There was to be no more needlework outdoors that winter, Mr. Kern made certain to inform all of us. For weeks the Missus remained laid up in bed with Silva or myself bringing her food or a magazine or puzzles to rework, although Mr. Kern never visited even once. Even in her sickly condition Miss Lula was a hell-raiser, at one point locking herself in her bathroom and refusing to come out until I finally threatened to summon Mr. Kern to her room. She suffered every minute she sat inside that house, seemingly forgetting that she had once secluded herself indoors and would not bear the outside for even a second. During this time, Silva and I became her tormentors, as she put it, and this home her prison.
“Just one minute outdoors,” she’d beg. “I swear, the sun would do me some good.”
“No, ma’am,” I’d argue. “It’s ice-cold out there.”
“What about a walk?” she’d say. “Anything to gets outta this bed.”
“No, ma’am,” I’d reply. “There ain’t even a hint of sunshine today. Frost out there could kill you.”
Then she’d finally turn over, mumbling and groaning until she’d fussed herself into an even weaker state.
“If it were up to me I’d leave this very instant,” she’d say right before her mind fell blank. “I swear, Bernice, I’d leave right now, if the Lord would let me.”
Then she was peaceful again, her soft skin lay gently over her forehead, her hair a golden crown that seemingly marked her territory as queen of this manor. As I watched her, I hoped she could at least dream of some distant place, even if she would never find it in this lifetime.
Still, that illness did not fade as the doctor had hoped, and within several months the fever had embedded itself deeper in her lungs, and she now lost most of her mobility and indeed all coordination in her legs, not to mention the color that summer had brought. Mr. Kern prepared for the worst, having us ensure the Missus was as comfortable as possible during these final days, as he put it.
“Don’t talk like that, sir,” I said. “The Missus gonna pull right through. Be just fine.”
“Only time …” he replied, leaving me to wait for the rest of his sentiment, although he made no further point.
Fields once again turned green as those early cicadas sprang from their dens and could be heard around the plantation during the evening hours just before the sun set, and the grass stiffened. Mr. Kern seemingly relished his quiet dinners alone with Silva each night, the sum of their thoughts compiled in polite gestures they’d share, through smiles he gave, and those infrequent slips of his fingers when she’d pass his glass or issue his plate—a moment to breathe her scent as she hovered or leaned closer.
All, that is, until the Missus quit her foolishness and rose from her bed in good spirits. With time she had lost that fever that had kept her down for so many months and now just sat spoiled rotten with expectancy that someone would care for her every need.
“You better shame the devil and stand up right now,” I’d insisted. “Tell the Lord you want to live before He believe your act and take you on.”
“Bernie!” she screamed once she’d stood from her bed. “I can feel my toes. I can wiggle them!”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, “I see,” sure as hell she always could.
“Lord willing, don’t ever let me sit again,” she declared.
“Well, sometimes, at least,” I corrected her.
“No, never!” she screamed back. “I swear, I’ll never stop moving.”
She danced around the room like a possessed person, twirling to a song heard only inside her head.
“I think I’ll even eat supper downstairs tonight if that’s okay with you, dear Bernie.”
The Missus had a sense of humor that I’d grown tolerant of in her company. For indeed during that time we both grew fond of one another, the Missus now calling me by that shortened name and certainly feeling a strong sense of attachment to my care and no longer that of Silva’s, although with so much time together we had no choice but to grow closer. Miss Lula and I had developed an intimacy that bade upon her a proclivity to speak of those personal matters of the heart when only I was around, things she had never told a soul, as she’d close her eyes each night and fall into recollection of her previous life.
“I did love him,” she once told me as she rested from a feverish day that almost saw her meet the Lord. “I wouldn’t marry him if I didn’t,” she swore. “But a woman’s love can only pull so far. A man can only stretch it so thin until it finally breaks.”
She paused, opening her eyes like a child who peeks to be assured of a parent’s love, relieved to find me still seated there as she glanced around to see the empty plate placed by the window, the hairbrush I’d used to smooth her hair full of golden shimmers. Tiring, she nearly closed her eyes again, but not before she’d found me once more and gently sighed, lay back, then continued with my hand in her hand.
“I knew he didn’t love me,” she said even weaker than before. “I could tell by the way he held my hand, like he was afraid or something, like he was my brother and I was his sister. He called Silva ‘Silvi,’ but had no name for me, only calling her by that name when he thought I wasn’t listening. She never loved him back, and that made me happy. I thought he deserved it for treating me so bad.
“When Elizabeth was born, I just knew he’d have to love me. But there was Fletcher, and George had eyes for only him. Poor Elizabeth would just be there. She would call out to her pappy, and he would wave her away, kiss her forehead, then send her to me, and she would come running all happy, thinking her pappy loved her too. I prayed she would never know any different, and that prayer came true for when she died, she was as dumb to his indifference as ever. But I still knew, and I swore he would have not one happy day as long as I was here. I cursed that man and sent his beloved ape from this house—Bernie, please don’t think any different of me. I done always done right by negras, but that boy remind me too much of what I lost. Anyhow, I allowed Silva to stay because she had no love for him and that alone made me the happiest in the world.”
A contentment fell over the Missus’s face with these words as she closed her eyes and curled up beside the warmth of my hip. She fell asleep instantly, waking only once throughout the night as she mumbled some indiscernible name then fell back asleep just as quickly as she had woken.
With her face a brushed application of crimsons and blues, and her hair fluffed to pageantry perfection, she was now ready to hobble downstairs for her first dining room meal in months.
“How do I look?” she fussed. “More or less?”
She panted, pointing to her flushed cheeks covered with translucent powder.