So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix: 2 (Remixed Classics)

by Morrow, Bethany C.

  “What is certain,” Madeleine continued, “is that the war was fought and won. All across the country, the enslaved are free.”

  “Did you read of Freedom Day in Galveston, Texas?” one of the women interjected, and a chorus of excited conversation followed.

  “Did you read that it came two years late?” Joanna couldn’t stop herself from responding. She regretted it immediately, when all their eyes found her, and their chorus quieted. “I’m sorry. You’ll know by now that I do not possess a mild or accepting manner,” she told them. “And I certainly don’t mean to dissuade you from celebrating, as the enslaved in Galveston did for days after. But having been enslaved myself, it’s impossible for my happiness over the matter not to be tinged with the bitter understanding that they were meant to be free long before.”

  “No, Joanna.” Madeleine put her teacup on the table before her and turned fully to face Jo. “Don’t apologize. You know something about this that we don’t. We are all a part of the same race, but I think you’ve probably come to see how different our struggles are from each other. Especially those of us born to freedom. You know intimately how to mourn those two lost years of freedom, because you were born into slavery. That’s why we want to publish you.”

  “But”—Jo’s eyes bounced from one smiling woman to the next—“you already do.”

  “Not in the journal, and not about the freedpeople,” Madeleine said with a shake of her head. “We want you to write about the time before. About what life was like before you went to Roanoke. We want to publish your slave narrative.”

  Jo looked again at the many faces of the Black women surrounding her. Her eyes drifted from one to the next, from high-necked lace collars to pearl drop earrings, from precisely draped hair to perfectly placed cameos. She had never seen Black women dressed so finely before coming to Boston, or considered that they might have any interest in telling a story like hers. Not her thoughts on the war or the Union, or her convictions about what the Freedpeople Colony could be, but Jo’s story.

  “That is, if you’d like to tell it.”

  “It had honestly never occurred to me,” Jo said. “To make my writing about me.”

  “I believe, Joanna,” Madeleine said, and Jo turned back to hold her gaze, “that when you write about you, and if you do it from the same impassioned, honest place that you’ve written about everything else—you’ll be writing about us all. I hope you’ll consider it.”

  “I will,” Jo said, and smiled. “I absolutely will.”

  * * *

  The park was bustling with what seemed to be hundreds of people, despite the cold, clear sky and the brisk wind. The ice rink held only a portion of them, but it was busier than Jo could manage, being untalented on skates.

  “If it were snowing, it’d be warmer,” she huffed.

  “Speak up, no one can hear you beneath that warm blanket,” Lorie replied, and he leaned over the sleigh’s handle as he pushed and skated behind it.

  “Honestly, Joanna,” Amy said, carving an elegant figure into the ice to slow her speed and draw near to them. “You look like an old curmudgeon, bundled on a sleigh and being pushed around the rink as though you don’t have two working legs.”

  “We are not all as graceful as you,” Lorie said, with an intentional grunt.

  “Don’t let him fool you,” Jo threw back over her shoulder. “He prefers this. He needs the sleigh as much as I do, or he’d never make it all the way around the rink.”

  “It’s embarrassing,” Amy said, and skated a wide circle around them, her skirts billowing beautifully as she leaned toward the two without losing her balance.

  “And that’s sorcery,” Lorie told her, but he smiled, and made her do the same. “What would your family say, to see you dance just as well on ice as you did back home?”

  At the thought, Amy’s shoulders settled with a whimsical sigh, and her smile softened into something nearly melancholy. The three of them were quiet but for the sound of skates and sleigh, each imagining the ones they’d left in North Carolina, and what they’d make of a great many things that had become routine.

  “I wonder if they miss us as much as we miss them,” Amy said, still skating alongside them, but with fewer flourishes now, her gloved hands staying closer to her sides. “Or if they speak of us this way, too.”

  “Of course they do,” Jo said, and reached for her baby sister’s hand, pulling her down onto the sleigh.

