The House Girl

by Tara Conklin

  Nathan nodded and looked to her with dead eyes. Josephine said, “Nathan, I heard you ran before. Did the undertaker help you?” The recklessness of saying these words here in the fields with Jackson so near made Josephine’s face hot and her throat ache with a stiffness as though she’d tried to swallow something too big to go down. She scratched at the inside of her right wrist, shot a glance to Jackson who stood with one hand on hip, one knee bent, his eyes on Therese. Certainly Nathan must hear the pounding of her heart.

  Nathan tipped his head to the side a little, shifted his weight with a wince of pain. “I ran before but no more, they cut my heels.” He spoke slowly. “I ain’t got nothing to say to you, girl. Go on back.” Josephine held his eyes for just a moment, hoping for a nod, a blink, some encouragement that she should try again, that he had something more to tell her. But he looked back at her stony and mute, then turned and limped away toward Jackson. She could not hear Nathan speak but Jackson looked to him as though listening and then shifted his gaze to Josephine. She nodded but he did not respond, only stared at her for a moment more and then down again at Therese as she bent to pull a leaf away.

  Josephine crossed again through the tobacco and toward the back of the house. She would speak to Nathan tonight, down by the cabins. Of course they could not speak in the fields, with Jackson so close. It had been foolish of Josephine to try. What if Jackson became suspicious? What if he spoke to Missus? Josephine waved away an insect that buzzed in her ear and wished she could return to the moment with Nathan and take back the words she had said, stop her carelessness before it happened, and she scratched again at the inside of her wrist until her fingernails drew blood.

  Once out of the tobacco Josephine stopped. She did not want to return to Missus Lu, to whatever mood might have struck her in Josephine’s absence and the tasks that lay ahead for the day. Impulsively she left the path and cut through the tall grasses of the far lawn and around toward the front of the house, toward the road and the open plain of wild grass beyond. Her feet were already restless, reckless, and speaking like that to Nathan—the foolishness! What if her chance already was dashed? Without a backward glance, Josephine crossed the dusty road. She strode farther and farther away from Bell Creek, the grass growing wilder with brambles and ivy, a persistent deerfly buzzing at the sweat on her bare arms, her face and neck. The air seemed wilder here too, smelling of dry grass and old manure, nothing of the flower beds’ perfume or house smells—lye from the wash, grease from the cooking.

  Finally, her breath labored, Josephine turned and looked back at Bell Creek, the only place she’d ever known. The white walls, the gray-green roof, the slope of the earth so familiar to her, the way the house stood up just a little from the surrounds, the porch jutting out like a bottom lip from a face. The flower beds looked frivolous and showy, flouncy skirts around a stout middle. The close-together windows of the second floor were so many eyes staring out toward the windblown treetops and far-off foothills.

  For a moment Josephine watched Bell Creek and she imagined that if she ran now, the house surely would lift from its foundations and chase her down. Those window-eyes saw her standing there, so far from her usual places, well beyond the permissible limits of where she might go. The house’s gaze was reproachful and accusing. It beckoned her back and Josephine lifted one foot, then the next, retracing her steps through the field.

  As Josephine walked, the full memory of the night she had run came to her: of the boy’s instructions, look for the wagons, the undertaker and his daughter. She remembered the woman, brown hair hanging loose around a face like a heart, pointed at the bottom. She remembered the woman stroking her arm, and then sleep had come, a blessed thing after the boy’s screams, the unrelenting fear, the constant forward motion. And then suddenly Josephine had been awake in the dark. The woman and the man were arguing, the woman’s voice so young and strong: We cannot send her back. Would you have us send her back? But the man had answered in anger: She is with child, the risk is too great. We cannot help her.

