Bittersweet Read online

  Sam slogged through the mud to where Sarah waited, small on the wagon seat. As they drove out of town, the rain let up and a crack of blue sky showed in the west.

  “Looks like we’ll have a clear sky by sundown,” Sam said. The wind gusted, spattering the rain against their faces, and Sarah looked up. He pulled off his coat. “Put this on.”

  The bright tear in the storm widened, chasing the black-bottomed clouds overhead. Sam nodded in time with the dull sucking of the horse’s hooves pulling clear of the mud. “You’re all done with your schooling now, you got some kind of paper. That’s more than enough for a girl,” he remarked after a time.

  Sarah felt her pocket. She had shoved her diploma in it when she bolted from the schoolroom. She took it out and pressed it flat on her knee: a bright border of wildflowers and vines in watercolor, and the neat hand of Miss Grelznik in heavy black ink. Water had gotten to it, and the ink had run into the colors.

  “Don’t go thinking on that speech or whatever it was supposed to be,” Sam said. “You made a fool of yourself, but it’s spilt milk now, and nobody thinks the worse of you for it.” Sarah let the ruined paper fall under the wagon’s wheels.

  They drove on in silence. The rain stopped falling and rattled from leaf to leaf in the trees. Sam sat hunched, with his forearms resting across his thighs, staring between the horses’ ears. Sarah, beside him, was curled down in his coat. One of the horses stumbled, and Sam straightened and spat over the side. “How old’re you, Sarah?”

  “Almost sixteen.” She looked up at him. His brow was contorted, his thick eyebrows pulled together above his flat-bridged nose. Sam held her eyes searchingly.

  “You’re a young woman. Time you had a family.” Sarah pulled herself deeper into the folds of his coat, putting the collar between herself and his eyes. He watched her. “What do you think you’re goin’ to do with yourself? Your pa hasn’t much—David’s run off, and Gracie and Lizbeth are girls. Four females and only Walter to help out.”

  Sarah squirmed uncomfortably. “I could teach,” she said at last, her voice small and uncertain. He snorted.

  “I don’t have to look far to see where you got that idea.” He glanced at her, hunkered down in the oversized coat. “Teach!” He laughed.

  Sarah looked at the smeared ink on her hands and the mud caked on her skirt from hiding in the dirt behind the school, and hid her face with her hair.

  “You’re no schoolteacher,” Sam said.

  Saran nodded, then shook her head. “No, sir,” she said into the rank wool.

  “I got a farm to run. I been running it alone, but a man owes it to himself to get some sons. I been talking to your pa; it’s time you were out raising a family of your own.”

  The setting sun poured down through the ragged blue hole, and a rainbow materialized from one side of the sky to the other, tethered to the ground by dark hills. Sam turned the wagon into the Tolstonadges’ short drive. Sarah jumped to the ground and ran inside without a word. The porch door slammed behind her, catching the sleeve of her coat. He sat in the carryall, waiting. The door opened again and she came out. She walked timidly back and set the heavy coat on the seat beside him. “Thank you, Mr. Ebbitt.” He nodded approvingly and she ran to the shelter of the house, plummeting headlong into Walter and Emmanuel on their way out to do the evening chores.

  “Watch out,” Walter said as she stumbled into him. He caught her upper arm and steadied her.

  “What’s got into you?” her father asked. “You look rode hard and put away wet.” Sarah pulled away from them and ran into the bedroom she shared with her sisters. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it, her breath coming in dry sobs.

  The ceiling sloped away, the far wall only four feet high. Against it bumped the head of a wide bed, its foot thrust into the middle of the room; on either side of it were bright oval rag rugs that Mam had made to protect bare feet from the cold planks in winter. The sun had gone down and the room was full of twilight shadows. One of the shadows broke away from the wall and moved slowly toward her. Sarah heard footsteps and jerked her head up. Mam moved into the half-light from the window, and took her daughter in her arms, pressing the girl’s head to her breast. Sarah clung to her, trembling.

  “I’ve been waiting for you. Your pa said Sam had talked to him.” Sarah held tight, her teeth beginning to chatter. “You cold, hon?”

  “I—d-don’t—know,” she stuttered.

