The Wedding Gift Read online

  One of the neighbors, Mrs. Faith Tutwiler, was unlike the other planters’ wives. She had attended a young ladies’ academy in Montgomery, where she was raised. It was Mrs. Tutwiler, whose husband owned one hundred slaves, who taught me how to thrive as the mistress of a plantation. I learned from her that certain chores, such as giving slaves their Christmas presents, should not be entrusted to overseers and that the mistress’s main duty with regard to the household servants was to be their advocate with the master.

  As Mrs. Tutwiler said, all the household servants, except for Emmeline, soon learned that they could lodge complaints or make requests of Mr. Allen by asking to speak with me. Most complaints concerned the overseers. The servants protested disciplinary measures and, as they saw it, excessive labor. I investigated all charges and sometimes agreed with the servants.

  In my first month at Allen Estates, I performed an inventory of the 1,500-square-foot library and dedicated myself to converting it into a respectable collection. My husband purchased mahogany from Honduras, and I had the carpenters, all expert furniture-makers, build shelves and reading tables. I ordered books and subscriptions to magazines and newspapers, including the Daily National Intelligencer, from J.S. Kellogg & Co., booksellers in Mobile.

  In September, I suspected that I was with child, three months after my marriage. My husband summoned a physician recommended by Mrs. Tutwiler. Dr. Robert Atlas arrived that evening and examined me in the presence of Bessie.

  “When you are dressed, Mrs. Allen, I will speak with you and Mr. Allen to tell you my conclusion.”

  When he was gone, Bessie helped me to dress and I went to the parlor. My husband and Dr. Atlas were laughing and drinking brandy.

  “Darling, Dr. Atlas has informed me that you are with child. Why are you crying? I thought you would be happy.”

  “Mr. Allen, I assure you that this is normal for a gentlewoman in her condition. There will be many moments like this, when Mrs. Allen will cry for no apparent reason. Everyone must be patient and do nothing to agitate her.”

  My husband asked Dr. Atlas what else needed to be done for me during my pregnancy.

  “Because ladies are delicate, they must abandon all outdoor activities, including gardening. Mrs. Allen may ride in the carriage, but she must take afternoon naps. I will examine her once a month until her sixth month, when I will see her once a week. If you desire, I am available to be in residence in the final month of pregnancy.”

  “Yes, those arrangements are suitable.”

  When Dr. Atlas departed, my husband consented to my request to invite my parents to Allen Estates. I told Bessie and Dottie that they were going to be aunties. They were thrilled and, being mothers, had many words of advice. That month, I did not feel at all ill. My parents wrote that they would arrive in early November. From the day that Dr. Atlas confirmed my pregnancy, I saw my husband only at supper because he stopped visiting me at night. At the end of September, I asked him when we were alone why he no longer came to our bedroom.

  “Dr. Atlas told me that it would be dangerous and that we cannot be together until you have recovered from the baby’s birth.”

  “But I am not ill. I feel wonderful, in fact.”

  “Theodora, I will not jeopardize our child. We must respect Dr. Atlas’s knowledge and experience.”

  “But…it will be a long time until we can….”

  “I said no. This is my decision. There is nothing more to discuss.”

  I did not tell him that I wanted to be with him even more than before my pregnancy. I spent my nights alone with my books and my journal, and my days were monotonous. I told an overseer to find two boys to help me in the garden.

  One afternoon shortly thereafter, as I was sitting on a bench instructing the boys, a servant gave me a letter from Papa. I read it again and again, not believing what it said. How could Mum be dead? She was in excellent health when I was married. I sent for my husband, who was in the fields, and when he arrived, I showed him the letter.

  “Darling, I am very sorry. This is shocking.”

  I did not reply.

  “Dear, you must accept that your mother has passed on. Why don’t I take you upstairs so that you can rest?”

  “No, I have things to finish in the garden.”

  “No, you will not work in the garden. Theodora, you must believe what happened.”

  “Dottie and I still have so much sewing to do.”

