“Of course.”
Constance stood and leaned down as though she might help Beth, but there was no need, and she withdrew her hand without turning away. Instead, she lowered her head, closing her eyes. Her brow was heavy, and she must’ve said a series of fervent phrases to herself, because Amy heard none of the young woman’s prayer.
When she was finished, Constance moved the jug of water closer to the bedside and then met Amy at the door. “I’d like to come again, with your family’s permission. I’d like to ask Bethlehem more questions when she’s awake enough to answer. In the meantime, I’m going to write to the Association, and to my former nursing instructor in Gloucester.”
“Of course,” Amy answered, nodding along.
“If there are illnesses I’m unaware of causing issue in other camps or colonies, they’ll almost certainly make their way here. We’re receiving hundreds by the day, and homes are built so slowly that the barracks overflow while they wait.”
“My,” Amy said quietly.
“Some have gone to stay with family on local plantations,” Constance continued, as though she were a pump or faucet herself, that with the slightest bit of coaxing could not help but flow. “Or they try to make their way to colonies like Corinth, I hear, which is said to be a bit further along, and profitable. But the deluge won’t end, and we must be prepared to make this colony a safe enough stead.”
“We must.”
Now the young woman seemed to notice that it was a girl before her, and not another young woman, but instead of chastising her for eavesdropping or something else meant to draw attention away from the way adults forgot themselves, Constance smiled.
“I’ve got to get back to the school, I’m afraid,” she said, and then she paused. “Do you attend?”
“Sadly, no. I would like to,” Amy answered, seizing on the change of topic. “I’ve had lessons since long before the colony, but Meg teaches me at home, though I rarely have the benefit of her instruction.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“Her tent can only hold so many students, and perhaps she thinks a little sister a personal distraction,” Amy said with a heavy sigh. She toed the floor and let her eyes fall to it.
“Crowding is an issue, but teaching is our ministry, and we’ll find solutions for as many as we possibly can. Perhaps you could come to my class instead. There’s such a benefit to learning among other pupils, and I’d hate for your curiosity to be extinguished because it languished too long alone.”
“It does sound like an awful fate.”
“Perhaps if I spoke to her,” Constance said after a moment. “Today, after this afternoon’s lessons. We could have you with us by tomorrow, and it wouldn’t hurt to have you out of this house, being minded.”
Amy kept her smile, though it snagged a bit. She hoped the young woman wasn’t planning to say that last bit to her sister. Amethyst liked Constance Evergreen, and it would be a shame for the missionary teacher to find that, however things went in Massachusetts, in North Carolina, even a young woman as polite as Meg March might tan someone’s hide without a switch. Every Northerner she’d ever met—however few—seemed to think they had manners and decorum, but then they easily tromped into impolite territory, such as instructing strangers how best to raise their kin.
She did want to attend the schoolhouse, though, so Amy nodded and clasped her hands in front of her chest.
“I would be in your debt, Miss Constance,” she said, at which the missionary teacher looked full to overflowing.
“Bless your gentle heart, child.” At the door, she turned while fastening her hat into place. “Would you keep the water jug full for Bethlehem?”
“I will.”
“Good day, child.”
* * *
There was nothing for Jo to do at the site but wait. A boy called Yannick waited with her, rather than wandering off toward the fishery or the shore to find other work. He wore a straw hat with a brim so wide it cast a shadow over his shoulders and chest, which were barely clothed otherwise, his shirt was so threadbare.
“That hat would never have fit yesterday,” Jo remarked, swatting at a pest. It had been too quick for her previous attempts to clap it between her hands. “You had hair as thick as midnight last time I saw you. Where’s it gone?”
“Sold,” Yannick said, swatting at something himself without looking away from his whittling work.
“For what? For netting? It’d make a fine brand of tulle, I imagine.” She barely gave attention to her own jest, glancing around to see that there were no missionaries or white men milling around the village before hiking her skirt to rest above her bent knees so that her legs could breathe.
