Cutler 02 - Secrets of the Morning

of my apple and started to stand, but the pain shot through my lower back so sharply and quickly, I couldn't breathe and had to sit back a moment.
    "You got a baby in you," Charlotte said, "and it might have pointed ears."
    "It doesn't have pointed ears," I snapped between gasps. "What a horrible thing to say. Did Emily tell you that it did?"
    "Emily knows," Charlotte insisted, nodding. "She can see into your stomach with her fingers and she knows."
    "That's silly, Charlotte. No one can see into anyone's stomach with her fingers. Don't believe it."
    "She saw into mine," she said. "And saw the pointed ears."
    "What?"
    A door slammed down the west corridor and Miss Emily's click-clack footsteps reverberated through the house like one gunshot after another. The sound put a look of terror into Charlotte's face.
    "Emily says I shouldn't bother you while you're working," she explained, backing up.
    "Charlotte, wait . . ." I pulled myself up on the bench.
    "I've got to finish a pattern," she said and turned to shuffle quickly away.
    A few moments later, Miss Emily appeared. She glared down the hallway in my direction. Then she inspected some of the furniture and some of the portraits I had cleaned and dusted. Apparently, she was satisfied.
    "I have put a clock in your room," she said. "Make sure you keep it wound up so it doesn't stop in the middle of the night and you don't know what time it is in the morning.
    "Dinner will be at five promptly," she added. "I expect you to come to the table looking clean."
    "But where do I wash? All I can get is cold water in my bathroom and there is no place to take a shower or a bath," I complained.
    "We don't take showers," she said. "Once a week we take a bath in the pantry. Luther will bring in the tub and fill it with water he heats over the fire."
    "Once a week? In the pantry? People don't live like this anymore," I protested. "They have hot and cold running water and they have nice-smelling soaps and they bathe far more often than once a week."
    "Oh, I know how people live today," she said with that cold smile on her lips, "especially women with their fancy smelling perfumes and seductive clothing. Don't you know that the devil won Eve's trust by appealing to her vanity and that ever since that hateful day, our vanity has been the devil's doorway to our souls? Lipstick and makeup and pretty combs, lace dresses and jewelry . . . all devices to fan temptation and drive men to the promontory of lust. They fall," she chanted, "oh how they fall and they take us down with them, down into the fires of hell and damnation. You have been singed by the devil. I smell the odor of the black smoke. The faster you come to this realization yourself, the faster you will find redemption."
    "That's not true," I cried. "I don't smell like something evil, and my baby won't have pointed ears!"
    She stared down at me a moment and nodded.
    "Pray to God that it doesn't," she said. "Pray that God won't take his vengeance on an innocent baby, but you have made Him angry and that anger is so great it rolls on and on through the heavens."
    She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, her hands against her small bosom.
    "Work," she said, "pray, and be obedient and, hopefully, you will find Him forgiving."
    She turned and walked away. At the top of the stairway she paused and looked back.
    "Don't forget, promptly at five and be as clean as you can," she added and descended, her head high, her back so straight she looked like a statue being slowly lowered.
    I pressed my hands against my stomach and swallowed back the lumps in my throat. My baby was only something good, I told myself. No matter how Michael had deceived me, my baby was inside me and felt the power of my love. That power was something precious and heavenly and not the devil's work. Miss Emily never knew the power of love. At this moment I thought she was someone more to be pitied than to be despised. She lived in a cold, dark world peopled by demons and devils and saw evil and danger in every nook and cranny of her home and life. I imagined she rarely laughed, even rarely smiled.
    She didn't know it, I thought, but the devil had already defeated her.
    I washed my hands and arms and face the best I could. Without a mirror, I could only imagine how dirty and dingy my hair appeared, but Miss Emily didn't care about appearances. In fact the less attractive I was, the more she liked it. I had to replace the soiled gown with the second one in the drawer.