In the second year of Tem’s apprenticeship, the distillery outgrew its bounds. Matty Winship did not know whom to thank for his good fortune—the swarms of new immigrants, now escaping the bloodshed in France, who had to spend for everything they desired; the federal government, newly installed in Manhattan and thirsty for gin; or simply all those who’d suffered the privations of the war and now loosened their purse strings in the general atmosphere of prosperity—but he did not think he’d be able to meet demand for his liquor two years down the pike. On hearing the news, Tem began strutting around, certain her own contribution had played some pivotal role in this success. Prue, by contrast, couldn’t sleep for two nights, so vivid were her fantasies of customers whose gin had not arrived coming to pound on their door. By the Friday of the week, she was so tired, objects seemed to wiggle when she stared at them, and when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she resembled a raccoon. Israel Horsfield called her out from the brewhouse midmorning, and took her up to the countinghouse to talk. He was a tall, slim man with angular features, and as kind as she knew he was, Prue worried he planned to chastise her.
“What’ve I done?” she asked as they entered the office.
He had a tight grin on his face that disturbed her more than a frown would have, but he said nothing. He closed the door behind them, and took his seat at the great desk. As her seat was beside his, she took Tem’s, across the table. Out the window, she could see men unloading empty casks from two barges.
“What’ve I done, Mr. Horsfield?” she repeated.
“Nothing, Prue,” he said. “Your father’s a bit worried about you, though.”
“Why so?”
His grin relaxed and broadened, and he more closely resembled Ben. “You’ve been looking wan of late. He’s concerned—well, it’s a difficult subject to raise, which is why it’s somehow fallen to me; but we’re all concerned you may have lost your heart somewhere.”
“My heart?” she asked. She wondered if he meant Ben or Mr. Severn, and her cheeks began to prickle with warmth. “No, sir. I can’t sleep for worrying about the orders we won’t be able to fill.”
Israel closed his eyes and raised his palm to his head. “Should have known. You’re just like your mother, a’en’t you?” Prue wasn’t flattered. “I’ll make you a coffee,” he said. “You could use it.”
“Thank you,” she said, and went back to looking out the window. She tried to count the casks and failed. She heard Israel banging grounds from the pot into the slop bucket.
“Prudie Winship, it means business is good. You should be pleased. Do you know what your father plans to do?”
She knew it meant something was wrong with her that her first thought was to imagine bleary-eyed workers toiling through the night. On this idea’s heels came a more logical possibility: “Expand the works?”
He set the pot down on the stove. “Exactly so. Let me show you.” He riffled through the loose papers on the desk and extracted a sheet covered with boxes and squiggles representing the distillery and the river. He placed it before Prue and leaned down over her shoulder. “Your father believes we can cut the end wall clear from each of the buildings”—here he took up a pencil and indicated this—“build them out longer, and move those farthest down the production line north, toward the ropewalk. It’ll require quite a bit of horsepower, but we’ll be able to save some of the foundations, which were what required the most work when we built the distillery.”
Prue thought about watching the laborers dig the cellar pit for the rectory, and didn’t recall it requiring more work than any other task. Israel sat down beside her, in her father’s chair. “With such sandy ground, you see,” he went on, “it’s hard to keep a building plumb. The ropewalk sinks more than an inch a year in its northwest corner, which is why you always see the workmen out shoring it up. When your father and I built these buildings, we drove piles as deep as we could into the sand and lay great, flat foundation stones atop them, solid enough for the buildings to rest upon. They’ve held up well; we’ll use the same method. Will you help us draw up the plan?”
“I can’t draw,” Prue said.
“Mmm.” Israel looked at his sketch of the distillery. “Nor can I. But it’ll look better once your father puts his hand to it. In the meanwhile, you can help us decide by what degree we should increase each stage of production. It’s a tricky issue, as it involves not only the space but the machinery, men, and the time it takes to work each part of the process.” The coffee had begun to boil, and he removed it from the stove and poured it out. “One thing more, Prue.”
She took the cup and broke off some sugar, keeping her eyes on him.
“If a certain young man of our acquaintance ever does aught to make you look so pale, I’ll beat him senseless.”
Prue smiled, despite her exhaustion. The gentle way Israel was watching her showed her he knew he’d hit the mark, but she felt less discomfited by this than she had a moment before. She was also pleased at the prospect of redesigning the works; she loved having a problem to think through.
