Suddenly, without warning, July had to slap her hand across her mouth to catch the vomit that began to spew from her.
‘Marguerite, where are you going?’ her missus yelled as July fled from that room.
July’s sick splattered over the veranda. She retched. Her throat was scoured hoarse by it. And she retched. Her stomach ached with it.
But the terror of the din that rose from the negro village was now louder with no glass to curb it. It hurled July back inside. She wiped snot from her nose, tears from her eyes, and breathed as deeply as her foreboding would allow.
When she re-entered the drawing room she found her missus stooping low over Emily—tenderly tickling her baby’s throat as she lay upon the daybed. Her missus’s face, at first rigid with frown, soon pursed about the mouth. And she whispered upon her child, ‘What a little one you are.’ Staring fixedly at the baby, the missus widened her eyes, then slowly opened and shut her lips. Then she smiled and patted her hands together in a soft clap. As she offered her little finger into the baby’s mouth she sensed July staring upon her. Without turning to July, nor taking her gaze from the baby, the missus said, ‘She looks just like him. She’s so fair. Not like a nigger’s child at all.’ Then, looking up to find July’s eyes upon her, she added, ‘But she is adorable,’ before returning to her cooing. ‘What did you say she was called?’ the missus then asked.
July bounded that room in a leap to wrest her child from out of her missus’s affections. ‘Marguerite, I was doing no harm,’ her missus said as July snatched her baby from the daybed. But the sound of a heavy footfall stomping briskly up the veranda steps had both July and her missus turning, startled, towards the door.
Robert Goodwin rushed in upon the room.
His hat was off his head. His hair wet. His face blackened with soot and striped by slides of dripping sweat that ran down. His shirt hanging out his breeches—dirty as rag—had a slash of blood at the collar. His brown jacket was ripped—at the sleeve, at the shoulder. His boots were enclosed in putrid mud. A ragamuffin, not an English gentleman. Yet he bestowed an air of wholehearted jubilation as he said, ‘It has been a great success!’
Who he was addressing, July could not tell, for he looked at neither she, nor the missus, as they both gaped upon him.
‘The negroes finally understand where their duty lies. And it is to their masters and to God.’
He hesitated, as he stepped further into the room, on where he should rest his gaze. ‘I have returned them to their rightful work,’ he addressed first to the missus, who glowed quite crimson before him. ‘The negroes are to commence taking off four of the cane pieces at conch blow tomorrow morning, they have assured me of that,’ he continued to July. ‘All is well,’ he laughed before lifting his head heavenward to declare, ‘If my father were here, I believe he would shake my hand upon this day. Yes. Yes. I believe my father would be very proud of his son.’
But then Robert Goodwin clasped at his arm—the one where the jacket sleeve was ripped—and staggered as he took a further step. The missus squealed like a poked pig—as if it were she that felt some pain—and pitched her fat white batty across the room to steady him. July had never seen it move so fast, nor wobble so wide.
‘Oh, Robert, Robert,’ the white-woman twittered, ‘What is it? Robert, Robert,’ as if he could not recall his own name.
As he placed his arm about the missus’s shoulder, the feeble woman nearly folded to the floor. For nothing heavier than Nottingham lace had ever bore hard upon that limp neck before. Come—she teetered graceless as a bakkra drunk on rum under his burden. Yet as the missus bumped and jolted him to a seat she boldly impudenced July by commanding her to, ‘Get some water quickly, Marguerite.’
Cha. July was not there to serve her. July had been required only to sit with her. For was it not July who nursed the pickney of the master of this house? Was it not July who wore his gold cross and chain about her neck? Was it not July who, curled tight within Robert Goodwin’s heart, unfurled only at his will?