The Sister's Tale, Beth Powning [important books to read TXT] 📗

that hung motionless as frozen rabbits, and had gone down the back stairs to the kitchen on the day she was supposed to spend with children her own age.

She yawned, closed her eyes. Today’s images pressed close: wax on wood, her rag, circling: custard, crinkled with nutmeg—you’re going to let it burn; icicles holding a rainbow shimmer, vinegar on windowpane; Josephine, hand on forehead, an urgency in her pen’s scratch. Maud and Lucy, home from school with frosted eyelashes.

Thoughts tipped, slid, ran together, glossy and warm, sweet smelling.

—

By bedtime, Josephine had not had time to peruse The Weekly Record, so she took it upstairs. Heat radiated from a stovepipe, which rose through the hall floor and separated into three pipes. She always warned her daughters about the hot metal. Careful. Hold your skirts tight.

She twisted, unbuttoning the back of her dress; worked at the hooks of her coralline corset. Her skin relaxed, like a jelly tipped from a mould. She rubbed at the red creases in her flesh. This was the time when she would read the paper out loud to Simeon, feet in his lap as he eased her arches with his thumbs.

In nightgown and wrapper, she sat in an armchair; paused for a moment before opening the newspaper’s virgin pages, smelling of ink. Mr. Dougan always spoke to her before shutting up the house. “Storm coming,” he’d said, tonight. “There’s a smell of the beautiful on the air.” When Simeon was on furlough, he spent his days at his father’s store, and in the evening she shared the day’s stories. Your cousin Carrie came. Mr. Dougan called snow “the beautiful” again. Flora served tea for the first time. She gazed at Simeon’s untouched pillowcase and felt herself changing. Her lips, held more tightly. A sadness within her as the stories she wished to tell him bloomed, faded, dissipated.

She looked down at the news.

IS SLAVERY ABOLISHED?

By George Francis Train

A veritable slave scene was enacted on Saturday last in the civilized village of Pleasant Valley by the annual sale of Paupers. Although no slave driver was present with his long whip to drive the poor creatures to the block, the sale recalled in all its degrading colours the scenes that were enacted in the long ago Slave sales in the Southern States…

She felt her heart speed as she read, as if the article had been written specifically to her.

…inhuman…just as unchristian as when the poor black man…nefarious business…degrading not only to the paupers themselves but to all those who take part herein…

Excuse me, Carrie, she’d said. I would like you to meet Flora Salford.

She felt her face grow hot. She dropped the paper and walked to the window. She closed her eyes, pressed her forehead against the cold glass, listening for the approaching storm.

—

Ellen, in her bedroom, also read George Francis Train’s diatribe on the pauper auction, finger running beneath the words. It did not occur to her that Mrs. Galloway had done anything wrong by purchasing Flora and saving her from the men gathered to bid for her.

Then she read the next installment of the axe murder trial.

The first witness, Mr. John Tatum, is a bachelor. Elsa Cavanaugh has resided with him after her husband’s death for about four years. The witness slept on a bed in the kitchen and she slept in the bedroom. On the day of the murder, Mr. Tatum left the house at about seven o’clock. Elsa Cavanaugh was still in bed at the time he left although she was awake. He spoke to her and asked her to be certain to lock the door after he had left. She said yes. He took his dinner and went to his job, taking a new axe and leaving the old one leaning against the stove. He was chopping cordwood for Mr. Cardwell…

She snipped the article from the newspaper with quilting scissors, thinking what she would say to Mr. Dougan.

“The old axe,” she would point out, shrewd. “He said himself ’twas too soft and the edge turned over. He testified that he bought that new axe the very day before the murder. Now do you think…”

They would discuss the details all week, until the next installation came in The Weekly Record.

—

Shaking out a cloth on the side porch, Flora squinted in the morning sun, glittering in last night’s snow. She could see farm wagons on Creek Road—horses, with icy fetlocks, stepping high; farm couples and half-frozen children looking eagerly at the big houses, reminding her of herself when she lived on Henry and Ada’s farm and was familiar with manure, teats and the butter churn. Here, her maid’s uniform was made of finer linen and edged with more piping than what she had then worn to church.

She went back inside and down the hall, where she opened the door of the broom closet.

This brush is for cobwebs, Mary had taught her, that first week. Mind you don’t use it for anything else. And this is for the outside of windows. This here’s a coat broom. This one’s the whitewash brush. Her finger, moving, ticking each one like a checklist. Stove brush, shoe brush, common broom, dust brush.

So much to learn. How to make peaks in egg whites for a dish called meringue. How to turn a mattress and put the marked part of the sheet at the top. How to polish silver. How to iron collars without leaving a scorch mark. How to brush a hat. How to walk. Don’t be a lummox. Step softly, like a cat. You come and you do your business and you go.

“Flora?” Josephine called.

Flora thought of this now, walking quietly by stilling herself from the inside. In the parlour, Josephine was sitting at her writing desk. She put down her pen when Flora entered. Sunlight hazed her loosely pinned bun, its wisps. She wore a scarf wrapped round her neck—blue cotton, with white dots. She smiled, although her eyes held worry.

“Ellen has spoken to me about a