  Mrs. Tolstonadge stripped the wet clothes off her daughter and, bundling her into an old flannel nightgown, put her to bed. She tucked the covers close. “There. Our Mam’s going to get you something hot to drink. It’ll be just you and me for a while. I knew you’d be coming home full of news, and sent the little girls to Mrs. Beard’s.” Mam lit the lamp over the dresser and left her, carrying her wet clothes into the kitchen to spread by the stove. She returned with a steaming mug of hot milk, nutmeg grated on top. “Sit up, honey, so’s you don’t spill.” She sat on the bed and put her arm around her daughter. Sarah sighed, settling against the familiar shoulder. “Blow on it a bit, or it’ll scald your tongue,” she warned as Sarah took the cup.

  “Mam?”

  “Hmm?” The room had grown dark; the single lamp by the door burned unevenly, dancing the shadows.

  “Am I going to marry Mr. Ebbitt?”

  “Do you want to marry him?”

  “What else can I do, Mam?”

  “What else can any woman do?” Mam rocked her gently, humming. “Sam’s a good man; has a farm that’s paid for.”

  “How old were you when you married Pa?”

  “I was sixteen. Your pa was twenty-three. I remember how scared I was. I missed out on my sixteenth birthday because it was the day before the wedding and Ma was flustered. Just slipped her mind, I guess, and she never baked a cake up.”

  “You like being married, don’t you, Mam?”

  “Marriage isn’t to like or not like, hon. A woman’s got to get married if she can. That’s the way of things. I like it now. I can’t picture how I’d go on without you and David and the little kids.” Margaret smiled and nuzzled Sarah’s hair. “The babies make it all worth while. There’s nothing I’d trade my babies for. It’s why life isn’t just coming and going and cleaning up after folks in between. If a woman doesn’t have children of her own, she can be awful lonely.”

  “If I get married, will I have babies?”

  “I expect you will. I had David less than a year after I was married.”

  “I’d have to go live at the Ebbitt place.”

  Mam laughed and bounced her comfortably. “You sound so sad. The Ebbitt house is big enough to put this little place in and rattle it around.”

  “It’s dark.”

  “That’s ’cause Sam doesn’t have a woman to look after him. ’Course it’s dark. I don’t think those windows have seen a pail of washwater since Sam’s ma died.”

  “Pa wants me to marry him, doesn’t he?” Sarah’s eyes were closed. She snuggled closer in her mother’s arms. Margaret took the cup from her hand and set it on the floor.

  “Your pa’d like to have you married off safe, and he thinks a lot of Sam.”

  “You want me to marry him, Mam?” Sarah’s voice was slow with sleep.

  Her mother stroked her hair, singing softly. Sarah’s hand slipped from Margaret’s shoulder. She had fallen asleep. Mam lowered her carefully to the pillow, still humming. She pushed the hair back off her forehead and kissed her before stealing from the room.

  8

  EARLY IN JUNE, IMOGENE PACKED TWO VALISES AND LEFT FOR PHILADELPHIA. Her train arrived five hours late, but William Utterback was there to meet her, standing on the sun-drenched platform, his years pooled in arthritic knobs on his fingers, his back straight and proud. Imogene saw him as the train heaved into the station, a great cloud of steam engulfing him as he returned her wave. She pulled the small valise out from under the seat and took her place at the end of the queue of weary travelers waiting to detra
in.

  Mr. Utterback stepped through the crowd, unruffled by the heat and the noise. “Imogene, it is good to see thee.”

  Imogene took his hand like a man, then kissed him on the cheek. “You look wonderful! I don’t know why I sound so surprised, it’s not been so long—not a year.” She looked around her, breathing the thick air appreciatively, her head cocked to the side. The street was alive with people and wagons, the traffic sounds punched over one another: bells and shouting, creaking harness and rumbling wheels. “It seems like a lifetime.”

  When the crowd had thinned, Imogene picked out her suitcase from the other luggage on the platform. Mr. Utterback took it from her as they walked into the shade of the elms lining the street. “I know thee can carry it,” he said as she started to protest, “but I’d take it as a favor if thee would let me.” Imogene let go of the handle and fell into step beside him. “I hoped thee would come for the used textbooks thyself. Mrs. Utterback so looked forward to thy visit she all but forbade me to send them.”

