I hadn’treallythought Louisa was chained up in a shed being fed live chickens at random intervals… at least, I was pretty sure I hadn’t… but it would be nice to be sure.
Ma Kersey gave me an odd look. “Sure as sure can be. Why?”
I had no good answer. I ducked my head and said, “Just… I worry about things.” Which was certainlyatruth, if not quitethetruth.
She drummed her fingers on the table for a moment, studyingme. “You ever start to worry about Halder, you tell Rose,” she said abruptly. “Or come tell me.”
I nodded, though the mention of Rose brought another question. “Jackson said that Mrs. Kent… Rose… was Louisa’s friend. But how can she still work for Halder?”
“Ahhh…” Ma Kersey shook her head. “Don’t judge her too harsh. Her mama was in a bad way right then. She’d got old and her mind wandered ’til she could get lost inside her own house. Rose didn’t dare move her. Probly she always meant to leave, as soon as she could. And then her mama dies and it’s hard to think about moving right then, and pretty soon it’s another year past.” She poured out more tea, even though it was growing cold. “And she keeps lookin’ for another place, but there ain’t so many people around here who’ll hire a married couple who ain’t the same color. Halder’s a mean old bastard, but he ain’t stingy and Louisa got away safe, so maybe it doesn’t seem so urgent now.”
I felt my shoulders sag as I pictured Mrs. Kent, hating Halder and unable to leave because her mother was dying. I’d sat in a tiny little bedroom myself, listening to my father drown in his own lungs. I’d have worked for the Confederacy or the Devil if it meant I could pay the doctor. “God,” I muttered. “How awful.”
“It ain’t easy to swallow some things down. Makes you feel like maybe you aren’t who you thought you were. She’s got a good husband though, and that’s got to count for something. I’ll send you home with some of my tonic for her.” Ma Kersey stood, and I took it as a sign that the interview was over. I gathered up my books, thanking her again for sharing her knowledge with me.
She waved her hand. “Ain’t nothing. Told plenty of people over the years.” She gave me a sly grin. “Couple of ’em brought me rabbits, but none so fine as that one.”
I was turning to go when another thought occurred to me.
“Ma Kersey?”
“Eh?” She paused, the shadow of the door falling over half her face, a study of light and darkness.
“You said earlier… ah… something about ‘three-month babies’?”
“Ah. Them.” A gold tooth flashed from the shadows. “Never were right, not since the day they were born. Their granddaddy was a preacher. Not a kind man, but he thought he knew his duty.” For a moment, I thought she would stop there and wave it off as old gossip as she had earlier, but then she heaved a great sigh, closed the door, and sat back down. I perched on the edge of the chair, waiting.
“Those two. Sad little things, they were. Brother and sister. I delivered them, you know. Their mama didn’t want to tell nobody about it. Strange, that was. Not that young women don’t get in trouble sometimes and try to hide it, the Lord knows, but this was a different kind of trouble, though I was too stupid to see it at the time.”
“What kind of trouble?”
She picked at the corner of a shawl with her fingernails. “Swore up and down that she’d met the father not three months earlier. I thought, fine, she just doesn’t know how to count, or maybe there’d been somebody six months afore that. Or maybe she just didn’t know what she was doing would lead to a baby. Wouldn’t be the first girl who thought you couldn’t get pregnant afore you were married or if you were standing up or some damn fool thing like that. But afterward, I thought yeah, maybe itwasonly three months. Wouldn’t surprise me now. Those babes weren’t right from the first.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. This was making even less sense than I’d expected. “Weren’t right?”
“Not shaped right. Not moving right. Eyes all sealed shut like a kitten’s, and a mouth full of milk teeth like a kitten too.” She made a small, exasperated sound. “But I’ve delivered more babies than I can remember, and they don’t all come out right. Sometimes they don’t grow right inside and they don’t live more’n five minutes. Got twins that were all grown togetheronce, and more’n a few with some extra bits here and there. You ever seen one of those two-headed calves in a jar? People’re no different, really.” She grabbed the teapot from the side table and poured us both another cup. I accepted the one that she thrust at me, even though it was tepid by now.
“Anyway, those babies weren’t like that. They weren’t like a person gone wrong. It was like they were supposed to be some other thing entirely.” She took a sip of tea, then stared at it in disgust, nose wrinkling. “Shit.”
“It’s fine—” I started to say, but she snatched the cup out of my hand and dumped it out.
“Never mind the damn tea. I need something stronger anyway.” She retrieved a flask from somewhere under the shawl, and poured a small amount of the contents into my cup, then slugged some back straight from the bottle. The smell alone made my eyes sting. I lifted my cup and let the alcohol just touch my lower lip, which promptly began to burn. Jackson’s moonshine clearly had nothing on Ma Kersey’s.
“Drink up, it’s good for you. Practically medicinal.” She gazed past me at nothing. “Not like a person. That’s what I’ve always thought,” she said moodily.
“Err…” I tried to find my way back into the conversation. “Thought what?”
“Those babies. They were like a whole ’nother sort of animal. Wrong for one of us, but maybe right for one of them. And maybe they did only take three months to get born.” She put back more of the moonshine. I tried letting a drop trickle between my teeth, and immediately regretted it.
“Did you ask their mother about it?” I asked, when I could breathe again.
“Couldn’t. She didn’t survive. You see that much blood going in, you know you can’t save the mama. Would have been better if I couldn’t save the babies either, but that’s the sort of thing you don’t know ’til later.” Ma Kersey shook her head slowly.“Not sure she would have made it anyway. Wasn’t hardly anything left of her once them babies came out, like carrying ’em had hollowed her out. Most women gain weight, but not her. Wrists like sticks and her skin hangin’ loose as an old coat.”
In my mind’s eye, a green caterpillar clung to a stem, its body sagging as white wasp larvae devoured it from the inside. I took a larger swallow of liquor, not caring about the taste any longer, hoping the burn would drive the image away.
“Anyway, her granddaddy took ’em and said he was gonna raise ’em, learn ’em their Bible, made sure they had clothes on their backs. Not that they were simple, nothin’ like that. But strange, everything about them was strange. Their eyes were shut but with eyelids so thin you could see ’em watching you through the skin. Really watching too, not just staring the way any baby does.” Ma Kersey swirled the moonshine as if it were the finest brandy instead of a bare step up from wood alcohol. “Always meant to go back and check on ’em, but the next thing you know, the court strikes down the Rights Act of ’75 and things go completely to hell here.” She snorted. “All of us had a bit on our minds, you might say.”
“Understandable,” I said, a bit faintly. I had been born the year after the war ended. Fortunately, my father had been engaged in an extensive survey of wildflowers in New England when everything came to a head. We’d moved back while the ink of the South’s surrender was still wet on the page. But I was old enough to remember Reconstruction, and how things had seemed to get better, and then suddenly it was all gone again.
