What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  I ask Mama for Caroline, but she says she threw the boot out long ago. It has, after all, been three years since I’ve been home. Mama gives me the Laura doll I sent her, but I’d rather have my old boot, the leather rough against my chest. Mama can’t believe how tall I’ve grown, though she swears I am more of a rail than when I left them. “What do they feed you?” she asks, and I tell her the truth: many days I eat only bread and butter and they leave me be. That is my choice. Doctor has given Mama strict instructions on my diet, that I am not to have salt or sugar or anything he considers incendiary―that’s his word—he believes blinds must be protected from too much excitement. Of course in my case, it doesn’t matter; she could dump in the whole salted pork barrel and I probably wouldn’t know the difference. Still, I like to help with the cooking, and most of all, I like that Mama lets me. She trusts me to handle myself in a way that nobody at the Institution does, because she saw how I could get around and what I could do on my own here for seven years.

  I limit my play so I can be the assistant cook and maid. Mama even allows me to cut up the vegetables for stew. At the Institution, they will never give me a knife, but the truth is I have only nicked myself twice this trip, and hardly at all, only bloodying one potato. I enjoy the precision of cutting one slice after another, stroking my way down the length of a carrot or sliding my finger into the shallow groove of the celery. And the funny little knots on the potatoes, I turn round and round and count them. Addison says they are called eyes, and I wonder that a potato, like a boot, can have a dozen eyes while I have none. I do not like to touch the raw meat, but I don’t let on because I know Mama needs me. I sit on the back screened porch with Mary plucking the feathers from a chicken; it is awful work that almost brings me to gagging, but I continue, running my fingers over the bare, puckered skin until I can find no more feathers. I am glad I don’t know what it looks like; I think if I did, I would never be able to eat it, or the beef or pork either. I have examined the shapes of cows and sheep and even a pig, but when they are cut up and turned inside out, I know they must look very different.

  Since I look different on the outside than other people, I wonder if my insides look different too. I pluck a hair from my head like a feather and feel the tiny, wet bulb at its end. I wish I could feel all the inside of me; I admit I do try to get in any hole I can, and Mama often pulls my fingers away from my nose or ears. “Nasty habit,” I am told again and again, but my self is all I have, since the girls I’ve tried to poke so far do not seem to like it much. Two of the blinds have bitten me this year when I tried to stick my fingers in.

  I help much more than Mary, who is eight years younger than me, about the age I was when I was sent to live at the Institution. We hold on to each other’s skirts as we move about the house doing chores, until Addison bursts in from school—I feel the air rush in as the door’s flung wide and know it’s him, since Papa barely opens it, almost as if he doesn’t want to come inside. Addison takes us outside most days and plays at tumbling, then twirls me round and round until I fall down dizzy. He’s hung a swing from the branches of the oldest oak behind the house, and that is my favorite thing: to sit in the rope seat with my brother’s hands firm on my back and the sun and breeze light on my face. I try to decide if it’s even better than sitting with Doctor after supper, and I decide that it is—for now—because Doctor has stayed far across the sea for over a year, and so I must open the doors of my heart to others, especially my own dear family. Addison is almost as tall as Doctor, with a bit of soft beard. Only he and Mama have bothered to learn the finger spelling well. He will be going away to study next year, but when he comes back, I think it is possible that we might marry. I can tell he loves me very much, and in my hand, he always writes, “My Laura,” as if he has already claimed me for his own. Mama and Papa would be very happy, I think, though Mary would be jealous. And Doctor would probably be jealous too, even with his Julia. She is not half as celebrated as I am.

  Mama also lets me knit and crochet without being watched. The only thing I’m prevented from going near is the spindle. She needn’t worry; I am terrified of the thing. That I remember: the trip, the fall, the needle piercing my one good eye. If it had got the left one, no matter, it was already dried out, but the right one, a year after the fever, still held some light, a prism of colors on a bright day. Doctor knows, but that secret I tell no one else. It is too much, too horrible; it sounds like a lie, a bad joke that only God could tell. I’ve never had pain like that, most of all because it meant the extinguishing of the last glimmer of light, the last blade of green, the last patch of blue.

  It’s strange to think of how perfect I was born, how absolutely perfect with all my senses until two and a half. How I pray to remember those earliest years full of sights and sounds, tastes and smells! It must have been glorious. I must have been glorious. Doctor says some of those memories are locked inside my brain, and that’s why I learn so well, drawing on those fragments that are buried somewhere deep down inside. I wish I knew exactly where.

  Tonight Asa is coming for dinner. Papa says he’s a half-wit, and it’s true he can hardly spell in my hand and understands only the simplest words, but he has always been so good to me. Papa has never one time even tried to spell into my hand, and when I reach for his, he jerks it away. It would be so good to talk to Papa because he has some learning and reads the Bible more than Mama is able; he is a farmer but also conducts much business in town. He has been voted a selectman, Mama says, and that’s very important and takes up his time. Papa asks me only one question on this visit, and I can tell Addison doesn’t want to translate it by the way he doodles in my hand. “Write,” I urge him, and so he does: “Papa wants to know why can’t you talk yet.”

