“You haven’t upset me at all. If anything, perhaps I’m confused. I thought this Liberia place was the hope of former enslavers and Yankees who wish the predicament of Black folk to disappear. I didn’t know there were any of us who wished to go there, of our own accord. But I admit I’ve had very little education on the matter.” Beth laid her hand across her friend’s and lifted the pamphlet with her other. “I’m happy to have my ignorance cured, if this writing will do it.”
“Thank you, Beth. It would mean a great deal to me.”
Whatever the two might’ve said beyond that was interrupted by a frustrated Amy stomping back into the bedroom and closing the door.
“I am quite old enough to be included in delicate conversations, I think,” she said before hurling herself onto her sisters’ bed. She’d immediately let her face fall into the blanket and then brought it back up with a start to say, “I’ll be studying dance in Boston, for heaven’s sake, and I should like to be treated with some amount of trust and concern, which isn’t too much to ask, at all.”
She received only blinking stares in return for all her exasperation, and the girl threw her face back into the blanket and huffed.
Mammy had followed Amy as far as the hall outside the bedroom door to ensure the child had gone out of earshot, and now she returned to Meg and Joanna waiting in the kitchen.
“Please tell us if something’s happened to Papa,” Jo said when she could wait no longer.
“Your Papa’s well, darling. I didn’t mean to make you worry over him,” Mammy assured her, touching her second daughter’s arm and speaking in hushed tones to them both.
Meg held her mother’s gaze with an urgent look. “But you’ve heard from him, haven’t you? And you sent Amy away so that she wouldn’t hear what he said in his letter. What has Papa said, Mammy?” she asked.
“It’s what I told your father, girls, not what he’s written back.”
“Please, Mammy, my stomach is a tangled mess.” Jo crossed her arms against her abdomen as though that might alleviate the anxious discomfort.
“I’m sorry, girls, I haven’t meant to drag this out, or make you worry. I just don’t know quite how to say it. And I don’t know what to believe.”
At the sight of their mother’s despondent expression, both Meg and Jo quieted their insisting. Whatever Mammy had gathered them to say, and whyever she’d not read aloud their father’s latest letter, there was something she’d been worrying over in secret well before tonight. That on its own warranted attention, though she wouldn’t ask for it. She was a mother of four daughters, and wife to a man gone to war; Margaret March deserved attending, too.
“Are you all right, Mammy?” Meg asked, and touched her mother’s face the way the woman had comforted her so many times before. “Is there some way Jo or I can help?”
“I don’t know. I feel my worry can’t be real, it couldn’t possibly be, and I’m not sure I want to pass it on to you. Even if it turns out to be.” The woman gasped a little then and covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes closing for a moment so that both her daughters understood just how troubled their mother had become.
“We’re the oldest,” Jo told Mammy. “Meg and I aren’t children anymore, not really. Childhood may be something we can insist upon for Amethyst, but I would rather share your burdens than be spared it while you carry them alone, Mammy. And Meg feels the same.”
When Mammy looked between the two, her eyes welled with tears, and then she finally confessed what she’d written to their father weeks ago.
“I’ve heard the officers discussing Corinth,” she began, and Meg felt as though her heart went cold.
Inside her chest, it was just like the bitter night when the southern wind had carried a chill few had ever experienced. It was strange and unexpected, especially for autumn, as it had been then. Meg had been a young child, or else she would have hated herself for the way she longed to be inside. Not inside the shack where her family slept that night, huddled together under a dilapidated roof with too few boards to keep the cold away. When her two younger sisters were already asleep, Meg had squeezed her eyes shut while her teeth chattered and wished that the terrible little rich girl who lived inside the house would wake up in tears, and someone would be sent to retrieve Meg. She would have to get up and walk down the hard gravel of the driveways between the shack and the big house, and then cross dew-soaked grass, which would make her small feet even colder—but at least after that, someone would use thick, plush towels to dry her and then they’d put one of those nightdresses on her and make her climb into a bed so large it could’ve fit the wealthy Southern girl’s whole family, too.
No one had come for her until morning, and Meg had passed the entire night awake and aware of how little the rich girl cared for her, despite what the family would say. When the family began to hastily pack a carriage with as many of their prized possessions as they could, and no one rode a horse up and down the length of the field to ensure the work was done, it was years after that cold night. Meg had stood a safe distance away while the father oversaw his wife and daughter’s hurried departure, the only pause when the wealthy girl caught sight of Meg and reached for her. She’d expected Meg to run into her arms. To leave her family and choose the wealthy girl’s, or else to weep at the abrupt end to their lifelong pairing.
There were men in gray uniforms there that day, as the wealthy girl and her mother were swept away for safekeeping, though only a few. They did nothing to stop the Marches or anyone else from slipping through the fields and away from the place. The soldiers were readying themselves, though they proved ill-prepared for the Union’s arrival.
The Confederates had returned.
That was what Mammy would say.
Their hideous gray had overtaken the Mississippi colony, and the Union had been beaten, and the tide of the war had turned, and freedom was at an end.
