The Kitchen House CHAPTER ONE 1791 Lavinia IN THAT SPRING OF 1791, I did not understand that the trauma of loss had taken my memory. I knew only that after I woke, wedged between crates and bags, I was terror-stricken to discover that I did not know where I was, nor could I recall my name. I was frail after months of rough travel, and when the man lifted me from the wagon, I clung to his broad shoulders. He was having none of that and easily pulled my arms loose to set me down. I began to cry and reached back up for him, but he pushed me instead toward the old Negro male who was hurrying toward us. "Jacob, take her," the man said. "Give her to Belle. She''s hers for the kitchen.

" "Yes, Cap''n." The old man kept his eyes low. "James! James, you''re home!" A woman''s call! Hopeful, I stared up at the enormous house in front of me. It was made of clapboard and painted white, and a wide porch framed the full length of the front. Towering columns circled with vines of green and violet wisteria stood on either side of the broad front steps, and the air was thick with the fragrance this early April morning. "James, why didn''t you send word?" the woman sang out into the morning mist. Hands on his hips, the man leaned back for a better view. "I warn you, wife.

I''ve come home for you. Best come down before I come up." Above, at a window that appeared open to the floor, she laughed, a figure of white froth capped by billowing auburn hair. "Oh no, James. You stay away until you''ve been washed." "Mrs. Pyke. Prepare yourself," he shouted, and bounded over the threshold.

Inside, he continued to shatter the peace. "Where is everyone?" I heard him call. "I''m home!" At a run, I began to follow, but the dark old man caught my arm and held me. When I fought him, he lifted me up, and I screamed in terror. Swiftly, he carried me to the back of the house. We were high on a hill, and out farther, lesser hills surrounded us. A horn blasted, frightening me further, and I began to hit at my captor. He shook me firmly.

"You stop this now!" I stared at him, at his foreign dark brown skin that contrasted so with his white hair, and his dialect so strange that I scarcely understood. "What you fightin'' me for?" he asked. I was exhausted by it all and dropped my head on the man''s thin shoulder. He continued on to the kitchen house. "Belle?" the old man called. "Belle?" "Uncle Jacob? Come in," a feminine voice called, and the wooden door creaked as he pushed it open with his foot. Uncle Jacob slid me to my feet while a young woman came slowly down the stairs, then came forward, quickly tying a band of green calico around a thick braid of glossy black hair. Her large green eyes grew wide in disbelief as she took me in.

I was comforted to see that she was not as foreign-looking as the man who had brought me to her, for though her light brown skin still differed from mine, her facial features more resembled my own. Uncle Jacob spoke. "The cap''n send this chil'' to you. He say she for the kitchen house." "What''s that man thinking? Can''t he see she''s white?" The woman sank in front of me and turned me around. "You been sick?" She wrinkled her nose. "I''ve got to burn these clothes. You nothing but bones.

You wanting something to eat?" She pried my thumb from my mouth and asked if I could speak. I could find no voice and looked around, trying to place myself. Belle went to the enormous fireplace that stretched the length of the room. There she poured steaming milk into a wooden mug. When she held it to my mouth, I choked on the milk, and my body began an involuntary tremor. I vomited, then I passed out. I AWOKE ON A PALLET in an upstairs room, too frightened to move after realizing that I still had no memory. My head ached, but when I rubbed it, I withdrew my hands in shock.

My long hair had been cut short. I had been scrubbed pink, and my skin was tender under the coarse brown shirt that covered me. My stomach turned from the scent of unfamiliar food rising up the open stairway from the kitchen below. My thumb pacified me, and I soothed myself as I studied the room. Clothes hung from pegs on the wall, and a pole bed stood off to one side with a small plain chest next to it. Sun streamed through a window, open and undraped, and from the outdoors came the sudden peal of a child''s laughter. It rang familiar, and forgetting all else, I sprang to the window. The brightness stung so that I needed both hands to shade my eyes.

