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

by Morrow, Bethany C.

  “Sometimes I fear you have endured more than a man can fathom,” he said softly. “And I fear there’s nothing I can do to ease your worries.”

  “She was ill for so long before we understood. I thought I would lose her, Alcott, with you away. And even when I didn’t, it was only because we came to accept that this illness, it will never pass. Not completely. Not for long. It returns like the tide. Always.”

  “And now you fear she’ll go away anyway.” He laid his hands over hers.

  “At first it was Ella receiving the letters, and I know she and her father had hoped to join the American Colonization Society, only he got too ill. And I know it’s been decades now, but so many died who first went over there to stake some claim,” she said, though she knew her husband was equally aware of those Black Virginians who’d gone so many years before. “Eighty percent of them, Alcott. Dead from disease.”

  “It would be difficult to imagine, wife,” he said. “If I hadn’t been to war, and if we didn’t see our fellow freedpeople falling ill and dying in this very colony.”

  Mammy could not bear to mention the delivered coffins, news of which had spread quickly anyway.

  “Can we promise our daughters long life anywhere?” he asked, and it was not meant to be answered, but he kissed her forehead when her chin fell low, and then he helped her stand before handing her the envelope with Beth’s name across the front.

  Together they crossed the hall, Papa remaining in the open doorframe of his daughters’ room when Mammy went inside.

  “Bethlehem,” she said, drawing the attention of all the young women and the little girl in the room as though they shared a name. “A letter came for you today. From Liberia.”

  Beth rose from where she’d crouched beside an open trunk, and behind little Fanny, whom she was dressing up in the lovely pieces she’d sewn.

  “Thank you, Mammy,” Beth said, accepting it, and then kept her mother’s gaze a moment before opening the letter, despite that everyone’s attention was on her. She peeled the envelope open, calm and mild as she always was, and then she read the contents to herself, a smile blooming on her lips.

  “Well?” Mammy asked, trying in vain to quiet the shudder trembling through her neck and shoulders. “What news from so far away?”

  Beth took a deep breath in and looked at her eldest sister, Meg, and then at Papa still in the doorframe, before offering Mammy a gentle expression.

  “There’s work for me. In a dress shop, with a sewing machine, and dress forms, and virgin fabric.” Her eyes sparkled and began to well. It struck Mammy to see it, and her shoulders, which had been tight and coiled, relaxed. “There is a place on the continent for me. And I feel that I belong to it, though the cost is being separated from you.”

  Now tears welled and fell throughout the room, and where Papa stood, just outside it. It was quiet, the way it was when Beth herself cried. Though her sister and her mother felt that their hearts were breaking, they did not mourn loudly, when it was in her honor.

  “I have a birthright, Mammy,” she said, and behind her, Ella hugged Fanny to herself, grateful to hear her friend say so but wiping tears of her own. “But I know that I’ll be homesick for you. Even if it’s heaven.”

  XIV

  April 1866

  It had become custom to find Wisdom standing in the yard with her father when Meg returned from the mainland at the end of the day. The young man worked odds and ends around the colony, at her mother’s direction. He kept at the lawn mowing, if only because little else could improve the disarray of having too many people on too little land, and he chopped wood, and helped at the fishery, where there were more fish than coin to purchase it.

  Wisdom Carter was a man who appreciated direction, because he knew his talent was in assisting. It was nothing more specific than that, and so he went where he was needed, and was pleased to find anything of particular importance to the people important to him so that he could accomplish it.

  Meg had learned to discern when he had an accomplishment to share with her, by the way his lips snagged up on one side, and the way he rose up on the balls of his feet before settling down again. The sight reminded her of her baby sister, Amethyst, and the way she used to bounce up onto her toes. She could not express how much she adored that something of Wisdom reminded her of someone else she loved so completely.

  Wisdom only grew more excited the closer Meg got to the house, and when she was very nearly to him, she noticed the way her father clapped the younger man on his back before retreating toward the front door. He didn’t go inside, though, only gave the pair some space.