Her father had filed away the measurements of all the buildings twenty years before, but Israel borrowed the carpenter’s Gunter’s chain, and he and Prue stalked the property, deciding exactly how far each house could extend without the whole works encroaching upon the ropewalk. Israel ordered new foundation stones from a quarry up in Wilbur that could ship the stones down along the Hudson. When Tem discovered that Prue had been released indefinitely from her ordinary labor, she pouted and yelled as if she might thus be excused from her studies; but their father was firm and made her keep on in the cashing house, no matter how unpleasant she made herself to the foreman. Ben and Isaiah gave themselves leave to quit Mr. Severn’s school—from which, they argued, they would both graduate anyway, come spring—and volunteered themselves for any opportunity to assist in the measuring. Israel Horsfield was furious with them when first he saw them loose in the middle of the day, but Isaiah assured him the study of building would serve him at least as well as the Lucretius with which Mr. Severn was torturing them. After two days, Israel himself wrote Mr. Severn asking for his sons to be excused while business demanded it. Cornelis Luquer cursed his apprenticeship at the grain mill—but for learning his father’s business, he would have been free to participate in the first engineering project of any size in the neighborhood, and he complained to Prue of his jealousy at every turn.
For two weeks, Prue, Ben, and Isaiah argued with their fathers over the best spacing of the buildings for ease of production, and over the best method for constructing walkways above the various production rooms. Prue’s own design—for simple balconies, with railings to prevent mishap—won the day, and looked well enough indeed when her father worked up a detailed drawing, including all the measurements necessary to build them. Ben and Isaiah wanted to stay on and assist in the ditch-digging and carpentry, but when the plans were complete and the workers apprised of them, Prue’s friends were sent back to school.
At that time, in the spring of 1790, the distillery employed nearly sixty men and had four horses in its stables. No one part of the manufactory could function while the others lay dormant, and Roxana Winship began predicting ruin before the work even began. But it had been Tem’s idea—Prue wished it had been her own—to increase production before the works shut down so the storehouses would be full when the building commenced; and with so many laborers, the digging and construction proceeded quickly. Prue and Tem learned how heavy even a spadeful of sand could be by the end of a day, and the kind of concentration two men needed not to injure each other with a double-handled saw; and their industry was matched by the workers’, each of whom, slaves included, had been promised a pound sterling if the work was completed by summer. When the foundation stones arrived by barge from Wilbur, Matty Winship and Israel Horsfield bartered with farmers from Red Hook to Wallabout for the loan of their oxen; and Prue thrilled at the commotion when six teams of the snorting beasts labored to drag the huge slabs over logs laid down on the sand. Matty Winship had ordered the new cauldrons and stills from England before the work began, and had men building the new mash tuns before the brewhouse was even complete. By the time the rectifying room was under way, he was calling on the Remsens and Cortelyous to find out how much grain he could buy of them, and at what cost. Before it arrived, he advertised in the New York papers for more men; “For, dammit,” he told Prue, as they stood atop two ladders, fastening a leather drive belt around one of the new drums, “before I die, I shall see you have more than a hundred employés to supervise.”
“But you aren’t going to die,” she said. Both the leather and the lumber still smelled fresh and sweet.
He made a plosive sound of disdain through his lips. “Of course I shall, Prue. So will you. All we can both hope is that it’ll happen a good ways in the future. And I imagine it will. If Death fancied our house, after all, he’d long since have come for Johanna.” They were ten feet apart, but he could see her face and added, “Don’t look so glum, now. I thought I’d have done with that expression when I let you come work with me.”
“You did,” she said. “You shall.” She tried to remind herself of her pride in her walkways, which were sturdy if not beautiful. But work well done could not prevent her from wondering what would happen if her father fell off the ladder right then.
He did not wait to complete the new storehouses before resuming production; if the liquor had to go into the assembly hall, this would be only for a short while, and the distillery fell further behind on its orders each day that passed. Twenty men would keep on building, but the second Monday in June, the brewhouse would reopen. In celebration of the event, Matty brought a cask of the previous year’s wares out into the yard one afternoon, tapped it, and gave every worker his dram. Prue saw the four lazy boys in Joe Loosely’s employ slip into the line, and felt tempted to warn her father; but when it came their turn, he gave each of them a wink with his sup of gin, and sent him back up to the ferry.
