by Lauren Groff
“…oh, let us pray now,” it was saying, “for she who is the child of our dear sister in Christ, Vivienne Upton, let us pray for her in this trying time in her life; not that her hardships fade and she lives a life free of them, for all men must have hardship; but rather that she learns from her travails, and that she feels the gentle grace of God’s bosom, through the gift of the light of Christ…”
By that time, my stunned eyes were able to understand what they were seeing in the living room. A circle of people in dull clothing, hands held, heads bent, all lit golden from the last sun. A pillowy white mess of a preacher, his gelled comb-over flapping like a hand as he prayed. My mother at the head of the circle, looking up at me, inscrutable. And everyone sitting in my living room was wearing the same heavy iron cross.
“What,” I said, interrupting the minister’s deep drone, “in the hell do you all think you’re doing?”
One old lady looked up at me, and though she had the sweet round cheeks of a grandma, a grandma’s marshmallowy hair, the fury in her expression was searing.
But nobody else opened their eyes and the minister didn’t stop, but, rather, hurried up so that his words elided; “and-keep-her-from-the-devil-and-give-her-strength-to-withstand-temptation-and-giveher-peace-in-the-name-of-Christ-our-Lord-Amen.”
“Amen,” said everyone, and looked up at me, beaming, save for Vi, who was gazing at her knees, avoiding me now.
“Vi?” I said. “What in the hell is this?”
The skim-milk minister rose to his feet and folded his fat white hands across his belly. “Wilhelmina,” he said, “we were giving you a gift. A prayer for your time of trouble, for your everlasting soul.”
“Oh, screw my everlasting soul,” I said.
One old lady gasped; one old man clucked and said, “Devil got your tongue, missy.”
“Screw the devil,” I said. “You don’t come into someone’s house and ambush them with prayers, not if they don’t believe in all that crap. You just don’t. This is insane.”
“Willie,” my mother snapped. “You’re being rude.”
“Rude?” I said, puffed and self-righteous. “Me? Well, Vivienne, I’m sorry, but rude is telling the whole town that your daughter’s a fuckup, Vivienne. Rude is forcing someone to be the beneficiary of a religion she finds insulting and the basis of everything that has gone wrong with the world. Vi, you were rude. You were the rude one. Not me.”
“Wilhelmina,” boomed the minister, pointing at me. “That is your mother you are addressing, and she deserves your respect. You should be ashamed.”
I stared at him so darkly that a hint of a flush came over his pasty face. “You,” I said, “are the one who should be ashamed. You are a nasty con artist. Now get your cult out of my house,” and I spun and slammed the door to the dining room, and then I slammed the door from the parlor to the hall, and then I slammed the door at the top of the stairs, and then I slammed the door of my room.
I forgot for a moment that I was twenty-eight; I felt thirteen again, wild and hormonal. I pitched the stuffed animals from the bassinet against the wall, one by one, where on impact they puffed out seventeen years of dust. When the Bible-beaters lingered in leaving, I punched my pillow so hard my hand seized up for a few days. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, and for the first time I saw that I was flushed prettily, back to my flashing, good-looking self. The stupidity of vanity at such a time. So silly. I gave a little low laugh.
It was unfortunate that my mother chose that moment to storm into my room. “Oh,” she said. “I’m so glad you find it hilarious to humiliate your mother in front of her friends.”
“Please,” I said. “You insane person. Of course you’re the put-upon one, aren’t you. When you’ve told the whole town that I slept with a married professor and have been visited with punishment for my adultery in the form of some godless heathen bastard. I should be apologizing to you, right?”
“Actually, yes. They were only being kind. And I never told anyone why you’re here.”
“Right. Out of nowhere, they felt compelled to say a prayer for me in my time of need. Because they had no idea I was in trouble.”
A ripple of—what was it? impatience? mirth?—came over Vi’s face. “Reverend John Melkovitch is a very spiritual man,” she said. “I’m sure he figured it out all by himself.”
I turned away from my mother, then, toward the flat lake. Although it was a fine, hot day, nobody was out; there were no motorboats, no Jet Skis, no swimmers at Fairy Springs or the country club that I could see. The lake seemed lackluster, moody.
