“I feel a persistent … tension,” she told Mammy while they waited for Jo, Beth, and Amy to return from the mainland.
“What do you mean? About what?” her mother asked through a relieved sigh. “One day, the white folk will leave this colony, and I pray we shall all wear comfortable flat skirts, even outside the home. What a joy not to have every solitary aspect of our appearance used to judge and determine our civility, as though I could not keep a ledger without that hoop.”
After a moment of simply enjoying the discarded weight, Mammy looked over at her daughter and smiled apologetically.
“I’m sorry, Meg, what were you telling me? A tension, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“Where do you feel it? In what regard?”
“I’m afraid it’s corrupting everything,” Meg answered, and her mother grew serious. “I know that’s a terribly strong way to phrase it, but I don’t know any other way. I wonder if I’m a proper adult yet, and then I wonder if I only wonder because I’m not engaged. You must be an adult once you’re engaged, mustn’t you?”
“I suppose so,” Mammy answered, but she didn’t look adequately contemplative and Meg worried she was only placating her.
“But engagement can’t be the thing that makes someone an adult. I feel far from it, no matter how much I dream of being married, and that doesn’t stop me feeling that same tension in other things.”
“Meg,” Mammy said, taking her daughter’s hands and making her sit beside her on the bed. “Tell me what you mean.”
“Now I’ve started talking before I’m sure I even know how,” the young woman answered with a sigh. “Why don’t my sisters ask me to go to the mainland with them?”
“They left before you were home from teaching, darling, that’s all.”
“But they always do. Is there too great a distance between us now? Is it just that they find me boring, and being too grown up has nothing to do with it? They adore Lorie, for one thing, and he’s the same age as me. But he’s so fun and funny…”
“I think I understand.” Mammy took her by the arm now, and it made Meg look up into her eyes. “I know it feels like you’re in a strange, in-between place, darling. I promise you, we all are, being free but with the war that made us so still ongoing.”
“Is it just the war?” Meg interjected.
“I don’t think war is a matter of ‘just.’ War splits the world in two, into a time before, and a time after, and then there’s the time in between, when you’re living through it. How can you separate yourself and your mind from that tension, to know whether you’d be feeling it otherwise? Of course, there’s the bits that are just a part of growing up, but you’re going through so much more, Meg. You must be gentle with yourself.”
“Am I still a child if I want nothing more than for you to make it all make sense for me?” Meg said, letting a whimper escape her lips when she laid her head on her mother’s shoulder.
“Oh, dear heart.” Mammy laid her hand against Meg’s soft hair. “I don’t think anyone has ever gone through a moment such as this before, changing over while the world does the same. You’re blossoming with freedom, and I am so envious of you. But I’m so sorry that it means I don’t always know how to help.”
“Mammy. You always help. Just you.”
The two sat together that way for a little while, Mammy swaying very gently without realizing, because her arms remembered rocking beautiful baby girls many years before.
“I don’t want to outgrow my sisters,” Meg admitted quietly, and before Mammy could respond, a door opened elsewhere in the house and welcome voices spilled down the hall. Both women smiled as they righted themselves and went to greet them.
When a deeper voice bellowed along with her sisters’, Meg hesitated. She was only happy her mother walked in front of her so that she didn’t see. Meg was surprised then, when Mammy turned and gave her a gentle look. Her mother might not know how to help her traverse the transition before her, but she still knew so much.
“Will he always be around from now on?” Meg asked, in something more like confession.
“I think so, darling,” Mammy said, and then pulled Meg into a hug so that she could whisper, “Lorie may be Jo’s, but Jo is still yours.”
As though in reply, Joanna barreled into the two women, throwing her arms around them to join their embrace. Meg smiled when her sister’s hands clawed at her arms, as though with Mammy between them, Jo could not get close enough to her. Before long, Beth came, too, meeting them in the hall just outside the girls’ bedroom and attaching herself to the side, where she could touch all three of the others.
“Me, too,” Amy said, skipping away from Lorie and then dropping to her hands and knees. “But I’m the youngest,” she almost shouted, while she pried the huddle of legs apart to make space for her to climb into the center of them. “So I should be in the middle!”
When she stood, she was at the heart of the hug, and Mammy and Meg laughed, kissing her cheek when she presented it.
“Who could have foreseen Amethyst needing to be at the center of something?” Jo quipped, poking her baby sister’s cheek with an outstretched tongue when offered it to kiss.
“Jo!” Amy shrieked. “Heathen.” And then she extended her neck, forcing Mammy to strain out of the way without breaking the huddle so that she could collect a kiss from Beth as well.
IX
October 1863
“You’ve said very little of your correspondence with the Association,” Beth told Constance Evergreen on the occasion of her latest visit. The young missionary teacher had returned periodically to the March home despite her lack of progress in finding answers about Beth’s condition, and while Bethlehem didn’t want to make the other young woman feel unwelcomed, she did wonder why.
“I’m sorry,” Constance said as she bounced a gorgeous brown baby on her knee in the front room of the March home. “I know I haven’t been as much help as either of us would have hoped.”