First all I saw was rolling green, but below the window, I saw a path. It cut past a large fenced-in garden and led to a log house where, on steps, sat two small dark brown girls. They were watching a scene up toward the big house. I leaned out farther and saw a towering oak. From a thick low branch, a little girl on a swing sang out to a boy behind her. When he pushed the swing, the little girl, all blue and blond, squealed. The tall boy laughed. There it was again! A laugh I recognized.

Driven by hope, I ran down the wooden stairs, out the open door of the kitchen, and up the hill to them. The boy pulled the swing to a stop, and the two gaped at me. Both had deep blue eyes, and both exuded vibrant health. "Who are you? Where did you come from?" the boy asked, his yellow hair glinting in the bright light. I could only stare back, dumb in my disappointment. I did not know him. "I''m Marshall," the boy tried again, "and this is my sister, Sally." "I''m four," said Sally, "how old are you?" She tapped the air with her blue shoes and peeked out at me from under the flopping brim of a white bonnet.

I couldn''t find a voice to answer, so I felt a rush of gratitude for Marshall when he pulled the attention away from me by jiggling the swing. "How old am I?" he asked his sister. "You''re two," said Sally, trying to poke at him with her foot. "No, I''m not." Marshall laughed. "I''m eleven." "No, you''re two," teased Sally, enjoying a familiar game. Suddenly, I was swooped up in Belle''s arms.

"Come back in," she said sharply, "you stay with me." Inside the kitchen house, Belle set me on a corner pallet opposite a dark brown woman who was suckling a baby. I stared, hungry at the intimacy. The mother looked at me and although her face was young, she had deep lines around her eyes. "What your name?" she asked. When I didn''t answer, she continued, "This be my baby, Henry," she said, "and I his mama, Dory." The baby suddenly pulled back from her breast and gave a high shrill cry. I jammed my thumb into my mouth and shrank back.

NOT KNOWING WHAT WAS EXPECTED of me, I stayed put on a pallet in the kitchen. In those first days, I studied Belle''s every move. I had no appetite, and when she insisted that I eat, my stomach emptied violently. Each time I was sick, it meant another cleaning. As Belle''s frustration with me grew, so did my fear of upsetting her. At night I slept on a pallet in a corner of Belle''s upstairs room. On the second night, unable to sleep, I went to stand at Belle''s bedside, comforted by the sound of her soft night breathing. I must have frightened her, for when she woke, she shouted at me to get back to my own bed.

I scurried back, more afraid than ever. The dark haunted me, and with each passing night I sank further into loss. My head throbbed with the struggle of trying to remember something of myself. Thankfully, relief from my sorrow came just before sunup, when the roosters and the horn called everyone to rise. Then another woman, Mama Mae, joined Belle in the kitchen. The two women worked easily together, but I soon sensed that, though Belle was in charge of the kitchen, Mama Mae was in charge of Belle. Mama Mae was a woman of size, although nothing about her was soft. She was a sober woman who moved like a current, and her quickness made it plain that she did not suffer idleness.

She gripped a corncob pipe between her tobacco-stained teeth. It was seldom lit, though she chewed the stem, and after time I decided that it served the same purpose to her that my thumb did to me. I might have been more frightened of her had she not given me an early benediction of her smile. Then her dark brown face, her flat features, and her black eyes wrinkled into kindness. In the days that followed, I no longer tried to eat, and slept most of the time. On the morning Mama Mae examined me, Belle watched from across the room. "She''s just being stubborn. When I get her to eat, she just brings it up, so now I''m only giving her water.

She''ll get hungry soon enough," Belle said. Mama held my face in her strong hand. "Belle!" she said sharply. "This chil'' not fightin'' you. She too sick. You got to get her to eat, or you gonna lose her." "I don''t know why the cap''n give her to me. I got enough work.

" "Belle, you ever think maybe when I first find out they movin'' you to the kitchen house, I think that way ''bout you?" "Well, I sure wasn''t making a mess, throwing up all over you." "No, but you was ''bout the same age, maybe six, seven years at the time. And you was born and raised here, and you still carried on," Mama Mae scolded. Belle was silent, but following that, she was less brus.