  “Theodora…stop it. Come with me or I will have to carry you. You know that this is harvest and I have to return to the fields. I cannot stay with you all afternoon.”

  “No, please, do not leave me alone. Please stay with me. I cannot be alone right now.”

  “I will stay with you for awhile, but I have to make sure that the cotton harvesting remains on schedule to meet shipment dates.”

  We went to the bedroom and he stayed with me for about an hour, and then he left me in the care of Bessie and Dottie. I felt unsettled at not having seen Mum buried. That night, I awoke with abdominal pain and I was perspiring heavily. My forehead and throat were hot. I rang the bell for Bessie. I told her to go to the overseer’s house and to tell him to send for Dr. Atlas, who arrived in the early morning.

  “Mrs. Allen, you have a high fever.”

  “What can be done?”

  “Now, now, do not trouble yourself. I have attended hundreds of gentlewomen in your condition, and my practices always resolve the matter. Please stand. Your maid should stand next to you in the event that you feel weak during the procedure.”

  “What procedure?”

  He did not answer me and withdrew an instrument from his waistcoat pocket.

  “Answer me at once. What are you going to do?”

  “Madam, please do not exert yourself. This is normal practice. I will perform venesection to cure your fever and the pressure in your uterus.”

  I was afraid and wanted to call my husband, but he had returned late from the fields and I did not want to disturb his sleep. I stood. Dr. Atlas told Bessie to help me remove my nightdress. He then tied the part of my arm above my elbow with a tight cloth. He told me the small, pointed instrument that he had taken from his waistcoat pocket was a thumb lancet.

  “Do not move at all as I begin the procedure. If you do, the blade can cut a tendon or sever an artery. Most ladies look away at this point, madam.”

  I closed my eyes. The pain caused by the blade entering my arm was not as severe as I expected, and I opened my eyes, watching as the doctor caught the spurting blood in a small bowl.

  “I believe that I have drawn sufficient blood. You should return to bed and sleep, and you will feel better when you awake. I will stay on the premises to examine you later today.”

  I followed his instructions, but when I awoke, I did not feel better. He said that he needed to let more blood until the fever subsided. He performed the procedure once more that day and three times more over the next two days. I felt weak. He prescribed more bed rest.

  Papa wrote that he, my aunt Lucretia, and my cousin Eliza were on their way to see me and would get to Allen Estates the following week. I was happy when they arrived, although Papa was thinner and looked tired. He kissed me on the forehead and smoothed back loose strands of my hair. I did not cry until I embraced my aunt. For the first time, I noticed that she and my mum had identical hairlines and cheekbones. When the servants settled my father and aunt in their rooms, Eliza and I retreated to my apartment.

  “Eliza, my husband has abandoned our bed, and…I miss him.”

  “My dear Theo, when a lady is expecting, especially with her first child, it is appropriate, and even advised by doctors, that her husband should not visit the marital bed. You will find that, as your pregnancy progresses, you will be grateful to be alone.”

  “Perhaps you are right. Oh, Eliza, thank you so much for coming to see me. My dear family is a tremendous comfort.”

  My family took carriage rides to the fields and to neighboring plantations. When we were
at home, Papa and I played chess, we read, and I continued to write in my journal. My aunt and cousin helped Dottie and me with sewing and knitting. We generally saw my husband at supper, as he was consumed by the work of preparing shipments.

  Late one night, I awoke with pain in my abdomen. I called Bessie, who hurried in and lit candles. When we lifted the linens and saw that blood had soaked through my nightdress and the sheets, I told her to call my aunt, who brought Eliza. Bessie roused Dottie. They all assured me that this was common during a first pregnancy and that it was not always a sign that something was wrong. Aunt Lucretia told Bessie to run to one of the overseers’ houses and tell him to send someone to town to get the doctor. I got out of bed so that Dottie could change the linens, and Aunt Lucretia and Eliza helped me to wash up and change my clothing.

  “Auntie, has Mr. Allen been notified?”

  “No, dear. Perhaps we should ask your papa to do so?”

  “No, I will go to him.”

