The Abandoned Heart

by Laura Benedict

  The sun shone on the house’s warm yellow brick, and construction activity around the house spoke of beauties to come: a garden with trees and flowers, and the beginnings of a garden wall. A secret garden, perhaps, like the ones she’d heard of hidden behind the walls of the great houses of Nagasaki, and the temples outside the city. She saw herself walking in such a garden, kneeling by the water, watching fish, the way she had as a child.

  Though Randolph had told her that the house wasn’t quite ready to move into, that it would take another couple of months, to Kiku the house looked finished. Finished and forbidding. Its black-framed windows were like rows of watching eyes, and the strange gray roof that hung over the house’s top floor reminded her of the protective shikoro of a samurai’s helmet. A set of stairs clung to the garden side of the house and led all the way to the topmost floor. Just the thought of climbing them made her feel dizzy. Who would use such stairs? Was Randolph so unfriendly that he would make visitors come in that way? She felt a strong, disturbing presence when she looked at the house, and she saw that the workmen, with their hunched shoulders and purposeful movements, sensed it as well.

  In fact, the house itself looked unfriendly, the way it stood alone against the sky. Madame Jewel had told her that Randolph’s second name, Bliss, meant “happy.” But this was not a happy house. She was glad now that she most likely would not be living inside it, and would be sure to watch it very carefully.

  Despite the sunshine, a film of gray gathered and descended over the scene of the workmen and the big house. At first she thought she was about to faint, the way she had the first time Madame Jewel had laced her into a corset. But the gray wasn’t in her head. It was a living thing, resting on the house and the men like a silvery shroud that moved with them like gossamer silk. Like a clinging, suffocating death.

  The tiny, heart-shaped flower she had been unconsciously fingering broke away from its stem, and she held it to her face to see that the petal had bruised and darkened like wounded flesh. Sickened and ashamed, she flung the ruined blossom away and rose from the ground to hurry back to the cottage.

  Chapter 7

  KIKU

  August 1878

  “You don’t look like much. Mason says you don’t talk.”

  Kiku had arrived back at the cottage, breathless with hurrying, her mind filled with death. Her own? She knew that with Randolph, someday she might actually be praying for her own death.

  The dark-skinned woman in the cottage kitchen came forward to examine Kiku more closely, her arms crossed below her bosom. Her simple yellow cotton dress, which was covered with small blue blossoms, hung neatly from her shapely hips, its waist nipped in as pointedly as Kiku’s own. She moved without hesitation, and though her clunky boots were loud on the cottage floor, she moved with grace. For the briefest of moments Kiku wondered if this might be Randolph’s wife, but Madame Jewel had led her to believe that Randolph’s wife was a grand lady who wore jewels and furs (but perhaps not in summer, not in Virginia?) and rode everywhere in a carriage drawn by four enormous horses. And she had seen many dark-skinned women in New York walking with white men, but when she glanced at this woman’s hands, she saw that they were rough. She did not seem like the sort of woman Randolph would marry.

  Catching her glance, the woman grimaced and slipped her hands beneath her folded arms so that Kiku could no longer see them.

  “Is that true? Don’t you talk? Maybe you just don’t speak English.” She took a step back, narrowing her alert brown eyes. “Maybe you just fuck.”

  Kiku understood that the woman meant to insult her. She stared back, saying nothing. It didn’t seem unreasonable to her. She hadn’t come here expecting friends. She hadn’t dared to hope that she would find kindness in this forsaken wilderness. Once she had been good at catching gray crabs on the beach and keeping her younger brother and sisters from trouble while her mother did her work. But now she had learned new things. Distasteful things that she sometimes watched herself do from another part of the room, as though it were another girl doing them.

  She held her breath, waiting for the woman to begin berating her. Instead, the woman shrugged and turned away, so that Kiku could see the sprig of tiny yellow flowers tucked into her low chignon.

