Little Women and Me

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  “Even if you were older,” Meg soothed, “you must be reasonable, Emily. Look at the invitation. It says that Miss March and Miss Josephine are invited to a little dance on New Year’s Eve at the home of the Misses Gardiner. It doesn’t say a thing about Miss Emily. Surely, you must realize how wrong it would be to show up at a party when you haven’t been invited.”

  Well, I thought unreasonably, I hadn’t exactly been invited to this book either, yet here I am!

  “See, Emily?” Meg thrust the invitation at me again. She could be so … teachery at times. I supposed that was the teacher in her. “Your name doesn’t appear—”

  “Yes, yes.” I swatted the folded note away. “I’ve already seen the stupid invitation, thank you very much.”

  “Emily!” Meg looked scandalized. “Your language!”

  “Oh, who can blame her?” Amy said with a self-pitying groan. “I cannot wait until I am old enough to go to parties and dances and balls. But of course, when I am old enough, I will wear perfectly beautiful gowns that will not be at all like the dreadful poplin Jo must wear tonight. That is, the one with the tear and the burn mark in the back because she always stands too close to the fire. And that means that she will have to stand with her back to the wall all night, never even joining in the dancing. Nor will my gloves have lemonade stains on them like Jo’s do. Meg and Jo will have to share gloves tonight, each wearing one of Meg’s good ones while carrying one of Jo’s soiled ones in their other hands. And when I am old enough—”

  “Which you will not be for a very long time,” Jo said sternly, “since you are only twelve now.”

  “Yes, yes,” I said. “And Meg’s sixteen, you’re fifteen, Beth’s thirteen, and I’m fourteen. We all know how old we are.” I yawned, overacting like a character in one of her plays. “Is there some reason you feel the need to keep reminding us?”

  “Don’t be irritable,” Beth said gently, grabbing on to my hand. “We will have our own fun here at home tonight. First, we will have the excitement of helping Meg and Jo get ready. Then we will sit around in our nightcaps, sewing and singing, all the while imagining the fun they are having. And then, finally, they will come home and tell us all about it!”

  Beth was so good, it was hard to be grumpy around her. Still, Meg and even Jo were going to a dance while I had to stay at home, sewing and singing? I wanted to get out of the house for a change! I wanted to go to a dance! I was sure there would be boys there!

  I couldn’t completely prevent the sourness as I forced myself to smile at Beth and respond, “Sounds great.”

  Actually, it turned out it was fun helping someone else get ready for a party you weren’t invited to.

  It was fun when Jo accidentally burned Meg’s hair when she tried to curl it with a pair of hot tongs.

  And it was fun watching Jo try not to itch her head after Meg put nineteen pins in her hair.

  And it was really fun hearing someone other than me get “admonished” for a change as Meg gave Jo a lengthy list of don’ts, which included:

  Don’t say “Christopher Columbus” or wink.

  Don’t dawdle when Hannah comes to collect us at eleven.

  Don’t eat much supper.

  Don’t shake hands.

  Apparently, in the 1860s, girls weren’t supposed to have any fun, punctuality counted, they were laying the groundwork for female eating disorders, and they were scared to touch other people.

  “Now remember, when we get to the party,” Meg gave Jo one last warning, “if I lift my eyebrows at you, it means you are doing something wrong and you must stop it at once, while if I nod my head it means you are behaving correctly, at least at that moment. Have you got all that?”

  “Yes,” Jo said with a sigh that made it clear she was no longer excited about the party.

  It was very satisfying, seeing Jo looking less alpha girl for once. Nearly on the verge of laughing out loud at the situation, I caught myself. What exactly was my problem with Jo? Well, outside of the fact that she was completely full of herself. But really, what was my problem? I shook the feeling away, promising myself I’d get back to it. Right now I was too busy helping Beth and Amy wave Meg and Jo off.

  There stood Meg, wearing a silvery poplin gown, her singed hair carefully camouflaged by some thingy that reminded me of the hairnets the kitchen workers wore at school, only nicer because it was blue velvet. There were lace frills here and there, a white chrysanthemum attached to her shoulder, and she tottered back and forth in heels she obviously wasn’t used to wearing.