Ben and Isaiah left off their studies again for a few hours, to view the completed work and take part in the festivities. “You’ve grown taller from the work,” Isaiah told Prue.
“Meatier, too,” Ben said.
Prue swatted at him, but Ben was already running into the brewhouse, where he began clambering up the side of a new tun. “Ho!” he called as he looked over the top. “It’s as big as the Luquers’ swimming hole! Can I go in?”
“Don’t,” Prue said. “We’ll have to drop a ladder in to get you back out.” She wanted to add that, at seventeen, he ought to have been able to comport himself better.
He commenced galloping around the platform at the tun’s perimeter. She was sure he’d pitch into the tank or to the ground and break his neck.
Isaiah walked more gravely around and between the giant tuns. “The whole operation’s stark admirable,” he said. “And you were correct about the walkways. They’ve come out well.”
“Thank you.”
Ben stopped and sat down, his legs dangling over the platform’s edge. “Has Pearlie seen this?”
“No.”
“Why not?” he asked. “She’d be interested. Let me go get her,” he offered, and was about to jump off the edge of the platform to the ground when Prue called, “Don’t! Use the ramp.” He sneered at her, but did as she said.
Prue herself ran up Joralemon’s Lane, and found the house quiet and her mother staring at the grain in the wood of the kitchen table, her eyes red. She did not look up when Prue pulled the door closed by its latch.
“Mum?” Prue asked. “Will you come down and see what we’ve done at the works?” When her mother didn’t respond, she asked, “What’s the matter?”
Roxana sighed, lifting her collarbones halfway to her chin. “Johanna fares poorly,” she whispered. “Pearl is sitting by her.”
Prue walked softly into Johanna’s bedroom and noticed, for the first time, a sweet stench, like attar of violets. Pearl looked up from her chair by the bedside. Johanna’s breath rasped like a wood plane, and she was pawing in her sleep at the gruesome tumor, close by the spot she had always touched when Tem or Prue vexed her. Pearl fixed her needle in her embroidery and looked anxiously up at her sister’s face.
Prue did not know what to say. After a moment Pearl opened her pad and wrote, I’m worrit’d about her. Surely this is her Last End?
Prue watched Johanna’s breast rise and fall. “I’m not certain, Pearl; she’s looked dreadful before and pulled through. We should call for the doctor.” Prue left the door open behind her as she returned to the kitchen. “If you come down to the distillery with me, you’ll be halfway to Dr. de Bouton’s. He’ll come.”
Roxana continued to look at the table. “You’ve never liked Johanna.” Prue did not know how to answer her. Roxana closed her eyes a moment and licked her lips. “Your father got on well in this village from the start, but the womenfolk of Brookland have never had much to do with me. I’m not like them, I suppose.” She smiled wanly, Prue thought to let her know it was no use denying it. “Johanna has never asked me to be other than what I am. It pains me to contemplate losing her.”
Prue could not help thinking Johanna was a slave and had had little choice in the matter; she could befriend or antagonize her mistress, but not escape her. But Prue said only, “We’ll fetch the doctor for her. Please come see what we’ve done, down at the works.”
Roxana continued to give her the sad half smile. “Your father’s proud.”
Pearl came in from the sickroom with her tambour frame in one hand.
“Come tour the new buildings,” Prue said.
Pearl put the embroidery on the table and wrote, Wth Joa unwell?
“A brief tour.”
Mothr coming?
“I don’t think so,” Prue said.
Pearl frowned and wrote a note to her mother. Prue looked over her sister’s shoulder, and saw the note said, Come its importint to her.
“And to Father and Tem,” Prue added.
“What of Johanna?” their mother asked.
Pearl wrote, She wo’n’t stir & we’ll be back immediatly.
Roxana stood as if it cost her some effort, and tucked a loose wisp of hair behind her ear. Then she smiled at her daughters in earnest.
Down below, many of the men had gone back to work on the storehouses, but the foremen were still standing around with their cups, and Ben and Isaiah were among them. Matty’s face lit up when he saw his wife. “Hoy, Roxy,” he said, and put his arm out for her.
She leaned her head toward his shoulder. “Johanna’s ill,” she said.
“How so?”
