Lilli de Jong

by Janet Benton

  “Does he ask for money, as thy brother did?” asked Father.

  “No.” I could hardly open my mouth.

  “Does he tell where Peter is?”

  “He’s at work, in Philadelphia. They returned over a week ago. They leased this room.”

  Father raised his powerful arm and smashed his fist onto the table. A split appeared and widened between two boards; this evidence of shoddy craftsmanship further loosened his restraint. “How can thee care for that fool?” he yelled. “He lured thy brother from me and broke his promise to work five years in my shop. I work fourteen hours every day to fill my orders. And what does thee do? Thee loves the very man who sentenced me to this.”

  In her corner Charlotte began to whimper, but Father didn’t notice. What had become of him? He was utterly lost without Mother. I’d never seen him strike anything. Tears dropped from my cheeks to my lap as he continued yelling.

  “What kind of a life is thee going to have with that”—and here he stood and scraped his chair back on the floor—“that poet?”

  Charlotte increased her cries. Father turned toward the noise, brow creased, mouth frowning. I rushed over and lifted her. Her weight formed a reassuring anchor.

  He pointed a thick finger. “Whose baby is that?”

  I pointed to her red curls. She mouthed my dress frantically. Father couldn’t speak but merely sputtered. Finally he asked, “How?”

  “Didn’t thee wonder why I left so suddenly?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Becoming a governess was a sensible—”

  “Thee should have wondered,” I said amid my baby’s wails. “I meant to go to Pittsburgh to marry Johan once I had their address. But I never had it! Then Patience discovered my condition and forced me out. I gave birth at a charity. We were living on the street when Johan and Peter found us in late Sixth Month.”

  Milk dripped to my abdomen. My father’s face went blank, as if in search of an expression.

  “If thee will excuse me,” I said through a choked throat. “I need to feed my daughter.”

  I stepped to the chair by the mattress and sat. I got Charlotte settled, then covered her with the shawl from Clementina. Two washings in soap and vinegar had returned the shawl to a glorious golden yellow.

  To his credit, Father didn’t leave. He occupied himself in trying to fit the pieces of the table back together, as if he were a human vise. He muttered with frustration, the chair creaking as he shifted his bulk. Then, reacting to my revelations, he huffed in disgust. “Disgracing the memory of thy mother,” he said. If he’d been out of doors, I believe he would have spit.

  I felt astonished. He’d withheld the letters that could have saved me from a year of grievous exercises and disgrace. Then he’d stood aside and asked no questions when I left home precipitously, forced to leave by the thief he’d married while Mother’s dying breath hung close upon us.

  And he dared to despise me.

  Emotions roiled through my body and brought on a sweat. Charlotte pulled her mouth from me and began to cry, sensing my distress. For her sake, I closed my eyes and pulled her closer, concentrating only on her form against me. With surprising quickness, we both grew calm.

  Within that calm, at long last, I no longer feared my father. I would say just who had done the worse disgracing. I looked at a grimy wall, at the torn shreds of paper dangling in the overheated air.

  “And thee?” I asked. “How many weeks did thee wait after Mother’s death before—” My voice caught and my stomach tightened. “Before taking up the bottle, and bedding thy cousin, and disgracing our family name?”

  His silence told me I’d hit my mark. At last he said, “I followed my own way, the Discipline be damned.”

  “And thy children be damned? Did thee not guess that we’d all suffer, as occupants of thy house, and that I’d be suspended from my work?”

  He sighed, as if my having a point of view inconvenienced him. “I did what I needed to do. I have the right to act as I wish.”

  “Regardless of the costs to others,” I snapped. “Costs thee hasn’t taken a moment to notice.”

  Eventually he replied. “I suppose I haven’t.” He sighed. “I suppose I haven’t noticed much at all.” His face grew soft and baffled, as it always had when he’d been faced with his own shortsightedness.

  His apology went unspoken, but I relished it. He pushed his hand across the coarse surface of what had briefly been our table, then tried again to bring the parts together. “Piece of factory junk. Has thee got any glue?”