“And about that Reverend Milky, anyway,” I said. “What a total creep. So bland and nasty. You can tell from a mile away he’s just a total phony. I’m disappointed in your choice of spiritual guides, Vi. As if you couldn’t choose some yogi or monk or anything more suited to who you are. I mean, a Christian Coalitioner! Probably doesn’t believe in Social Security or women’s rights. Probably thinks the best people I know are going to hell just because they don’t see the world in the same, narrow, revisionist sort of way that assholes like that do. I’m afraid you’ve been taken in, there, Vivienne. I’m afraid for you, really afraid.”
There was a long silence then and when my mother spoke, she was close to my ear and her voice was very low. “Well, that’s a shame,” she said. “Because he’s more than my minister, Willie. We’ve been dating for about nine months. Seriously. Just so you know.”
I was too stunned to say anything, and so she just turned triumphantly and stomped out the door. There, she said in her martyr’s voice, “Dinner will be at seven, Sunshine. Tomates farcis, your favorite,” and then she went out the door.
“Reverend Milky is so not your taste,” I called out, but she just heaved an enormous sigh and clomped down the stairs.
WHEN I CALLED Clarissa and the answering machine picked up, Hey, it’s Clarissa Evans and Sullivan Bird. Be brief but nice, I put on my best Nancy Drew voice, a WASP y chirp.
“The Mystery of the Miraculous Christian Transformation is suddenly revealed; call for your exciting new installment of Willie Upton, girl detective. I’ll be up all night doing genealogical questing and praying for a phone call from a certain dark, handsome Brit, so call at any time, and don’t be offended if I am at first disappointed. Love you both. Bye.”
I was lighthearted, almost ditzy, but when I hung up, I felt wrung out. And when I went downstairs for dinner, I ate my tomatoes before my mother even finished her prayer and took my glass of milk upstairs, to be alone. I had come home to become a child again. I was sick, heartbroken, worn down, teetering between either abortion or unplanned motherhood, and my mother was allowing me to act like a child. I was carrying on like a teenager, all hormones and grief. Though I was furious with her, there was a little tired piece of me that was grateful, relieved.
11
Hetty Averell
MOST TIMES, I can look at a man and see if I can run him. Most times I can, even ones who don’t look like any woman could. See it straight out in Duke. That day in Philadelphia he’s buying slaves to make Templeton, in the stinking slavehouse. Big, silent Mingo to help build things. Cuff, the Indian boy, to write for Duke. Duke can’t spell, and Cuff, he writes like the brightest angels in the sky.
Duke goes to the door with those two behind him. I put my eyes on him, I like his looks. Red hair under all that powder. Tall, built like a bull. Good, dark clothes like Quaker clothes, but I know he’s no real Quaker because no Quaker buys slaves. So I burn my eyes on him. He feels it. Turns around, slow-slow, looks at me. Got my shirt off and the men are examining my breasts and teeth and they are beautiful and my skin is shining like water. I am eighteen or twenty then and a beautiful girl. I’m not vain, it’s a truth. Already have two babies though they left back in Jamaica. I come at age ten, eleven from Africa to Jamaica, eighteen, twenty from Jamaica to Philadelphia. They sell me for having a long tongue but that is all lies. Truth is, my master, MacAdam, I
run him easy. Make him a rich man. When he dies Widow MacAdam don’t like me, puts a hot poker around my neck, one by one, makes me a pink necklace on my skin. Hate her then, but can’t say I blame her, running her man like I done.
That day, Duke don’t want to buy slaves but don’t have a choice, no good dentured servants anywhere. All is sickly, none have any skills. So he comes to the stinking slavehouse but not ready to buy humans, gets sick, almost leaves. But then he sees Cuff almost took by an evil-looking man. Duke sees the evil clear, that fat man licking those red lips at the pretty Indian boy. So Duke buys him. Has a son Cuff’s age, and I think it is because of Richard he buys Cuff. Then he sees Mingo, sees how he does good woodwork, buys him too. Thinking, I’m already a slaveowner, might as well get a house out of it. When he’s about to go, I burn my eyes on him. Turn him around. We look at each other and there’s a flash between us. He buys me.