  That is an excellent question and one I mean to discuss with Doctor on his return. If he could teach me to read and write, I don’t see why he couldn’t teach me to talk. I can certainly make noise! If Asa can talk, then surely I should be able to master it. I don’t mean to look down on him; Asa was a better friend and playmate in my helpless years than even Addison. Maybe that’s because my brother usually had chores to do, but I don’t think that’s all it was. I think he saw me as a burden, like a blind dog to be watched after to make sure it didn’t upset the churn or fall down the well. I think Addison still looks at me that way sometimes, though I know how much he loves me because he hugs and kisses on me so much. But no one—save Doctor—loves me the way that Asa does. Asa enjoys my company. I know he would marry me if he could, but he is too old.

  He’s waiting in the yard, and Mama says he’s been there for hours, whittling me a stick pony. He grabs me up in his arms, and I pull off his old wool cap. As I pat his head, I realize that he has lost some of the hair he had three years ago. Asa’s hair is like the last bits of roasted meat off the bone, spare, greasy strings, though the back is long and his beard as full as ever, hanging down to his heart. Mama’s hair plays nicer on my fingers, and Mary’s too, but I’ve never gotten to touch Papa’s. I do forget a few things, like how to hold the mustard seed when I pound it, but I don’t forget the features of any person. I wonder if Papa’s head is mostly skin like Asa’s. Mama and Mary don’t have the skin mixed in with their hair, and I don’t either. Both are nice, though. It is always the most fun to have many different things to touch on a friend.

  Asa tickles me with the rough, tangled ends of his beard, but when he rubs it under my chin, I push his hand away. Now I realize he is dirty; I roll the grease and the grime between my fingers. Before, I never noticed, maybe because everyone at Perkins keeps so clean, as do I now. Hugging Asa has no doubt soiled my jumper, but that I will bear for my oldest friend. It is probably good that I cannot smell him, though. I can now understand why my family wasn’t that keen to have the old man around; they let him come because he could take me off their hands, out to fetch the eggs or to skip stones in the creek down by the mill. He was my minder, this filthy, old man. No one seems to have any idea exactly how old he
is. Papa said he’s lived down the road in Hanover since he was a boy. And he’s never had any family, as far as anyone knows.

  He lifts me onto his stooped shoulders and falters beneath my weight. I was such a tiny thing last time he held me, and though I am still thin, I am full tall for a fifteen-year-old gal. I know to duck my head low as we enter the house, and I feel the shiver through him as Asa whoops his greetings to my family. Doubtless they do not whoop back. I insisted we have rabbit stew, Asa’s favorite, and though little Mary refuses to eat it, dear Addison caught the hares and skinned and cleaned them. I admit I skipped that bloody task, but helped Mama roll the biscuits. I am a very good roller, though Mama says I always end up covered in flour.

  Asa sits beside me at the table with Addison on the other side—my two favorite men after Doctor! I feel very lucky, like a princess, so I even try to eat the stew. I feel my work in it: the potatoes and carrots peeled clean, and I’m proud. At supper Addison talks of training to be a Baptist minister or a doctor. I think I would like to be married to a minister, especially one with such thick and wavy hair, a cowlick that curls over his brow.

  “But I am Unitarian,” I remind my brother. Our whole family is pure Baptist but me, and this is something they apparently all worry about, even Papa. He is not concerned with anything about me, it seems, except my religion.

  “Change to Baptist,” Addison writes slowly, and I feel the biscuit crumbs in each letter. So he does not take my religion seriously. Is it because I am young or because I am so deficient?

  “Doctor made me,” I write, and it’s true. He did not only make me a Unitarian; he made me in every way that matters. I left this family unformed, an illiterate creature less useful than a dog, and he has transformed me into one fluent with the language and with the world.

  “Can’t turn back,” I say to Addison, and I hope he understands. He drops my hand and I know he is telling everyone at table. Papa shows his immediate displeasure by jiggling the whole table.

  I lift my shoulders in a shrug and then point toward heaven, letting them all know that the matter is out of my hands and in God’s. God gave me to Doctor and so I am Unitarian. I remember from when Mama would dress me up and take me to the little church down the road that the Baptists do more singing and clapping. My memories of those services are filled with a kind of joy that I admit I do not approach at the Institution’s services, where there seems to be almost no noise, no tensing and shifting of the floorboards. But for now, I must trust Doctor.

  Asa smears jam onto a biscuit and holds it to my lips. I don’t think Doctor would like me to have the jam with sugar, but I take a little taste. I like the way it’s sticky on my tongue, but basically it just makes for a wet biscuit.

