Cutler 02 - Secrets of the Morning

because it was at least clean.
    "The same thing happened to me," Charlotte admitted, shaking her head sadly as I went about cleaning up the room.
    "The same thing?" I paused to look at her. "You mean you've been sick like this?"
    "Yes, but Emily said it was because the baby had pointed ears and was a spawn of the devil."
    I stared at her. What did all this mean—the baby rattle, the needlework for a baby, the references to her own pregnancy. Was it real or part of her imagination?
    "Charlotte, when did you have this baby?" I asked.
    "Charlotte!" we heard Miss Emily scream from down the hall. "I told you to give her those things and leave her to clean up."
    Charlotte started to turn away and then hesitated and looked back in at me, an impish expression of defiance on her face.
    "Yesterday," she said and ran off.
    Yesterday? I thought. I nearly laughed myself. Charlotte really didn't have any concept of time. But did that necessarily mean that all she had told me was fantasy? And if she was pregnant out of wedlock, just like me, did Miss Emily do the same sort of things to her? Miss Emily wouldn't tell me. I knew that if I so much as had asked her about Charlotte being pregnant, Miss Emily would have chastised me for listening to her and encouraging her fantasies.
    But I had to discover the truth, perhaps before it was too late for both me and my baby, I thought.
     
    As I entered my eighth month of pregnancy, Miss Emily decided that I was too heavy. She decided to cut back on everything I was given to eat. Some days I was so ravishingly hungry, I gobbled anything in sight, even stale bread. I had to sneak food on the sly, for she left nothing out and easy for me to get. I would finish my meager meals and have to sit at the table and watch her and Charlotte continue to eat. I got to the point where I was eating whatever Charlotte left on her plate when she handed me the plate to wash.
    Although my food was cut back, my work was not and I was carrying the baby much lower now. I couldn't bend down; I had to kneel to pick things up. One late April morning, Miss Emily decided that it was time to air things out. At first I didn't understand what that meant. Then I realized what she wanted to do.
    First, she wanted me to take up every rug in the house and pound the dust out of it outside. Then, she wanted me to carry out every sofa and chair cushion and beat them the same way. When I started to protest, she ordered Charlotte to help and Charlotte was eager to do so. She was happy to be given any significant activity. Together, we began by rolling up the rug in the library. Charlotte did most of that, but carrying it out was a terrible strain. Even sharing the weight, it was too heavy for me to bear. I felt my stomach pulling and tearing. Off to the side, Miss Emily watched us like an eagle. We managed to get the rug out on the portico and draped it over the railing. Then we started to beat out the dust, months and months of it. The clouds of dirt nearly choked me.
    "I had to get up early today," Charlotte told me when we paused for a rest. "The baby woke me."
    "Charlotte, how can there be a baby if you told me the baby went to hell?" I asked.
    "Sometimes, Emily lets him come back to visit. I never know until I hear him crying for his bottle," she said.
    "Where is he today, Charlotte?" I pursued when I was sure Miss Emily wasn't listening to us.
    "In the nursery. Where else?" she said and then she started to beat the rug, singing a child's tune as she did so.
    "You better not go down to the woods today . . ."
    I made up my mind. Tonight, I thought, when I was sure Miss Emily was asleep, I would do what I had been forbidden to do: I would go into the west wing and I would explore.
    The airing out of things was the hardest work I had to do all month, but it at least permitted me to be outside and enjoy the warm spring day. I had almost forgotten how wonderful and happy the blue sky and soft milk-white clouds could make you feel. The breeze was gentle and delicately played with my loose strands of hair. I couldn't help but recall some of the happier spring days of my life, those unfortunately too rare but marvelous days when Jimmy and I were very young and didn't fully understand how hard and how terrible our lives really were. At least I didn't. I think Jimmy always knew and resented our poverty.
    It had been so long since he had heard from me or I had heard from him. I was afraid he thought that I had forgotten him and no