The Unforgiven

by Irina Shapiro

  “I failed you, Maddy.”

  “You didn’t,” Madeline protested.

  “I did. I should’a been honest with you. I should’a warned you. I knew what Besson men were like, and I kept silent, thinking George wouldn’t come after you. Don’t think there’s no Besson bastards in them huts. My Corinne wasn’t the only one, but she be the only one that came out white.”

  “I was horrible to you,” Madeline said. “There’s no excuse for that.”

  “Think no more on it, child. You’s my flesh and blood, and listening to your ramblings is the least I can do. You’ve a right to be angry, and you’ve a right to be hurt. Just don’t let your anger rule your heart. Let it go, Maddy. Be free.”

  “That might take some time,” Madeline replied.

  “You’s got time. You’s young.”

  “I don’t feel young,” Madeline said sadly.

  Mammy just nodded. She understood.

  Chapter 43

  June 1859

  Louisiana Bayou

  The oil lamp glowed brightly, casting a pool of golden light that didn’t extend to the corners. The night outside was dark and filled with sounds of the bayou. Madeline usually found them sinister as she lay in her bed at night, trying to get to sleep, but tonight the chorus of cicadas or the loud splash of a gator sliding into the water didn’t trouble her. She was filling the bayou with a new kind of sound, the hoarse screams of a woman in prolonged labor. Her shift was soaked through with sweat and her damp hair felt hot on her neck. Mammy’s round face glistened with perspiration and she’d undressed down to her undergarments, unable to bear the suffocating humidity of the bayou in the summer.

  “I’m scared, Mammy,” Madeline wailed as another contraction tore through her exhausted body. She’d been in labor for two solid days, but was no closer to bringing the child into the world. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “I know, child,” Mammy said in her best soothing voice. “No woman wants to do it, but there ain’t no going back now.”

  Tears rolled down Madeline’s cheeks. She’d never been so scared in her life. Her body seemed to have turned on her, the pain of the contractions so visceral that it obliterated every thought from her mind, but how could she make it stop? Mammy had said the baby hadn’t descended into the birth canal yet, but it felt like a huge boulder had lodged between her hip bones and was pushing them apart with merciless persistence.

  “My bones will break,” Madeline cried. “I can feel them cracking.”

  “I’ve seen many a woman give birth, and no one suffered broken bones,” Mammy replied.

  “I’ll be the first.”

  “You remember this pain before you lie with a man again.”

  “I want to die!” Madeline screamed as a new contraction rolled over her. “Just let me die.”

  “Ain’t no one’s going to die,” Mammy said firmly. “Not today. Now stop carrying on like a little girl. You’re a woman now, like it or not, and you’s got to get this baby out before it dies in your womb. Time to push.”

  “Push what?”

  “Gather all your strength and bear down.”

  “I don’t want to,” Madeline cried. “It’ll hurt more.”

  “You want this child out or not?” Mammy demanded as she positioned herself above Madeline’s stomach. “You push and I’ll press on your belly to help it along.”

  Madeline did as she was told. She felt like her eyes would pop out of her head from the internal pressure this created, but she did it again and again, desperate to expel the infant from her body.

  “Once more now,” Mammy said, her voice calm and authoritative. “The head’s out.”

  “I can’t. I just can’t.”

  “You can and you will. Do it.”

  Madeline gathered what was left of her strength and pushed. The baby slid into Mammy’s waiting hands and Madeline slumped back on the pillows, grateful the ordeal was finally over. She could barely feel her nether regions and she was sure she’d soiled herself while pushing. Mammy didn’t seem concerned. She used her cooking knife to slice through the slimy cord that connected the baby to its mother and set the knife aside. She held up the child for Madeline to see before taking him over to the table where towels, a blanket, and a basin full of warm water awaited his arrival. He began to cry. It wasn’t the thin wail Madeline had expected of a newborn, but a loud, lusty cry that jerked Madeline out of her stupor.

  “He’s a big one. A fine, healthy boy,” Mammy said as she cleaned the child, wrapped him in a thin blanket and handed him to Madeline.

