Sometimes she even turned on her own flesh. Twice she tried stabbing herself with the pin of a brooch I had given her as a wedding gift, and once she shoved a fist through a window in order to cut herself with the glass shards. Molly kept a close watch on her day and night, and for the most part she was successful in keeping Bertha safe.
But one dark night Bertha managed to escape, making her way out of the house with a lighted candle, and before anyone knew it, she had set the nearest cane field ablaze. When the fire was discovered, ten acres were already burning and Bertha was still nearby, her eyes on the flames as if transfixed. It was too late to save that field, and only with the valiant efforts of everyone on hand were we able to save the other nearby fields. By afternoon the next day we claimed victory, though there were still smoldering pockets. As I stood in the midst of the ashes, covered in dirt and soot and smelling like burned sugar, it occurred to me that in nearly all of Jamaica the whites feared an uprising of the negroes that would burn down the fields, but at Valley View it was a white woman who did it and negroes who put the fire out.
The morning after the fire Jonas asked me into his study, closing the door behind me. I sat—uncomfortably, for we had difficult things to discuss—in a chair facing his desk. “My daughter is a danger to herself, to us, and now to the plantation itself,” were his first words. “But I refuse to put her into an asylum. It would break her heart. It would kill her.”
I felt a sudden surge of rage. “I cannot understand why I was not told!” I charged. “I should have been told! You deliberately—”
“I suppose I did,” he interrupted.
“Yousuppose?”
“I hoped…,” he said. “I thought marriage would keep her from growing worse. I thought perhaps a baby—”
“A baby!She is the last person who should have a baby! Her mother is like this?”
He blanched at my question, but he did respond. “Worse. I imagine”—he sighed—“I fear my daughter will someday fully lose her mind, as her mother did. But if there is any hope for her, it will be in keeping her at home. My wife grew much worse when she was put in care, and, between you and me, Rochester, I’ve found it difficult to get over that decision; it’s irreversible now, but I would give anything to have done it differently, to have kept my wife and son near me, despite it all. We must keep my daughter with us, safely under our eye, here, within the radius of our family. Constrain her within the house if you must, but…” He choked back a word or two, then gathered himself again. “We must treat her with gentleness, Rochester, for she is sick, and we must stop it from getting worse.”
Though it seemed impossible to end Bertha’s decline, I reluctantly agreed with him, for Jonas’ love for his daughter was clear, and I had respect—and envy—for that. But I could not yet completely forgive him for having sacrificed my happiness in his quest to see Bertha cared for—nor, worse, could I understand my own father, who should have warned me of her family history, which he must have known. What reason could have compelled the two of them to use me so?
Devastated, I retreated to Spanish Town as quickly as I could, for the town house there had become almost a sanctuary for me. As always, Sukey almost seemed to foresee my arrival, for there was pepper pot on the stove to welcome me. She was in the parlor, mending a shirt of mine, when I arrived, but she rose immediately when I came into the room. “No, no, sit,” I said to her.
As she sat, I said, “It’s Bertha,” for I needed at that moment to unburden myself, though it is never right to bring servants into one’s private life.
She nodded.
“You know her inheritance,” I said. “Her mind.”
Sukey did not even look at me.
“Why was I not told?” I demanded, as if I expected the poor girl to hold the answers. When she did not speak, I found myself unable to contain my restlessness. “I will be back for dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and I left.
I went to my office, where, distracted, I signed the application to the registrar-general for permission to remove the wordGuineafrom the names of the two ships that had carried slaves. I didn’t care if it was bad luck or not; I had had enough bad luck in my life anyway. What worse could happen?
The next day I rode to Kingston, though I knew it was a mistake, and asked directions to the asylum—a large, formidable building of gray stone. I paused in front of it for a long time, not sure what I was seeking but knowing I needed to face what lay behind those walls. Finally, I tethered my horse and walked toward the gate, where a squinty-eyed man asked my business. He led me down a dark hallway that smelled of urine and vomit and God knows what else. I could hear, in the distance, shouts and screams and a low, nearly constant moaning. Another man intercepted us and the two had a few words, and then the second man beckoned me forward and I followed him.
“Why do you want to see her?” he asked.
“She is my wife’s mother.”
He shook his head. “Too late for you, then, surely,” he said.
I did not respond.
We passed several cells crowded with women, all of them reminding me of Bertha in one way or another, before we stopped at a cell containing a woman alone, her simple dress askew, her hair matted.
“Here.” My guide indicated her with a nod.
I watched her for a time, taking in the three-legged stool on which she sat, the mat on the floor on which she no doubt slept, the bucket for her waste. She was raking her fingers through her hair, as if to groom herself, and she seemed not to notice me. At first I pitied her, sitting there alone. “I have come from Valley View,” I said to her. “Your daughter sends her love.” My words seemed to make her suddenly aware of the two of us standing outside the bars, and she started to scream, and she rose and lunged toward us with an ear-shattering howl, her face grotesquely contorted, and I inadvertently jumped back.
“This one’s right mad,” my guide observed.
I stood for a moment, rooted to the spot, horrified. Was this what would become of Bertha? And then I fled.
Bertha there, in that place? It was no wonder her father forbade it and she was terrified of it. I could not blame them. As I rode away, the horror of that place would not leave me, and I, too, became as determined as Jonas to prevent Bertha from ending up there.
I spent three more days in Spanish Town before I could bring myself to return to Valley View.
