I didn’t even know his name until the hasty ceremony that next morning. He wanted to brand himself as a respectable man, but the veil of deceit was as wan as the veil he slapped on my head in front of the justice.
His eyes dripped with lust and I knew all the self restraint he’d been willing to employ had been spent just in the few hours from when he took me from my mother’s arms to the ceremony.
I’d had no idea who he was, but had figured that if he’d paid off my pa’s debts that he must be financially stable and at least I’d live in comfort, treated as a lady by my household. It took only a look at this very cabin to realize that my fate was to be much different.
At 39, Mr. Worthe had very little in assets and lived month to month on smuggling runs. He was slovenly and partook too frequently in drink, his nose webbed with red veins and his gut paunchy and doughy. Unfortunately, drink did not quell his libido and every night that he was home I endured his sweaty, ham-handed fumblings as he rocked on top of me, sometimes making me wonder if I would be unable to breathe and just as often musing if it would be a blessing to suffocate.
We had only one part-time servant who came for hours a day only to school me in housekeeping, a thing I’d never dreamed that I’d need to grasp. Malvina was wizened beyond her years, with crepe skin that wrinkled so that her expressions were enigmatic as she watched me closely.
As I gingerly attempted to use the washboard she’d snatch the garment from my hands and grunt at me to observe as her wiry hands harshly scrubbed and wrung, the callouses on her hands resistant to the scalding water.
Despite her taciturn nature, I came to enjoy her company. She did not stare at me with lascivious eyes, and in her quiet companionship I felt an ally. She bore the hardened face of a woman who had been abused in her flowering years, and when she was present I felt her kinship and it lightened my soul.
I lived for the weeks when Mr. Worthe would travel to Boston or North Carolina to meet shipments and sell goods. On those occasions Malvina would stay with me, teaching me the basics of cooking. Her hands were gentle as she showed me how to form hoecakes and fry them in lard, and how to pluck chickens and butcher scrawny rabbits caught in her meticulously made snares. Before long, my hands were rough and calloused as well, as I kneaded dough and tended the garden, day in and day out.
It was my second summer there when my stomach turned sour and my monthly menses stopped. Malvina eased my nausea with herbs and shepherded me through my pregnancy, and when my daughter was born I called her Iris, for she was like the flower that can grow even in poor conditions. Something beautiful, no matter where they may sprout.
It was many years before I realized that Malvina was a pariah in town, both distrusted for her herbology and also highly sought for it. Quietly, men and women came to seek her council all the while turning their noses up at her in town. We lived far from the podunk streets of Bishop, so I was not privy to the politics, but once I learned of her social standing I felt blessed for that.
I avoided town as the few times I’d accompanied Mr. Worthe I was scorned by the eyes of women and ogled hungrily by the men. I’d elected to make do with supplies that Mr. Worthe brought home and whatever I could grow or snare under Malvina's careful tutelage rather than frequent town.
As Mr. Worthe took longer and longer leaves from our cottage, Iris and I began spending our days at Malvina’s shack. It was a shoddy marvel, with cupboards filled with jars of flora and fauna, dried and labeled in a chicken scratch I could never hope to decipher. She’d busily scoot around, opening jars and measuring carefully as scents filled the room, potently sweet or herbaceous and foul. Her brain was her only reference book as she mixed tinctures and handed them out with careful recommendations to the shifty-eyed Bishop folk that turned up on her doorstep for various maladies.
I began to watch and learn, knowing that she welcomed it as she began to slow down slightly so that I might retain what I was seeing. As time passed, people became inured to seeing me there, observing all their hushed and desperate requests. They accepted me as her unconditional apprentice because Malvina saw to it that they understood I would be part of all dealings.
It was around that time when Malvina told me she believed I had the gift. A touch of magic, she’d said. She’d seen it in me the very day we met, an ability to divine and influence, though it hadn’t been nurtured. It had been starved by men like my father and Mr. Worthe. Men who thought that women were just means to different ends, with no right to thoughts and desires of their own.
Mr. Worthe began to be home more often, and his demands on my body never slowed. Soon I found myself with child again, and I became dismayed. In his times home, Mr.Worthe had become more drunk and aggressive and had begun to take out his alcoholic rants on Iris and I. One morning Malvina arrived to see my eye swollen and blackened and shook her head, eyes alight with disapproval.
As she applied a fragrant poultice of rosemary and white willow to the aggravated proof of his rage, Malvina stared deep into my eyes. “Ye needn’t