  Madeline held her son carefully and gazed into his face. He was red and wrinkly, his eyes shut tight against the morning light that had begun to creep into the shadowy corners of the cabin, dispelling the darkness. Dark blond fuzz covered his head, and a small hand pushed its way out of the wrapping, the fingers curled into a tight fist.

  “He looks like George,” Madeline whispered, amazed that they’d made this little person together.

  “That he does,” Mammy agreed, frowning with disapproval. “He’ll be a proud daddy, that’s for sho.”

  Madeline hadn’t been sure how she’d feel once she saw the baby, but now that he was here, and he was a boy, pride overwhelmed her. She’d given George what Amelia couldn’t, a healthy son. And she wanted to be there to see him grow, to take his first steps and say his first words. She wanted to see the joy on George’s face when he beheld his son for the first time, and bask in the warmth of his approval. Maybe once George saw their baby, he’d love Madeline again. He’d set Amelia aside for the mother of his child. Amelia would be all right; George would see to that. He would provide for her and make sure she wanted for nothing. Why should Madeline be the one set aside when she’d been able to do the one thing Amelia couldn’t?

  “Mammy, what if I…?”

  “No!” Don’t even think such things. This baby is for them, the next one for you.”

  Madeline slumped over the baby, hot tears falling on his tiny face. “I don’t want to give him up. He’s a part of me.”

  “Do you love him?” Mammy asked. She stood over Madeline, hands on hips. For a moment, Madeline had forgotten that this child was Mammy’s great-grandchild, but then she saw a momentary softening of Mammy’s gaze. She loved him too, in her own way.

  “Yes,” Madeline sobbed. “I love him more than I thought I ever could.”

  “Then do what’s best for him.”

  Madeline nodded, tears still falling. “I want to name him.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because naming him is laying a claim to him, and you ain’t got no claim. They will name him.”

  “Mammy, how can you be so cruel?”

  “I’m not cruel. It’s life that’s cruel, and nature. It’s always the women that suffer.” Mammy sat on the bed next to Madeline and pulled the sobbing girl to her bosom. “This will make you stronger, Madeline. This will make you wiser. This will make you more cunning. This a hard lesson to learn, my girl, but you can’t trust no one in this world. Everybody wants something, and if you let them, they’ll trample you beneath their feet to get it.”

  “Oh, Mammy, do you really think that’s what George did?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t his intention to hurt you, Maddy, but that’s what he done. It weren’t Jean’s intention to hurt me neither, but he near ruined my life. Had Sybil had her way, she’d have sold my girl to punish me. She’d have had me whipped till strips of skin was hanging off my back, and still she wouldn’t have been satisfied. Jean forbade her to hurt me, but I could never feel safe. I cried for days when he passed, terrified of what she’d do to me and my children.”

  “But she didn’t do anything,” Madeline replied.

  “No, your father wouldn’t have let her. But he ain’t here now.” Mammy held out her hands and took the child from Madeline. “You sleep now. You need your rest. I will look after the boy.”

  Madeline lay back. Exhaustion dr
agged her along and swept her under like a powerful current and she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 44

  For the next few days, Mammy allowed Madeline as little contact with the child as possible. She kept him in her own cot and took him away as soon as Madeline fed him. Mammy referred to the baby only as ‘the Boy’ and refused to engage in any conversations about a future in which Madeline got to be his mother.

  Madeline still felt exhausted and bruised, and her body did things she hadn’t expected it to. She’d thought that giving birth would be the end of her ordeal, but she’d been wrong. Her breasts were engorged with milk and painful to the touch. She’d even had a touch of fever when the milk started to come in, and sweat so profusely that Mammy had to keep washing out her shifts and handing her clean ones before they even had a chance to dry out. She was still bleeding, and her belly felt like a sagging sail after the wind had died, leaving the fabric to hang limply off the mast. Mammy said her body would return to normal, but it needed time, and the help of a tight corset.