“Abed and breathing poorly. I’m on my way to fetch de Bouton.”
He nodded, but the news did not appear to have dispelled his good mood.
“Quite a lot you’ve done here,” Roxana said.
Pearl bent and straightened her knees a few times in eagerness to get on with her visit.
“Poor thing,” said John Putnam, the brewmaster. “Wish I had a sweet for ye.”
Pearl kept bouncing as if she hadn’t heard him, but the expression of delight had hardened on her features.
“I’ll show her around,” Ben said, pouncing on her from behind. She pitched forward happily; she was tiny for twelve years old, and no one ever roughhoused her.
“There’s so much to show you,” Matty said, and kissed Roxana’s forehead.
She didn’t shrug free of him, but neither did she soften into his embrace, as Prue had often seen her do. “Delightful,” she said. “I’ll be delighted to know what’s been keeping you from home all these months. If, indeed, this manufactory be the culprit.”
One of the foremen whistled through his teeth, and Ben whisked Pearl off toward the brewhouse. “It is,” Prue said, and watched her mother color.
“You don’t even know what I speak of” she said.
“I can see by her countenance she does,” Matty said, and laughed to himself. “Come. You need to fetch the doctor and it’s high time Prue and I got back to work. Let’s have our look round and be through.”
When they arrived at the new cooling house, Pearl drew in her breath in delight. She stepped out onto the lattice of planks and strode to the middle of the room. “It is lovely, isn’t it?” Prue said.
Pearl could scarcely communicate when far away from people, but she nodded her head yes.
“Of course she likes it,” Matty said. “She’s an eye for beauty, don’t you, Pearlie?”
But Pearl was off toward the great open windows, watching the traffic on the river go by and whistling one of the tunes she’d heard the French laborers sing up by the ferry. Prue wondered how Pearl could never have seen the cooling floor before, but, of course, Pearl was no more allowed to wander the distillery than the streets. It was too dangerous for a girl who couldn’t be heard if any ill befell her.
After showing them the works, Matty kissed his wife and small daughter good-bye, and Roxana led Pearl up the Shore Road to fetch Dr. de Bouton. When Tem and Prue came home from the distillery that evening, they found their mother in Johanna’s chair, with her hands in her hair. “What’s wrong?” Prue asked.
“De Bouton was insensible with drink,” she said.
Tem went up the stairs as if she hadn’t heard this.
“Did you go for Philpot?” Prue asked.
“He’s not really a doctor,” Roxana said.
“But he’s better than none.” As her mother did not reply, Prue walked back outdoors and up toward the Jamaica Turnpike to fetch him. As she skirted Simon Dufresne’s wagon and another bearing the day’s last load of lumber down from the van Vechten sawmill, she thought how odd it must feel to give way to extreme old age. She had watched Domine Syrtis dodder until one day he could do so no more; a similar anticlimax had punctuated the life of old Mrs. Joralemon. This natural death, in which the organism simply wore out, struck Prue as stranger than the scourge of disease. The typhus had borne off Mrs. Horsfield two years after Maggie had been born, a death the whole village had mourned. Her demise had been swift, and painful because unexpected; but Prue could not understand why people hoped to be overtaken by some creeping deformity of body or mind. True, there would be no great surprise, as in suddenly finding oneself stricken with a fatal ailment. Yet the knowledge of one’s own imminent decease seemed more frightening to Prue. Then again, she had felt certain all day Johanna was no longer cognizant; and hoped she would remain so when Dr. Philpot came, for otherwise she would berate him with charges of quackery. Johanna’s mother, Elsa de Peyster, was said to have been a wise woman of even greater skill than Mrs. Friedlander; and when she’d still had her wits partway about her, Johanna had always condescended to anyone who’d claimed knowledge of healing.
Dr. Tobias Philpot, in addition to keeping the Twin Tankards with his brother, Antony, was a purveyor of patent medicine. He seemed a nocturnal creature, with a sleepy gaze and an eternal growth of purplish stubble on his cheeks and chin. At that hour of the afternoon, he was in the quiet barroom, wiping down the tables with a rag. The only customer was a well-dressed Negro Prue didn’t recognize—perhaps a traveler, staying upstairs—who barely looked up from his schnitzel when she entered. Dr. Philpot did, and said, “Prue Winship,” as if she was a pleasant surprise. “We never see you, except when the singers come.”