Expect he’s lonely. Missus Temple, she refuses to come to Templeton, all rough as it is then. She has a life in Burlington, books and company and music and her father. Tell the truth, expect Missus don’t want Templeton at all. So many years Duke tries to get her to come and she says No. No, no, no. She’s afraid. But he’s lonely and works too much. Remarkable Prettybones the housekeeper can’t cook a whit, burns the porridge, burns the ham. I call her Remarkable Uglybones, that witch. I come and start to cook and Duke begins to get fatter again. Looks happier. I feel his eyes on me all day long.
Duke is a good man, I’ll grant. Struggles. Don’t touch me, not for a long time. And if he don’t touch me, I can’t run him, works that way. Magic like that. And in the beginning, Duke, he’s so busy he don’t even have time to touch me, selling land faster than a man could breathe, out all day surveying, riding to Albany, riding to Philadelphia, riding to his family in Burlington. But I run the house good. Cook good food, make a beautiful house. I like things neat-neat, clean as a Sunday morning. Mingo, he builds Temple Manor almost by his lonesome, huge and stone with a yellow roof. But I am the one to make it nice, the whitewash, the curtains, the varnish, though Remarkable takes the credit, that ugly skinny toad. I do the cooking, and even in famine with all the Templeton babies screaming for food, we always have food. I buy our meat from Davey up the hill, and Mingo, he catches fish. I catch fish with Mingo, too, but the one time I go with him in his little boat I seen a huge, bad thing deep in the water, and Mingo puts his hand on my leg and it is all I can do to fight him off and not tip into the water for whatever it is down deep, ready to eat me alive. Never again do I go, never again. Just because we’re both dark doesn’t mean I’m meant for Mingo I tell him. He leaves me be after that.
Even though I fill her belly, Remarkable is not my friend. She stares at me, suspicious. Brings that little angel Cuff on her side and makes him hate me, too. For some time, Cuff and me was friends, taught me to read a little. Words like water, apple, snake, horse. But Remarkable, she gets her hands on him, changes him. It hurts but I got a mean streak so I call him Little Poof. Your breakfast is ready, Little Poof. Go fetch some water, Little Poof. Turns out I tell the truth, cause a few years later he runs off with a traveling preacher-man and turns out to be a little poof, after all.
The day comes we move into the Manor. My room’s off the kitchen, and I know it’s coming. Duke is hungry, starving for it. Think may well be me as anyone, certainly won’t be Remarkable Uglybones, and anyways I can run him if it’s me. I oil my limbs, set the taper ready. There’s a knock on the door. I open and see Duke falling over himself, trembling, pale as a mealybug. I bring him in.
Tell the truth, I don’t like it. Never have. What I do like is the running. Making men do what I want. That, I like.
I run Duke so gentle he don’t see it. Need to do it that way for the menfolk think themselves bigger than anybody and you can’t threaten their bigness. I get him to make changes to Templeton, move the market to Second Street, not First, build the courthouse, build the icehouse down by the lake. For years I run him. The town is a big success. Marmaduke gets rich, then richer. Richest.
The day Jedediah Averell come into town on a donkey I see him, sweeping the porch, I see him, I take a long look at him. Not much to look at, all hunched and ugly, but I see the iron in his back, the strength of him and I say, Hetty, that man there’s going to be something. And I say, Hetty, you can run that man. Know it first look. Later Averell watches me wherever I go and I feel his eyes on me and I smile. I wait on him, though. Bide my time.
Though I’m careful, go to Aristabulus Mudge every month for herbs, I get with child. Bad news. Remarkable, she sees it immediate. She works on Cuff, and one day he puts my news in a letter Duke dictates for Missus Temple. Duke never reads the letters Cuff writes, account that Cuff is perfect in his writing, so he doesn’t know what’s in it. Duke signs his name, sends them off. He misses the mention of me, and I don’t even think Missus Temple even knows of me before that letter. And she’s in Burlington, she’s with child, too, with Jacob, and she reads this. Goes a little crazed, sets off that very day with her big son Richard, even though she’s eight months gone with a child that kicks her day in, day out. Hops into a carriage and off she goes, like a madwoman. Jostling for weeks over those pitted roads in hired hacks and wagons, sleeping on flea-bitten mattresses, chewing gristle and hardtack. She, a porcelain cup. A wonder she don’t break.