  And there stood Jo, with her nineteen pins in her hair.

  “Good-bye!” “Good-bye!” they shouted back at us as they bobbed their way out the door and into the night. The way they bobbed—they kind of reminded me of bobbleheads.

  “So what shall we do first?” Beth asked with timid eagerness as soon as the door had shut on the others. “Shall we sing first? Or sew maybe?”

  “I have a headache,” I said, feeling the sudden need to be alone. “I think I’ll just lie down for a few minutes.”

  “Oh, not a headache!” Beth said.

  “I hope you don’t die from it,” Amy added.

  “Of course I won’t—” I started to say; then, “What?”

  “I’m sure Amy didn’t mean to upset you.” Beth blushed. “But you do know, when people get headaches, sometimes it does lead to … other things.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said impatiently.

  Honestly, no matter how often Jo reminded me that I was fourteen, I couldn’t help but feel like I was surrounded by a group of people much younger than me, less sophisticated. Well, maybe because I was. If only these people could see YouTube, they’d probably have heart attacks.

  “I just need a few minutes of peace and quiet,” I added, “but I promise you, I’m not going to die from it.”

  And that really was all it was, I thought as I entered the bedroom I shared with Meg and Jo, for once having the whole room to myself: I just needed a few moments alone.

  You’d assume that without the endless noise of the life I was used to—there were no TVs or computers or iPods here or cell phones ringing with Justin Bieber, barf—it would be quieter. The kind of place that would offer a girl opportunities for silent thought. And maybe there were, in other parts of this Brave New World. But here? I could barely hear myself think.

  And I had so many things to think about!

  Like the color of my hair.

  Okay, I do realize that sounds lame, but the other girls all had hair ranging from the various browns of Meg, Jo, and Beth to Amy’s yellow, while mine was auburn. Didn’t the others notice how different I looked compared to them? What did our father, the vaunted Papa, look like? Had I gotten my coloring from him? Perhaps dearly beloved Marmee had had an illegitimate child on the side—me! But I could hardly ask the others about all that, could I? “Oh, by the way, what is Papa’s hair color?” They’d lock me away!

  Didn’t the others notice, given my looks and the odd things I tended to say, that I didn’t fit in? And yet, no one seemed to think that at all.

  On the contrary. On returning to this bedroom after my barefooted attempt in the snow to break the seam between this world and my real one, I’d discovered a wardrobe where some of the clothes were supposed to be mine. (Well, I discovered which ones were mine after first mistakenly trying to put on one of Jo’s things—she quickly put an end to that!) With two older sisters to provide me with hand-me-downs, I had more clothes here than I had back home! Yes, I had clothes here, and a family—a family who seemed to have memories of everything I’d done for the last fourteen years, going back to when I was first born into this house, as if the story had been preadapted for my entrance, and yet they were memories that I had no knowledge of. What were those memories? What did they all know about me? What had I been like at age two? At ten? And what about their lives—what did I need to know about them?

  Again, more questions I couldn’t ask.

  Was I a d
ifferent person in this world than in my own world?

  My own world!

  Ever since arriving here, I’d been in defensive mode, only really able to react to all the newness of the strange life surrounding me, so I’d had little time to think about what was going on back there.

  What was I supposed to have been doing back home today? Or tomorrow? Had I been invited to any New Year’s Eve parties? Was I at one right now with Kendra and even having a good time there? Did I still exist back home, living on two planes at once, or did I just live here? And if only here, there must be things I had to get back there for. School. Homework assignments. Parties—real parties, not like this silly cookies-and-punch gig that Meg and Jo were going to. Wouldn’t people miss me and start looking for me?

  But wait a second. Did life still go on out there? Did the clock still go on ticking in my real life even while I was in here?

  I. Had. No. Idea.

  “So, tell me about the Laurence boy,” I said. “Jo made such a big deal about speaking to him over the fence. Have either of you ever seen him?”

  In spite of my initial reluctance to stay at home with my … younger sisters while the older two went off to the dance without us, it was turning out to be a bizarrely fun evening, just as Beth had promised.