  “Only flour and water.” I leaned my lips to Charlotte’s head, to her silken hair.

  “No sense fixing this anyway. I’ll bring a small table. It won’t take but a day or two to make.” He released the pieces to the floor, then pulled out his leather coin purse and opened its mouth. “Get a tea set, and some better tea.” He laid two dollar coins on the floor beside him.

  The tea! I stood and looked to the pot on the stove, where the water had boiled dry. I had been going to brew it in that very pot, and the tea in a paper box upon the shelf was the worst dust, left after others had paid good money for the leaves. I was moved that he’d noticed, though more pressing items than a tea set needed buying. His nurturance had often been that unpredictable, that random.

  “Many thanks,” I replied. I lowered my head to Charlotte and pulled the shawl back slightly to uncover her head as she nursed, watching her lips purse and listening to her gulp.

  “My first grandchild.” Father huffed. “A bastard.”

  I recognized in him the self-pity I’d seen in some drunks on the street. “Her name is Charlotte.”

  “After my mother!” He stared in chagrin.

  I was ready to tell him why I had every right to follow the naming pattern of our family, and how Charlotte had already survived much and proved worthy to be called after his mother, till I recalled old Hannah’s exhortation at the meetinghouse burying ground: “Thy father needs thee!”

  “Has thee been unwell?” My voice quavered with stifled feeling.

  “There was trouble with my liver, but I’m recovered.”

  I waited to hear more. Through the opened window came the clarifying scents from our window box, where thyme, sage, and rosemary burst from the soil.

  “We’ve got a baby coming very soon.” Father reached his feet to the floor ahead of him to give room to his long legs. “It’s difficult.”

  “I understand.”

  Did I? I knew there must be rancor in the house. I knew I wanted to get my private possessions away from his wife.

  “When thee brings the table,” I said, “could thee bring my trunk?” My diaries should still be in there, and the silver spoons, which I might pawn, and the wedding linens. The oldest linens were from Grandmother, fragile and stained; the next oldest, starched and neatly pressed, were those Mother had made while dreaming of her someday marriage; atop those emblems of hopeful longing lay my own handiwork.

  “I’ll try to bring it all within the week, unless the baby comes.” Father cleared his throat and stood. Charlotte leaned from me, ready for the other side, so I shifted and settled her. Father watched, the muscles of his face slackening.

  “I was wrong to hold the letters back,” he said.

  Tears clouded my vision as he stepped away; the door opened and clicked shut. His feet stomped down the stairs, growing ever farther and fainter.

  I wondered if he would bring us a table. In the meantime, I supposed we’d eat off the floor.

  * * *

  I placed my sleeping baby down and put the two unopened letters on the shelf beside the stove. I craved them as keenly as if they were bread fresh from the oven, sliced and thickly buttered. But I also dreaded knowing their contents, which could just as well be like ice, or swords. Those letters would put some change in motion. They remained on the shelf all afternoon.

  Near sunset, Johan returned from seeking work, hot and smelling of the street. He removed his jacket and stood befo
re me, stains beneath the arms of his shirt, then pulled his suspenders over his shoulders. I had an unpleasant memory of Albert as Johan bent to kiss me. Still overheated, he removed his shoes and socks. On his long toes, gold-red hairs shone. He sat at one of our chairs, beside the pieces of our table.

  “What happened here?” he asked. Like Father—like any craftsman, perhaps—he lifted the pieces and tried to fit them together.

  I told him of Father’s violence and pointed to the withheld letters. He strode to the shelf and grabbed the envelopes.

  “Open them!” He thrust them at me. “That solicitor was a liar. He wanted to pretend he’d done something, to get his fee!”

  My heart cramped as I took the two letters and sat on the mattress, thinking less of their contents than of his unexpected temper, so like Father’s.

