The Wet Nurse's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

held each other and cried, but knew we was bound to go back. Our younger brothers and sisters were still small, some of them. Indeed our mother still took in babies from outside to nurse, though she told me when we were home to bury Ellen that the one in the cradle would be the last. Our father, almost as useless as a pot about bringing in money, could drink it up fast enough. It was us, I told Mary, who had to send some little money back lest Mam end up in the poorhouse with all those brats.
    It seemed almost too hard to go back to the Great House. There they all were, playing and gallivanting, as if our poor thing wasn’t cold in the ground because of them. I blamed them all for the master’s evil doings. I wished his dogs would turn on him and tear out his throat. If he walked into a room, I would have to leave it, even if I left my chore half-done, lest my stomach turn and I spew my breakfast on his shiny boots. I’d hide in the drapes outside the room and when he left it, I’d run back in and finish whatever task I was at, double quick-like, so’s not to get in trouble with Mrs. Hart, the housekeeper.
    The first month hurt the worst, of course, but it passed and then came my half-day and I meant to go home to my mother for it. Twas a lovely day, with a breeze and bouncing clouds and for all my heft, I am a good walker, with a firm step. Mary stayed behind to walk with her young man who, if you ask me, just wanted to feel her bosom as much as she’d let him. But really, I couldn’t blame her for letting him. It was as good a way as any to take her mind off poor Ellen, wasn’t it?
    I walked away from that house, feeling as light as if I were one of them clouds in the sky. The fields had flowers all over and I reached down to get some. I felt like I did when I was a lass, and my mother’d let me play for an hour. The freshness of the day recalled to me one of my mother’s paying babies whose mother said she’d given it over to nurse so it might have the country air in its lungs. “If she wants to pay for air, I won’t say no,” my mam had said. We had all of us laughed, but now that I thought on it, it seemed like the baby’s mother got the ripe end of the bargain. Twas a true English day, as my dad would say, and I had the whole afternoon and need not be back til nightfall.
    I climbed the hill that separated the Great House from the village where we lived and stood atop it. The breeze blew my cap off and I scrambled to get it, though the scrambling put me out of breath and made me laugh. My hair tumbled out of its bun. I must have looked a fright, but I felt big and healthy and I recalled it to me that there was joy in the world, even after it seems there’ll never be gladness anymore.
    The view from the top of the hill afforded no sight of any house at all; the Great House was hidden by its forest and the village wasn’t yet near enough. I saw only one lone horse rider, at the bottom of the hill, small as a pinprick. The figure raised his arm to hail someone and I pretended it was I and waved back.
    I came upon an old oak, the same one that John and Ada and I would climb as youngsters. It seemed the very place to rest and eat the apple I had in my pocket. Now, though I’m plump, you’d hardly believe how I can bend myself. My foot will go nearly behind my ear, if I sit on the floor and bend up my leg; that’s how I’d make Ellen laugh til there were tears in her eyes. “I never saw a girl so big as you and spry,” she’d say, wiping the tears away. “Just think, Susan, if your stomach wasn’t in the way, you could bend yourself like a Chinee!”
    As there was no one anywhere to spy me, I heaved myself up into the tree, gathered my petticoat around me and plumped myself down on a branch. There I sat in my tree, munching and spitting apple seeds on the ground. My father’d slap us if we wasted, but once a town boy stared at me and laughed, “Look at the big one eating the core as if she’s a