Lilli de Jong

by Janet Benton

  They’d fetched it for repair from a Chestnut Hill household and needed to unload it. Our horse was restive; her hooves were caked in mud and most likely uncomfortable. The two men were struggling to remove the heavy desk amid her shifting—but it would have made extra work to unhitch our horse, then hitch her up again to get the wagon to the neighbors’ barn. So Father yelled for help, and I left my sewing to hold the horse.

  “There, there, Sarah, we’ll clean your hooves soon.” I scratched the hard place between her eyes, with its white diamond marking. Short hairs and dirt rose around my fingers and clung there. She banged her head into my belly, threatening to nip, huffing her frustrated breath onto me, and this kept her hooves still long enough for Father to pull the remainder of the desk from the wagon. Too much weight fell on Peter, however, and his footing faltered. He jerked Father’s hold on the desk away, and it landed on the toe of Father’s boot. Father fell back onto the street, with his foot trapped beneath the desk.

  “Bloody hell!” he cried, the worst epithet I’d ever heard him utter. “Between this horse and thee!”

  “I didn’t expect that much weight.” Peter flushed as he heaved the desk off Father.

  “Thy attention has been poor all week.” Father rose with a grimace. “Thee used the wrong sandpaper, and carved that letter backwards, and applied a second coat before the first had dried.”

  Peter muttered toward me. “He never forgets a fault.” His hair hung in his eyes, and with the back of his hand he shoved it away.

  I didn’t feel compelled to defend my younger brother at that moment. I hitched our horse to the post and ran inside to gather the items needed to treat Father’s foot. Peter helped Father walk inside and settle into a chair, removed his boot, washed Father’s bloodied toes, and bandaged them. Somehow this struck Peter as an opportune time for revealing his plan.

  “Thee won’t have to bother about me soon,” he started. “I’m leaving for Pittsburgh in early Sixth Month with Johan.”

  Father shifted in the chair to turn his contorted face to Peter. “This is how thee informs me?”

  My brother lowered his eyes to the wood planks, looking younger than his twenty years. “Without Mother here, I’ve got no reason to stay.”

  “No reason? How can I keep up with orders without thy help? Who’ll do the carving? And Johan—scoundrel! Was this his idea? He said he’d work five years.”

  “I’m going. We both are. It was my idea.” So I had my brother to thank for luring Johan away. Peter swished the bloody rag in the bucket of water and wrung it out. His demeanor remained bland; only the shaking of his hands showed his feeling.

  “The two of you are going to ruin me! And thee will never have a better opportunity than taking on this business.”

  “I don’t want to live exactly as thee has!” Peter turned to me. “Isn’t this a miserable house to live in?”

  I nodded. Father said nothing, but his eyebrows drew together at that unexpected hurt. Then Peter added, “I won’t always be a helper if I work in a steel mill. I can rise in the ranks.”

  Father snorted. His neck and face swelled red. “Rise in the ranks? Being the master is far better than falling in with any ranks. It won’t be more than ten or twenty years till thee takes over here and has an assistant or two to do thy bidding!”

  Ten or twenty years must have sounded to Peter like a lifetime. And Father’s rage, no matter how reasonable its origins, could no longer affect my brother. Father pressed hard for several days, even offering to pay Peter and Johan five dollars more per month despite their having room and board supplied, but he couldn’t halt their plan. It seems young men don’t like to see sameness too far into their futures. This only increased Father’s misery at his own unchanging future.

  As it would have increased mine, if I hadn’t known that soon I would, in secret, follow. Johan, Peter, Pittsburgh, and some sort of teaching work—these were to be the cornerstones of my reconstructed life. It was this belief, along with my own fleshly weakness and desire to be loved, that opened me to further seduction.

  * * *

  We’d kissed before, but always standing up—beneath the grape arbor, beside the garden shed, against a kitchen wall when Johan came in for a slice of bread or a cup of water. Thus I failed to understand the power of a full embrace. So on the night before Johan and my brother left for Pittsburgh, I hardly hesitated at Johan’s whispered request. I consented to wait till the others were asleep, then to ascend to his attic aerie. And when I left my childhood bed to climb that ladder, I didn’t know how readily our intimacy would arouse the craving animal in me. I didn’t know it would snap the chain that had always held that animal to its stake.

