by Jodi Daynard
37
THE CHILD LOOKED WHITE AT FIRST, BUT Lizzie later said she knew at once it was a Negro child. At the time, however, I received only her jubilant cry, “It’s a boy! A fine, healthy boy!”
I wept with relief, and, propping me up with pillows, Lizzie helped put the babe to my breast, which he accepted eagerly. He and I both fell asleep, but when I awoke, the babe was gone. I panicked.
“Where is he? Where’s my child?”
Martha was by my side at once.
“He is well—just there, don’t you see?” Indeed, I could see him. He was in Lizzie’s arms by the kitchen door.
“Give him here!” I cried.
Lizzie was having none of my Cambridge ways, however, and I would soon learn that in matters of midwifery—well, in all matters, really—she could be as obdurate as Braintree’s granite.
“I prefer to wait until you have regained some strength. He will keep—we give him distilled water with a tiny bit of milk in it. It will do at least till tomorrow. And then there’s always Betty, a wet nurse in the South Parish—”
“Wet nurse? Oh, do be clear, Lizzie. My head aches. I can hardly comprehend you.”
Martha came toward me and gently wiped my brow with a cool cloth. “Lean back now. That’s it.”
As I became fully awake, I realized that something had changed while I slept. I felt shivery and could not stay warm. My head ached horribly; the light seared my eyes, and I closed them.
“Am I unwell?” I asked, covering my eyes with my forearm.
“Rest,” Lizzie said. “All will right itself in time.”
But all was not well. Thankfully, there is a special Providence that makes one unaware of the gravity of one’s own illness. I remained in bed a week, as Lizzie silently worked to keep a “slight infection” from carrying me off. In truth I felt very unwell. I lost my appetite and could not sit up to nurse my babe, who I named Johnny. Four, five, six times a day, Lizzie handed me strange teas to drink.
After several days in which neither she nor Martha slept, my fever eased. I knew this not by the abatement of my malaise, but by their relieved faces. Only when it was over did they reveal to me that I had developed puerperal fever, an often-fatal disease in new mothers. When they finally handed me my little boy, he seemed heavier to me, like a fat, delicious dumpling. Thank God for that!
During these early days, Lizzie was strict with me. She still “liked not my color” and was hourly on the lookout for fever. After a second week had passed, however, she allowed me to sit quietly in the kitchen while the babe slept. There, I helped her to grind spices or hang herbs to dry.
It should be mentioned that I had as yet not told either Lizzie or Martha about John Watkins. Perhaps I would in time share my story with them. But to Mrs. Adams? Certainly not. This conviction lasted all of a day—or slightly less. For, that same afternoon, as I was nursing Johnny, in strode a tiny person whom I at first mistook for someone’s servant. I marveled at Braintree’s easy ways, where servant girls could come upon one without so much as knocking first.
The woman wore a frock of homespun quite imperfectly woven, and her hair had not been combed through in some time. Her petticoat was soiled from various outdoor chores—feeding her animals, perhaps. Only when she looked at me did I see the hard intelligence of her brown eyes and knew who she was: Abigail Adams.
“Oh, what a beauty!” Mrs. Adams exclaimed, seeing Johnny at my breast just as Lizzie entered from the kitchen.
“Abigail!” she cried and hugged her gleefully. She then properly introduced us. Abigail paced the parlor until I had finished giving suck, at which point she said, “I should like to hold him, if I may.” Johnny had fallen asleep and lay with his arms akimbo. I nodded to her, and she sat on the edge of my bed and took up the sleeping child.
“I’ve had five children,” she remarked, “but none quite so beautiful as this child. What do you call him?”
“Johnny. After his father.”
“Oh, hello, Johnny.” She smiled down at him, playing with the fingers of one of his open little hands, which had turned palm-up in sleep. His fingers curled unconsciously around her gently prodding forefinger.
With Johnny, Abigail Adams was perfectly gentle and natural. Yet, when setting her eyes upon me, this esteemed woman reminded me of nothing so much as a hawk. Her small eyes saw everything, even from a great distance.
