Darkest Hour (26 page)

Suddenly, he brought his shoulders up and pointed his finger at me.

"Don't you go making wild accusations, Lillian. Don't you go saying anything outrageous, hear, or . . ."

"Or what, Papa?"

"Or I'll have you horsewhipped. I know how you got yourself in a woman's way. It was that boy that night. That's what it was; that's when it happened," he decided, nodding after he spoke.

"That's a lie, Papa, and you know it. You had Mrs. Coons here. You heard what she said."

"She said she wasn't sure," Papa lied. "That's right, that's right, that's what she said. And now we know why she wasn't sure. You're a disgrace, a shame on the Booth household and name and I won't permit anyone to shame this family! No one's going to know. That's right," he said, nodding again.

"What is it? What's wrong, Papa?" Emily said, coming up behind him. "Why are you shouting at Lillian now?"

"Why am I shouting? She's pregnant with that dead boy's baby. That's why," he said quickly.

"It's not true, Emily. It wasn't Niles," I said.

"Shut up," Emily said. "Of course it was Niles. You had him in your room and you did a sinful thing. Now you're going to suffer for it."

"There's no reason to let anyone else know," Papa said. "We'll keep her hidden until afterward."

"And then what will you do, Papa? What about the baby?"

"The baby . . . the baby . . ."

"It'll be Mamma's baby," Emily said quickly.

"Yes," Papa said, quickly agreeing. "Of course. No one sees Georgia these days. Everyone will believe it. That's good, Emily. At least we'll save the Booths' good name."

"That's a horrid lie to tell," I said.

"Quiet," Papa said. "March yourself upstairs. You'll not come down again until . . . until it's born. Go on."

"Do what Papa says," Emily ordered.

"Move!" Papa shouted. He stepped toward me. "Or I'll beat you like I promised."

I closed the book and hurried out of the office. Papa didn't have to whip me. I wanted to hide the shame and the sin; I wanted to crawl into a dark corner and die. Now, that didn't seem so terrible. I would rather be with my lost little sister Eugenia and the love of my life Niles than live in this horrid world anyway, I thought, and prayed my heart would simply stop.

12

While I lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling, Papa and Emily were downstairs in his office planning out the great deception. At the moment I didn't care what they did or what they said. I no longer believed that I had any control over my destiny anyway. I probably never had. When I was younger and I sat around planning all the wonderful things I would do with my life, I was simply dreaming, fooling myself, I thought. I now realized that poor souls like me were put on this earth to serve as illustrations of what terrible things could happen if God's commandments were disobeyed. It mattered not who in the line of your ancestry disobeyed the commandments. The sins of the fathers were, as Emily often quoted, visited on the heads of the children. Surely I was living proof of that.

Yet why God had listened to someone as cruel and horrid as Emily and turned a deaf ear to someone as soft and gentle as Eugenia or Mamma or as sincere as me was confusing and frightening. I had prayed for Eugenia, I had prayed for Mamma, and I had prayed for myself, but none of those prayers were answered.

Somehow, for some mysterious reason, Emily was put on this earth to judge us and lord it over all of us. So far, it seemed to me, all her prophecies, all her threats, all her predictions came true. The devil had seized hold of my soul even before I was born and he had tainted me with evil so effectively that I had brought about my mother's death. Just as Emily had said many times, I was a Jonah. As I lay on my bed with my hand on my stomach and realized that inside me an unwanted child was forming, I did feel as if I had been swallowed by a whale and hovered now within the dark walls of another prison.

That's what my room was to become as far as Papa and Emily were concerned, a prison. They marched into it together, armed with their Biblical words of justification, and pronounced sentence on me like the judges of Salem, Massachusetts glaring down hatefully at a woman suspected of being a witch. Before they spoke, Emily offered a prayer and read a psalm. Papa stood beside her, his head bowed. When she was finished, he raised his head and his dark eyes hardened to rivet on me.

"Lillian," he declared in a booming voice, "you will remain in this room under lock and key until the baby is born. Until then, Emily and only Emily will be your contact with the outside world. She will bring you your food and see to your needs, bodily and spiritually."

He stepped closer, expecting me to object, but my tongue stayed glued to the roof of my mouth.

