City of Dreams (116 page)

“Here,” Lucas said. He turned his back to the pond, chose a place beside a bramble thicket, took the trowel from his bag, and began to dig.

Mistress Clare would flog her for being gone so long and coming back so late. Laniah felt the tears start. Made it harder than ever to see. She reached up to wipe them away and wiped her nose as well. Stupid to get all snot-nosed and soaky-eyed over what you couldn’t change. Weeping only made things worse. Oh, dearie my …

Laniah stopped short. She was at the edge of a clearing, near what was left of the old Collect Pond. Someone else was there. His back was to her, but she knew instantly who it was. She’d wanted Mistress Molly, but she’d found Mr. Jonathan. Heaven only knew what he’d—

Her gasp of surprise had given her away. The figure whirled around. “Laniah! What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for Mistress Mol— Oh, my. I thought you was Mr. Jonathan. But you ain’t.”

Molly Devrey put her hand to her head. Her hair was her best feature, Mama always said.
You’re no beauty, Molly Devrey, but that red hair will catch you a man if you let it do its work.
Now she’d cut it off. Most of it, anyway. “Did I make it too short, Laniah?”

“I can’t say, Mistress Molly. Too short for what?”

“For what I’m supposed to be, damn it!” That was the first time she’d said it aloud. Damn. The way a man did. “Damn it, Laniah, tell me. Do I look like a him, or just a her with ugly short hair?”

“I thought for sure you was Mr. Jonathan, Mistress Molly. Before you turned around, I was certain. Them clothes…” She gestured toward the broadcloth breeches and the linen shirt. “Them’s Mr. Jonathan’s clothes for sure.”

“No, they’re not. They’re mine.” Molly raised her hand and pointed to a small leather satchel. “I’ve another set in there, and my coat’s ready to put on. In fact, I shall do that just now. Come over here and you can help me.”

Sweat ran down Marit’s face. The bodice of her frock was soaked with it. Lucas’s shirt as well. The heat of the summer day. And the labor.

“We are almost done,” Lucas said, continuing to dig the fourth hole he had made in this place. “Afterward, if you like, we can swim.”

How many times they had come here and frolicked like children in that cool, fresh water, and she had given herself to him with such perfect joy, such abandon. Now, it seemed to her, rivers of Ankel’s blood must travel under the ground and flood the pond. “I do not think I will swim,” she whispered. “It is not like before.”

Lucas stopped burrowing into the earth long enough to look up at her. “It will be better than before. Much better.”

She had done it for him. And because Ankel Jannssen was a monster who did not deserve to live. He would never allow himself to think otherwise.

There were two more closely wrapped packages in his bag. A hand. And the monster’s head. Lucas reached for the hand.

Laniah dropped the drawstring bag she’d been carrying all day and jumped to pick up the coat lying neatly folded on the grass. She held it open the way she often did for Master Raif or Mr. Jonathan, and Mistress Molly slipped her arms inside and shrugged it comfortably onto her shoulders. Just like Master Raif or Mr. Jonathan, that was. Exactly like.

“How do I look?”

“Like a him,” Laniah conceded. “Like Mr. Jonathan.”

“Good. Now you go on home and don’t you dare— Laniah, stop that weeping. I can’t stand it when you weep. And what have you got in there, anyway?” The girl had stooped and picked up her drawstring bag. She was hugging it to her as if it were her last hope on earth.

“It be my things,” Laniah said. “Only mine. I didn’t take nothin’ didn’t belong to me.”

“Your— Laniah, what are you doing? Are you running away?”

“I been running after you, Mistress Molly. All day. I went to the City Hospital and New York Hospital and even up to that new pesthouse in the woods, that Belle Vue. I asked, but—”

“Did you talk to him? To Dr. Turner?”

Laniah nodded.

“And what did he say?”

“Nothin’. Only that you didn’t have the yellowing fever so you weren’t in his Belle Vue pesthouse.”

“Bloody fool.” Oh, that felt good. Bloody. Another word she could say when she wore breeches and never if she had on a skirt. “He doesn’t know anything about me. Why should he? He didn’t guess why you thought I’d be in any of those places, did he, Laniah?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Say ’sir.’ Say, ’No sir,’ Laniah. Look at me and tell yourself I’m a man and say, ’No, sir.’”

“No sir, Mistr— Mr…. I can’t say Mr. Molly, can I?”

“Of course not.” Molly reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a letter. “See this. It’s from my grandfather Cuf.”

“The one up in Nova Scotia? The grandfather ain’t never be seeing you?”

“That’s right. My mulatto grandfather, Laniah.” Her voice softened. It was always hard for her to understand how her mother could let her father buy slaves when Mama was a little bit Negro herself. And Laniah … It was hard to understand why Laniah should belong to anyone except herself.

The oiled cloth wrapping came apart as soon as Lucas took the head from his bag. It was an awkward package. He had not removed the cleaver from the skull. He could not bring himself to do so now. Jannssen’s pig-eyes looked up at him. By the time Lucas had come upon the corpse the eyes had been death-frozen in that wide-open stare, and he could not brush them closed.

He heard Marit retching in the bushes, swallowed his own bile. A murdering animal who deserved exactly what she did to—what he got.

“Stay there,” he called softly. “Don’t turn around. I will be done quickly.”

He looked for a suitable burying place. The thing was heavy, the presence of the cleaver meant it must go into a large hole. Very deep. Unless…

People said the Collect Pond was deep as the ocean. In the old days, when he and Marit swam naked here, as soon as they were a few feet from shore they could not touch the ground.

This time he went fully clothed into the water, holding the last of Ankel Jannssen above his head. When at last he dropped it, weighted by the heavy cleaver, it sank without a trace.

