Sanctuary

by Jennifer McKissack

  Anna was abandoned at the other end of the formal table for twelve. I realized this was Uncle’s solution to the awkwardness of his quick marriage to the cook and that Anna’s seat was also practical since it was closest to the kitchen. Our servers were Patricia and Mary, who looked slightly confused and relied on Anna’s whispered directions. Jasper had been banished from the dining room and kept trying to get in whenever the door flew open.

  It was soon clear this arrangement wasn’t running smoothly when Patricia and Mary tried to bring out the entrée before the soup. Anna’s little hands went flying, and she got up to tend to the matter. Ben giggled quietly into his hand, turning his dark hazel eyes to me. Uncle glared, sliding from his lord-of-the-manor ridiculousness to embarrassment, which only made him bark at Anna to hurry up.

  She returned to the table, way at the other end, with three empty chairs between her and me. I took up my spoon to eat my soup.

  Mr. Bauer was taking all this in with a very thoughtful look. He really shouldn’t be here, I thought, eavesdropping on me, on our family, and reading our books. He has no right to be so interested in all of it.

  I had been giving him the silent treatment all during dinner, but I didn’t think he was noticing.

  Uncle finished his rum, the bottle now empty, and Anna jumped up to fetch him some more, her soup getting cold. She pulled the liquor out of the mahogany sideboard against the wall. It had grown dark and overcast, so we weren’t able to see the lawn before us and the sea beyond that. I had watched guests play croquet on that lawn.

  “Eli,” said Uncle suddenly, giving his empty glass to Anna, “I didn’t get a chance to go to a university like you. I had adventures when I was young, but then settled down for a quiet life with my Laura.

  “Of course I had to put up with Cecilia’s mother, who disturbed my quiet, bringing her husband,” Uncle continued, “her kids, then her mother came, everybody, for God’s sake, until they”—he paused, taking a sip of his rum—“died.”

  He shrugged. “So.” He let the word lie.

  I held my tongue, despite feeling Tess in my head: You let him talk of us this way, Cecilia! I glanced at Eli, who was studying Uncle carefully.

  Mr. Bauer wiped his mouth with one of the fine linen napkins Anna had brought out for the occasion. “You have a wonderful collection in your library, Mr. Wallace. What is your favorite volume?”

  “I don’t have much reason to read.”

  Eli looked at all of us, his face filled with incredulity. “So none of you have read them? Except for Cecilia?”

  Uncle guffawed. “Cecilia can’t read. She always had trouble with it.”

  I bristled at that.

  “She can,” Ben said very bravely. “Cecilia was reading in her room all day.”

  “Tess was always carrying around books,” interjected Mary, while refilling Mr. Bauer’s glass as he thanked her.

  “That’s right,” Uncle agreed. “It was Tess who could read. Always—” He stopped, then paled, as if some unwanted thought came to him. He swigged down his rum and raised his empty glass again to Anna, who hurried over with the bottle once more. I couldn’t help but feel irritated with her, wanting her to stand up to him.

  “Cecilia’s slow with words,” Ben said, not meaning to be unkind, but still it stung. “But she would read me some of the stories sometimes.”

  Mary’s lips turned into a smile as she left the room. I felt Mr. Bauer’s eyes on me. Steeled with defiance, I looked up at him, only to find him giving me an encouraging nod.

  “They are fascinating books,” he said, just to me, it seemed. “Brilliant.”

  Uncle glanced at me, his eyes bright. “Valuable, then?”

  My stomach felt sick. I drank some water. It tasted bitter.

  “Oh, yes,” Mr. Bauer said. I didn’t think he was a very good negotiator if that was what the college had sent him to do. “The stories are compelling. Do you know—many of the texts are about women being persecuted.”

  “What?” Uncle rasped out.

  I smiled into my glass. The library had some such texts, but not the “many” Eli claimed it did.

  “Women being attacked, mistreated, murdered,” Eli listed, “plundered, all sorts of evil deeds. One text addresses the witch-hunting that took place in the American colonies in most of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth.”

  I nodded, remembering the books.