  Johan greeted me with warmth. I slid beneath his feather quilt into his lean and muscled arms. And with surprising speed his suspenders came down, and his shirt gave way to naked skin—skin that proved startlingly and thoroughly inebriating. His chest and arms seemed made of velvet; his lips and tongue, of something finer. Swiftly we moved to a place that had no time in it, nor even physical existence. It was a place comprised entirely of sensations, which came in subsuming waves; a place I swam in, like a fish; a place in which no rational thought or worry could interfere.

  “Thee is lovely,” he said, mouth brushing my ear as he unbuttoned my bodice; on reaching the busk of my corset, “I’ll just open this”; in a low and humming voice as he opened its clasps, “I never believed I’d find a woman who could make sense of me, and who makes sense to me”; untying the neck of my chemise and pulling it to my waist and gasping at my appearance, in a sort of exaltation: “Thee is that woman.” Then, as my hand toyed with the red curls at the back of his neck, he nuzzled his way downward to my breasts, and the kisses and sucks he gave there took away my last remaining sense. I yielded to his requests for more, then more. I allowed him to do whatever he wanted—indeed, what I wanted. I floated and floated until the rules of land were but a memory farther than the stars.

  I disliked his entering, however, and what came next felt highly peculiar. These parts of ours couldn’t truly be meant to go together, it seemed—until mine widened to admit his. He moved his swelled part farther into me, smothering his face in my neck and hair, and his voice came from deep in his chest when he said, “I love thee.”

  I replied with equal ardor. Then all at once a pulse began to pass between our parts, and some radical force transfixed him, as though he held his hands on a bolt of lightning. When that force released him, his weight collapsed upon me.

  My head was pressed into his neck, where I heard his pulse beating fast, then slower, then slow and steady. My eyes swarmed with tears, for we had claimed each other, and I believed I’d found my home inside his arms. He seemed to me as guileless as a newborn lamb. When he raised his torso to gaze into my face, his own face shone like a beacon. Then my fingers touched the wetness between my thighs and found bright blood, which frightened me and loosed my tears.

  “That proves I was thy first,” he whispered. “As thee was mine.” His face was serious as he reached for a cloth to place beneath me. “We’ve sealed our marrying intentions.” He wiped my tears with his hand, and we kissed some more, our former urgency replaced by a languor that was unfamiliar and precious.

  “Thee is so lovely,” he said in wonder, and I rejoiced as I returned the sentiment. “I’ll write soon with our address and money,” he vowed, as he’d been promising for weeks. “As soon as Peter and I have work and a place for us all to live.”

  I fastened my clothing while his fingers traced the outlines of what he’d so recently sucked and embraced. After a parting kiss, with our lips clinging and soft, I lowered myself down the ladder and returned to the small room I’d slept in for all my years of unknowing.

  I lay awake awhile, feeling as if I’d been broken apart and waiting for my pieces to reassemble into a new whole. And as they did, I felt myself expanding into more than a young person who loved learning, an erstwhile teacher at the Meeting school, a d
aughter mourning her mother. In those moments I became a woman, with my curves finally knowing their fuller purpose, my mind understanding more of what draws and keeps the sexes together, my soul satisfied to know this man who would become my husband. There was sorrow in this passage, but also pride.

  My time of shame began in glory.

  * * *

  The morning after I was thus transformed, at the first hint of light, Johan and Peter and I dressed and ate a hurried breakfast. Then we left for the depot several blocks away. We stood alongside the rails in near darkness, the two of them inflated with the hope brought on by any journey, me struggling not to spoil it all and weep. Peter’s hazel eyes were bright and his cheekbones rose in a half smile as they talked excitedly. The horses came into view, hauling the yellow car behind them; my dear men hoisted sacks of belongings to their shoulders, gave hurried embraces to the one they were leaving, and stepped aboard for their six-mile journey downtown. Soon after, they would catch a train to start them toward the thriving city of Pittsburgh, some 350 miles of track away. I had written down the route they’d take on various railroad lines, knowing I’d soon be taking it myself, and had tucked those notes beneath my mattress.

