Libbie

by Judy Alter

  I was overcome with sadness, sitting there beside that newly mounded grave with its brave floral pieces and the marked-off space of a headstone yet to come. I had loved my mother a great deal, and I would miss her, but more than that, I was fearful of life without her. I respected Papa, even feared him some, for he was much the disciplinarian in the family, but I was sure that he didn't understand me and that he could never, ever make up for the loss of my mother. Life loomed bleakly before me, and I tried to remember what Armstrong Custer had told me. I hoped he was right.

  * * *

  "Libbie, you're to come to Grand Rapids with me for a few weeks," Aunt Harriet said, busily pulling my clothes out of a wardrobe and sorting them, packing some into a large suitcase. "Let's see, you'll need a warm shawl for evening, and some cotton wrappers will do for daytime.... Your mother did have such taste in clothes!" She fingered a flowered cotton wrapper that Mother had had the seamstress make, then put it back in the wardrobe, murmuring, "You can't wear it now. We'll have to get you some black dresses."

  The dressmaker was even then at work on several suitable mourning garments for me. The lavender calico, my newest dress, would have to sit in the closet.

  "Won't Papa need me?" I asked.

  "No, dear," she said. "He's best left alone to deal with his grief."

  "And me?"

  "You need to have loving family around you," Aunt Harriet said in a wise tone that settled it all.

  I wished someone would ask me. I wished for my Papa—to take his arm, tell him I loved him, to listen to him tell me what was right and wrong. I wished most of all for my mother to sing.

  I pulled out a heavy woolen shawl and then, defiantly, a flowered silk apron. I might not be able to wear it, but it would comfort me to have something bright with me. Chambray wrappers and muslin short gowns and petticoats followed, and an enormous pile began to accumulate. "How long am I to stay?"

  "Several weeks. Until your father is able to arrange things."

  Arrange things? Our lives were arranged, I thought. The house would be empty without Mother, but life would go on. "I'll miss the opening of school," I protested.

  "You'll begin in Grand Rapids. And then when you get back to... when you get back to Monroe, you can catch up on what you've missed. You're a good student, Libbie, aren't you?"

  I was a so-so student, and she knew it.

  Papa saw us to the train station, full of stern advice against talking to strangers and warnings not to eat the food in the stations when we stopped. "Betsy has packed you enough to last," he said. "Best not to try anything else."

  The train was better than I remembered it, though in late August the trip was inevitably hot, and cinders and sparks still blew in the open windows. Aunt Harriet got a cinder hole in the black outfit she had chosen for traveling and muttered over it for miles. I watched the scenery, slept when I could, and arrived in Grand Rapids feeling tired and dirty.

  I remember little of my stay in Grand Rapids, though my several cousins there tried to cheer me, and Aunt Harriet hovered over me so that I was most relieved when it was time to return to Monroe. Papa met me at the train.

  Once settled in the carriage, we headed not for Monroe Street but across town in the opposite direction. "Papa? Where are you going?"

  "The seminary," he replied, his voice distant. The seminary was Monroe Female Seminary, where all the proper girls went.

  "The seminary? Papa, I cannot go to school straight from the train. I'll enroll tomorrow. I've already missed three weeks of school. One more day won't matter." I was baffled by his behavior.

  Reluctantly, slowly, he said, "You're going to be a boarding student this year, Elizabeth. I've closed the house, and I'm living at Humphrey House." Papa never looked at me when he said this.

  "Humphrey House? A hotel? Papa, you can't!" Had it been anyone else but my papa, I would have suspected a grand joke, some high jinks designed to fool me, especially since Humphrey House was owned by the father of my best friend, Nettie Humphrey, and she and her family lived there. But close the house? Of course that was impossible. We would live on Monroe Street, and I would climb the stairs each night to my bedroom with its poster bed and flowered wallpaper and organdy curtains, and Betsy would cook and clean and care for us, and Papa would read his paper at the breakfast table and study his law books late into the night, seated at the round oak dining table.

  "It's for the best," he said without emotion.