“We will not swim,” he told Marit when he rejoined her. “Not today.”

She nodded in agreement, trying not to look at the pond.

“My grandfather Cuf,” Molly said again. “He’s written to me twice. And do you know what, Laniah? He thinks it’s Jonathan he’s writing to. ’Dear Boy,’ that’s how he starts the letters.”

“And what does he say?”

“He says that there’s plenty of people need a surgeon in Nova Scotia,” she whispered. “He says if Jonathan wants to come to Nova Scotia and practice surgery there, then he’ll be happy to welcome him.”

“Oh, dearie my soul. That’s what you’re going to do, ain’t it? You’re going to be a surgeon in that Nova Scotia place.”

“Yes, Laniah. That’s what I’m going to do. Because I must.” Molly held up her big, strong hands. Nothing feminine about them. Never had been. And they were as steady as any man’s. When she started practicing with the scalpels she snitched from the pharmacy—on corncobs and apples at first, later on Laniah and a few other black folks who couldn’t afford to visit a proper surgeon—she had been astonished at how right the knife felt in her steady hands. “I’m going to Nova Scotia and live with my grandfather Cuf and be Jonathan Devrey the surgeon. You going to tell on me?”

“’Course I won’t do that. You know I never tell on you.”

“I know. But you’ve got to go home now, Laniah. Mama will take a switch to you if it gets any later.”

“She be doing that already.” Laniah glanced at the sky. The sun was a fiery red ball, shooting its last rays at what was left of the old Collect Pond. “Been gone all day. She be taking the switch to me for sure. You got to let me go with you, Mistr— Mr. Jonathan. That’s what I been looking for you all day to say. You gotta take me with you.”

Molly who was Jonathan didn’t pay much attention to the request. She had dropped to her knees beside the pond, bent over it to see if the setting sun would show her herself as she was now. Transformed. “I can’t do that, Laniah. You’d slow me down. And you might— Oh! Oh God!” She jumped to her feet and took two backward steps, hands pressed to her mouth as if she wanted to stifle a scream.

“What is it?” Laniah demanded. “What you be seeing in that water?” She ran past Molly and knelt at the pond’s edge. “What you— Oh, dearie my soul…”

“You see it, too? I wasn’t imagining it?”

“You weren’t imagining nothing. It be there all right. Plain as it can be.”

The skull had worked its way from the depths to the shallows as a result of all the draining. The meat cleaver that had split the head in two was still in place.

“Who is it?” Molly demanded.

“I don’t be knowing that.” Laniah stumbled to her feet and made the sign of the cross. Mistress Clare, she’d made them all be Catholics just like she was. That was the one thing Laniah figured she had to thank her mistress for, making her a member of the true Church so when she died she’d go to heaven. “I don’t know who that be, Mr. Jonathan. See, I remembered.”

“So you did.” Molly who was Jonathan took a step closer to the water and looked again at the death’s head and the cleaver. Harder to see now that the sun was almost entirely gone. “Been dead a long time, it looks like,” she said. “Don’t you think so, Laniah?”

“I expect.”

“And whoever did it, do you think he was ever caught?”

“Might have been a she what did it, mightn’t it?” Laniah asked.

“Yes, of course. It could have been a woman. If she were really strong.” Molly who was Jonathan held up her hands. “You never know what you’re going to leave behind, do you, Laniah?”

“No. I guess you don’t. Or who’s going to find it. You planning to leave me behind, Mr. Jonathan? To get switched by your mama? Won’t be no one to speak for me now you’re not going to be there.”

One more glance at the thing in the remains of the pond; then Molly who was Jonathan, prepared to be Jonathan for the rest of her life as long as that meant she could practice surgery, picked up her satchel and began to walk. She felt the incredible freedom of the breeches, the blessed lack of a skirt and petticoats. And without actually realizing that she’d made up her mind, she tossed the words over her shoulder, “Come on, Laniah. Look sharp. You and me, we’ve a long way to go.”

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS READING GROUP GUIDE

C
ITY OF
D
REAMS

D
ISCUSSION
P
OINTS

1. The novel spans more than 130 years of early American history. How does the author effectively blend together the leaps in time? Aside from family trees, what historical or social links unite each section? Which of the generations did you find most compelling? Why?

2. Lucas Turner sets the stage for the rest of the story when he promises his sister’s hand in marriage to Jacob Van der Vries. Do you believe he thought it would benefit Sally, or was he acting purely out of self-interest? Considering what he had to gain and the social structure of the time, would you have made the same decision?

3. Many of the characters’ decisions and actions have long-term, far-reaching ramifications. Aside from Lucas’s agreement with Jacob Van der Vries, which single decision had the most impact on the story and the characters’ lives? How did the consequences differ from what he or she intended, if at all?

4. The story begins at a time when the practice of medicine is slowly evolving. Discuss the risks involved in the earliest surgical procedures and the superstitions attached to them. What factors play a role in the gradual acceptance of certain medical procedures? In what ways is medicine different (and unchanged) at the close of the book than it is at the beginning?

5. How does each generation pay for the feud initiated by Lucas and Sally Turner? How often do the successive generations question the reason for the feud, and how often is it taken for granted? Which characters had the best chance of overcoming the past bitterness and reconciling, and why?

6. Put yourself in Morgan’s shoes when he chooses to save Caleb instead of his Uncle Luke. What factors made Morgan the type of person capable of making that decision? Would your choice have been the same? If not, why not?

7. Jennet believes that “Amba always managed to make it seem as if the white people were the slaves and she the owner.” How does Amba manage to do that? How do the other African-Americans deal with being enslaved? White characters exhibit various ways of treating and relating to slaves. How did the author use this issue to define her characters?