A Mercy

A Mercy by Toni Morrison Page A

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Authors: Toni Morrison
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would take out his pipe and embarrass the songbirds who believed they owned twilight. A still living baby would be on her lap. Patrician would be on the floor, mouth agape, eyes aglow, as he summoned rose gardens and shepherds neither had seen or would ever know. With him, the cost of a solitary, unchurched life was not high.
    Once, feeling fat with contentment, she curbed her generosity, her sense of excessive well-being, enough to pity Lina.
    “You have never known a man, have you?”
    They were sitting in the brook, Lina holding the baby, splashing his back to hear him laugh. In fryingAugust heat they had taken the washing down to a part of the brook that swarming flies and vicious mosquitoes ignored. Unless a light canoe sailed by very close to the riverbank beyond no one would see them. Patrician knelt nearby watching how her bloomers stirred in the ripples. Rebekka sat in her underwear rinsing her neck and arms. Lina, naked as the baby she held in her arms, lifted him up and down watching his hair reshape itself in the current. Then she held him over her shoulder and sent cascades of clear water over his back.
    “Known, Miss?”
    “You understand me, Lina.”
    “I do.”
    “Well?”
    “Look,” squealed Patrician, pointing.
    “Shhh,” Lina whispered. “You will frighten them.” Too late. The vixen and her kits sped away to drink elsewhere.
    “Well?” Rebekka repeated. “Have you?”
    “Once.”
    “And?”
    “Not good. Not good, Miss.”
    “Why was that?”
    “I will walk behind. I will clean up after. I will not be thrashed. No.”
    Handing the baby to his mother, Lina stood and walked to the raspberry bushes where her shift hung. Dressed, she cradled the laundry basket in her arm and held out a hand to Patrician.
    Left alone with the baby who more than any of her children favored their father, Rebekka savored again on that day the miracle of her good fortune. Wife beatingwas common, she knew, but the restrictions—not after nine at night, with cause and not anger—were for wives and only wives. Had he been a native, Lina’s lover? Probably not. A rich man? Or a common soldier or sailor? Rebekka suspected the rich man since she had known kind sailors but, based on her short employment as a kitchen maid, had seen only the underside of gentry. Other than her mother, no one had ever struck her. Fourteen years and she still didn’t know if her mum was alive. She once received a message from a captain Jacob knew. Eighteen months after he was charged to make inquiries, he reported that her family had moved. Where, no one could say. Rising from the brook, laying her son in the warm grass while she dressed, Rebekka had wondered what her mother might look like now. Gray, stooped, wrinkled? Would the sharp pale eyes still radiate the shrewdness, the suspicion, Rebekka hated? Or maybe age, illness, had softened her to benign, toothless malice.
    Confined to bed now, her question was redirected. “And me? How do I look? What lies in my eyes now? Skull and crossbones? Rage? Surrender?” All at once she wanted it—the mirror Jacob had given her which she had silently rewrapped and tucked in her press. It took a while to convince her, but when Lina finally understood and fixed it between her palms, Rebekka winced.
    “Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.” Her eyebrows were a memory, the pale rose of her cheeks collected now into buds of flame red. She traveled her face slowly, gently apologizing. “Eyes, dear eyes, forgive me. Nose, poor mouth. Poor, sweet mouth, I’m sorry. Believe me, skin, I do apologize. Please. Forgive me.”
    Lina, unable to pry the mirror away, was pleading with her.
    “Miss. Enough. Enough.”
    Rebekka refused and clung to the mirror.
    Oh, she had been so happy. So hale. Jacob home and busy with plans for the new house. The evenings when he was exhausted and she picked his hair clean; the mornings when she tied it. She loved his voracious appetite and the pride he took in her

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