  By now we were in front of the three-story brick building that housed the Monroe Female Seminary. I'd gone to school there as a day student for several years and always felt twinges of sympathy for the boarding students, who, I thought, lived a bleak existence. Now as I stared at the square and formidable building with the long veranda across one end, its rows of windows, all with identical chambray curtains, seemed to mock me. I made no move to alight from the carriage.

  "This is for the best," Papa repeated, shaking his bald head as though in despair. "I can't care for you now. Come, let's go in."

  "I will not get out of this carriage," I said firmly. "We need to go home."

  "Daughter," he said in a weary tone, "we cannot go home. Don't make this any more difficult than it must be."

  I looked at him, saw the grief in his face, and realized that I was defeated. Papa, so lost in his own sadness, had no sense of my grief, my need for the house on Monroe Street. Feeling both angry and betrayed, I ignored his offered hand and alighted from the carriage. We both knew that I often jumped from the carriage almost before it stopped, so anxious was I to get to school and see my friends. But not this day.

  Inside I was greeted enthusiastically by teachers who hugged me and muttered, "You poor, dear thing"—that, again!—and by students who eyed me uncertainly. What, they were wondering, do you say to someone whose mother has died? I swept by them without a word, even turning a cold shoulder to Nettie Humphrey. When Mr. Boyd, the headmaster, reached out a comforting arm, I shook it off and asked, "Where am I to stay?" I knew they all thought me rude, but I was trying desperately to keep from crying. And I never looked at Papa again that afternoon, even when he left, saying, "I'll be back tomorrow to see you."

  Once alone in my room, one in a corner of the building with windows on two sides, I threw myself on the bed and sobbed bitterly, sobbing for my dead mother and for myself, for all the joy that had gone out of my life. Vaguely I remembered Armstrong Custer again. Was I really strong?

  My black mood passed quickly, as such moods will with young people. But no one else recognized my need for warmth and comfort and—yes, even laughter. Instead, during my first few months back at the seminary, everyone, teachers and students alike, treated me as though I were made of fragile porcelain, liable to break at any moment. They expected me to be somber and silent. I couldn't see that prayers or quiet meditation or a long face would bring my mother back, or move my father out of Humphrey House, and I longed for brightness in my life.

  On the other hand, I traded unmercifully on the special attention given me. "Mr. Boyd," I would say in a tremulous voice, "I wasn't able to finish my French exercises," or "Miss Taylor, I'm afraid I'm not feeling well at all today. May I miss the nature walk?" Dear things that they were, the teachers allowed me to get away with this outrageous behavior. I longed for someone to shake me by the ears and tell me to behave, as Mother used to, but all Papa said was, "You must try to do better, my dear." At night I often cried myself to sleep, for I was lonely and miserable.

  My misery peaked at Christmas, when all the girls packed to go home for the holidays. Nettie had asked if I could not come to Humphrey House to stay with her, but for reasons I did not understand, Papa decreed that I was to stay at the seminary, where the Boyds would be my only companions.

  Christmas Day dawned cold and gray, matching my disposition. Papa was to come take me to Christmas dinner at Humphrey House later in the day, and we would exchange presents then, but a long, empty day stretched before me, and I could not help but recall the joy
of previous Christmases, when Mother had decorated the house with pine garlands and gilded pine cones and had filled the air with the aromas of fresh baking.

  Suddenly I knew what I had to do, where I had to be. I bundled up in a warm shawl, with boots on my feet, heavy gloves, and a wool bonnet. Then, quietly and carefully, I crept down the stairs from my third-floor room. Nothing but quiet came from the Boyds' apartment, which was, purposefully I suppose, right next to the door. I eased the heavy oak door open, squeezed out, and pulled it gently to behind me. Then, heart pounding, I began to run.

  The streets of Monroe were empty—each family was celebrating Christmas, I thought bitterly—so no one saw me pass. By the time I reached Monroe Street, I was cold to the bone, but the sure knowledge that I would soon be in my own home cheered me. I fairly bounded through that gate, still tight on its hinges in spite of my swinging, and up the stairs. The door was locked, of course, an obstacle I should have anticipated. I tried the side door on the veranda, found it locked, and went dispiritedly to the back and the kitchen door. To my surprise, it gave when I pushed, and I entered a stone-cold, silent kitchen. Had I expected Betsy to be bustling around fixing Christmas dinner?

