It wasn’t until the woman had opened the inside door to the foyer, pulling a robe around her, hair hidden beneath a white sleeping bonnet, that Jo realized she’d have to give good reason for the woman to wake Lorie.
“Oh,” Jo whispered to herself, or to her phantom Lorie, who’d suggested that it was always upsetting to see a young woman cry. She blinked a dozen times and then tried squeezing her eyes shut, but no tears came.
“This is a gentleman’s boardinghouse, miss,” the woman said immediately upon opening the front door.
“I know,” Jo replied, still batting her eyes in hopes of becoming teary eyed.
The woman squinted at her. “Well, it’s too late for visitors, and unless you have family here, I don’t suggest visiting young men in the dead of night.”
“It’s nothing like that.” Joanna stopped her fruitless attempts and looked at the woman before her. “I only need to talk to Lorie for a moment.”
“And I’m sure you’ll find him in the morning, or, if he’s as fond of you, he’ll come calling on his own.”
“Please,” Jo said, reaching toward the door when it began to close, though she made certain not to touch it. The tears were welling now. She couldn’t go home without seeing him. She couldn’t take her encounter with Madeleine Plender to bed with her without the comfort that at least Lorie knew. “I promise,” she said, self-conscious now that the tears might actually fall when she was so unaccustomed to crying, let alone with an audience. “It will only be a moment.”
The woman pulled her robe tighter despite that it hadn’t loosened, but her stern expression relaxed.
“You must be Joanna,” she said, to Jo’s surprise. “One moment. I’ll wake him.”
“Thank you,” Jo managed to the closed door, and then she could not be still. She turned and faced the street, eyebrows lacing in thought. The den mother at Lorie’s boardinghouse knew who she was, without introduction, simply because she was there. It was only strange until Jo recalled all of the ways Lorie came up in her conversations with people he’d never met. How if he showed up at the salon, all of the women would know exactly who he was. It wasn’t because she’d told them any distinguishing features, or because she spoke of him any particular way. It was just that she spoke of him. Often.
She thought of him often.
Always.
“Jo, what’s the matter?” Lorie exclaimed before she heard the door reopen, and he had his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him before she had the chance. He only looked into her damp eyes for a split second before pulling her into an embrace and laying his head atop hers. “What’s happened? Are you all right?”
He sucked his teeth, which must have been his male equivalent of shushing or cooing, because he began to gently rock, too.
“I’m all right,” Jo said, pushing back against his nightclothes and barely holding back a laugh. She’d forgotten her worry entirely at his dramatic response. “Are you ?”
“Miss Esther said you were crying, and that you needed to see me right away,” he told her, letting her pull out of his arms but taking one of her hands before she could go too far.
“I only cried so she’d fetch you.” Jo wicked at her eyelashes with her thumb, and Lorie cocked an eyebrow at her.
“It’s convincing, to say the least.” And then he tipped his head to the side, and held her gaze. “You aren’t all right, Jo.”
She tucked her lips into her mouth when the tears swelled again, and this time, she let them fall.
Lorie’s shoulders sank, and he gently tugged at her hand so that she’d come back into his arms.
“There isn’t a chance that Miss Esther isn’t hiding in the dark, watching us,” he said when his head was laid against Jo’s again. They were pressed against each other so that he felt the laughter ripple through her. “I’ll be evicted come the morning, so thank you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“There are many beds for rent in this city, worry not.” He released her again and led her to sit at the top of the stoop. “But do tell me what’s happened.”
Joanna sank onto the step, crumpling even farther until she rested her head on her knees, her arms wrapped around her skirt.
“I’m too proud,” she said.
“Are you?”
“And too boorish.”
“Boorish,” he echoed, as though it was news to him.
“And I’ve thrown away an opportunity that will not be presented me again, because I have more conviction than I deserve, or than is decent.”
“If you’ve thrown it away, then it wasn’t an opportunity. How can something be that inspires such a response from you?”
“People waste opportunities all the time, Lorie.”