  “Makes no difference to me whether you talk, but I’d hoped for better. Mason’s too quiet, like living with a ghost some days, those days when he gets home before I go to bed. That’s not often.” Kiku caught a glimpse of the mannish boots beneath her dress as she moved to the stove, on which sat another towel-covered bowl, like the one that had been there the night before. “Mister Bliss . . .”

  The terse, unpleasant way she said his name—as though she could not say it quickly enough, as though she didn’t want it on her tongue—made Kiku look at her retreating back more closely. Again she appraised the woman’s figure. Randolph had preferred Kiku over all the other girls, dark-skinned or light, at Madame Jewel’s, but maybe she’d been wrong in thinking Randolph wouldn’t have lain with this woman. Mason’s wife.

  “He likes his people to be available to him night and day.” She turned to look at Kiku again, and this time Kiku thought she saw a glimmer of pity in her eyes.

  “Yes.” Kiku’s voice stayed at a whisper.

  The woman smiled.

  “You are a strange little thing. How old are you? Who cut your hair like that?”

  Kiku put her hand to her shortened hair. As she had dressed, not an hour before, she had tried to pin her hair into some kind of shape, but it was too short. Looking in the mirror, she felt she looked like a boy wearing women’s clothes.

  “Do you know how to use the stove? Can you cook?”

  Kiku shook her head.

  They both turned at the sound of a carriage and horses coming around the front of the house. Kiku felt the blood rush from her face and felt once again that she might faint. She had never gotten the water she had come to the kitchen for. The pitcher was still empty because she hadn’t filled it.

  Why this fear? Why this feeling of death?

  “Did you know he was coming here this morning?”

  “No.”

  The woman didn’t look afraid, but only perturbed.

  “Looks like Mason’s with him.” She paused and added, “Thank God. I can’t stand that man on my own too early in the morning.” She spoke hurriedly about the food on the stove, but before she could finish, Kiku heard Randolph’s heavy tread on the porch stairs.

  “Kiku! Where are you?”

  Randolph looked larger here in the small cottage, larger even than he had that first night he’d come to her in the Red Room at Madame Jewel’s. His skin had been tinged with yellow, as though he had been ill for a long time. Now his cheeks were ruddy with sunshine. If he had been another man, she might have thought him handsome.

  But Randolph Bliss was not handsome, and try as she might to imagine him as Madame Jewel had told her to imagine him, she couldn’t. She could only see the cruelty and shrewdness in his eyes. Greedy eyes.

  “I am here.” She bowed so that her shorn black hair hung about her cheeks. “Sir,” she added. This for the benefit of the woman. See, she seemed to say. This is why I am here. This will keep me alive. What will keep you alive?

  “You’re dressed, I see. Settled?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “Please see to this, Kiku.” As he handed her a low brown hat that she’d never seen him wear before, he nodded to the woman as though it were the most natural thing in the world to see her there. “Odette! Mason said you were available to help my young ward acclimate herself to her new home, and for that you have my great thanks.”

  Kiku was glad to hear the woman’s name. Mason had, perhaps, told her, but she had forgotten.

  Odette nodded, her voice subdued. “Yes, Mister Bliss. I’ll see that she fares well as best I’m able.”

  “Fine. That’s just fine.” He inclined his head toward the kitchen door. “Please assist Mason with the provisions. There’s a good girl.” He beamed on
her, and Kiku found his unusually broad smile chilling. His teeth were perfect. He was as vain about them as he was his hair.

  Kiku held the hat in both hands, uncertain exactly where to put it. Odette slipped past her, her boots less noisy on the floor now; she seemed shy in Randolph’s presence, which surprised Kiku. Perhaps it was not so surprising. Although Odette had seemed bold when they were alone, Kiku had yet to meet the person who did not seem to feel uncomfortable, or at least somewhat diminished, in his presence.

  When the front door closed behind her, Randolph sighed. “Stupid woman. She should know better than to come and go through the front door. You’re the mistress here, my dear.” He pointed at her. “You will need to admonish her.”