  Lorie grunted, to no one’s concern, and continued pushing the sisters along the ice.

  “Mammy misses you most, of course,” Jo told Amy as the younger girl straightened her legs and adjusted the blanket to cover them both, and then she snaked her arm through Jo’s and let her head fall on her sister’s shoulder despite that they were the same height now.

  “I don’t feel like the baby anymore,” the girl said. “Not without a Mammy to care for me. Or a Meg.”

  Jo laid against her sister’s head.

  “I miss Meg so much,” Amy continued. “I wish she could see the way I am with my students, so she could tell me if I’ve got a gift for teaching the way she does.”

  “I’m lonely for her at night,” Jo said softly, though not so softly that Lorie couldn’t hear. “It’s lovely to have a bed just for myself, but it’s lovelier to have a sister close by.”

  “Would they be upset at us, for not living under the same roof? Have we become too citified?”

  “We came so you could study dance. We were always going to sleep in separate beds, with you in the dorms, even if I had stayed nearer to the Evergreen family. I’m more afraid they’d think me selfish, wanting to live in Beacon Hill, but look at this place.”

  Laughter and conversation swelled as though by Jo’s invitation, and the merriment of the rink and the surrounding park put smiles back on the sisters’ faces.

  “We’ve always lived among our people,” Jo said. “But when have we seen them live so well? Or at least, have so much. I’m more than happy to pay a boarding fee to a Black family, given the choice.”

  “It’s easy to consider it all meaningless earthly possessions when you may have them,” Amy agreed. She had become accustomed to so many things in so short a time, and she didn’t want to think that it made her a bad person, because she could tell the difference between having a little and having a little more. “I’m pleased to have things I didn’t have before, and I’m proud that I can afford myself them. Although I suppose it was a blessing to live in the colony for free, too.”

  “For free?” Joanna asked, her head snapping toward her sister’s.

  “Well, being given the land and the lumber for Papa to build our house by the Union.”

  “Amethyst,” Jo said with a shake of her head. “No one lives in the Freedpeople Colony for free. Why do you think Mammy worked every day, and Meg, and me?”

  Amy’s brow crashed down in confoundment.

  “But that isn’t fair,” the young girl said, at which her sister’s eyes roamed either as though an explanation might reveal itself in their surroundings or as though Jo was equally confused by her sister’s confusion. “How could anyone be expected to go from captivity, wherein they benefited from our unpaid labor, to being required immediately to give our first wages directly back? Perhaps you misunderstood, Jo.”

  “Amy, really. We paid a rent to the Union, always. And if we hadn’t worked all that time, when Papa joined the war effort they would have taken the cost of our upkeep from his earnings.”

  “The villains!” Amy huffed.

  “And the land isn’t properly the Union’s to give, as it turns out,” Lorie said, managing to move the sleigh to the outside of the rink so he could rest, and so that the sisters could watch the other skaters glide by.

  “What does that mean?” Amy asked when he pushed her farther center so he could sit down.

  “Mind your skates,” he said absently, lifting her crossed ankles and replacing them on his longer legs anyway.

  “What do you mean
it isn’t theirs? Of course it is now, if not before. We won!” Amy insisted.

  “They won,” Jo muttered distractedly, her eyes watching the lively park.

  “My mother’s settled in New Bern,” Lorie said to Jo as though her sister weren’t sitting between them.

  “Are you pleased?” Joanna asked, her brows tented so that he knew she was concerned most with how he fared with the news.

  “Why has she left the big house?” Amy looked from one to the other of them, annoyed that in their presence, she still felt very much like a child, despite being seventeen. They did it intentionally, she could tell. “I’ll see myself home if no one plans to answer any of my questions. Honestly, it’s terribly rude, and not at all as mature as you seem to think. Hortense Evergreen could teach the two of you something about common courtesy, and its place in a civilized society.”

  “I doubt she’d tell me the same, given the opportunity,” Jo said with a snort. “Constance must have warned her to be a bit more courteous with me before she returned to the colony, and rightly so.”

