Lilli de Jong

by Janet Benton

  “That’s correct.” I nodded. “A few months longer, no more than that.” I gulped back all the incriminating words I might have offered. A church bell tolled and saved me from further questions.

  “Three o’clock! I got a rehearsal at Angelo’s.” Victor strode through an archway into the next room and grabbed what I took to be a case for a horn. The front door banged after him.

  Gina placed Lucia in a bassinet, then led me and Charlotte outside, where she checked the bread and fed the fire. Charlotte grabbed my pointer finger and sucked it. I stroked her red hair, so much like her father’s.

  For him, she is not a whisper of a thought.

  I prayed again for a letter from Peter.

  When a church bell struck five, I placed Charlotte not in the cradle but in Gina’s arms, hoping to soften my departure. I covered my head with a shawl, stepped into the afternoon’s oblique sun, and walked to the Burnhams’. I took back ways through meadows and woods, my sadness soothed by air that was redolent with life expanding. My soul exulted at this good world, where everything is made purposeful by God’s animating force.

  Fifth Month 29

  Clementina’s temper has burst forth like a flame all day. She began to assert it early this morning, when I was making breakfast. Henry called from his crib; since Margaret was emptying a bucket of kitchen waste in the back, I had to leave my work to get him. When I returned, with him mouthing my apron, the toast was burned. So I tried again, with Henry in one arm (which proved no easy way to slice bread). I placed the toast rack before the hearth, then sat to nurse. But I didn’t turn the rack soon enough, and once more the bread turned black. Clementina came in, yelling.

  “What’s that wretched smell? Where’s my breakfast?” She gave but a second’s glance to her son. Before I could answer, Margaret entered and instantly saw that I was serving too many needs at once.

  “I’ll look for something in the attic for Henry to lie in,” she said. I met her words with a grateful look.

  “You have five more minutes to prepare our meal,” said Clementina. “My husband has to get downtown.” She grabbed a strawberry from the table and devoured it. Also on the table sat a cup of tea and a small pile of shelled peanuts.

  “Are these yours?” she asked, pointing, for both those items are forbidden to me. They were indeed mine, but I feared the increase of her rage too much to answer. My stomach clenched as she spilled my tea into a bucket. “I’m taking note of this violation of your terms.” With a slight blush, she swept the peanuts into a cupped hand and tossed them into her mouth. Raising up her nose and balling her fists in indignance, she marched out.

  Margaret returned carrying a padded wicker basket, perfect for Henry’s size, and a wheeled frame for it to rest on. She said this might have been the very basket Clementina had lain in, an observation that failed to make me sentimental. I laid a dishtowel on its musty padding and placed Henry down. Then we raced to prepare omelets and toast and broiled ham while the Burnhams engaged in a heated discussion in the dining room.

  “A fellow in Harper’s Magazine says a girl’s education should fit her for a woman’s life,” Clementina said.

  “Sounds sensible,” replied Albert.

  “A woman’s life? He means doing all the filthy, boring, never-ending labors of the home—while constantly pretending to be contented and sweet. Oh, and doing these things while amusing others with modestly informed conversation and musical performances of fitting mediocrity.”

  “But my dear, you are sweet. Others do your filthy labor. And your conversation is informed—though you refuse to entertain with music. And you’re free to learn whatever you please, regardless of what this writer claims. Everyone’s got an opinion about the proper education of girls. Find one that suits you better!”

  “Albert!” Her cry was dismal.

  “All right, you tell me what’s the matter.”

  “That man’s view is typical, and you know it. But a woman doesn’t exist merely to make life pleasant and convenient for others. Has she no right to a livable existence herself? To say a girl’s education must prepare her to be a wife and mother only—and to say, as he does, that this education should take place entirely in the home—why, it’s a bit like saying a colored man’s education ought to occur only in fields and to make him fit only for planting and picking cotton. Don’t you see? It’s a virtual prison women are kept in—a cage decorated with words like moral and pure!”

  “Surely you can’t think your life a prison,” protested Albert. “It may be a cage, but it’s a gilded one. Dearest, why are you so unhappy?”