“Tony was just saying he wished we’d see more of your father.” Dr. Philpot had a low, pleasant voice, and took his time choosing his words. Though everyone said his medical training had been of the most perfunctory kind, she imagined his calm manner provided comfort in times of distress. “Such a jolly man. He understands there’s no enmity, on our side? If we had a license for hard liquor, his gin would be our first choice. Or your gin, I should say.”
Prue said, “You’re kind; but I think he knows. It’s simply that Joe is one of his dearest friends. He drinks there, when he isn’t drinking at home.” Joe Loosely exerted the same monetary influence over the state regulators Matty Winship had when his business had been beholden to the Crown; Joe paid them off handsomely, and in return, his was the only establishment selling gin and brandy anywhere near the ferry. Brooklyn was not yet an incorporated village, and with no elected officials of its own, there was nobody to whom an alehouse-keeper like Tony Philpot might apply for redress. Winship gin could be had in Midwood and Bush-wick, but it was the Philpots’ ill fortune to be too close to Joe. “I’ll tell him to stop in soon.”
The customer took a long pull at his ale. Prue knew he was listening.
Tobias Philpot dunked the rag in his bucket and wrung it out with care. “Anything I can do for you this afternoon? Tone’s made some coffee, and if you like, we’ve some of Peg Dufresne’s jam and biscuits.”
“Thank you,” Prue said, “no.” Tony and Tobias had no womenfolk; but while the Hicks brothers had gone greedy and mean after a few decades in each other’s company, the Philpots, like the Schermerhorns, had become solicitous of women and children. “I’ve actually come to ask you to examine our serving woman. She’s doing poorly.”
“Your slave, Johanna?”
Prue nodded.
“Had quite a tongue on her, in her day. When your father bought her of old Mr. Remsen, the whole village said only a stranger would be so gullible.”
“She would still have the tongue, could she speak.”
“Well, it served all of us right, for minding other people’s business.” He winced as he finished wiping down the table. “Lived with her all your life; you must be quite fond.” Prue tried to think up a reply, but he wasn’t looking at her. “De Bouton has told me she’s a cancer on her brow. Is it for this you’ve come?”
Prue nodded again. He pulled out a chair at the damp table, inviting her to sit, but she said, “Thank you, but I really should get back.”
“Why didn’t you go for de Bouton?” he asked, without malice.
Prue said, “He’s stone drunk, sir.”
Dr. Philpot shook his great, jowly head. “Sometimes I think, when I reach my end, there’ll be payment to be made for this business I’m in. Will there be anything more?” he asked his lone customer.
As the man was chewing, he simply shook his head no.
Dr. Philpot walked out of the barroom and into the hall, and craned his head up the stairs. “Tone? Can you see to the customer? I’ve a medical visit to pay.”
“Coming,” Tony said from somewhere upstairs.
Dr. Philpot returned, Prue thought nearly as slowly as if he were walking through water. “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Of course I can make no promises.”
Prue said, “We’re grateful you can come at all.”
From behind the counter he brought forth two of his brown bottles, with wax seals over the stoppers, and testimonials in small type. With his usual languor he placed them on the counter, then held an empty jug under one of his taps. “Some ale for your father,” he said.
“Thank you. He’ll like that.”
He stoppered it and pushed all three bottles forward on the counter. Prue reached for her pocket, but he held forth his stubby hand and said, “Please. We’ll see what I can do.”
He took his time packing his wooden case, and ran his hand across his jaw, already shadowed with his evening beard, before heaving the box aloft. Prue hurried to open the door for him. Out in the barn, he took great care in saddling his fat black horse, and he secured the medical box to her back. Prue wanted to exhort him to make haste, but also remembered there was likely little he could do for Johanna. “Will you ride?” he asked Prue, still holding the horse by the reins.
The horse, Bonnie, shook her head, but Prue didn’t take it amiss. “Won’t you?”
“I often walk her,” he said. “I think she finds me a bit heavy; but you’ll suit her fine.”
He held the gentle mare still while Prue mounted, and he led the horse by the reins as they ambled downriver together. Mrs. Livingston’s roses were blooming, and perfumed the evening air.
