The Mapmaker's Children, page 7
Priscilla’s gaze went to her feet.
George continued, “But as soon as they came into our possession, we freed them.” He smiled confidently, an attempt to alleviate their concerns.
Annie’s brow remained furrowed.
“Siby’s parents and two younger siblings live down the road in their own house and of their own free will.”
Siby nodded emphatically. “I live with the Hills ’cause it’s a good job, and there ain’t many a’those round here for a person of my distinction.” She turned both her arms over. “My pa be dark as an apple seed. But me, Clyde, and Hannah—the baby twins—took after Ma. High yeller. My grandmauma be a light-skinned slave down in Georgia, and my grandpa be Master’s son.” She shrugged with a smile. “But I’s born free, thanks to Mister George.” She tilted her head up proudly at that. “Pa work the river. That’s how he come to our family name, Fisher. I’s happy to do the cooking and cleaning for the Hills. Ma at home now ’cause Miss Prissy say all chil’ens needs their mammy during the swaddling years.”
Priscilla looked up from her shoes then. “And a fine job she does.”
Siby blushed a rosy yellow. “You’s partial ’cause she done mammied you up.”
From her father’s war against slavery, Sarah knew that asking the enslaved to hope for freedom was one thing, but giving it to them in word and deed was quite another. Her father had wagered his life on hope being powerful enough to incite action at Harpers Ferry, but it hadn’t been. The problem was, freed or slave, they all had ties to white families. Some, like Siby’s mother, by blood. It was a weighty demand for them to lift a spear against people they’d lived beside all their days. Those who’d been tortured and mistreated were afraid to hope, afraid for their families on the plantations. Those treated kindly weren’t willing to disrupt the peace for an outcome that would likely be worse. So it hadn’t surprised her that her father had succeeded in recruiting a mere handful of Negro vigilantes. The southern families were as tangled as a blackberry and raspberry briar patch.
Now Priscilla winked at Siby, and Sarah felt the sisterly chemistry between them.
“I never learned to make corn bread as tasty as yours and your mama’s,” said Priscilla.
“That’s Gospel truth!” George thumped the table. “I love my Prissy, but she makes an awful dry pone.”
“It’s ’cause I make it in da fashion of a pie—round.” Siby fidgeted with her apron at the compliments. “Gonna be mealy if y’all don’t give it some butter and stew to sop up.” She went back to the kitchen.
Alice pulled an alabaster doll with painted yellow hair, red lips, and eyes shining bright as peas from the floor to the table. “Pa, may Kerry come to dinner, too?”
Priscilla looked from the doll around the table. She reached for George’s hand, and he ran his thumb over her knuckles.
“Kerry is an early Christmas gift from our Auntie Nan,” he explained.
“Pa says her face looks like one of our Kerry Pippin apples. See?” She held it up to the guests.
George cleared his throat. “She may join us so long as she sits quietly without interruption.”
“Mama and I are going to needlepoint her a bib of apple blossoms,” Alice whispered across the table to Sarah.
Mary had just finished sewing their best hand-me-down doll a new dress. Little Ellen had begged for the pearlescent saffron silk described by a fabled princess in the town puppet show. Make-believe. They’d explained that although spoken, written, or dreamed, some things did not actually exist. “But I can see it in my mind,” Ellen had contended, and who were they to argue? They blamed themselves for her extravagant proclivities. She was five and they mollycoddled her, but soon enough she’d eat from the Tree of Knowledge.
Here, now, was Alice Hill, stricken with perpetual youth. A blessing, a curse.
“Apple blossoms are the loveliest,” said Sarah. “Three years past, a cold snap dropped snow in April after the apple orchards were in bloom. You couldn’t tell the flurries from the flowers. The wells tasted of cider through summer from the melted ice.”
Sarah didn’t know what compelled her to tell the story, but from Alice’s delighted face, she was glad she had.
“Angels from the realm of glory,” Alice whispered, then took up her empty cup. “A toast to Christmas!”
George squeezed Priscilla’s hand again, then raised his empty glass, too. “To Christ’s mercy in all seasons. The merry and the mournful.”