  “Aaaarh!” yelled Clementina.

  A chair scraped the floor. Footsteps pattered up the stairs. A door slammed shut and a bed creaked, revealing her new location.

  By that point we’d finished assembling their meal. Margaret’s face was pallid. She whispered, “Should I serve Mr. Burnham?”

  I nodded. “Fill a plate for her, too,” I whispered, “and bring it upstairs. She was awfully hungry.”

  Margaret nodded and carried the tray into the dining room. Amid the clatter of serving, I sat a moment to eat my cracked wheat and cream, staring at the wild daisies that Margaret had put in a vase. Amid its flimsy white petals, each flower had a fiery orange sun at its center.

  Clementina has just such a fiery center, I mused.

  As do I.

  Instantly I grew panicked at my virtual imprisonment in this unhappy house. My heart rose to my throat, beating irregularly and making me breathless. I grabbed my shawl from the kitchen bench and rushed to the back porch, which overlooks the work yard and, beyond that, a stretch of gardens. A fog descended in a wall of soupy mist. Someone clambered onto the porch behind me, and I turned, expecting Margaret. A hot-faced Albert stood there, dressed for the office in a summer suit and bow tie.

  He cleared his throat; awkward seconds ensued. Agitation emanated from him, and the strain of standing still in such a state. I felt no differently myself.

  “Shall we take a turn about the property?” he asked. “I don’t mind the fog. Do you?”

  “Not much,” I said, wondering again why he doesn’t revile me as his wife does. He also seemed immune to the fear that she might grow suspicious if she saw us walking together. I wasn’t immune. Each step on the brick path seemed one step closer to bursting the balloon of her temper and threatening my employment. Yet I wouldn’t let her cage me.

  We stepped side by side without speaking as beads of water settled like a chilling blanket on my skin and hair. He made fretting sounds, and I sought solace in the garden and its flowering trees. The dogwoods were impressive specimens, far larger than the one I’d viewed each spring from my bedroom window. When I was a girl, during its annual week of glory, I’d gaze at its spread of white petals veined with pink and the clusters of tiny yellow flowers at their centers. I’d wish to lie upon that flowering dome as one might wish to be held aloft by a cloud. But my older self was not so dreamy. I noted the hard branches beneath the blossoms. I knew a cloud was but a gathering of chilly vapors.

  Albert thrust his body forward along the path and mumbled to himself. Finally he burst into speech. “Why is my wife unhappy? She stormed away because I asked her this. I don’t understand. She has two houses, abundant help, a healthy son, and”—he reddened—“a husband who adores her.”

  “Perhaps she feels she was meant for a freer life, without a child and a household to run,” I offered.

  “I believe you’ve got it.” Albert turned to assess me anew. “Did you know she gave up a career in music? Actually, her parents forbade her to pursue it.”

  A career in music! Her parents forbade it! So that was what the doll and musical scores and copybooks indicated. My words came out before I could think: “She’s haunted by that.”

  “Yes, she’s haunted.” He spoke slowly, as if first realizing. “If only I’d understood the extent of this before I yoked my life to hers.”

  The mist turned cold on my arms and
face and at the back of my neck. We turned onto a brick path toward a grape arbor. By Eighth Month, the arbors behind my home would droop with clusters. The scent they wafted was so delectable and elusive that I would breathe and breathe and never breathe enough. My lips tingled, anticipating that scent.

  “I met Clementina at a dance,” said Albert. “She holds her own as a partner, I assure you. Maybe I shouldn’t have married such an independent woman.”

  “May I speak frankly?” I asked.

  “I’ll tolerate nothing less, Miss de Jong.” The set of his mouth was equal parts serious and jesting.

  “She wants to escape from others’ control,” I blurted. “To decide for herself. She wants what women rarely can have—the chance to determine her own way.”

  “Ah,” he said. “You’ll be needing to take another work from my Pine Street library. J. S. Mill has written a treatise on that subject called The Subjection of Women.”

  I wondered if this work might address my troubles with his other treatise.