Constance looked up at the third young woman in the room, a dark-skinned girl named Ella who wore colorful fabric over her hair. The baby was named Fanny, and she belonged to Ella, who Constance glanced toward in case at her admission the mother would reclaim her child.
As promised, Mammy had invited another family to come into the home. Ella was a mother, but she was only about Meg’s age, and it was her father and not Fanny’s who had accompanied them into the March home. The old man’s name was Orange, and he spent much of his time taking long solitary constitutionals around the island and, according to passersby, looking out at the water as though he expected that a ship might come in. Old men were allowed an oddity or two, Ella said, especially those who’d only had the freedom to walk long distances after a lifetime of backbreaking labor that warped their legs.
Ella didn’t demand her child back from Constance, likely because Beth had given the little girl one of her fingers so that she didn’t fuss while Constance held her, and just now Bethlehem was smiling at the baby’s great big dark eyes. Instead, Ella turned and opened the window shutter so that the little darling could feel the crispness of the air, now that the summer had burned away and fall was in full swing.
“It isn’t that I don’t appreciate your concern, Miss Evergreen,” Beth said. “It’s very apparent. And perhaps you’re as engaged by the mystery as I am.”
“It is mysterious. My letters about you probably seem too impassioned, but it is so difficult to understand when even the symptoms I myself have observed wane.” Constance looked at Beth suddenly, her eyes wide with concern. “Don’t misunderstand, I’m always pleased to see you return to your bright and upbeat self for weeks at a time, but I’m not when…” She trailed off.
“Please,” Beth coaxed her. “You mustn’t worry about discretion on Ella’s behalf. She studies me as closely as anyone else does, and nothing you say will be news to me.”
“I know your family must be devastated each time you succumb again to aches and pa
in and fatigue, and none of us know why,” Constance acknowledged. “Sometimes, Beth, it seems we could forget you’ve ever fainted, or clutched your chest suddenly, or spent a day or more at a time in bed. Except…”
“Except that it happens again. And except, I suppose, for the bruises,” Beth said softly, speaking of the marks she occasionally found while changing out of her clothes. She didn’t mention the dark circles under her eyes, though she could always tell when Constance or one of her sisters were trying not to see them. “Had you worried that perhaps I was only pretending to be ill?”
Only Beth could ask such a question kindly, when if true, it meant Constance had accused her of something terrible, even if only in her mind.
“I can say, before God, Bethlehem, that I never have.” And then her glance ticked away, first toward Ella, then as though she’d caught sight of some distraction on the other side of her chair, and Beth knew something she might otherwise never have been told.
“But the Association does.”
Constance looked back at her immediately, and then she lowered her chin a bit as though in apology. When she remembered to bounce Baby Fanny again, she nodded.
“I’m sorry, Bethlehem, I’d no intention of ever telling you. I was certain if I kept a more detailed log of your symptoms and your ailments, we might stumble upon a pattern that the Association can make sense of.”
“Are they God, that it must make sense to them or else be written off?”
“I’m embarrassed on their behalf, I must admit,” Constance said, though it was obvious that Beth was not upset. “They’ve stopped offering any advice but that I consider the behavior attention seeking, and that if I am unconvinced of it, that I should fervently continue in prayer for discerning. Which, if I’m honest, has begun to feel like a judgment in itself.
“I’m sorry, Bethlehem,” she continued, “if I’ve said too much. It does frustrate me, and I’m beginning to wonder whether it wouldn’t just serve them right to have Joanna catch wind of their behavior and write about it in her monthly newsletter. It’s reached some of the Association’s own readership, I hear.”
“Have you read Jo’s writing?” Beth asked, enlivening at the mention of her sister’s talent, because it mattered a great deal more to her than the very unsurprising machinations of any organization of white folk.
“Not personally,” Constance admitted. “But I’ve heard that her pen is sharp.”
Beth nodded, knowing the young woman would not carry on. She’d grown freer in Beth’s company, confessing the hypocrisies and shortcomings of her organization. But perhaps because she was from the North, Constance would never divulge precisely how they spoke about Black people amongst themselves. Beth knew well enough anyway, and what she didn’t know by hearing, she could guess at.
If they didn’t think her mysterious illness wholly imaginary, they surely posited it was a side effect of the laziness many missionary teachers felt must be confronted before freedpeople were to benefit from liberty.
If they thought Jo’s pen sharp, they likely thought it too sharp. They would rumor that her tone did not always reflect the gratitude expected of a freedperson—but perhaps that was also why the subscription list was growing so quickly. That, and the fact that little fault could be found with the newsletter being provided free of charge, allowing all donations to reflect the benevolence and genuine philanthropy of the benefactors.
“How have you felt this week?” Constance asked, to redirect the conversation and move away from what might be considered impolite chatter.
“Very well,” Beth said, nodding, too, because she’d become accustomed to offering small confirming gestures in addition to her word.
“If she were seeking attention,” Ella said, and because she had never interjected in Constance’s presence before, the missionary teacher looked as cautiously at the new young woman as she had when she’d been allowed to hold her child. “Or rather, if your association thinks she is, wouldn’t Bethlehem conflict her assurances somehow? I’m sure I’ve heard that even some Northerners think Black folk wily and mischievous. Instead of professing her good health on the days she’s well, wouldn’t they expect her to make her family probe and pry for information with slight insinuations that she’s merely putting on a brave face?”
