Cloud of Sparrows (17 page)

Emily marveled at the quiet conversational way in which Zephaniah said these wild words. His normal manner, before the shooting, had been considerably more strident and hysterical. Then sweat burst full and sudden upon his brow; his bulging eyes bulged out yet more; veins in his neck and forehead filled up, in appearance near bursting; spittle flew from his lips, along with loud words and hot breath. Now he was at peace.

“Then let us pray that all repent,” she said, “for who among us has not cause for it?”

Lucas Gibson owned a farm in Apple Valley, fifteen miles north of Albany, New York. He met Charlotte Dupay, a distant cousin from New Orleans, at his grandfather’s funeral in Baltimore. Lucas, handsome, stolid, reliable beyond his years, was twenty-two at the time. Charlotte, who, like many Southern girls of her generation, read far too much Scott for her own good, was a feverishly romantic golden beauty of fourteen. Thinking she had met her Ivanhoe, she went as a virgin bride to one hundred fifty acres of apples, pigs, and chickens. Their first child, Emily, was born nine months and a day after the wedding. By then, Charlotte had already given up on her good Saxon knight and was beginning to dream, almost against her will, of the evil but wildly passionate Templar, de Bois-Guilbert.

When Emily herself was fourteen years old, her father was killed in an accident in the apple orchard. He had fallen from a ladder. This was rather curious, since he was famed for his balance among the pickers and had never fallen before, not once, in Emily’s memory. Also curious was the condition of his body. The back of his skull had been crushed with such force that the shattered bones were driven inward. While it was conceivable that a man could die in a fifteen-foot fall, it was hard to believe that his head would hit the ground so hard. Yet there it was. Her father was dead, her mother was widowed, she and her two younger brothers were half orphaned.

Before grass sprouted over her father’s grave, the farm foreman began spending his nights in her mother’s bedroom. The wedding itself didn’t take place until six months of mourning had passed. By then her mother’s belly was swollen with child. The beatings began soon after. The loud cries of passion that had punctuated the night became screams of pain and terror.

“No! Jed, please! Jed! Don’t! Don’t! I beg you!”

Emily and her brothers huddled together in her bed and wept. They never heard a sound from their stepfather, only their mother’s terrified voice. Sometimes, in the morning, her mother’s face would be bruised. At first, she tried to hide her injuries from her children, with powder, or a bandage, or a tale of a misstep in the darkness.

“I’m so clumsy,” she would say.

But it grew worse, and no powder, bandage, or story could conceal the truth. Her nose was broken, and broken again. Her lips were smashed and swollen. She lost her front teeth. There were days she couldn’t walk without a limp and days when she couldn’t rise from bed. The baby was delivered stillborn. In one agonizing year, her beautiful mother became a crippled old hag.

They were no longer invited to community gatherings. The neighbors stopped coming to call. The best pickers would not work for them. Their orchard, which had once produced the sweetest apples in the valley, began to die.

Then their stepfather started on them.

Her brothers were whipped with a thick leather razor strop until their buttocks bled. If their legs weakened and they couldn’t stand, he would tie them over an apple barrel, and whip them more. They were punished for not doing their chores, or doing them poorly, or not feeding the chickens, or feeding them too much, or leaving bad apples in a barrel of good ones, ruining them all. It was hard to say what the punishments were for. Their stepfather never said.

Emily alone remained untouched. When she treated her brothers’ injuries, they asked her why. Why were they beaten? Why was she not? She didn’t know. Fear and guilt tore at her heart with equal ferocity.

On the eve of her fifteenth birthday, Emily was alone in the children’s bedroom. Her brothers had been locked in the cellar for a week, sentenced there for an unknown infraction. She had heard them crying until two days ago. Her mother was abed, delirious from an infection of an old, unhealed wound. Emily had just changed into her nightgown when she saw her stepfather standing in the doorway. How long had he been there? Long enough to have seen her unclothed? More and more often, she found him behind her when he should not have been. His eyes were bright and staring, as if inflamed with fever.

“Good night,” she said, and climbed into bed. He had asked her to call him by his given name, Jed. Though it was dangerous to disobey him in any way, she couldn’t bring herself to say his name. She closed her eyes, praying silently that he would leave, as he had always done so far.

This time, he did not.

When it was over, he clutched her hard and wept. Why did he weep? She didn’t know. She hurt in a strange way. But she didn’t cry. She couldn’t. She didn’t know why.

She must have fallen asleep, because she awoke to flickering candlelight and her mother’s grotesquely deformed face.

“Emily, Emily, my dearest Emily.” Her mother was crying.

Emily looked down at herself and saw that she was lying in blood. Was she killed? Somehow, that prospect did not frighten her. It would be a deliverance.

Her mother cleaned her with a warm towel and clothed her in her Sunday best. She had not worn the dress in a long time. They no longer went to church. It was too tight now around her hips and bosom, but she was glad to wear it. Her father had always said it was her prettiest dress.

“Go to the Partons’ farm,” her mother said. “Give Mrs. Parton this letter.”

Emily begged her mother to come with her, to rescue her brothers from the cellar, to flee together and never return.

“Tom and Walt,” her mother said, shaking her head. “I must pay for my sins. God forgive me, I never meant harm to befall the innocent. It was love. I was blinded by love.”

Her mother wrapped Emily in her own best coat and sent her on her way. It was very late. The moon had set. Only the bright spring starlight lit her way.

When she reached the Partons’ farm, the sky behind her was brightening. She wondered why dawn was breaking in the west, and turned. Plumes of flame consumed her home and rose high into the air.

