Lazaretto (28 page)

Sylvia rebalanced the scalpel in her hands, her hands so bloodied she could not tell where her fingers ended and the living substance of Carl's limb began. She looked around for the salt
solution. It was not on her cart. It was on the other side of the room, next to the basin. She started to fault Linc, but of course she could not. He was just a confused young man, a tortured soul; he was hiding from himself, she could tell. How could she expect for him to put the salt solution on the cart with her other supplies if she had not specified that to him? She walked across the room. Her movements were wooden, as if they were being managed by a novice puppeteer. She rinsed her hands and retrieved the salt solution. She did not glance beyond the sheet as she walked back to the bed. She did not want to see his face just yet.

She poured the solution onto the remains of Carl's leg. “The midwife had been such a beacon of power to me until that moment,” she said, as she watched the solution work its way through. “But at that moment she appeared crushed, broken, though I wanted her to fight for the baby, to say no, we will handle its discharge. To tell him that he was the one in a compromised situation. That he had been paid well to have the woman he'd escorted here to be no longer with child. And that result had been satisfactorily accomplished. I wanted her to tell him to take his damn carriage and political connections and be gone, that we would send word when she was well enough to travel back to his fancy house and do his bidding once again. That child had been my first. So of course I wanted her to fight for it. But I knew that the midwife would not as I watched the sash of her head wrap swing back and forth. Perhaps on another night she may have, but this night we had just learned that the president had been shot. Who can say how that may have sapped her ability to push back?”

Sylvia paused. The mat had filled again with the morbid cuttings she'd excised from Carl's leg. She did not want to call out for Linc to empty it, did not want to interrupt herself to walk it to the vat. She just wanted to get through the mass of seemingly never-ending dead flesh. She dumped the contents of the mat
on the floor. They would clean it later. She slowed herself; she flexed her fingers and repositioned her scalpel. Her cuts into this section of flesh were precise as she snipped away at more deadened flesh, and then more, and then more still.

“Since Dr. Miss would not take charge, I knew that I must,” she said as she resumed her narrative. She could feel her voice change as she talked, her tone lower, coming from a deeper, an almost haunting place now. “Yes, I knew that I must,” Sylvia said. “I knew that I was risking my employment with the midwife, perhaps all future employment, as she would never produce a letter on my behalf if she knew, and would likely tarnish my reputation any way that she could, but I followed behind Dr. Miss when she went to deliver the baby to the waiting carriage. It was already full morning, so I kept my distance, that she would remain unawares. The streets were bustling with further news of the president's death. A crazy chorus of church bells rang out willy-nilly, and the cacophonous clangs matched the scratchy, grating feel in the air as women cried and men pushed their hands against their brows, and there was a palpable sense in the air of what will happen now, what will become of things, of us. Through it all I could hear the baby cry.

“I watched the midwife tap on the carriage door. The door opened and I crept around to the other side. She did not see me; my hooded cape was around my face, and besides, there were too many people about. I crouched on the side of the carriage until I reasoned she had slid the cradle onto the seat next to him. I waited until I thought she was likely gone. The blood pulsed through my head, and with the sound of all the church bells crying I thought my head would explode. I pulled on the carriage door then. I pulled on it with all of my might, but I could not open it. I heard the horses begin to pick up their feet and I ran to the front of the carriage and signaled the driver. ‘Please, please,'
I called to him. ‘I must speak with your mister. It is a matter of life and death.' He peered down, and I could see his eyes soften for me. He whispered to his horses to hush and be still and then climbed down from his perch and walked to the side of the carriage where Dr. Miss had just been. He pulled open the carriage door for me and extended his hand to help me up. The baby had a rousing cry going, and the lawyer seemed almost relieved to see me. I lifted the baby from the cradle and pushed the cradle to the carriage floor and sat. I rocked the baby and cooed that everything would be fine. Dr. Miss had thankfully packed a feeding bottle in the cradle, and I offered it, and the baby pulled it hard and drank.

“I focused on the baby. The baby was so easy to look at as it settled into contentment and drank. It opened its eyes and looked at me, and its eyes were dark as tar. But then I turned to look at the lawyer. He was staring at me, waiting, but when I looked at him he turned away, though not before I saw the torment in his eyes; his eyes held dark circles beneath, and the whites of his eyes were red and almost, but not quite, washed clean of their true color, which was an ocean blue. I told him that the baby was special to me because it was my first and I just wanted to know that it would be well cared for.