  “Soundly trounced for it, he was,” continued Albert. “And no wonder. A degree of subjection can be awfully convenient.” He chortled.

  I had no ready answer.

  “Miss de Jong, have you ever fancied yourself a free thinker? A rebel?”

  “I’m not versed in those terms,” I said. “But the Society of Friends has valued the spiritual equality of male and female for over two centuries. All flesh is equal in the eyes of the Lord.”

  “Interesting.” He pulled a handkerchief from his jacket and wiped the accumulating wetness from his face. “But what of equality in areas besides the spiritual?”

  “Ah.” I broke off into quiet to consider this.

  “This may well be what Clementina is on about,” he mumbled.

  Indeed. And Mill seemed once more to be my dearest ally. Might he have even considered a woman such as me while decrying women’s subjection? I might have dared to ask Albert to bring that screed to Germantown, if he were to stop in at Pine Street, but his brow was creased, and his lips moved with some preoccupation.

  In silence we traveled past the flowering honeysuckle, the sage plants that reached already to my waist, the feathery stalks of yarrow bursting upward into lace. We passed the stable, where the coachman in trousers and a livery coat—their summer regular—was harnessing a horse to the carriage. I peered into the dusty space. At back was a closet, and nearby, a staircase, perhaps leading to a second-story room where a coachman or a groomsman might have slept, when the Appletons had one around the clock.

  The stocky fellow inclined his head of red curls toward us and nodded. “G’morning, Mr. Burnham.”

  “Good morning, Randall. About ready with that carriage?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Thank you, Randall.”

  The coachman gave me a suspicious glance with his small brown eyes as we passed.

  “How do you like our summer place?” said Albert.

  “It’s quite comfortable.” I pulled my shawl over my head, for the mist had cohered into insistent drops. “But…”

  “What?” he asked. “Has Henry been difficult to manage?” He leaned to take a sprig of lavender, pinched it, and brought it to his nose as rain dripped down his face. I hadn’t noticed till then that he wore no hat. His nostrils widened as he inhaled, and his lips curved upward. Pleasure drives him, I saw then. We resumed our walking.

  “Oh, no,” I answered. “Thy son isn’t difficult. The opposite, really. I—I merely find it odd to be—so close to home.”

  “Where is your home?”

  “I spent my life in Germantown, until last fall.”

  His face lit with surprise. “Why don’t you visit?” A furry form streaked by, nearly tripping him. His attention followed the cat, who was no doubt pursuing a small rodent.

  I tried to reply. “I’m—surely thee can imagine—well, I can’t disgrace my family by showing up as a—as someone considered—ungodly.”

  “Ah, I’d forgotten your situation,” he said.

  Yet I devote my every hour to his. I swallowed that bitter pill.

  “So do you believe yourself ungodly, Miss de Jong?”

  It was a large question. Answering such sizable questions always involves me in falsehoods created by the need to simplify. But I tried to speak truly and briefly. “I trusted the word of the man I loved. I put too much at risk in doing so.”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “This fellow betrayed you, as you told the doctor and me at that charity. Do you believe, then, that society shouldn’t judge you for your part?”

  “Society does judge me a sinner,” I said, “so what I think is irrelevant.”

  “But what is a sin, in your view?”

  I glanced sideways to see his face, which looked earnest and not prurient, as I’d feared. “I’d say it’s a sin to behave with hate, to be untruthful, to betray the messages that come by the Divine Light. It’s a sin not to remain open to perceiving those revelations.”

  “Your language is fascinating. You seem to believe that God troubles to send us individualized instructions. Isn’t there a list of sins already written in the Bible for all to see?”

  I sighed. It isn’t easy for some to accept that God may speak to anyone. And I wasn’t prepared to convince him that sin was more than a list of acts. I wanted to return to the kitchen. My hair and clothes were thoroughly wet, and I doubted he’d be going off to work in that sopping jacket. But he was undeterred.

  “So in being intimate with your—man,” he asked, “were you following God’s guidance?”