“People do, but not you,” he said, and she cast her eyes up to see his streetlamp-illuminated face. “People don’t know what they want or who they are, and so when opportunities arise, they don’t recognize them. That isn’t you. If you’ve declined Madeleine Plender’s offer, it’s because there is fault in the offer, not in you.”
She sat up with a start. “Who said it had anything to do with Madeleine Plender?”
“Are there other recent opportunities I’m unaware of?”
“No,” she muttered, sinking back down into a slump. “But now I’ll never be published.”
“By her. Maybe.”
“Why are you so loyal?” Jo demanded, her voice jumping up an entire register, as though it weren’t night and the neighborhood around them weren’t silent by comparison. “Don’t you even want to know what happened?”
“Of course I do. But I already know I’m on your side.”
Joanna stilled. “As I’m on yours.”
On the stoop, Jo twisted so that their knees touched, and they faced each other, and then she laid her hand over his.
“I love you, Lorie.”
His reply was a deep inhale that blossomed into a wide and handsome smile.
“I’ve known it all along, because I keep you with me even when you’re not. And because you knew me from the start.”
For once, he didn’t answer back. She was glad he could accept her confession quietly, so that he did not have to perform its acceptance or distract from the hearing by trying to fashion something to say in return.
“And because you joined my family, and never tried to part me from it.”
He shook his head, brows low in disapproval at the mere thought.
“I’m just afraid,” Jo began, and her eyes fell. “That I don’t love the way so many do. And that I’m keeping you from a better kind.”
When she looked back, there was a dampness in Lorie’s eyes.
“No,” he said.
“No?” she echoed, smirking and mimicking the shaking of his head. “That’s it?”
“That’s it, Jo,” Lorie said, and never broke her gaze. “There is no better kind.”
XV
June 1866
Wisdom and Meg would have liked to have held their wedding ceremony on the estate where they’d first danced, but the big house had been restored to its former owner and inhabitants. All things could not be reclaimed, of course, as the fine portrait in the entry had been kindling in the bonfire, and the many hidden treasures had been discovered and taken. Beth’s sewing machine was forfeited back to the original family, only because she’d never elected to move it.
They held the wedding on the Roanoke shore instead, where there was space to set out blankets and where folks had easy access to the water as soon as the vows were exchanged and the broom was jumped.
“I want to wear this dress for the rest of my life, Beth,” Meg said, fanning out the edges of the skirt. She and her three sisters were sitting on a quilt, with cushions beneath them, to identify that this was the designated space for the wedding party. “It must have been so difficult to make without the use of your machine, though.”
Beth leaned toward the eyelets she’d handstitched for the summer wedding, and tucked a stray thread th
at only she had noticed.
“It wasn’t difficult at all. I only had to keep imagining you in it, and the work flew by.”
“That can’t be so. I spied you working day and night these past months. And I adore it. I wouldn’t have been married in anything but a dress my sister designed.” And then, she turned to her youngest sister. “Don’t pout, Amy.”
Meg took Amy’s hand, and as though it had begun an unspoken ceremony, Jo took Beth’s, before Amy took Jo’s, and, smiling, Beth completed the circle by taking Meg’s. The four March sisters laughed, but did not release one another. It had been three years since they were all together, and not fellowshipping by way of ink and paper, and what they loved most was that in proximity, even silence could be shared.
“Anyway, Meg, I’m perfectly happy wearing the lovely dress I bought for you,” Amethyst recommenced the conversation after a short while, smoothing the white lace that spilled elegantly from a corseted waistline.
“One might almost suspect that had been her hope all along,” Jo said, smirking.
“Expensive things look best on you, Amy,” Meg reassured her. “I’ve worn my share, and I prefer to see them on you. You’ve worked so hard, and you deserve them.” She hesitated then, but not because she was unsure what to say, only how to say it in a way that would keep her sister from becoming self-conscious. “I’m glad for you and Joseph Williams, as well. With all sincerity. You are the kind of high-society wife he will hopefully one day deserve.”
