The House Girl Page 11

  “It seems tidy enough in here, I suppose,” Melly said as she paced, tracing one finger along the cutting table, the rows of knives stored there in notches in the wood. One notch empty. Melly stopped. “But Lu Anne, where is this knife?”

  For a moment Josephine and Missus Lu both froze, both guilty in the shared secret of Missus Lu’s madness, the cut face, the intended gift from the mistress to the slave. How to explain such a thing?

  Then Missus spoke. “Melly, Melly. Robert took that knife to the tool shed.” Missus’ lie was so effortless that for a moment Josephine herself could imagine Mister selecting the handle, testing the blade, striding outside with some purpose in mind, to cut a length of rope, to slaughter a calf. “Please, Melly, let us sit on the porch to visit,” said Missus. “The heat in here is stifling.” She waved a hand toward the embers glowing red in the wide stone hearth. The day neared one o’clock and the sun entered in hard, slanting angles through the back windows. Missus’ cheeks flushed too pink, her brow glistened with an unhealthy sheen.

  “Of course, my dear Lu Anne,” said Melly. “I do apologize. How foolish of me!” Her eyes still roamed the room but she began making her way toward the hall.

  With weary relief, Josephine started out the door, and then Melly’s voice came, quiet and sure in her success. “And this?”

  Josephine turned back and Melly stood with the bundle of food in her hands, prying open the knots, sniffing at the inside. “Is this one of your supper napkins, Lu Anne? And why is good food all done up? Do you think she’s fixing to take it to the field hands? Steal right from under your nose? You know, my mama says they’re all thieves, every one.”

  Josephine saw on Melly Clayton’s face the clear fact that she loved the sport of this. Perhaps there was a reason for the inspection deeper than pure enjoyment, but for now it was only that, the pleasure of watching Josephine squirm and twist, the pleasure of controlling the destiny of another with nothing more than a suggestion, a whimsy of a passing thought.

  Missus examined the bundle with a frown. “Josephine, what is the meaning of this?” she said. “Why do you keep a bundle of food, just here by the door? Who is this for?”

  Josephine stood in the doorway, the heat of the kitchen in her face, Missus Lu and Melly in postures of waiting. Josephine felt her cheeks burn, and then her lie, as effortless as Missus Lu’s from a moment before. “It’s for Mister,” Josephine said, her voice level, her posture sure. “He asked for a bundle made, I don’t know the particulars of why.”

  Melly narrowed her eyes. “You can ask him yourself soon enough,” Melly murmured to Missus Lu. “Then you’ll know the truth of it. But looks to me that’s the face of a guilty Negro.”

  Slowly Missus Lu shook her head. “And where are my boots, Josephine? My boots?”

  Melly inhaled. “Boots? Are you missing your boots, Lu Anne?”

  Now Josephine felt a panic rise up, a heat greater than the kitchen and its engulfing sunlight, greater than the red embers themselves. She felt the prickling of fear and a loosening too, as though she might urinate there on the floor while the two ladies watched, a hot stream running down one leg and onto the wide flat paving stones, evidence more than any other of her guilt. She imagined Melly’s triumph, the smile that would unfurl.

  Josephine could not speak and the three of them, a tableau of accusation, confusion, terror, stood for what seemed like many minutes or perhaps only a single breath, the time it might take a pair of lungs to empty, to fill again. Josephine said, “Missus. You know yourself Mister took your boots for resoling. He left them with the cobbler’s in town and the cobbler will send them straight back when they are good and done. You must’ve forgotten, Missus. The doctor said it was to be expected, what with your illness, you turning forgetful.”

  Neither woman reacted immediately. Josephine did not advance toward them or retreat farther into the hall. Melly turned to Missus. “I—I—I,” said Missus, faltering, as though sure of nothing beyond the fact of her own mere existence. She put a hand on the cutting table and leaned against it.

  Melly’s eyes widened. “My dear, I am sorry to be bringing all this up.” She stepped toward Missus. “My senses must have left me. Let’s go on outside.” She half-turned to Josephine. “Girl, get your Missus something cool to drink. Be quick.”

  Melly and Missus Lu left the kitchen, stepping around Josephine, and she stood for a moment in the doorway, listening to their footsteps in the hall, the open and shut of the front door, the murmur of Melly’s voice. Outside, a horse neighed and Josephine became aware of the tireless, brittle barking of a far-off dog. Josephine moved. One foot, two. She opened the cellar door and descended on narrow steps.