  I flushed. Certainly I’ve fallen short of the precepts of my religion. But I didn’t feel I was doing so when giving my body over to Johan. Loving him felt godly. Do the senses trick us? Or do the senses tell us truly, and the world’s restrictions only fail to let us follow them?

  “I believed so,” I said. “I certainly believed I was doing right.”

  Albert laughed in surprise. “Most people would consider you a worse sinner for that.”

  My throat grew thick. I rushed ahead, then took a turn toward the back door of the house.

  “Miss de Jong,” he called. “Forgive me.”

  He strode closer, and I took a sideways look. His pale face bore signs of true regret—widened eyes, mouth low at the edges. He pulled out his pocket watch. “Seven-forty-five. I’ll need to change this jacket before I go. I beg your leave and thank you for the worthwhile conversation.” He bowed slightly, then raised his head and gave me a crooked smile. “Unrepentant sinners make the best company.” He ran sideways across the grass toward the front door.

  In a moment I stood dripping in the hot kitchen, where Margaret was drying the breakfast dishes. She gave me an inquiring look, but I didn’t explain. I picked up a towel and began working beside her, with Albert’s parting comment spreading like a bee sting in my heart.

  “May I speak honestly?” Margaret asked.

  “Of course,” I said. This was a morning of honesty.

  “I doubt any good can come of talking with Mr. Burnham.” Margaret dried her hands, kneeled before the stove, and began refueling it with wood. “It’s lucky Clementina retired for a nap.”

  “I’m sure thee is correct.” I sighed. This girl who lacks even the earliest signs of puberty is more sensible than I am—perhaps for that very reason. Just then Henry’s wails reached us, and footsteps clattered on the front stairway.

  “Nurse! Where is that damned Lilli.” Clementina rushed in from the hall holding her son, who twisted about in the blanket she’d lifted him with. She strutted to me and pushed him into my arms. “You didn’t come when he woke. Feed him now, and change him. I couldn’t rest with this boy wailing.”

  I sat immediately at the table and opened my clothes, then affixed her son to me. Margaret looked on with worried eyes.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” I told Clementina. “I stepped out—”

  “I’m aware that you were walking with my husband,” she replied coldly.
“I expect no better of him. But of you I demand better, despite your blemished history.”

  I flushed once more. After she left I promised myself—not for the first time—that I’d keep to my duties and do nothing more against her wishes. For she holds the keys to my independence. Until I can get a sewing machine and a room and reclaim Charlotte, Clementina Appleton Burnham is my guide and judge.

  Fifth Month 31

  Miss Baker arrived yesterday! Fully recovered, and eager to make up for our days of bland fare and overwork. She’s a tiny woman, perhaps fifty years old, with few wrinkles on her face but some silver in her dark, wavy hair. Her dress is modest and well mended. And, true to her name, she loves—indeed, she lives—to bake. So rather than making soup, I’m helping with sweets and breads during Henry’s long morning nap—and enjoying her company.

  Yesterday I made a rum cake while Miss Baker mixed a fruit-bread batter with a giant spoon. She called out my next steps with no recourse to instructions, for she knows the proportions of rising agents to dry and wet, and she improvises the rest. When she had me stir a cup of rum into the batter, I sneezed four times in quick succession. The fumes stung delicate places in my nose and eyes.

  “You not used to liquor?” she asked from close beside me. At the edges of her narrow face, the gentle hairs were curled and white.

  “I’ve never been so near to rum before,” I told her. Even Father had indulged only in beer.

  “I hope you ain’t against all liquor.” She huffed. “There’s a piece I saw in Mrs. Burnham’s Ladies’ Home Journal claiming that folks who drink too much should blame their childhood cooks. Now fancy that. And the writer is begging cooks to stop using alcohol in cakes and gravies so as not to make folks like the taste and damage society. I declare, if taking liquor from the kitchen is the price of temperance, then temperance is overrated.” She guffawed.

  I replied that although I do support temperance, I’d never blame a cook for someone’s drunkenness. This pleased her. “But I won’t be allowed to enjoy these sweets anyway,” I said. “Clementina limits my diet, for Henry’s sake.”