  Her breath was coming faster now, and she didn’t wish to become light-headed, so she parted her lips and exhaled a long breath.

  Wisdom’s hand shot up into the air, and clutched inside was a slip of paper.

  “What’s that?” Meg asked in greeting.

  “It’s a transportation order, Miss March.” His lips moved and shifted after he’d spoken, as though too excitable to rest.

  “Where to?” she inquired, careful not to get ahead of him.

  “To Mississippi. A man’s been sent to the colony to recruit workers, and the Union’s encouraging, as there isn’t enough work to go around, and not many close by to work for, which I know you know, Miss March, being Mrs. March’s daughter, and taking care of the colony the way you do—” He was rattling on, speaking in long, winding sentences because he had too much energy to stop.

  Meg took a deep breath so that he would.

  “And,” he began again, speaking at a more reasonable pace now, “I hadn’t wanted to impose such a question on you before I could offer a life worthy of a teacher.”

  His eyes locked with hers.

  “Such a question?” Meg asked when it seemed Wisdom could look down into her face for the rest of the evening.

  “Oh,” he said quietly, and then Wisdom Carter went down on both knees in front of Meg, and her hands began to shake. “Meg March, I know you’re too brilliant and lovely and good for me to suppose you’d have reason to say you would. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t ask, now that I have something to give, too.”

  “You’ve gotta ask, son,” Alcott March feigned to whisper, from his place near the front door.

  “Meg March,” Wisdom began, while Meg held a laugh behind her lips and nodded emphatically.

  “I will marry you,” she said, and when he lifted her off her feet, and her father whooped so that the whole colony could hear, it was like the night they’d danced in the big house, years ago.

  * * *

  Dearest Jo,

  Meg will be wed! In June! I don’t have to tell you that her marriage will be to Wisdom Carter, who is such a doting, lovely young man for our sister. I think the way he admires her, she feels very much like you, and I am so glad for her.

  Please write and tell us that you’re coming, as I know you will, and bring your writing so that I may see it before the rest of the world descends upon your narrative and swallows you whole. You will be carried so far by your gift, the way Amy has been. You both have always been the extravagant ones, and it made sense for Meg and me to stay behind.

  You will be surprised, then, to learn my news. It seems I will go farthest of all, Joanna, and even when I long to be together, I can’t explain the tug in me to go to Liberia. It feels like it will be like returning, like a place I’ve never been is somehow already part of me. I might not have known that, without my illness, so Constance Evergreen will be pleased to know that I’ve not been dissuaded from crediting it with a great purpose in my life.

  When you do return, Joanna, I am sorry to tell you that you will find the colony greatly changed. It will not seem as idyllic and spacious in the village as it did when you were here. Yannick and your boys have all gone, drawn away by promises of work and independence, while here we are still dependent on the benevolence of white people, which we never desired, but which it seems was engineered into the colony’s design. As it h
appened in so many places before Roanoke, the men are first to leave, encouraged and rewarded for it, by keeping what wages they make, rather than having them taxed to feebly support a wife or family in the colony, whose rations have been reduced almost to nothing. And fewer of the colonists qualify at all.

  It has been so difficult watching Roanoke’s decline whilst reading your words on our behalf, and perhaps it has been even more painful, worrying that we have not lived up to your talent. I am so pleased to know that you will go on, despite the colonies that rise and then are sabotaged to spoil. You will still be Joanna March, and your audience will follow your passion wherever you lead them, as long as they know it’s you.

  I don’t exhort you to keep true to your voice because you need such encouragement, but because I think it is your integrity that has given me some of my passion. I am so excited to craft dresses from something new, to not have to reclaim material from a wardrobe worn by an oppressor. And I am so pleased that this excitement tells me something of myself, and who I am.

  If I have seemed too quiet over these years, I hope my sisters will come to see that I have listened to you. I have learned from you. There could be no Liberia for me, if there had been no Meg, or Jo, or Amy. I think you will understand this best, Joanna. If ever our sisters doubt it while I’m away, I entrust the truth to you to share.

