Patience & Sarah

by Isabel Miller

  There’d be that huge man pounding her, and Rachel wailing, “Pa! Pa! Don’t!” and all the little girls wailing too and the mother silent night and day. He came to hate Sarah, I think, for making him be a bully when he wasn’t one at heart, and making all his family silent at the sight of him where there’d been love before. And he couldn’t even explain. If he could have explained, they would have supported him. They thought (except Rachel) that he only wanted to keep Sarah forever and make her work for him. Maddening to be thought cruel, when you’re guided by nothing but the loftiest moral purpose.

  Then Sarah would get up and slowly go back into her house, the way to mine being furiously barred, shaking off Rachel’s efforts to support and guide and comfort her. Slowly she’d climb up to her pallet. It was the end of clearing the new field for that winter.

  “Sister, Sister, quit. He won’t let you!” Rachel whispered. She’d followed Sarah up.

  Sarah looked at her and then tried to turn away but couldn’t, being lame. So she shut her eyes dismissingly.

  “I can’t stand this every day,” Rachel said. It had been then ten days.

  “Pa’ll get so he can’t either,” Sarah said. “I don’t feel it at the time.”

  This was the first Sarah had spoken to her in the whole ten days, so Rachel was able to fetch snow for Sarah’s bruises. She carried the snow in a pan past her father, who was sulking by the fire and who said not a word.

  Then opening Sarah’s clothes, finding bruises (how not find them?), holding snow against them, Rachel murmured, “Bullhead, do you have to just put your horns down and run blind? He don’t want to hurt you. He don’t even want to keep you. He just wants an excuse now to stop. Can’t you see he’s just pleading with you to tell him a lie, so he can stop pounding you?”

  “I haven’t got one,” Sarah said.

  And then Rachel produced the selfsame plan I’d made myself, showing that female minds run in the same channel.

  “You just say it was all a lie, what you said before,” Rachel said.

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “Say so. Say here’s your chance to get to the West where the men all are, at the expense of this well-to-do lady that wants the same but’s too scared to go alone.”

  “I already said I love her. Didn’t you tell him that?”

  “Well, now you say you didn’t think how that would sound. You thought it sounded better than being greedy for her money. But now you see the truth would’ve been better.”

  Sarah had never dreamed women could be so sly. “I won’t say that against my feeling,” she said and shut her eyes and soul and pushed the pan of snow away.

  Then, on second thought, she looked at Rachel again and asked, “Why did you tell him?”

  With tears, Rachel said, “I didn’t know he’d take on so. I thought maybe it was a common thing. We never know what’s common, living back here like this. I was worried and I thought maybe he’d say it was nothing to worry about. I never knew he’d take on so.”

  And even with an example of Rachel’s slyness so fresh in her mind, Sarah believed her.

  I’m not proud of myself for this next part, but I’m proud of Sarah, and I have to tell mine to tell hers.

  Sarah was at my door. I gasped at the sight of her, and took her arm to draw her in. Her eyes were bruised, face puffy, lip swollen and split, eyebrow cut. “Pa’s here,” she said, and, yes, he was, leaning against the wall beside the door. I hadn’t noticed anything except the condition of Sarah’s face, but when I saw him hulking there my heart began to pound so loud I thought it would deafen me and maybe deafen them too.

  They both came in. I shut the door and leaned against it. I was very afraid. We were all mute. Soon I felt the door move, and Edward came in. I suppose Tobe or the children had seen them come and told him. I didn’t care. I may even have been a little glad. Sarah and I were lost anyway. At least Edward could talk.

  “Was that necessary, Dowling?” he asked, tilting towards Sarah’s damages.

  “I didn’t really hurt her. Just bare bands. That cut there’s the only one she’s got. Her own bone did that.”

  Edward’s lips made an excellent scornful line. “Well, what brings you?”

  “She was set on it. I thought there’d be no harm as long as I came too. Speak up, gal. We won’t stay long.”

