“William, look at me.” The unshaven man lifts his head, and I see that his eyes are red from crying. “This can never happen again. If you touch a hair on Katherine’s head, I’ll call the cops. Lay one finger on her, and I’ll do it. I probably should this time.”
“I’ll die before I do it again,” William finally whispers. I have to lean into his yesterday-whiskey breath, his voice is so low.
“You better bathe, shave, brush your teeth, and go say those words to Katherine. I’m not leaving until she feels safe.” The man shuffles toward the stairs, and I let out my air.
Sometimes I surprise myself. When I entered the room, I had no idea what I’d say and was actually hoping I wouldn’t see him.
“You done good, girl,” Mary whispers, and I grin and raise my eyebrows.
“Hey, wait a minute, William.” I yell up the stairs, now feeling powerful. “Come back a second. You still owe Bitsy five dollars for her work over the holidays!” The man looks around like he’s waking from sleep and edges back down the steps.
“God, I forgot. Do we have any money in the cookie jar, Mary? I’m out of cash.” Mary rolls her eyes where he can’t see her and lifts the honeybee on the top of the beehive ceramic cookie jar.
She takes out a small handful of coins and one bill and spreads them on the table. “One buck, twenty-eight cents.”
Not enough, but I’m not letting him off. “Bitsy was here for three weeks, so you can pay her the rest in food. Mary, can you fix us a sack of flour and beans, whatever you think is worth about five dollars if we shopped at Bittman’s Grocery Store?”
“Good idea,” William agrees. “I don’t want to go to the bank just now.” He reaches out his hand so I can shake it and I notice his ring, gold with a ruby. I have a ruby too, though he wouldn’t know it. That’s the way of the rich; they lament about the state of the economy and their businesses and go on with their life in the same regal manner. There’s a difference in the wealthy lamenting about being poor and being really poor. If you’re rich, you can go bankrupt and still wear a ruby.
“Thank you, Patience,” MacIntosh says, looking right at me. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”
“You are welcome,” I answer formally, but then harden. “You better thank Katherine for bearing your child and coming back to you.” He nods and turns to go upstairs. “And thank Mary too, for feeding baby Willie while Katherine was gone.”
The cook smiles, shakes her head, and gets out a sack of flour.
Bitsy is in awe when I hand her the money. She lays it on the table and counts it again, then hefts the sack of goods Mary has stowed away for us. It must weigh thirty pounds. My friend’s so excited to get paid and I’m so relieved that the scene at the MacIntoshes’ didn’t turn ugly that we’re in a celebratory mood.
“Let’s go shopping,” I suggest. “We have one hour before the vet leaves. You said you need stockings.”
“Miss Katherine has to do our shopping,” Bitsy says in a low voice. “There’s no dry goods store for black folks in Liberty. We can go in Bittman’s Grocery for food, if we’re shopping for our employer, and there’s Friedman’s in Torrington or the Sears catalogue, but no one but Stenger’s Pharmacy caters to coloreds, and they don’t sell clothing.”
That feels like a splash of cold water in the face, and I realize how little I know about my housemate’s life. I don’t know where she and Mary shop for personal things or get their hair trimmed. I don’t know if there’s a colored dressmaker or what they do when they’re sick.
This is West Virginia, part of the Union in the Civil War, not Alabama or Mississippi, but Bitsy and I still can’t stop for an ice cream together in the summer—“No coloreds allowed”—or go to a picture show together—“Whites on the ground floor and Negroes in the balcony”—or get a sandwich at the Mountain Top Diner.
I give up the shopping spree and settle for purchasing a two-gallon can of kerosene at the Texaco station. Two blocks down as we stroll toward the vet’s, I link Bitsy’s arm in mine, the way I would with Mrs. Kelly, Nora, or Daisy Lampkin in Pittsburgh. Bitsy stiffens, looks around to see who’s coming, and tries to pull her arm out, but I hold on tighter, daring anyone to say anything.
I do it on purpose. We’re only forty miles south of the Pennsylvania state line, for God’s sake. One hundred miles from Pittsburgh, where I did the Charleston with colored men in the jazz clubs and where, since 1887, it’s been illegal to deny any person of color service in a restaurant, hotel, or streetcar.
When we round the corner of the courthouse, the demonstrators are gone and I think maybe we’ll stop off at my friend Becky’s women’s clinic downstairs, but two men in heavy ankle-length overcoats stride down the sidewalk. Bitsy pulls harder and yanks her arm out.
Their black shoes are shiny, not country shoes, and their eyes take us in. They must be from Pittsburgh or Charleston. Maybe cops? Maybe feds? Bitsy turns to watch the outsiders get into their long gunmetal vehicle but I look away. Above us, Sheriff Hardman, a rail-thin man of about fifty with a notable scar straight across his chin, leans on a pillar at the top of the steps. He tips his hat but doesn’t smile. On the second floor, in the county jail, a prisoner leers down through the bars.
“Come on,” I insist. “We don’t want to miss Hester.”
18
Twilight Sleep
As we bump out of Liberty in Hester’s Ford, I note the stone house with the green-shingled roof where Prudy Ott and Mayor Ott live. She’s due in a month. Becky Myers has been seeing Prudy at her clinic to check on the growth of the baby. Since I haven’t heard otherwise, I assume she’s okay.
Prudy makes me uneasy. The birth of her only daughter four years ago, at Boone Memorial in Torrington, was a disaster. She’s told me the story twice, and it’s clear that she’s terrified.
“I was assaulted by nurses and doctors,” she announced the first time we met. Those were her exact words, not overcome or treated badly—assaulted. I think she meant raped.
“Mr. Ott wanted me to have the best of care, so we went all the way to Torrington for my first baby, where I could have an obstetrician and twilight sleep. For two days I was in labor, in a ward with five other patients, and all that time I was delirious, in and out of a dream. My husband slept in the waiting room. He had no idea what was going on.