Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [112]
“What was it you saw at the Browns’?” I said, trying to focus her wandering attention.
Her age-spotted hand went up to her mouth as if wanting to physically hold back her words. “The first baby, Daisy, died of pneumonia,” she said.
I nodded. That fit with the death certificate. “What about her sister?”
“Rose was so sad when Daisy died. Inconsolable. But the family and all her friends were right there helping her and taking care of things. Petted her and comforted her and told her she had to get up out of that bed, that her other little baby needed her, that her little girls needed her. Even her husband, the judge, started coming home at night. And her doctor, handsome fella, he came over every day, twice some days and talked and talked to her. They took to having tea in the parlor every day about four. She started wanting to live again, blossomed really. All that attention, she just craved it, and it fed her like an underwater spring feeds a lake. But then, like people do, they got back to their own lives. The judge started staying away again. He had his work and, though no one talked openly about that sort of thing then, his lady friends. Her doctor got busy with other patients and such. It was just me and her again, with the little baby and the girls and all the servants. The first time she came running down with the baby calling for me to fetch the doctor, the baby wasn’t breathing, my heart just about broke for her. No one deserved that kind of sorrow. The doctor came, but by that time the baby was breathing again, and he sat with her down in the parlor and had his tea, and she laughed and carried on with him as if her baby hadn’t been on death’s door only an hour before. It didn’t seem right to me, but I never was one to question about folks’ ways much. They’d always been such a mystery. Still are for that matter.”
She paused for a moment, breathing deep and hard. The effort of telling this story was wearing on her, but I didn’t know how to make it go any faster. Like most things in life, it had its own pace, and I had to just let it unfold. She inhaled a phlegmy, rattling breath, and suddenly I was fearful that this might all be too much for her. Should I stop?
“Would you like some water?” I asked.
She motioned no with her hand and continued on. “It was after the third time the baby stopped breathing I got suspicious. It only happened when she was in the room, and since I tended that baby more than she ever did, it just didn’t seem right to me. Every time the doctor came, and they talked and he fawned over her. I kept telling myself a mother wouldn’t do that to her own child. Not just for a little attention. So I started kinda following her, watching her. Then I saw her do it.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Hold the pillow over the baby’s face. Her little legs just kicked and kicked. I screamed, ‘Mrs. Brown!’ and she looked up at me. Straight in my eyes she looked at me, set the pillow aside, and said, ‘Yes, Eva?’ Just like that, face as blank as a rock. ‘Yes, Eva?’ My blood ran cold as creek water.”
“What did you do? Did you tell someone?”
Tears pooled in her pale eyes. “What could I do? Do you think anyone would believe me when I said Mrs. Rose Brown, wife of the richest man in the county, was a-tryin’ to kill her own baby? So I made myself believe her when she said the baby had pulled the pillow over her face, and she was taking it off. I believed her because I wanted to. I had to. I kept telling myself that mothers don’t smother their own babies. They just don’t kill their own babies.”
“Except she did,” I said.
She nodded. “I was down at the stables with the girls, watching while they took their riding lessons. When I saw the doctor’s car come barreling up the dirt road, and I knew in my heart this time it was bad.”
“She killed