Mary’s lip trembled. Annie stared at the H monogrammed on her chinaware. The candles dimmed, wicks into melted wax.
The grandfather clock in the hallway pealed the hour. Yes, thought Sarah, keep the wheels of the evening turning, the clock hands ticking, the hours moving forward. He’s going to live. He’s going to be gone when they open the tomb, the bed shroud empty. But each toll of the bell foreboded the undeniable truth: her father was John Brown, not John Christ.
Eden
NEW CHARLESTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA
AUGUST 2014
“Anybody home?” called Cleo from downstairs. “Mrs. Anderson!”
Eden was in her bedroom. She’d called her PR agency and had a lengthy discussion with one of the VPs—a man who had told Eden that as soon as she was ready to come back, her desk would be waiting. Guess not. Four months later and it had been filled by a “brilliant new gal just out of Georgetown” who’d done “wonders” with Eden’s client list. It wasn’t fair to them to switch back now, he’d argued, and he’d dared to say that he was jealous of Eden’s quaint new life away from the city fracas. She wanted to send Gomer Pyle to pour gasoline on his desk while she struck a match.
It burned.
She’d hung up in a full-body sweat and had been doggedly Googling real estate values of historical marker buildings ever since. She’d also called the Niles Antique Mill and left a message requesting someone to come do an appraisal. Immediately.
“Miss-us Ander-son!”
“Coming!” Eden yelled, bookmarking the page of a New Charlestown property called the Lee-Manning House. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it had sold for a mighty sum and now functioned as a bed-and-breakfast. That was just the kind of thing Eden had in mind.
“Oh, hey, I knew you were home.”
Downstairs, Cleo knelt beside Cricket, rubbing his head between her palms.
“I got groceries.” She stood and went to the kitchen without waiting for Eden. “Milton’s didn’t have Casey’s brand, so I went over to Ms. Silverdash’s bookstore to look up another on her computer and to ask about the doll’s head, which she was very interested in hearing more about. She said you could bring it to her anytime and she’ll have a look. She knows everything about New Charlestown. She’s got a degree in history and literature. Her store is an anti-quarian”—she pronounced the word carefully—“but she sells brand-new books, too.
“She found this one, The Holistic Hound.” Cleo held up a glossy cookbook. “It’s got, like, fourteen different one hundred percent organic recipes. Ms. Silverdash said to give it a try until we can special order from Milton’s. I told her how I got hired on to dog-sit for y’all. Well, Mrs. Hunter, who Grandpa says has ears like an Ozark bat, heard that from way across the bookstore and came over with one of her twins—all they do is grunt and holler.” Cleo prattled on while pulling items from a brown paper sack.
“So Mrs. Hunter started asking questions about what your house looked like inside. And don’t you worry, Mrs. Anderson—I said your house could be featured in Coastal Living magazine. That shut her up. Ms. Silverdash told me she was mighty impressed that I got a summer job. She’s anxious to meet y’all.”
It irked Eden that someone was asking questions about her home and that Cleo had given a fractional glimpse inside. Coastal Living magazine—what did that even mean? They were landlocked in West Virginia!
Cleo gestured to the line of ingredients on the counter: a head of broccoli, two potatoes, brown rice, ground chicken, and a can of stock. “Ms. Silverdash said the Canine Casserole looked like the easiest one to start.” She opened the book to a page marked by a yellow Post-it. “Basically, mix everything together and cook.”
Eden pinched the bridge of her nose. She was all for eating right, but honestly.
Jack had his father’s organic agricultural formulas and innovator patents in a bank lockbox, and Eden liked supporting the Anderson family. Jack had so few legacies. An organic diet was recommended by her fertility specialist, so she’d made sure to buy the right labels. All the celebrities were doing it now, too, making it easier to find a vegan muffin than a Twinkie. Truthfully, she would’ve subscribed to a diet of bugs if the doctors had said it would help, plus most of the organic entrées came ready to eat. She wasn’t much of a chef.
Eden rifled through the boxes stacked at the far end of the kitchen until she found the shiny red Dutch oven. A wedding gift off her registry, though she’d never actually used it.