White folks had little need to be in view, since there were so few homes built yet in the village, and no buildings for their purposes. It separated the colony in Jo’s mind. There was the town, which included the barracks and the buildings confiscated from the Confederates or from white islanders who’d lived near enough for their property to be useful, and in town there were always white and Black people around. Too many, in fact, and people seemed to be stacking one on top of the other. Then there was the village, where the tall trees and shrubs and overgrowth had been before the Union got permission to level them. Even those without a plot assigned to them walked the grid of streets and avenues, and where there was grass, small children played before or after their lessons, and usually en route to their next task. Here in the village, there was usually only brown skin and uncovered, coily hair.
“If they had to see us during the day, or if they made us come into the house, we had to cover our hair,” Jo said. “Did you know that?”
“I did. Back home, too.” He let Jo take the hat off his head when she stood, and run her hand over his shorn scalp, glancing up at her with one eye, the other squinted shut to keep the sun from blinding him.
“Back home where?”
“Louisiane,” he answered, sweat pearling above his lip.
Jo didn’t mean for her hand to stay so long, but Yannick’s scalp almost looked discolored, pale when the rest of his skin was a plum brown.
“Louisiana?”
“Louisiana,” he repeated with a nod, his attention back on the small square of wood in one hand, and the whittling knife in the other. “It was law there. I thought here, too.”
“It may as well have been,” Jo said, sitting back down on the stack of wood intended for the home they were supposed to be building. She scratched absently at her scalp, as though the subject required it, and to reach it, she had to dig through the kerchief holding her hair off her neck like a cloth snood. “They were always either tugging at it, as though they’d never seen anything like it—despite the many of us constantly around—or they were feigning disgust, and declaring it unkempt.”
“Feigning,” Yannick repeated, as he did when he wanted a word defined.
“Pretending.”
“What makes you think they pretend?”
“Their insistence on having an opinion at all, I suppose. White people ponder us constantly, with a fixed attention I can hardly muster for anything that doesn’t bring me delight. I certainly wouldn’t have reason to give their hair such consideration when it has nothing to do with the quality of my life.”
“Yes, I see. Well,” Yannick said with a shrug. “Perhaps they feign, but now they pay for it.”
“They paid for your hair? Whatever for?”
“Wigs, for their actors.”
Jo opened her mouth to scoff, or to screed, she hadn’t decided which, but in the end she made a considering sound. “They’ll pay us for it now. What did I tell you? Feigned disgust. Well. If the heat won’t relent, I might just sell them mine. They’ll have enough for beards, and tufts, and anything else they can think to fashion.”
Yannick gave an amused snort and bobbed his head a few times to signal he’d like his straw hat put back, which Joanna did.
“Are the Carter brothers planning to bring back the nails to
day?” she said in exasperation after she and her friend had waited another half hour at least.
“They’re not coming,” Yannick answered matter-of-factly, as though he’d always known.
“What do you mean? That’s what we’re waiting for, isn’t it?”
“We’re waiting in case Madame Armentrout or one of her six comes to see about our progress. So they’ll know we are at our post, only the soldiers don’t give us what we need.”
Jo slumped, letting her back curve unbecomingly because neither Meg nor Mammy would bemoan what they did not see.
“I could be writing, if there are no more nails to be delivered and everyone else has gone to some other task.”
Yannick blew the dust and bits from his wood, and then took one of Jo’s hands and held it so he could see her discolored fingertips.
“It’s ink,” he said, as though she were unaware.
“Of course it’s ink,” she answered, yanking out of his grasp while he grinned.
“Wisdom and Honor thought you’d taken up berry picking. I told them no.”
“The Carters’ names proved too high a calling, and they’ve settled for making them satire instead.”
“I’ll tell them you think so.”
“No, you won’t.”
“No. Your English is too elegant to remember.”
“You can tell them in French, if you like.”
“They make fun.”
“Dullards,” Jo said, and Yannick grunted in agreement. After that the two sat in silence for a moment, too beset by the sun to speak too elegantly too often, in either language. “I fear I’ll die of heatstroke.”