  “Satan’s minions!” Uncle sputtered, his fingers twitching as he picked up and put down his glass. He pulled on his nose in agitation, again and again.

  But Eli was paying no attention to Uncle, which confounded Uncle so much I thought steam might erupt from his ears. Eli pressed on: “Many times financially independent women were the ones executed as witches.”

  “They only brought it on themselves!” spat Uncle.

  “Some did see it that way, as ludicrous as it sounds,” Mr. Bauer said. “Take the widow Ann Hibbens, living in the colonies in 1656. She was of fairly high social standing, but outspoken.”

  “I remember reading about her,” I said. “She was excommunicated, wasn’t she? She refused to apologize to some carpenters she’d accused of being dishonest.”

  “That’s right,” Eli said. “That was as far as it went because she was under her wealthy husband’s protection. But not long after her husband’s death, she was accused of being a witch and hanged.”

  Uncle’s eyes blazed, and I knew when his lips started moving, it’d be another one of his wild speeches: “ ‘So saying, her rash hand in evil hour, Forth-reaching to the Fruit, she plucked, she eat’ ”—I took a huge bite of my bread, trying to chomp through his words—“ ‘Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe’ ”—was I any better than Anna? Just sitting here, not defending my sex, my cousin from this man—“ ‘That all was lost.’ ”

  “Would you stop with that insane chatter,” I snapped, surprising myself.

  “Don’t be blasphemous, you soulless creature!” he shouted at me. I steadied my chin, not wanting him to see me tremble. “Those are God’s words, you wicked girl. You’re one of the devil’s imps, just like all your kind.” His eyes were alight with the passion of a zealot. I thought him insane in that moment, as if he were possessed by a demon.

  “Actually,” interjected Eli, in a calm voice, but his eyes were hard, “those are Milton’s words.”

  Uncle’s head jerked. “What?” His eyes lost some of their crazed look. “My father taught me those passages. They’re from the Bible.”

  “No, they’re not. They’re from the epic poem Paradise Lost, written by John Milton.”

  Uncle gave his guest a long stare, but Eli didn’t seem agitated at all.

  Disquiet settled over us. Even the room itself seemed to be disturbed by the conversation, the lights dimming, probably because Uncle had neglected to repair something. His beady eyes were fixed on the amber liquor in his tumbler. His shoulders were stiff and tense, as if he were a predator ready to pounce on prey, but without hunger as an excuse for killing.

  He caught me staring. He settled back in his chair and said to Eli, while still looking at me, a challenge in his eyes, “Will that part of the collection be worth less because it’s about a bunch of women?”

  I sipped my water. He’s not getting my books.

  Eli studied Uncle for a moment. “They’re valuable texts.” He turned to me and asked quietly, “Did your aunt or mother add much to the collection?”

  “Some,” I said.

  “Before I came to your island,” Eli said to me, his eyes lit up by his subject, “I did some research, looking for something about the people who had originally settled here.” (His voice was really lovely, with a slight gravelly undertone to it.) “I discovered that your ancestor,” he said, nodding at Uncle, “Captain Winship, was a witch-hunter before he settled on this island. Did you know that?”

  I felt an unease come over all of us at this more personal turn in
the conversation. The mood almost visibly shifted. Ben looked at Uncle, then quickly glanced away to study the wallpaper on the opposite wall. Uncle scowled at Mr. Bauer.

  “The captain,” Eli continued, “was also involved in the deportation of the Acadians from their home. He transported a shipload of them from their French province in Nova Scotia, abandoning them to the wilds of Virginia.”

  I felt Uncle’s eyes on me then. He wasn’t paying any more attention to Eli. He was focused on me, as if I had something to do with this story Eli told. Still watching me, he gestured in Anna’s direction, down the long length of table. “Anna, where’s the chicken?”

  My head whipped over to Anna’s tense face and back to him.

  He glared at me, a smile on his face.

  I left the table before the chicken arrived.

  I SAT UP, THRASHING, WAKING TO A GUNSHOT. MY HEART POUNDED AS I tried to remember where I was. This wasn’t school; it was Sanctuary, Anna’s room. A nightmare, only a nightmare: the same one that had haunted me many times before. In it, I was a child running across the sea lawn, desperate to find my father.