  Without the other two around to boss us, we were free to act like, well, silly gooses if we wanted to. We’d already found some munchies and had laughed over how Jo was dealing with her nineteen pins as we huddled in our white nightshirts and nightcaps in front of the fire.

  I caught sight of my image in a reflective surface. Huh. Not bad. The nightcap looked kind of cool on me, sort of like a floppy French beret. Maybe I’d start a trend when I got back home?

  Of course, being the oldest of us, I was the first to bring up the topic of boys. It was satisfying for a moment to have them look at me as though I were worldly on the subject. In my whole life, no one had ever pegged me as being worldly on the topic of boys! But these girls? Except for Papa, it was as though boys were aliens to them.

  “I did see him once,” Amy said, seeming oddly shy for her. Well, I guessed, guys could have that effect on some girls. Me, I certainly hadn’t been shy when I tried to hijack Jackson’s attentions from Charlotte. Darn, I hoped he hadn’t already made a play for Anne!

  “That same day Jo spoke to him over the fence,” Amy went on, “I guess you could say I was spying on them … but only for a minute!”

  “Amy!” Beth was shocked. Then, with a voice dripping with wistful curiosity: “What did he look like?”

  “Oh, he was very fine.” Amy, all amped up to know something we didn’t, was full of self-confidence and excitement now. “He had big black eyes, curly black hair, brown skin like he’d been riding his horse in the sun, a longish nose, nice teeth, curiously small hands and feet. Oh, and he was easily as tall as Jo and seemed awfully polite and jolly.”

  “That must’ve been some long minute for you to have seen so much,” I said. Then: “Wait a second. Did you say ‘small hands and feet’? Combine that with some of his other features, and your description could fit Jo’s rat, Scrabble!”

  “Oh no,” Amy insisted as her yellow curls shook in vehemence. “He was very fine indeed. I only mentioned the small hands and feet because they impressed me as being so much more refined than, you know, the usual galumphing hands and feet you see on other boys.”

  I sniffed, a rather Jo-like sniff. Amy suddenly made it sound as though she knew a lot about boys. Still …

  “So, the Laurence boy is hot, then?” I wanted to know.

  “Oh no,” Amy said, looking puzzled. “I am most certain that when I saw him he did not have a fever.”

  “I wonder what they are doing at the dance now?” Beth cradled her cheek in her palm, a dreamy expression on her face. “I would bet anything that the Gardiners have the finest piano—”

  “Yes,” Amy cut her sister off, “but there are six girls in that family, including Sallie, so you’d hardly ever get a chance to play.”

  “Well, there are five girls in this house,” I said, “and Beth gets to play that wretched piano all the time, so I don’t see how much difference one more sister could make.”

  Beth looked on the verge of tears.

  “Honestly, Emily,” Amy said, “sometimes I think you’re as bad as Jo.”

  As bad as …?

  My hands went straight to my hips.

  “Wait a second here,” I half shouted. “What did I do?”

  Amy nodded smugly as she gave me the once-over from head to toe. “Well, that for one.” She imitated the way I was standing. “And you hurt Beth’s feelings, even if you didn’t mean to. You know how she loves her music.”

  “I’m sorry, Beth.” I could feel my cheeks redden. “I never meant to say your piano is … wretched.” (Except it was.) “It’s a … lovely piano and you play it … splendidly.” (Well, as well as anyone could play a wretched piano.) “Certainly you play it better than I could.” (This was no lie. I couldn’t play at all.)

  “I guess,” I went on, “I was just still feeling nasty about not getting to go to the party.”

  Just like Jo made me feel annoyed, Beth could make me feel ashamed of myself. Of course, of all the girls, Beth also had the greatest capacity for making me feel better after one of my screwups.

  “Oh, I know exactly what you mean,” Beth said, smiling now. “I don’t think there is anything more confusing in this life than life.”

  “Well, I haven’t figured it out yet,” Amy said with a very Jo-like snort of her own. “Life—it’s just one great big muddle to me.” Then she laughed. “Except for boys.”

