Authors: Margaret Atwood
Mary coming into the room found me in this state, and said What has happened? and I said that I had a dreadful illness, and would surely die; and I had a pain in my stomach as well, which I’d ignored, thinking it was only from eating too much new bread, as it was a baking day. But now I remembered my mother, and how her death had begun with a stomach pain, and I cried harder.
Mary looked, and to do her credit she did not laugh at me; but explained all. You will wonder that I did not know this, considering how many children my mother had given birth to; but the fact is that I knew about babies and how they got out, and even how they got in, having seen dogs in the street; but not this other thing. I’d had no friends my own age, or I suppose I would have learnt it.
And Mary said, You are a woman now, which made me cry again. But she put her arms around me, and comforted me, better than my own mother could have done, for she was always too busy or tired or ill. Then she lent me her red flannel petticoat until I should get one of my own, and showed me how to fold and pin the cloths, and said that some called it Eve’s curse but she thought that was stupid, and the real curse of Eve was having to put up with the nonsense of Adam, who as soon as there was any trouble, blamed it all on her. She also said that if the pain got too bad she would get me some willow bark to chew, and that would help; and she would heat a brick for me on the kitchen stove, and wrap it in a towel, for the ache. And I was very grateful to her, for she was indeed a good and kind friend.
And then she sat me down and combed out my hair, which was gentle and soothing, and she said, Grace, you will be a beauty, soon you will turn the men’s heads. The worst ones are the gentlemen, who think they are entitled to anything they want; and when you go
out to the privy at night, they’re drunk then, they lie in wait for you and then it is snatch and grab, there’s no reasoning with them, and if you must, you should give them a kick between the legs where they’ll feel it; and it is always better to lock your door, and to use the chamber pot. But any kind of man will try the same; and they’ll start promising things, they’ll say they will do whatever you want; but you must be very careful what you ask, and you must never do anything for them until they have performed what they promised; and if there’s a ring, there must be a parson to go with it.
I asked her innocently, Why was that, and she said it was because men were liars by nature, and would say anything to get what they wanted of you, and then they would think better of it and be off on the next boat. And now I saw that we were in the same story as the one Aunt Pauline used to tell about my mother, and I nodded wisely and said that she was right, although still not altogether certain what she meant. And she gave me a hug, and said I was a good girl.
On the night of October the 31st, which as you know, Sir, is All Hallows Eve, when they say the spirits of the dead come back from the grave, although it is only a superstition – on that night, Mary came to our room with something hidden in her apron, and she said, Look, I have got us four apples, I begged them from Cook. Apples were plentiful at that time of year and there were barrels of them already stored in the cellar. Oh, I said, are they for us to eat, and she said We will eat them after, but this is the night when you can find out who you will marry. She said she had got four, so that we would each have two chances at it.
She showed me a little knife she’d got from Cook also, or so she said. The truth is that she sometimes took things without asking, which made me nervous; though she said it was not stealing as long as you put the things back after. But sometimes she didn’t do that either. She’d taken a copy of
The Lady of the Lake
by Sir Walter Scott
out of the library where they had five of them, and she was reading it out loud to me; and she had a store of candle-ends which she’d taken one by one from the dining room, and she kept them hidden under a loose floorboard; and if she’d had them by permission, she wouldn’t have done so. We were allowed our own candle, to undress by at night, but Mrs. Honey said we weren’t to burn it up in a profligate way, each candle was to last us a week, and that was less light than Mary wanted to have. She had some Lucifer matches which she also kept hidden, so that when our official candle was blown out to save it, she could light another whenever she wanted; and she lit two of her candle-ends now.
Here is the knife and the apple, she said, and you must take the peel off in one long piece; and then without looking behind you, you must throw it over your left shoulder. And it will spell out the initial of the man you will marry, and tonight you will dream about him.