  A fear had cut through Josephine as she heard those words, just as pain spooned deep within her belly. The two seemed linked, the understanding that these people would not help her and the twisting inside. Josephine waited, pretending still to sleep. She heard the man and the woman move farther into the barn, and then she crept away, out a side door, stepping through matted straw and then mud and then cool grass, back to Bell Creek. Where else was she to go? She kept off the road as best she could, cutting through grassy fields, corn rows, pastures with dry turned earth lying fallow and acre after acre of ripe, greening plants nearly ready for the harvest. As the pains came through her, she would stop and bend forward, the posture somehow easing the force of them. The sky boiled with black clouds shot through with brilliant lightning and claps that each time made Josephine start and move her legs faster, faster to arrive before the rains began to fall.

  At dawn, as she neared Bell Creek, the storm finally descended and the rain soaked her cold and wet to the skin. She had stepped off the road and passed through an expanse of wild meadow and chickweed that brought her quicker to Bell Creek, but the wet grasses lashed at her ankles, the burrs and thorns tore at her feet. Finally the house rose into view, through the dim haze of the rain and the rising gray light, and she saw Bell Creek for the first time from a distance, the sight making her forget for a moment the twisting in her belly. She marveled at the house, at its size and solid square perimeters, how it took possession of that small hill upon which it was built. How could such a vast construction seem so confining within?

  Josephine had come again to the front gate, latched closed as she had left it only hours before, but it seemed a lifetime ago, hers or another’s. The realization that soon she would birth a child fell upon her with a raw terror. Her teeth shook in her head, her bare feet numb to the ankles, bloated and strange and disconnected from her body as she walked those last paces up the path. Through the front door she had tried to creep, up the stairs, but those slip-sliding feet would not do her bidding. Missus had heard.

  “Josephine, what have you been doing?” Missus appeared at her bedroom door, fully dressed but her hair hung loose around her face, such a strange view because Missus never wore her hair down, only at night in bed would she allow Josephine to release it. “Where have you been?”

  “Missus, I—” and Josephine had collapsed there on the landing, the weight of her body finally too great to bear, the floor rushing up to meet her and she had welcomed it.

  Later, after Dr. Vickers had left the room and then Missus behind him, the silence stretched forward and around her, containing all that Josephine had never told and all that she now regretted. If she had run months before, when the undertaker would have helped her, where might she be now? Would she be holding a child, her child? Would she be a free woman in a free state? Josephine had wept atop that high bed, feeling as if she rested on the upper side of a cloud, and nothing could touch her because of what she had lost and her body seemed both empty and full of a terrible wisdom.

  JOSEPHINE SHOOK HER HEAD TO clear away her memories. She had returned to the house now and stood just paces from the back door. There was no breeze and the wash hung limp on the line between the two oaks. Around her feet the chickens pecked and sauntered, their soft low murmurs sounding so much like comfort, like all the chickens sought to make one of their number see that this is a good life, the sun, the dirt, the cool dark of the coop; do not grieve for the way things are. Her hands were shaking, Josephine realized, with the force of her remembering. The drawers she had kept so carefully shut all these years were now flying open as though in deciding to run again she had let loose something rough and dangerous within herself as well.

  With a sharp clap of her hands, she tried to scatter the chickens. “Go on,” she said, and the words nearly did not come from her throat, which felt thick, closed tight, and she said it again, “Go on,” hoarser and louder this time and the chickens flapped away.

 
Lina

  FRIDAY

  So, how are we doing?” Dan asked. Lina and Garrison were in his office for the first weekly meeting on the reparations claim. “Dresser will be here later, but let’s get started. I may have to run out early.” He checked his watch. “Who’s first?”

  Lina glanced over at Garrison, who was sitting at attention, his eyes pegged to Dan. Over the week, they’d spoken on the phone frequently but she’d barely seen him, each of them intent on their respective assignments, their digital clocks flashing through the billable minutes. Since Dan’s refusal to send her to Richmond, Lina had focused her efforts on finding a plaintiff in New York. She had contacted people at the NAACP, the ABA, the National Bar Association, the Metropolitan Black Bar Association, the Black Women Lawyers’ Association. On Wednesday night, she’d attended an ACLU cocktail reception where she wore a name tag, made polite conversation and described the reparations case, the search for a lead plaintiff, the requisite tie to an enslaved ancestor. On her desk sat a stack of jotted-down phone numbers and business cards passed to her by people interested in the case; Garrison had e-mailed his list of contacts. “I’ll follow up in the next few days,” Lina had told each one of them. But she hadn’t made a single call. In Lina’s office, the photo of Lu Anne and Josephine remained pinned to the corkboard behind her computer. And quietly, without billing her time, she had continued to research the Rounds family and the Underground Railroad. She had spent hours online and ordered some relevant books from various out-of-state libraries, but they had yet to arrive.

