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Chapter 27: Fresh air
Mistress Celia examined the kitchen area where Mariah had spent the afternoon cooking. She looked at the bottoms of pots and pans, and took a toothbrush to the seam of the sink. Finding no fault, she said to Mariah, "You are dismissed."
"Thank you, Mistress," said Mariah, focusing on not rushing away in her eagerness. She had made plans to be with Emerson that night. It would be her first time going back to someone she had been with before. Knowing him a little, she grew warm thinking about what it would be like to explore him more deeply.
Mariah was among the last to be dismissed that night. She went to join the slaves congregating on the other side of the center, eating gruel, sipping warm water, before they would split off into pairs or groups of three or four.
Emerson was sitting on a wooden bench against the wall, in the thick of the crowd. He smiled at her. As she was making her way toward him, she saw suddenly that Taejon was sitting next to him, and hesitated.
But Taejon grinned at her. "You better go, Emerson," he teased, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Here comes Mariah, and you know she can't wait to try out some new position on you."
"Or I could be like you," Mariah said tartly and just as loudly, "always looking for new people so they'll never figure out you only know one position."
Her heart hammered and her face turned red when she realized what she had said, but around her the room exploded in laughter, including Taejon's. "She busted you!" someone called out, chortling.
Mariah sat on the other side of Emerson, their thighs and arms touching. She didn't much listen to the mock insults and laughter flying back and forth. She felt odd, jumpy and calm at the same time. With a start, she realized the feeling was happiness. For the first time since long before she left the farm, she belonged.
***
At last the waiting room was empty. Gabriel gave Mariah one of the two egg sandwiches that Rose had packed. Since Mariah refused to look at him, she did not see his tentative smile as he handed it to her.
Gabriel did not try to speak with her while they ate, and made no comment when she threw most of her sandwich into the trash which he had just emptied. After he swept up and washed his hands for the last time, he said, "I've a visit to make, and I'd appreciate your company."
Mariah said nothing but followed him out the door he held open for her. He led her through a series of corridors, until at last he stopped at an inner courtyard suite and knocked.
A mistress came to the door. Mariah refused to register her surprise that a human would open her own door. She was an older woman, her hair salt and pepper, her shoulders slouched.
"How are you, Anne?" Gabriel asked quietly.
She sighed. "He's tired today," she said.
Gabriel nodded. "He'll have good days and bad," he said. Mistress Anne took no notice of Mariah as she followed Gabriel into the living area. On the couch a slave lay listlessly. He tried to rise up when Gabriel sat on a footstool beside the couch, but Gabriel put a firm hand on his shoulder and he lay back down. Mariah could see that he did not move easily.
"How do you feel today, Lenny?" Gabriel asked him.
Lenny responded, "Fine, my lord. I think I'm getting better."
Gabriel looked at Mariah, then, and she heard his voice in her head as if he had spoken aloud, "There's nothing I can do."
Taking Lenny's wrist, Gabriel checked his pulse, talking with him at the same time, softly, reassuringly. Mariah didn't listen to what they said. For some reason she felt clumsy in front of the ill slave, as if she did not know what to do with her own arms. Mistress Anne seemed to be in the same state of mind, aimlessly picking up and putting down knickknacks on a nearby shelf.
Gabriel continued to examine Lenny until the slave's eyes fluttered closed. Still Gabriel stayed with him, breathing with him. Only when Lenny was deeply asleep did Gabriel stand up, slowly, his breathing almost unchanged. Gently he put his hand under Anne's elbow and steered her to the kitchen. Mariah followed. Gabriel was shaking his head. Mistress Anne's eyes filled with tears, and Gabriel's did too. To her dismay, so did Mariah's.
"I don't know how much longer I can keep him," Mistress Anne said as she poured iced tea for herself and Gabriel, spilling a little.
"What do you mean?" Gabriel said. He had reached out for the glass but pulled back abruptly.
Anne turned partially away, and shrugged. "I'm already a laughingstock," she said. "My friends tell me I'm crazy to live like this, to cater to him when he . . ." She broke off.
Gabriel stood up tall, cold, furious, masterful. He waited until Mistress Anne turned back to him before he drawled, "You would send him off to die alone because you don't like what you're friends say about you?"
Anne took a step back. "Not just my friends," she said. "My son . . ."
Gabriel shook his head. "I misjudged you," he said, and his voice was disgusted.
"You don't understand," Anne said. "You're an outlander, you can't know . . ."
"What I know," Gabriel interrupted, "Is what you told me. That he served you well for as long as he could, until the cancer crippled him. That he still tries to comfort you, as if you are the one who needs it, not that poor young man who is going to die soon -- and you will send him away to . . . to . . . I don't even know what, but that his last days will be lonely at best, and probably miserable and painful." He turned to go. "You know my rules. I can't help you any more."