“That is a very reasonable point, Ella,” Constance said. “I’ll mention it in my next letter. And”—she turned to Beth again— “in the meantime, there’s still no pattern you can see?”
“No. If nothing else, my new condition keeps me in a state of surprise.”
“You must be joking,” Constance said. “Not even you can be expected to find the good in something that’s devastated your life in some ways.”
“It’s an interesting thing to have happen, though, isn’t it?” Beth asked with a soft smile. “And if interesting things must happen, I’d like at least a few of them to happen to me.”
“I wouldn’t mind it being less interesting, in just this one regard. Do keep on taking the cod liver oil for now, Bethlehem,” Constance encouraged.
“It’s a small improvement, if it is one,” Beth confessed to both Constance and Ella without looking away from Baby Fanny. “But small improvements make for great impact, I suppose, if there are enough of them.”
“Bless your grateful heart, Bethlehem,” Constance said. “It isn’t often one is as natural to exaltation as you are. I aspire to it, truly.”
“Only focus on what’s been done for you, and not to you, I think. I wish that I could do it more often, but Jo’s writing has sometimes given me food for thought on the matter.”
“What do you mean?” Constance asked.
Beth paused for a moment, wondering if her present company were appropriate for sharing these particular thoughts. Ella would more than understand, of course, so there was no concern there. It was Constance. The young woman was kind, but in a world where some could afford it without sacrifice, kindness was not enough. Beth had gotten to know the young woman a bit better than her sisters had, though, and while Meg and Jo were understandably standoffish with the missionary teacher, Beth had hope for her. Simply being in the colony was not proof of sacrifice or right motives, both her older sisters had pointed out after the unfortunate matter of Constance speculating on what might be best for Amy’s education. Beth believed, though, that regardless who she’d been when she’d arrived, Constance Evergreen was changed by being here. That was a good sign.
There was a very good chance that Constance would not understand what Beth said next, but—if nothing else—she would at least hear it. Mammy often read the Bible to her and Amy, and it said that there are some who plant seeds, and others who water them. It gave Beth a peace in doing good. Whatever someone’s immediate response, there was always a chance that later, they would be elsewhere nurtured, and though she would have no way of knowing, it meant that Beth’s investment would not have been in vain.
“Do you think, then, that there is ever cause to focus on what one has suffered?” Constance asked.
“The Christian Recorder wrote of Jo’s latest newsletter,” Beth began thoughtfully.
“They even published an excerpt!” Ella said.
“They did, and in it, Jo wrote of the gratitude that’s been stolen from those who must themselves keep the offenses against them in mind. That damage that is done when, because of the guilty party’s refusal to acknowledge their crimes, the offended must keep a record and remind them.” Beth paused a beat, and then concluded, “As Blacks in this country will, if all the nation does not repent of the great sin of slavery.”
“And,” Constance began timidly, “do you agree?”
“I do. When something is true, one has little choice.”
Constance looked out the open window shutters, her knee settling and the quiet baby with it. Through it, she watched Amy March leap in front of her sister, Jo, and then whimsically glide across the avenue, her arms extended, one behind and one in front of her.
“Can so
mething be true if it contradicts the scripture?” Constance remarked. “Love keeps no record of wrongs, and we are called to love our neighbors.”
The missionary teacher was fortunate it was this March sister she spoke to. Beth was not indelibly good or impossibly pure the way some needed to think she was to excuse that they could be like her if they were willing to give up certain vices, but she was patient. She wasn’t often taken aback by failures, in herself or others. It was perhaps not a character trait as often recognized as her others, but she did not expect perfection in others, and it meant she was able to conceive of people ending up far from where they’d begun. It was a gift no one deserved, and that made it easier for Bethlehem to offer to all.
“It’s difficult to let those who held the scripture hostage and warped it to justify enslavement and treachery stand as authorities on its meaning. I don’t mean to imply that there isn’t a true and certain meaning, but it will rarely be championed by the same people who distorted it in their favor.”
If Constance could fathom how to reply, she didn’t share it with Beth and Ella, which was best.
“If we were loved by our neighbors, there’d be no record to keep, after all,” Bethlehem said, in the graceful way that perhaps only she could. “Jo’s talent has illumined many a simple phrasing that I once took for granted, and I’m glad to apply my storied gratitude to her for that.”
She smiled and opened her arms to Fanny, who leaned forward into them, and Constance gave the child over. When the front door opened, the missionary teacher stood.
“Good day, Joanna. Hello, Amethyst.”
“Constance,” Jo said with a nod, and then opened her mouth wide toward Baby Fanny in an excited salutation.
“I’ve just been visiting with Bethlehem,” Constance said while the three March sisters greeted Ella and then fawned over her child, taking turns kissing or nuzzling her neck without taking her from Beth’s lap. Constance waited a moment, but no one seemed to notice that she hadn’t taken her leave. “I’d hoped to visit with your mother, as well, and Amethyst.”
So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix: 2 (Remixed Classics) Page 11