Speaking of eyes, my child’s were of a most unusual color, though I expected they would change and darken. They were the same aqua-blue eyes as John’s. Abigail could not help but comment upon them.
“Everyone here has blue eyes except for me,” she lamented.
“I don’t,” Martha said. “Don’t envy them, Abigail. For, in the sun, their eyesight is as weak as a ferret’s.”
“Ha—that’s true enough.” Her small mouth formed a tiny smile.
As Johnny slept, Mrs. Adams and I fell to talking. “You know,” she said, “of the past eight years, I’ve seen my John only four. And there have been many months—sometimes as much as six in a row, where I’ve not heard a word from him and knew not whether he was alive or dead.”
“What torture that must be. I’m learning . . .” I began, then admitted, “I’ve not heard from my John in many weeks, and it’s already more than I can bear.”
For a year I had kept my grief locked within me, and I could do so no longer. Abigail, sensing weakness, edged closer to me on the bed.
“Tell me exactly what troubles you, dearest.” She placed a dainty yet oddly rough hand on mine. “Spare no detail.”
I then proceeded to unburden my heart to Mrs. Adams in a way I had not done with Lizzie. In telling my story, I cried, and when I had calmed myself and thought I might sleep, Mrs. Adams kissed me on the side of my head and said she would return the following day. I dozed until Johnny’s cry woke me later that afternoon, to find Martha and Lizzie staring down at me.
“Yes?” I murmured. “What is it?”
The two looked at each other, then Lizzie asked, “How is it that Abigail Adams managed to get you to reveal that which you would not reveal to us, even in the throes of your travails?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes it is easier to unburden oneself to a stranger.”
Suddenly I recalled that I had a gift for Lizzie. I let go her hand and smiled. “As it so happens, I have something for you. Call it payment, if you like.”
“What could that be, I wonder?” she asked.
I pushed my bolster aside and stepped down from the bed. I pulled out my trunk, opened it, and removed Jeb’s portrait. Then I walked into the kitchen, toward the sunlight that streamed into the window facing onto the sea. Lizzie followed with a puzzled expression. Martha remained in the parlor, with Johnny.
As I handed my sister-in-law the gift, I suddenly feared it might discomfit her. Portraits were expensive and not so common in those days. What’s more, to see one’s dead beloved could feel like seeing a ghost. But it was too late.
“What’s this, Eliza?” she asked, staring at the smooth convex glass above the oval portrait. She held it delicately in the palm of her hand, like an egg. I knew not her thoughts or feelings. But after gazing at it in the brilliant light of the sun, Lizzie closed her fingers upon the portrait and lifted it to her heart. She looked toward me, her eyes swimming in tears, and she said, “Thank you. Thank you, Eliza.”
“It belongs with you. You knew who he was.”
“Yes,” she said simply. Then, suddenly, Lizzie called to Martha, “Martha! Oh, Martha, come see my Jeb!”
Martha appeared at the entrance to the kitchen with the sleeping babe in her arms.
“Come. Look at the handsomest man in the world.” A handsome man at this time was a rare sight, one to be greatly savored. Carefully, Martha lifted the portrait and held it by the window. The sun illuminated its details: his fine face, his resolute blue eyes, his thick blond hair.
“He is handsome. He has a strong, intelligent face. Is this your brother?” Mar
tha turned to me.
“Yes. He was my brother, Jeb.”
Martha handed the portrait back to Lizzie. “Well, what he saw in her”—she thrust her thumb in Lizzie’s direction—“I know not.”
“Oh, you!” Lizzie said, charging at Martha. She knew Martha to be ticklish and went directly for her rib cage.
“Get away from me!” Martha cried, hunching over to protect her tender torso and Johnny, who started but did not wake. And they were soon happily laughing, cutting the heavy dolor of the moment with the bright citrus of youthful cheer.
Lizzie’s cottage was small, and Johnny and I were now its great spectacle. Indeed, we might have been Mary and baby Jesus in the holy crèche, so often did my new friends gaze upon us passing from kitchen to garden, or chamber to kitchen. We were the first thing they saw before dawn and the last thing they saw before mounting the stairs at night.
