America's First Daughter: A Novel(15)
At my silence, Mr. Short sighed. “Come. I’ll take you home.”
The word home rang between my ears, taunting me with how comforting the very thought of home had been not so very long ago. Even when the British came and we knew not whether Monticello might be burned to the ground, Mama maintained that feeling of home that families provide, even in the worst of situations. Especially in the worst of situations. But now that role and responsibility fell to me.
I followed Mr. Short to his horse, an old brown gelding with a white star on his forehead. Mr. Short offered me a hand up onto his mount. I paused before accepting it. William Short had always been kind to us, and I hated the idea that I might do something to change that. But the way he spoke to Papa . . . “You mustn’t take such a tone with my father, Mr. Short. You must never do something like that again. We must comfort Papa in his loss.”
I held his gaze so he would regard me seriously. Perhaps he did.
“I didn’t intend to be provoking, my dear. And I’ll try to hold my tongue. But answer me this.” His smile was small and sad. “Who comforts you in your loss?”
“DONE LOST HIS MIND,” one of the servants said in a harsh whisper. The words froze me outside the cellar kitchen door. “Bringing pox into this house . . . he’s gonna kill them babies.”
“Maybe it’s what he wants, so he can follow them to the grave,” another said.
A chorus of agreement from the others sounded out, making my heart fly. Papa had talked about the threat of the pox for days and argued inoculation was the only way to guard against it. But could the slaves’ suspicion be based in truth? Could Papa really want to—
“Hush right now!” Mammy Ursula said, as if she knew I was listening.
Forcing my feet to move, I entered the kitchen, finding the group of women gathered in front of the hearth. In many ways, the kitchen was the domain of the slaves, and even before my mother’s death, it was the cook’s habit to shoo me away when she was busy so that she could gossip with the others. Now, the cook froze by the fire at the sight of me, her wooden spoon clutched in her hand, midair. The other slaves went silent, also stilled.
All of them but Mammy Ursula, the sturdy black laundress and pastry chef whose innate sense of authority was such that the other slaves obeyed her like a queen. With her hair tied tight and regal atop her head in a red-checkered handkerchief, Mammy snapped, “Why are you sneaking about, Miss Patsy?”
I hadn’t been sneaking about at all, so despite the nervousness that the slaves’ words and Mammy’s tone unleashed in my belly, I simply folded my hands over my apron as I remembered my mother doing and met her stern gaze. “Dr. Gilmer is here. Papa wants your help.”
Inoculating us was the first decision my father made about anything since the day my mother died over two months before, and it was a decision that came upon him suddenly and with the utmost urgency. Of the slaves carried off by the British, almost all had perished from smallpox and other fevers.
Perhaps it was the stories of how our people had suffered that put my father into a singular fervor that his daughters must be guarded against this illness, no matter how terrifying the treatment. Mammy Ursula had been my nursemaid when I was a babe, so I wanted her to tell me this treatment was a needful thing, and not part of my papa’s madness. Instead, Mammy brushed flour from her apron, wiped her dark hands on a cloth, and silently followed me to fetch Polly and the baby.
We found Papa in an agitated state, pacing in front of the clean-linen-covered table where Dr. Gilmer’s knives gleamed silver and sharp. In an echo of my wildly beating pulse, a November rainstorm pitter-pattered against the windowpane, and I stole a glance at the menacing little glass vial of noxious pus from a victim of the pox.
With steady hands, Papa tugged up the white linen sleeve of my shift to bare my arm for the physician, and I asked, “Will it hurt?”
Papa stilled, his bleak gaze lifting to my eyes. His lips pursed. “I wish your mother . . .” He shook his head and sighed. “Your mother would know better how to . . . what to . . .”
I hung on the edge of his words for a long moment, then finally looked to Dr. Gilmer. “It will be little more than a scratch, my dear,” Dr. Gilmer said as he removed his black frockcoat and placed it over the back of a wooden chair. “When it pains you, you must bravely set the example for your sisters so they won’t be frightened when their turn comes.”
I glanced at Papa for reassurance, but his expression had gone distant again, his fingers cold as he held fast to my wrist so Dr. Gilmer could bring his knife down on the tender underside of my arm. I hissed as the first slash drew blood, then yelped at the throbbing pain that followed. I clenched my teeth to hold back my cries lest they frighten my little sisters, waiting on the other side of the door, an effort that left me shaking.
Dr. Gilmer buried a thread soaked in the infected fluid between the folds of my rent flesh, then bandaged over it with a linen strip, tying off the ends. “There, there, Patsy. You did very well.”
I wiped away a mist of tears and tried to give a brave smile when Ursula came in carrying the baby in one arm and leading Polly with the other. But neither my brave smile nor Ursula’s presence did any good when it was Polly’s turn. My willful little sister screamed and fought and even tried to bite Dr. Gilmer before Mammy wrestled her still.