The Partons took her in. They were a kindly old couple who had grown up with her grandfather. They had known her father from the day he was born until the day he died. She never asked about her mother’s letter, and they never spoke of it to her. But not long after, she overheard their conversation.

“I always knew it was no accident,” Mr. Parton said. “That boy could climb as sure as an African ape before he could walk.”

“She was too passionate,” Mrs. Parton said. “She had too much emotion in her.”

“And she was too beautiful, too. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so should it be. When a woman’s beauty is so obvious that everyone can see it, it is not a good thing. Men are weak, easily tempted.”

“That is a danger we have adopted,” Mrs. Parton said. “The daughter is like the mother. Have you seen the way the men look at her? Even our own good sons?”

“And who is to blame?” Mr. Parton said. “She is but a child, yet has the face and form of a Babylonian harlot.”

“The curse runs through the female line,” Mrs. Parton said. “What are we to do?”

One night, a dream of fiery death awakened her. She saw shadows looming in the darkness, and thought the vengeful demons had followed her from her sleep. When they crept closer to her bed, she recognized the Partons’ three sons, Bob, Mark, and Alan.

They moved swiftly then, before she could rise or speak. Hands were everywhere. Holding her down, covering her mouth, tearing at her clothes, touching her.

“It’s not our fault,” Bob said. “It’s you.”

“You’re too beautiful,” Mark said.

“This is nothing you haven’t done before,” Alan said. “You have no virtue to lose.”

“Put the gag in her mouth,” Bob said.

“Tie her,” Mark said.

“If you’re quiet, we won’t hurt you,” Alan said.

It was her fault. It was all her fault. Her father’s death, her mother’s destruction, her brothers’ innocent suffering. She stopped struggling.

They sat her up and lifted off her nightgown.

They pushed her down and pulled away her underpants.

“Harlot,” Bob said.

“I love you,” Mark said.

“Don’t make a sound,” Alan said.

The door burst open and the room filled with light. Mrs. Parton’s staring eyes burned more brightly than the lantern she held.

“It’s not our fault,” Bob said.

“Get out,” Mrs. Parton hissed.

The three slouching boys gave her a wide berth as they went from the room.

When they were gone, Mrs. Parton stepped up to the bed. She drew her hand back and slapped Emily so hard her ears rang and her vision went white. The old woman spun on her heels and left without a word.

Mr. Parton returned from a trip to Albany the next day. The following week, Emily was sent to a parochial school in Rochester with the proceeds from the sale of her family’s farm. No one came to visit her. On holidays, she alone among the girls remained at the school. She rarely left the campus. On excursions, she did her best to remain hidden within the group. Still, she was unable to escape the gaze of men. She saw them looking at her with those eyes. Her stepfather’s eyes. The Parton boys’ eyes. The eyes of men seizing her.

Once, during a school visit to the museum, a young man came up to her. He was very polite. He bowed and said, “May I say, miss, you are more beautiful than any treasure in these collections.” He seemed surprised when she fled. She knew what it was. He wasn’t to blame. None of them were. The fault was hers. There was something in her appearance that eroded men’s restraint.

Was it really beauty, as they always seemed to say? Mary Ellen was more beautiful than she. All the girls agreed. Men thought she was beautiful, too, and paid her much attention. Except when Emily was present. Then they looked only at her.

Mary Ellen didn’t like Emily. None of the girls did. If not for the headmaster, Mr. Cromwell, her life at the school would have been utter misery. He protected her with the power of his intimidating personality and the words of the prophets.

“Let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart,” he would say, his fearsome eyes bulging.

“Amen,” the girls would answer.

“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock.”

“Amen.”

“Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself.”

“Amen.”

“Mary Ellen.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“I said ‘amen,’ sir.”

“I heard you in my ear, not in my heart. Speak it with your very soul, girl. The word said truly is your salvation! Mouthed like a hollow thing, it is your eternal damnation!” His voice would grow louder and louder, the veins would rise in his forehead and neck, and his arms would wave like the wings of an avenging angel. “Mary Ellen, say ‘amen’!”

“Amen, sir! Amen!”

“Did not He that made me in the womb make him?!”

“Amen!” the girls would reply, their voices, too, more frantic.

“Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?!”

“Amen!”

“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

“Amen!”

Mr. Cromwell never stood too close to her. He never tried to touch her. He never told her she was beautiful. He never looked at her the way other men did. His eyes would bulge and his veins would pop up, the same way they did whenever he was thinking of the words of the prophets. He was the one man she trusted, because he was the one man who did not desire her.

That day in the museum, it was Mr. Cromwell who came looking for her after she ran from the handsome stranger’s compliment. He found her huddled in a corner among a display of artifacts from some faraway Asian land.

“Get up, child, get up.”

He didn’t try to force her to her feet. When she failed to rise right away, he turned his attention to the exhibit.

“Japan,” he said. “A heathen land of murderers, idolaters, sodomites.” The tone of his voice surprised her. Though his words were harsh, he spoke them with affection rather than condemnation. “They are ripe for conversion, Emily, ready to hear the True Word, I know they are. I will publish the name of the Lord; ascribe ye greatness unto our God.” He looked down at her, waiting.

“Amen,” she said.

“Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off.”

“Amen.”

“These are the isles afar off of which the Old Testament speaks. The isles of Japan. There are none more distant than these.”

Emily stood and came timidly to his side. On the wall was a map, not of the land, but of the great Pacific Ocean. There, far to the left, at the very edge of the waters, were four larger islands and many smaller ones. The letters of the word “Japan” stretched along their eastern shores.