  Over the weekend, Imogene relaxed, enjoying the company of the Utterbacks. But first thing Monday morning, she was outside her old schoolhouse. Her eyes traveled down from the neat belltower and over the shingled roof to the clean white walls with their skirting of foliage. “I love this school. I’m almost afraid to go in. I’ll remember what I’ve been missing.” Mr. Utterback held one of the doors open for her and she smiled, shamefaced. “Thank you. I’ve allowed myself enough self-pity for a day.”

  Rows of coathooks ran down the sides of a gloomy central hallway above low benches built onto the walls. Two doors opened to each side: Imogene pushed open the first door on the right. “I can smell the chalk. I think if a child hadn’t set foot here for a hundred years, there would still be the smell of chalk.” Orderly rows of wooden desks, holes for inkwells black in the upper right-hand corners, awaited the autumn’s crop of children. Imogene walked between them, trailing her fingers over the scarred wood. She stopped at an unremarkable desk three rows from the front of the room, pressing her palm against the wood as though its history could come up through the oak.

  “How is Mary Beth?” she asked. “And that boy she was to marry? Kevin, wasn’t it? Kevin Ramsey.”

  “She is with child. Mrs. Utterback says it is due the end of July.”

  Imogene smiled and leaned back against the desk. “A baby! God bless her. She’ll make a wonderful mother.” She was still for a moment, smiling, her eyes soft. Mr. Utterback folded his crippled hands in front of him and looked away, leaving her to her private thoughts. She laughed aloud. “Mary Beth a mother. That is good news.” Straightening, she dusted one hand against the other. “I’d best not see her. Will you tell her I asked after her?”

  “Of course I will. I seldom see her, but Mrs. Utterback sometimes calls.”

  “Could I leave something with you? For the baby. If it would be awkward, perhaps you might say it was from you.” Imogene’s face puckered with concern, making her look younger.

  “Thee may leave anything but the textbooks.” He preceded her out into the hall. “There are thy children to think of as well.”

  Imogene spent every morning for the next several weeks immersed in the storeroom’s dusty treasures. William worked with her when he could, and sometimes Mrs. Utterback came by with cool drinks and conversation. In the afternoons, when the wet heat of July weighed heavy and the close room became intolerable, Imogene walked through the streets and lanes of Philadelphia, visiting the places she had known as a child. She spoke to no one. She went alone to the house that had been her home. The garden was little more than dirt, and one of the shutters on the gabled window hung crooked, the hinge wrenched and broken by the wind. Two grubby children, apparently untended, poked at an anthill near the gate. Imogene stopped and the toddlers left their game to stare up at her with solemn eyes. She gave each a penny and bought two smiles. As she left, one of the bright coppers disappeared into a dirt-streaked mouth.

  In the fifth week of her stay, she and Mrs. Utterback were in the backyard at a table under the spreading branches of an oak, surrounded by the glue pots and papers. Piles of mended books lay drying in the late afternoon sun, boxes of broken and torn primers were scattered under the table and around their chairs. Mrs. Utterback delicately dabbed glue onto the spine of a Webster’s Speller that had been new when she was a girl in school. Imogene had just started for the house to fetch more lemonade when the side gate banged and a disheveled Negro child ran into the yard—a little girl not more than seven years old. Gulping for air, she pulled herself up short in front of Mrs. Utterback, too much out of breath to talk coherently. Imogene stopped on the back steps.

  “It all gone bad,” the child gasped. “an’ she been cryin’ for you. It all gone bad an’ Momma sent me.”

  Mrs. Utterback took the child by the shoulders and pulled her through the tangle of boxes and onto her lap. “Melissa, sit quiet until thee can breathe.” She held out her glass and the little girl drank the last swallows of lemonade. Her thirst quenched and her excitement abated, she started again.

  “Mary Beth Ramsey havin’ her baby an’ Momma ’fraid it go bad. She go over to help, but Missus Sankey say she don’t want no nigger woman around, so Momma stay under the window ’cause she like Missus Ramsey. Momma said it all gone bad.” Melissa had worked herself back into a fright; she leaped off Mrs. Utterback’s lap and pulled at her hands.

  Imogene ran down the steps. “Quick, child, run. I can keep up.” She turned to the older woman. “I’ve got to get to her.”