  Yet on paper, my lover’s words did more than soothe; they made me ashamed of how readily I’d believed him a betrayer. He wrote of longing for me; he sent again their first address, then the next one, when their location changed; he went most days to the post office to see if I’d replied. The letter he’d sent when I was four months along, his second, consisted chiefly of him begging me to reply, if only to explain the reason for my shunning of him. He asked whether I’d found another love. He’d matured, he said; he wanted me to travel there as soon as possible. He enclosed four dollars, hoping I could supplement them with my own, and saying he would keep me when I arrived. He quoted his favorite bard:

  O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!

  O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin’d man.

  The one sent on the day after Charlotte was born, his final missive, went as follows:

  1883. 3rd mo. 30

  To Lilli,

  “Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe—all were for me

  In the kiss of one girl.”

  —

  Those words of Robert Browning’s might as well be mine.

  I’m puzzled at thy silence.

  No, devastated. Did it mean nothing that I gave my word and body? That thee gave thine?

  No matter; I have nothing for thee now. It doesn’t matter why. There’s only this: goodbye.

  My mind filled in the gaps with images of what he’d told me—of the accident at the mill, and his selling pencils on the street, and Peter having to pay most costs for them; of how they’d stayed in a cheap lodging house until Peter was fired from the mill for protesting his rough treatment by the more skilled workers; then, for seven cents a night, they’d slept in a long room of beds made of fabric strips suspended between boards. To raise money for a better place, Peter joined a gang of day laborers from that lodging house, and Johan traveled farther on foot to buy his pencils at a discount, and spent more hours selling them each day.

  By this time, Johan had seated himself beside me on the mattress, and Charlotte was asleep on a blanket. I joined my eyes to his.

  “Now will thee marry me?” he said, leaning closer, so that I felt his warmth.

  There had been no grand time in Pittsburgh of thriving and exploring, as I’d imagined. And Johan had been truthful about his letters. But I retained one stubborn reservation.

  “Why did thee stay away? Thee should have returned to find out why I never answered.”

  Johan looked to his damaged hand, his expression not self-pitying but ashamed.

  What lies at the root of a man’s shame? Perhaps his failure to serve a cause, to perform the roles he’s given.

  He rubbed the scar as he spoke and shook his head side to side. “I had nothing to offer. I left to set things up for us, and all I could do was stand on the sidewalk and hawk pencils.”

  “So the will was sucked out of thee.” I saw a strange picture. “By life’s giant mouth!”

  He smiled wanly. “That, and maybe—maybe I already doubted that thee could love me.”

  “Doubted? I would have married thee here,” I said. “We should have gone to Pittsburgh together. Thee treated me as if I was baggage to send for.”

  But blame can often be justified only by a partial view. I’d permitted myself to be treated like baggage, as if I couldn’t strike out on a journey without his consent.

  “Thee could have written the truth to me,” he replied, “instead of writing Peter. Why didn’t thee?”

  I searched his face. How certain I’d been that he’d tricked me. Or had I been certain? I recalled that vision I’d had of him, downcast and beseeching. I asked, “Would thee have come back?”

  “Would I have—?” His voice broke. “Without thy news, I didn’t dare. But with it? If I’d known that thee needed me, that we had a child? Absolutely.”

  Look how our corresponding burdens of doubt and shame had kept us in our private hells. Father had set these wheels in motion by hiding Johan’s letters, yes. But we’d continued their turning.

  I wanted to weep. We might have embraced. But Peter came back then, walking through the door to our one room with an exhausted stoop, his hands and clothing stained with ink. He sank to the floor to remove his boots, and I apprised him of the day’s occurrences.

  “Did Father apologize for holding back the letters?” he asked.

  “He admitted to doing wrong.” A pang came as I said this. No matter that I craved his apology, to receive it was bittersweet. A giant of my younger years was proven, after all, a man.

  “That hardly helps,” said Johan. He stood up from the mattress. “He ruined our lives.”

  “No.” Peter turned to Johan. “It was thy carelessness that caused the ruin. How could thee take liberties with my sister—and leave her behind?”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “Thee didn’t think.”

