Free The Loom by Shella Gillus Page A

head. Their fingers would be stained purple for days, but the ruffled ivory sleeves Elizabeth repetitively shoved above her elbows would be stained for life. She couldn’t count how many times she’d warned her daughter of wearing anything she cared about in the fields. No matter how much Lydia scrubbed, dark splotches would fade, but never lift completely. Emma had tried herself once and scrubbed her fingers raw. Giving up, she resorted to lye, pouring the bubbling liquid over the cloth, but it burned her skin until it oozed pus and seared a hole through the fabric. She now knew some things couldn’t be saved.
    She watched her daughter with Lydia, saw herself in earlier years. The full of their skirts accentuated their cinched waists as they leaned over the bushes, their hands cupped under clumps of fruit they rubbed, loosened until they fell into the bottom of the wooden buckets swinging from their forearms. They were good girls, had grown into nice women. Cora still a baby among them.
    Cora.
    The pain of looking at that girl had dissipated with all her other emotions. The moment she witnessed what she tried to disregard, she froze like a pillar, her heart now stone.
    It was the only way she could rise day after day, nod at passersby, smile at humor that was no longer amusing, sit among the living. If she had continued to feel the truth, every ache, every hurt, process all the anguish and deceit from a man she had loved, the weight of it would have broken her, stripped her mind of understanding, and she would’ve ended ripped to her core. Like Beatrice.
    Emma and Beatrice. Elizabeth and Lydia. Her daughter was likely to suffer the same fate, her husband one day wanting the other, the slave woman in her house.
    Emma had been in love, grateful for this gentleman to whom her father bestowed her. She was to be the lady of her own home.
    She beamed at the thought of it, no more than a girl, three seasons shy of her twentieth year. Her heart warmed at the small smile on Michael’s lips as they rode in silence down the dark winding road, to the old colonial her father sold him, Beatrice toggling in the wagon behind them.
    Alone in their sleeping quarters, she stared into his big, brown eyes and longed to feel his large arms around her, to lie against the warm fur of his chest, but when she kissed his temple, he flinched. When she wrapped her arms around his neck, he gripped her hands, his thumbs pressing against the small bones of her wrist, and pulled away. Only on occasion did he come to her in the middle of the night, and only for a few moments, only touching as much as needed. She lie like Leah, unwanted, swaddled in cool sheets and hot tears.
    Emma wondered what was wrong, why he resisted what was rightfully his. She sat for hours contemplating, painting her lids, her cheeks, her lips, bathing in scents of vanilla, crushed petals of lilac, pouring oils as fragrant as they were sacred, anointing the parts of her body she prayed he’d desire, but nothing drew him to her.
    One morning, she sat across from him, Beatrice serving hot steaming flapjacks between them. She spoke to her friend, bid her good morning, and witnessed dark eyes darting from her gaze to her husband’s. Beatrice scrunched the buttons between her cleavage into her fist and turned away. Michael cleared his throat and rose, brushed against her thigh as he walked out. It was their last breakfast together.
    She hated him. Hated her servant, but only for the hours it took for Beatrice to come to her, late in the night, bowing before her, sobbing into her lap, sorry, so sorry, her tears sticking the thin skirt of her dress to her knees. Emma cupped the back of her head and cried in agony and forgave the worst of sins.
    When she gave birth to Elizabeth, Beatrice cared for the girl as if she were her own. Dark hands lifted her, cleaned her, cared for her, held the child, spoke life into her. Elizabeth was her slave’s daughter, their hearts knit together from