I didn’t think his father would hurt Emmaline, not really, but I couldn’t stop from squeezing Warren’s arm the closer the other man came. It was all too easy to see her being snatched away, just like the boy from three years ago.
That poor little boy.
I never knew his name—we were only together for a short while—but I recognized his fear just as well as my own. Sometimes his big, scared eyes haunt me more than my own nightmares. I’ll never forget those mismatched eyes. One a deep brown and the other a deep blue. Pain swells in my throat, but I swallow it down. The past is long gone, and no good can come from dwelling on it now.
I can’t stop myself from easing out of bed. The creaky floorboard beneath my third step is disguised by low rolls of thunder as I move to the window and flatten my palm on the cold pane.
How long I stand there, I cannot say, but an ember of quiet agony simmers deep within my heart. An ember stoked with every sound of the raging storm, with every frigid kiss of the wind, until it becomes too much to ignore. I lean down to Emmaline’s cradle, and the small, rapid lifts of her chest beneath my hand are the barest bit of salve to my battered heart. A lingering glance to Warren’s still form in bed proves he isn’t awake to stop me as I leave the bedroom and quietly open the front door.
The wind kicks up again, carrying on its wings the echoes of childhood hymns praising a God who never calmed any of the storms in my life. Raindrops seep into my white nightgown the closer I get to the railing, but I don’t care. I shiver in the cooler air and wrap my arms around one of the porch columns, almost wishing it could hug me back as I press my cheek to its wet wood. All the farmhands are abed at this hour, and in this moment of solitude hidden in the storm, turmoil bubbles in my mind.
I should be happy by now.
While I’ve pushed back the plate little by little so as notto arouse Warren’s suspicions, I’m certainly not starving. On the contrary. I’m still eating more than I ever did most days with the men who owned me. And it’s hot food instead of cold leftovers given as an afterthought.
By the generosity of Mrs. Smith and Warren’s mother, I never have to wear that dirty buckskin dress again now that I have five dresses fit for a lady. Dresses that are all mine, no matter that they hang around my small frame. Nightgowns, too. Ones like what I wear now with a line of tiny buttons leading to a blue satin ribbon tied at the collar.
Even if Warren makes me sleep in the bed with him, I should be grateful that strange men aren’t taking my body at all hours of the day and that Emmaline hasn’t spent one minute in the presence of cruel men like Joe and Crowley. Or her father.
A jagged bolt of lightning illuminates the sky long enough for me to see what’s left of the chrysanthemums in the flowerbeds, and empty resignation settles in my stomach. That’s it, then.
I’m for certain at least eighteen years old now that they’ve ceased blooming. The flowers were still open when I first arrived, but now they’re withering. That must be what my soul looks like, too. A soon to be dry and dusty husk with nothing left inside. Their heads hang low, as if coming to the acceptance that turning their faces to the sun to beg for nourishment won’t help them anymore.
Eighteen. Another year older in a life celebrated by the mark of death.
That aside, I’m trying to be happy. I truly am.
But it’s other little things that chip away my spirit. Things I never allowed myself to dwell on until now. Water that might be tears as much as it might be rain blurs myvision, so I close my eyes and drag in the heavy air until my lungs burn.
When did I last breathe in the scent of fresh rain as it fiercely watered the earth? Or when was the last time the wind danced around me and teased my hair? Has my mind ever been so much mine and mine alone as it is now?
If I’d known when the Overstreets died that the next four years of my life would pass in a small room without any of these moments, surely I would have savored each one. But wouldn’t anyone do the same if they knew tragedy would befall them? I was only a child and certain that I’d always have my small amount of happiness, even living with the strict and overbearing Overstreets. They did the best they could in their own distant way, even if they fed me hymns and scriptures three times more than they did food in an effort to save my soul.
If only they could see what their hymns and scriptures gave me in return.
All my innocence ripped away by their own heathen son.
A soul stained by every man who ever paid for me with money that never went to my purse.
A child damned with the mark of her father.
“Why?” I whisper to the treetops that bend and sway to the whim of the forceful breeze. “Why would you let all of this happen to me? If you can control the seas, you could have saved me.I will never leave you nor forsake you, you said.”
If there is a God up there behind the black clouds, his answer comes in a gust of wind that slaps me with a stinging onslaught of rain.
He mocks me.
But that’s not good enough.
“Tell me why you turned your back on me! Why didn’t you stop it at least once? Just one time would have given me hope.” A crack of thunder devours my raw yell. I trip down the steps and yank a handful of dead chrysanthemums from their bed. Dirt falls as I shake the clump of brittle flowers towards the heavens. “My prayers weren’t good enough for a white man’s god, were they? You cursed me from the very beginning when you caused me to be born into death. Why couldn’t it have been when these were beautiful and blooming?”
Over and over I demand an answer, but there’s no reply.
Forsaken and abandoned, as always.
“Just tell me why!” With a strangled cry, I strike the porch steps with the broken mums before collapsing to the dirt in defeat. “Please…”
Hard pellets hit my back and bounce off as the rain turns into a barrage of hail, but the pain eases into a steady, dull ache the longer I lie there with the remnants of the mums still clenched in my fist. What use is asking questions if there’s no one to answer them?