  “Neither did I,” I argued. “The fault was both of ours.” I said this, but I was glad when Peter pushed further.

  “Whose idea was it, to draw so close”—Peter spit the next words—“to copulate before you parted, without marrying first?”

  We all blushed pink.

  “I suggested it,” said Johan, his face downcast. “I invited her to my room. I pressed her.”

  “I refuse to regret it.” I pointed at Charlotte on the blanket beside me.

  Slowly Johan shook his head. “I don’t regret her.”

  My brother couldn’t bear us. “What’s all this mawkishness?” He began to pace the painted wood floor. “From what I’ve heard, the baby almost died at the almshouse. Lilli could have perished with her on the street, even been murdered or badly abused.” He lowered his tone. “I’m sure there’s some abuse she isn’t telling.”

  I shut my eyes briefly against their stinging. He knew me well.

  “All because this fellow”—he jabbed toward Johan—“is too much of a dreamer to see the possible effects of his actions.”

  “Thee sounds like thy father,” Johan observed.

  “Well, in this case, Father’s right.” Peter stepped to his pile of belongings on the floor and pulled out an envelope, withdrawing a photograph and waving it before my face. “I left her behind to come find thee. Anyway, her mother wouldn’t let her see me after I lost my work. But I’m going to visit once I’m good and settled here.” He handed me the picture. “And we didn’t do the careless thing that thee and Johan did.”

  I looked at the young woman. It appeared she had light brown hair. Her clothing and manner were free from vanity. There was a pleasant press to her lips, and her face held an eager, honest look. “What’s her name?”

  “Meredith Henson. I think thee will like her.”

  “I believe I will.” I stood and kissed his cheek. “This is happy news!”

  Yet I couldn’t help but feel stung at how easily my younger brother judged himself superior.

  Seventh Month 5

  Father sent a letter by post. “It’s too late to defend against thy disgracing,” he wrote. “But Peter mustn’t live with thee and Johan. Tell him he’s welcome here, and I’ll employ him again. I need
his help. Tell him.”

  Inside his letter was tucked something far sweeter, an envelope that bore these words in Mother’s calligraphic hand: For my daughter, to be opened on the occasion of her marriage.

  She must have written it a few days before her death, after receiving her leading that Johan and I should marry. With a shiver of joy and grief, I tucked the envelope into this notebook, until the time to read it should arrive.

  “She wanted us together,” Johan said. He leaned and kissed my forehead as I wept.

  Seventh Month 7

  Last evening brought a surfeit of sweetness.

  After an early supper of millet and lentils cooked in beef juice, I nursed Charlotte and put her on a pile of clothes to sleep. There were several hours till Peter would return. Johan and I lay together on the mattress; I rested my head on his chest, relishing the steady beating of his heart, until our touching turned to passion. And although some fleeting images of Albert interfered, I was able to accept my lover’s skin on mine, to turn my pliant lips to his. Within cautious bounds, we explored a realm of tenderness that desperate Albert might never know.

  Afterward, my body vibrating, I listened to Johan read his newest poem. It was a tiny prescription, really, for how this bond of ours could last. He envisioned it—like metal—as being formed in the heat of our trials, pounded into shape on an anvil of awareness, and cooled and strengthened by the waters of time.

  So his time at the steel mill had come to something.

  We agreed that our wedding should be in five days, by which time we’ll have made our simple arrangements. Sated by our closeness, we dozed. Peter returned; we all retired.

  It’s near dawn, and I’ve risen with Charlotte to nurse. My wedding day is planned. So I’ll read Mother’s letter before the street sounds rise to a cacophony and wake the men. Then, no matter how it may disassemble me, I’ll transcribe the letter here.

  My dearest Lillian,

  In marriage as in all, moderation is key. Thee has a self-righteous disposition, not unlike thy mother’s; but let it not loose against thy husband, who means thee well. Remain temperate with him in all things earthly.