  “No, Mammy, not yet,” Madeline pleaded. “I can’t bear it. And it’s too hot.”

  Mammy shook her head. “You want to get your figure back or not?”

  “Yes, but I’m still so uncomfortable.”

  “No one said birthing children was a comfortable business,” Mammy countered. “The sooner you back to normal, the sooner you can go.”

  But Madeline didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay. The thought of never seeing her son again filled her with such unbearable pain that she pushed it away, again and again, refusing to even picture a future in which he wasn’t with her.

  “Mammy, let me hold him,” Madeline pleaded, but Mammy refused.

  “It’ll only be harder to let him go.”

  “Mammy, please.”

  “He ain’t yours to hold,” Mammy reminded her cruelly.

  Madeline turned her face to the wall and wept. She knew Mammy was only trying to protect her, but her heart longed for the child, and her arms stretched out to him whenever Mammy brought him for a feeding. Madeline studied him as he suckled at her breast, his cheeks puffing out in a way that would have been funny if it didn’t break her heart to know that once Sybil learned of the birth, she’d never hold her baby again.

  Madeline secretly named him George. She hated George for abandoning her, but she still stubbornly believed he had loved her. He was just too weak to stand up to his grandmother, who’d dominated him all his life. Madeline would see George once she went back to the plantation, and then all would be resolved between them. They would not be lovers again, but perhaps they could still be friends, and maybe he would allow her to be a part of their son’s life. He had the power to do that, surely.

  Sybil came three days after the birth, alerted by Joe, who had visited every other day over the past two weeks to check on Madeline. Mammy had sent him away with strict instructions not to say anything to Sybil until after the baby came. She hadn’t wanted Sybil anywhere near Madeline during the birth. She couldn’t do much to help her granddaughter, but she could help her in this. Birthing was a harrowing enough business without someone hovering nearby, ready to snatch up the child as soon as it came into the world, and Madeline needed a few days to recover, and to come to terms with what was about to happen—not that she ever would.

  Seeing the baby and holding him in her arms had undone all the careful work Mammy put in, talking to Madeline and trying to get her excited about the future she could build for herself away from Arabella. But Madeline was like any other woman, besotted with her newborn child, and utterly ruled by her emotions. Had she not cared for George, it might have been easier for her to turn her back on her infant, but Madeline loved George with all the innocent passion her still-childish heart could muster, and believed that somehow he would make things right despite evidence to the contrary.

  Mammy and Madeline were sitting outside, the baby asleep in Mammy’s arms, when Sybil arrived. He was completely unaware of anything but his own needs, which at that moment were all happily fulfilled. Sybil’s expression softened for a brief moment as she beheld her great-grandchild. Perhaps he reminded her of George when he was an infant, or perhaps she was relieved to finally have the heir she’d prayed for. The future of the plantation was secure, so she could rest easy and enjoy the fruits of her labors.

  “Well done, Madeline,” Sybil said. “He’s a fine boy.”

  “What now, Madame Besson?” Mammy asked, staring Sybil squarely in the face.

  Sybil looked from Mammy to Madeline, as though gaging the level of hostility before replying. “You two will remain here until Madeline is fully recovered. You will bind Madeline’s breasts immediately to stop the milk. Once she is ready, she will return to the plantation and accept a proposal of marriage from Gilbert Montlake, who’s been eagerly awaiting her return. A house in New Orleans has been rented, and Madeline will reside there, with myself as a chaperone, for the duration of the engagement, which will be mercifully short. If anyone questions this arrangement, we will simply tell them it’s more convenient to plan a wedding in New Orleans. After the wedding, which will be lavish, Madeline will move in with her husband’s family, as is proper. During her sojourn at Arabella, she will have no dealings with either George or the child. George has already agreed to these terms, as has Amelia. Madeline, I’ll need your word that you will honor these conditions.”

  “And if I don’t?” Madeline asked. She felt Mammy tense beside her, but she couldn’t help her defiance. Her whole life had been laid out for her, all the players given their lines, and the stage set for the final performance—her wedding to Gilbert, who had about as much sense as a lamb being led to slaughter.

