Wishing Caswell Dead by Pat Stoltey

Author:Pat Stoltey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gale, Cengage Learning
Published: 2017-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

JO MAE AT THE HOBART FARM

* * *

By the time I had to go begging Miz Gray for help, I had not been to her house for a long time, ever since Mama got mad at me, saying I was begging for pretty things and that the Prouds earned their way in the world. She said we were not taking any more charity from the likes of Annie Gray. I did not understand, because Mama kept on taking whatever Miz Gray brought over in her basket.

Mama and Caswell did not care whether or not I had a nice dress, or if I’d get a ribbon in my hair after I’d washed it with Miz Gray’s homemade lye soap that made it smell funny until Miz Gray rinsed it with her rose water. I reckoned Mama did not want anybody looking after me better than she did, even if she never even hardly tried. I waited until she fell asleep before I took that fancy brush of hers to my own hair, which I never thought about doing until I was ten years old.

I knew there were girls not much older than me who were married and already had babies. That made me wonder if it ever happened that a girl got the baby first and then got married. Or was I the only girl who did this bad thing? And maybe no man would want to marry me ever. And then I wondered if I would even get to be fourteen or if Caswell would beat me to death first.

Being big with child was going to make it hard to run away from Caswell when he had one of his temper fits. He’d turned even more hateful since the lightning struck him down and made him crippled—and crazy to boot. And I reckoned Mama was not ever going to stop Caswell from beating on me whenever he wanted, even if she was standing right there in the same cabin and pretending like she was thinking about something else.

Caswell hung around the cabin a lot at mealtime, but he hardly ever slept in the house, even if he did have his very own bed. I do not know if that was because he and Mama stopped getting along after the lightning made him act so stupid, or if it was because he stunk so bad—like sweat and saddle soap and straw dirtied up in a pile of horse manure. I reckoned that Mama had made him get a job in the horse stables, but I never said anything about the smell. I was afraid if I did say something, it might get Mama thinking he ought to be back home.

After Mama started yelling at me about having a baby, and calling me terrible names, I could not think of anything else to do but pay a visit to Miz Annie Gray. She was the midwife for babies in Sangamon and parts surrounding, and she’d been good to me and to Mama, until she got sideways of Mama’s bad feelings.

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