  Kiku almost laughed, but quickly covered her mouth. He was telling her that she should give orders to Odette? She had never given orders to anyone, except to her younger brother and sisters.

  “Put the hat on the table beside the door. Stop standing there like you don’t have a brain in your head. You’re not the employee of that shrew, Bernadette Jewel, anymore.”

  What am I to be now, Randolph?

  She hurried to set the hat on the table. Niall, the Irish boy at Madame Jewel’s, had always seen to the gentlemen’s hats and coats, brushing and cleaning them if required. He kept them in a little room beside the hall, hidden away, so that the gentlemen who visited would not see the belongings of some friend, acquaintance, or even family member. Madame Jewel was very discreet.

  “The Virginia air suits you.” When she returned to him, Randolph took her chin in his hand and turned her head side to side. “What’s this in your hair?” He touched the locks of hair covering her ear and she froze. His face changed, and he flung something away with his hand.

  Kiku looked down to see a silver and blue dragonfly casting about the floor, trying to right itself.

  Randolph mashed the thing under his boot. “Filthy bugs.” He looked back down at her. She held his gaze for just a moment, but could only think of the poor crushed dragonfly. Dragonflies were good luck. It was the only one she had seen since leaving the village, and now it was dead.

  “You’ve been outside.”

  Kiku nodded, taken off her guard. He had said nothing to her about not leaving the cottage, but perhaps she should have known. Still, she tested him. “It is a fine day. Am I not allowed?”

  He threw his head back and laughed, again showing his perfect teeth. “Not allowed? As long as you stay within shouting distance, roam as you like. But stay away from the house.” He lowered his voice. “And the men. You’re not for them. Old habits, eh?” His grin was wry and suggestive.

  Then I will not be used by all the men.

  The idea that she might be given at some point to the men had flitted through her mind when she had first seen them outside the big house, but the idea had been so terrible that she hadn’t followed it far.

  The front door opened, and Odette started in with a stack of boxes that reached her chin. Mason stood just outside.

  “Tell her.” Randolph didn’t bother to lower his voice. “You are mistress of this house.”

  It occurred to Kiku to say that if she was the mistress, then she, like her mother in the house in which she had grown up, or like Madame Jewel, had say as to who could come and go and through what doors. But she was not really the house’s mistress. It was only Randolph’s game.

  Kiku gathered herself and crossed to the front door. Her instinct was to help Odette with the boxes, but she checked her actions.

  “You must come in the back door. Please.”

  Odette glanced from Kiku to Randolph and back.

  “I will next time. Let me just put these down.”

  Randolph gave a little cough.

  “You must go out now, and come in the back.” Kiku felt her voice waver, but the heat of Randolph’s cruelty was like a great beast at her back. At least for now, obeying him was what would keep her alive.

  Odette’s lips parted, and Kiku was sure she was going to argue.

  Please, please don’t.

  Then Odette closed her mouth and turned without a word. Beyond her, Mason looked angry, his kind eyes no longer kind as he watched his wife cross the porch. Kiku shut the door, her heart pounding. She could hear Mason grumbling at his wife.

  “What are you trying to do, woman? What did I tell you?”

  Kiku couldn’t hear Odette’s retort, but only the irritated tone.

  When she turned back to Randolph, he was nodding. “Well done.”

  Chapter 8

  LUCY

  June 1899

  The arrival of Hannah Tanner, the infamous female preacher and daughter of famed Pennsylvania abolitionist E. L. Tanner, wasn’t announced with posters or handbills in Old Gate, but word quickly spread that the meeting would happen on Thursday, and Lucy knew she would go to hear her. Hannah and her followers, the Tannerites, were zealous Christians, but were better known for their spontaneous demonstrations for the rights of working women and children. Lucy had thought a lot about the travails of the poor and prayed for them often. But she also knew that her father would forbid her if he caught wind of her plan, which made it all the more likely that she would find a way to go. He could not be allowed to persist at running her life.

