The flurry of coos and peek-a-boos quieted, and the sisters turned their attention to the missionary teacher still standing in their front room.
“Why?” Jo asked. It hadn’t been very long ago since Constance had spoken to Meg about Amy, in an attempt to add the youngest March to her classroom. Meg hadn’t asked the missionary teacher to mind her own business, but she had made clear that a thoughtful decision had already been made, and that Amy was a capable enough student to perform her studies at home. Jo hadn’t been there, but she wished she had seen Meg tell the woman no, even if pleasantly.
“It isn’t about schooling.” Constance made a stern wave of her hand, as though to ensure she’d not broach that subject again. “It’s something else.”
“Am I sick now as well?” Amy asked, her shoulders pinched high and her eyes wide.
“Of course not,” Constance replied quickly, and at the sight of Joanna March’s slight scowl, she clasped her hands together against her wide skirt and nearly curtseyed in apology. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. In fact, it’s something wonderful—at least I hope you all think so.”
“Tell us, then!” Amy demanded, already happy, and already convinced that this wonderful something would change her life entirely.
Both doors of the March house opened before Constance could begin, the front door as calmly as whenever Mammy returned home in the late afternoon, this time with Meg beside her, and the kitchen door as though blown open by a cyclone.
“Jo!” Lorie’s voice erupted into the space before he could reach the great collection of women, and he was nearly tumbling when he made it into the room.
“What is it?” she asked, beside him before her eldest sister and Mammy were even properly welcomed.
“Come and see,” he said between breaths, grabbing the hand she’d naturally extended to him.
“Have you run here from the shore?” she asked, laughing.
“Can’t you tell?” he answered, and then he pulled her back through the house, and out the kitchen door, the two of them a hurrying, raucous whirlwind that left a startling stillness in their sudden absence.
“They are chaos itself,” Amy said, shaking her head.
Meg said nothing, but she glanced discreetly between all who remained, to ensure they didn’t all look at her. She couldn’t say why she thought they would, or why the addition of two women who were not her sisters made her feel even more self-conscious over Jo’s romantic fortune.
“Was there news, Miss Evergreen?” Mammy asked, when she realized the white girl was still there.
“None pertaining to Bethlehem’s condition, as yet, Mrs. March. I only wish there were,” she said, and then pressed on before some other event could distract the family again. “But there was something else I’d hoped to discuss with you. Another way I might be of use to your girls. Amethyst, specifically.”
The young girl beamed, nearly trembling with excitement now that the attention was on her and Constance was preparing to describe the wonderful something she could sense.
“I have a sister myself,” Constance said, and she smiled warmly when she did. “Hortense.”
It was an awful name, Amy thought, but she didn’t let it distract her.
“She and I were given dance lessons from a very young age, though grace didn’t take with me, I’m afraid. I had to go in search of my purpose, but Hortense was something of a prodigy. She was a natural, and it isn’t just family who thinks so. She’s done quite well for herself, not just in New England, but abroad. She’s studied in Paris and further east, before returning to our home as a celebrated teacher and performer. I’m in awe of her, really. There are few who aren’t. She shepherded her very first student to a placement in London!”
Constance took a breath.
“Do forgive me,” she said self-consciously. “I don’t mean to be so excitable, it’s just that I’ve wanted to speak to you about Amy’s love of dance from the first day I saw the girl move.” Constance’s brow furrowed then. “I daresay it hadn’t occurred to me that negro children could be so naturally predisposed to something that I dedicated time and effort to.” She stopped abruptly, realizing how quiet the family had fallen. Her eyes widened as though the last confession only seemed improper now that it’d been spoken in their company.
The March women did not rescue her. They did not speak or smile to ease Constance’s palpable discomfort when their own had not been considered.
