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He shut off the water and stood, but his legs still felt disconnected from his brain, and he fell to his hands and knees. There he remained for far too long, gasping for breath and longing—for the first time since Victor—for the false security of his mother’s arms.
But she’s not here, and better for it. She shouldn’t have to see you like this.
He grabbed the edge of the vanity and dragged himself to his feet. It seemed that Jane had collected his old clothes and left a clean cotton T-shirt and track pants in their place. He had to sit on the toilet to pull them on, but he was slowly regaining muscle control. The shower had helped.
His side cramped as he bent to put his sock on. He clutched at himself, hunched and panting until it passed, then finished dressing and headed back to the living room. He walked with one shoulder pressed to the wall, using it as a crutch until the hallway ended, then managed the last several feet on his own before collapsing onto the couch.
Jane appeared with a brownie and a mug of hot tea. “Eat; you need the energy.” She smiled that same sad, soft smile. “And the tea will help your throat.”
“Thanks.” Daniel said, voice stripped to a scratchy whisper. He sipped at the tea, nibbled desultorily at his brownie.
Jane watched him for a moment, then sat down on the coffee table and turned her attention to her hands, clutched together in her lap. “I have two sons I’ve never met,” she said.
Daniel’s head jerked up, seeking her eyes. Her gaze was sad but steady; this was an old pain, long endured.
“My first master owned a culinary school in Georgia. I was born and raised on the campus. It was big; I barely even knew him. He didn’t let his slaves teach officially, but I was handy in the kitchen, and the instructors liked me around. I was happy there.”
She went silent for a long moment, but Daniel sensed this was not the time for him to speak. He broke off a piece of brownie and chewed it slowly, leaving no room in his mouth for questions.
“Master’s wife was barren,” Jane said. “They were both pushing forty. Wanted babies before they got too old, needed a mama who’d bear ones that’d pass. I was sixteen, one of only two white girls the school owned. Mistress picked me.”
Another long silence, this one heavier than the last. Even in his addled state, it didn’t escape Daniel what Jane was trusting him with. In most of the Western world, at least, children of a slave and a freeman were legally slaves, morally slaves. Also genetically slaves—or so prevailing scientific theory believed. If he told the wrong person, those kids’ lives would be changed forever.
Jane reached for Daniel’s plate and broke off a piece of brownie for herself. He offered her his tea to chase it down with, and she accepted with a nod. “Deal was he’d have me as much as he could handle during my most fertile week each month. But he wasn’t never happy with just a week; his wife was over twice my age, and he couldn’t do any old thing he pleased with her like he could with me. He wasn’t a gentle man.”
Brownie break number two. Daniel wasn’t hungry anyway; he handed her his plate.
“I had a son when I was seventeen, another when I was nineteen. Never even laid eyes on ’em. Wet nurse came and cut the cord and took ’em away.”
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, even though he’d meant to stay quiet, let her finish.
Jane shook her head. “I’m not. They don’t know their mama’s a slave. They’ll never know what it’s like to be a slave, if they live right. If they can live right, what with who their mama is.” Her lips pinched together, and she dropped her gaze to her hands like maybe she was wondering what crimes and cruelties they were capable of, soulless as she was, as they were. “What more could a mother want?”
To see her children, Daniel thought. He had an older sister he could barely remember, sold away when he was three and she was seven. On the rare occasions his mother had spoken of her lost child, he’d felt her sorrow like a sickness, a wound never healed.
“Worked out good for me too, in the end. Mistress found the master stealing away with me long after the baby-making was done. Sold me off to one of my old students, who set me to cooking for his restaurant in the East Village. He was a good man, and I met my Dave there. And then Master Whitman got sick of paying to eat my cooking and bought us up.”
She smiled again, patted Daniel on the knee, and pushed his plate back into his hands. “Finish your brownie, darling,” she said, then stood to walk away.
“Jane?”
She stopped, looked back, kind and patient as ever. He wondered how she possibly could have known, though clearly she did. He wondered why he didn’t mind that.
“You’re probably wondering why I told you all that, eh?”
He was, but he thought it rude to say so, so he just shrugged.
“Because it gets easier. You get past it, and it gets easier. I wanted to make sure you knew that.”
“I . . .” There was so much Daniel wanted to tell her: that he was honored she’d trusted him with her story, touched she’d relived her own pain to help him ease his own, grateful she’d understood his need more clearly than he’d understood it himself. But in the end, he simply said, “Thank you.”
When she smiled at him, he knew that was enough.
“Get some rest, darling. You want to use our bed?”
The thought of that soft mattress and those smooth sheets was wonderfully appealing, but the thought of dragging his sorry ass the thirty-odd feet necessary to enjoy them was most definitely not. In the end, it wasn’t worth it; the couch was comfortable enough. “No thanks,” he said, sensing that Jane understood his reasoning.
He curled up on the couch, and Jane brought him a blanket. A vicious cramp seized his thigh as she covered him, and she gently peeled his hands away and massaged the muscle with a strength he’d never have guessed she possessed.