“He looked straight ahead, seemingly not affected by anything, not by me, by what I'd just related, the baby I held, or the commotion just outside of his carriage. His words were wooden as he spoke. ‘And what would you do should I release it to you?'

“I told him that I knew of a home for orphaned children where my classmate used to work after school. He asked its location and I told him it was less than a mile from where we were. And he leaned forward as if to prepare to signal his coachman. But I told him I would transport the baby right then. I was afraid he might change his mind in the time it took to travel that mile. I promised him that I would give them an acceptable story. I swore to him on
everything that I held dear in this life and the next that I would never speak of his identity, of hers, of the baby's to a living soul. He flicked his wrist in my direction as if saying, ‘Be gone,' and I did not wait for him to change his mind. As quickly as I could, I pulled open the door and propped the feeding bottle under my chin and nestled the baby so close that I could feel its fast heartbeat. I climbed down to the ground and ran. I ran away from the carriage, away from the direction of Dr. Miss's house. I ran and cried and held the baby close as I listened for the sound of the horses as the carriage sped away. A group of women had gathered near the corner, and one of them reached out to me. ‘And you with the newborn. To have to learn of the president's death when you have not long ago issued forth life. Come settle yourself down, child.'

“I tried to explain that I had not just given birth, but I was crying too hard, and in any event she had already pulled me to her, she was already swaying from side to side, and it felt good to be rocked in such a way at that moment. I just fell into the rhythm of her motion, and even the baby stopped crying. When I had settled myself, I walked the rest of the way to the home.

“The woman who'd opened the door was tall and thin and with a mass of dark hair that fell into her face and I was startled by her appearance. She apologized, said that she was so distraught over the president, she'd not concerned herself with even combing her hair. I just pushed the baby into the woman's hands, and at first she would not accept it. She said that they were beyond capacity and had just taken in another infant not two days before. But I pleaded with her, told her the story I'd contrived, that a constable had been setting up a blind in the alley a block away to catch tax cheats and had heard this baby's squeals and thinking it a rat had almost bashed its head with his billy club. That the baby was otherwise unwanted. The woman's eyes softened and filled with
tears. She called into the house then and an older woman, squat and graying, ambled to the foyer, and gently took the baby from me. She spoke with a brogue so thick that I could hardly understand her, but her tone was calming, sincere, as she cooed at the baby and held it close, and that satisfied me, so I left.”

The room was completely silent save for a lone drop of water that fell into the basin as if it had been hanging at the mouth of the spigot, waiting for Sylvia to be done. She picked up the magnifying glass and inspected the stump. Her breaths were slow and she inhaled deeply. That deathly smell that had pushed out from the stump in wide swaths seemed reduced to mere ribbons of a scent, seemed to grow fainter even as she stood there. She used tweezers to pull away at a dot of flesh. It appeared pink, healthy. She nipped at it and cut it off just as she'd done with the gangrenous sections because she thought it wise to sacrifice a bit of what was good to make sure she'd gotten all of what was not.

Linc cleared his throat then and Sylvia jumped. She had forgotten he was there, even as she'd been sorely aware of his presence. She could see his silhouette on the other side of the sheet. She'd not realized how tall he was until just now. One of his shoulders seemed fashioned higher than the other as he stood there with his elbow resting in the palm of his unbandaged hand, his chin resting atop his fist. His chin so pronounced she could almost see the cleft there. “Mnh,” she said, as she walked to the basin and freed herself of the gown and the mask. “Carl is resting comfortably?”

“He appears to be, yes.”

“I am grateful for your assistance.”

“May I ask—”

“I may choose not to answer,” Sylvia said, as she scrubbed her hands.

“What of your promise to not say the names—”

“It is a promise I fully intend to keep.”

“And what of the drawings she made of the president such as Carl described?”

“What of them?” Sylvia said, dismissively, as she pulled the broom from the closet.

Linc had come from behind the curtain the sheet made. He sighed and leaned his head back and stretched. It was such a long lean that Sylvia could see the scar on his neck and she almost asked had someone held a knife to his neck. But then he took the broom from Sylvia and began sweeping the scraps of dead flesh. “I knew a miss who also sketched the president. No other reason.”

“In New York?”

“No, in Philadelphia,” he said, as Sylvia turned away to get the dustpan.