  Downstairs in the semidark, muffled by earth and the floorboards overhead, she poured a glass from the cool water jug for Missus. The task took far longer than it should have. Her hands shook and the water spilled again and again over the lip, leaving a mottled dark stain on the cellar’s dirt floor.

  Josephine brought the glass to Missus on the porch, who accepted it without a word, and then she stepped back and waited. The air hung heavy over the road and the dry yellowed grass had begun to shimmer as it did in the hottest part of the day, the sun causing it to buckle and bend. Josephine’s heart knocked hard against her chest and she felt a snaking poison in her blood that worked with the heat upon her muscles and her mind like a drug of dismay. The shoes, the food, her small pictures, these were hardly enough to sustain the journey she must take. Who was she to think of escape? Who was she to imagine a world beyond Bell Creek? You foolish girl. Standing on the porch, the sharp smell of a distant fire, her dress stiff with dust and damp, the groan of old wood as Missus Lu leaned the rocker forward and back, forward and back, and Josephine felt as though roots had long ago forged themselves beneath her, securing her forever to this small piece of earth, and it was not within her power to release them. Only when she, Josephine, died would these roots wither and die with her.

  Missus Lu laughed with a sharp bark and Josephine’s attention returned to the women. They were talking now of Melly’s prospects, the disappointment of a departing suitor, a blacksmith in town who had it in him to try California and the gold said to grow in the rivers there, set in glistening clumps like eyes on a school of fish.

  “You must be so happy here,” Melly said, placing a hand on Missus’ arm. “Such a well-appointed home. And a handsome husband.”

  “Mmm. Happy, yes, of course,” said Missus. The tone was airy, far-off. Josephine could tell Missus was tiring.

  “Is Mr. Bell in town for the day?” Melly said.

  “Why no, he’s—he’s attending to some business here. He’s in the fields.”

  “Oh? Well, that’s a comfort. Widow Price has had troubles aplenty. They run her every which way, with no man to take charge. Soon as the master’s off, it’s like a week of Sundays in the fields.”

  “Is that so?”

  “And runaways. Widow Price has had three gone in the last few months. And that boy over at the Broadmoors’, a patroller hauled him back just last week, but you know how the taste for it gets under their skin. He’ll run again, no doubt. Mrs. Broadmoor says they keep him in shackles day and night. She can hardly abide the racket they make.”

  “The Broadmoors? Do you mean Louis? We sold that boy on. I didn’t know he’d run.”

  With the name Louis, Josephine’s heart turned and, in that instant, her heaviness lifted and she became a sensitive, waiting, listening thing, every inch of her attuned to the women’s conversation, to the timbre of their voices, the rise and fall in Melly Clayton’s tone. Louis, her Louis. She recalled Mrs. Broadmoor from calls to Missus Lu, a tall, gangly woman, too big in the knees and the elbows, a horsey face and coarse dark hair. Sickly too, with a dry persistent cough. She had seemed neither kind nor horrid, so far as Josephine could remember. That was where Louis had gone, sold to the Broadmoors. Carefully, Josephine inclined her head toward the women and inched her feet forward half
a step.

  “He didn’t make it very far. Josiah picked him up just outside of Lynnhurst town,” Melly said, seeming pleased to possess information that Missus Lu did not.

  “Oh, that’s lucky then,” said Missus Lu. “He’s a very good worker. I’m surprised he’d ever do a thing like run.” Josephine saw a flash of Missus’ brown eyes as she glanced sideways at Josephine.

  Again Josephine found herself beside Lottie’s fire with Louis, the soft pink of his tongue as he opened his mouth wide with laughter. Come with me? he had asked.

  “Oh, but don’t you worry, Lu Anne.” Melly waved her hand in the air. “I can scarcely believe yours will give you and Mr. Bell any trouble.”

  “No, I’m sure they won’t,” said Missus Lu.

  “Mr. Bell seems a fine master, very efficient. Very circumspect,” said Melly.