"I don't want to hear any complaints, no whining and crying, no pounding on the door, no screaming from the windows, hear? If you do, I'll have you taken up to the attic and chained to the wall until it's time for the baby to be born. I mean it," he said with firmness behind his threat. "Understand?"

"But what about Mamma," I asked. "I want to see her every day and she will want to see me."

Papa knitted his dark, thick brows together and thought a moment. He looked at Emily before he decided and turned back to me.

"Once a day, when Emily says it's all right, she will come to fetch you and take you to Georgia's room. You will stay a half hour and then return to your room. When Emily tells you time's up, you listen, otherwise . . . she won't come to take you anymore," he declared, a hard edge to his voice.

"Am I not to go out and get some sunlight on my face and breathe fresh air?" I asked. Even a weed needs some sunlight and fresh air, I thought, but dared not say it, or Emily was sure to reply that a weed does not sin.

"No, damn it," he retorted, his face red. "Don't you understand what we're trying to do here? We're trying to save the family's good name? If someone sees you with your stomach swollen, there'll be talk and chatter and before you know it, everyone in the county will know our disgrace. Just sit over by your window there and that will be enough sunlight and air, hear?"

"What about Vera and Tottie?" I asked softly. "Can't I see them?"

"No," he said firmly.

"They'll wonder why not," I muttered, daring his scorn.

"I'll take care of them. Don't you concern yourself about it." He pointed his thick right forefinger at me. "You obey your sister; you listen to her commands and you do what I've just told you to do and when this is over, you can be one of us again." He hesitated, softening a bit. "You can even return to school. But," he added quickly, "only if you prove yourself worthy.

"Just so you won't go daft," he said, "I'll bring you some of my book work to do from time to time, and you can have books to read and do that needlework you do. I'll look in on you whenever I get a chance," he concluded and turned to leave. Emily lingered in the doorway.

"I'll bring you some breakfast now," she said in her most arrogant, haughty voice and followed Papa out. I heard Emily insert a key in the door and turn it until the lock snapped shut.

But as soon as their footsteps trailed off and they were gone, I started to laugh. I couldn't help it. I realized that suddenly Emily was going to be my servant. She would be bringing me my meals, marching up and down the stairs with my tray as if I were someone to be pampered. Of course, she didn't see it that way; she saw herself as my jailer, my master.

Perhaps I wasn't really laughing; perhaps it was my way of crying, for I was out of tears, drained of sobs. I could fill a river with my sorrow and I was barely fourteen years old. Even laughter was painful. It wrenched at my heart and made my ribs ache. I sucked in my breath to get control of myself and went to the window.

How pretty the world outside looked now that it was forbidden. The forest was a landscape of autumn colors with ribbons of orange and shades of brown and yellow painted through it. The uncultivated fields were studded with tiny pines and brown and gray underbrush. Small puffs of clouds never looked as white nor the sky as blue, and the birds . . . the birds were everywhere demonstrating their freedom, their love of flight. It was tormenting to see them in the distance and not hear their songs.

I sighed and retreated from the window. Because my room was being turned into a prison cell, it seemed smaller. The walls looked thicker, the corners darker. Even the ceiling appeared to lower itself toward me. I feared it would close in on me a little every day until I was crushed in my solitude. I closed my eyes and tried not to think about it. Soon after, Emily brought up my breakfast. She placed the tray on my night table and stood back with her shoulders hoisted, her eyes narrow, her lips pursed. Her pasty pallor sickened me. Being confined within these four wails, I feared I would soon have the same ashen complexion.

"I'm not hungry," I declared after looking at the food, especially the bland hot cereal and dry toast.

"I had Vera make this special for you," she declared, pointing at the hot cereal. "You'll eat and you'll eat all of it. Despite the sin of your being with child, there is the child to think of and protect. What you do with your body afterward is not of any importance but what you do with it now is, and as long as I'm in charge, you will eat well. Eat," she commanded, as if I were her puppet.

But what Emily said made sense to me. Why punish the child inside me? I would be doing the same sort of thing that had been done to me—weighing the child down with the sins of its parents. I ate mechanically while Emily watched, waiting to be sure I swallowed every mouthful.

"I know you know," I said, pausing, "that Niles is not the father of my baby. I'm sure you know how much more terrible this really is."