  “I’m glad no one has to fear my temper,” Amy declared.

  “Only your spoiled disposition.”

  Lorie sometimes thought Jo and Amy bickered back and forth not because they were a budding young talent and a sharp-witted advocate-writer who could not see eye to eye. He smiled at their sparring because he knew it was how they managed being too homesick. They fell into the routine regularly, despite it leaving no lasting discontent or upset, and he’d decided some time ago that it was because they were all they had. Everything else had been new for so long, and Northerners had such a complicated way of speaking, even in pleasant company, that their tiffs had been the only familiar thing for a while.

  “My mother left the big house because the home was unconfiscated,” Lorie replied to Amy, leaning toward her to win her attention back. “When the Union presence dwindled on the island, white folks came back for their property, and any that wasn’t in military use, they reclaimed.” He sighed, and settled back against the sleigh. “I guess now I wish the Union had made that place part of their shadow. At least then there would have been someone to contest the deed, and those enslaving heathens would have had to fight for it.”

  Amy pouted and took one of Lorie’s hands in both of hers, her eyes wide with heartfelt sympathy. Her brushed gloves were the same royal blue as the tailored coat she wore over her dress, and they were much nicer than Lorie’s fingerless ones.

  “Whatever did this cost, Amethyst, I swear?” he asked, losing in his attempt to keep from laughing when she’d been so genuine.

  “What a crass question!” she shot back, and tossed his hand away. “My finances are my own business.”

  But then she held up a gloved hand so all would see, and traced the stitching on the lovely tapered fingers, before joining Lorie’s laughter.

  “Oh, Jo!” Amethyst turned to her sister with a start. “Do Papa and Mammy still pay to live in the colony?”

  “Of course,” Jo answered.

  “Then perhaps I can help.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I could pay some of it, what do you think?”

  “I think you could pay it all,” she said. “You’re paid more for a single private recital than any of us received for a month’s work on the island. And Boston is a much more expensive place than North Carolina, to be sure.”

  Amy’s face brightened with excitement.

  “Oh, but dear heart, they’d never let you,” Jo told her quickly, and then watched her sister’s face fall. “I’m almost sure they wouldn’t.”

  “But we can ask them, at least,” Amy almost pleaded.

  “Of course we can. I’ll put it in the letter I was going to send tomorrow,” Jo promised, and pulled Amy closer. She meant to relax then, and let the skaters floating past carry her thoughts with them—until she saw someone she thought she recognized.

  “It couldn’t be,” she said, leaning forward and pulling the blanket away from Amy and Lorie in the process.

  “Courtesy, Jo!” Amy tried to wrangle the thing from her sister, who easily discarded it as she stood from the sleigh in a wobbling trance before beginning to skate directly across the rink, despite the flow of the crowd.

  Joanna could hear her sister and Lorie’s quizzical exchange over her behavior, and could imagine them craning their necks to see her intended destination, while both refusing the effort it would take to stand and follow her.

  She wasn’t sure she’d seen correctly, as it was. She couldn’t have, unless all the nation intended to descend on Boston, now that the war was over. And maybe that was the way of the future. She couldn’t pretend to be entirely surprised, knowing the difference in standards of living from personal experience. She loved her home, the way even people who had every reason not to often did. She’d known a brutality she could not wish on anyone, and still, every joy she’d known—every memory of laughter, and love, and family—had happened in the same place. It should be easy, outsiders must have thought, to despise the South, but even now it wasn’t the land’s fault that Black people newly free could not expect to be treated much better than grudgingly. It was not the land’s fault that emancipation had been contentious and a matter of war. She could not despise the loblolly pine or the creeks, or the smell of wide-open fields and forests before the summer rain.

  Jo finally crossed the rink, only very nearly falling and bringing down an innocent patron a handful of times, and when she had to catch herself on the arm of the man she’d been studying, she was relieved to find that it was, in fact, Joseph Williams.

