Free The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom Page B

Tears of relief and wonder rolled down my face, and helpless to stop them, I wiped them away with the back of my hand. Mama wrapped him in a blanket and took him to his mother. “It a boy, Miss Martha,” she said, “it a big strong boy.”
    “No!” Miss Martha pushed away Mama and the crying baby. She turned her face and closed her eyes.
    “Here, Abinia, you hold him.” Mama nodded me toward a chair. I sniffed loudly, and she whispered urgently, “Abinia. This no time for cryin’. You got to hold this baby tight. Come. I needin’ you here.”
    Again I sobered. Determined to win Mama’s approval, I reached for the baby. “I can hold him, Mama,” I said. Instinctively, I began to rock him back and forth until he quieted. While Mama cared for Miss Martha, I looked at my charge. As his hands moved in the air, I noted his tiny fingernails and watched their purple color turn pink. I couldn’t quite believe his miniature features, and when his eyes opened, they focused on me. His little mouth worked as though trying to speak, and from deep within me, love took hold.
    Mama tried again and again to get Miss Martha to take her child; each time she rejected him, I couldn’t wait to have him back in my arms. Mama’s relief was evident when the doctor’s carriage arrived. He stopped first at the nursery to see Miss Sally, then he came, white-faced, to see Miss Martha. He examined her, though all the while she did not respond to his questions. After, the doctor took Mama aside. He pulled a brown bottle of dark liquid from his case and gave instructions. “You know how to use the drops, Mae,” he said. “Give her enough to let her sleep until…” He nodded toward the nursery.
    The baby began to fuss, and the doctor came over to where we sat. “You’ll have to bring someone up from the quarters to feed him. Do you have anyone?” he asked Mama.
    “My girl Dory got a new baby,” said Mama quickly, “she feed this one, too.”
    The doctor examined the newborn; he rubbed the baby’s fine blond hair, and I wondered if Miss Sally was going to think this baby was as pretty as Dory’s. With a shock, I remembered that Miss Sally was dead.
    “Masta Marshall needs lookin’ at,” Mama told the doctor. She led him across the hall and knocked until the tutor opened the door. Mr. Waters invited the doctor in but shut the door, leaving Mama Mae out. She returned, her face grim. A short while later, we heard both the doctor and tutor speaking as they went downstairs. When they closed the doors of the library behind them, Mama went across the hall to check on Marshall but came back to say that he was sleeping. Then she took the baby from me and sent me to get Dory.
    I don’t know why I didn’t go out the back door but went out through the front. Perhaps because it stood open; certainly, I was disoriented from the day’s trauma. I stopped for a minute on the front porch, surprised at the normalcy of a golden sunset. I walked down the front steps past the side of the house, then hung back, frightened to turn the corner. I knew the oak tree with the hanging swing waited there, and I didn’t want to see it. I paused under the open window of the library. The boxwoods had grown high, and although no one inside could see me, I was able to clearly distinguish the voice of Mr. Waters.
    “It was that Ben fellow from the barns,” he said. “He has no business with the children, but there is no one, it seems, who can control him. He has the run of the place, and more times than not, he is sitting behind that woodpile, sleeping. I don’t know why he took it upon himself to put that little girl on the swing and push her like that. I don’t suppose he meant to kill her, but the way he was pushing that swing, I don’t know what he was trying to do.”
    I ran then to the kitchen, wanting to tell Dory about the tutor’s conversation with the doctor, but when I arrived, Dory, still in shock from Sally’s death, was in such a state