Free The Shore by Sara Taylor Page A

her eyes on the ground. That’s what Calley had told her. Medora herself remembered little: still, dark eyes watching her through the kitchen window, a seamed hand reaching out for her own, feeling of “mother” like a pile of warm down quilts. The smell of the pipe that she smoked while sitting opposite the kitchen door, back braced against thechopping block where Calley beheaded chickens, waiting for Medora to come out to her.
    Her father frequently entertained himself with female hands, but they had all been careful or had men of their own, so until Medora came along there had never been issue. Her mother had no husband, no family, did not cover up her condition, named him openly as the father, and from Medora’s birth he held a grudge against them both. Her mother worked her father’s fields with Medora tied to her back at first, but when the girl had grown enough to totter barefoot up and down the rows of tobacco he had sent one of his overseers to bring her into the house. He had expected her mother to give her up with little argument; she’d bitten the overseer’s arm bloody, and two of the hands had carried her away and locked her in a curing barn to keep the man from shooting her like a mad dog.
    It was not usual for a gentleman to claim his bastards, but her father had ceased to abide by the dictates of “usual” years before, and he could think of nothing that would hurt the woman more than laying claim to their child. Medora had been handed over to Calley, who had not yet graduated to housekeeper but was undisputed mistress of the kitchen, with instructions to keep her quiet, out of his sight, and away from her mother. Calley had taken charge of the toddler without comment, made sure she was kept clean and fed and happy—and assiduously turned her back when the Shawnee woman appeared at the kitchen door.
    Medora was five the first time that her father found them, herself and her mother, sitting together on the kitchen stoop. Calley had gone down to the root cellar just moments before, which saved her from dismissal. The sound of his raised voice brought her back at speed; she tucked Medora’s face under herapron and held her still there as he shouted, threatening to have the Shawnee woman arrested if she came near the house again. Medora didn’t see her father throw her mother into the kitchen yard, but she heard it, heard the impact of her mother’s body against the ground and the air leaving her lungs in a rush. She had tried to fight her way free, but Calley held her tighter; a moment later she was glad of this as her father then directed his venom at them, cursed Calley’s incompetence and threatened to have her arrested as well if it proved that she’d been abetting covert meetings. Only when he had gone back in the house was she allowed out from under the apron; it was the first time she had ever seen tears in Calley’s eyes.
    The visits did not cease, but they became shorter, more clandestine, only occurred when Calley was out of the kitchen completely. They were not caught again until one late winter night when Medora was perhaps seven. They had been sitting by the fire, wound in each other’s arms, and her father came unexpected into the room; when she was older Medora looked back and guessed that someone must have told him that he would find them together. This time Calley was too far to hear, and so no one kept the child from watching, from hearing, as crockery shattered and furniture cracked. Even so, Medora’s memory of that night was blurred, except for the moment, sharp as glass, of looking through the kitchen window into the night and seeing the vague lump of her mother’s body, crumpled on the frosted ground. That was the last time Medora saw her.
    Calley had not been dismissed as he had previously threatened, but he had taken Medora out of the kitchen and brought her into the house, to be tortured into the form of a Southern lady much in the way a French gardener would shape a