“Thank you, Meg,” Amy replied, bringing her eldest sister’s hand to her lips and pressing a kiss into the back. “I knew you’d feel that way. But I’m happier now that you’ve said so.”
“I want all my sisters to be as happy as I am today,” Meg told them, looking at each young woman’s face. “Whoever and wherever it requires.”
They all looked to Beth now, and their joy mingled with a hint of sorrow.
“I hope you’ll come and visit me, at least,” Beth told them, embarrassed when she began to cry. “You can’t very well sponsor such a trip, Amethyst, and not see the place for yourself.”
The young women laughed at themselves, wiping each other’s tears instead of their own, oblivious to the way their parents admired them from another spot on the shore.
“I hadn’t wanted to tell you in my letter,” Amy began. “Not until I was certain it wouldn’t spoil the gift at all. Joseph has asked to sponsor you and Ella and Baby Fanny, in my place. He said he’d never gotten the chance to repay our hospitality, and I agreed.”
“What an expensive way to repay a night of shad fish,” Beth said, visibly astonished.
“Is it too much?” Amy asked, worried that she’d spoiled the excitement. “I shouldn’t have said anything!”
“Of course it isn’t,” Jo interrupted before the young performer could get carried away.
“It isn’t!” Meg insisted, to both Amy and Beth, whose eyes were leaping from one sister’s face to the next, unsure. “We served him molasses apple pie, too!”
The four fell into laughter again, their happiness carrying so that all of the freedpeople joining them turned and smiled along with the sisters dressed in white.
“They’ll always be happiest when they’re all together,” Lorie said to his company, and they agreed. He was standing with the Carter brothers, Wisdom and Honor, in finer clothing than he’d ever bothered with, when Joseph Williams joined them.
“For the bridegroom,” Joseph said, and offered Wisdom a champagne coupe. He’d brought one for himself as well, and Honor eyed it.
“Careful,” the young man said, as the sparkling liquid swirled with Joseph’s movements. “You’re likely to overflow. Not that I’d mind, since you’ve forgotten one for the best man.”
“I regretfully have but two hands, Mr. Carter,” Joseph answered. “And as for the overfilling, champagne glasses are regretfully shallow, and I did not want to return for another glass too quickly.”
“One must remember his wedding decorum,” Lorie snarked, to the Carters’ amusement, only to find Joseph very unbecomingly hunched over the glass, lowering his lips to the rim, as though to raise the glass to his lips instead would invite disaster. “Oh, Amy will not have that,” Lorie said, and all four of them laughed, Joseph almost spitting out the champagne he’d worked so hard to preserve.
* * *
There were too many of them to fit in Lorie’s old boat, but after a few trips, everyone had crossed the sound, and stood on the shore of Manns Harbor.
Lorie, Wisdom, and Joseph mounted and secured the luggage on the two coaches Joseph or Amy had hired—they would not confirm which—and Alcott March looked on.
Ella sat close to the water, a sleeping Fanny on her lap, sweat plastering the little girl’s dark curls to her forehead despite that her mother fanned her.
Mammy stood with her four daughters somewhere between the work with the coaches and the sleeping child, and the five March women created a ring when they joined hands.
“My heart might never recover, having to say goodbye to you all at once,” Mammy said, and then she shook her head. “But I am so pleased that you’re all departing together. I’m so glad we got to make one last memory in this colony of ours. This place we gave so much to.”
“How long will you and Papa stay?” Jo asked.
“Until the end, I think,” Mammy said, and then she nodded through a deep breath. “Until the bittersweet end. There are freedpeople petitioning for deeds, so that however much is taken back, perhaps we can save the house your father built. And all the ones you did.”
“And do you think you’ll succeed?” Jo asked.
All her children were women now, so Mammy could answer truthfully, except that she found the words too difficult to speak.
“Whatever happens,” Jo spoke instead, because she knew her mother well. “You have so many places you can go. You can come to Raleigh and be with Lorie and me.”