  Taking deep breaths, I stayed still, listening to the night breathing of the house, its normal whispers and creaks, feeling something had woken me other than my dark dreams.

  My feet were quiet, sliding over the small rug on the floor, as I crept toward my door. There, I stayed very still, waiting for some noise or movement. Someone was on the other side, waiting too, I just felt it.

  I watched the knob to see if it would turn. If it was Uncle, I’d be in trouble; he was much larger and stronger than I was. Quietly I picked up the letter opener I’d left on my bedside table. I needed a real weapon, a knife from the kitchen, but this would have to do.

  Gathering courage, with my blade at the ready, I flung open the door. But the service hall was dark and empty.

  Determined now, I grabbed the flashlight off my bedside table. Turning on all the lights in the house might wake people upstairs, and I didn’t want that. On my own, I needed to figure out who was here, because if it wasn’t Uncle … The thought died in my head.

  I looked around the hall and up the service stairs, and even in the pantry briefly, the smell of fresh yellow onions caught in my nose.

  Next I searched the breakfast room, elegant in its day, abandoned now.

  My light flickered across the white sheets draped over the small table and chairs at the room’s center. It had been a morning ritual of my mother and my aunt to take coffee and cold bread in here, even while their guests were served a more formal breakfast in the dining room with the rest of the family.

  I passed through the room into the foyer. Thinking I heard whispering, I shone the light up the wide stairs, but saw nothing but darkness. I investigated the shadows and corners of the lower portion of the stairs and of the large hall, but found only dust balls and scurrying spiders.

  The vast ballroom pulled me to it. Opening one of the double doors just beyond the staircase, cringing at the loud creaking of its hinges, I stepped barefoot onto the cold marble floor of this grand wasted room. Two great cut-glass chandeliers hung from the high gilded ceiling.

  On the other side of the wall stood three pairs of French doors leading to a stone upper terrace, stepping down to a smaller lower one with a crumbling fountain and to the long sea lawn beyond.

  I closed my eyes and stretched my mind back. I could hear the lively music my mother preferred with trumpets and trombones, see the swishing beaded dresses flying up, and feel the bubbles of champagne in my mouth—before my father snatched the crystal glass away, saying to my mother, “She’s seven, Cora,” in an exasperated but loving voice. I saw her coquettish smile and how she looked at him, how she flirted with him, her husband.

  My father and mother were dancing now, in my mind, all the guests gone or asleep. Round and round they spun as they gazed into each other’s eyes. And around them Tess and I spun, dancing too, two sisters giggling, mimicking our mother and father as they waltzed around the ballroom. And to the side was it Mamie, who stood there, disapproval pursing her lips, with Aunt Laura cowering behind her? “There are things to do,” Mamie was saying to my mother, who ignored her, ignored all of us in that moment, even Tess, her gaze fixed only on my father.

  My eyes snapped open to the hushed room where music no longer played. All was still and quiet. The house was taunting me with the past, mocking me and saying in a voice like Uncle’s: You’re the last one left. I closed the door and rested my forehead upon it.

  Sanctuary was familiar and real, a part of me, an eye or a bit of my heart. My memories of my childhood could be a comfort—all the carefree days of playing stone tag or hide-and-seek with Ben and Tess, flying up the stairs into the attic or over newly clipped grass on the sea lawn, looking for a spot they would not find.

  Other times, though, my lovely memories twisted into me, plunging deep to a place rubbed raw by hurt and longing.

  Something was here in this house, a presence that wanted me gone. I felt it keenly. It wasn’t just Uncle’s animosity. It was something more. I refused to believe it was Sanctuary itself. This was my home, where I’d been born and loved. But things were different now.

  And I felt just as strongly that something outside of Sanctuary, in the graveyard, wanted me there.

  That simultaneous pushing and pulling led me out the front door into fresh air I could breathe, beyond the portico, looking out at the dark lawn. Patches of clouds swirled here and there in the night sky, obscuring stars as they floated past. I was about to turn away when I glimpsed something in the trees by the stones.

