July spent many days gathering up those cockroaches for Robert Goodwin’s leaving dish. It was not, however, a thousand roaches that menaced Robert Goodwin, for they became quite hard to find. But more than one hundred, July managed to capture. Most were crushed, for they were the devil to keep in one place. And not all were cockroaches, but beetles and centipedes and tumble-bugs and strange black slithery things that squirmed within the shitty pit-holes. But all were diligently hoarded by July, for far too easily had she just been discarded.
July heard Robert Goodwin command not only Joseph, but Byron and Elias that, ‘Miss July must be allowed nowhere near the house, or the garden. Do not let her return to her room until we are quite departed. And she must stay far from the kitchen. Do not, under any circumstances, permit her to approach the missus or myself. She must be warned that if I glimpse her anywhere within my sight then, so help me God, I will have the policeman brought from town to incarcerate her in the lock-up. Anywhere! Savvy that? Anywhere! And neither your missus, nor myself, wishes to bid her any sort of goodbye.’
Their departing carriage disappeared that day, rippling and swaying in a heat haze. July watched it go until the last black dot of it appeared to simply vanish.
July turned her gaze to watch Emily, who sat at her feet. Her pickney was singing a song to herself—a nonsense song, for she knew no words. And as she sang she played with a piece of lace, turning it over and over in her fingers until she began sucking it keenly within her mouth.
The lace had been gifted to Emily by Robert Goodwin. He had hoped July to stitch it into a christening dress for his daughter. The christening would now never take place, but July leaned forward to her pickney to promise, ‘But me still gone make the dress for you,’ as she wrested the soggy lace from Emily’s sticky hands.
It was then that Molly arrived. She stood before July saying nothing, just staring her one good eye down upon her. So long did Miss Molly remain silent, that July thought to ask her where she would go now there were no white people within the great house who required her nasty food.
Molly lifted her gaze to the clouds to at last speak. She began by saying that she had milk. It was warm and fresh and straight from the cow and should she take Miss Emily to feed her some? Then she smiled upon July.
July thought nothing of it as she handed her pickney to her, for Molly often fed her. But perhaps if she had noticed that Molly was wearing a hat—a missus cast-off with a blue satin bow that hung down comically in need of a stitch—she would have waved her away. Oh, reader, if July had remembered that Molly, in the whole of her days, had only ever smiled in spite, perhaps she would have just clutched her pickney tight to her.
But she did not.
July walked the path up to the great house, where every window and every door of that big place was barred and sealed to her. Only the veranda remained open to welcome. July lifted herself into Robert Goodwin’s hammock. As she rocked there she watched a column of red ants determinedly climb the veranda steps. They marched in their thin red line straight under the bolted door of the house. Where once July would have chased them back with a broom or threatened them with a fire stick, now she let them go. And there was no missus to squeal, ‘Marguerite, Marguerite! Come quickly, there are ants!’ Come, so quiet did it remain that July could hear the pitter-patter of the ants’ legs as they walked that wooden floor. And she fell asleep there, rocking within a hammock that smelt faintly of an Englishman.
When she awoke, it was nearly dark. The commotion that roused her was made by Byron and Elias returning from town. They unharnessed the horse from the carriage with so much squabbling that July was sure Byron was once again drunk upon rum. July called out to Molly. When there came no reply, she walked to the kitchen.
But the kitchen was empty. The stove was unlit. The jalousies were closed. When Elias mounted the steps on to the veranda, July was upon him. She grabbed him at the shoulders, ‘You see Miss Molly?’
And Elias answered, ‘Yes.’
‘Then where she be?’
Elias, shaking himself from out July’s grasp looked puzzled on her as he replied, ‘She be gone to England with the missus.’
July had to wait a moment for her breath to return before she asked, ‘Did she have pickney?’
‘Oh yes,’ Elias told her, ‘She carried the massa’s pickney with her.’
And July roared upon Elias, strong and commanding, telling him to run to Byron—the cart must be got up, a pony harnessed. She must be taken into town and she must be taken now, for she must find her pickney. Now. Quickly. What did he wait upon? Now!
When Elias just stood looking confused upon her, she bashed him about his ear, nearly knocking him down. ‘But the boat be sailed,’ he told her. ‘Me did watch it. Five did sail upon the tide. One big-big sight them sails flapping, and them calling out and . . .’ Elias stopped in his musing as July gaped upon him. ‘No fear, Miss July,’ he went on with a pride intended to calm her, ‘it be the massa and missus be taking the pickney to England.’ And when July suddenly dropped to sit upon the floor in front of him, he gently asked her, ‘But what, Miss July, did you wan’ keep that little pickney for your own?’
PART 5
CHAPTER 34
ONLY HIS MAMA CAN rouse my son, Thomas, to quarrel. Let me place you as a guest at our Sunday table so you might find evidence for this judgement. See before you a white cotton cloth upon which sits, between knives and forks, the porcelain dinner plates decorated with delicate pink and canary roses, that Lillian does only allow to escape her display cupboard upon Sunday afternoons.
To your left is Miss May, my son’s youngest daughter. Be sure that she is fidgeting—playing with a piece of braid within her fingers, pushing back her chair to look upon her new patent-tipped button shoes, tapping her hand upon the table as she stares through the window. Her sister, Miss Corinne, sits beside her with folded arms and her full mouth drooping with sulk. While across the table Miss Louise, the middle child and quite the darkest of the three, sits making ugly faces at her sisters—widening her black eyes and sticking out her tongue when their mama Lillian, who sits at the other end of the table, is engaged looking elsewhere.
My son Thomas is seated at this table’s head—probably still reading some pamphlet or perhaps grinning upon his wife. While your storyteller, who is beside Miss Louise, sits wishing that just this once she might remain peaceful as she waits for the eating to commence, but is forced, as at every meal within this household, to quell the mischief of these three naughty girls by saying, ‘Sit still—stop that—be quiet at the table.’ Reprimands that their mama and papa should be composing but, alas, never do.
See now, as Miss Essie, our housekeeper, cook and busybody, arrives from the kitchen bearing the food upon a wooden platter. Be sure that what she will serve will be pork . . . again, but do not place your blame with her. Your storyteller did tell Lillian many times that the hog she decide to slay was too big for this family alone.