  In the days that followed, I walked about in a half stupor, dreaming of times to come. I had no unfamiliar sights to entice me, no unknown places to explore, such as Johan and Peter had at every moment in that far-off city. I imagined what they might be doing—working amid gleaming machines in a factory aglow with molten metal, settling temporarily into a boardinghouse, seeking out the cottage or the flat we would inhabit. And I bathed in memories of my hour’s intimacy with Johan. I walked about the house and yard and did my marketing in a haze, as if lit from the inside by that awakening. It was a glorious Sixth Month, and my excitement blossomed along with the flowers. I relished the baby birds and animals bobbling about, the vegetables and fruits burgeoning in our back plot of green, the leafing of the trees. All around me lay proof of the gorgeousness that arises from the interplay of male and female parts.

  Then my own body began to ripen and swell. My monthly flow was days late, then a week, then two. I feared these signs might indicate a state I’d never thought to face without a husband.

  The blood remained obstinately absent each time I checked. Daily I grew plumper and more distraught. And Johan never sent the promised address and funds, nor even a word on his progress. Peter sent no letter, either, perhaps because he’d always been more easy with a chisel or a saw than with a pen. Nevertheless I felt betrayed by them both, when I wasn’t worrying that they’d come to harm. It seemed that these two men, the keys to my rejuvenated life, had dissolved into the ether.

  Loneliness became my intimate companion. It wrapped my body head to foot. As I lay in bed some nights, my heart beat tight and hard in the little space that loneliness had left me. On one hot night I threw off my quilt and shuffled down the stairs and escaped to the backyard, where I shook my limbs and torso, trying to get that trap of loneliness off. It clutched me like a too-tight skin and stifled my breath, as if feeding on the air I needed, taking what could have kept me well. And when the nausea of pregnancy came, it seemed as if my loneliness came forth into the porcelain bowl on my washstand.

  I wasn’t used to uproarious friendships. I expected no great gaiety from life. Mother’s fierce adherence to plainness and our obedience to it had always kept us isolated, even among Friends, most of whom saw no harm in playing games of whist or euchre or in wearing current fashions. Few were as sober as our family, as hardworking or grim. Yet this loneliness that overtook me after Mother and then Johan and Peter were gone, it took away even the small pleasures I used to hoard, leaving nothing between me and a hard wall of sorrow. By the time autumn came, as I grew a baby with a horrid knowledge that the baby and I couldn’t remain together except to our disgrace, I found no joy even in the blaze of leaves, the return of cool nights, or the scents and tastes of the vegetables and fruits that Patience and I spent weeks drying, canning, and otherwise preparing for the cold season ahead.

  I found newness and pleasure in one place only. I went to bed with the dark and rose before first light, and every morning the sun and clouds conspired in a fresh performance that was unrepeatable and stunning.

  I wanted to go to Pittsburgh and track Johan and Peter down. But I had no address, not even the name of a neighborhood in which they might be lodged. I hadn’t the means to travel there and search, and even if I had, where could I have stayed, as a young woman in an indecent condition? Aside from all that, my vomiting would have made the train ride calamitous. I kept quiet, trying to keep my grief little enough to hide, praying a letter would come before my condition became obvious to others.

  Meanwhile, Father grew more surly by the day. He tried out man after man to replace his son and apprentice and found them wanting. At meals he snapped at us; Patience snapped back. If she wanted a window open, he wanted it closed. If he thought the day had been fine, she cursed its early darkness. And as they grew further acquainted, the venom they exchanged over such minor matters became more poisonous. But I kept quiet, wanting to be unnoticed. I continued in my household work and attended to the postman’s comings and goings assiduously.

