One morning, as she was serving my breakfast, Walter came in and commenced pawing her skirt and whining to be picked up and petted, as Rose was always so willing to do. Sarah put down the coffee urn, laid the flat of her hand across his face, and pushed him away roughly. He ran bawling from the room.
“Does he remind you of someone?” I said, earning one of her thinly veiled looks of contempt. She took up the urn and leaned over me to fill my cup.
“He’s as much your responsibility as mine,” I said. “God knows, I didn’t ask for him, but here he is.” She went to the sideboard and stood with her back to me, slicing a baguette, indifferent as the knife in her hand.
“It’s useless to talk about responsibility to you people,” I continued. “You have no sense of it. That’s the gift we give you all. You just run away and we bring you back and you never have the slightest twinge of conscience. No one ever holds you responsible for your actions. It’s just assumed you have no moral sense.”
She spooned a dab of Creole cheese next to the bread and brought it to me. I placed my right hand on the plate to hold the bread, then took up the knife to spread the cheese. “It’s thanks to you I’m a cripple,” I said. “Look at the way I have to eat.” She stood to the side, watching my hands with an interested expression.
“If you hadn’t beat me to the horse,” I said.
It was the first time I’d spoken to her of that night, though I dreamed of it often enough. I was running, running, and the horse was there, if I could only get to it, but someone was holding me back. Sometimes it was my husband, sometimes Sarah, sometimes a man I didn’t know. Once I turned to find Mother clawing at me, her teeth bared like a wild animal. I woke from these dreams soaked in perspiration, my heart racing so fast it hurt.
Sarah stood watching me, her hands folded at her waist. She was listening to me, I thought, which gave me an odd sensation.
“You knew my husband was dead,” I said. “There was no reason for you to run. They weren’t going to kill you.” I took a bite of bread and glared at her as I chewed it. She met my gaze, but curiously, as if she wondered what I would say next.
“But you had already hatched your plan with Mr. Roget, hadn’t you?” I said. “I heard you whispering here that night. You had it all arranged; your clever disguise, and your ship passage, and your new friends in the North. I’m sure they all made you feel very important, very much the poor helpless victim, and no one asked how you got away or whom you left behind.”
Her eyes wandered away from me, to the plate on the table, the cup next to my hand. A strange inward-looking smile, as at a recollection, compressed her lips. “When you gets to the North,” she said, “they invites you to the dining room, and they asks you to sit at the table. Then they offers you a cup of tea, and they asks, ‘Does you want cream and sugar?’ ”
I was dumbfounded. It was more than I had ever heard her say. My uncle was right, I thought. She had changed; she’d gone mad. I took a swallow of my coffee. “And this appealed to you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, raising her eyes very coolly to mine. “It appeal to me.”
I considered this image of Sarah. She was dressed in borrowed clothes, sitting stiffly at a bare wooden table while a colorless Yankee woman, her thin hair pulled into a tight bun, served her tea in a china cup. The righteous husband fetched a cushion to make their guest more comfortable. It struck me as perfectly ridiculous. What on earth did they think they were doing?