She blinks once, slowly. “How come?”
“Because you know things I need to know. And I want you to know what I’ve learned about him.”
“What you talking about?”
“Grandpapa murdered Daddy, Pearlie.”
The orange eye of her cigarette glows bright. “You just think that? Or you can prove it?”
“I can prove it. What I want to know is, did you already know it?”
Pearlie exhales a long stream of smoke. “Not to prove, I didn’t. I didn’t see him do it, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Did you suspect it?”
“I had thoughts that night. Later on, too. But there wasn’t nothing I could do about it.”
I knew it. “You think Grandpapa’s invulnerable, Pearlie. But he’s not. I’m going to put him in jail. I’ve got evidence now. Remember Lena the Leopardess?”
A glint of memory passes behind her eyes. “The toy you buried with Mr. Luke?”
“That’s right. Grandpapa suggested I put her in the coffin with him. Do you know why he did that?”
“I know there was blood on her. I know Dr. Kirkland told me to throw that toy away. When I told him it was your favorite, he told me I could wash it off and sew the rip back together.”
“Do you know how Lena got torn?”
She shakes her head.
“Grandpapa stuffed her into Daddy’s mouth so he would suffocate before you got downstairs. He wasn’t dying quickly enough from the bullet.”
Pearlie winces. “Lord Jesus. Don’t tell me that.”
“That’s not the worst of it. You remember the story about Grandpapa cutting out Ann’s appendix by lantern light on the island? How he was the big hero for saving her life?”
“Sure I do. Him and Ivy both.”
“Well, he took out her appendix, all right. But he did a little something extra, too. He cut her fallopian tubes, so she couldn’t get pregnant.”
Pearlie bows her head and begins to pray softly.
“Why did you go to the island yesterday, Pearlie? You hate that place.”
“Don’t want to talk about that.”
“You’ve got to start talking. You’ve been silent too long.”
She sips whiskey from her coffee cup, then lights another cigarette and takes a deep drag. “I quit cigarettes twenty-three years ago,” she says, smoke floating out of her mouth with each word. “I’ve missed ’em every day, like a pain that won’t quit. But when I heard Miss Ann was dead, I had to have me one. I ain’t stopped since.”
I say nothing.
“I come to work here in 1948,” she says, almost to herself. “I was seventeen. Miss Ann was born that year, but they was living in New Orleans then. Dr. Kirkland was still training to be a doctor. He and Mrs. Catherine didn’t move to Natchez until 1956, and they didn’t take over this place until sixty-four, when Mr. DeSalle died.”
She looks at me as though making sure I understand. “That’s why I missed it, you see? Miss Ann was sixteen when they moved in here. The damage was already done. But things still wasn’t right. Not really. Any boy that come to call on Ann, Dr. Kirkland frightened away. Even the nice ones. Lots of daddies will do that a little, but Dr. Kirkland never gave an inch. He was jealous of that girl. Mrs. Catherine saw it, too, but she couldn’t do nothing to change it.”
“If they’d been living in Natchez since 1956,” I reason, “surely you saw some other signs before they moved to Malmaison?”
The old woman chews her bottom lip. “I been thinking about that for two days now. There was times when they left the girls here, going on long trips and such. Sometimes Dr. Kirkland would leave me medicine for Ann. She didn’t seem sick, ’cept she had to go to the bathroom too much, and it stung when she went. I’d give her the medicine, and she’d get all right. But looking back, she had too many of them problems. No other doctor ever saw it, though, you see? Her daddy was her doctor.”
Pearlie lays her hand over mine, the skin papery over sinew and bone. “I know, baby. I knew something was wrong when Ann was just a toddler. I just didn’t know
“Or maybe they could,” I say. “Maybe they sensed it, and that’s what drew them.”
“Maybe so,” Pearlie murmurs, nodding sadly.
“What about Mom?”
She takes another sip of whiskey and grimaces as she swallows. “Gwen was twelve when they moved in here. She didn’t have the same problems Ann did. She could smile and laugh, and she seemed like a normal child. But she married young as she could to get away from this house. But then she didn’t get away after all. The war brought her back. And the older she got, the more problems she had. Looking back, I think Dr. Kirkland got to her, too. The damage got done when she was just a baby, same as with Ann. Just not as bad.”
“I think Ann tried to protect her.”
Pearlie nods slowly. “Ann tried to be everything to everybody. To save everybody. But she couldn’t even save herself.”
“Did Grandmama Catherine ever suspect anything?”
“She never said nothing to me. But Mrs. Catherine sure knew when to disappear. And she let Dr. Kirkland spend a lot of time with those girls alone. I saw it when they stayed up here during Christmas, when the girls was little. If Dr. Kirkland was gonna be around the house during the day, Mrs. Catherine would find somewhere else to be. It gave me a bad feeling, but what could I say about it? Times was different back then. A maid like me couldn’t open her mouth about something like that. All I could do was be there for those girls when they got upset. Try to ease their pain a little bit.”
“Did you ever see anything yourself?”
She shakes her head. “Looking back, I think Dr. Kirkland made sure I didn’t.”
“How did he do that?”
“He’d walk this property all hours of the night, just like your daddy. I think that’s one reason he didn’t like Mr. Luke. He couldn’t prowl around without being seen anymore. The few times Dr. Kirkland caught me out after nine, he warned me to stay indoors. Said he might shoot me by accident, thinking I was a burglar. So I stayed right in this house unless I got called out by him or Mrs. Catherine.”
In hindsight, it all seems so obvious. What’s missing is the historical context. The idea that Dr. William Kirkland, respected surgeon and paragon of virtue, could be tiptoeing around his antebellum mansion molesting his daughters was virtually unthinkable forty years ago.
“What about the island?” I ask.
Pearlie shifts uncomfortably in her chair. “What about it?”
“Do you think he bothered any children there?”
“If he did, nobody would tell me about it.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause I left there and never went back. I turned into a house nigger. They think I’m Dr. Kirkland’s slave, bought and paid for.”
“Why didn’t you ever go back?”
She looks at me with something like scorn. “Why you think? There was a man there I had to stay away from.”
“Who?”
“My uncle.”
“Why did you have to stay away from him?”
She snorts. “Why you think, girl? Same kind of trouble as this.”
“Sexual abuse?”
“They don’t call it that on the island. They call it getting ‘broke in.’ The men do, leastways, and some of the
