Page 27 of The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter
Master Carter’s first wife died in childbirth. After that, he’d forced himself on Mama, who’d had Silas and then, two years later, me. In time, though, he’d needed a legitimate heir, so he’d married Miss Mariah Wilcox, a widow, when I was five. I remember seeing them for the first time when the wagon slowed as it crept toward the Big House. Missus Mariah had a daughter named Mary, aged seven, and a son, Wilbur, aged twelve. Their father had died from pleurisy two years prior.
I’d peeped through the window into the sitting room, too curious for my own good about the new mistress of the house. I watched her sip from the nice china. Beautiful like one of the women in the books that Master Carter would read. Her brassy yellow hair was swept up and pinned with a black hat as she ushered the boy and girl from the carriage. Her smile had dropped the instant she saw me, her mouth turning to a thin, flat line. I never saw that smile again in my direction. My resemblance to Master Carter and his slight favor of us earned me sharp smacks or painful pinches as we passed in the narrow hallway—always a reminder of my place. But she hated Silas the most because, with his reddish hair and hazel eyes, he looked most like Master Carter.Missus Mariah wanted her son Wilbur at his side instead, and she finally had what she wanted in 1778, when Master Carter died.
His will was ignored, and instead of freedom, the little favor granted to us was stripped away. Missus Mariah sold Silas, leaving me alone to fend for myself. Wilbur had watched me over the years—the threat of my father the only thing keeping him back. Now gone, he’d caught me a few times, hurried, pushing my skirt up, leaving me bruised, with split lips. Thankfully, I never became pregnant. Bearing his child would have been a fate worse than death. Wilbur married a neighbor’s daughter, Miss Jessica Monroe, and took over the plantation. The abuse lasted for a year before Wilbur was called to war. There’d been no tears from me when he became cannon fodder at the Siege of Savannah.
Jacques’s touch didn’t erase the horror, but it did dim it. He showed me sex didn’t have to be violent. It could be pleasant. Functional. Warm. I’d slowly gotten used to his touch. Which was good, for it was almost my only responsibility.
Once I’d moved in, I’d given up working with Eulalie, only seeing her to attend social events and parties as we mingled with other free Creoles in the city, folding into a veritable spectrum of brown folk striving to set themselves apart and assert some control in the growing city. I looked forward to those days, a break from trying my hand at being mistress of the house.
The freedom had been glorious at first. I no longer had to wake up by the tolling of the bell. Jacques dressed, and we ate in the dining room daily. In the afternoons, he had meetings, and on the days he didn’t, he shut himself up in his study to work. We kept our habit of walking on Sundays, but I spent most of the days alone, left to my own devices.
I would eat Sarah’s breakfast and spend the hours as I pleased, usually reading or writing. Like all his collections, his library was extensive, with more books than I’d ever seen. I read the poems of Phillis Wheatley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and perused Benjamin Banneker’s 1794 and 1795 almanacs. Eulalie pressed into my hands acopy of the scandalous novelJustineand advised me to save it for when Jacques was not at home.
I spent many days using the thick creamy paper from Jacques’s study to record the day and the events and even cataloging Jacques’s collections, still searching for the beautiful and good; I submitted letters in French to the editor ofLe Moniteur de la Louisianeunder a male pen name. I thought Death would’ve come around by now, but he’d left me to my own agenda.
As did Jacques. He made occasional trips back to the plantation to tend to his duties there. Before he left he would grasp my hands, hold them to his chest, and assure me of his devotion. I had no doubt of it.
Still, week by week, my world shrank, limited to the house’s four walls. Despite my inquiries, I’d heard no news on Silas, and my letters to Missus Mariah’s cousin, the family I was told Silas had been sent to, had gone unanswered. Still, I continued to search for him, paying for investigators and combing the newspaper for information, but I found nothing new.
I had seemingly endless time.
So, I wrote, continuing to fill my notebooks as I called up memories and recorded them. I chronicled hog butchery in the fall, watched Milly the cockatiel as she flapped and climbed in her cage, and wrote of my experience having a new wardrobe made for me, the details of my life pouring across the page. Sometimes it wasn’t even my current life, but memories of the places I’d been and the things I’d seen there—the croak of frogs on the bayou, the beat of African drums on a Sunday afternoon.
Whenever Jacques returned, we would retreat immediately to our chamber, no matter the time of day. He was always at least cursorily interested in my pleasure, but almost as soon as he’d enter me, with three to four rough strokes, he would shudder, his face contorted, before he collapsed, sweat coating his brow. He’d kiss my shoulder and roll over, his soft snores echoing to the high ceiling soon after.
This left me tossing and turning until the early hours of the morning, wrestling with insomnia, searching for a feeling I could notyet put to words. I would stare at his sleeping face, the hollowness inside me growing bigger and bigger by the day.
It was during one of his trips away, long after bedtime, that I sat in Jacques’s study, fresh paper before me, ready for another letter to Missus Mariah’s cousin about Silas.
The crash of breaking glass lured me from my writing. I tiptoed toward the sitting room and heard something rustling inside. Had Jacques returned? I turned the knob and peered in, and a great whoosh sounded in my ears. There was a blur of white as something raked against my face.
I screamed and slammed the door. My heart beat like thunder. It was a moment or two before I heard—
“Miss Noelle?” William’s deep voice came from under the door to the kitchen.
“William,” I gasped, pointing. “There’s something in there!”
He entered the hall, his eyes blinking away sleep. He looked at me, then dropped his gaze to the floor. “May I see to it?” he asked.
I nodded and stepped out of his way. He put his hand on the knob. Without thinking, I touched his arm. It was like rock, strengthened by his work at the forge. “Be careful.”
He nodded and went inside. The rustling sound came again, and William called out in surprise. Then, after a moment, a different sound slipped beneath the door: a soft familiar song loosening memories I’d long buried. I waited there, puzzled, listening to the baritone of his voice, the melody filling the lonely parts of me and reminding me of when Mama would wash and comb my hair.
Curiosity rose, and I peeked my head inside, finding William serenading a petulant cockatiel, luring her down from a perch on a curtain rod high above.
“Milly?” I laughed. “Naughty bird! How did you get out?”
William smiled, and it was as warm as the sun. “I think after Sarah cleaned the cage, she made a run for it.”
“I don’t blame her in the slightest.” I whistled to see if she’d come to me, but the bird continued to stare at the both of us with glassy eyes.
Finally, William warbled in a way that mimicked Milly’s calls, and she flitted down to his outstretched finger. He grasped her gently around her wings and brought her to me.
“Determined little girl,” I said as I stroked Milly’s beak.
Willliam rubbed her chest with his calloused thumb. “Just following her heart, I suppose.”
I held the cage door open, and William deposited her inside.
