“But—” I stopped.
“Yes?”
“I—um, forgive me. I don’t think I—” If I had to go down in that basement alone in the dark, I would die of fright.
“What?” he asked.
“I haven’t been down to the kitchen yet. I’m afraid I’ll…trip.”
He pointed behind me. “Just lower the dishes in the dumbwaiter. Get them tomorrow.”
My eyes followed the direction of his finger to the shaft built into the wall with a pulley mechanism for transporting items to and from the basement. “Oh, thank you.”
He left without responding.
While I placed dishes and other items in the dumbwaiter, I wondered what we would do after this. We were both tired from our journey. Nerves crept around my belly when I thought of sleeping in the same bed with him. I had never been in a bed with a man. I picked up my glass of water from the dining room table, took a sip, and put it back down. I stood there for a moment, not moving. I didn’t swallow the water, just held it in my mouth. I was afraid. I felt uncomfortable about sitting next to John, let alone sleeping in the same bed with him, being naked with him. I was scared, but a little excited, too. No matter what, I was going to be a good wife. I couldn’t be what I wanted to be in life, but this was the dream—women wanted to get married, not work until they found a man. I—we were going to be happy. I swallowed and nodded to myself.
I used the pulley to lower the dumbwaiter down the shaft to the kitchen. When I heard the thump at the bottom, I felt unnerved, as if the noise had disturbed something down there. I would have to go down there the next morning. What if there were no windows and the place was dark as night all the time? I shuddered. I tried to cast out the thought, but when I faced the table and the empty dining room, a sense of misery crept up the shaft from the basement and out like smoke to envelop me. I froze but soon forced myself to edge my way to the door.
I peered down the hall and spotted a glow from the study. I took the dining room oil lamp, grasping the handle shaped like a strange woman with insect-like wings stretched out below the bone-colored glass cover. I exited the room into the dark hallway, the basement entrance just behind me. I felt as if whatever I’d awakened in the basement might reach out and try to snatch me as I slunk past it. I threw myself into the library and exhaled, having reached safety. John popped his head up and acknowledged my entrance with a puzzled expression and then returned to shuffling through some papers in a leather briefcase. When he found a particular document, he pulled it out and placed it on the desk.
I controlled my breathing. “Shall we retire for the evening?”
He lifted his eyes, papers in both hands. “Uh—I’ve only gotten started.”
“Oh, of course.”
He shuffled through more and then started organizing them into two piles.
“But you must be exhausted.”
He kept his eyes on the papers. “Uh—yes, I am, but I have to be prepared.” A cigarette burned in the ashtray. He picked it up and took a long, hard draw.
“What better way to prepare than to be fully rested?”
He exhaled a stream of smoke. “But I also need to be prepared.”
I started to feel as if I were intruding. “Very well.” I lingered a moment. “Um—can I help?”
“No.” He sounded irritated. “You can manage on your own, can’t you?”
“Of course.” I noticed I was fidgeting with my wedding ring. I immediately stopped and clenched my hand tightly. Unaware of another option, I reentered the dark hallway. The lamp’s glow illuminated the area around me and the first step of the twisting stairwell. I stopped just before the stairs. I scrutinized the hole leading into the basement. I took a deep breath and decided to hurry. As long as I could make it to our chamber and shut the door quickly, I could escape this frightening sensation—this feeling that my presence had disturbed something here.
I stepped forward and began to scale the steps. I curved right and entered the middle part of the stairs, where the top and bottom steps were hidden around corners. I felt as if I were completely enclosed, turning and twisting. The walls seemed to contract. I felt trapped. I felt as if the house had locked me in a box—a coffin. I climbed faster. Finally, the light disappeared into darkness ahead. I had reached the landing.
Our chamber was at the end of the dark corridor. I walked stiffly and quickly, my eyes flicking back and forth as the lamp’s light reflected off a doorknob on the right, then the left, the right, the left—door after door of rooms that would remain empty and silent. The sensation of eyes watching me swelled. I tried to calm my heart. I tried to laugh at my foolishness, but it didn’t work. How my sister Lillian would have teased if she’d seen me so ready to take flight for fear that a beast might appear out of thin air. Finally, the light reflected off the doorknob at the end of the hallway. I reached, turned the knob, stepped in, and shut the door. I made sure not to peek back, for fear of what I might see.
