Page 84 of The Unforgiven
Mammy’s answer had always been the same: “Any place is better than here.” But today her reply was different. “Go North, Madeline. You’ll be safer there. Freer.”
“Why do you think that?” Madeline asked, surprised by this new viewpoint.
“I seen some of them Northern ladies when they comes to visit. They’s different, Maddy. They’s learned, admired. They not like Southern ladies, dressed up to look like upside-down flowers and expected to do nothing but look pretty for their menfolk. They have choices up North.”
“Choices to do what?”
“To be more.”
Madeline pondered this new idea. To be more. The thought appealed to her. She’d never longed to be more, but perhaps she’d never realized such a thing was possible. The extent of her ambitions had been to marry well and have children. She would still like to marry someday, but maybe she could continue her education, or get involved with a cause. She’d heard of the abolitionist movement, of course, but in the South it was as good as saying you’d decided to worship the Devil. Madeline had agreed with that in the past, but she knew better now. She was no longerwho she’d thought she was, and the world looked somewhat less black and white. They said a war was coming between the North and the South, and she didn’t want to be on the South side when it began. She had no wish to see men dying by the thousands, fighting for the right to oppress others and play God with their lives. She wanted to be on the side of justice, on the side of good.
Madeline looked at Mammy. “I will. I will go North. Thank you, Mammy, for putting up with me these past few months. I know it hasn’t been easy.” It was the closest Madeline would come to offering an apology, but Mammy seemed satisfied with the effort.
“I failed you, Maddy.”
“You didn’t,” Madeline protested.
“I did. I should’a been honest with you. I should’a warned you. I knew what Besson men were like, and I kept silent, thinking George wouldn’t come after you. Don’t think there’s no Besson bastards in them huts. My Corinne wasn’t the only one, but she be the only one that came out white.”
“I was horrible to you,” Madeline said. “There’s no excuse for that.”
“Think no more on it, child. You’s my flesh and blood, and listening to your ramblings is the least I can do. You’ve a right to be angry, and you’ve a right to be hurt. Just don’t let your anger rule your heart. Let it go, Maddy. Be free.”
“That might take some time,” Madeline replied.
“You’s got time. You’s young.”
“I don’t feel young,” Madeline said sadly.
Mammy just nodded. She understood.
FORTY-THREE
JUNE 1859
Louisiana Bayou
The oil lamp glowed brightly, casting a pool of golden light that didn’t extend to the corners. The night outside was dark and filled with sounds of the bayou. Madeline usually found them sinister as she lay in her bed at night, trying to get to sleep, but tonight the chorus of cicadas or the loud splash of a gator sliding into the water didn’t trouble her. She was filling the bayou with a new kind of sound, the hoarse screams of a woman in prolonged labor. Her shift was soaked through with sweat and her damp hair felt hot on her neck. Mammy’s round face glistened with perspiration, and she’d undressed down to her undergarments, unable to bear the suffocating humidity of the bayou in the summer.
“I’m scared, Mammy,” Madeline wailed as another contraction tore through her exhausted body. She’d been in labor for two solid days but was no closer to bringing the child into the world. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“I know, child,” Mammy said in her best soothing voice. “No woman wants to do it, but there ain’t no going back now.”
Tears rolled down Madeline’s cheeks. She’d never been so scared in her life. Her body seemed to have turned on her, the pain of the contractions so visceral that it obliterated every thought from her mind, but how could she make it stop? Mammy had said the baby hadn’t descended into the birth canal yet, but it felt like a huge boulder had lodged between her hip bones and was pushing them apart with merciless persistence.
“My bones will break,” Madeline cried. “I can feel them cracking.”
“I’ve seen many a woman give birth, and no one suffered broken bones,” Mammy replied.
“I’ll be the first.”
“You remember this pain before you lie with a man again.”
“I want to die!” Madeline screamed as a new contraction rolled over her. “Just let me die.”
“Ain’t no one’s going to die,” Mammy said firmly. “Not today. Now, stop carrying on like a little girl. You’re a woman now, like it or not, and you’s got to get this baby out before it dies in your womb. Time to push.”
“Push what?”