“Let’s swim.”
“What about Madame Armentrout and her six children?”
“They have no house today. We’ll wait some more tomorrow, if it pleases them. We’ll curse the Union together tonight.”
“What’s tonight?”
“The reception, at your big house.”
“It isn’t—” Jo gave up explaining to Yannick that the big house had been a stop on their way to the Roanoke Colony, and not the site on which she and her family had lived their old life. Like the Carter boys, she only spoke one language, and not always well enough to clarify things to someone who spoke two. “What kind of reception?”
“A wedding. A man and woman arrived and they had only been married on a plantation, until they became free and met a vicar.”
“That’s lovely,” Jo said.
“You don’t care for marriage,” Yannick said, wiping the gleam from his broad nose.
“Perhaps not for myself,” she conceded, “but I care very much for those who cherish it. I’m glad they’ve been properly married, if they wanted to be.”
“Come,” he said, nudging her with his elbow.
“I don’t know them.”
“You know the big house. Anyway, they have no family, and they want many guests. Bring your sisters who do want to marry,” he said, and then laughed good-naturedly. “There are many new arrivals to the mainland on their way to this island, or as far as Ocracoke.”
Meg would like a party , Jo thought. If nothing else, it might distract her while she decided how to proceed with Joseph Williams. There was no question that Amy would love to dance, and it might lift Beth’s spirits, too.
“They’ve been cooking for at least a day,” Yannick remarked. “So come at least to eat. Food tastes better when it’s shared.”
“That sounds like something a brilliant mother makes small children believe when there’s not enough to go around.”
“My mother was brilliant, this is true.”
“It’s true what she taught you about food, too,” Jo said, and the two laughed. When they set out for the shore to swim, they ran to spite the sun.
* * *
“We shouldn’t attend parties when our father is at war,” Meg said firmly enough that it sounded like truth even to her excited sisters. They settled, and the sound of their giggling quickly turning to silence stung her. She had no desire to be the thing that stifled her sisters’ happiness, but she could not help the way she felt. “How can we celebrate when he is putting himself in harm’s way for our freedom?”
She’d voiced some opposition when Jo first told the family of the wedding reception, and had only grown more certain while putting on one of the petticoats Beth had discovered and repaired at the big house.
“Meg, it’s not as dire as all that. Try not to work yourself up.”
“This feels positively decadent, Mammy,” she replied, thrusting her arms out as though to showcase the puffed sleeves. “It doesn’t remind you of the elegant trappings the wealthy girl used to dress me up in? It’s worse, in fact. Wearing the clothes a woman probably lorded over her slaves in, as beautifully restored and creatively improved as Bethlehem’s work always is.” There were tears welling in her eyes, and they made the other March women heartsore and attentive.
“Whatever that girl dressed you in, you were always you, Meg. They took so much from us, why should wearing their clothes now bother you?” Jo asked, taking her sister’s elbow in hand.
“All of it does. Papa fighting on the side of men who only want to free us to cripple their southern neighbors, and who still abuse us in their own ways. All the Black men who come and then follow him and Joseph and General Wild to the front before they’ve had a chance to think what they might want from their newfound freedom. Everyone behaving as though it’s a privilege, when none of it seems fair! And us! Living in a house of our own when so few are being built, and so slowly, and my students huddle in barracks and tents, and if anyone is ill, it spreads like fire. Wearing beautiful clothes when there are fewer and fewer decent coverings for the Union to issue because of how many freedpeople there are, and so few proper colonies to host them.”
She would have gone on that way, perhaps all night, if Mammy hadn’t taken Meg’s face in her hands. They weren’t soft. Margaret March had known the field before her daughter taught her how to write years ago. She’d worked land before she kept records and wrote correspondences, as she was now paid to do. But had her hands been soft, her daughter might not have recognized their touch.
