"How dare you accuse me of making an error, just because you're too stupid to take care of yourself."
"I'm not too stupid. I almost lost the baby." She started to smile. "You want me to lose the baby! That's why you did it and why you're making me work so hard."
"Why you ungrateful, spiteful . . . I would never do such a thing." Her eyes narrowed. "Do you think I would punish a baby for the sins of its parents? Get hold of yourself before I do put you in the barn. You're behaving no better than a barn animal anyway." She drew up her shoulders.
"I will send Charlotte up here with another towel and cloth and a fresh dress," she said. "I want you to clean yourself up and spend the morning cleaning this room. Then, and only then, can you come downstairs for something to eat. Do you understand? Disgusting," she added and marched out.
I remained where I was on the floor until Charlotte came with my things. Could I have been so confused as to leave them downstairs? I wondered. The last few days had been so hard, the work so difficult, my fatigue so deep, perhaps I had. But it seemed more likely to me that Miss Emily had done all this to me deliberately.
"Ugh," Charlotte said, squeezing her nose.
"I'm sorry, Charlotte. Thank you," I said, taking my things. "If I had a window in my room, I could open it," I added angrily. She stood outside the doorway looking in at me as I proceeded to wash myself down. I felt like I had been dragged through a war. I was happy to get clean and I was even happy to put on the ugly sack dress 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 longer cared. One of the reasons I was anxious for the baby's birth and my leaving The Meadows was renewing my relationship with Jimmy, if I could. I was afraid that after he had learned all that I had done and all that had happened, he might very well not want to have anything more to do with me.
"Stop that daydreaming!" Miss Emily screamed from a window.