  Bethlehem March

  * * *

  Though he intended to repay the entire March family’s kindness, Joseph Williams had insisted that Jo and Amy let him entertain them in the meantime. He’d invited the sisters to supper with the knowledge that Lorie would come along, and scheduled the occasion for an evening when his hosts, Timothy and Francine Miller, would be unavailable.

  “I only met them briefly,” Amy said as she, Lorie, and Jo walked toward the Miller residence. “But I quite liked Mr. and Mrs. Miller.”

  “That’s precisely because you met them briefly,” Jo said breathlessly. She had to walk at a faster clip to keep pace with her youngest sister’s long, graceful strides, a fact which she was certain Amy observed without adjustment.

  “You weren’t with them any longer, Jo. You just dislike society types.”

  “I won’t argue that,” Jo huffed, hooking her arm through Lorie’s so that he’d pull her up the inclining street.

  “But it’s insufferably contrarian to like to dislike society types,” Amy chastised her.

  “How’s this,” Lorie interjected. “Amethyst, you may like them enough for the both of you, all right?”

  “I’ll argue with my sister if I like, Lorie.”

  “I’m very well aware, but hopefully not in front of Joseph, when he’s invited us to supper,” he answered. “You’re a society type now, too, aren’t you? I wouldn’t want you to make an ill impression.”

  Amy lifted her chin as though to elongate her elegant neck, and laid her gloved palm to the smooth side of her coifed hair. She didn’t notice when Jo rolled her eyes at Lorie’s knowing smile.

  “You do make a fair point, Lorie,” Amy said, dipping her chin cordially before recommencing her dancer’s stride.

  When the trio arrived at the Millers’ door, it was opened before any of them could knock, and their jackets and gloves were taken by a uniformed maid who curtseyed before gesturing for them to proceed deeper into the house.

  “I won’t pretend to approve of that,” Jo muttered.

  “Be reasonable, Joanna,” Amy whispered as they followed the maid. “Service is not the same as enslavement. I’m sure the Millers pay their staff a fair wage, and I’m sure maids and butlers are free to leave if they so desire.”

  “Make whatever justification you like, Amy,” Jo said quickly, as though aware they’d soon be in their host’s company. “Only remember that the people who fought to keep us enslaved had theirs, too. And I’m not so certain of what anyone who must do someone else’s bidding is free to do. The self-importance of hiring folks to wait on you hand and foot, and the hypocrisy of free Blacks to immediately replicate such—”

  “Good evening,” Joseph bid them from in front of the hearth. He didn’t know he’d interrupted Joanna’s increasingly passionate rebuttal, and when he’d turned fully to face his guests, he saw Amy first. Whatever else he’d meant to say seemed trapped then, despite that his mouth gaped slightly.

  “Good evening, Mr. Williams.” Amy returned his greeting. “What a beautiful home the Millers have. You must give them our regards and thanks when they return.”

  His eyebrows lifted as though he would reply, and Amy lifted hers, too, as though in invitation.

  “It is a feat, furnishing a house so splendidly and yet still retaining the welcoming qualities of a home. You must tell Mrs. Miller I think so,” Amy finished. If she were Beth or Meg, she might’ve become coy beneath Joseph Williams’s unbroken but unsteady gaze, but she was Amethyst, so instead she turned away gracefully and continued admiring the room.

  “Evening, Joseph,” Lorie said, stepping between the two and shaking the man’s hand. When he clapped the man’s shoulder, it was perhaps a bit more roughly than was customary, though not enough to provoke confrontation. “A pleasure to see you again.”

  “And you as well,” Joseph answered, apparently grateful to be jostled back to his senses.

  “You’d think our coming surprised you,” Joanna said, taking her sister’s hand and then crossing the dark wood floor of what appeared to be a gentleman’s study to sit with her. “Have we changed so much since you saw us last, Joseph? It’s only been a couple of weeks.”