“Are you up for helping me make this Canine Casserole?” She tried not to sound as desperate as she felt. She did not cook. She microwaved. Cooking required knives, fire, perils. There might even be an age limitation.
“How old are you?” she asked Cleo.
“I’ll be eleven in January.”
When Eden was eleven, she’d already been fully responsible for Denny, so she figured it was old enough for Cleo to be head chef in the kitchen. Eight or nine was a different story. But going on eleven? Well, that was a hopscotch jump from thirteen, and thirteen was practically an adult. People used to get married and have babies at thirteen. Eden couldn’t immediately think of an example but knew she’d read it somewhere.
She put the pot on the stovetop burner and waved a hand over it like a magician. “Ta-da!”
Cleo frowned. “We should rinse it out first.”
Filled with dust bunnies and packing peanuts, it had been a pop of red in her Adams Morgan kitchen design but nothing more. Cleo had a point: she had to start into this cooking thing on the right foot. Sanitized.
Eden washed the pot.
“Mr. Morris says a casserole ain’t nothing but a savory pie. He owns Morris’s Café. Best pies in the county. They won so many pie ribbons at the Dog Days End Festival that he’s a judge now. He doesn’t have the patience for the delicates. Fancy frostings and dippity doodads. It was his wife’s café, and Miss Lenore never made ’em that way,” Cleo explained while breaking broccoli florets off the base. “His youngest son, Mett, runs things now. Mr. Morris eats lunch next door at Ms. Silverdash’s most days—avoiding the counter crowd, he says, but we know he’s really steering clear of his oldest son, Mack. Mack delivers the groceries to Mett then.” Cleo shook her head solemnly. “Ms. Silverdash says if Miss Lenore was here now, it’d be her heart that broke, not her head. Ms. Silverdash would know. They were best friends.”
“Where’d she go—and what’s wrong with her head?” Eden asked, encouraging Cleo to go on, and took a seat on a kitchen stool. If the townsfolk had dirt on her, she could hear a little on them.
“Miss Lenore passed away from a stroke when I was seven. Shook everybody up awful bad, then people in town started talking…”
“Talking about what?” Eden pushed, though she knew it was none of her business.
Cleo cut the potatoes and put them in the pot. “Long time ago, Ms. Silverdash was keen on Mr. Morris. He moved to town when they were in high school, and my grandpa said that all the girls mooned over him, but he liked Ms. Silverdash best. Mr. Morris was supposed to take Ms. Silverdash to the end-of-school dance, but she had a tooth pulled and her mouth swelled up like a catfish. She didn’t want him to miss the dance, so she made Mr. Morris take her best friend, Miss Lenore. He proposed to her two months later. Ms. Silverdash said it was meant to be—love has its own ways. They hitched up at the courthouse. That’s how a lot did it back in the day, Grandpa said. Like the pies—no fuss.
“Ms. Silverdash went on to be in the first class of women at the University of Virginia. People in town gave her a heap of grief. They said girls who were too smart end up spinsters and Ms. Silverdash was living proof. Which is dumb.”
Cleo took a breath to pour out some brown rice, and Eden jumped to get in her two cents. “You don’t need a husband to be successful,” she assured the girl. “Ms. Silverdash owns her own bookstore, a big achievement for a man or woman. She’s happy.”
Cleo added the stock with a sigh. “Well, not so much these days. The bookstore’s in trouble. Too many bills and not enough hands to help do all the things Ms. Silverdash needs doing. Mr. Morris says she’s got her ears gummed up—won’t listen to reason and let him help. He’s a businessman. An investor like he done for the café, Milton’s Market, and just about half the town. Even my grandpa’s bank back before I was born. But Ms. Silverdash won’t let him. Says it’ll send tongues wagging to high heaven and being a Bronner, I understand that.” Cleo scowled, then put the lid on the pot.
Eden couldn’t out-and-out pry, but this town was not entirely matching the real estate agent’s idealistic portrait. Trouble behind the scrim. Starting right here in her kitchen with the doll’s head and Cleo.
“So…you live with your grandpa?” It was the best roundabout way she could think of to ask after Cleo’s absent parents.
