20
THERE IS NO FEELING in the world worse than betrayal. I felt cheated, laughed at, shut out of the lives of all around me.
I went home. Maude was there, puttering in the kitchen.
“Well, where were you? Your uncle won’t be home this night. I thought I’d just serve leftovers.”
“All right,” I said, “but I have to go out a little later, on an errand. I’ll be home about six.” I went to my room. There was so much to do and not enough time.
First I had to decide what I was taking with me and what I was leaving behind. I stood in the center of my blue-and-white room. I wanted to take everything and I wanted to take nothing.
I would take nothing that Uncle Valentine had given me, I decided. Not clothes, books, or even food. I would buy food before I got on the train. I would take nothing from anybody in this house. I would go to Aunt Susie’s in Richmond as poor as I’d been when I’d come here.
Except the cat. I’d take Sultana. Because it was as plain as the nose on your face that he couldn’t live without me, poor thing. And already he’d been kicked around from pillar to post, worse than a freedman.
Only, first I’d change his name. Sultana was a girl’s name and he was a boy. What would I call him then, Sultan? No, it had to be far removed from the name Robert had given him.
No, don’t think of Robert.
I threw some things into a portmanteau. Oh, Lordy, I thought, if I go to Richmond I won’t be able to finish at Miss Winefred Martin’s. And there would go my daddy’s money. What would my daddy have said? Miss Muffet had been frightened away. I felt a great sadness cut through me at the thought of Daddy. And another for Mrs. McQuade. “There was one I thought had so much promise,” she’d say. “You never can tell.” I’d disappoint her. Well. How many people had disappointed me?
I ran around my room throwing things into that portmanteau. All the while I tried out names on Sultana, who was sitting in the middle of my bed watching.
“Arnold,” I said. “How would you like to be called Arnold?”
He blinked at me.
“Look, it’s not after Benedict Arnold or anything. I just thought it had a nice solid ring to it. Well then, what about Sad Stock? It’s a new plant Marietta got for her garden.”
He licked his paw, feigning disinterest.
“No, you don’t look sad enough. Maybe I’ll call you Custer. You know, he’s the boy general and he has long blond curls. Don’t like that? Too dandified for you? Well then, what about Ulysses? Nothing dandified about him.”
I decided on Ulysses. Maybe when I got to Richmond I’d change my name, too. No more Emily Pigbush. I’d start over when I got there, new name and everything.
After I finished packing I went under my bed, where I’d hidden the twenty gold pieces from Johnny. I took two out of the little velvet sack. That ought to be enough for a ticket to Richmond and a wire to Aunt Susie. I knew she was still at the same address. Hadn’t she written to Uncle Valentine, “This is my home. Here I shall stay. Richmond will re-build”? So what if Richmond was a mess now? I’d thought I was safe coming here.
And what did it get me? Two dead bodies lying on a table, and Myra Mott snickering up the ladder at me. My uncle was a body snatcher. How could I show my face back at school? That was what trusting people and wanting to be safe got you. I’d gone from the frying pan into the fire.
Oh, I couldn’t bear the thought of it. Every time I closed my eyes I saw those two dead bodies on that table. And heard Robert’s voice. “Why would I be bringing back dead people, Emily?”
How could I have let Robert sweet-talk me out of my suspicions? Oh, what a simpleton he must think me to be! My face burned with the shame of it. And what about Uncle Valentine? How many times had my suspicions been aroused against him? And always I’d found an excuse for him. He’d helped Annie. He’d given me a home. He had warm brown eyes and his voice healed me.
Well, I wasn’t healed now. I was betrayed, naked, and used. I felt like those bodies on the table. Like my face was all burned off.
First I went to the telegraph office and wired Aunt Susie. I told her I would be down to see her in a couple of days. Then I went to the railroad station and purchased a ticket. Both errands took me the rest of the afternoon.
I would leave tomorrow morning, early, before Maude even got here. Uncle Valentine wouldn’t be home from Baltimore until tomorrow evening. I’d leave a note for Maude saying I’d been invited to have breakfast with Mrs. McQuade. By the time they missed me I’d be halfway there. Then, once in Richmond, I’d wire Uncle Valentine and tell him I was staying with Aunt Susie.
I felt a mite better walking home. I was filled with a sense of purpose and determination. I’d go home and grab a plate of food from the kitchen and take it to my room. Tell Maude not to bother with supper. I’d help myself. She’d be glad of it, an evening off.
