Free The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel by Katy Simpson Smith Page A

any devils responsible. Asa presses his hand and sees him down the front stairs, at the base of which Stevens’s horse is stamping.
    He carries Helen upstairs to the room she shares with the slave. She is quiet and not unhappy. She lets her hand linger on Asa’s arm after he rests her in the bed. A doll made of dried rushes with a braided waist lies on the pillow next to her. It fits in Asa’s palm.
    “Moll made it,” Helen says.
    “For you?”
    “She lets me play with it sometimes. You can leave it on the dressing table.”
    These are the relationships that should be managed by women; mothers are the ones who prevent slaves from slipping out of place. He fears that he has somehow allowed an unraveling.
    In the morning, Helen’s redness has mellowed some, and she is well enough to be carried downstairs again, where she and Moll play rummy by the window. Helen leans her cheek against the glass to feel the air outside.
    “What is it you’d like for Christmas?”
    Moll thinks, fingering her cards. She brings them up to her mouth and nibbles at the edges.
    “Stop!” Helen slaps a hand out.
    Moll pulls her cards down again. “I do have dreams about a yellow dress.”
    “You’re being vain.”
    “You got one,” Moll says.
    “And I’ve a right to it.”
    Moll sets down her cards and crosses her arms. “You’ll give me what you’ll give me. No use in me wishing.”
    “What about a little Bible of your own?” Helen asks.
    “And you read it to me?”
    “You know most of the letters on your own now. Come, it’s been your turn for ages.” Helen fans herself while Moll sifts through her cards again, slowly selecting a knave, which Helen snatches the moment it’s laid on the table.
    Disease has left Long Ridge by Christmas, and Helen is pleased with her complexion. The few slaves gather by the back steps and call Christmas gift , and Helen takes them bundles of fabric and oranges. One older man spits into a clump of weeds.
    Inside, Helen unwraps a wool coat and a novel from her father and an apron from Mrs. Randolph, who has stitched the girl’s name in pink thread, copying out the letters from Helen’s own lesson book. Later, when Mrs. Randolph and Moll are exchanging gifts in the pantry, she tells her father that she doesn’t read novels.
    “This one was said to be very moral. The author tells about his travels, which I thought you would enjoy.”
    “I read the first page and it seems silly,” Helen says. She is ten years old, not a child.
    “You’ll be the judge. Surely a diet of prayer alone—”
    “Prayer alone , Papa? There is nothing better; that’s what Miss Kingston says. If I’m to save myself and all the negroes, I must keep on the straight path.” She offers him the novel on outstretched hands, as if she were holding a dead toad. “You’d do well to heed the Lord’s call yourself.”
    “The Lord doesn’t speak to me, child.”
    “The day will come when the deaf shall hear the words of the book. Isaiah.”
    Asa wonders if he should remove his daughter from Miss Kingston’s care.
    In her room, Helen folds her new coat into the armoire, next to her dead mother’s gilt-edged Bible, which she hides under her stays so Moll won’t steal it. She likes to think of her mother’s slender fingers turning through the gospels, or maybe her fingers were stout, but surely they left a trace on the pages. Miss Kingston is not actually so religious, but she told the girls once that God was a woman’s province, and this made sense to Helen. Women were the ones who died.
    Mrs. Randolph smoked the ham, but Helen brings it to the table, where she and her father eat alone.
    In the afternoon, Helen leads a service in the cabin and a few slaves attend, sucking their oranges. She has arranged some green pine boughs and strands of ivy along the small table that serves as an altar. She emphasizes the importance of being kind because Jesus was, and when she mentions that it’s his birthday, a few of the