  Lina wondered with a sinking dread how she would get through this meeting. After a week of research, she should have been able to identify at least a few names for Dan to consider, some stories for him to review. Garrison turned to her with eyebrows raised, and Lina nodded eagerly for him to go first.

  “Dan,” Garrison began, “let’s talk about the problems with this case. We have to.” Garrison paused, his face all intellectual torment. Dan did a slow blink and tilted his chin down with the slightest of nods.

  “What about the whole idea that there is no loss?” Garrison said. “If you look at the numbers, the African American population of the U.S. is in a far better economic position today than if they’d stayed in Africa. You could easily argue that the transatlantic slave trade brought them to this country, which then gave their descendants the opportunity to take advantage of America’s economic success. I mean, isn’t any wrong done back then negated by the objectively better position we find ourselves in today, as compared to the people who stayed in Africa?”

  “Mmm …” Dan leaned back in his chair. “Interesting point.”

  “And there’s also the problem of defining the class,” Lina jumped in, relieved that the discussion was taking them far afield from the lead plaintiff question. She wondered if Dan had asked this of them, to talk about the problems, and she had missed the e-mail. “I mean how can we pick and choose? Is anyone with a drop of black blood deserving of compensation? How could we possibly verify everyone?”

  “Uh-huh, another good one.”

  Garrison launched in again and Lina, listening to him, realized three things: first, that Garrison had, in the past week, analyzed the case from all angles; second, that the problems were many and they were large; and third, that she hadn’t missed the e-mail—this was Garrison’s own meeting agenda.

  Africans themselves kept slaves, Garrison said, it was part of the culture. Chieftains of one tribe gladly handed over prisoners from an enemy tribe to the European traders. And what about no retroactive application of law—did a more firmly rooted legal principle even exist? You couldn’t penalize someone for doing something that was legal at the time they did it. That’s arbitrariness at its worst. That’s what Stalin did. And most of these antebellum companies had changed names, changed ownership at least once, maybe dozens of times, since the period when they were actually benefiting from slavery. Half the time there’s no paper trail. How will we know with certainty that we’re suing the bad guys?

  Garrison was midsentence, onto something about calculating the correct amount of compensation now due, what interest rate should be used, when Dan brought his hand down on the desk, palm flat, fingers stretched. Lina jumped. Garrison stopped speaking.

  “Listen.” Dan’s voice was loud and tight. “I don’t want to hear about the problems. I know it’s a tough one. I want to hear about how we are going to win. This isn’t just any case. Don’t you get that? This is the big one. Dresser is right, for all his eccentricities—and believe me, I know he’s an eccentric bastard. But the guy is right.” He slung his thumb at the bookcase behind him and Lina noticed for the first time the gold letters running up the spines: United States Reports. “I’ve got all the big Supreme Court cases in here, good and bad. The original printing. Dred Scott, Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, Marbury v. Madison, the Miranda ruling. Don’t you ever wonder—one hundred years from now, what will people look back on? What will they think are the important ones? The ones to keep, the ones to be ashamed of? This reparations case isn’t some corporate big bucks, breach of contract, you-owe-me-money wah wah wah kind of bullshit. Haven’t you ever wanted a case like this?” He gave a short, sarcastic laugh. “Jesus Christ, I have.”

  Dan closed his eyes. No one moved. Lina heard the creaking of the wind against Dan’s windows.

  When Dan resumed, the volume was lower than before but the words more clear. “I thought the two of you would get it. I thought you’d understand the bigger picture here. I mean, seriously, why did you even go to law school? This case is the ticket beyond all of this … bullshit. It’s glory. It’s immortality. Okay, maybe not quite, but almost. It’s a whole shitload of money, sure, but it’s the idea. I mean, this case is history.”