She stared at me for the longest time without speaking and then finally nodded.

"The more reason for you to listen to me and obey. I know not why it is so, but you are a vessel through which the devil makes his way into our lives. We must shut him up within you forever and give him no more victories in this house. Say your prayers and meditate upon your deplorable state," she said. Then she picked up my tray and carried my empty dishes from the room, locking the door behind her again.

Day one of my new prison sentence had begun. I shrank back into my small room which was to become my world for months and months. In time I would know each and every crack in the wall, each and every spot on the floor. Under Emily's supervision, I would clean and polish and then clean and repolish every piece of furniture, every inch of space. Papa dropped off his bookkeeping work for me every few days, as he had promised, and Emily, with reluctance in her face, brought me books to read as Papa had commanded. I did my needlework and made some fine pieces to hang on my otherwise naked walls..

But I took the greatest interest in my own body, standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom and studying the changes. I saw how my breasts and nipples grew larger and how my nipples grew darker. Tiny new bluish blood vessels formed in my bosom and when I ran the tips of my fingers over them, I felt new tingling and felt the fullness that was developing. My morning sickness continued well into my third month, and then suddenly stopped.

One morning I woke up feeling ravishingly hungry. I couldn't wait for Emily to bring me my tray and when she came, I gobbled everything up in minutes and asked her to bring me more.

"More?" she snapped. "Do you think I'm going to run up and down the stairs all day to satisfy your every whim? You'll eat what I bring and when I bring it and no more."

"But Emily, it says in Papa's medical book that a pregnant woman is often hungrier. She has to eat enough for two. You said you didn't want the baby to suffer for my sins," I reminded her. "I'm not asking for myself; I'm asking for the unborn child, who surely craves and needs more. How else can it tell us what it needs except through me?"

Emily smirked, but I saw that she was reconsidering.

"Very well," she acceded. "I'll bring you something more now and see that you get extra portions of everything from now on, but if I see that you are getting fatter and fatter . . ."

"I'm bound to gain some weight, Emily. It's only a natural part of things," I said. "Just look in the book or have Papa ask Mrs. Coons." Once again, she reconsidered.

"We'll see," she said, and left to get me more food. I congratulated myself on my success in getting Emily to do something for me. Perhaps I had been somewhat conniving, but it felt good. It gave me the most pleasure I had had for months and I found myself smiling. Of course, I hid my smiles from Emily, who still hovered about, watching me suspiciously at her every opportunity.

Late one afternoon long after she had brought me my lunch, I heard a gentle knocking on my door and went to it. Of course, it was still locked so I couldn't open it.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"It's Tottie," Tottie replied in a loud whisper. "Vera and I been worrying about you all this time, Miss Lillian. We don't want you to think we didn't care none. Your papa told us never to come up here to see you and not to worry about you none, but we do. Are you all right?"

"Yes," I said. "Does Emily know you're here?"

"No. She and the Captain is out of the house right now so I chanced it."

"You'd better not stay long, Tottie," I warned.

"Why you locked yourself up in there, Miss Lillian? It ain't what your papa and Emily says, is it? You don't want it this way, do you?"

"It can't be helped, Tottie. Please don't ask any more questions. I'm all right."

Tottie was silent a moment. I thought she might have tiptoed away, but then she spoke again.

"Your papa's telling folks your mother's pregnant. Vera says she don't look or act pregnant. Is she, Miss Lillian?"

I bit down on my lip. I wanted to tell Tottie the truth, but I was afraid, not for myself as much as I was for her. There was no telling what Papa would do if she told anyone about me. Anyway, I was ashamed of what had happened and didn't want it known.

"Yes, Tottie," I said quickly. "It's true."

"Then why you want to stay in your room under lock and key, Miss Lillian?"

"I don't want to talk about it, Tottie. Please, go back downstairs. I don't want you getting into trouble," I said, choking back my tears.

"It doesn't matter, Miss Lillian. I really come to say good-bye. I'm leaving just as I said I would. I'm going north to Boston to live with my grandmother."

"Oh Tottie, I'll miss you," I cried. "I'll miss you very much."

"I'd like to give you a hug good-bye, Miss Lillian.

Won't you open this door and say good-bye to me?"

"I . . . can't, Tottie," I said. I was crying now.