I know the Missus’s carriage is coming from a mile away, somehow, put on my pretty pink calico, tie my hair back. And she comes into the drive, her little face pale, round in surprise at the big house. First time she’s seen it, and I don’t know what she’s thinking all these years, maybe we live in the trees like the bears. But Duke, he comes running out of the house, joyous, shouting, and Richard, he jumps out to hug him, only fourteen and already so hairy, and Missus Temple, she pries herself out, fat with her baby, but so very tiny. I’m twice near as big as her. She’s a little wren. Could break in my fingers like a twig, though I never would do it to her. I pity her, somehow.
And I pity her still, even after she looks at me, eyes burning. Even after she walks around me in one circle, two, three. Even after she says, Marmaduke, I don’t want no slave in the house, though she don’t say it about Mingo or Cuff, just me. She says, Marmaduke, I don’t want no slave in my house. I am a Quaker, she says. Get rid of her. Today, get rid of this ugly wench today. And still I am not angry with her although I am not an ugly wench and she knows it, too.
So that day after my chores I slip up to see Duke in his study. Missus Temple collapsed, sleeps for two days entire, I’ll hear. Duke’s near to crying. Oh, Hetty, I’m so very sorry, he says. In the dark, with one taper, he looks older than he is.
I sit beside him. I say, Duke, no matter. You go on and give me to that tanner on Front Street, that Jedediah Averell. You’ll see. He’s a good man, he’ll marry me, even if I am black. I say, Oh, and Duke, careful. I say, Duke, take a look at the boy I am to have in a few months. You’ll see someone in him you love dear.
Duke, he’s both happy and sad, wants to set me up with my very own inn in Albany so that I can have his son. But I say no. No, Duke, Templeton’s mine, my own place. I have moved enough in this hard life. I’ll be nobody’s slave in a week, I’ll be a wife. In one week, you’ll see. A wife.
Next day I go to Averell with all my things tied in an apron. Knock at the door. He’s working in the tannery in the back by the lake, and the terrible strong smell there has made his eyes water. He looks up with his water-eyes, turns red. I say to him, Judge Temple is giving me to you. I’m yours, I say. I say this and smile in his eyes.
In a week, I run him. In two I’m a married woman. The day my son comes, five months too soon for Jedediah, he holds the big boy in his arms. He looks into the pale face, the red hair. He sees the one eyeball gone untied in the boy’s head. How it wanders, and maybe Jedediah thinks of his own hunchback and maybe he loves the boy for the eyeball before loving him for who he is. And I see that Jedediah don’t care if the boy’s not his, or if
he does, he don’t even think it to himself. Instead, he tries to name him. All night, trying out names. Adam, says he, Aaron. Methuselah, says he. Jesus, says he, laughing. At last, I’m tired out. Midwife Bledsoe, she’s cleaned up and gone, Remarkable’s come and gone, left gifts, probably poisoned, and I have the baby in my arms. I say, oh Jedediah. What’s bigger than big. Bigger than anyone in this little town. President, I say. Emperor. Governor.
My husband looks at me, smiles. Says, Guvnor, that’s a good name. We’ll name him Guvnor, and that’s what he writes in the fat Bible. Guvnor Averell, Born The twentythird Of January, 1790.
Later, when Guvnor grows, I am careful-careful. I tell him my own mother was made with child by her redhead master, though it is not true, though she is an African lady and my father is an African man with two round black cheeks and I remember both in the dust and heat, she in her wrap, he chewing something and smiling at me. I tell Guvnor a redhead skips from grandfather to child always. I tell him he is so smart because I am so smart and he is finer than anyone in this town, than anybody in the world. He is a good boy, he is so laughing and strong, so brave, nobody teases him for his dark skin.
I do not know if he finds anything out, or how, if he does. But I do know that one day, when he is ten, he comes home and he does not look at me anymore. He does not embrace me. His face folds in anger. And that is the day he begins to save his coins, to buy up land. And my own mother’s heart is cleft in two, cause that is the day I lose my son. Gone from me, he is that day, gone from me, my boy, for good.
12
Cowboy Faces
THE WEEK AFTER the monster left, Templeton slipped into August. We all dreamt of the beast, its long-fingered hands, its delicate neck. We imagined ourselves lodged in its ancient brain, saw the dark water before us as it swam so fast in the cold depths. The leaf-thin shimmy of the moon through all that water. The glacier still slowly melting at the bottom of the lake, glowing phosphorescent blue. Those who loved Templeton felt the monster’s loss like a phantom limb, still aching.