“So you have spent time in Philadelphia, besides this time?”

“I have, yes.”

“And are the constables here in fact looking for you?”

“They may be,” he said, as he took the pan and leaned down to scoop up the putrid remains and walked them to the trash vat.

“Are you the guilty party?”

“In some ways I am guilty, but my actions were completely justified.”

He turned to face Sylvia then and she saw that same sadness, that stark vulnerability she'd seen in him their first encounter, though it was even more pronounced now. His eyes appeared even darker, deeper, his cheekbones even more prominent, as if a storm was raging there, his mouth pursed. “Mnh,” she said. “Well, you may keep to the room next door, then. I shall put a quarantine sign there so no one will enter, though no one will come into the hospital anyway, except for Spence, whom I will alert, and the doctor, who is not a threat. Just tell the doctor to go back to his house and you will bring him an opium pipe and he should do your bidding”—she smirked—“provided he thinks you are white.”

Linc flinched when she said the part about him being white. He looked away, looked at the window, where blasts of gray and yellow were throwing themselves at the night, the night fighting back by growing darker still, even as it had already begun to yield. “Was it a girl or a boy?” he asked then. “You never said.”

“It was a girl of course. As I stated at the outset.”

“No. You spoke only of ‘the baby,' or ‘it.'”

“It is easier for me that way. It—she was my first.” She balled her fist for emphasis, and to settle it once and for all. “You should find everything you need in the way of bed linens in the supply room.”

“Thank you,” he said, though he seemed to be speaking more to the display outside the window than to Sylvia. “I am grateful to you. Most grateful.”

THE GROUNDS OF
the Lazaretto were still as winter as Sylvia walked back to the house. She felt as though she were sleepwalking, and then she thought she felt a shadow behind her and turned quickly, but no one was there.

Though someone had been. It was Son. He had fallen asleep outside, under the porch, waiting for Linc and Vergie to leave the cellar so that he could go down and give Bram water and make sure that he had not died again. He did not know for sure whether or not they had left, but he would take his chances. He lifted the door and took the ladder stairs slowly, and the quiet told him they were gone. He didn't even light the lamp. He knew this space like a blind man as he walked behind the barricade. He could see Bram there wrapped in the shroud, his head to one side. He opened his canteen and sat next him and propped his head to give him water, and then he started to cry.

SYLVIA CREPT UP
the stairs and eased into her bedroom. Vergie was sprawled across the whole bed and Sylvia thought,
I am not fighting for sleeping space with this girl.
She changed quickly into her nightgown, wanting her head to touch the pillow before the daylight did. She went into the top of her closet for her quilt and extra blanket, prepared to sleep on the parlor couch. She looked instead at an empty shelf. Vergie woke then. She sat up all at once. “Sylvia, you are back, how is Carl?”

“He has survived another day. Each day he lives, chances improve that he will continue to live. He is in the good Lord's hands, as we all are. And where is my bed linen?”

“For what? Are you not sleeping in here? I promise to sleep small.” Vergie said, remembering that Sylvia's extra pillow and sheets were down on the cellar floor.

“As exhausted as I am, and as my extra bed covering has disappeared, okay, yes. But the first instant I feel your foot in my back, you are on the floor.”

Vergie waited for Sylvia to kneel and say her prayers, then she moved over, excited. She felt like a little girl again, sharing the bed with Sylvia, the way they'd shared sleeping space when they traveled on family trips with her aunt and uncle. She wished she were still a little girl right now as she thought of how she'd bungled things with Linc. She should not have ceded her passions so quickly, should not have told him about Bram when she did, how she did. “So what exciting thing happened over here tonight?” Sylvia said in a voice that sounded half-asleep.

“Well, Spence and Mora finally tied the knot.”

Sylvia sat up. She'd almost forgotten. “How was the ceremony?”

“Where shall I begin? If you subtract Lena and her frightful self, and the fact that Skell's pronouncement of man and wife turned into a long-drawn-out Baptist sermon, and that Kojo couldn't find the ring for a full half an hour, and the one playing the harmonica was having problems with his instrument and missed every other note in his Lord's Prayer solo, and Mora cried nonstop, and Spence looked liked a sad, wet dog, then I suppose it was a very nice wedding.”

Sylvia chided herself for taking such pleasure in Vergie's description, and then she let herself laugh out loud. Vergie laughed, too, then said that the one thing that held up to near perfection was the food. “I never tasted duck so juicy.”

“Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord, that Nevada can surely cook.”

“And I had no appetite, but I was cured with the first bite.”

“Why did you have no appetite? Are you not well?”

“I have had a difficult time this night, Sylvia,” Vergie said, and then she said no more. There was a tap on the door and Nevada peeped in. “Hey, Sylvie. I thought I heard you. How's Carl?” She found her way to the chair.

“He is comfortable. He is alive. I believe I got all the infected tissue.”

“Thank God, I have been praying. And they tell me the Lord pays special attention to a sinner's prayers.”

“And you have been sinning, right?”

“Let us say that Buddy is having very few complaints about being quarantined.”

“Well, close your mouth, please. I can see you grinning all the way from the other side of this dark room.”

“Speaking of grinning, I guess Vergie told you about that fiasco masquerading as a wedding. I am still trying to decide which sounded worse, the never-ending harmonica solo or Mora's bawling. And then when Kojo dropped the ring as he tried to hand it to Spence, mercy—”

“Come on now, Nevada”—and Vergie jumped all the way up to sitting. “Tell Sylvia how Kojo got down on his hands and knees to look for the ring under the fainting couch and, and—” Vergie could not finish talking for her gasping laughter.

“And what?” Sylvia insisted. “
What?
”

“He blew wind,” Nevada said.

“No, he did not!”

“Oh yes he did so,” Vergie said. “It was so powerful and loud we thought his pants would split.”

“And Spence turned up his nose, 'cause he was standing closest to him, and then he said, ‘Jesus!'”

“Out loud, he said it?”

“Out loud,” Vergie said.

“And Mora and Lena started fanning themselves—”

“And Miss Ma was near the back, and she did not know what was going on, and she asked, ‘What happened?' and Splotch said, loud enough for all to hear, ‘We appear to be in the midst of a quite smelly situation.'”

Sylvia hollered then, they all did. They laughed soundly for what felt like the better part of an hour. They laughed convulsively; and as soon as they felt that they could laugh no more, Vergie would add to the fun starting them up again.

“I needed that laughter,” Sylvia said when they had finally settled down.

“You did, Sylvie,” Nevada said. “Being on the front line with the quarantine, and then keeping Carl alive. Nothing better than some laughter to chase the worry away. I myself been trying to keep the jokes coming with Buddy since he's still broken up over Sister's death.”

“They were real close, huh?” Sylvia asked.

“They were. Though you would hardly know they were related, because she was a very refined type. And when you'd hear her proper speech alongside of Buddy's how should I say, improper speech—”

“Like Daddy and Aunt Maze?” Vergie laughed.

“Y'all woulda liked Sister,” Nevada said. “But no chance you woulda possibly met her the way your mama, Sylvia—or your aunt, Vergie—measured the time you were allowed to spend on Fitzwater Street with us lowly Negroes.”

“I have to beg to differ,” Sylvia said. “I actually went inside of Buddy's house once, on that fateful night I tried to deliver your birthday cake and ended up throwing it on the floor. What a scene that was!”

Nevada chuckled. “I heard of that from my grandmother, but the shock was not you throwin' the cake, the shock was that you had actually stepped inside of a house where cardplaying was going on.”

“You
threw a cake
, Sylvia?” Vergie asked. “Why?”

Sylvia recounted the story. Then Vergie asked who the white boy was whose neck Splotch wanted to slit. “And why was he even there?”

“I don't think I ever knew. Handsome little something with the darkest eyes,” Sylvia said, remembering how she'd cleaned the knife wound on his neck, picturing the scar. “I could not get a clear answer about who he was when I asked back then. Why was he there, Nevada?”

“I never knew much about him. I think he was just some boy from an orphanage Sister had got attached to.”

“Which orphanage?” Sylvia asked, and her voice caught in the top of her throat as she pictured the wound on the little boy's neck, imagining the scar it would leave, measuring her recollection of it against the scar she'd noticed on Linc's neck. Now she compared their eyes—both had eyes black as tar.

“Sylvia, you asking me questions I cannot answer. I am sure Buddy will be glad to oblige you when you can finally take yourself a breather and let me cook you up a special meal and serve it to you. I want you to get to know Buddy, besides; tell me if he is as good a catch as I think, or if I am kidding myself. 'Cause I hope to high Heaven I'm not kidding myself.”

