Willow Chapter 4: Maggie Arrives
By: Claudia Stack
Tags: Illumination, Life, Fiction, Parenting, Writing

A serial novel by Claudia Stack

Photo by Hayden Scott on Unsplash

Maggie walked up the circular drive, pushing her way into the wind and the awareness that she did not belong here. The wind off the Hudson was bitter, whipping her skirt painfully against her legs. The huge marble blocks at the corners of the house, the elegant front stairs, and the banks of windows all passed through the edge of her vision. Finally, she saw a side entrance.

Maggie’s fingertips were turning white when she rapped on the door. She heard the scraping of the lock turning, and a large woman with a full-length white apron regarded her skeptically. The cook must have been passing by the door at the very moment she knocked, and this coincidence shone briefly in Maggie’s mind as the first piece of good fortune in her thirteen years.

“Well now, what do you want? Are you looking to peddle or steal?”

As harsh as the words were, there was kindness in the fact that they were spoken at all. A little heat escaped the kitchen hall and reached Maggie, and the sensation was so strange, her exhaustion and the cold so great, that when she moved her lips no sound emerged.

“Well, come in, don’t stand there dumb. We’ll all be frozen, waiting for you to speak.” Cook opened the door slightly, just enough for Maggie to slip over the threshold before collapsing.

Cook contemplated the girl at her feet uncertainly. Just then, Rose looked into the kitchen to order the tea tray for Miss Sarah. She saw Cook standing over what appeared to be a heap of rags. Then the rags stirred, startling her into action.

“Cook! Is that a child? For heaven’s sake, bring it here to the fire.” She strode over, all compassionate authority with her long gray dress and her reading spectacles on a chain around her neck. Children were her province, and not even a street urchin would be allowed to freeze on her watch.

“Help me lift her.” Maggie was lifted under each arm, one side briskly, the other side reluctantly, and deposited on a stool in front of the fire. She stared into the orange flames and felt she would never have another piece of luck in her life, ever, for she had used it all in the last two minutes.

“Cook, make up the tea tray, and give this child a hot drink.” Rose said firmly. Cook grumbled and took her time getting the tray arranged. She took even longer to heat some milk that was already turned slightly and had been meant for the dogs.

“What am I now, a servant to every match-girl and rag-picker in the city? In a proper house this would not happen, I tell ye. Here girl, take it, I haven’t got all day.”

Maggie took the rough mug, eyes wide with astonishment at this additional boon. It didn’t occur to her to resent Cook’s shuffling delay, or grumbling, or the fact that the milk was sour. She expected nothing. She would not have felt surprised, and hardly any less fortunate, to have been thrown into the fire like so much debris. At least for once in her life she would have been at the heart of warmth.

When Rose returned from delivering the tea tray Maggie was still sitting, silent as one of the gray hearthstones, in front of the fire. Cook was peeling potatoes and appeared to have forgotten her.

“Now child, what is your name?” Rose asked, bending down.

“Maggie, ma’am.” Maggie whispered. She had never been in such a wealthy home, and assumed that Rose must be the lady of the house.

“Why did you come here?” Rose asked.

At a loss to explain, Maggie pulled out the rag in which her precious matches were wrapped. Rose finally understood, the girl meant to sell matches, but it left her at a loss. She straightened up and her eyes came to rest on Cook, who studied the potato she was peeling.

“Cook, could you not use this girl to help you? She could fetch the coal and help you with the cooking.”

Cook eyed Maggie skeptically. “It’s true I’ve been wanting some help, but not from the likes of her.”

Rose set her jaw. In the absence of Sarah’s mother, and with Sarah’s father out of town, she as the governess was in charge of the household. It was an uphill battle. Cook, who was Irish, resisted the Englishwoman’s instructions on principle. Still, order must prevail, and they both knew order comes from the top.

It did not occur to either woman to consult Maggie about her fate. She was a wisp, something the wind blew in, and they both thought she should consider herself fortunate at that.

“Well then,” Rose said firmly, “that settles it. I’ll put a pallet in the corner, and she can start helping you tomorrow.” It was a fateful decision.

For Willow Chapter 3: The Reckoning, see below

For Willow Chapter 5: Sonia Drifts, see link below

https://medium.com/illumination/willow-chapter-5-sonia-drifts-67883b592d88

A note to readers: Thank you for giving this book chapter a chance, I hope you enjoyed it. I plan to share one chapter per week of Willow. In case you are wondering, publishing this book chapter is part of my new mission to share some writing that, thanks to the dynamics of traditional publishing, has never seen the light of day. On the other hand, my work on historic African American schools and on sharecropping has been published in various venues and featured at dozens of film festivals. To link to those articles and to view my documentary films, please see my website: