The Factory Witches of Lowell by C. S. Malerich

Author:C. S. Malerich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

8: Kitchen Magic

BREAD DOUGH SMACKED AGAINST the kitchen table with a great thwap, sending forth an explosion of floury smoke within which Mrs. Hanson might well have concealed herself, except that continuous muttering betrayed her position. In fresh curses she protested the crick in her neck, the fatigue in her feet, the indifference of young people, and the arrogance of rich. Most specially that great potentate of Lowell himself, Kirk Boott! Her fingers, so arthritic and unwilling as they kneaded the dough, itched to seize and twist the man’s silk cravat until he choked. She might have known he’d turn their interview into an interrogation. More fool her, for marching upon him without reinforcements or artillery. A mistake she would not repeat.

At least no harm had yet come of it. For here was Hannah, gobbling her supper as hastily as any night, her narrow backside propped against the windowsill.

There’d been some fuss among the girls over that little mouse Abigail North, who’d come in with Betsy and Laura and the groceries, a shawl over her head, and scurried upstairs at once. She did not reappear for supper. Mrs. Hanson felt no inclination to investigate; she had kept the Lowell house long enough not to involve herself in all the little dramas of her wards. One more plate of beans and gravy remained on the sideboard, for Abigail or Judith Whittier, whichever had the stomach to come for it. Hannah—Hannah the Gifted, Hannah the Fire-Kissed—never went to bed hungry. Well, house matrons (like mothers) were entitled to their favorites.

Four years earlier, when the ginger-haired maid came to Lowell, Mrs. Hanson had never seen a child so haunted. Hannah was mute among the robust crowd of girls at meal times, and first to retreat to the dormitories while the others took turns at checkers and cards. Finally, the matron told her that the washing-up after supper fell to the newest tenant in the house, and so drove her into the refuge of a task each evening. There, among the scrub brushes and buckets, Mrs. Hanson talked to her. Idle stories. Gossip from the Acre and English Row. The rising price of butter and the waste of modern fashions. The uselessness of Baptist and Methodist ministers alike. It was no more than the matron would have said to herself, if she were alone. She might as well have been, the ginger girl worked so silently.

Not until she witnessed Mrs. Hanson’s tonics and potions did Hannah speak up. One of the Sarahs was carried home from the mills fainting, and her friends begged the matron not to call the doctor, who would charge much, help little, and report every cough and shiver to the corporation. Mrs. Hanson was not inclined to fetch the man anyhow, but instead brewed a tea for Sarah—Hemingway, she thought it was—to answer the trouble. That night, the good woman discovered Hannah staring into her cabinet of herbs as if to memorize every leaf and root, except that her eyes were shut.

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