“And Barracuda.” She nodded. “He’s a Korat cat. Gray with long teeth. Grandpa got him when Grams was doing chemo. When she first tried to hold him, he bit straight into her. So she called him a barracuda and said some things don’t care to be smothered with tenderness, but that don’t mean they don’t want it just the same. True, ’cause to this day, Barracuda won’t sleep anywhere but on my gram’s sewing chair. He misses her.”
“I bet you do, too.”
She shrugged. “I was still in diapers when she died. Ovarian cancer. Folks tell me lots of stories, though, so I feel like I know her.”
“My father died, too.” It came out without her having meant to say it.
Cleo’s freckled nose blushed, and she swiped it with the back of her hand. “I bet you miss him.”
“He was a good guy.” Eden smiled. Deep down, she wished her father had been more of the hero she’d always wanted him to be, wished she could’ve gone on without knowing the truth about him.
“I don’t have a dad.”
Silence crowded the room, but what could Eden say? I’m sorry didn’t feel appropriate. That’s too bad, even worse.
“It doesn’t bother me to be a bastard.” She seemed to read Eden’s mind. “My mom moved home so Grams could help raise me. That was before the cancer.”
Steam puttered from the sides of the lidded pot.
“Canine Casserole just needs to simmer.” A hay-colored wisp of hair fell across Cleo’s brow, and she scratched at it. “Is it cool if I come over to walk Cricket after dinner? Grandpa and I watch Jeopardy! during. We play along. Grandpa gives me a nickel for every answer I guess right. I got one of those giant pickle jars. When it’s full, I’m going to open my own account at the bank. Write checks and buy stuff—like an airplane ticket.”
“Oh, yeah, where to?”
Cleo sucked her bottom lip for a moment, then shrugged. “I got some places in mind.”
Cleo was the most atypical ten-going-on-eleven-year-old child Eden had ever met. From her violet eyes to her guileless sass, Eden liked her. She felt bad that the girl had never known her father, but her relationship with Mr. Bronner seemed to make up for it. Based on the stories, she immediately liked Ms. Silverdash, Mr. Morris, and Cleo’s grandparents. She even liked Barracuda. The one person that remained a mystery was the mother.
Single parenthood held a stigma, no matter what people said. A decade back would’ve been even worse, especially in a small town like this. So what had happened to her? At ten years old, Cleo was already devoid of her biological father and the two pivotal women in her life.
When Eden’s father died, she still had her mother. Remote as she was, she’d made fried eggs for breakfast, picked them up from school, taken them to swimming and music lessons. She’d invested time in their childhoods. And that, in its own way, was love. So as reluctant as Eden was to call once a month, she winced at the thought that one day she wouldn’t have to. Her mother was her mother. Good or bad, you only got one in a lifetime, right?
“If you like to travel, I have a ton of tourism books. Jack and I used to go places,” Eden offered and realized how very long it’d been since they’d taken a vacation.
She found a box with cartoon books drawn across the label in a conga line. Who had done that? Neither she nor Jack had any artistic flair—or whimsy, for that matter. Pulling back the packing tape, she found that the Frommer’s Mexico guide was the first on the stack.
“We went to Puerto Vallarta. You’d like it. It’s just like the pictures.” She fanned the bright photo pages and unfolded the inner map. “Consider it a lending trade. The Holistic Hound for Frommer’s Mexico.”
The doorbell rang a tinny ding-dong, and Cricket took off yapping.
Cleo accepted the book. “Looks like you got company.”
The silhouetted visitor tilted his head anxiously left to right, and Eden recognized the subtle gesture as only family could. Denny.
Sarah
NEW CHARLESTOWN, VIRGINIA
DECEMBER 1, 1859
Siby’s cooking lived up to its fame, and Sarah was grateful when she snuck her an extra corn bread wedge. “Case your stomach be giving you trouble in the night,” she said after showing the women to the guest room.
When they were changed for bed and the candle had burned down to a nub, Annie brought forth a tincture in a black bottle from her bag.
“I ordered it from the Albany Advertiser.”
“A snake oil potion?” their mother asked.
“No, Mama. Balsam made by Dr. Karl Von Meier of Germany, a famous doctor. It will help us sleep and give us the fortitude.”