  Dan looked genuinely stricken, and Lina, recalling his enthusiasm as her partner mentor, recalling that on Wednesday he’d missed the twins’ talent show (again, third year running), recalling his encouraging remarks about partner track, said: “Dan, you’re right. This isn’t like any other case. I’m with you.”

  “Thanks, Lina, I appreciate that,” Dan said with a curt nod.

  Lina looked to Garrison, who seemed to be studying his wingtips. Finally Garrison said, “Me too, Dan,” in a small voice, and Lina felt a surge of relief. She didn’t want Garrison to be taken off the case; she didn’t want to be left alone on this one.

  “I’m happy to hear that, Garrison,” said Dan, giving him the same little nod. “And listen, I know there are obstacles in this case. But our attitude has got to be win. Understood?”

  Dan’s office door opened with a sudden jumble of hallway noise, and Mary, Dan’s honey-voiced, silver-haired secretary, appeared in the doorway. Lina often wondered if Mary had once been like Sherri, and how Lina might help to effect a similar transformation. Mary’s efficiency was legendary at Clifton; once, with Dan felled by food poisoning, Mary had drafted the cross-examination of a key witness in a fraud trial. Not a single issue left unexamined, Dan had raved afterward.

  “Mr. Dresser is here for you,” Mary said with a placid smile.

  “Oh, great. Send him in.” Dan looked at his watch again. “Shit, I’m due in court. Run through what you’ve done with Dresser,” he instructed Lina and Garrison. “I don’t need to be here.”

  Dan greeted Dresser at the door and gave his apologies. “Lina and Garrison will update you. So sorry, Ron, I’ve got to run. The judge on this case is killing me.” Dan shrugged his shoulders and pulled out his aw-shucks, apple-pie grin.

  “Dan, my friend, no worries.” Dresser put a hand on Dan’s shoulder. Today Dresser wore an expensive-looking gray pinstripe suit with a pink tie. His assistant, also in pinstripe, followed behind and quietly shut the door as Dan made his exit.

  “Good morning,” Dresser said and surveyed the room with his formidable, toffee-colored gaze, then ambled over to Dan’s desk and sat behind it. The sight of Dresser in Dan’s chair seemed to Lina strangely unsettling, as though
Dresser’s physicality had erased Dan entirely—not just for the period of his absence at the meeting, but permanently, forever. Dresser’s eyes skated over the various personal items on Dan’s desk—the deal toys, the photographs—and then he turned to the diplomas hanging on the wall. And somehow the weight of his gaze made everything seem cheap. The desk was solid mahogany, seven feet by four, and yet Dresser presided there as though it were plywood and he a king accustomed to grander surroundings. From behind her, Lina heard the assistant rustling papers. A pen clicked to ready.

  “I’m glad we have this opportunity to speak, just the three of us,” Dresser said. “Dan is a big presence in a room, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Definitely,” replied Garrison, with more eagerness than seemed appropriate. Lina looked at him sharply.

  “Why don’t you tell me the status of the case. Where we stand, what you’ve been doing.”

  Lina described the inquiries she had made to the NAACP, the ABA, the reception she’d attended, the books she’d consulted.

  “The nature of the harm is so … vast,” she concluded.

  “That is true,” Dresser said.

  “I’m also following up a lead on an artist named Josephine Bell,” Lina began with some caution, wondering if he would view the idea as Dan had: a waste of time and money. “There’s been some press about her recently—maybe you’ve heard the story?”

  Dresser nodded, leaned forward in his chair. “Yes, I saw the piece in the Times. Very compelling. Exactly the kind of angle I think we should be pursuing.”

  Conscious of Garrison watching her, Lina described the Bell paintings she’d seen, what Marie Calhoun had told her about the authorship controversy, her discussion with AfriFind and the need to conduct further research in Virginia.

  “This sounds very promising, very. Let’s send someone down to Richmond, see what we can find. Lina, keep up the good work.”