  I hadn't been prepared for the house to be as empty as it was, nor as cold. I wandered into the parlor, where I found all the furniture covered with sheets, creating ghostlike shapes in the dim darkness. The only familiar thing I saw still uncovered was Papa's prize picture of General Winfield Scott. When I was little, during the Mexican-American War, I'd heard much talk about soldiers and bravery and fighting for one's country, and the talk had always come back to Scott and that picture of him, which Papa prized so. General Winfield Scott became my childhood hero, the epitome of a brave soldier. The general at that moment seemed to be frowning at me.

  I was cold and hungry, but I found nothing to eat in the kitchen save some preserves, which didn't appeal at all. Fleetingly I thought of Mother's Christmas dinners, with roasted duck and cranberry relish and mince pies. At least I could do something about the cold, for I'd watched Betsy start a fire often enough to manage it. And there were kindling and coal in the scuttles next to the parlor grate.

  It took me ten or fifteen minutes, and cost me tears of frustration, to get that fire going, but at last a small flame flickered to life, and soon I had enough of a fire that I could warm my frozen hands and then toast my feet. I pulled one of Mother's knit afghans out from under the sheet that covered the couch and wrapped myself in it, growing drowsy as I grew warmer. At last I slept.

  A knocking on the front door woke me with a start, and it took me just a moment to remember where I was. The sheet-covered furniture brought me back to reality, and the knocking reminded me that I'd run away and someone would no doubt be looking for me. I crept to the bay window, where, if I was careful, I could look out without being seen. If it was Papa, I was not going to answer the door.

  Armstrong Custer stood at the door, cupping his hands to peer through the glass panels. A part of me wanted to ignore his knock and be alone with my misery, but a greater part of me was lonely and afraid. I opened the door.

  "I thought it was you," he said matter-of-factly, pushing past me into the parlor.

  I closed the door behind him. "How did you know I was here?"

  "Saw the firelight flickering and knew the house was supposed to be empty."

  "Did my papa send you?"

  "Your papa?" He was genuinely startled. "I don't know your papa. Why would he send me?"

  "I suppose," I said dramatically, "everyone's looking for me. I've run away."

  "Run to a pretty obvious place, I'd say. How long you plan to stay?"

  My foot traced the flowers in the Axminster carpet, and my eyes followed it, avoiding looking at Custer. "I don't know.... I haven't thought...."

  "Seems to me you ought to have a plan if you're going to run away," he said seriously. I looked quickly to make sure he was not making fun of me. "Course," he went on, "I thought you'd do better than that. I thought you'd stay at that school. I heard you were a boarding student."

  "How did you hear that?" I asked, genuinely curious why this farm boy should know anything about my life.

  "Everyone knows what the Bacons do," he said, "and besides, I have a particular interest in you after that day I found you swinging on the gate. How is school?"

  "I hate it!" I said fiercely.

  "No doubt you do. I hate Stebbins, too, but I aim to be something one day, and I figure sitting through things I hate is the only way to do it."

  "What do you aim to be?" I asked curiously, unconsciously mimicking his speech.

  He smiled, and his blue eyes twinkled. "A famous general in the army. I'm going to West Point."

  "You can't get an appointment," I said without thinking. "They only go to rich boys and..." Embarrassed, I let my voice trail off.

  He had seated himself before the fire and was poking at it now with the fireplace iron, stirring the cinders into life. "And I'm not rich," he finished. "No, but I'll get there one day, you wait and see. What do you want to be?"

  What did I want to be? I'd never given it a thought. All I wanted was to have my mother back and to live in the house on Monroe Street. "I don't know," I said hesitantly, seating myself beside him. "I guess someday I'll be married and have children."

  "Maybe," he said mischievously, "you'll be a general's wife."

  I laughed at him.