  “If you don’t, you will be cast out without a penny to your name. Do you find that alternative preferable to a life of luxury and comfort with a man who adores you?”

  “He hardly knows me—the real me,” Madeline retorted.

  “All a man needs to know when getting married is that he’s anxious to bed his bride, and believe me, Gilbert can’t wait to get you in his bed. His father made sure he’s well prepared for the occasion,” Sybil added with a knowing smirk.

  “You mean he’s been taking him to brothels, and partaking himself,” Madeline stated. “I wonder how Mrs. Montlake feels about that.”

  Sybil’s eyes widened in surprise. “There’s nothing wrong with a man satisfying his needs, Madeline. You will learn to turn a blind eye, as all wives do.”

  “You mean as you did,” Madeline taunted. Some inner voice told her to be quiet, to apologize, but she couldn’t stop. She was shaking with helpless rage. If she didn’t say something now, her baby would be lost to her forever. This was her only chance, her only hope. She knew she had no right to insult Sybil. Sybil wasn’t the one who had lain with a married man and borne his child. She was only trying to protect the family and offer Madeline’s child a brighter future, but Madeline was so overwhelmed by her emotions that she couldn’t and wouldn’t think straight.

  Sybil stared at Madeline, her mouth opening in shock as her gaze turned to Mammy. Sybil looked murderous, but didn’t say a word. Instead, she held out her arms.

  Mammy handed over the baby with some reluctance. “He’ll be hungry soon,” she said.

  “I’ve already found a nursemaid for him. She’ll be honored to suckle Miss Amelia’s son,” Sybil replied. Madeline’s anger was all bluster, as far as Sybil was concerned, and she chose not to engage in an argument that she’d felt she already won.

  “Everyone will know he’s mine,” Madeline cried.

  “No, they won’t. The only people who know the truth are Bette, Cissy, and Joe, and if they breathe a word of it to anyone they know there’ll be hell to pay. Amelia is in her bedroom even as we speak, ready to exchange the pillow beneath her petticoat for a live baby. We will then announce the joyous news to the world,” Sybil said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  Sybil carefully handed the baby to Joe. �
��Get him settled in the boat,” she barked.

  Joe put the sleeping child into a Moses basket that was lined with clean linen and padded with a soft blanket, and positioned it in the center of the canoe where it couldn’t tip over.

  “Joe will come for you next week, Madeline, by which time I hope you will have seen sense,” Sybil said. She was about to leave when Madeline grabbed her by the arm, forestalling her.

  “That child is mine, and I won’t let you take him away from me. I have no intention of marrying Gilbert Montlake, nor will I stand by and allow Amelia to claim my baby. My heart goes out to her. Only now that I’ve had my own baby can I even begin to comprehend her pain, but it’s not for me to save her from it. You will tell George to obtain a divorce. And if you don’t, I will tell everyone what I know.”

  “And what might that be?” Sybil asked, yanking her arm out of Madeline’s grasp.

  “I’ll tell them your son married his own sister, who was the daughter of a slave. You will be disgraced, and all doors will slam in your face.”

  Sybil turned to Mammy, her face white to the roots of her hair. Her eyes narrowed to mere slits, and her breath came in shuddering gasps.

  “I hated you,” Sybil spat out. “I lay in bed every night thinking up new ways to hurt you. I would have had you flogged until your skin hung off your back in ribbons of bloody flesh. I would have sold your children. I would have plunged a knife in your heart and watched the lifeblood drain out of your body,” Sybil sputtered. “But I didn’t. Do you know why? Because deep down, I knew you had no choice. My husband wanted you, and he had you. You were as much a victim as I was.”

  “Madam…” Mammy began, but Sybil held up a finger to silence her.

  “I brought Corinne into the house to shame him, to torment him with guilt, but he didn’t care. She was nothing to him; just another slave girl to pour him coffee and shine his boots. I didn’t punish Jean; I punished myself. I lost my son,” Sybil cried. “I lost the person I loved most in the world.”