At the Winship house, Dr. Philpot spoke in soothing tones to Johanna, despite that she could not hear him. He drew his breath in across his teeth when he saw the tumor—it had grown large and solid as an egg, its tentacles more numerous and as sturdy as twigs—and at the sound of his dismay, Roxana left the room and walked out into the dooryard. Prue and Pearl remained in Johanna’s cramped chamber with Dr. Philpot and Johanna, who had not even opened her eyes upon examination.
“It must pain her,” he said. Prue thought he was speaking to himself. “Does she still take liquids?” he asked Prue.
“From time to time.”
He nodded and bent down to unhitch his case. “Give her hourly a spoonful of my Eugenic Water. I doubt she’ll be with you long; but this will help ease her pain.” He put the bottles on the night table and handed her the jug of ale. “As I said, for your father.”
“Thank you. How much do we owe you?”
“Never mind for now. Send him in when he’s the time.”
Prue led him to the door, and saw that the sun was setting in great rolls of pink clouds over Manhattan. Bonnie, tethered to the post, was eating clover. Prue’s mother was pacing, out by the well, and wringing her hands in her apron. The scent of the ripening berries on the juniper bushes was pungent and sweet. Prue had no idea what was keeping her father. She went back into the house and found Pearl reading the label on one of the bottles.
“What’s in Eugenic Water?” Prue asked.
Pearl opened her case and wrote, Lanidanum & Moonshine. She sighed, and Prue thought she understood more than Maggie Horsfield, for all Maggie’s pretensions of superiority. It was clear from the set of her shoulders and the steadiness of her gaze she knew the bottle contained no cure.
Prue administered the first dose of the nostrum but felt her stomach lurch when she did so; there was something awful in the greedy way Johanna’s tongue sought out the medicine when the rest of her was letting go by degrees. Pearl agreed to give the medicine from then on. She did not seem to flinch at either death’s proximity or the stench in the room.
When Johanna passed a week later, Roxana wept as if she’d lost a child. Matty comforted her and put her to bed, then came down to find his three daughters sitting in the parlor, wide awake but doing nothing. The windows were open, admitting gnats and a warm breeze. Pearl was curled up on the divan with her cat in her arms; Tem looked as if she understood something somber had occurred but wasn’t certain exactly what. Prue simply held still, afraid if she moved she might explode with guilt. “No,” her father told her, as he sat on the arm of her chair and reached up to rub her scalp, “don’t look so low. It’s a great sadness Johanna will no longer be with us, but you girls loved her well, and did your best to help her in her last days. You brought Dr. Philpot, don’t forget.”
Prue wanted to accept his benediction, but as usual thought he understood little of what troubled her. At a gross level, she felt responsible for the existence of Johanna’s tumor in the first place, as it had been Prue who’d first made Johanna’s head ache with worry over Pearl, and in exactly that spot. Underlying this, she felt some relief no longer to have to watch the poor woman dying; and beneath it all lay that which she could tell no one: the solace of knowing Johanna would now take her secret with her into the dirt of the Reformed Dutch churchyard, if indeed she had kept it all these years. Prue knew that even to think this was a betrayal of the same order as having cursed her sister in the first place; nevertheless, she breathed more easily than she had in all her days. In the eyes of the rest of her family, she was a sober, diligent, hardworking girl; only Johanna had seen the depths of her vileness. And to know such a person was gone from this world—vanished as surely as if her body had been taken up into the clouds—was freeing. To whom could she confess such a confidence? Not her sisters, nor her parents, nor even Ben and Isaiah. She wanted none of them to know she thought such reprehensible thoughts. She was a grown woman of eighteen, trained to run a distillery; she ought to have been more practical-minded.