  Though the national church had quieted its criticism of women who had the temerity to preach the gospel, they didn’t interfere with the local priest’s preferences. Her father very much believed Paul’s admonition from 1 Timothy: “But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” Her mother, of course, maintained her own neutral silence on the subject. Lucy didn’t see why a woman shouldn’t preach, though female preachers had the reputation of being as dull as nuns and sometimes were even known to wear pants (Hannah Tanner was said to smoke, but not wear mannish clothing). Lucy had visited the country home of a friend near Boston, and as a lark they had attended a camp meeting that featured two woman preachers. She had been struck by the energy of the crowd of faithful, and if she had flirted with a boy from the next county over, and let him kiss her in the darkness as a simple late night supper of bread and soup dished from a large kettle over the fire was served inside the tent, it didn’t mean that she was not still a good Episcopalian. So she had spent all of Wednesday excited about Hannah Tanner’s appearance. But the biggest attraction was, of course, that Hannah Tanner would be speaking in the theater at Bliss House.

  Faye complained that nothing bored her more than preaching, and that women preachers were always worse than men.

  “Most of them are so ugly, they only preach because they couldn’t get someone to marry them. But I know why you want to go. You can’t fool me, Lucy Valentine Searle!” A month had passed since the Walpurgisnacht party, and though Faye’s parents were perfectly happy to have Josiah as a guest at their house, or for Faye to dine at Bliss House with him, Lucy had no such permission or excuse to go to the big house outside town.

  The passage of weeks since she had been to Bliss House hadn’t dimmed her thoughts of that night. At any given moment, she found herself remembering the touch of Randolph’s hands on her skin. No man had touched her before with such solicitude. She had felt like a woman, and no longer a child. He hadn’t shown up in church the following Sunday, but he had in later weeks, and they had greeted each other no differently than they had before they had danced, naked, around the Maypole.

  Even now the thought of that dance, of the nakedness of people she saw clothed on the street in Old Gate, caused her to flush so that her mother would ask her if she felt ill.

  Ill! In fact, she felt something that was quite the opposite of ill. She felt alive. She felt as though that aliveness might flow out of her, covering all that she touched. She felt she could live forever in the memory of that night, even though she knew her parents would have her be ashamed.

  In the pure light of Sunday morning services, she saw that Randolph definitely was not a young man. Yet when she thought of him,
she did not think of him in church, but in Bliss House. With a certainty and boldness she didn’t recognize in herself, she saw herself sitting at the long Chippendale table in the dining room with him, walking in Bliss House’s beautiful, well-kept gardens. Saw herself in one of the bedrooms she had seen others enter so carelessly, eager to touch each other, to taste, to breathe in the very scent of each other.

  “You don’t even mind that he’s old, do you? You’re so strange, Lucy. Josiah says I’m being silly, but I do believe you very much want to spend time again with Randolph.”

  When Lucy flushed, Faye laughed and clapped her hands. “You’re delicious. Oh, your father is going to want to lock you up in a nunnery!”

  After they had left Bliss House together, Faye had commented that Lucy and Randolph had looked very cozy when she and Josiah had come into the salon. Lucy had been reticent, but Faye knew her well enough to push further. Lucy told her that she wasn’t quite sure how she felt about Randolph. It was a lie. She knew very well that she couldn’t wait to see him again. Within two days, Josiah reported to Faye that Randolph had hinted that he would very much like to see Lucy again.

  “It’s just a visiting preacher, Faye. Stop it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ve half a mind to go so I can watch you. What would you say to that?”

  Lucy shook her head. “I’d say I don’t care. Do as you please.” Inside, though, she was hoping against hope that Faye wouldn’t come. She was self-conscious, and she felt like she couldn’t bear to have Faye watching her, making assumptions. It wasn’t even as though she had a desire to go to Bliss House. It felt like a need. It felt like there was some special sort of air there that she, and she alone, should breathe. Faye couldn’t be expected to understand.