There were just two more things I had to do first.
“What do you mean, you’re leaving?” Annie stood in the open doorway of her mother’s house, her hair disheveled, her sleeves rolled up, and white flour on her hands and arms.
“Tomorrow. On the ten o’clock train to Richmond. I have to leave, Annie. I can’t live in that house anymore. Something bad has happened.”
Her eyes darkened. “It’s Robert, isn’t it? You’ve been seeing a lot of him. He hasn’t been playing free with you, has he? You’re not in trouble?”
“Oh, God, Annie, no.”
“Well, what else could be so bad?”
I stepped inside the hall. Immediately I felt dizzy. Memories can do that to you, make you dizzy. It was all too familiar—the textures, the light, the smells. “It smells good in here,” I said.
“I’m baking,” she said. “Come into the kitchen.”
“Are you having company?”
“No. I’m baking to keep from going insane.”
We sat in the kitchen. She reheated some coffee and gave me a cup, then went back to kneading her bread. “Now tell me,” she said.
“You must promise not to tell anyone.”
“Oh, in heaven’s name, Emily, who would I tell? Who talks to me?”
“Well, you were right. About Uncle Valentine. He is stealing bodies.”
She went on kneading. I told her the story about Myra, the trip to the college, the burn victims. She kept right on kneading. I sipped the dark, sweet coffee. For a moment or two after I stopped talking, she said nothing. A clock chimed somewhere in the far reaches of the house. Puss-in-Boots came into the kitchen and rubbed against my skirt, recognizing me. I picked her up.
“And so that’s why you’re leaving?” Annie asked dully.
“Yes,” I said.
“You want to know what I think?”
“You know I do, Annie.”
“I think you’re spoiled and selfish, Emily. I think you don’t know when you have it good. I think you’re like your mother.”
If she had slapped me, I couldn’t have been more shocked. “Annie,” I said, “don’t you understand what I just said? He’s a body snatcher. All of them—Robert, Maude, Marietta.”
She never stopped kneading that bread. “Have you ever had a burn, Emily?”
“Not really.”
She picked the bread up, threw some more flour on the board, and slapped it back down. She wiped her hands on her apron and poured herself a cup of coffee. She was getting thinner than ever, but her back was very straight in the old calico dress, and she did not turn around from the stove as she spoke. “Wouldn’t you like to think that if you were burned someday, doctors would know how to treat you?”
I did not know what to say. “Yes.”
“I’ve seen my mother suffer so with her migraines. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someday doctors knew what caused migraines? I understand Mrs. Lincoln gets them. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if the next time a president got shot in the head they’d know what to do for him? Think of it! If they could have saved him, Mama wouldn’t be in jail.”
“Maybe she still would be,” I said.
“But not in danger of being hanged.”
I could say nothing to that.
“What’s so bad about what your uncle has done? How do you think doctors got to know everything they now know? By working on dead bodies. My God, Emily, stop being a child. Look how your mother died. Coughing her lungs out. Maybe he’ll cut into these men while he’s at it and find out about lungs!”
“It isn’t that,” I said. “It’s that they all lied to me. I can’t live with people who have lied to me.”
“Oh, my Lordy.” She raised her eyes to the ceiling and gave a bitter laugh. “They lied to you, did they? Well, what do you think my brother Johnny did to us? What do you think my mother did to me? But I still love her. I’d give my eyes to have her back here in this house living with me right now. And Johnny, too! My God, Emily, they’re going to hang my mother! They’ve got all the evidence against her. This trial that’s coming up is just a formality. They want to hang people and they’re going to hang them. Now, there is trouble. Not the fact that your uncle Valentine is trying to find a better way to treat burns and lied to you.”
Silence in the kitchen. Except for Puss-in-Boots. She was purring.
“You’re measuring everybody else’s problems by your own,” I said.
“That’s right, I am.”
“It isn’t fair. The yardstick for measuring doesn’t work anymore if you do that.”
“That’s right,” she said. “If they hang my mother we’re going to have to throw the yardstick away. Because nothing will be more unfair, Emily. So I would advise you to thank God there are men like your uncle Valentine and Dr. Mudd, who care so much for humanity that they are willing to take chances and break the stupid laws.”
I set the cat aside and stood up. “There’s no talking to you anymore, Annie. You don’t care about anyone else. All you care about is your own problems.”
“Because I have problems. And they aren’t imagined.”
