She yelled and kicked, and people passing by stopped and turned in the direction of the commotion, but with the way Vergie was dressed this morning, in her high-society outfit, she appeared perfectly suited for this carriage, for this prosperously appointed man handing her over to a woman who opened the door to the carriage and stretched her hands out and grabbed Vergie, a woman in a wide-brimmed hat with pink feathers and a veil that seemed to match the pink fringes on Vergie’s petticoat. The few people who had turned in the directions of Vergie’s screams resumed their activities, counting Vergie as just another indulged little rich white girl resorting to her usual tactics to get her way and her parents were getting the response they deserved.

  The husband was up on the box and the horses answered his commands and clopped away. The woman held on to Vergie with desperate arms as she pressed the little girl’s head against her chest so hard and close that Vergie could smell the vanilla rising off her skin. “I am your mother now,” she yelled over Vergie’s screams.

  “You are not! No you are not!” Vergie hollered back at her and managed to push her head far enough away from the woman’s chest so that she could spit in her face.

  The woman slapped Vergie with such force her nose began to bleed. “Yes, you are my daughter now, and you should be grateful I’m delivering you from a nigger’s life.”

  Vergie continued to scream and holler and she clawed at the woman’s face and tried with everything in her to wrestle herself free. She felt like the caught fish last week that had struggled so long on the end of her father’s pole for a much longer time than she thought it ever could. Her father had cut the line and let the fish fall back into the bay. He’d said that anything with that much will to live deserved another chance. She gasped and writhed as she had seen that fish do. She began to hyperventilate, and the woman yelled to her husband to stop. “She is turning blue.”

  “Well, calm her,” her husband yelled back.

  “She is too wild. Untamable. We have to let her go.”

  “After all of this, are you now saying let her go?”

  “Please, yes, she is impossible. This is impossible.”

  He stopped the carriage and Vergie had already pushed the door open and was about to jump, not even caring how far it was to the ground, but before she could, he had caught her. “Are you bleeding? Why is she bleeding?” he asked as he put her down and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. But Vergie had already taken off at a run. She ran and called for Sylvia. She wasn’t even sure if she was headed toward the fabric store, but it was away from that carriage, so she continued to run. She heard someone call her name, it was Nevada’s friend from Brown’s Livery, whose carriage had brought them to the fabric store.

  “What happened to you? Where is Sylvia?” he asked, as he leaned down and wiped the bloo
d from her nose. She gasped. She could barely talk, she just cried and called out Sylvia’s name. He picked her up and told her it was okay, he would take her to Sylvia. He asked again what had happened, how did she get a bloodied nose. “I fell” was all she said, when she could talk again. “I came outside to skip and I fell.” She told the same thing to Sylvia, the same thing to her aunt Maze and uncle Levi, the same thing to Nevada, even to her father. “I came outside to skip, and I was skipping and skipping and I didn’t know how far away I skipped, and I fell.” Over and over she told that story because she was ashamed that she had been foolish enough to let a strange man lead her away from the fabric store, from Sylvia, from her life with her family. Ashamed, too, because she thought she’d caused the man to try and snatch her, something about the very essence of her was so flawed that a white man would just walk up to her and try to whisk her away. She didn’t understand it as shame that day, didn’t understand it as shame this morning as she sat in the dirt under the crawl space at Nevada’s house and cut away at her hair. The shame had already begun to be covered up with anger. She was already showing a sassiness toward white people, resentment toward black people who thought her white, disgust toward anyone who treated her as if her appearance was some sort of gift. Already a whiff of vanilla, like the scent rising off of the woman’s skin that day, caused her to vomit, such that Nevada had to withhold vanilla if she was baking cake when Vergie was over.

  A heap of hair had accumulated on the dirt under the steps as Vergie continued cutting. She thought she must be getting close to her edges because she could feel patches of scalp. She heard Nevada calling her, Nevada’s voice coming from deep in the house. Miss Ma’s voice, too, as Miss Ma started with her high-pitched laughter. Vergie moved the scissors as quickly as she could. Now Nevada’s voice could be heard shouting over Miss Ma’s laughter. “Where is she, Ma? Look at me and tell me where she is.”

  Vergie responded to Nevada’s frantic tone. “I am hiding from you under the steps,” she said in a singsongy voice.

  “You are, are you?” Vergie could hear the relief in Nevada’s voice as Nevada matched the rhythm of Vergie’s speech. “Well, come on now, time for us to make breakfast. You want to form the dough for the biscuits, don’t you?”

  Vergie emerged slowly from the crawl space. She stuck one leg out and then the other. The lap of her night slip was filled with hair and she shook it out as she maneuvered into the sunlight in the backyard. It seemed warmer suddenly, and even before she looked at Nevada she felt the change in the air; now it had an itchy feel, like the edges of the crinoline slip she’d had to wear for an entire day the past Easter as, it seemed, every child in the world gave a recitation about the Risen Lord.

  “Here I am,” Vergie said as she emerged fully from the crawl space and walked into the center of the yard.

  There was a sharp intake of air from Nevada. It was so loud that it penetrated even Miss Ma’s high-pitched laughter and left her suddenly quiet. Vergie looked from Nevada to Miss Ma to see if she could tell from their faces whether she’d done a good job getting to the roots of her hair. Their expressions were identical: frozen, horrified. Vergie patted at her hair. There was a section across the front where practically no hair remained, but just next to that a thick clump, and then, beyond that, an irregular swath of scalp. The pattern repeated itself across her head and she thought that if she’d just had more time they wouldn’t be staring at her now as if she were a monster. She thought about trying to finish the job but Nevada seemed to read her mind. “Give me the scissors, Vergilina,” Nevada’s shaky voice said.