  She glanced at them, waiting for them to stand back and let us talk, but they stood right there, wouldn’t budge, and she looked at me and braced herself and said, “Do you still want to go?” She looked at me with love, right there in front of them. I felt angry at her. Embarassed.

  “We can’t,” I said, because we couldn’t unless Edward bought me out and Sarah’s father stopped guarding her. We’d need so much help to go, and they’d set their wills against our going, and it was hopeless, and I couldn’t remember love. It was far away and lost, like infancy, and a mistake anyway.

  “We can, unless you don’t want to.”

  “It wasn’t very reasonable,” I said.

  Her father said, “There, Sal, you’ve got your answer. Now let’s go.”

  “If you want to, we’ll find a way,” she said.

  “There is no way,” I said.

  “You’ve got your answer. You was played with,” her father said. “Now come on.”

  She said, “Do you want to?”

  As a pauper and a fugitive? For a love I couldn’t remember the feel of? I didn’t want to. I wasn’t strong enough. I had to know what I was strong enough for. I had to know that much.

  “No.”

  With a great wailing groan she made for the door.

  I let her go. There was no more to say. Then when she and her father were out the door, there was one more thing to say.

  “Sarah!” I called. She faced me so fast, so hopeful.

  “Don’t you care what people think?”

  “Course I care,” she said. She turned away. She stumbled as she walked away. I shut the door.

  Edward was still with me. For something to do, not to look at him or talk, I sat down to spin. He was standing in the middle of my kitchen, just standing there, for the longest time. Go, go, go, go, go, I thought. Out, Edward.

  “She really feels,” he said, slowly. “I never knew anybody to feel so much. Not even a man.”

  I faced again my fate as spinster sister and aunt, but it was worse now because I believed it, as I never really had before. I knew myself unable to change my life.

  I worked at forgetting what I thought I knew when Sarah kissed me. That whole day came to seem very childish and foolish and unworthy of me. I struggled for calm and unselfishness, to be of service to others, and I thought, why, this is suffering, this is the pain of life, this is what they talk about in Church, this daily struggle to keep going without knowing why. And I saw what was meant by faith: faith is the belief that this life is not our only chance. Wavering of faith means beginning to believe in this life and wanting to live it, denying all duties and dashing off uncontrolled. What would I do, I wondered, all uncontrolled and raging and self-seeking, my tiger-soul unchained, these dangerous passions freed? I would seek Sarah’s lips again and be calm.

  The story of the Prodigal Son attracted and warned me. He demanded his patrimony, as I had meant to demand mine. He squandered it. I tried to imagine how one might squander – what dissolute living might consist in. Searching my soul for an answer, I found again my longing for Sarah’s lips. But that wasn’t dissolute in a man. Men could have women’s lips. And I felt, I think for the first time, a rage against men. Not because they could say, “I’m going,” and go. Not because they could go to college and become lawyers or preachers while women could be only drudge or ornament but nothing between. Not because they could be parents at no cost to their bodies. But because when they love a woman they may be with her, and all society will protect their possession of her.

  BOOK TWO

  Sarah

  Chapter One

  Pa and me walked home, single file,
him first. The tears just poured down my face. I couldn’t’ve stopped them even if he’d been looking.

  I’d made the mistake of letting a feeling get past the point where it can be stopped. You can’t stop tears if they get as far as your eyes, or even to your throat. Only place to stop them is in the feeling, keeping it out. But I didn’t see, and still don’t, how I could’ve done different – not felt for Patience. And once I’d felt, I had to stand whatever happened.

  Pa said, half over his shoulder, “I see now I wouldn’t’ve had to lay it on so.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “No hard feeling?” he asked.

  “No, Pa.”

  And I really didn’t have a grudge against him. I knew that if Patience had felt what I did, nothing Pa did could’ve kept her from me. I knew that by his own lights, Pa’d acted right. I couldn’t hold that against him. And I didn’t. I was just finished with him.

  We walked along. I could feel every place he’d hit me. I hadn’t much before. But then I could.