There were no specific customs in Brooklyn regarding the funerals of slaves. Many of the inhabitants kept slaves for kitchen work if not for the fields, but there was talk in the barrooms of a gradual manumission; and though Prue could not see how her father could run his manufactory at profit entirely on paid labor, she knew he planned to do so someday. When one of the Rapaljes’ slaves had died, they’d buried her decently but without show, and in a similar act of conscience had hired paid help to replace her. Roxana insisted that Johanna had been as much a member of their family as anyone and deserved a full funeral. “I’d sooner lie down in the grave beside her than allow her to be buried with no more dignity than a pet dog,” she said with a vehemence that unsettled Prue. Roxana had the new domine, who hadn’t known Johanna by name, conduct a service, and afterward invited all the neighbors and the distillery’s workers back to the house for cider and seed cake. Prue put on her one brown dress for this occasion, and it constricted and chafed against her, though not nearly so much as did her discomfort about her sin. Then, too, she noticed she was not the only sinner in the room. There was Dr. de Bouton, reeking of liquor in the afternoon, and Henry Hicks and Mr. Patchen, neither of whom had a kind word for anyone. The neighbors were gluttonous in their consumption, and the men went out of the house, seriatim, to spit tobacco. Maggie Horsfield must have been as displeasing to God’s sight as Prue, for the way she stepped aside to admire the curtains when Pearl drew near her. Isaiah and Ben closed ranks in front of Maggie, as if to shield her from Pearl’s view. Though they had long since reached their full height, they hadn’t filled out at all; and their narrow faces, the image of their father’s, clearly showed their shame. Ben tossed Pearl a sugared nut, which she caught and popped sheepishly into her mouth. Prue wondered if this was sufficient apology for Maggie, who now stood with her back to the room, examining the still life Pearl had embroidered using cast-off strands of the family’s hair. It was a weird object—less because of the hair than because of the lifelike accuracy with which she’d depicted twigs and dried leaves—and Prue could imagine Maggie giving an unflattering account of it to whomever she counted among her friends.
In what the neighborhood considered a rare act of generosity, the Hicks brothers sent over their mulatto cook, Abiah Browne, to help with the cleaning the next day. She was no older than Prue, and prettier, with a head of chestnut curls that fell in orderly spirals from beneath her woolen kerchief. She watched with curiosity as Prue fastened her knee britches and pulled on her heavy boots. While Prue, Tem, and their father worked at the distillery that day, Abiah cleaned the house of footprints and spilled beer and threw all Johanna’s linens outdoors to await the washerwoman. (Pearl reported her horror at the scent of putrefaction.) She moved Johanna’s bedstead into the kitchen, and attacked even the ceiling of the sickroom with soap and water, by means of a washrag wrapped around the business end of a broom. When Prue returned home from work, Abiah was eating some buttered peas at the kitchen table, and the whole house smelled pleasant and damp. “It must have been a lot of work,” Prue said.
Abiah finished chewing and said, “It’s all right.”
Prue went into Johanna’s room. The scent of soap was strong, but she wondered if she only imagined the odor of decay still lingered beneath it. The room had always been small, and for some reason looked smaller now that it was denuded of personal effects.
“Do you feel her in there?” Abiah asked.
Prue felt a tingle in her spine. “Excuse me?”
“Everyone says she was a seer, like her mother. I felt eyes on me, the whole while I was in there.”
“My sister Pearl’s, perhaps.”
Abiah shook her head no. “It’s no worry. They didn’t feel malign.” She took a long drink of water. “I put your supper on, and it should be ready soon; but there are more peas, if you’d like, in the meanwhile.” She tipped her head toward a skillet on the hob.
Prue said, “Thank you,” and took a wooden spoon to move the peas to a bowl. They smelled green and sweet. As she sat down at the table, she noticed all the sticky spots had been scrubbed clean, as they had not been for some while. She felt a physical sense of relief at not having to watch where she placed her elbows. “It’s lovely to have the place so neat. Johanna had been unwell a long time, and my mother doesn’t care much for housekeeping.”
Abiah pushed the crock of butter to her across the table. “Well, if your parents ever seek a replacement, ask them to come calling.”
“Don’t you like working for the Hickses?”
Abiah shrugged her shoulders. “I like it fine. But your family’s temperament seems more pleasant.”
Prue nodded, and deduced from Abiah’s comment that her mother had remained abed all day. If she’d been down, Abiah would have found her work more trying.
After Abiah had gone home and the family had retired to the parlor, Prue went back into Johanna’s room. The grate had been swept clean, but because of its proximity to the kitchen, the room was still hot. The ropes creaked on the mattress when Prue sat down. Could it be, she wondered, that Johanna sat beside her, or was in their backyard or drifting around Fly Market? It could not be; she reminded herself it was childish to think it might. Still, she could not convince herself any of these possibilities was more distressing than the possibility that so unique a human soul could vanish, leaving nothing behind her but an ivory hair comb and two dresses to be given to the poor.