  It was a shadowy shape, quiet and suddenly still, as if it knew I was watching it. I stepped off the path and toward her, somehow knowing it was a woman, a young woman. Her hair was dark and long, like mine, but she wore long skirts that brushed the ground beneath her.

  Something fluttered above my head, but I didn’t look up. I had to reach her. She had something to tell me. She’d been waiting for me for a very long time. I wanted her to know I was sorry I left without helping her, that I’d only been a child and my aunt had banished me from the island. I’d had no choice.

  A brilliant white shawl slipped from her shoulders as she held out her hand to me, closed in a tight fist. I reached for her, wanting to clasp her hand in my own and discover its contents. It was vital, urgent, not only to her, but to me as well. But I couldn’t move quickly enough: Her hand opened, and specks of light rose out of her palm into the dusky air. My fireflies!

  I hurried, desperate to catch the lights, angry with her that she’d released them.

  But when I was but a few feet away, I stopped.

  Where was she?

  She’d dissolved. I’d seen her just there, at the edge of the line of trees. I had seen her. Maybe she was in the shadows, hidden from the moon.

  But I couldn’t move forward. Something wasn’t what I thought it was.

  A slow dread crept over me, fear prickling my fingertips. I closed my eyes, trying to center myself, not at all sure of why I’d needed to talk to this young woman. Opening my eyes, seeing no girl, no dark shape, nothing human or otherwise, I took a long slow breath. Pressing my lips together, I willed my eyes not to well up.

  I am not my mother. I am not her.

  Exhaustion pulled at me, the muscles in my shoulders sore and my eyes stinging and tired. Yesterday’s long day of traveling and today’s events had drained me. I looked again.

  There was no one in the woods. I picked up the flashlight and the letter opener, which had fallen out of my hands into the grass, and hurried back inside. I lay in my bed thinking for a long time.

  I WAS IN THE KITCHEN THE NEXT MORNING WHEN MR. BAUER WALKED IN. “Good morning,” he said to Anna and me.

  “Good morning, Mr. Bauer,” Anna said. “Would you like some breakfast?”

  “Thanks, Anna,” he said. “Call me Eli.” He sat down beside me, putting a newspaper on the table. “Are you all right, Miss Cross? You look
pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, trying to convince myself as well. I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. I’d ended up on the love seat in the library, drawn to the emotional comfort of the room, but my temporary bed was short and uncomfortable. I’d felt better when the streams of early morning light crossed the room, making the night before seem impossible and a trick of the shadows.

  I tried to still my trembling hand as I drank my coffee. Mr. Bauer’s eyes were on my hand as well. I put down my coffee, and it spilled over into the saucer. He looked at me in concern.

  Glancing at the headline of his newspaper, I saw that it was the same one I’d seen in the library.

  He saw me looking and tapped the paper. “A lot to read about Hitler’s attack on Poland. England and France have declared war on Germany, you know.”

  “It seems so far away from us,” Anna said, pouring his coffee.

  “We’ll feel it soon enough, I think,” he said.

  Anna served us poached eggs while the girls slept away upstairs and the sun brightened the kitchen, pushing the night’s fears away. Everything seemed better in the day.

  Mr. Bauer was absorbed in his newspaper. I was feeling kindly toward him for very rightly putting Uncle in his place last night.

  Finally, I asked him, “What are you reading about now, Mr. Bauer?”

  He looked up. “It’s Eli.” He gestured to the paper. “About British children being evacuated from the cities. They’re worried Hitler will be bombing soon.”

  Anna looked up toward the ceiling as if she could see them falling from above.

  Eli read out loud to us. In my mind’s eye, I could see the children with knapsacks on their shoulders, carrying gas masks in their hands, boarding trains while their mothers wept and called out to them.

  There we were surrounded by normal morning sounds, like the water pouring from the sink faucet or the rustling of the newspaper, and in other parts of the world, people were afraid bombs might be falling from the sky.

  As I slipped looks at Eli brushing his hair out of his eyes—his particular habit—with a serious set to his lips, it struck me at how he made the quietness of Sanctuary seem companionable instead of cold.