  “I’ll be leaving, soon’s I heal up,” I said.

  “Like you was planning.” He nodded, like broad-minded. “Now, that’s all right.”

  I was really finished with him. I didn’t even hackle up and ask what made him think it mattered to have him say it was all right.

  “I think you’ll be back,” he said.

  “No.”

  “I think so. But I think you need to find that out for yourself. And that’s all right. When you want to come back, I just want you to know you’ve got a place.”

  I would hang myself by the neck before I would come back, but I didn’t say so. I just walked along behind him.

  I clumb up to my bed soon’s I got home. Rachel came at me right away. I had no grudge against her either, but I could see that I was through with her too. I knew she never meant to harm me. It didn’t matter. It was like an ax had come down and cut me from her. I wondered if that was how Patience felt about me.

  Rachel said, “Oh, Sister, where you been? What happened?”

  I just shook my head and turned away.

  All I wanted was to heal up and get out of there.

  I didn’t go down for supper. Pa yelled for me. I thought next he’d send up one of the little ones, knowing I still had feeling for them. I braced myself. I’d say, gentle, no, I wasn’t hungry.

  But it was Ma that came. She shouldn’t’ve! With her lame shoulder, up the ladder like that, with her shoulder like that – “Oh, Ma!”

  “Now, gal,” she said.

  “I just want to heal up and go.”

  “Sure. I always knew you’d go.”

  “Patience don’t want to.”

  “She’s scared.”

  “Scared? You think so? She didn’t say so. She just said, no, she didn’t want to.”

  “She’s too scared to think if she wants to.”

  All the while, Ma was wiping my eyes and nose on her skirt. Hard-woven linsey, scratchy. It shouldn’t’ve felt so comfortable. It took me back to when I could reach no higher than her skirt. Oh what a skirt she’s had through the years, smeared with baby noses.

  I said, “She won’t come.”

  “No, she won’t.”

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  By March I was healed up. Every outside part of me worked just right. There wasn’t a bruise to show. I didn’t cry for Patience except when nobody could see.

  I cut my hair. The family talked against it, but nobody stopped me. They stood around and watched, like watching a fist fight but not getting into it.

  We had no looking glass. I just felt and cut. My head felt light and strange and cool and free. It would take some getting used to. When I’d got to where I couldn’t catch any more locks, I stopped.

  Ma said, “I’ll even it up for you.” I felt the blades cold on my neck. Everybody allowed it was uncanny how like a boy I looked when she got through.

  I didn’t know what I’d do when my hair needed another cut. Patience was supposed to bring shears.

  “You know there’s a toll for walking down a turnpike?” Pa said.

  I didn’t know. For just walking?

  “I won’t walk down a turnpike, then,” I said.

  “There’s a toll for bridges,” he said. “And ferryboats.”

  “I’ll swim.”

  I figured I could walk fifteen miles a day, at least, and work here and there as I went for my eats. Ma’d fed many a man on his way like I’d be. I knew it could be done and was done. They’d been by our fire and told, and made me want to go. I don’t know why they didn’t make Pa want to. How could he stay in Connecticut on that rocky hilly farm that had been butchered before we ever laid eyes on it, and not feel his heart just break to go? The only way I can explain Pa on that is to say he never had that hopefulness you need to push out and try. He might look big and cheery and reckless, but inside he’s very scared to take a chance.

  There was no use starting till the mud dried out and let the farmers at their fields so they’d be glad to swap a meal for a little help. I was fit to go, but I waited around, teaching my sister Mary how to use an ax and drive the cattle. Pa skipped Rachel – he figured she was past the age. I wanted to teach Mary how to handle a gun too, but Pa said that was going too far. He wished he’d never taught me, he said. Mary was going to help him, but she wasn’t going to get big ideas about herself. He’d learned his lesson, he said. I have to laugh at Pa thinking it’s having a big idea to do like him.

  “I don’t want Mary claiming her name’s Mark one of these days,” Pa said.

