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The Adventures of Andwan Wingsweep

By Andrea Camoriano

Chapter 6: Dinnertime!

          Andwan and Mrs. White bustled around the kitchen, preparing dinner, Andwan having finished her bath after a long day in the stables.  The boys had the bathhouse now; they were even filthier than Andwan, since she (once again) hadn’t been permitted either near the horses or to perform heavy labor with the boys.  She doubted she’d even have seen the inside of the stables if it hadn’t been for George Dellsmith’s reference (which specified five competent stablehands, four male and a female) and the insistence of the rests of her classmates.  So she performed some of the lighter tasks---raking out the straw bedding in the empty stalls and throwing down armloads of fresh straw, putting the feed in the troughs, and polishing the family’s gig (a kind of small, two-wheeled carriage used for Sunday drives to church).  She hoped she’d impressed Mr. White enough that he’d let her start helping the boys directly with the horses.

          Now, as she set the table, she heard the front door open and several pairs of boots troop in.  She looked up to see Mr. White, his two huge sons, and the male Time Teens walk in.  She grinned at her friends, and waited for the Whites to make the first move.

          Which was promptly made by Mr. White going to sit down in his armchair.  He lit his pipe and asked Mrs. White, “Where are Hannah and Prudence?”  Hannah and Prudence were the White family’s twin daughters, fourteen years old.  Andwan hadn’t met them yet; they’d not been in all day.

          “They’re at the Jameson home,” Mrs. White answered quietly.  “Poor Mrs. Jameson has the flu.  Hannah and Prudence are helping with the household chores.”

          Mr. White snorted into his pipe.  “Leaving us to fend for ourselves.  We need them here.  That’s all they should be doing at their age, taking care of the men in their family.”

          Andwan and her friends traded warning looks.  They all knew what would happen if Mr. White kept going on in this vein: one of them would either have an angry outburst and get them thrown out of the house, or Andwan would need to run to the barn and have a good bawling fit before she exploded.  Either way, their reputation would take a serious hit.

          Ritis came to the rescue.  “Excuse me, Mr. White, sir,” he began politely.  “I was wondering if the Jamesons have any children to help them?”

          Mr. White looked up at him, looking angry and tired at the same time.  “No,” he said.  “Their children are but infants.  Why do you ask?”

          “Well,” Ritis said, “if Mrs. Jameson is sick, Mr. Jameson has to work, and the children aren’t old enough to help yet, shouldn’t somebody be courteous enough to help take care of things?”

          “My brother makes a good point, sir,” Andwan chimed in.  “I’m told that when I was born, my father was away from home often---he was a kind of roving chaplain.  When I was born, my mother’s mother came to stay.  She helped my mother with all manner of household chores as well as childcare.  If my grandmother could be counted on to perform such charity work while she was alive, think of all the good your daughters are doing for Mrs. Jameson.  It must be such a weight off of her mind to have the aid of Hannah and Prudence.”

          Mr. White looked a bit shocked.  For that matter, so did the rest of the family.  Andwan and the Time Teens looked around uneasily.  “What did we do?” Andwan asked.  “We only tried to point out the positive.”

          “No woman has dared to speak freely like this under my roof,” Mr. White said.  “While I acknowledge the truth in your brother’s statement, we do not encourage the views of women to be heard.  Women have no views worth hearing; you were merely parroting what you were told, perhaps by your brothers.  For myself and my family, I will thank you to keep a latch on your thoughtless tongue, you foolish wench.”

          The Time Teens all went very still.

          Andwan drew herself up.  “Excuse me sir,” she said.  “I did not know that attempting to show the positive points in a situation would prove so unwelcome under your roof.  With your leave, I must go to the barn.  It seems my presence is unwelcome in the same room as you.”  And she turned and walked past the boys, out the door and down the path to the barn.  As she strode out the door, she heard someone---a Time Teen, it sounded like---informing Mr. White coldly that it was their female relative who had kept them together until they could reach Williamsburg.  She stopped and listened as they told him that they would thank him to treat their sister and cousin with at least a veneer of warmth and courtesy while they helped his family in the barn, in his house and in the fields.  Then she heard Distie saying, “Just give me a plate, bowl and cup of food.  I’ll take Anne her dinner; she’ll not wish to be seen in the state she’ll be in now.”

          Andwan smiled through the tears as she pushed open the door to the barn and sat on a sack of sweet feed in the wagon George Dellsmith had given them in Boston.  Lucky ducky, she thought.  Your friends actually give a care what happens to you back here!

          At least now she knew that she could count on her own, if no one else.

          Distie maneuvered into the stall containing the Time Teens’ cart, carrying a tray bearing two stew plates under a large bowl of stew, a small pot of honeyed porridge, a basket of bread, two clay cups, and a tin pitcher of water.  He knew Andwan was there; he could hear her sobbing in the wagon.  As he clunked along the floor, he heard Andwan try to still the sobs.  “Hey, Anne,” he called out, to let her know it was safe.

