Hazel pulled the churn from the icebox, hearing Bessie’s tires crunch down the gravel driveway as she did. The butter was the palest yellow, indicative of the milk’s freshness from the fattest cows on the Lakeses’ farm. Hazel thought about how delicious the biscuits would be that night, fresh from the oven with the peach-pear-blackberry jam Bessie had gone to buy. It was a specialty brand from Charleston that Mrs. Nora gave her as a gift from a trip there once.
Dare I say, that jam is better than mine. Bessie had been as excited as a child is for a new toy. She usually made the jam for the biscuits from scratch (Bessie would have cultivated her own sugar cane if she could), but squirrels had wiped out the Lakeses’ fruit-tree groves in August.
By the time Hazel was aware of Teddy’s presence, his knees were pushing her legs apart; knowing every give in the kitchen’s hardwood floors, he’d crept up behind her. The shock of his body against hers sent the churn to the ground, where it split. She struggled against him as his feet forced hers wider. She lost her balance and fell against the table, sliding into and blackening the butter with her soles. Her eyes locked on a piece of wood from the churn. Her fingers inched toward it, itching to bash Teddy’s head in, and she would have, had he not slammed her palms against the table. Part of her resigned itself to being restrained. Had she fought back and really injured him, the Whites would have used it as an excuse to burn Cottonwood to the ground. Worse than that moment would be being the reason everyone she knew lost everything they had.
Her cheek hit the wooden table and, having been warned about the unnatural thing he would do if she resisted, she stared out of the back door, wishing the shiny nose of Bessie’s silver Cadillac would slide into view.
It was Teddy’s wife, Lanie, who first found Hazel on the floor amid the butter and flour. When she couldn’t stop humming one of the hymns her momma used to sing, to explain how the churn busted, Lanie took it upon herself to fire Hazel without severance pay.
Bessie came over after her Christmas Day shift at the Lakes home with a basket of biscuits for Hazel and the Bendses.
“No butter and no jam.”
“Don’t matter.” Adelaide went to pour Bessie some cider.
Bessie looked surprised to see Hazel at the table but didn’t say anything.
“We were just about to eat. You want a plate?” Adelaide kept moving, making only two plates for herself and Hazel, expecting Bessie to refuse as always.
“Yes, thank you. I’ll have some.”
Adelaide reached for another plate.
Hazel looked at Bessie as she sat down next to her.
“She gave away all my jam to the guests,” Bessie said. “Even the three jars I’d set aside in my spot. Called herself apologizing to them for the break in biscuit tradition.”
“Sticky fingers is always taking something,” Adelaide said.
“What did she tell them happened?” Hazel asked. Adelaide sat plates of yams, mustard greens, and butter beans in front of her and Bessie.
“That the butter spoiled.”
Hazel heard “soiled,” and with it came the downward vision of her black, round-toed work shoes sliding and stomping into the pale butter mounds. She felt sick.
Bessie lowered her voice to speak to Adelaide as Hazel left the room. “Is she all right?”
Though Hazel closed her bedroom door, their voices carried. She wondered if Lefred could hear from the porch.
“You know she doesn’t say much.”
“You gon’ take her to see Dr. Cardwell?”
“Did today.”
“I came back from the store and they were cleaning. The butter was packed into the floor cracks.”
“Who was cleaning?”
“They made Teddy do it. That dummy wife he’s got was in there helping. They boiled pots of water to get it to liquify.”
Teddy and his wife had left in the middle of the night after a terrible fight. Mrs. Nora was unsure of when he’d return. She came in the kitchen shortly after Bessie arrived with a Christmas surprise: a solitary jar of jam she’d stashed away. They had some together on toast. Bessie laughed while narrating the moment. “If I told you my life story, I swear you wouldn’t believe it.”
Hazel never did find out what had been so funny but didn’t want to ask. Bessie’s absence of yesterdays was what made Hazel feel so comfortable around her. They had an understanding, and Hazel had learned, after her family died, not to ask people questions she didn’t want to be asked herself.
* * *
A few weeks later, morning sickness and a hardness beneath her belly button sent Hazel back to the Lakes manor. She needed a job, and her firing had made her unemployable. Aside from ruining the town’s favorite Christmas Eve fete, she was “pretty for a Negro girl,” and no woman wanted to hire help for whom her husband might form an affinity.
Mrs. Nora grasped Hazel’s hands, pleading for her silence. There were political plans for Teddy, and while his having his way with a Negro girl wasn’t a threat to that future, a child could be.
“How will I feed her?” Hazel glared at Mrs. Nora. Fully aware of the illegality of direct eye contact, she was bolstered by the need to protect the life inside her.
Mrs. Nora looked at Bessie as if she needed her permission to speak. “A job here as long as you want it,” she finally said. “Bessie will be retiring soon, and I’d like you to stay.”
“He’ll be settling in Virginia after law school,” Bessie said, reading Hazel’s mind.
“Dear Lord, give me strength.” Mrs. Nora bent over and took in a long breath. Bessie started patting her back like a tambourine. “It’s gon’ be all right. It ain’t your fault.”
Days later, Hazel found an envelope in the pocket of her apron. Folded inside was a notecard, with FROM THE DESK OF NORA ALLISON LAKES inscribed in gold at the top:
Employment and living expenses to be paid for the entire life of Hazel Ledbetter and one child who shall be the eldest and firstborn at time of birth, whether male or female. Giver humbly suggests that this money be kept in a savings account in a bank until the child is eighteen years of age and wishes to embark on his or her own life.
Hazel signed the card and returned the envelope to her pocket. Days later, she found a deposit receipt in its place. Bessie pretended she didn’t know anything about it, but only she would have known which white apron on the hook was Hazel’s.
Nightmares about Teddy came when she slept. She felt his breath steaming up her ear and heard the staccato tempo thumping her eardrum. She smelled the cigarette he’d smoked and the bacon he’d had for breakfast. She felt the edge of the kitchen table cutting into her pelvis, which left a permanent scar, with every jab into her body. Then she saw his face, a view she had not had in real life. His features were twisted with the pleasure of his power, eyes slit and tongue licking, snakelike, with every thrust. She woke up after her daddy appeared and blew Teddy’s head off with a shotgun.
Bessie busied her mind by day. Acting as sous-chef from her seat at the kitchen table, she remitted recipes to Hazel in between stories about her son in Chicago who just had his third baby.
Hazel entertained it because doing so was kind: after asking Adelaide if she planned to accompany Bessie to Chicago to see the baby, Hazel learned that Bessie’s son had been dead for more than ten years. He’d been found hung after organizing a boycott at the lumberyard where he worked, demanding other work for Negroes besides the backbreaking job of hauling timber.
“She sat in the tub for days, wailing as if a body part had been cut off,” Adelaide said. “She was too close to death after losing that boy.” When the water ran cold, Adelaide boiled more and fed Bessie broth. “Then one morning she got out the tub, got dressed, and went back to work as if it had never happened. Forgetting is the only reason she’s still breathing.”
Bessie wasn’t the only one in the Lakes house who was haunted. Mrs. Nora never spoke Mary’s name but proffered a cake to Hazel on her first birthday.
“She didn’t ask for my help,” Bessie said, hearing of it later.