I was too young to be thinking of husbands, but Mary talked about them a great deal. When she’d saved up enough of her wages, she was going to marry a nice young farmer whose land was already cleared and a good house built; and if she could not get one of those, she would settle for one with a log house, and they would build a better house later. She even knew what kind of hens and cow they would have – she wanted white and red Leghorns, and a Jersey cow for the cream and cheese, which she said there was nothing better.
So I took the apple and pared it, and I got the peel off in one piece. Then I threw it behind me, and we looked at how it had fallen. There was no telling which way was up, but at last we decided that it was a J. And Mary began to tease, and to tell over the names of the men she knew whose names began with a J; and she said I would marry Jim from the stables, who had a squint, and stank horribly; or else Jeremiah the peddler, who was much handsomer, though I would have to tramp the country, and would have no house but the pack I carried on my back, like a snail. And she said I would cross water
three times before it happened, and I said she was inventing it; and she smiled, because I’d guessed she was tricking me.
Then it was her turn, and she began to peel. But the peel on her first apple broke, and also on the second; and I gave her my extra one, but she was so nervous that she cut it in two almost as soon as she’d begun. And then she laughed, and said it was only a foolish old wives’ tale, and she ate the third apple, and set the other two on the window ledge to keep until the morning, and I ate my own apple; and we turned to making fun of Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s corsets; but underneath all the funning she was upset.
And when we went to bed, I could tell that she hadn’t gone to sleep, but was lying on her back beside me, staring up at the ceiling; and when I did go to sleep myself, I did not dream of husbands at all. Instead I dreamt of my mother in her winding sheet, drifting down through the cold water, which was blue-green in colour; and the sheet began to come undone at the top, and it waved as if in the wind, and her hair floated out, rippling like seaweed; but the hair was over her face so I could not see it, and it was darker than my mother’s hair had been; and then I knew that this was not my mother at all, but some other woman, and she was not dead inside the sheet at all, but still alive.
And I was afraid; and I woke up with my heart beating very fast, and the cold sweat on me. But Mary was asleep now, breathing deeply, and the grey and pink light of the dawn was beginning; and outside the cocks had begun to crow, and all was as usual. And so I felt better.
And so things went on through November, when the leaves fell from the trees and it became dark early, and the weather was grim and grey, with a hard driving rain; and then December came, and the ground froze up solid as rock, and there were flurries of snow. Our attic room was now very cold, especially in the mornings, when we had to get up in the dark and put our bare feet on the icy floorboards; and Mary said that when she had a house of her own, she would have a braided rag rug beside every bed, and she herself would have a pair of warm felt slippers. We took our clothes into the bed with us, to warm them up before putting them on, and dressed underneath the bedclothes; and at night we would heat bricks on the stove and wrap them in flannel and put them in the bed, to keep our toes from turning to icicles. And the water in our basin was so cold that it would send the pain shooting up my arms when washing my hands; and I was glad we were two in a bed.
But Mary said this was nothing, as the real winter was not here and it would get much colder yet; and the only good of it was that
they would have to build up the fires in the house, and burn them longer. And it was better to be a servant, in the daytime at least, because we could always warm ourselves in the kitchen, whereas the drawing room was as drafty as a barn and you could get no heat from the fireplace unless you stood right next to it, and Mrs. Alderman Parkinson lifted her skirts in front of it when alone in the room, to warm her backside; and last winter she’d set her petticoats alight, and Agnes the chambermaid heard the shouting, and rushed in and was frightened into hysterics, and Mrs. Alderman Parkinson had a blanket thrown over her, and was rolled on the floor like a barrel, by Jim from the stables. Luckily she was not burnt, but merely singed a little.
In the middle of December, my father sent my poor sister Katey to beg more of my wages; he would not come himself. I felt sorry for Katey, as the burden that had once been on me was now on her; and I brought her into the kitchen and warmed her by the stove, and asked a piece of bread from Cook, who said it was not her job to feed all of the starving orphans in the town, but gave it nevertheless; and Katey cried, and said she wished I was at home again. And I gave her a quarter of a dollar, and said she was to tell our father it was all I had, which I am sorry to say was a lie; but I had come to feel that the truth was not a thing I owed him. And I gave her ten cents for herself, and said she was to keep it safe in case of need, though she was in need enough already. Also I gave her a petticoat of mine, that was grown too small.