  Mrs. Utterback was halfway to the house. “I’ll get Dr. Stricker and follow you.”

  Melissa grabbed Imogene’s hand and darted out the gate. It was more than a mile across town to the Ramseys’ house, and when the child tired, Imogene carried her, her long strides throwing her skirts before her. The shady lanes, with their tidy border of homes, grew ragged, the fences leaning and unpainted. Dogs wandered unconfined, sniffing at corners and poking their noses into refuse dumped in the street. The air was foul with the odor of rot, and clouds of flies buzzed over the garbage.

  “There!” the girl cried finally, and pointed to a small house near the end of the street, the unfenced yard overgrown with weeds and only the memory of paint still clinging to the weathered wood. Imogene broke into a run. Melissa’s mother, a heavyset woman of indeterminate age, was there to meet them.

  “I told you to git Miss Utterback!” she scolded.

  “She’s coming with the doctor,” Imogene intervened.

  “You better do somethin’ now,” the Negro woman warned, “or there goin’ to be no need for the doctor; Miss Sankey goin’ to kill that child.” She took Imogene by the arm and propelled her up the steps. “You get in there an’ you do somethin’ now, you hear? This nigger’s goin’ to wait here by the door an’ she want to hear somethin’ happenin’.”

  The spare front room was empty. The bedroom door stood ajar and Imogene pushed it open slowly. The last light of the sun poured through the window, flooding the room with orange light. A double bed, piled high with clothes and rumpled bedding, took up most of the space. A narrow-faced girl lay amid the covers, her eyes closed. In the corner, by the head of the bed, a sluggish, blowzy woman jabbed at something and there was an angry cry.

  Imogene stepped to the foot of the bed. “Is she all right?” she whispered. The woman stared at her with glazed eyes. The air was heavy with the smell of whiskey and blood. Her mouth was slack, and she held a pin in her hand, poised above the protesting form of a newborn infant almost hidden behind a mounded blanket. The baby’s hair was slicked against its head, and a gelatinous mass of afterbirth extended from it like a snail’s trail. The umbilical cord, uncut, disappeared into a fold of heavy wool behind the infant’s head. The baby turned milky eyes on Imogene and smeared its mouth with a tiny, bloody fist.

  The sun dipped below the sill, and the orange light drained from the room. Without the food of color, the blankets showed their black banners
of blood, and Mary Beth’s white face was staring in contrast. Imogene leaned over the bed, her hands hovering above the still figure.

  “Mary Beth,” she whispered, stroking the girl’s cheek with the back of her hand. “No. No, Bethy.” Jerking back the covers, she pressed her ear to the girl’s chest.

  When she looked up, her face was like slate. Her nostrils flared slightly, two white dents appearing on either side of her nose. The midwife still poked drunkenly at the whimpering baby, trying to diaper it before the cord had been tied off or the blood and afterbirth washed away.

  “Get out,” Imogene said quietly. The woman looked up stupidly, focusing with difficulty. She pawed the hair away from her eyes.

  “You git,” she said thickly. “Nobody tellin’ me my business. You git! Cow.” She snorted and a thin line of mucus ran from her nose.

  Imogene was around the bed in three strides. She clamped her hand on the woman’s wrist and the midwife cried out, dropping the diaper pin on the bed. Imogene jerked her away from the baby, slamming her into the wall. Her fingers clenched into a white fist, Imogene raised her arm.

  “You got no call to go hurtin’ me,” Mrs. Sankey blubbered. Her flaccid, puffy face quivered and crumpled. Imogene dropped her hand and, grasping the woman by the dresstail and the back of her neck, ran her from the bedroom.

  Melissa and her mother crowded the narrow steps, peering in. When they saw Imogene, stonefaced and bloodless, drag the midwife from the bedroom, they scattered like chaff before a storm. They were just in time. Imogene wrenched back on the woman’s hair and the seat of her dress, hauling her just off the floor, and hurled her though the door. She landed in a bawling heap at the bottom of the steps.

  Imogene caught sight of Melissa and her mother cowering in the twilight.

  She pointed at the Negro woman. “You! Get me some warm water and soap. Send that girl for clean linens.” She yanked a leather coin purse from her pocket and flung it toward them. “Clean. Do you hear me?” The woman picked the purse out of the dirt and handed it to her daughter.