  Vergie handed Nevada the scissors, and when Miss Ma’s laughter started anew, Vergie wondered if it was really laughter at all; maybe all this time those high-pitched sounds were actually Miss Ma crying. Nevada continued speechless as she stared at Vergie, and now she shook her head back and forth in disbelief. “Your hair, Vergilina. Dear God, your hair . . .” The yard felt suddenly dark, and Vergie ran to Nevada and wrapped her arms around her waist and pressed her head into her stomach. Then she cried. She didn’t understand why she cried, but she was overtaken with that feeling again that she’d not yet understood to be shame. It was a shrill feeling that started deep in her stomach and spread out from there even as Nevada patted her back and told her it would be okay; her hair would grow in before she knew it. The feeling had already found an opening in her chest, and settled there.

  OVER THE NEXT months, Vergie grew bolder, brasher—her aunt thought that her behavior bordered on rudeness—but she was severely needy, too. She stayed as close to Sylvia as she could. They’d have to distract Vergie for Sylvia to be able to leave the house without Vergie throwing a tantrum. Which happened one day when Sylvia’s parents were preparing for a big catering job, and Sylvia needed to make a quick trip to the wharf to pick up their last-minute supplies.

  She rushed to return home with the crate, worried about Vergie’s sudden change in temperament. Even Nevada had remarked on it. “She act like a little puppy dog, nipping on the heels of whoever happens to be caring for her. Did something scare her?” Nevada had asked. “It would be a sin for her independent streak to go awry.” So Sylvia was preoccupied with thoughts of Vergie as she ran along the wharf, her crate loaded with onions, molasses, peppercorn, and whey. She didn’t hear the man calling out to her until he was practically yelling. “Miss Lady, might I offer you a hand?” And when she stopped and turned around, he was right there, smiling. He told her that his name was Carl, and that he had seen her on other occasions but had resisted, till now, the urge to offer his how-do. “This time I said to myself, ‘Carl, that pretty miss could sure use a hand.’ ”

  Sylvia thanked him politely but assured him that she could make her way unaided. His teeth were too small, she thought, his ears too large, his face too wide, his hairline already receding. She was picky when it came to men. Nevada tried to convince her that she feared love, and that she only feared love because she was unsure of herself. “For all your smarts, you cannot see it?” She’d challenge Sylvia. “If no one can suit you, then you never have to risk all that a person risks when they allow their feet to leave the ground.”

  Carl took the crate from Sylvia anyhow and the sudden absence of the weight told her how heavy it had been. She didn’t realize that her arms were bleeding from the rubbing of the splintered wood. She generally didn’t leave the house with her arms exposed, but she’d left in a hurry, before Vergie could try to follow. Carl noticed the blood before she did. “Ah, what you do to those pretty arms?” he asked, as he put the crate on the ground and pulled a handkerchief from his back pants pocket and dabbed at her arms. His eyes were tender, brown like syrup. His touch was light as air. “If that crate wasn’t necessary for toting your haul to wherever you headed, I would crush it with my bare hands as punishment for scraping your pretty arms.” He laughed and his laugh caught in his throat and Sylvia realized that he was nervous. She’d not known that her presence could bring out nervousness in a man. The knowledge bolstered her, changed her, and she and Carl began keeping company.

  It was a comfortable courtship, Carl was easy about Sylvia’s educational pursuits, even encouraged them. He had a decent income, working as a pipefitter at the shipyard, so he won her parent’s approval—at least her father’s, as it was difficult to satisfy Maze, who was intent on Sylvia being linked with a man of the social class to which her mother aspired. But Carl had won Nevada over with his sincerity. And Vergie adored him since he was always happy to include her in his visits with Sylvia. Which pleased Sylvia greatly, because Vergie was one of the joys of her life.

  8

  JUST AS VERGIE was Sylvia’s joy, Linc and Bram were Meda’s. Though a sun didn’t set when Meda had not spent part of the day thinking about the baby she’d lost, the boys’ presence in her life lifted her up in ways that even Ann’s friendship did not. And every time she’d say their names—Bram and Linc—she’d think that she was honoring the president, the father she’d lost. />
  Mrs. Benin was not so taken by the boys. From the beginning she’d been reluctant about the arrangement of Meda bringing the boys into their home for weekends and holidays. But her husband had overruled her. Said that the infants had lost their fathers to the war, and since he himself had not donned a uniform or fired a gun or given his life on the Union’s behalf, at least he could be charitable to the sons of men who had. She’d countered that he could just make a deposit of funds in the orphanage’s account. Why must her home be tarnished by the presence of such ragamuffins? Her friends were beginning to whisper. He stood firm, suggested that she buy them the necessary clothes, school them in the manners that her friends might find acceptable.

  Though resentful about the arrangement, Mrs. Benin did make available for the boys finely constructed clothing. And by the time they were four years old, she did try to introduce them to music, tried to teach them piano, at which she herself was quite skilled.

  Bram showed a proclivity for the piano. He would sit next to Mrs. Benin for long stretches, fascinated by her ability to make music, wanting to be able to make such sounds himself. She began to allow incremental affection for Bram; told him that he had the most beautiful hands, that his long, slender fingers were well-suited for the piano. Linc was also drawn to the music, but he had no patience for the painstaking instruction; found it impossible not to fidget when he sat on the bench next to Mrs. Benin. Plus, he didn’t have Bram’s hands, as Mrs. Benin explained to him repeatedly. His hands were short and stubby, she said, ill-suited for the keyboard. She’d shoo him away when he came near, tell him he was wasting her time. Linc would slide from the piano bench, and Bram and Linc would touch elbows then—their private gesture of greeting, saying hello or goodbye to one another, their way also of saying, without anyone else being privy, you are my brother and I love you like life itself.