I sighed, relieved, feeling as if I had shut out the rest of the house and was at last safe. Although I was disappointed that John chose not to join me straightaway, I was somewhat glad. I could undress alone and be ready in my nightclothes when he arrived. I just needed to complete my task before he entered, which might have been at any moment. Unfortunately, I could not undress with speed. I was used to having a handmaid assist me, and I wore a full toilette that day. I removed layer after layer—skirt, petticoats, my decorative jacket, my shirtwaist, my corset cover. My corset seemed to take a half-hour to get off. John, however, did not appear before I was able reach the last layer, my chemise and drawers. I quickly put on my nightdress.
I left the lamp lit for when he came. The tiny glow comforted me. It made the room soft and safe. I explored the room, touching and examining things. The chamber felt light compared with the rest of the house. The statues and wall hangings were simple and colored in various shades of white. With the yellow glow from the lamp, though, everything appeared shiny and gold.
I slipped into the bed and lay there awake waiting for him despite my exhaustion. Perhaps I was too anxious to sleep. Any fears I’d had were replaced with a sense of expectation. Perhaps whatever happened this night would remove the invisible barrier between us.
I felt strange in this bed. I missed my bed. I missed my home. I missed my world with light and people and St. Louis. I missed the echoing sound of carriages in the narrow streets, the sight of people walking their dogs, and the vines creeping up intricate brick homes in the Central West End. I missed the feeling of knowing there were hundreds of people just outside my door. I’d never felt alone. I’d felt safe. I sighed. I wished he would come up.
Finally, I heard something and hushed my thoughts so I could listen. There were the sounds of footfall. John could be treading down the hallway or climbing the stairs. I waited. The door would open at any moment. I should hear the doorknob squeak. Maybe he was coming up the stairs and hadn’t quite made it to the door. I waited. I listened to the house shift under someone’s weight. He was coming. But then the noise stopped. Nothing. I heard shuffles, creaking, and even footsteps several times, and several times I could have sworn it was John on his way, but nothing happened. No one was there. I hoped no one was there.
As I lay there, I felt terribly alone, like I had made a horrible mistake. I missed my family. I missed my younger sisters, the way Ruth giggled at everything, even if it wasn’t funny—she was so little. I missed Lillian’s antics and Florence’s friendship. I missed my mother’s voice. Who would have guessed such a thing? I missed how much she cared. I especially missed my brother. Only two years younger than me, James was my confidant, my best friend. I missed his encouragement. He reminded me of my father. I missed the smell of my father’s cigar and being able to hear him sneeze from down the hall. Always sneezing. He wasn’t there anymore, though. None of them were. I couldn’t go back if I wanted to. With that I closed my eyes and chose to abandon consciousness rather than cry.
I woke
up when John entered. I had no idea how long it had been, but my stomach leapt with excitement, and then I froze in fear. I didn’t sit up or move. I remained on my side and listened to him undress. I heard him drop his shoes with two soft thuds and place his cuff links on his dressing table with two clinks. A yawn. A belt buckle. I did nothing but listen as he changed into a pants-and-shirt sleeping suit. It was a popular new garment for men, inspired by some type of exotic sleepwear from Persia or India.
He slipped into the bed, and I stiffened with uncertainty. I wondered, should I tell him I was awake? Should I wait for him? What was it that I was supposed to do? I certainly couldn’t initiate without knowing. If I didn’t know, did he know how to begin? He must have known, for I surely did not. Should I reach for his hand or his lips? Or should he reach for me? My panic returned, and I lay wide awake. What was to happen? What was I supposed to do? What—then I heard a noise. I listened. John was snoring.
Four
February 1901
Being married to a handsome man and living in your own home was supposed to be the dream. I felt like a stranger pretending I’d been invited. I’d once thought John would never have agreed to marry me if he had not cared for me, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. I had expected our first night to be far more…romantic. We did eventually have our night together, but it was not as I had anticipated. We undressed with our backs to each other and did not speak a word. Our exchange felt awkward and uncomfortable, and we avoided each other’s eyes. I wasn’t sure what I had expected—perhaps I’d thought it would be more…loving.