  Mr. Bell. Josephine realized then Melly’s interest, her cataloguing and snooping. Her attention to Missus’ illness. Perhaps Dr. Vickers had spoken of her prognosis. Perhaps there had been only a suggestion of gravity, but Melly nonetheless had smelled it out. Melly knew that soon Missus Lu would be gone, and Mister still young enough, a landowner, a slave owner, a fine catch.

  Missus leaned back in the rocker and closed her eyes. The chair just moved with the barest push of her toes.

  “Well, I should leave you now,” said Melly, discomfited, it appeared, by Missus’ silence and the purple-blue tint of her eyelids.

  Missus drew open her eyes and gave a slow nod. “Yes, thank you for calling, Melly. May Josephine help you to your buggy?”

  “Oh no, no,” Melly said, too fast. “No need, really. It’s scarce ten paces. I shall be fine on my own.” She leaned to kiss Missus Lu’s cheek and then descended the porch steps, down the side path toward the barn where her buggy waited. Otis had watered and fed and then rehitched the horse. It watched Melly approach with an air, it seemed to Josephine, of placid disappointment.

  “That woman is nothing but clay-eating trash.” Missus’ voice rose razor sharp from her chair. Her eyes were open and watchful as Melly seated herself on the bench, took the reins, and waved a tightly gloved hand in farewell as the horse began its plodding toward the road.

  “A spinster. She sniffs around here, seeing to me. Condolences. Do not allow any other visitors to enter this house. Do you understand, Josephine? I will see no one.” Missus did not look at Josephine. “Now, go fix up Mister’s dinner. He’ll be coming in soon.”

  JOSEPHINE LEFT MISSUS ON THE porch and stood for a moment in the entry, seeing if she might follow inside. But no, she heard the soft creak-creak of the rocker, regular as rain. Walking high on the soft pads of her feet, Josephine darted first to the kitchen for the bundle of food, then up the stairs to the studio. With one hand she grabbed the boots by the laces, with the other she plucked the roll of canvas from her pile. In her attic room, Josephine placed these treasures under the sleeping pallet. The material bulged with the bulk of them, but there was nothing else to be done.

  Josephine started down the stairs and to the kitchen. With Louis’s name spoken into the day, Josephine felt the world shift toward brightness. He had run once, he would run again, Josephine had no doubt. Philadelphia, she again heard Louis’s voice form the word, each syllable sweeter than the last. She did not think of the mechanics of finding him, the likelihood of their success and reunion. It was merely the knowledge that he lived that made herself seem suddenly more alive, and stronger too, capable of running away because wasn’t she running toward something? Wasn’t there the picture now in her head, however fantastic, however unreal, of walking with Louis along a broad busy street, of a city where she might find a beloved face, and in that face find her home?

  Lina

  SUNDAY

  Lina and Oscar waited outside the Calhoun Gallery for Marie to return from a pedicure appointment. They sat in silence on Parisian-style black lacquered chairs under the shade of the gallery awning and sipped iced coffees bought from the grocer on the corner. The morning was hot and Lina felt sweat beading on her upper lip and her shirt dampening where it met the chair.

  Marie arrived wearing flimsy pink paper flip-flops and a green silk sundress that reminded Lina of 1940s movie stars in the way it floated across her body and shimmered in the sun. She sat down beside Oscar and lit a cigarette.

  “I am so very paranoid,” Marie said with a dramatic exhale of white smoke. Her voice was nicotine-hoarse, the French accent strong. “No one is allowed to see the new paintings until the opening. Only you, Oscar. Only for you would I do such a thing. And your lovely daughter.”

  Marie leaned forward, directing her attention now to Lina. “We have no information on Josephine’s family,” she said. “Nothing. From what we know, she had no children, no brothers, no sisters. After 1852, she disappeared from the face of the earth. Just”—and here Marie snapped her fingers—“gone. And to be honest, that is fine with us. We have no familial estate contesting ownership of the works. It’s a windfall. It’s the largest windfall in the history of windfalls! The owner is an amateur collector, a man from the South—South Carolina? Or South … West Virginia? I never can remember. He bought all the paintings—fifty-two! For fuck’s sake! He bought them at an estate sale, an old lady who died with no will, no kids herself. But a white woman, very white. No actual relation to Josephine Bell, so it would appear.”