  “True,” Joseph said, fully composed now, one hand in his suit pocket. “But then our reunion was too brief to take it all in.” He looked equally between the two sisters, as though he’d never faltered. “I’m so pleased you’ve all come, so that we can get reacquainted at our leisure.”

  He was the gentleman he’d been on Roanoke, if more polished in his city attire, and more relaxed outside the subject of war. His shoulders were exactly as broad as Amy remembered, despite that she’d been so young when he visited. She remembered him well, though she hadn’t thought of him since—except that he was much younger than she’d assumed the night he’d come to dinner. Perhaps it’d been the talk of war and recruitment that made her think he was a very mature man at the time. Now she was sitting beside her sister, her hands lying neatly one over the other on her lap, and she could see that he was barely older than Lorie.

  Jo nudged her waist.

  “What was that for?” Amy whispered roughly when Joseph had led Lorie to a handsome dark wood sideboard on whose buffet sat a host of liquor bottles and drinking glasses.

  “I can see you,” Jo whispered back.

  “You have eyes, haven’t you?”

  “Amethyst.”

  “I think you’re more bothered because you can see him seeing me.”

  “Fine,” Jo confessed, and nodded sharply once.

  “Well, what’s the matter?” Amy continued discreetly, a delicate smile on her lips when the young men glanced back at the sisters. “Should young men be unaffected by me because I’m your baby sister? Am I not something to behold?”

  “Of course you are.”

  “And I have no desire to sound conceited, but I’m rather used to causing men devastation, Joanna. It can hardly be avoided.”

  “Heaven save me,” Jo answered under her breath, before cutting her eyes at her sister. “Who on earth would say such a thing except to sound conceited, Amy, really.”

  Amethyst waited until Joseph Williams and Lorie had turned their backs again, and then shielded her face with one hand before sticking out her tongue at her sister.

  “Will you never outgrow that habit?” Jo snorted in an unladylike fashion, and only one of the young men nearby turned, quizzically, to find the source of the sound.

  “Not while it still amuses you,” Amy answered, matching Joseph’s gaze from across the room until the uniformed maid returned and beckoned the four to supper.

  * * *

 
; The next night, life returned to its normal routine and Lorie sat reading on the Babcocks’ sofa, in the sitting room off the staircase landing. He was twisted at the waist, one knee drawn up onto the cushion, so that he seemed despondent or troubled, hunched as he was. Behind him, Joanna held a fountain pen at the ready, her other hand pressing the paper against Lorie’s back, while her gaze fixed upon her thoughts and not the world around her.

  Sometimes she mouthed a word, to feel its shape, and determine whether it was the one she meant to use, and occasionally she cocked her head to the side when she was still unsure.

  It was a completely silent practice, this writing trance the two had been performing since the days they sat beneath the loblolly trees together. The silence was why occasionally Mrs. Babcock drifted past, her skirts sweeping the floor and her finger absently tapping the tie at her throat. When not Mrs. Babcock, it was her husband, needlessly passing the sitting room to witness the strange spectacle, until finally Mr. Babcock stepped into the room properly, pocket watch in hand, and announced, “Until tomorrow, young sir.”

  It pulled the two from their collective meditations, and Jo replaced the cap on the lovely pen Madeleine Plender had furnished her with upon her first publication in the journal. Immediately, she uncapped it again.

  Tonight she had a sentence or two left to transcribe, so between mutterings and writing, Jo gave a hurried, “Good night, Lorie.”

  He patted her on the top of her head, which she swatted away still without looking up, and then Lorie followed Mr. Babcock down the staircase to the door.

  “Loren,” Mr. Babcock said after pausing with his hand around the doorknob. He retracted his hand completely and turned to the younger man, who was never made to feel unwelcome in the home, despite that he still wore the vest he’d brought from Roanoke, and had never adopted any finer a wardrobe. Now when the lawyer looked him over, Lorie didn’t have to consider that the appraisal had anything to do with the fact that he did not seem to have ever assimilated to city fashion.