In the moments between Mammy’s words, Meg saw everything she’d escaped, and worse, spilling into their colony and claiming them back. She saw the wealthy girl reaching for her, and though Meg had already lived it once before, she had not thought to live in fear of the old life returning. Now Mammy must be preparing to tell her that it had.
She was a silly girl, indeed. There’d been no need to worry over Joseph Williams, or Wisdom Carter, or whether it was indiscreet to dance with one man while corresponding with another. The worries that had dominated her thinking vanished, made too small to matter by recalling that but for the one of them who’d been permitted—forced—to take lessons with a terror of a wealthy Southern child, it had been prohibited not so long ago to write letters at all.
“Mammy,” Jo said breathlessly, and she seemed to fall back a step, steadying herself on the stove behind her.
Meg looked at her sister, who turned her incredulous gaze away from the nothingness of the middle distance to meet her. Meg had been swallowed up in her terrible thoughts. She hadn’t heard a word of what her mother disclosed to them. She only knew by Jo’s reaction that it was terrible enough to match her fears.
“What is it?” she asked her sister.
“Haven’t you heard her?”
Mammy’s hand was in front of her mouth again, tears already on her face. She could not repeat the words.
“Jo, what did she say!”
“They’re going to undo Corinth.” Joanna’s voice was gravelly at the end, as though it was suddenly difficult for her to speak, or as though the tears that did not well in her eyes must have lodged in her throat.
“The Confederates,” Meg whispered when she lacked the breath to give the words volume.
“No, Meg. The Union.” Jo took their mother in her arms so that the stove could support both their weight. “The Union is going to evacuate the colony when the troops there are called away.”
For a moment Jo studied her sister, trying to find something in Meg’s unresponsive eyes, before she gave up and watched her own arms tighten around their mother, pressing her face again
st Mammy’s hair.
“That’s what the officers say, at least. It’s what Mammy’s been overhearing while she works.”
“But”—Meg turned her chin as though she might shake her head, but didn’t—“Corinth makes a profit.”
That was the pride of the Union and freedpeople alike. Corinth had become a proper town, cultivating hundreds of acres of farmland, earning thousands of dollars each month. It was nothing if not a remarkable success. And it was home to so many freedpeople, to wives and families of Black men who now served in the Union army.
“But why? If it’s true at all,” Meg insisted. The cold in her chest seemed at last to shrink, smothered by a heat she was unaccustomed to, and it allowed her voice to lift, and for her limbs to reanimate, though she couldn’t think what to do with them. When she gestured, they were jerking movements that betrayed the depth of her frustration. “Then why ? Why would they dismantle such a labor, simply because the army is deploying somewhere else? Why? When so many have made it their home?”
Jo couldn’t help but think of Lorie, and everything he’d said the night he’d kissed her. As always, she was almost sure he was with her, even when he wasn’t, and when she spoke next, it was in agreement with him.
“Because they have no more respect for our labor than the Confederacy does,” she whispered bitterly.
“It can’t be true,” Mammy said, almost too softly to hear. “It can’t be. Where would we go?”
At the question, the cold that had threatened Meg’s heart returned, infesting Joanna as well. Because that was the great terror, if the news was true. If Corinth was profitable and had been written of and lauded by Northerners and abolitionists as a wonder and a prime example of what freed Blacks could build once their citizenship in this nation was instated properly …
If Corinth could be remarkable and then callously disassembled … evacuated …
Then so could Roanoke Island’s Freedpeople Colony.
“If it’s true,” Jo said, grounding her older sister with the declarative tone she used. “A rumor—even one passed around among soldiers—is only a rumor. Right? It isn’t gospel truth simply because it’s conveyed by men.”
“If it’s true at all,” Meg replied, and she nodded, her voice working toward steadying.
“If it’s true,” Jo continued, “it isn’t true tonight, at least. Corinth is still an example. It is still an operating and profitable farm, and town, and home to freedpeople who’ve carved pride out of their new freedom.”
Despite the way Meg had envied her confidence and conviction lately, Jo’s clarity anchored her now. She nodded again, and kept her sister’s gaze as though everything depended upon it, even if it only seemed to. That Jo was here beside her when she heard what might be terrifying news did make all the difference.
Jo stopped speaking before the more difficult words could scuttle free. Because at news of Corinth’s potential fate, she had to wonder whether their success wasn’t part of the problem, even for the Union. If there wasn’t something undesirable about how quickly Blacks could accomplish the unexpected, once the chains were removed. She hadn’t thought to worry what impression their triumphs would make, their happiness and productivity, until now.
She could not help but meditate on it while her older sister went into the backyard to fetch their mother some water.
“What did Papa say?” Meg asked their mother upon returning. Mammy had regained her composure enough to stand on her own, though once she’d had something to drink, she held one of her daughters’ hands in each of her own.
“He sends his prayers, and a promise. That he’ll come home at the first possibility, and see that our home is not disturbed, regardless of how the Union effort moves on and away. And he says to send you and Amy on to Boston.”
“Mammy, how could we leave now?” Jo argued, dropping her voice when it threatened to raise too much.