  Marie dragged long and hard on her cigarette. “This … collector, he is looking at significant sums. Big money. He is happy as a little clam. I won’t even tell you how he came to me, it is a funny story.” Marie Calhoun rolled her eyes and smiled, more to herself than to them, and stubbed out her cigarette. She checked her toenails and slipped out of the paper shoes, changing them for a pair of vertiginous heels she fished from a purse as big and round as a man’s head. “Now. Shall we go inside? You must not tell anyone you have seen the pictures. Mr. South Virginia will be very upset.” Marie giggled, her mouth circled by little smoker’s wrinkles and colored a brilliant red.

  At the gallery entrance, beside the empty receptionist’s desk, a tripod easel displayed a posterboard printed with a black-and-white headshot of a smiling man, his thick gray hair well coiffed, his teeth gleaming white. THE ART AND ARTIFICE OF LU ANNE BELL, LECTURE BY PORTER SCALES, JUNE 24, 7 P.M. was printed in large type beneath the photo.

  “It is Porter who first questioned authorship,” Marie said to Lina as she paused to examine the poster. “He has spent many, many months examining these works. The new, and the old. But it is always hard to change people’s expectations. Change what they have so long believed.” Here Marie gave a quick frustrated shake of her head, and then turned to Oscar. “Oh Oscar,” she said, her tone now teasing. “Will you be here for Porter’s talk?” Marie gave a sly grin.

  “I would answer that in the negative,” Oscar said with more force than seemed necessary. Lina tried to remember why the critic’s name rang a bell, and then she had it.

  “Wait—isn’t he the one who called you fidgety? Who gave you that awful review?”

  Oscar nodded once. “That would be him, yep.”

  “Porter and Oscar have a—how should I say it?—a long history,” Marie said, turning to Lina. “But he is a very brilliant man. He knows everything about Lu Anne Bell. About many things in fact. He is very learned. An intellectual.”

  “The guy’s a hack, Marie,” Oscar said. “He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, never had to work a day in his life. Couldn’t paint to save his ass so now he just criticizes what real artists do.” Oscar moved into the gallery, his boot heels echoing loudly in the empty room. Marie raised her eyebrows at Lina and followed him inside.

  The show filled all three of the gallery’s white-walled rooms. Some of the pictures hung in simple frames; others leaned against the wall, waiting to be placed. There were primarily paintings, both watercolor and oil, but also some pencil and charcoal drawings, a few wood engravings. Veering away from Oscar and Marie, Lina started at the back o
f the gallery, where a row of landscapes hung, watercolors and oils of the tobacco fields, the Blue Ridge Mountains that surrounded the Bell farm, and numerous studies of the main house seen from different angles at various times of day and evening. In one image the house seemed monstrous and foreboding, and Lina stopped to examine it. Bell Creek at Dawn (1848) the label read, though the light seemed too murky and bleak for dawn. A flock of crows quivered in the upper left corner and a small group of slaves hovered on the lawn, seven of them, their figures dwarfed by the looming house, their faces indistinct. The stillness of the scene invoked in Lina a sudden and sickening claustrophobia.

  She turned away from the landscape to a wall of portraits. Each of these was in oil, each of a slave, half-length and full face, realistically rendered, each devastating in its own particulars. Winton, Lottie, Jackson, Calla, Therese, Otis. The names were printed directly onto the gallery wall beside each painting, the dates ranging from 1845 to 1852.

  “It is the imperfection, the authenticity, that is so striking in the Bell work,” Marie whispered, standing at Lina’s ear. “That woman, her name is Lottie. I have always found this to be the most moving of the portraits.” Yes, Lina could see why. Lottie’s hands, gnarled and bent as the roots of a tree, were clasped before her, holding a bouquet of flowers. Lottie’s eyes looked patient. She looked as if she were waiting for something, or someone, but with no expectation that it or he or she might ever arrive.

  “None of the Bell works are signed, but the names of the subjects are written on the back of each portrait,” Marie said. “Handwriting. This will help us prove it was Josephine who made them, not Lu Anne. As soon as we have access to the full Bell archives.”

  “What’s the problem?” Lina asked.

  “Well, the Stanmore Foundation, they own nearly all the Bell works, of course, and it is a very dramatic shock to them, the idea that Lu Anne was nothing more than a fabricator. A liar. So they are not as … cooperative with us, with Porter, as they should be. That is why we are having the show now, to push the question. To take it public.”