Read Online The Rebel Wife by Taylor M. Polites - Free Book Online

but the tables and chairs, lamps and ornaments were all there as they had been four years before. The pianoforte was still in the music room. It was like a ghost house, filled with the past.
    Emma took my arm. “Let me help her out of these clothes, Mr. Branson,” she said. We knew the house better than he did. She took me up the stairs, holding my hand and almost pulling me along. She closed the door and came to me, wrapping her arms around me.
    “Shh, now, honey,” she said over and over. “Don’t worry, Emma is here. Emma will take care of you.”
    I cried into her breast like a baby. “Emma, what will I do? I can’t do it. I can’t.”
    “Shh,” she said. “Don’t worry, honey. It doesn’t take long.”
    “Emma, I don’t know what to do.”
    Emma wiped at my face with the edge of the cloak. She removed Mama’s garland of wax orange blossoms that I had half crushed. “You don’t have to do anything, Miss Gus. And if you don’t want his baby, you don’t have to do that, either,” she said softly. “There are ways to keep from it. I know some ways.”
    Emma pulled a piece of cotton wadding from her pocket. It was smeared with sheep fat, and she told me how to use it. She knew medicines, too, bottled medicines that could bring on my flow. That was the answer I needed. I was sick from the medicine for a week after I took it. I thought it might kill me, but I would not have minded then.
    “Do you have them with you?” I asked her, and she nodded. She looked at the small carpetbag packed with her things.
    Eli knocked at the door and Emma opened it. She curtsied to him and left us. I was silent. I knew what he came for. My God, of course that was what he came for.
    And that first night, how awful it was. Awful and groping and wet. That first night, I felt like I had died in that bed.

Five
     
    THE SEAMSTRESS STABS ME with her needle. The pain is sharp, like a bee sting. We look at each other until she turns her eyes away, the needle suspended in her fingers between us.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Branson,” she says. She has a mountain accent, was probably a refugee during the war who came to town and never left. “Please stay as still as you can.”
    Eli will be buried soon. In an hour or two. Mourners are arriving, waiting for me downstairs, but I won’t hurry the women. I shift a little on my feet, slowing their hands, risking another barb from the needle.
    Another woman on her knees works at my hem. They have been sewing for two days, virtually since Eli died, to make the dress. The pattern came with an engraving from Godey’s where a young widow with drooping eyes holds a bunch of lilies in her hand. Godey’s painted it in shades of gray and lilac, but for me it must be all black. The perfect picture of mourning. There is an art to mourning. We have all learned it well. There is a cost, too. Judge will have to settle the bills.
    We are in the room with the pink-ribboned wallpaper, across the hall from Eli’s room, closer to Henry. The wallpaper has garlands of climbing flowers entwined with the ribbons. A white girl has brought boxes of veils and lays them across the bed and on the backs of chairs, reminding me of the house on Allen Street during Mama’s funeral. Black veils of the gauziest tulle and sheerest English net shimmer in the sunlight. The room is so beautiful swagged in black. I want them all.
    Judge was in such a rush to see me after Eli died. Not a word from him since then. How can any of it be true? He says he will take care of everything. He will find out what Eli has left. For Henry and for me. Judge can say what he likes, but I know it is not really for Henry, not while Judge is the trustee. Judge is the owner. The real owner. I want to see the will. To see the words written in Eli’s hand. To see his signature. And to see who the witnesses were.
    “There you are, ma’am. All done.” The women get up from their knees and look at me. They have finished, and it is a lovely thing.