Chapter 20In Which I Meet a Questionable Man of God and a Kind Madam
Summerland’s church is bigger than I expect. I’ve only seen a handful of folks walking around the town, but the church is easily the size of the First Baptist, the second largest church in Baltimore. While the rest of the town looks ragged and tired, the lone house of worship is fresh and clean: the building’s walls are crisp with whitewash and a real stained glass window is set high in the front of the building. The only similarity between the rest of the town and the church is the small windows covered with iron bars, but the shambler proofing is barely noticeable on such an impressive building.
We walk up the path in silence, and before we can reach for the door it swings open. The whitest white man I ever saw beckons us, his blue-veined hands shaky, his false teeth overly large in his mouth. “Miss Deveraux. Please, join me inside. The sun is frightful fierce today.”
Katherine gives the man a beatific smile. “Sir, your kindness is greatly appreciated. Oh, I fear what this sun is going to do to my complexion. I can already feel a powerful flush coming upon me.”
She sweeps inside the church and the cool darkness beyond the threshold. I make to follow her but the old man stops me with a hard look. “I’m sorry, but it’s our way here that those bearing the Curse of Ham don’t enter the church.”
I scowl. “The Curse of Ham?” I ain’t ever heard of such a thing, and I have a feeling it’s got nothing to do with supper.
Katherine sighs softly from behind the old man. “It’s a euphemism for the curse Noah put upon Canaan, Ham’s son. It’s the reason the Negro was enslaved,” she says. There’s a tightness in her voice that reveals she doesn’t agree with this particular line of thinking, but the old white man doesn’t notice. He nods in agreement with Katherine’s explanation.
“In these days of His castigation upon the earth, we must reaffirm the hierarchy of His creation and His will. Your soul will be cleansed in Heaven; in the meantime, your kind are made to serve His image through toil and labor, girl.”
“What part of the Scripture is that from?” I mutter. The old man either doesn’t hear me or chooses to ignore me.
“Your mistress won’t have use of you any longer. Here in Summerland we take care of our blossoms the way the Lord has always intended. We have no need for Attendant companions to live alongside our fair blossoms, no matter what Mayor Carr has instituted in those heathen cities of the east. Here, we have worked to reestablish the Lord’s natural order, and peace and safety has been our reward. You’ll serve the patrols. Take yourself to the house of soiled doves. The Duchess will take care of you.”
With a vacant smile, he closes the door in my face.
I stand there for a few moments, sweating, arms piled high with boots and clothing. I consider kicking in the door, but then what? I don’t know how anything works around here, and I have nowhere to go.
So I turn around and go back the way I came, toward the house of ill repute.
When I reach the end of the boardwalk, I keep walking past the saloon and back toward the rail yard where we entered town. For a moment I think that maybe I could just keep walking, out toward the mystery of the wall, past that to the open prairie, continue moving until I’ve left this whole mess behind. Running away has never been my style, but it doesn’t seem so bad, now.
The road past the rail yard is lined with poles, and beyond it are houses, which I can get a better look at now. Beautiful houses, whitewashed and large, the kind of house where you could raise a nice family. Screams filter up the road from the houses, and I tense until I see a pack of kids come running around the side of one of them, playing some game of chase and laughing in between their proclamations of mock terror.
The sight stops me in my tracks. When was the last time I saw kids running and playing, not a care in the world? Even back on Rose Hill we tended to be cautious in our play, the memory of Zeke casting a long shadow for years to follow.
If kids can run and play and scream in delight, then maybe Summerland ain’t all bad.
I turn back the way I came and head to the saloon.
As I walk, I think of what Miss Preston said, that Katherine came from a brothel, and wonder if that’s why she has such pretty manners. Even now, in the midst of a full-fledged crisis, Katherine has managed to retain her deportment. I grew up in the big house on Rose Hill, and even I didn’t have manners as pretty as Katherine’s when I got to Miss Preston’s. I figured she’d grown up someplace where appearances would be important, but not a cathouse.
Of course, everything I know about brothels I know about from books. I read a novel, The Captain’s Forbidden Woman, that was all about a poor girl named Annabel who ended up as a working girl after her father’s rival ruined her family; she was eventually rescued by a dashing ship’s captain. I think Jackson got it to scandalize me, since the red velvet cover was decidedly lurid, but it ended up being a very good story. Annabel spent many paragraphs relating the extravagant furnishings and decorum of the brothel. It all sounded very glamorous, although the idea of tossing up my skirts for pay struck me as being even more laborious than killing the dead. Especially if being a working girl meant a lot of swooning. Annabel