“You’re hurting because you’re a good woman, Meg,” Mammy said, looking her eldest in the eye and not leaving space enough for her to unravel any further. “That’s why you feel this way, so I won’t try and change your mind about some of it.”
Jo, Amy, and Beth looked on, having given their mother space to intervene, but curious what answer she could give.
“There’s space enough in this house for more people, to start with. We’ve enjoyed it on our own for a time, and your father would be pleased, but you’re right. There are so few homes, and too few tools to build them quickly. We can’t take them all in, but if I come into your room, there’s room for another family, at least.” Mammy lowered her chin, as though asking Meg what she thought of the suggestion.
“At least,” Meg answered between breaths still quicker than normal but that began to even.
“How exciting!” Amy exclaimed when she couldn’t wait any longer, and Meg’s lips caught her smile briefly.
“But Papa,” Meg began again.
“Papa has chosen to fight,” Mammy said, touching her face again. “And we must honor his decision, the way he honors ours. And we must go on enjoying the freedom that made him choose it. We mustn’t feel guilty when we feel beautiful, though I know that is a struggle you uniquely know. We mustn’t feel guilty, either, when we find ourselves laughing. Even in the old life, we confounded our captors with our spirit, with the joy we made together. Not because we approved of our enslavement, but because we are resilient people. We hide light in the darkest place, and when others think embers extinguished, we know how to breathe them back to life. And now we’re free.” Mammy’s chest expanded, and all her daughters found theirs doing the same. “Should we despair? Should Amy never dance?”
At the question, Amethyst bounced onto her toes and gave a twirl.
“Of course she should,” Meg said with a smile that lingered now.
“Should Beth not sew, and should you not teach? Should you both let talents that others profited by wither in disuse to prove you love your people? Should Jo not write her words down now that it is safe to, and now that you are teaching so many how to read them?”
“You said I must,” Jo said. “And you were right. And I’ve made a decision. If a reporter can solicit donations from the North with his writing, then I can do the same. Instead of waiting for the Union to provide us tools—and those often only being the ones they are willing to spare—I can start a newsletter of my own. I can write of life on Roanoke, in the Freedpeople Colony, and I can ask those true abolitionists to donate directly to the freedpeople, for the building of our homes.”
“Jo, that’s a wonderful idea!” Meg exclaimed.
“Then be excited,” she pleaded. “Let’s all of us be, at the ways we can help, and the life we’re living. It doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten Papa. We couldn’t. But we must be allowed to be excited, if we’re to make this country what it’s meant to be.”
“I’m excited,” Beth said. It was her first interjection, and it gathered her family’s attention. “I know I’ve caused you worry, not knowing why I’ve felt so poorly, but this is the best I’ve felt in weeks. I’m afraid I must insist on going with or without the rest of you.”
“Bethlehem!” Meg exclaimed.
“I’m going with you,” Amy said, and laced her arm through Beth’s.
“I’m going as well.” Jo laced her arm through the other.
“And me,” Mammy declared, taking Amy’s hand, and then they all stared back at the eldest daughter, knowing they wouldn’t leave her behind.
“Well, I won’t be left out,” she said to a collection of exclamations and praise. “Let us celebrate a stranger’s marriage as a family!”
VII
But for the youngest two, the March women rarely crossed the Croatan Sound. Manns Harbor was on the other side, opposite Roanoke, and could usually be seen not long after casting off in one of the many shallow draft vessels. These were manned by anyone who’d salvaged or built one, be they fisherman or folks as young as Amy. The night of the party, the sound was alight with half a dozen ferries at a time, each with its own lantern, held by a passenger or attached to a long stick. For all they knew, it looked very much like a flotilla determined to take the mainland, or the way the Union might have looked bombarding Roanoke Island—except that laughter bubbled up from each vessel. The partygoers’ mirth sounded quite at home on the water, which always sounded so cheerful when parted and churned by nets or oars or rudders. Once ashore, some were met with carts or horses, but more set out on foot, as the March family did.
So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix: 2 (Remixed Classics) Page 7