He seemed so kind, I almost admitted I had planned to steal the coins Rachael had stolen from me, but I decided that was a sin suitable for divine ears alone. Rachael had exchanged her life of crowded entombment for one little different from my own. Never did a day go by that she did not bustle about doing washing, digging a garden, sweeping and tending and carrying and cleaning. Her limp body firmed up and plumped up and her eyes even seemed not quite so crossed. Her temperament, however, was crosser than ever, as she was unused to the labor put upon her. I asked, “Could I not come and be your servant instead of the Haskens’?”
He smiled a kindly smile. He leaned forward and whispered as if it were a secret between us, “You are ever loved, little Mary. Not a sparrow falls from the heavens but that it is noted. How much more are you than a sparrow? I am a humble man and can afford no servants, nor will I ever own any slaves for I think it is a pitiful thing.”
“Sir? Would you permit me paper and a quill to write to my ma?”
“I have none, child.”
“How shall I ever get home to my mother?”
Reverend Johansen’s face turned sad. “You will work off your indenture as others have done before. I did it myself. It is not forever. And you will pray that she is well and that you may find her when you have done your utmost in honest toil.”
I set the plate down and sighed. “Was your mother alive when you finished?”
“Mary, I’m glad you asked me for the Psalms. It is a book of both great comfort and great chastening, and none should shirk the hearing of it.” With that he left me.
It took the men four more weeks to finish the church house. While they did, Mistress and the girls worked at putting in a garden, and some days assigned me digging, or to keeping out birds and goats and pigs that came from one of the other houses. The air warmed. Rain fell, sometimes for days at a time, coming down in torrents much as it did in Jamaica. The trees budded and leafed out, and all the world was riotously green.
Only one goat gave milk by then, so Birgitta said it would be a lean summer until the does had their babies. The bear ruined other stores and tore through one home’s doorway, which was closed by a blanket pulled and fastened on both sides, ransacking and ripping through all their cloth goods. Wolves howled at night, and owls, and the Haskens’ house filled with bats. First one or two came in the morning to roost; before long there were thirty-one bats. I counted them every morning. Master was forced by his tender-voiced wife to collect scraps of any hewn wood from the church building and put a ceiling above our heads to keep the bats’ spoilage from falling on the supper table.
I tried as much as I dared to work near Patey. To my joy she was growing stronger and plumper, too, and seemed recovered from our passage in the ship’s hold, sometimes smiling. Once she laughed at Lukas, standing on his hands before her like a child showing off. As we carried buckets of water to the men chopping trees, she told me good tidings for the anniversary of my birth. I had turned eleven without knowing the day or date. “And when,” I asked, “was my birthday?”
“I remember it,” she said. “On a gusty, rainy day in March. Ma cried out five times. The sun broke through heavy clouds as if it pushed them aside and thrust itself upon the earth to shine upon your wee puffed and pinched face. You were ugly as a tortoise. Soon as it saw you it hid again.”
“La, Patey!” I felt shock though she smiled. “Am I still so ugly?” I shuddered. Did I seem as hideous as these Hasken daughters? It was said no duppy ever peered in a mirror for fear of death by ugliness. Their faces reflected in a pond turned it to poison. Perhaps I was numbered among them.
She laughed. “Name a star in heaven without beauty. And yet, the sun itself had to hide when you were born. Not a bad way to start a life. But”—she mimicked Ma’s voice—“’Twil be a burthen for ye, lassie.” Then she began to sing one of Ma’s favorite old songs, “O Waly, Waly.” I joined her and we sang together, refilling our buckets and returning to the men. The whole place bustled with the work of living.
“Mary! Stop squalling that heathen jig!” Master Hasken pointed toward me with the axe in his hand.
I nearly dropped the bucket, my eyes large as apples. “Yes, Master,” I said. “Beg your pardon, sir. It was just a song.”
“We’ll have no singing but for hymns and psalms as please the ear of God.”
“Yes, Master,” I said. I began humming the hymn of theirs I oft hummed to myself while milking, the one that fit the words “Damn your eyes, Mistress Hasken.”
He listened for a minute then said, “That’s better. Do you not know the words?”
“Only the tune, Master,” I lied.
CHAPTER 9
April 29, 1730