  "Come on, it's time for you to go back now." He stood up and held out a hand to help me. "Before everyone starts a row looking for you."

  "Let them," I said petulantly, refusing to get up. "I'm not going back."

  "Sure you are. Before anyone knows you gave in and ran away. You're going back and show yourself how strong you are. Besides, I'll take you on my sled."

  "You will?" For a moment I was tempted. Then I shook my head. "No, I'm not interested in being strong. I hate that school!"

  "You'll never get beyond it if you let it beat you. You'll never be a general's wife or anything else interesting. What would you do? Run from school all your life. Sounds like a poor living to me."

  He was right, and in the end, after much more persuasion by him, I let him take me back to school. In spite of my nap, I hadn't been gone more than two hours, and no one had missed me. Armstrong pulled me on the sled, running to give it speed, and delivered me to the front door of the seminary.

  Mrs. Boyd was at the door in an instant. "Libbie! I thought you were upstairs! Where have you been?"

  "Oh, I just took her for a Christmas ride," Armstrong answered for me. "Hope you don't mind."

  "No," she said, "but your father will be here any minute, Libbie. You best dress for dinner."

  "Yes, ma'am," I said meekly. Then to Armstrong, "Will I see you again?" Quite the coquette I was, even at thirteen.

  "I'll be by to see that you're working on being a general's wife," he said, smiling. Then, in an affectionate gesture, he reached down and cuffed me gently on the nose. "Take care, Miss Libbie Bacon." And he was gone.

  Papa tried hard to make our Christmas dinner festive, but he would have been horrified if he knew why I was in such bright spirits.

  * * *

  In the winter of my third year in high school, the monotony of life at the seminary was broken by two fires, both of which nearly touched me closely and did scare me more than a little.

  The first happened while we attended Sunday services, as a class. As Methodist ministers were wont to do, Mr. Smythers was preaching at length, and we girls were trying hard to pay attention, knowing that any wandering of the mind would bring a severe look from Headmaster Boyd. Just as Mr. Smythers reached the point where he pounded on the pulpit to remind us that God saw every little thing we did, a cry erupted outside the church.

  "Fire! Fire!"

  In the distance, we could hear the fire bell ringing, and the shouting as volunteers ran to their posts. Several men in the congregation jumped up immediately and headed outside, no doubt to do their pa
rt in fighting the fire. But Mr. Boyd remained in deep concentration, staring at Mr. Smythers, who continued as though nothing had happened. One look from Mr. Boyd told us that we were expected to do the same.

  Then the cry outside came more clearly: "The seminary's on fire!" Mr. Boyd bolted, followed by a whispering, worried flock of girls. Behind us, I could hear Mr. Smythers's voice falter.

  We ran the two blocks to the seminary, holding our skirts up just enough to allow us some speed but never enough to compromise propriety. When we stood, panting, in front of the building, we could see flames coming out three or four windows on the top floor.

  "It's close to your room," Laura Noble said, hand over her mouth in horror, and I stood paralyzed, watching the flames move across the front of the building toward the corner where my bedroom was located. "What," I asked myself, "if they do burn? What am I losing?" The answer became clear—I was losing a wardrobe full of clothes that I loved.

  I'd worn black mourning for one long year, then spent several months in half mourning, which meant black and white ribbons instead of all black, white or pale dresses on occasion, but still no flowers. At long last I'd emerged from that period and was able to order my wardrobe again, but now with a much more specific taste than I'd had as a twelve-year-old. The lavender calico, which I'd so lovingly put away, no longer fit—it was made for a slightly chubby and much shorter person; at sixteen I'd grown taller and, to my pleasure, much thinner, though Papa worried constantly that I was not eating enough to keep a bird alive.

  The calico had been replaced, though, by plaid silks, flowered cambrics, light pastel short gowns to match striped heavy skirts, all manner of pretty gowns, and none of those awful homespuns I'd worn as a young girl. I secretly prided myself on having the finest wardrobe in the school, mostly because I had no mother to oversee my clothes, and my father allowed me to order as I wished from the dressmaker. Strict as he was, that was one area of my life that baffled him.