Beyond the cottage was a beautiful gray-blue crescent of sea. I had but to gaze out the kitchen window to see it there, across the dunes.
Within, the eye could feast as well: bushel upon bushel of apples. This bounty was due, apparently, to a certain Mr. Cleverly and his ingenious invention, a watering machine, which he had fashioned for Lizzie the previous summer while courting her. He then seemed to disappear, but my friends offered no further details, and the story trailed off.
“But did you love him, Lizzie?” I asked her one morning that first week of my recuperation. I was sitting up and nursing Johnny. It had now been three years since our Jeb had died, and the idea that Lizzie might come to love another did not seem unnatural.
“Mr. Cleverly was very attentive, very charming.”
“She didn’t love him,” Martha said, coming into the parlor. Lizzie set her bushel down and turned to Martha.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I just do.”
“Would you have agreed to marry him?” I inquired of Lizzie, switching Johnny to the other breast.
“I thought—”
“No,” Martha interrupted her. “I would not have allowed it.”
“Allowed, indeed!” Lizzie finally got a word in edgewise. “You see, Eliza. Martha truly believes she has the power to determine whom I marry.”
“I certainly do,” Martha replied without smiling. “I liked him not. Mr. Cleverly, that is.”
Lizzie shrugged her shoulders. “My servant liked not my suitor. There’s an end to it.”
Martha shot her a baleful look, and I laughed. The two women reminded me of an old married couple: quarrelsome, yet deeply intimate.
Two days later, on October 27, I received word from Mama that my father had died. Her note was terse and factual:
Your father is gone. I have no expectation of your returning for the funeral, which is set for this Friday. I have sent word to Uncle Robert.
The note was not signed. I took the inward blow of my dear Papa’s death in silence; all my tears had already been shed. However, I resolved to go to the funeral, though I doubted that I should be welcome at the house. Nonetheless, I wrote at once that I would come, and that, in case Mama was curious, I had two weeks earlier given birth to a healthy boy.
Lizzie wished I would not go. She feared that, under such infelicitous conditions, and without my babe, my milk would cease to flow. She insisted on having me practice a particular kind of massage to make my milk come in at regular intervals throughout the day.
“I shall write to Bessie and tell her to expect you,” she said. Bessie was Judge Lee’s old servant, who lived with Giles, a former family slave, in Lizzie’s ancestral home.
“I don’t know what Mama shall do when she sees me. I should like to stay at my home, if only to see Cassie.”
“Well, then, I’ll tell Bessie that possibly you’ll come.”
I thanked her warmly and then returned to the issue of my milk. “But it is most inconvenient to have milk dripping everywhere, at all hours,” I sighed.
“It’s inconvenient to have a child, especially when one is unwed,” Lizzie reminded me pointedly. “But I don’t hear you complaining about that.”
“No,” I admitted. “I have no regrets on that score.” I was entirely smitten with my little boy, who ate and slept so well, and complained so little. Though it had been but two weeks since Johnny had come into the world, I could no longer imagine life without him.
I had not as yet divulged the name of Johnny’s father to Lizzie or Martha, nor had they asked. The babe’s complexion had darkened slightly since his birth. My friends must have been dying of curiosity, but Lizzie merely said, “I think it best that, in your absence, we have a ready story for our inquisitive neighbors.”
“Something at least approximating the truth,” Martha added cagily.
I looked at them and sighed. “Well, you shall have your approximation.” I then proceeded to tell them everything: about my uncle Robert, and Colonel Langdon, and the shipyard on Badger’s Island. And I told them, at last, about Watkins, my handsome, prideful love, son of the governor and his slave. When I was finished, Lizzie looked at me with sincere puzzlement.
“Eliza,” she said, “I could not be more surprised.”
38
THREE WEEKS EARLIER, I HAD DREADED COMING to Braintree. Now, I dreaded leaving it. The only thought that gave me any comfort was that I would see my beloved Cassie.
