Seven Sisters - Earlene Fowler [113]
“Yes, and all the attention started all over again. Oh, such a funeral you can’t imagine. Just like Daisy’s. Hundreds of people. All the florist shops in town were empty. Judge Brown knew everyone, just everyone. A lot of people came, of course, trying to curry up to him. And during it all, I knew she’d killed that baby. At the funeral, she caught my eye and she knew I knew.”
“No one suspected? None of the other servants? The judge?”
“Not that anyone said. To me, anyway.”
“So, what about the other babies . . .”
“She got pregnant shortly after that. I stayed till past her delivering time. When she had another set of twins, I couldn’t help but wonder what God was thinking, giving her those babies. They named them Bethany and Beulah. I struggled with what I should do, even went to the judge once, trying to tell him he needed to watch out for those babies, but I got too afraid, and my words got all jumbled.
“ ‘Eva,’ he’d finally said in that gruff voice of his. ‘I know working for Mrs. Brown’s not the easiest thing in the world. I’ll triple your pay if you’ll stay. I know you need the money, what with your son and father. I’ll see that Father Xavier at San Miguel gives him a little extra work, add to his pay. They’ll be taken good care of, Eva. Trust me on this. I value your discretion.’ ”
She fingered the torn arm of her easy chair. “That’s all he said. He valued my discretion. I had to look the word up to see what it meant. I knew then he was telling me to keep quiet. What could I do? If I lost my job with the Browns, there was no place to go. I was a good nanny, but by then it was hard times, and there was no work anywhere. With my job and Father’s tending the mission gardens, me and Father and Johnnie had it good. All I had to do was forget what I’d seen.” She sighed deeply, causing Heidi to lift her head and whine. Mrs. Knoll patted the dog’s head reassuringly.
“Things went okay for three months after the second twins were born. I’d even convinced myself that maybe I’d been seeing things. Then Beulah started having the breathing spells, and time after time Mrs. Brown would call for the doctor. I took to following after her, especially when she was around the babies. But she’d say, ‘Now, Eva, let me care for my babies. Take the girls for a walk. They’re looking a little peaked these days.’
“I’d take Cappy and Willow and little Etta for a stroll around the garden, and then, sure enough, the doctor would come driving up in his fancy car, spewing dust in his haste to get there. Finally Beulah died, and then Bethany. I was beside myself, not knowing what to do.”
“Didn’t anyone, Judge Brown, her doctor, anyone, suspect what was happening?” That seemed unbelievable to me, that all these babies kept dying and no one questioned it.
She shook her head slowly. “Lots of babies died back then. You go look at any graveyard and you can see that. If anyone else suspected she was killing her own babies, they never said anything. Like me, I reckon they just wouldn’t, couldn’t believe such a thing about anyone.”
“Did you go to Judge Brown after the others?” I asked.
“I tried, but after Bethany, the last twin, passed on, he wasn’t living at the house but one or two days a month. I think he knew something was going on. Maybe he just wanted to stay away from all that sadness. Maybe he didn’t want to make any more babies for her to kill. I don’t know. The one time I tried to say something, he stopped me and told me they wouldn’t be needing me at the big house anymore. He gave me a year’s pay and said he’d pay me a pension until I died. Got a check at the first of the month like clockwork. When my boy got sick, the bills were paid, and he paid for the funeral, too. Did the same when my father died. Then one day, after Father had been gone a while, the deed to this little house came in the mail. I moved out here around ’42 and never saw any of the Browns again.”
“And you never told anyone,” I said.
Her glassy eyes seemed to clear slightly when they stared straight into mine. “Not until now. I figure there’s no reason to