“Well, he is at least unattached, so that's a good start,” Sylvia said. “And what was Buddy's sister's name?”

“Sister—right?” Vergie offered.

“No, she was
known
as Sister. At least that's what everybody called her on Fitzwater Street,” Nevada said. “But her given
name, which I didn't even know till just last week, when she died, was Meda.”

“Meda,” Vergie repeated it. “That is a nice name.”

“It is,” said Sylvia. Though Sylvia did not know how it was even physically possible for her to speak right now, because she was sure her heart had just separated from her chest cavity. She thought she could hear the separation as it pulled away. Vergie and Nevada chattered on in the background. Bands of pink and yellow daylight had begun their tumble in through the tall windows, and Sylvia closed her eyes, and Nevada whispered, “Aw, poor thing is exhausted. I am about to go see what the hens have done for me this morning.” And Vergie whispered that she would come with her, and soon the room was silent as a crypt except for that painful sound coming from Sylvia's chest. It was the sound that a starched muslin sheet makes when strong hands rip it in two to fashion a swab for a slit neck, a tourniquet to save a limb, a life, a secret; to use as a head wrap of the type Dr. Miss wore, wrapped around and around, such a tortuous wrap—Sylvia did not know how it had come undone that morning. But it had, first when they spoke with Benin, and then later when Sylvia returned to the house after depositing the baby at the orphans' home.

Dr. Miss had met her in the foyer, asked her where she'd been, why did she have the appearance of one who'd just run from blood hounds trained on her scent. Sylvia told her that she'd gone for a walk to try to calm herself after the combined events of the baby and the president being shot. She'd gotten caught up, she'd said, in a throng of hysterical people reacting to a deep-voiced man on a soapbox proclaiming that they must all, that day, take flight for Canada because Lincoln's assassination signaled that a new revolution was afoot that would see every colored person bound and chained no matter their status as already free. “Could that be true,
ma'am?” Sylvia cried and shook. The tears, her trembling, were genuine, even if the reason for them was not, and afraid that Dr. Miss would detect her lie, she added a truth: “And I am so distraught over the baby, and us having to tell Miss Meda that her baby died.”

Dr. Miss took Sylvia by the hand and led her into the parlor and sat her down on the couch. She placed a pillow behind her back, a warm towel on her neck, and gave her a handkerchief doused with lavender oil and told her to sniff. Told her, in the softest voice Sylvia had ever heard her use, that she had experienced grave occurrences the past night into the day. That she could best help herself by finding a place within herself to discard the parts about the night that would ill serve her by remembering. She had Sylvia look at her, and repeat after her that the baby died. She died. The baby girl died. Like the refrain of a song. Sylvia had watched the sway of the sash hanging along the side of Dr. Miss's face as she repeated the words back to Dr. Miss. The lavender felt like cotton puffs filling up in her head, felt soft, pure. The repetition, the motion of the sash, the lavender—it all lulled her. Enchanted her. She felt as if she'd fallen asleep as she sat there, wide awake, repeating over and over: The baby girl died, she died, the baby girl died.

Right now Sylvia could feel the daylight touching her face, pushing against her closed eyelids, causing the darkness to shatter into a thousand loose threads. She realized now that Dr. Miss had tried to hypnotize her, work a spell on her, had tried to imprint a different reality in her mind to override what she'd actually lived. And had Sylvia not already just taken the baby to the orphans' home, she might have allowed herself to be convinced that the baby died. But the part of Dr. Miss's spell that had worked,
had
.

She could hear a sparrow now on the other side of the window testing its new song. It seemed to come from far away, from
years ago. And just like that, the ripping sounds stopped, and there was otherwise an astounding stillness as if even the earth had ceased its spin, the same stillness she'd felt when the baby had slipped into her waiting, wanting hands; the candle had died and the room was black. She was so tired that middle of the night, having tended to Meda the length of her labor. As she was tired now, having been the whole night excising the infection from Carl's leg. And yet then as now there was exhilaration, too. She'd been extraordinarily present, had taken her place where she felt she was meant to be in the grandness of life's to and fro. Delivered her first baby; saved a man to see another day. It was a between state back then, and right now, when the mind is too exhausted to fight its own terrifying clarity. And in that speck of time so brief that it had no name for its measure, so brief that she wasn't even aware that she'd seen what she thought she had not seen; she saw it now. That tiny lump of its maleness. It had been a boy. It had been her first.