She said that our father had found no steady work, only odd jobs, but had the prospect of going north that winter, to cut trees; and had news of some free land farther west, and would go there once the spring had come. Which he did, and suddenly too, for Mrs. Burt came around and said my father had gone off without paying anywhere near all he owed. At first she wanted me to make it good, but
Mary told her she could not force a girl of thirteen to pay a debt incurred by a grown man; and Mrs. Burt was not a bad woman at heart, and at the end she said it was not my fault.
I do not know what became of my father and the children. I never had a letter, and also heard nothing from them at the time of the trial.
As Christmastime came around, spirits rose; and the fires were built up larger, and hampers were delivered from the grocer, and great wedges of beef, and the carcass of a pig from the butcher, which was to be roasted whole; and bustling preparations were made in the kitchen; and Mary and I were called away from the laundry, to give a hand, and we stirred and mixed for Cook, and peeled and sliced the apples, and picked through the raisins and currants, and grated the nutmegs, and beat up the eggs as required; and we liked this very much, as there was a chance for a taste here and a nibble there, and whenever we could we scraped off a little sugar for ourselves; and Cook did not notice or say anything, as she had a great deal on her mind.
It was Mary and me who made the bottom crusts for all of the mince pies, although Cook did the top ones, as she said there was an art to it which we were too young to know; and she cut out stars for them, and other fancy designs. And she let us unwrap the Christmas cakes from the layers of muslin round them, and pour on the brandy and whisky, and wrap them up again; and the smell of it was one of the best things I can remember.
There were many pies and cakes needed, as it was the season of visiting, and of dinners and parties and balls. The two sons of the household came home from school, at Harvard in Boston; their names were Mr. George and Mr. Richard, and both seemed pleasant enough and fairly tall. I did not pay much attention to them, as to my mind they only made for more washing, and a great many more
shirts to be starched and ironed; but Mary was always peeping out the upstairs window into the yard, to see if she could catch a glimpse of them as they rode away on their horses, or else listening in the passageway, while they sang duets with the ladies invited; and what she liked especially was
The Rose of Tralee
, because her name was in it – where it says,
Oh no, ’twas the truth in her eye ever dawning, That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee
. She had a good singing voice herself, too, and knew many of the songs off by heart; which the two of them would sometimes come into the kitchen and tease her to sing. And she called them young scamps, although both of them were some years older than she was.
On Christmas Day itself, Mary gave me a pair of warm mittens which she’d knitted. I’d seen her doing it, but she had been very sly, and had told me they were for a young friend of hers; and I never thought that the young friend she meant was myself. They were a beautiful dark blue, with red flowers embroidered on them. And I gave her a needle-case I’d made from five squares of red flannel, sewn together along the top; and it tied shut with two bits of ribbon. And Mary thanked me, and gave me a hug and a kiss, and said it was the best needle-case in the world, you could never buy such a thing in a store, and she’d never seen one like it, and she would treasure it always.
The snow had fallen heavily that day, and the people were out in their sleighs, with bells on the horses, and it sounded very pretty. And after the family had eaten their Christmas dinner the servants ate theirs, and had their own turkey and mince pies, and we sang some carols together, and were glad.
This was the happiest Christmas that I ever spent, either before or after.
Mr. Richard went back to school after the holidays, but Mr. George stayed at home. He’d caught a chill which had gone to his lungs, and
was coughing a great deal; and Mr. and Mrs. Alderman Parkinson went about with long faces, and the doctor came, which alarmed me. But it was said he did not have consumption, only a feverish cold, and the lumbago, and must be kept quiet, and given hot drinks; and these he had in plentiful supply, as he was a great favourite with the servants. And Mary heated an iron button on the stove, which she said was the best thing for the lumbago, if you put it on the spot; and she took it up to him.