America's First Daughter: A Novel(179)
“How will I face my sisters? The last time Cornelia saw me, she nearly turned me to stone with those gorgon eyes.”
“Your sisters will be as delighted to see you as I am.” And if they weren’t, I’d make them pretend. Because Ann had never been taught to do anything but honor and obey a husband, and none of this was her fault.
Ann was too weak to go up the steep stairs to the family bedrooms, so we put her into the same bed Jeff had used to recover from his stabbing. And for the same reason. Both my children were victims of that vile wretch Charles Bankhead!
Would he come after her? Would he dare? My husband had abandoned us, my father was frail, and none of the slaves, or even the overseers, were brave enough to confront Bankhead with the force required. So I made my own plans to defend us.
My sons James, Ben, and Lewis were all young men now, between the ages of sixteen and twenty. While closing every paneled shutter over the windows of the house, I told them to arm themselves—not with a horsewhip or a fire iron, but with pistols. Because if the moment came, I didn’t want them to injure Bankhead, but to see him to his grave.
Instead, we saw Ann to hers.
In scream-inducing pain, she gave birth to a little boy. Seeing the bruises on her body and the bleeding that wouldn’t stop, the physician dosed her heavily with laudanum. Ann didn’t want it, and I protested the physician’s prescription. But the doctor said my daughter had internal wounds that couldn’t be repaired. Then he gave her a dose that left her speechless and insensible.
Slipping into much the same condition, I lingered with Ann, holding her hand. Such was the state of my own distress that, for a moment, I saw not only my beloved daughter dying in childbed, but also my dear, sweet sister, who’d lost her life in childbed. I’d blink at Ann’s brown hair, and for a moment see my sister, then my mother, then my daughter again.
I was so lost in time and place, I scarcely heard the words of the doctor, who finally said, “Mrs. Bankhead is past hope.”
I suppose I heard these words. They were simply too shattering to accept. Inside my head, I screamed a glass-shattering scream, but in truth I made not a sound. I sat there with my dying child—the grief swirling like fury in my skull—blind and deaf to the whole world.
I couldn’t rise until afternoon, after Ann breathed her last. Even then, it was only because, like a sudden dam that must be built to fend off the flood of anguish, I was frantic to do for my child the very last thing that I could do for her in this world.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t swoon away. I couldn’t lock myself in my room and pace the floor howling and smashing and breaking things. I couldn’t ride through the woods in madness, though I wanted to. How desperately I wanted to!
Instead, I went to my father and said, “We must arrange for her burial.”
“Our poor, dear Ann.” My father wept. “My little garden fairy. I’ll never see flowers again but with her in heaven. Though now, heaven seems to be overwhelming us with every form of misfortune, and I expect the next will give me the coup de grace.”
I couldn’t hear it, couldn’t accept how frail and dispirited and heartbroken my father was, because I needed him now as I’d perhaps never needed him before. “Send for Bankhead.”
My father cried, indignant, “Charles?”
“Yes.” My mind was quite made up. “Send for Bankhead and ask him to bring the children and Ann’s best dress.”
“Surely a servant—”
“We must send for Bankhead,” I insisted again, speaking to my father with a commanding tone I’d never employed before, and scarcely recognized within myself. “We must welcome him home to bury his wife. We must offer hope at reconciliation after so many bitter years. We must elicit from him a warm glow of gratitude in his grief and guilt. And in the moment he’s most vulnerable, we must ask him to leave the children with us.”
I said this with perfect clarity of mind and terrible resolve. I wouldn’t lose Ann’s children as I’d lost Polly’s. And not to a man like Charles. I believed, sincerely and utterly, that even if we were fated to abject poverty, my grandchildren would still be better off with me than at the mercy of that drunk, violent monster.
I’d swallow down any poison to wrest Ann’s babies from her murderer. And so I felt no compunction in demanding cooperation from the family. “The natural consequence of our having the children will be a reconciliation with their father. When Bankhead arrives, there’ll be no accusations, no recriminations, no coolness to him in any respect. We’ll smile at him and make up our quarrel—even you, Jeff.”
Something in my voice, something in my dry eyes, seemed to frighten the family into perfect obedience. And when the slaves shoveled dirt over my daughter’s grave, Charles sank to his knees by Ann’s grave, trembling, and retching in guilt and grief. There was no hope for Ann and there was no hope for him. The only hope was that my grandchildren might be saved, so I did the most difficult thing I’d ever had to do in my life.
I forced myself to put a hand upon Bankhead’s accursed shoulder and offered him the solace and forgiveness that would bend him to my will. Then I whispered sweetly in the ear of my daughter’s murderer how her babies would be best left with me . . .
. . . until, at length, he agreed.
And I am not sorry for it to this day.