  “I had heard the March sisters were Northerners now,” he said in greeting, steadying her, while the group he’d been conversing with looked on. “It’s lovely to see you again, Joanna.”

  “And you, Mr. Williams.” She smiled because he smiled so broadly down at her.

  “Joanna March, this is Leonard Carson, and Timothy Miller, and this is Mrs. Timothy Miller,” he said, gesturing to each in turn.

  “Francine,” the only woman in their company introduced herself properly, with a roll of her eyes. “How do you know our Joseph?”

  “The Marches gave me a proper Southern greeting and homecooked meal when I was touring the region with General Wild during the war,” he answered before Jo had the chance. “I’ll admit I was delighted when I heard you’d come to Boston.”

  “And did you hear it?” Jo raised an eyebrow.

  “I like this girl,” Timothy Miller interjected, slapping Joseph on the back, who was still holding Jo upright on her skates while the group of friends stood on the snow just outside the rink.

  Francine Miller tried discreetly to hush her husband’s boisterousness to no avail, and then smiled again at Jo, who was quite sure by now that they all had the wrong impression of her acquaintance with their friend.

  “This is the kind of firebrand you ought to marry,” Timothy continued, as though to confirm her thoughts.

  “Miller, really,” was all Joseph replied, though he smirked and squared his still-broad shoulders. Clearly the friends had a jovial rapport, and the subject of Joseph’s singlehood was recurring, if it could come up so immediately with a stranger.

  “Firebrands don’t tend to like being spoken of as though they’re hard of hearing,” Jo told the man, smiling graciously.

  “Forgive my good man, Joanna,” Joseph said, putting hand over heart. “The stability of marriage can make some men far too comfortable, I think.”

  “Is that how you’ve kept your head, Joseph?” Timothy quipped. “By failing to attract a bride?”

  “That’s why we’ve invited him to Boston,” Francine joined in, if only to make her husband’s behavior seem less obnoxious. “It would be impossible to remain a bachelor with a city so rich in beautiful, brilliant women.” She gestured toward Joanna. “Even from as far as…”

  “Roanoke Island,” Jo answered.

  At that, the group became even livelier, if such
a thing were possible.

  “You’ve come from the Freedpeople Colony?”

  “Well, now!”

  “We’ve read so much about it!”

  “It’s Joanna’s work you’ve read,” Joseph informed them with a laugh, and his three friends’ heads swiveled to find her. Joanna froze, just as she had upon first seeing a group of rodents catch sight of a meal in the middle of the street, who then descended upon it to gorge. It was a very particular spectacle, and one she’d witnessed more than once since moving to the city. When Joseph turned back to her, it was with a much less ravenous expression. “I’ve kept up with your newsletter, and was pleased to see you published in the League of Negro Women Writers’ Journal .”

  “Which,” Jo conceded, “is how you heard of my coming to Boston, I presume.”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “So you see, I spoke true. I’ve come to live and work in Boston, and I was hoping to repay my debt of hospitality to the March family. I just didn’t expect to find you so soon, and skating!”

  At the reminder, Jo immediately wobbled on her blades.

  “Nor shall you again,” she said, and shook her head. “I’ll just take these ridiculous things off and bring you to reacquaint with Amy.”

  “And how is Beth? And Mrs. March? And Meg?” Joseph’s gaze was interrupted by a quick series of blinks that perhaps only Joanna noticed. “I so enjoyed your eldest sister’s friendly correspondence during the war, but I’m ashamed to say I let it taper off when I heard you’d come North.”

  Jo nodded, her mouth slightly parted in recognition. It turned out Meg had been quite right in her discerning, then. Whyever else Joseph Williams had asked to write her, his primary interest was in continued news of the colony, and perhaps more specifically the village. He’d thought the young woman lovely, anyone who’d seen him in her presence could not deny. It must have been, then, that he had no marital imperative, as he so clearly seemed to now.