  “No, Theodora. You must stay in bed.”

  “No, I feel better and the bleeding has stopped. I want to be with my husband.”

  They did not attempt to stop me. I took a candle and went to my husband’s apartment. I opened the door to his bedroom. The windows were open and the moon illuminated two nude figures, as still and as perfect as statues.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SARAH CAMPBELL

  MY LIFE, FROM BIRTH, WAS TIED TO CLARISSA’S. I was born three months before her, and my mother was her wet nurse. We were playmates from a year old, my mother said. When I began working, I was allowed respite from my labor to spend time with Clarissa. There was a vegetable garden in the rear of the kitchen where we went sometimes, drawn by its pungent smells. Laughing and holding hands, we would throw ourselves face down on a patch of herbs and breathe in the earthy smell.

  One task that I liked was polishing furniture and cleaning the library. As I dusted books, I imagined that they contained paintings similar to those on the walls. I dared not open them, but I caressed their leather and linen covers. I once asked my mother what was in books.

  “What’s in them you don’t need to know nothing about. If they catch you looking in one, they’re going to punish you.”

  “Who is going to punish me, Mama?”

  “Why you ask so many questions, girl? Mr. and Mrs. Allen, that’s who going to punish you. Sarah, it’s a crime to learn how to read.”

  “What’s a crime?”

  “A crime is when you do something bad, like looking in books. You can be whipped by a overseer for doing that.”

  “But why can Mr. and Mrs. Allen read books?”

  “Sarah, it’s only a crime for us to read.”

  “Why?”

  “Sarah, you ask too many questions. Let’s just finish cleaning in here.”

  “Is it a crime for Miss Clarissa to read?”

  “Sarah…it ain’t no crime for Miss Clarissa to read. Enough. You finish dusting the low shelves.”

  Clarissa and I played in the nursery, where there were numerous books, all with colorful covers, small tables and chairs, a writing board, a map on the wall, and a globe. When we were there, Mrs. Allen or my mother periodically came to see us. One afternoon, when Clarissa and I were alone, I pointed at a book and asked her if it was a toy.

  “No, that’s a book. You know, for reading.”

  “What’s reading?”

  “Well, there are words and you…I don’t know, but my papa, mama, and my brothers read, and I’ll learn how when Mama gives me lessons. She says every lady must know how to read and write and learn her numbers.”

  Clarissa lost interest in the topic and we dressed her dolls. Another day, I asked her to open a book.

  “I like this one,” she said. “Mama reads it to me a lot. I think it’s called something like ‘Little Goody Two Shoes.’”

  We looked at the pictures.

  “What’s it about?”

  “Uuumm. Let’s see, there’s a little orphan girl who was very poor. She only had one shoe until a nice gentleman gave her two. Then she was a nice person and taught little children. In the end, she was happy because she married a rich man.”

  I wished that I could read what was written beneath the pictures.

  “Miss Clarissa, can you please show me more books?”

  She selected one from a shelf. “All these are called nursery rhymes,” she said.

  “What’s a rhyme?”

  “It’s when words sound the same. I can’t really explain it.”

  “Miss Clarissa, I wish that you could read the rhymes to me. Do they sound pretty, like somebody singing a song?”

  One day, Mrs. Allen stayed in the nursery and told stories from Aesop’s Fables and read a book about strange animals, one of which was called a quagga and looked like a horse with black and white stripes. After that, whenever she came to see us, Clarissa asked her to read. It made me so gleeful to hear the tales that I sometimes clapped in appreciation, which made Mrs. Allen smile. Once, my mother was startled when she went there and found Mrs. Allen reading to us.

  Clarissa and I were outside the kitchen jumping rope when two girls, daughters of Hall maids, asked if they could play with us. We took turns jumping and holding the rope. When we were tired, Belle took Clarissa back to Allen Hall and I went to help my mother in the kitchen. I was washing string beans when she asked me to go to her garden and pull more onions. Two boys who were walking by teased me. “Sarah is a yellow belly. Sarah is a yellow belly.”