Gabriel walked towards the kitchen door, but Mistress Anne called, "Wait!" Gabriel turned back to her. "How much longer does he have?"
Gabriel shrugged. "Not long, I think," he said coldly. "Weeks, maybe, not months."
Mistress Anne was gave a small cry. "Please, help me," she said. And Gabriel put his arms around her as she sobbed on his shoulder. "I won't send him away, I could never." And she continued to cry. Gabriel said nothing, but Mariah could recognize that he was matching his breathing to Mistress Anne's until she calmed down. Then she pulled away with a final sniff.
Gabriel took a bottle from his medicine bag. "This is palliative, nothing more," he said. "Give him a teaspoonful if he complains of pain. As often as he wants -- there's no reason to hold back now."
Anne placed the bottle on the counter. "Thank you," she said. "You've done so much for both of us, I can't thank you enough." Her voice shook.
Gabriel's voice still had a hard edge to it. "Thank me by keeping him comfortable," he said.
And suddenly Mariah understood. Master Gabriel's kindness was a mindgame, there was no denying it. He treated slaves as if they were special, when they weren't, not to him.
Mariah had told Guckel this morning she didn't know what happened after the cure, after the mindgame ended.
But Lenny wouldn't be cured. He would die. Neither Master Gabriel nor Lenny's mistress could torture him then. For Lenny, Master Gabriel's kindness mindgame was just that -- kindness. There would be no after.
And the mindgame had brought Lenny comfort, just as it had at times comforted her more than she would ever admit. Gabriel had saved Lenny from torture, just as he had saved Mariah from death. What did it mean?
***
The next morning Mariah was assigned with two other slaves to go on their own to the food exchange. It was Mariah's first time in the corridors of the mansion unaccompanied by a human. As they passed a window she admired the glint off the silver do not molest bracelet Mistress Celia had fastened on her wrist. The bracelet, if she behaved with propriety, would likely protect her from unwanted attention.
It was Tabitha who suggested that they go outside rather than through the north wing of the mansion to get to the exchange. Gino shook his head. "If we get caught . . ." he said, his hands on his welted backside.
"We won't!" Tabitha said. "Not if we walk quickly." Gino shook his head dubiously and Tabitha appealed to Mariah. "You want to, don't you?"
Mariah nodded her head, her heart pounding. Gino sighed and rolled his eyes, but followed the other two out the door.
Outside. The lawn, green and soft, intersected with carefully tended walkways. Beyond it, the fields, where Mariah had grown up. And beyond them . . . Mariah didn't care. She took Tabitha's and Gino's hands and the three of them started to run, towards the food exchange where they were sent, but outside, breaking rules, laughing.
***
Mariah was so lost in her thoughts that she did not notice when she and Gabriel exited the mansion. The walkway pavement felt warm under her feet. "My lord?" she asked tentatively.
Gabriel blinked, coming back from where he had been deep in his own thoughts. "Yes?" he said with an encouraging smile.
"After Lenny dies . . ." she tried to formulate her thoughts. "Is that all?" When Gabriel just looked puzzled, she clarified, "Do you think there's another life, another mindgame, after this one?" She blushed, embarrassed by how stupid she sounded.
Gabriel pushed his finger through the hair on his forehead. "I don't know," he said. "I don't think it matters."
"How can it not?" Mariah asked. "I mean . . ." But she didn't know what she meant.
Gabriel led Mariah over to a bench swing under an oak tree. "A lot of people who lived long ago thought it mattered," he said. "Some believed in heaven -- a paradise where good people would go after they died, or people who believed the right things. Some believed that people would be reborn as other people, or even animals, depending on how they acted in this life. Some believed dead bodies would be brought back to life."
He pushed the ground with his foot, making the swing move. "The earth was populated, then, from one ocean to the next and on continents across the oceans, there were people everywhere. And no matter what the people believed, they used the earth up, and they fought tremendous bloody battles against each other, sometimes because of what they believed, until there was hardly anyone left, billions of people died, devastation like you can't imagine." Mariah listened, transfixed, as Gabriel continued, "And of those who were left, some people who believed and some who didn't became masters and some people who believed and some who didn't became slaves."
He stood up, and gave his hand to Mariah to help her up. "It doesn't matter what happens after we die. What matters is what we do while we're alive. Do we help each other, and stand up for what's right? Or do we . . ." He pointed to a mistress across the yard, forcing a crying slave to walk into a wild rose patch, her skin torn by the thorns . . . "Do we act like that?" He started to walk again, and Mariah came with him.
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