  “Boys, boys, boys!” I laughed back, tickling her. “Is that all you ever think about, Amy March?”

  And then we were all laughing and tickling.

  When we had had enough and were back again before the fire …

  “I wonder what they’re doing,” I said aloud, “right this minute?”

  “I’ll bet,” Amy said, her face lighting up, “that the boys will be talking about skating, since it is winter, and Jo will want to join in the conversation.”

  “But Meg will lift her eyebrows at Jo before she can,” Beth said with a sigh. It was impossible to picture Beth approaching a group of guys about anything, let alone something like skating, but maybe she sighed at the idea of Jo’s wings being clipped. Beth may not have had much boldness in her, but it was obvious how much she admired that quality in Jo.

  “Jo will not be able to dance because of the burn at the back of her dress,” Amy reminded us.

  “But,” Beth added brightly, getting excited now, “she can still tap her foot smartly whenever a lively tune is being played.”

  “Except,” Amy put in, “she will probably be standing in front of another fireplace while she is doing so … and she will burn her dress all over again!”

  Amy laughed as Beth tried to look serious but instead started laughing herself.

  “I know,” I said excitedly, wanting to join in, “and if that Laurence boy is there, Jo’ll think of a way to get him alone so she can get to know him better.”

  The other two stopped laughing and just stared at me.

  “Oh no,” Amy said way too seriously as Beth gazed on. “I am quite certain that even Jo would never do that.”

  It was all I could do to keep from snorting aloud, because if memory served me correctly—

  But then our two older sisters were there again, bobbing back in like bobbleheads, only bobbing a little more slowly this time because Meg had her arms draped around Jo’s and Hannah’s shoulders as she hopped on one foot.

  “What happened?” Beth said, alarmed.

  “Meg sprained her ankle in those ridiculous heels,” Jo said.

  “That Laurence boy offered us the use of his grandfather’s carriage,” Hannah put in. “He rode all the way here on the box, even though it was cold out, so that Meg could put her foot up on the seat inside.”

  And then Mar
mee was there, all capable movements.

  Where had Marmee been hiding herself all this time?

  But there was no time to ask about that now as she settled Meg in her own best seat beside the fire, propping Meg’s foot on a low stool and sending Hannah for a warm towel to wrap around Meg’s ankle.

  The invalid comfortably settled, Meg and Jo began chattering about their evening.

  “I was trying to escape a redheaded boy,” Jo said, “who wanted to dance with me.”

  This sounded familiar. A redheaded boy, I wondered. Should I know that redheaded boy?

  “He was a fine boy,” Meg said, “and a marvelous dancer. I know, because I danced with him.”

  “I’m sure that’s all true,” Jo said. “But I couldn’t dance in front of the others in this dress and let them see the burn on the back, could I?”

  Meg grudgingly agreed that this was true.

  “So I slipped into a curtained recess,” Jo went on, “where I just happened to bump into the Laurence boy.”

  I knew it!

  “He is called Laurie,” Jo went on as though this was the most exciting detail ever, as if the whole world didn’t know the boy next door to the Marches was called this. “His real name is Theodore, but he doesn’t like it because some of the boys at school called him Dora, for which he thrashed them, making them call him Laurie instead.”

  Laurie was an improvement on Dora?

  “And,” Jo rushed on breathlessly, “he has been to school at Vevey—that’s in the Swiss Alps—and he will be sixteen next month, talks a lot about going to college, and longs to live in Italy. Oh, and he dances marvelously too, no doubt far better than that redheaded boy.”

  Amy’s blue eyes went wide. “So you danced with the Laurence boy?”

  “In that dress?” Beth added.

  “Well,” Jo said, barely blushing, “at first he asked me and I said no, showing him the burn mark at the back of my dress—”

  “Josephine!” Now even Marmee was scandalized.

  “But Laurie found a long hallway that was deserted and where no one would see us,” Jo went on, as though there’d been no interruption, “and we romped up and down the length of it. It was wonderful because, as I explained to him, there was plenty of room and nothing for me to harm as I am normally so likely to do in my usual galumphing way.”