“I have learned a great many things since coming to the colony,” she said after a moment. “Chief among which, I think, is that it is impossible to know what people are capable of until they are free. It will be hard work, of course. To truly succeed as a dancer, one requires diligence and sacrifice, of course, but more than that, Hortense has convinced me that there must be an irresistible tenaciousness. It’s that tenacity and adventurous spirit that made me at first want to teach Amethyst myself, I now realize. It’s why I’m convinced that she should go. That she must.”
Mammy’s arm curled around her youngest daughter before she felt herself move. “That Amy should go where?”
“To Massachusetts,” Constance answered through an exhale. She felt a weight was lifted, having finally shared her conviction with the family. “To Boston.”
Amy’s mouth gaped, and her eyes sparkled back at Constance.
“Dear me,” Beth said, hardly above a whisper.
“Why should Amy go to Boston?” Mammy asked.
“Why?” Constance echoed, the bridge of her nose wrinkling before she willed her face to ease. “To study under my sister, at her dance school. I think she must.”
“I think so, too!” Amy exclaimed, and Mammy turned.
“Quiet, child,” she said sharply before returning her attention to the missionary teacher. “Who are you to think what we must or mustn’t do?”
Constance’s brow curled again, the pale skin around her eyes already tight because of her taut hairstyle now looking pained.
“My husband built the house you’re standing in, Miss Evergreen,” Mammy continued, “and he means to find us here when he returns from war. And he will. The Marches don’t mean to move north, not now and not when the fighting’s done. Our place is in Roanoke, and Amy will dance here, if she must.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest the family move north, Mrs. March,” Constance said quickly, seeing with some surprise that the idea was as offensive to the woman as it was to those back home. “I meant just Amy. And only to study.”
“Yes!” Amy exclaimed again, this time with an involuntary bounce.
“Hush,” Meg said this time. “Constance, my sister may be clever and tenacious, as you say, but she’s also a child. Perhaps she wasn’t in the old life, but we’ve decided that she will be for as long as we can sustain it. You can’t think my mother would send her away at such a young age. To a strange city, no less.”
“To Boston,” Constance insisted, as though she could not see where she was going wrong. “It’s one of the most accomplished cities in the nation, and perhaps the world. There’s hardly cause to think it strange, in fact. It’s perfectly safe in Boston—”
“For you.” Meg silenced her at last. “It’s perfectly safe for you in Boston. You’ve no idea what it would be for her. And having received a valuable education yourself since coming to Roanoke, I trust you’ll forgive us that we could never take it on your authority that our fourteen-year-old Black child would be well cared for, as she’s accustomed to being.”
There was so much more that Meg wanted to say, so much more that she would say, if she had Beth’s calm, or Amy’s tenacity, or Jo’s courage.
She would speak of the audacity it required and of the utter inconsideration on display when one stood before a Black mother and told her that her child must go anywhere without her. Brutal people had done it to the enslaved for centuries, and though Constance Evergreen did not look brutal, and though she was no enslaver or auctioneer, neither had that wealthy Southern girl been who’d stood b
efore Meg and callously proclaimed her intention to steal her away from her family. Meg didn’t want to be reminded of it, only here Constance was, conjuring up the same image and the same heart-stopping fear, all while seeming so elated and self-satisfied. All while expecting immediate gratitude, because she did not know what it felt like to be on the receiving end of those words, and she never would.
It seemed there was no age or gender among white folk that made them take care with Black people, or understand when they were causing them pain.
Meg said none of it, the way she knew she wouldn’t.
Lorie had stolen Jo away, so she wouldn’t say it, either, in far more impacting and impressive words, and Meg tried not to abuse herself for what would go unsaid, especially when Amy was already crying.
The youngest March girl had made up her mind to go, even if Boston were on the other side of hell, but as the beloved child in a family, she was acutely aware that very little was up to her. She felt on the verge of hysterics and only holding her breath kept it at bay. It wouldn’t do. Mammy wouldn’t be swayed, for one thing, and it would be a terrible display and reflection on her mother to do so in front of a white woman, familiar missionary teacher or not. Amethyst could only stay inside the arms Mammy had protectively clenched around her and silently weep while Beth and Ella looked on, Ella cuddling Baby Fanny close.