Lizzie told me that while I was gone, she and Abigail were to have dinner with the Admiral d’Estaing at Colonel Quincy’s house.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“He’s a very great man. A French admiral, come to aid our army,” Martha explained.
“Who shall care for Johnny, then?”
“Oh, I shall be happy to. I wasn’t invited,” Martha replied.
Thursday afternoon, I paced the cottage in a state of dread. I had nothing to wear to my father’s funeral. Martha had an old black gown, the one she had been wearing when I first brought her to the farm, but it was far too small for me. Lizzie had none. “But only think, Eliza,” Lizzie said. “It’s November. The chapel shall be cold, and you shall have no reason to remove your cape.”
“But afterward,” I fretted, “Cassie will surely have made a tea or something back at the house.”
Lizzie considered. “Wait—does Colonel Quincy know of your father’s death? They were blood relations, were they not?”
“I don’t see how he would know. Mama would never write to him. They haven’t spoken in many years.”
“Well, don’t you think it might be proper that he know?”
“Lizzie.” I shook my head. “I’m in no state to make the acquaintance of the colonel.”
“Allow me to take care of this. All will be well. Trust me.” She placed a steadying hand on my forearm and smiled warmly.
Lizzie excused herself, and from the parlor window I soon saw her make her way in the wind and growing darkness, guided only by a sure knowledge of the path, to the Quincys’ house. I sighed and caressed my babe, who slept soundly, his thick eyelashes dewy with sleep.
About an hour later, I was startled to see Lizzie round the front of the house with a couple in tow. The man, portly and of medium height, in his mid fifties, wore a raccoon hat and hunting jacket. The woman wore a woolen cape with the hood up and a scarf across her face. She held something in her arms. In a moment, they all entered the cottage, stomping the cold off of them, removing their outer garments and hats. I stood up from the bed, readying myself for mortification, when the elderly couple ran to me, accosted me with hugs, and swarmed my child as if they were his long-lost grandparents. On the bed, without a word, Mrs. Quincy lay a fine black gown.
“What on earth did you say to them?” I asked Lizzie the following morning, as I readied myself to depart. The black dress fit me well, though I was obliged to don Lizzie’s stays and have her tie them fairly tight.
“Nothing,” she replied. We were in the parlor, awaiting the colonel’s carriage.
“Nothing? That cannot be.”
&n
bsp; “Well, almost nothing. Only that Jeb’s sister was lately arrived at our cottage from Portsmouth, that your father had died, and that you wished to go to his funeral. Colonel Quincy said he was very sorry to hear it, as, despite the rift, he had been fond of your father as a child. Indeed, he should have liked to attend the funeral, but Ann objected that his presence would by no means be a comfort to your mother.”
“Well, I suppose that is true enough. But, oh, it was very kind of them to visit with us, was it not?”
“That is their way,” Lizzie replied. “The colonel can be loud and blustery, but they both are most kind. They do not stand on ceremony.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“No, I don’t expect you would have,” Lizzie mused. “Braintree is a long way from Cambridge, or even Portsmouth. We are a true country village with all its bumps and warts.”
“But what did you tell them about Johnny?”
“I told them that, three weeks ago, I delivered you of a fine, healthy boy, and that circumstances required the father to remain in Portsmouth.”
“Circumstances—I suppose that covers a whole host of evils.”
“They asked not a single question, Eliza. Indeed, they were so excited to have a babe in their midst, they hardly cared who the mother or father were. They insisted on coming at once.”
I shook my head in grateful disbelief. The reactions, the sentiments of these Braintree people—how different from all I’d known before! They were as inhabitants of a distant planet, one I wished never to leave. With a kiss for Lizzie and Martha, one final smothering hug for my child, I was off in the colonel’s carriage.
The funeral was a grim affair. From it, I garnered no special consolation, particularly since Mama would not look at me. The service was out of doors, at the cemetery down the road to Watertown.
It hardly mattered. Papa’s friends had long since dispersed, and it was only myself, Cassie, and my mother. Uncle Robert had sent his condolences but said that he was not well enough to travel. I wondered what he meant by that but didn’t inquire of Mama.