          “Hey,” she replied, moving to open the stall door for him.  “Is it safe in there yet?  I don’t want to have to go back in there if he’s going to tear a strip off me for nothing again.”

          Distie smiled grimly as he handed her the tray.  “Be careful,” he warned her as he did, “it’s heavy.”  He hoisted himself into the wagon, then dusted his hands off on his breeches and took the tray back.  He nodded at the sack of sweet feed she’d been sitting on; both of them sat down and began to eat, sharing the food given them by Mrs. White between them.

          “Yeah, it’s safe outside the house,” he said, “and I checked around the barn before I came in.  We’re safe; the nearest people are in the Whites’ house, and nobody’s working around or in the barn.  You not going back in the house immediately, now, that’s probably a smart move.  In fact, I think you’d better spend the night here in the wagon.  Mr. White is still insisting that he was the one in the right and can’t understand what prompted you to make that abrupt departure.  And it’s safe around the building; nobody’s out, and I made sure nobody was hiding in or around the building.”

          “Thanks.  And you know why I had to get out of there,” Andwan told him.  “I can’t stand an insult, and that man out-and-out said I wasn’t worth listening to, that I had no brains worth speaking of, and that I was insulting him.  I don’t get it; all I did was compliment him for raising daughters who were so willing to volunteer to help a sick old lady.”  The tears were threatening to come back; Andwan put her spoon back down in her bowl of stew as the sobs of remembrance threatened to choke her.

           “Hey,” he told her, “it’s okay.  He’s not gonna come out here and bother you when we’ve already driven it home he’s being a complete dip.  I mean, the only way he’d come out here after dark is if one of the mares was in foal or one of the animals had colic or something.  When I last saw him, he was sitting at the kitchen table, hollering at his wife to get dinner on the table and that he wanted her to quit wasting good time and food on you.  At least she’s on our side.  She wouldn’t let you starve after all that hard work you did.”  He paused, then looked at her in cold horror.

          “Would he hurt her, do you think?” he asked, horror-struck at the possibility.  “Would he strike her for openly defying his orders to let you starve?”

          Andwan shook her head.  “I just don’t know,” she told him.  “It’s entirely possible that he would.  Of course, if he did, and she told someone about it, he’d lose some serious standing with the rest of his social circle, but chances are, she’ll cover it up with a high collar, a long skirt, and long sleeves and say she slipped and fell on something.  Haven’t you ever watched the cop shows on TV or read anything about it?  I’ve seen one of each, a murder-mystery TV show and a book on a 20^th-century Cherokee woman who made it her business to get her peoples’ magic talismans out of the wrong hands and nearly died for it.  In both of those stories, there were women married to abusive husbands; they both fed the authorities the same stories about being really clumsy or rubbing their husband’s emotional fur the wrong way just slightly when he’s going through a stressful time at the office.”

          “What happened to them?” Distie asked.  “The wives, I mean.”

          “One husband was warned away from his wife by the cops.  The other went to jail for assault and battery.  I don’t know what exactly happened to the wives.”

          “Well, at least both of those women had happy endings,” Distie felt compelled to point out.  “If we find out that Mr. White or his boys have been beating Mrs. White or the twin girls, we can always take them back home with us.  You did tell Mrs. Roberts you thought you could manage that.  At least in our time, we can keep anything worse from happening.”

          Andwan suddenly stiffened.  “Do you realize what we’ve been doing?” she asked.  “We’ve been talking freely and openly about home and our assignment!”

          “First thing I did was check,” he reminded her.  “If there was anybody here to hear us, he’d have to come by the house’s front windows first, and I asked the boys to run and get us quickly if somebody did come.  And I listened before I came in here; I know the sounds of someone sneaking around, or even walking around without bothering about stealth.  I didn’t spend all that time in Mr. Elfreth’s class learning to track for nothing, you know.  Don’t worry.”

          They’d been eating all this time.  Now, they settled down to finish it all off.  As they finished the last crumb, Hannon came in.

          “The twins are home, and they want to meet us all.  Mrs. White asked me to come and fetch you back to the house---both of you.  She also says that we can each have a pallet by the fire to sleep on until her husband and sons can make us some proper beds.”

          Andwan and Distie looked at each other, then back at Hannon.  “Are you sure you’re up to this?” Distie asked.  “It’s sure to be tough.”

          “Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Andwan said; “that’s why I’m going in, too.  It would be too dangerous for me to stay out here.  Rules of politeness and all that---being rude is one of the most dishonorable things we can do here.  Let’s go, and everybody be careful.”

          Andwan, Hannon and Distie walked back into the kitchen, Distie and Andwan carrying the remains of their dinner.  A pair of pretty twin girls was standing by the sink, washing up after their family’s meal.  The girls both had black hair, and when they turned around Andwan saw green eyes and smooth skin of one of the prettiest shades possible.  There was absolutely nothing to distinguish Hannah from Prudence apart from hair styling.  Hannah wore hers in a bun under the tea doily type of bonnet, and Prudence wore the covered-wagon bonnet.  Andwan wondered if this was just to provide the Time Teens with one distinguishing characteristic.

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