  My new name was Sam. Did learning to shoot cause that? I expect it could’ve. It made me feel I could take care of myself, and not be beholden, and love who my feeling went to. I suppose lots of girls loved Patience but never said. Maybe it was because I could shoot that I could say. No matter that Patience changed her mind and I had to cry and go alone. I was never for a minute sorry I’d said.

  Came the day I left home, a Monday late in April. I was up early and everybody with me. I hoped the little ones would sleep on, but they got up, crying. I was crying too, but that had nothing to do with how I had to go.

  I laid my blanket on the floor and put my extra clothes and tinderbox along it, and the jag of nocake and jerky Ma had for me, and then I rolled the blanket long, like a log, and bent it and tied the ends together so I could hang it around my neck and over my shoulder. It rode easy that way. Pa let me take a hatchet, on grounds I’d be back before he could miss it, and I hung that at my waist, along with a little pan Ma gave me, and I was ready to go except I didn’t know how to.

  Ma kissed me and said, “I wish we had some money for you.”

  “I’ll make my way,” I said.

  “I know. You’ll be just fine.”

  “Ma, I’ll come back if you need me. Just let me know.”

  She nodded, playing there would be a way she could let me know, and said, “Now, off you go.”

  Pa said, “You won’t get twenty mile.”

  I kissed them all. Even Pa. “I won’t say goodbye,” he said. “You’ll be back in two days.”

  “Off you go,” Ma said.

  “Don’t tell nobody you’re a girl,” Pa said. “Nobody! Hear?”

  I set off. I hardly could, but just by taking one step and the next, I did it.

  But I couldn’t get up any enthusiasm, and I knew I had to try Patience one more time, to make sure. It wouldn’t make sense to get all the way to Genesee and then wonder what she’d say if I asked her again.

  And no matter what she said, maybe she’d give me one last kiss.

  So I cut back and around the woods to Patience’s place, and stood, scared, in the road looking at her house all grand and white, and me with everything I owned across my shoulder and not heavy. I could see how there was never any real reason to expect anything.

  But I’d come out of my way to make sure, and after the racket her dogs made I knew I must’ve been s
een. I went on up and thumped the main front door. The door to Patience’s part was inside, down the hall, but I couldn’t very well go in there after all that had been.

  Who came to the door was Mrs White, Edward White’s wife, the one that wouldn’t let me warm up the day I fetched the wood. She didn’t know me as a boy. She was almost pleasant at first, but soon’s I said who I was she shut the door all but a crack, like I was dangerous, and peeked out at me. I felt the air on my head and wished for my hair back. I felt my plaguy face and ears get red. No way to stop them. The blood just went. I stood still and played I didn’t notice.

  “I came to see Patience, Miss White,” I said.

  “She’s gone.”

  “Gone! Where?”

  “Visiting.”

  “Oh.”

  She wanted to shut the door then, so even though I was choking I had to hurry to say, “Tell her I came by. Tell her I’m heading out. Tell her I said goodbye.”

  Then I could go. Going couldn’t be fast enough or hard enough to suit me. I wanted to walk till my feet bled and my knuckles dragged and my belly broke, to see if maybe I could hurt enough someplace else to tire out the knot in my chest.

  Chapter Two

  My road ran first northwest and then veered northeast, up the valley of the Hooestennuc River, the way the men who stopped at our place talked about. Even at flood from spring runoff, the river showed its biggest rocks. The rest of the year it showed the smallest too. You couldn’t take a boat up it, or ship to market on it, but it did give me many a drink, and it marked the easiest grade through a tangly batch of steep hills.

  I planned to rest often and be sensible, so my strength would hold through the many weeks I’d be walking. But on that first day, every time I stretched out in the roadside grass I got so jumpy I had to set right off again. I had to put space between me and all I was lonesome for – Ma and Mary and the little ones, and Patience. I kept thinking Patience could be home again by now, and I should ask her again. It was a dangerous thought, that made me weak. I wouldn’t be able to trust myself until I’d gone too far, so far I couldn’t turn back.