After that, every day felt the same. I woke up intent on being the finest and most cheerful wife so that I might satisfy my husband and make him fall in love with me, and every day I failed. It began at five in the morning when I rose by candlelight, slipped into my dressing gown, and started breakfast while John shaved and dressed for work. John always sat at the head of the table, at the end closest to the door, and read as I brought breakfast up from the basement, tray by tray, through the dumbwaiter. He poured coffee from the pitcher with the leaf-shaped lid and ate oatmeal with his vine-inlaid spoon while little frogs and critters snickered at him from his plate of ham and eggs. He didn’t acknowledge me when I sat next to him. As Mother had taught me, I was to amuse with discussion. Why else had I received an education, she would say. The task, however, was something of a challenge with John. I didn’t know why, but he rejected the act of conversation.
“How is work?”
“Hmm?” He glanced up and then returned to his reading material. “Oh. Uh—fine.” He managed to always have something in need of reading while we ate. At first the material seemed reasonable—the newspaper or files for work. As time went on, however, I noticed that his reading seemed less and less obligatory. Once he spent an entire meal reading a church bulletin. He spent twenty minutes reading a two-sided sheet of paper no bigger than a folded napkin. He must have reread it five times, every minute or so flipping it over. Our meals rapidly evolved into a match I could not win. No matter the question, he responded only with short awkward answers, some of which didn’t even address the question. He absolutely refused to speak more than a few words until he swallowed his last bite of food. Finally, he’d stand, announce his departure for the firm, and leave without any farewell—not a kiss on the cheek or a touch on the shoulder. He didn’t even say goodbye.
He was my husband, and I wanted him to act as such. I wanted to be held, to be touched. I prayed I would do something to please him, to rouse some affection. Sometimes I imagined what it would be like if he came home and swept me up, spun me around, and kissed me over and over as if he had done nothing but miss me all day. Oh, how I longed to earn a kiss—a real kiss. I wished I could initiate such a thing, but a lady would never do that—would a wife? I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do. Even if I knew how to go about it, I didn’t think I could get John to stay in the same room with me long enough to make such an attempt. He worked all the time. He was never home. It certainly made it easier for him to avoid speaking to me.
When he left in the morning, my day of tedious redundancy began. My handmaid, Mrs. Lottie Schwab, couldn’t be a live-in because she had a family of her own, not that we could afford a live-in anyway. We couldn’t even afford to pay Mrs. Schwab for the whole week. Although wealthy, John’s father believed we should start out on our own, with little help. I believed that had more to do with me than with family tradition.
When Mrs. Schwab didn’t work for us, she picked cotton or fruit for local farms. The hard outdoor labor had tanned and aged her once fair thirty-four-year-old skin. That’s why upper-class women avoided the sun. When we first met, I observed brown freckles all around her nose and cheeks. I usually saw freckles on pale women with luscious red hair. Mrs. Schwab had a mix of thick brown and blond strands, like hay. At the time, I assumed she failed to clean her face and requested she be sure to bathe before entering the house. She made no rebuke. The next time I saw her, she reminded me of my request by promptly informing me that she had bathed. Her southern accent never failed to reveal her true feelings no matter how careful she chose her words. I felt awful but figured it would be cruel to explain my mistake and why I had made such a demand. I thanked her instead.
Although I hadn’t been impressed by Mrs. Schwab when we first met, I found her quite the amusement. Her German surname reminded me of the word suave, but Mrs. Schwab was clearly unrefined. She was expecting, but continued to work despite the fact that she had begun to show. This wasn’t abnormal among working class women, but polite society considered such a delicate condition to be a private affair and even deemed it an inappropriate topic for open conversation or polite correspondence. Middle and upper class women went into confinement or took a lying-in period. They withdrew from the public and dedicated most or all of their time resting for the sake of the child and public decency. Mrs. Schwab, however, continued on as she grew larger and struggled to maneuver herself, often knocking things over with her bulging abdomen. John grumbled and deducted the cost of the items from her pay. I didn’t mind, as I hated everything she broke, so I slowly stopped informing him when certain objects were no longer with us. Mrs. Schwab helped me three days a week, and even though we didn’t speak much, her presence, or lack thereof, determined the mood of the day.