“Bethlehem was right. We must all pursue each new opportunity,” Mammy said, and then she drew in a shaking breath. “Especially now, when we aren’t sure anything is certain. I want nothing more than to have all my children close to me, all the time. But if the war does not end as we’ve all hoped, I think I would be more at peace to know you were north. I only wish Beth were well enough to go, or that you all could.” She looked at her eldest.
“I couldn’t leave my students,” Meg said. “My teaching seems more important than ever now. And I wouldn’t go north to depend on the charity of a white family, even Constance Evergreen’s.”
Mammy nodded. Meg was right, and her hope in sending all her daughters to safety was unreasonable. “I’m only terrified what it will mean if any of this is true,” she said. “If it can happen to Corinth…”
“Even if what the officers say comes to pass,” Jo told her mother, “Corinth is not our colony’s only inspiration. Our fates aren’t aligned. We will decide what becomes of Roanoke Island, those of us who’ve lent our service and our love to this colony. Please trust in that, Mammy, and I will, too. I’ll take Amethyst to Boston, and I’ll write, pleadingly if I must, and be mild and kind, the way only Meg and Beth are, if it means I can make the least difference.”
“Joanna,” Mammy said, smiling despite the heaviness on their hearts. “I have a Meg and a Beth. I need my Jo, too. The whole world does. I hope you won’t change too much, ever. I hope you’ll pass through life’s gauntlet of trials with all your passion and fire intact. ‘We are all members of one body,’” Mammy quoted the Bible, “‘but with different purposes and gifts.’ Only you can accomplish yours.”
She was tired, and after her exhorting words, which Jo accepted with a grateful squeeze of her hand, Mammy slouched as though only just realizing how much. She bade her eldest daughters goodnight, kissing them each before retiring to their bedroom.
Jo hoped that Meg would linger when their mother was gone, though she didn’t know how to begin. She was entirely unprepared when Meg did.
“The world is constantly changing, it seems,” Meg said, looking at nothing at all. She at least breathed evenly so that Jo knew she was only in concentrated thought, and not overwhelmed the way Mammy had been.
“It is,” Jo answered.
“Are you ever terrified?” Meg looked at her now, suddenly.
“Of course I am. How could I not be sometimes?”
“I suppose it just looks different on you. On everyone. We’re different, as Mammy said.”
Jo could sense that there was something more that her sister wanted to say, and she waited.
“I would never forgive myself if I let the world change in ways I cannot foresee, and our relationship with it, without offering an apology to you, Jo.”
“An apology for what? I know I’m quarrelsome—”
“You aren’t.”
Now Jo tilted her head at her sister.
“All right,” Meg said, through a soft laugh. “Sometimes you are. Or tempestuous, as you say. But there’s nothing wrong with that. And it isn’t to blame for the hurt between us.”
Meg took a deep breath.
“I suggested that you escort Amy north,” she said, so ashamed that she lowered her chin until it was nestled against her chest. “You and Lorie, both.”
“Is that so wrong?” Jo asked carefully. Her sister’s confession seemed a burdened one, and it meant that there was some offense. She felt a strange unease to have agreed to the task when there had been an unknown motive, but she could not for the life of her determine what it could be. “I’ve no qualm with taking Amy, and it makes the most sense. How else would she have gone otherwise?”
“Mammy wouldn’t have let her,” Meg blurted, her eyes closing for a moment before she forced herself to look her sister in the eye. “She wasn’t going to go, and it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. I suggested you escort her … so that you would go.”
When Jo’s heart shrank, Meg saw it. She saw the hurt in the eyes looking back at her. She saw the crease between Jo’s brow, as though she’
d been pricked by the doctor’s needle. She wouldn’t cry; Jo rarely did. But that didn’t mean she didn’t suffer.
“I’m so sorry, Jo.”
“What have I done?” she asked quietly. “Whatever it was, I didn’t mean to. I try to take care with people, especially with you, Meg,” she carried on, speaking quickly when Meg shook her head as though she might interrupt. “And I know I’m not very good at it, but I do try. I don’t ever want to hurt one of my sisters. Who else will love me the way my sisters do?”
“Lorie,” Meg answered, and that quieted them both. Finally Meg’s shoulders sank and she leaned all of her weight against the wall beside the back door. “I’m sorry, Jo. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve only fallen in love, when I wanted it so badly, and you came by it so easily.”
Jo went rigid, but kept her tongue.
“I had no right to take personally your fortune, Joanna, and I’m ashamed that it’s taken me this long to apologize. There are no excuses … but I do believe it’s that I think so much more highly of you than I do of myself.”
Whatever stamina had kept Meg from exhaustion seeped out of her, and she slid down the wall to sit on the kitchen floor. Tonight, her mother had cried over the terror of Beth’s illness, they’d been advised that white nurses would never help them unravel it, and then Mammy had told her and Jo in confidence that life in freedpeople colonies was not as certain as they’d dreamt. It was news that made her want to be close with Jo again, but it was all so taxing, when taken together.
“We’re never given the privilege of facing one difficulty at a time, are we?” she said when Jo joined her on the floor. Her sister gave no reply but to take her hand. “I am sorry, Jo. Truly.”
So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix: 2 (Remixed Classics) Page 16