The Candle Star by Michelle Isenhoff

Author:Michelle Isenhoff
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Candle Star Press

Chapter 11

The next day, Isaac met Emily at the door when she came home for lunch. “Emily, Shannon’s nephew is worse, and she couldn’t make it in this morning. Julia is swamped trying to do the work of them both. Would you mind skipping your afternoon classes to lend a hand?”

Skip school? She didn’t hesitate a moment. “Of course not!”

“Good. I’m on my way to fetch the doctor. Julia can tell you what to do.”

The woman pushed into the room with an armload of dishes just in time to hear the exchange. “When you’s done eatin’, you takes de linen off de line,” she ordered. “Me an’ ’Zekiel will finish up lunch.” She dropped the dishes beside the wash tub, filled another plate, and disappeared into the dining room.

Ezekiel passed her coming in.

“Is it busy today, Zeke?” Emily asked.

“No more’n usual, miss.”

Emily made herself a sandwich and took it to the table with a glass of milk. Halfway through the meal, Malachi burst through the door with his usual aplomb. Julia set on him at once. “Malachi Watson, when you gonna learn ta open dat door like a Christian ‘stead o’ like some heathen outta de brush?”

“Sorry, Mama,” he cringed, shooting Emily a look of chagrin.

But Julia was too busy to send him outside to practice his faith proper. “See dat you get de chamber pots cleaned in rooms six and four. Den Mr. Isaac has a mess o’ wood out back needs splittin’.”

After bringing in the freeze-dried laundry, Emily got her first lesson in ironing sheets. She had grown accustomed to hard work, and if she didn’t exactly find pleasure in it, at least it had gotten easier. She had, however, purchased a new pair of white gloves and wore them in public to cover her hands, which were becoming as red and calloused as Shannon’s.

Julia placed three heavy flatirons on the stove to heat and then padded the kitchen table with an old blanket and spread out one of the stiff linens. When it was hot enough, she wrapped a rag around the handle of the first iron and pressed it across the sheet. The cloth softened and the wrinkles disappeared like magic. When the iron cooled, she replaced it on the stove and grabbed a new one.

“Now you try it.”

Emily did it just as the woman had shown her, but instead of gliding smoothly along the top of the sheet like a duck on a pond, she pushed the whole mess across the table, blanket and all.

“No, no,” Julia admonished impatiently. “You’s not carvin’ a turkey with it. Push it along gentle, like you’s strokin’ a horse.”

The woman straightened the cloth and Emily tried again. At first she seemed to create more wrinkles than she removed, and she managed to burn her fingers twice, but after two or three attempts, Julia left Emily alone and began tossing ingredients for supper into a big black pot.

They were alone in the kitchen, but Emily ironed and folded three more sheets before she worked up the courage to ask the question foremost on her mind.

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