“Other people do, too, Annie. Next to yours they may not seem important. But mine are. And I’m sorry you can’t see them as I do.”
She shrugged and started kneading the bread again. “I’ve been through too much,” she said.
“Does that mean you don’t want to be my friend anymore?”
“No. It means I’ve been through too much. Johnny’s gone. My mother’s in prison. Alex is dead. My home is up for sale. I have to sell it.”
“I lost my daddy in the war and my mother died. I don’t have a home.”
“You have your uncle!” she snapped. “And a good home, and Robert paying court to you. You want advice? Go home. And forget about what those noodleheaded girls at school are playing at. Your whole life is ahead of you. Mine is finished.”
“Annie.” I moved toward her. I touched her arm. “You’re still young. Your life isn’t finished.”
“Isn’t it?” She drew away. “I’m a Surratt. I have to live with this name forever. Who will want anything to do with me?” Her face was taut, white, ugly.
For a moment I felt sorry for her. Then in the next moment I didn’t. She hadn’t listened to me, to my troubles. And they were real. She didn’t care about anybody but herself. “No one,” I said, “if you continue on as you are.”
Then I left the house.
I felt bad about Annie, but there was nothing I could do. I’d helped her. Robert had helped her, and so had Uncle Valentine. It wasn’t my fault if her mother went and got mixed up with John Wilkes Booth, was it? Besides, I’d needed Annie. Always in the past she’d been there for me. Now she just wasn’t anymore. I went home.
There was one more thing I had to do. Tonight, before I went to bed. The idea of it was so gratifying it put all the other bad feelings out of my mind.
Maude was waiting for me in the kitchen. “Well, I was ready to send for the Metropolitan Police. Where have you been!”
“I had an errand. And the streets are crowded. For the Grand Review tomorrow.”
“Exactly. Which is why you shouldn’t be out alone, with all those soldiers hanging about.”
I filled my plate at the stove. Leftover chicken and beans. She’d made fresh muffins, though. I was hungry. “I’ll just take it to my room,” I said. “I have some studying. You deserve the night off. Why don’t you leave now? I’ll put the food away.”
“I have to bring a plate up to Addie.”
“I can do that.”
She looked doubtful. “All right, but don’t forget to lock the doors. I’ll be over in the morning to make breakfast for you and Addie.”
I’ll be gone by then, I said to myself. And so will Addie.
“Leave?” Addie wiped the gravy in her plate with a muffin and put it in her mouth. Her old eyes were wary. “You wouldn’t be funnin’ me, would you, little missy?”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, Addie. It’s what you want, isn’t it? So you can have a chance to do something with the freedom Mr. Lincoln gave you?”
“’Xactly,” she said. “But you always say no. You get inta that shed out there? You find out what’s in them barrels that say PICKLES? You find out they be dead bodies in them barrels?”
Dead bodies! Pickles! Of course! How could I have been so stupid? I could hear Robert’s words to me that night in the shed. Rum, arsenic, and corrosive sublimate. It was what they preserved specimens in. Likely what he’d used to preserve the bodies from the Sultana disaster. Not from out of state, I hope. The doctor wants no out-of-state pickles. Of course not. Except for the Sultana disaster they did not want to traffic in out-of-state bodies. It was too risky.
“Yes, I found out, Addie,” I said sadly. “And so now I’m leaving. And I want to help you leave, too. If you want to. You’re better, aren’t you? No more coughing?”
“Medicine make me better.”
“Well, then, do you want to go, or don’t you?”
“I wants to go.”
“Good. We leave in the morning, early. I have some money. I’ll give you some. But you must promise to use it to get settled, and not for rum.”
“I doan drink no more. Fer sure.”
“Where do you want to go? I’ll take you.”
“Go?” She stared at me. She got dreamy for a minute. “I gots a place,” she said.
“Where?”
“Can’t tell.”
“Then how can I take you there in the morning?”
“You take me to the Relief Society. Twelve an’ O Streets. So’s I kin pick up my things.”
My God, I thought, the outskirts of the city. How will I get her there? But I must.
“Reverend Nichols,” she said, “he runs it. I wuz workin’ fer him before. Gotta let him know I’s arright. He think I’s dead. Gotta let him know I’s arright and pick up my things.”
“All right,” I said. “You get some rest now. I’ll be up to wake you at first light. I’ll hire a carriage. And take you to Twelfth and O Streets. Tomorrow you’ll be a free woman, Addie.”