House of Rougeaux(46)

Hetty thought back to the beaches of her childhood. How she and her mother sometimes went at dawn to watch the last of the stars fade and the sun fill the world with fire. She thought of the orchards in the springtime, where she and Dax rode out just to look at the blossoms. The trees, bedecked like magnificent brides, full of bees buzzing like tiny grooms. These were among her most beautiful memories, to be sure, but perhaps not the most beautiful of all. Hetty told Margaret about the wagon road she remembered walking with Tata. The tall grass, green and gold, waving in the wind, the many colors of the flowers, and the way the clouds sailed above in the bright blue sky like great white boats.

“What about you?” she asked. “What is your most beautiful place?”

“There was one my Ma used to take us to,” Margaret said, rubbing her hand over the apron that strained over her great belly. She described an ancient footpath that led into the hills, the craggy rocks that reared up from sloping meadows, and a small, unlikely pool carved into the stone by a spring. There were markings here and there worked into the stone surrounding the pool. Her mother said it was writing made by their people from ages ago. She called the spot a thin place. A type of place where the distance between people and the spirits was so thin that the two could touch.

Margaret never forgot the green of that grass. The sunshine on her mother’s hair. Holding the hands of her two brothers and her sister while her Ma told them fairy stories and taught them her special songs. Margaret used to close her eyes to feel just how near to the spirits she might get.



* * *



When Margaret’s time came she was tended to first by the midwife and then by Hetty and her daughters. Hetty directed them all in her quiet way, sending her older daughters in rotating shifts to help in the home and in the Minkins’ restaurant. Phoebe, Olivie and Abigail all had young ones and they imparted their care and advice to Margaret like sisters. Mr. Minkins joked that he was going to have to buy a ticket to see his own wife and son, so often was he shooed away during that first week. Dax consoled him, putting an arm around his shoulder and inviting him to come see the fine saddle he was making for the minister of their church. Peace in the home was made, Dax told him, if the men knew when to keep out of the way.

On the second day after the birth, after Hetty brought a bowl of warm oatmeal porridge in to Margaret, who was resting with the baby, Margaret broke down.

“You are the finest people I’ve ever known,” she sobbed. “I can’t tell you what all this means to me.” Hetty put down the bundle of washing she had gathered and sat on the edge of the bed.

“We help each other,” Hetty said. “We’re intended to.”

“You have been so kind to me, Hetty, I do thank you.” Margaret swabbed at her nose with the corner of the baby’s blanket.

“It’s not needed,” said Hetty. She wondered for the sixth or seventh time at how different a sort of white woman was Margaret Minkins. Margaret hadn’t been taught from birth, as had Thérèse and Nicola Belcourt, that people of darker color existed solely for her service. There were no darker people where Margaret was from. A person’s worth was determined by what he owned, and since Margaret had owned nothing when she fled the famine in Ireland, she’d had to decide for herself that her life was worth saving.

As it was, Hetty and Margaret occupied the same station, and if any difference existed it was Hetty who ranked higher, as she was older and respected, and much more established in their community. How things sometimes turned upside down, Hetty thought, as if one could turn over a chair or table and find it just as useful.



* * *



The Minkinses’ scrawny little newborn fattened and grew into a fine baby boy with dark curls and long lashes. Josie was very fond of him and carried him around on her small hip, delighting in every new thing he learned. On one of the Tuesday nights at the Minkins’ restaurant, Margaret watched as Joah struggled to crawl over Josie’s outstretched legs.

“Do you think he’s simple?” Margaret said to no one in particular.

Hetty laughed. Wasn’t it their lot to fret over their children? Thankfully, things usually turned out alright.

On one of these nights Margaret asked Hetty, in a low voice, how Josephine was doing lately. She had seen herself how Josie sometimes worried her hands together and grew sad for no apparent reason. Joah was asleep in his wicker bassinet and Josie was just then absorbed in a book.

Of all the considerable knowledge Hetty had accumulated, from experience and reading, and from a lifetime of listening to others, none of it was applicable here. The moods and such that sometimes overcame Josie might be called spells, might even be called possessions, but what to do about them? She certainly had no wish to seek out doctors with their bitter powders and violent bloodlettings, nor priests who claimed to perform exorcisms with beatings and holy water.

“She reminds me of a fairy,” Margaret said, “or like someone caught between the worlds, like the stories my Ma used to tell.”

“How was that?” asked Hetty.

“There are all manner of those old tales,” Margaret said. “A girl falls in love with a fairy boy, or the other way round, babies snatched away. Someone’s always getting stuck in a world they don’t belong to.”

“What then?” said Hetty, “What happens in the end?”