  I thought to call on my former classmates, or on the students and the kindly parents who’d doted on me for how well I’d served them, if only to relieve the tedium; but these Friends would have been dishonored merely by engaging in teatime with the disowned Samuel de Jong’s daughter. If I’d confessed to my far worse dilemma, I would have compromised their consciences with my secret—and increased our family’s disgrace by revealing that yet another of its members had a loose hold on virtue—and handed them the power to ruin me.

  I waited for a letter from Johan through Sixth Month and Seventh, then Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh. To spend months in waiting may sound like a passive state, but in truth, it was quite strenuous. I prayed day and night for the address and train fare to arrive. Father’s behavior worsened; he was sour to all whom he encountered, and most nights he drank and complained of minuscule injustices loudly enough for passersby to hear—until he finally made his way to bed, at Patience’s insistence. At such times I couldn’t help but pity her.

  Demand for his cabinets had hardly slowed, due to his skill. But no neighbors or acquaintances would take me on for day jobs when I sought them. Thus I had no way to earn money. Perhaps my own unhappy and resentful manner was as much to blame as Father’s was.

  By Twelfth Month, Germantown was ensconced in snow. The postman did manage to get through most days, delivering mail by the opening in Father’s workshop door. But I received no letter.

  Soon after the new year began—a full year after Mother’s death, when my pregnancy was more than six months along—Patience forced me from inertia.

  Father had gone to get a saw blade replaced, and I was shoveling the most recent snow off the back porch so we could reach the outhouse. The sun was at its peak, making sweat run down my face as I shoveled. Patience came out the kitchen door, approaching me with some strong intention. The skin around her blue eyes wrinkled as she narrowed them against the brightness.

  “Thee shouldn’t be doing that.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Doing what?” I stilled the shovel.

  “Lifting that snow.” A smile flitted across her mouth, revealing her small and even teeth. “Unless thee wants to bring on an abortion.”

  I was stunned at her understanding. I had in fact been half hoping to bring one on, not merely then, but in strenuous walks and hill climbing. I’d considered throwing myself down the stairs, but this frightened me too badly. I had nowhere near the funds that I imagined a surgical abortion would cost, and I feared a furtive visit to its hidden practitioners even more than I feared self-injury. It wasn’t possible to come to womanhood without hearing of some desperate soul who’d perished afterward from bleeding or infection.

  My pulse quickened as Patience brought her rough-skinned face t
o mine, filling my view. “I’ve been watching you. I’ve heard you retching in your room. I’ve seen you adding fabric to the waists of your skirts.” She pulled me to her—easily, since she was stronger—and moved her coarse hands along my belly to confirm her knowledge. “You’re a disgrace!” she hissed, shoving me away. “I’m going to tell your father and have you banished from this house!”

  She appeared fierce and angry, but I’m certain she was pleased inside to have found a way to be rid of me. Her distaste for having her husband’s daughter in the house had been ill disguised from the start. As soon as she’d married Father, she began asserting her discontent with my housekeeping. The way I washed the supper pots using Mother’s method annoyed her no end, for instance, as she thought it was too frugal with water.

  “Two grown women in a house,” she told Father in my earshot, “is one too many. Tell her to follow my ways or find another house.” Father replied with a grunt—no doubt pressing a tumbler of beer to his lips.

  My pregnancy gave her a chance to swoop in like a raptor and dislodge me from my lifelong nest.

  In panic I begged her not to tell Father of my circumstances. I said I’d leave in any case. But she had no intention of sparing me.

  “What makes thee better?” I said. “Thee shared a bed with a man before marrying. Thee could have become pregnant then.”

  She glared in disgust. “Don’t pretend the two of us have anything in common.” Then she marched out to buy meat at the market.

  I rushed to pack an old leather valise, aiming to leave before she or Father returned. What should I take, without knowing where I was bound? Some items to sell should come along, I realized: the gold ring from Grandmother, the cashmere shawl from Great-Uncle Clarence’s trip to India, the silver belt buckle that had come from a great-aunt to Mother, the silver candlesticks, three pewter thimbles. All of these Mother had bequeathed to me in her will. But though I roamed the house in wild pursuit, checking closets, trunks, and cabinets, I found not one of them.