When Amy had daughters, if ever she did, she would let them do exactly as they wished, she promised herself.
“I fear I’ve said this all wrong. I would escort her myself,” Constance pleaded on the girl’s behalf. “I’ve already written to Hortense about her, and my sister has agreed to waive the entirety of the fee, if Amy lives in the dormitory, and helps with the wash from time to time—”
“My child will not be a washerwoman,” Mammy interjected, sternly and with finality. “She will be a child.”
“But she wishes to be a dancer,” Beth said at last. “She can be a child and a dancer, can’t she?”
“She can dance in Roanoke.” Mammy didn’t look away from Constance in answering her daughter, but one of her shoulders slipped low.
“Or,” Beth said, in her gentle way, “she could be taught, in Boston. Where none of us has ever been able to go.”
“We don’t all wish to move away,” Meg said.
“But perhaps, given the opportunity, we won’t all wish to stay.” Beth looked from Meg to Mammy, her face bearing an open expression that no one could think combative or unsympathetic. She did not mistake her mother’s justified concern for ignorance or anger, as Constance seemed to. If anything, she thought the teacher very slow to learn. She repeatedly made requests concerning Amy, whether to teach her personally or to whisk her away where someone else in her family could. She might not have seen the organized institution of slavery, but being from the North did not mean that Constance Evergreen was a different kind of white woman. Beth—and indeed all Black people—had seen the kind of benevolent attentiveness that made them projects or pets, and either way they were less than autonomous people, and as ever expected to perform.
To Constance’s good fortune, Beth was capable of overlooking the familiar motive in favor of considering the wishes of her little sister, and so she said to her mother and eldest sister, “Wouldn’t this new life be glorious if we were each allowed a wish of our own?”
Amy lifted her chin and looked through a curtain of tears at Beth’s face.
“I’ll escort her,” Bethlehem said. “I’ll make sure she’s looked after, and I will be the washerwoman, if it means Amy can learn new ways to dance.”
The room was still for a moment, Constance and Amy holding their breath while Beth’s suggestion calmed her mother.
“You’re good to her, Bethlehem,” Meg said. “No one could ever question that. But you must know having both her youngest gone would break Mammy’s heart. I think suggesting it has done enough to convince us both that perhaps it must be considered, for Amy’s sake.”
Meg looked at her mother to confirm her suspicion, and Mammy laid her fingers across her own lips.
“I can’t take you,” Meg told Amy. “I have students of my own, and work to do here. And besides being young, Beth isn’t always well.”
“But Jo…” Amy followed her eldest sister’s thinking, interjecting in a voice that squeaked as though it had been previously trapped. She spun in her mother’s arms, her eyes pleading with Mammy. Meg looked, too, though she could feel Beth’s thoughtful gaze on her.
“Jo’s pen might’ve taken her north anyway,” Meg said. “Her writing is a credit to the colony, but perhaps there are possibilities for her work beyond our community’s needs.” She drew in a steadying breath so that she did not glance at Bethlehem. “And you wouldn’t need to worry over them, if her Lorie went as well.”
“They aren’t married, Meg,” Mammy said, but her voice was too soft to be chiding.
“I only meant he could escort them both,” she clarified. “And perhaps there is work he might do there, too?” Meg raised a brow at Constance, and the woman reanimated.
“I’m sure there is. I’ll see to it at once, if it means you’ll consider letting Amethyst go,” she said, inclining her head toward Mrs. March and tightening her clasped hands as though in fervent prayer.
Mammy looked from Meg to Beth and, finally, to her youngest daughter, Amy.
“I suppose there’s no harm asking if the boy could do some work. If he’d even agree to go.”