  That night, I told my mother what the boys said. “What did they mean by saying that, Mama?”

  “It’s just because you’re lighter skinned, baby. That’s all. They didn’t mean nothing by it, they was just being boys.”

  “But, Mama, why is my skin a different color than yours and Belle’s?”

  “It just is, Sarah. Don’t you see, nobody is the same skin color as everybody else?”

  “Miss Clarissa is the same color as Mr. and Mrs. Allen.”

  “That’s just how God made them, Sarah. They get to look like each other, but we all look different.”

  When I was eight, at the time of year when her garden was in full bloom, my mother took me there to show me her flowers and herbs and teach me their names. She pointed out ones that could be poisonous. Then we went to our cabin and she opened the cabinet where she stored dried herbs.

  “Sarah, I’m going to teach you, like I did Belle, how to take care of yourself when you get sick. If it’s something serious, Mrs. Allen can call for a doctor from town for us, but by the time they go get somebody, it can be too late. And sometimes these doctors don’t really know what they’re doing, or maybe they just don’t care when it come to us. Now, listen. What I’m going to teach you is just between us, you understand? Don’t ever talk to nobody about this.”

  “Why, Mama?”

  “Because we’re not supposed to know about some of these herbs.”

  She pulled down six containers and told me the name of each herb and to smell each one. Then she told me to close my eyes, and I had to identify each herb by smell alone. When I had learned the herbs, she taught me how to prepare infusions.

  “Bloodroot we use to clear out our chests when we catch colds in the wintertime. But bloodroot can be poison. The reason why it took you so long to learn it was because it don’t smell like nothing. Now, it’s strong so you just use a little bit at a time. That way, the person don’t taste it. One thing you can do is mix it in a drink.

  “Thorn apple is the flower you said was pretty. Some people call it ‘devil’s apple.’ It’s poisonous too, but good for pain and sickness of the chest, like when a person can’t breathe right.”

  That day, Mama showed me how to prepare those six herbs, but her lessons continued for years, until she was confident that I could prepare twelve herbs without her assistance.

  Clarissa’s lessons began the same year my mother first taught me about herbs. One day, when I was in her rooms, Clarissa told me that he
r mother had praised her because of how quickly she was learning, but she said that she missed playing with me.

  “Maybe I can sit in the nursery while you have your lessons,” I said.

  She laughed. “You can’t. Lessons are for young ladies, not maids.”

  About a month later, she told me that she was bored. “Don’t you want to play with my dolls?”

  “My mama says that I have to do whatever you say, Miss Clarissa.”

  Then we played with her dolls and her new dollhouse, but I only pretended to be interested, and she noticed.

  “Don’t you like playing with me anymore?”

  I shrugged. “Like my mama said, I have to do whatever you tell me to do, Miss Clarissa.”

  Clarissa slapped me, and I cried.

  “You are just jealous. I told you. You can’t have lessons because you are my maid. Now go away. I don’t want to look at your dirty, stupid face.”

  I was hurt but knew that Clarissa was lonely for a playmate and that she would continue to summon me. One day, as I was polishing furniture in her rooms, she was playing with her dolls and her dog, King.

  “Sarah, if you play with me like before, I’ll ask Mama if you can be in the nursery while I have my lessons.”

  “Really? Will you really?”

  We played one of our favorite games, chasing each other hopping on one foot. We played other games, some of which we had begun playing when we were two or three years old. Clarissa kept her promise and insisted that her mother allow me to sit in the nursery while she taught her. Clarissa’s parents never denied her requests, as she was their only daughter and youngest child.

  King would sit next to us for a few minutes but soon lose interest in his role as a student and wander away to lick and scratch. I sat still, listening to every word. When Mrs. Allen called Clarissa to write on the board, I observed how she wrote and was attentive to Mrs. Allen’s corrections. Mrs. Allen said that I could return whenever I wanted to and that she would speak to my mother about excusing me from work. Many months after I began attending lessons, Mrs. Allen asked Clarissa to spell the word “temperature.”