First she’d help me into one of my dreary mourning dresses, cinching my corset, pulling my skirt closed over the layers of petticoats, and assisting with high-collar buttons. She’d also help me with my long hair, which I wore in a pompadour with curls, twists, and tucks atop my head. Then I’d have her open all the doors downstairs to let the light out of the rooms. She’d clear away the dishes and lower them to the basement using the dumbwaiter. Next she would empty, clean, and refill the jug and basin in the bath chamber. She’d then go to the dungeon to wash the dishes and remove the ashes from the coal-burning stove.
“The dungeon” was my nickname for the basement. I’d thought it up as a way to tease myself, but it turned out to be quite accurate. It was murky and the walls bled with leaks. It felt as if despair had been banished to that space. One insignificant window hovered at the top of the wall opposite the stairs. Below the window was a large wash basin for cleaning dishes. We had to lug the water down to the basement from a well outside. We stored dishes and food in some cupboards with glass doors. I stored fresh food and baked goods in a pierced-tin closet to keep bugs away. The extra buffet and icebox sat against another wall. People in Labellum actually had iceboxes that they filled with large chunks of ice from the Mississippi during the winter and stored in such a way that the ice lasted through much of summer. The stove and oven sat next to the stairs. We did much of the work on a large wood table in the middle of the room and a small dough box with an unfinished wood top for chopping.
While Mrs. Schwab worked on the dishes, I would dust off the tablecloth and fold it. Then I would sweep, moving from the dining room to the parlor and other commonly used areas while ignoring the g
lares coming from the knickknacks. In the parlor’s main seating area around the fireplace, I swept each day around and under a green sofa with clawlike feet. The seat of the sofa curved up into the arms, which rounded over and under, making the entire piece look like a menacing leer, the white tassels of a large doily throw its teeth. Next, I’d move toward an adjacent blue love seat that had two chair backs but a fused seat, like conjoined twins connected at the hip.
Mismatched wooden chairs were placed sporadically around the room, and I had to move them all around every time I swept. I’d move one and then turn and another would confront me, and then another, and another. One with ghostly hands drifting up, like smoke, one with two green bug-eyed pads on the back, and one with three overlapped leaves for a seat. Another had thick layered waves that resembled muscles I’d seen in books but not those of a human—some other creature. The muscles of a chair?
I would polish everything, and I mean everything, even the doorknobs. I’d clean the lamps’ black residue from the walls, and I’d clean John’s ashtrays. He smoked cigarettes—never cigars like my father. Even when others smoked cigars, he favored cigarettes, but he mostly smoked when he worked and never at the table.
About the time I would reach the end of the hall, Mrs. Schwab would rise from the basement and trudge up the stairs, open the doors on the second floor, put our chamber in order, flip the mattress, and make the bed. She also polished fixtures, dusted, and cleaned out the chamber pot. Then she’d dump John’s shaving water and wipe down the wash basin in our room. Finally, she’d refill the jug so we could wash our hands and faces throughout the day and before bed. Mrs. Schwab did these chores daily and dusted the empty rooms once a week. On the days she wasn’t with me, I would do those chores alone. Those were the worst hours for me, alone with those empty rooms and the people who weren’t in them.
Other chores depended on the day. On Mondays, when Mrs. Schwab returned from our chamber, we would both go to the basement for laundry. Boil, wring, scrub, wring, soak, wring, and hang. The process took all of Monday and usually some of Tuesday. When we’d finished more than we could carry, we’d gather the wet linens and take them outside to hang. Whenever we rose up from beneath the ground holding baskets of wet clothes, I imagined us as captives released after years of undeserved confinement to a cell. Of course, when we went back, I couldn’t help but imagine that our captors had immediately accused us of some other crime for which we were being forced back underground. I wasn’t used to laundering, and afterward my arms and hands would ache from the scrubbing, so much some days that they’d quiver all through dinner and I feared I might drop the pitcher of water on John.
A White Room Page 5