“He belongs to Jo,” Meg said, and she tried to lace some measure of sweetness around the words. “And Jo adores her baby sister. She’ll want to go,” she promised Amy, “and he is sure to follow.”
She smiled then, though her heart pinched. The smile wasn’t broad or bright, but it held until Constance Evergreen had said her goodbyes, and Meg could slip into the kitchen to see to supper.
* * *
Jo and Lorie had not gone a day outside each other’s company since the reception. He’d taken to working some portion of the week with Jo, building houses in the village. Whatever his tasks had been before their meeting, they must have fallen to someone else. He didn’t abandon his mother, and when he came to Roanoke he was sometimes later reaching the island than he’d hoped or left sooner than he would’ve liked so that he could be of use to her. Though he lent himself to work on their behalf, he was gracious in refusing things from the colony when they were offered, since rations and clothing were only supplied to those who lived on the freedpeople’s site. Those living at the big house or other confiscated and otherwise unofficially inhabited places had to fend for themselves, and Lorie insisted he was capable of doing so.
“There isn’t any need for that. Why not bring your mother and live here now?” Jo had asked days ago.
“Because I don’t have a mind to,” Lorie’d answered, and Jo had to stop her work so that she didn’t smash her thumb with the mallet.
“She’ll swear she misheard him,” Honor Carter quipped from his seat on the frame above their heads, guffawing so as to get his brother’s attention. Wisdom had taken to self-conscious quiet around Jo since dancing with her sister, and he gave his brother a half smile, but otherwise pretended not to overhear. “I never thought I’d see such a look on your face. You honest-to-God didn’t think he could refuse you, Joanna. I’ll be. Maybe you should have kept to Yann after all.”
“Careful,” Yannick said, making an offending gesture at the young man whose long legs dangled overhead. When it wasn’t enough to quell Honor’s laughter, Yannick lifted his mallet as though reminding the young man that he had one.
“Careful, says the French boy with the broken heart,” Honor shot back, through a laugh. “Don’t feel bad, Yann, until this fellow came along, we thought she despised all men, not just you.”
“You can’t help but disparage the name your mother gave you, Honor,” Jo said, putting a snide emphasis on it. “What an embarrassment it’ll be if my sister is fool enough to love your dog, let alone your kin. I pray God send J
oseph Williams back to Roanoke and spare my family the shame. He could lose three limbs and still be more a man than any Carter. Or did you think one dance was all it took to woo a March?”
It hadn’t been what Jo intended to say. She’d meant to defend her friend’s reputation by explaining that Yannick had never wanted more from her than friendship, and that he suffered no broken heart on her account. She’d meant then to ignore Honor Carter completely and finish the conversation he’d interrupted with his dim wit, but there were only so many times she could hear the same ridicule or suffer the same insults just because she was not more like her eldest sister. It hadn’t occurred to her to dispute the insinuation around her and Lorie, as Lorie was the only person on earth who needed to understand their bond, and, happily, he did.
It didn’t matter what she’d intended, though, because Wisdom Carter heard what she said instead. He didn’t lift his head, he just made a kind of stutter step, as though unsure how to walk away. When he did manage to leave, it was with an awkward gait, and under the watchful gaze of young men he’d have to see the next day and the next. His brother swung his leg over a beam and leapt down from the frame, scowling at Jo before following.
Yannick shook his head without saying at what or whom, but went back to his work, and Jo was left with a certainty that she hadn’t overreacted, but that the precision of her counter would always overshadow an impotent attack.
Now, days later, Lorie half led and half pulled her to the shore, and Jo recalled the way the conversation had begun that day at the build.
“Just tell me your news!” she exclaimed when they finally slowed, Lorie collapsing forward so that his chin nearly met his chest, his hands on his knees. “Have you changed your mind? Will you bring your mother to the island?”
“What? Of course not,” he said, shaking his head while his breath escaped him in quick bursts.
She looked at him quizzically, raising her hands as if to question either why not or what else it could be.
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