“And me!” Amy added. “I’ll be in Raleigh a whole term, giving recitals and lessons at Raleigh Institute. I’ll have far more leisure time than Jo, since she’ll be enrolled as a student.”
“I should like to see my girls at a university,” Mammy said before the two could bicker. “Especially at one designed just for Black people.”
“Or you could come to Mississippi, and be with Wisdom and me,” Meg offered. “I know Beth and I have had more of you than Amy and Jo, but I will always want a little more.”
“I don’t expect anyone to cross the Atlantic very soon,” Beth said, without a hint of offense. “But perhaps one day you’ll come to Liberia, too, Mammy, and see me in my shop.”
Mammy released Beth’s hand so that she could cup the young woman’s face, and then she let their foreheads rest together.
“Wherever my daughters are brave enough to go,” Mammy said, eyes closed as though in prayer, “I will surely follow.”
When the moment ended, the four men were facing them, still standing back beside the coaches so as not to interrupt. Ella struggled to stand under the sleeping weight of her daughter, and Wisdom rushed to help her.
“I suppose you must be off,” Mammy said, smiling and tucking her lips inside her mouth as though she might swallow them along with any pleas for the young women to stay. “Take care of each other until Raleigh,” she said, knowing their paths would diverge from that point, with the newlyweds taking a train to their destination, and Beth and Ella heading to their port.
“And ever after, Mammy,” Amy told her. “We promise.”
They hugged as one, refusing to embrace their mother in turn, so that they built a cocoon around her.
“Go on, my darlings,” she said, while her daughters were still wrapped around her. “Be free.”
Author’s Note
In the summer of 2020, during the full weight of the pandemic and what one hopes was the beginning of a serious reckoning with the racist foundation of our country and all its brutal consequences, someone wrote that it isn’t history people
are trying to protect, it’s memory.
When people decry the 1619 Project or don’t want to remove terrorizing statues of enslavers and brutalizers, it isn’t because they are protecting history. They’re protecting their legends, their mythology, the things they’ve decided to believe or at least repeat, to the exclusion and misrepresentation of whatever really happened. In a country with an intentionally racist foundation and a recurring pandemic of state violence against Black Americans—which is always accompanied by the knowing deputization of white citizens to enact the same violence with little or no consequence—we who were never taught a dozen names of Black Americans before the 1960s know that we weren’t taught “history” in the first place. We were taught propaganda, and it was and has been another dehumanizing campaign in the ongoing march of white supremacy.
So Many Beginnings is historical fiction. It’s based on meticulously researched and collated correspondences and documentation, some of which I painstakingly searched through extensive endnotes in academic papers available on JSTOR. The lion’s share of my treasure, and indeed the basis for the March family’s life, is found in Patricia C. Click’s Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen’s Colony, 1862–1867 (University of North Carolina Press). It’s a book I had never heard of and did not own prior to this project, despite being an American-educated adult with a university degree, and having had a partner whose undergraduate degree was in American Studies. That we could pass through more than fifteen years of education, with all its history components and requirements, and have had no instruction on something as distinct as the freedpeople colonies is alarming, to say the least.
This note is not to defend the historicity in So Many Beginnings , though. It’s to challenge what we have accepted as history and acknowledge the roles that white supremacy and anti-Blackness play in that conception. For people woefully uneducated in the discipline, it’s not adherence to canon that makes us challenge the validity of accents and diction and presence and impact; it is the mythology that we’ve ingested, and which has shaped our national imagination. For an audience supposedly unaware of the Tulsa Massacre and the brutality of sundown towns until recent television shows showcased them, it’s laughable to assume resistance to historical truth is based on a breadth of knowledge. The sad truth is that any nation that would intentionally do the things ours has cannot be trusted to relay its doings. History must be searched out, and the people that myths have omitted or misrepresented restored. My deepest gratitude to the true historians doing that work, so that I can do mine.
So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix: 2 (Remixed Classics) Page 22