"Does it happen often?"
"Often enough," I said.
"Did you ask your mother about it?" she pursued.
"Yes. She said it's not uncommon for pregnant women to be this way."
"What way?"
"Shifting abruptly from happiness to sadness and without any apparent reason," I explained. "I'm sorry," I said. She stared at me a moment and nodded.
That night, when I went to the bathroom to empty my chamber pot and bathe, I heard sobbing coming from her room, and when I peered in the doorway, I saw her sitting on her bed, wiping real tears from her cheeks. Suddenly she stopped and then laughed. Then she started again. I left before she discovered me watching her, and for the first time, I began to consider that this situation might be just as emotionally draining for her as if was for me.
Of course, I realized that even though
pregnancy made me emotionally fragile, some of my gloom had to have to do with my being caged up in Gladys Tate's old playroom. I didn't want to complain and make everyone feel bad and suffer any of Gladys Tate's lectures about how much she was doing to solve this terrible problem and how much I should be grateful.
But despite my books, my embroidery, my sketching and keeping of the journal, I had so much time on my hands and nothing left to discover about my tiny, new world. Where could I put my eyes where they hadn't been dozens of times? I spent hours daydreaming, imagining myself free and outside, walking through the tall grass, dipping my hand into the canal water, smelling the honeysuckle and magnolia blossoms or the damp odor of the
hydrangeas and pecan and oak trees after a good rain. I imagined the cool breeze coming in from the Gulf caressing my face or making strands of my hair dance over my forehead. I heard the quacking ducks flying north for the summer and saw the nutrias working feverishly on their dome houses.
When Mama found out I was no longer permitted to take my walks on Thursdays, she complained to Gladys and told her it was unhealthy for a pregnant woman to remain sedentary.
"You have to keep her legs and stomach strong," Mama chastised. "She needs exercise."
Gladys's solution was to permit me to wander through the house after dinner.
"Just keep away from the windows. I don't want anyone knowing you're here, especially now," she emphasized. To make the point, she drew every curtain and kept the rooms as dimly lit as possible.
The Tate mansion was filled with expensive furnishings, many of them antiques, some of which predated the Civil War. The living room looked like a room in a museum. It seemed to me that no one ever used it. The maids kept it polished and clean, not a cu
shion out of place, not a speck of dust on a table. The Persian rug looked like it had never been trod upon. There were artifacts everywhere, some Oriental vases, ivory figurines, crystal and glass pieces on tables and shelves and in a cherry-wood glass case. Rich satin drapes framed the windows.
Gladys Tate let me peruse the library to choose new books to read, but I always had to restrict myself to no more than two at a time and always replace the two I had finished before taking any additional volumes. This way, she explained, no one would notice any were missing. Of course, I was forbidden to touch anything else. I could look at everything, go practically anywhere, but never disturb a thing. It made me feel like I was walking through a house made of thin china, terrified that I would bump into a table and send some very valuable piece shattering or leave footprints on the immaculate floors.
One Thursday night I ventured farther into the upstairs corridor. Usually the doors were kept closed and Gladys Tate made it very clear that I was never to open a closed door during my walk. This particular night, however, one of the always-closed doors was almost half open. I paused and gazed in, as timidly as a turtle at first, and then more like a curious kitten when I saw a pair of man's trousers draped over a chair. The closet door was open, so I could see the contents: all men's clothing. I realized that Octavious used this room. What did that mean? He and Gladys weren't sleeping together? Was it because of her fabricated pregnancy or was it always this way? I wondered.
I said nothing about it until Gladys and I sat down to our usual cold Thursday night dinner the following week.
"Your mother says that walking up and down the stairs is actually good for a pregnant woman, as long as she doesn't overdo it," Gladys remarked. "She says too many women baby themselves and are babied when they become pregnant. I'm sorry you can only do the big staircase on Thursday nights. However, you can walk up and down your own little stairway quietly when you come down to use the bathroom, I suppose.
"I'm not babying myself," she continued. "I used to have breakfast in bed occasionally. And everyone expects me to now, of course, but I am not going to appear to be one of those spoiled women your mother talks about," she said. She thought a moment and then said, "I never realized exercise was so important for a pregnant woman. I always thought they had to lie in bed and be waited upon hand and foot, but your mother thinks it should be exactly the opposite. She says unless the woman has some problem, she never tells her to stop working. Some have worked right up to the day she's delivered them."
"Mama's delivered enough babies to know," I assured her. "One time she delivered four in one day: a baby boy in the morning, a pair of twin girls in the afternoon, and a baby girl in the evening."
She nodded and then, after a pause, screwed those inquisitive eyes on me and asked, "You don't sleep well these nights, do you?"
"No."
"You wake up a lot and moan and groan. I can hear you through the ceiling sometimes. You've got to control that," she warned. "Remember, the window is open at night."
"I don't realize I'm doing it," I said. "Did I wake you and Octavious?"
"Not Octavious. His bedroom is across the corridor," she said quickly.
"You don't sleep in the same room?" I asked before I could stop my tongue.
She fixed her eyes on me with a stone glint this time. "No. We have different sleeping habits. It's not uncommon. My mother and father slept in separate bedrooms from the first day they were married."