  Asa takes his leave suddenly right after dinner. Addison says he made a mess at the table, trying to fix things to tempt me to eat, and Papa asked him to leave. My own family doesn’t care if I eat, and they throw out the only one who tries? I would’ve wolfed down every morsel, snuffled every crumb from the tablecloth if I had known. Addison feels my hand tremble in his and he knows how angry I am. He strokes my cheek and then pats my head over and over, and I know he is trying to comfort me—how I loved that touch when I was a child—but now I feel I am being treated like a dog. Pet the doggy and it will wag its tail and roll over and be good. No! I walk toward the heat from the fire where Papa likes to sit in his big horsehair chair after dinner and read the paper. I am not allowed on that chair. I kneel beside him and put my hand on his knee, and he shakes it in irritation. Papa doesn’t like for me to touch him, but I am determined. I tap hard on his knee and point at the door and make my noise for Asa. I make the noise again, louder, and this time he nudges me with his boot. He doesn’t kick me; only once he kicked me and that was when I’d wrapped myself around his legs and wouldn’t let go. Poor Papa, he’d dragged me round and round the room before he finally got me off. I don’t remember why I’d held on to him so fiercely. That was before Doctor came. Now he nudges again, and then Addison’s strong hands are under my arms and lifting me away. His chest is hard and I feel his heart beating. How wonderful it is! I will let Addison and his heart take me away, though I am still angry with Papa.

  Addison deposits me back in the kitchen and tells me that I must help Mama with the dishes. Usually I enjoy this task, but not tonight. Mama hands me the drying towel and then a bowl and I do nothing, just stand there, holding it, so she finally shoos me, gives me a marble to play with. Doctor let me hold a marble, a big one, to show me the shape of the eyeballs I lost. Think of that: pretty, round eyeballs with all their uses for good and evil, heated by the fever until they turned to liquid oozing down my face. I have never asked Mama, never held her accountable, but now she turns out my friend and gives me a marble. Does she care about me at all? I pull at her skirts until she gives me a soapy hand.

  “How could you lose my eyes, Mama?” She twists away. Did you hurt them, did you mash them, did you know what they were, your baby’s eyes, half her use and fortune in this world, or did you just wipe them away like snot? I fight for her hand. She won’t let me write; she doesn’t want to know. “Try to save them? Try to put them back?” I pound across her back until Addison pulls me off. I pummel his arms with truth: “Could’ve pushed them back in.” Even if she had to hold me down, screaming, my head in a vise, and poke and plunge and stuff with her fingers; maybe if they could just have stayed in until the fever went down, even if they had lost their purpose, even if they had become a maddened swirl of blue and black and white like Doctor says the sky can be on a stormy night. Didn’t you think that would be better than nothing, Mama, better than these tiny, wrinkled caves of bone? She tries to calm me as Addison holds me down, and I sign into the air: “Did you throw the mess outside?”

  I cry myself into stillness as they both lean above me. I reach for my mother’s face, trace one finger down her cheek. All my heartbreak, all my terror, all those terrible questions, and still my mother has not shed a tear. What’s wrong, Mama, are you afraid you’ll cry your eyes out?

  Asa comes for me the next day, and I tell him I’m sorry they wouldn’t let him stay. “Mama mean,” I write, his crusted palm so wide that it holds both words easily.

  “We play,” he writes.

  Papa is not rich, Doctor says, but he does have over a hundred acres here in the Connecticut River Valley. We can walk in any direction and it’s still Bridgman land. Hand in hand, we walk to the creek, and Asa helps me find the roundest, smoothest stones for skipping. I can’t enjoy the splash when they hit the water, but it gives me great pleasure to fling them into the air just so, just the way he has taught me. This creek was one of my favorite spots when I was little, and now I take off my boots and socks and dip my toes into the icy water. It is a tingle like no other, and then the squish of the mud between my toes, the jagged edges of the rocks that thrill me even as I know they can hurt me. I’ve cut my feet on them more times than I can remember, Mama getting so mad with Asa when he’d carry me back with a bloodied foot, me happy as a bird.

  Slowly―it is always so slow with him―I tell him that Mama didn’t cry about my eyes. He brings my hand to his face and shakes his head no over and over. He draws my fingers to his cheeks and slides them up and down, up and down, until I understand that he means Mama wept. He places my palm against his heart, and back to his eyes, and I realize how much my dear friend mourned also. After a moment, he writes, “2 babies die,” and then, “before you.” I rock back on my heels away from him, sit down hard on a slick rock. Mama had two babies who died before me?

  “Fever?” I ask Asa. Yes. I have no memory of any babies dying, but then again, I was only two when the fever struck me.

  “Boy and girl,” he writes. No one has ever told me. Why? Did they think it would add to my burden? Or that I just didn’t need to know, as they doubtless think that half the things of this world I don’t need to know, information that even the slowest-witted possess, simply by virtue of seeing and hearing
, by witnessing.

  He taps on my hand again: “And your mam’s mother too.” My heart wells for her: the fever also took Mama’s own mother from her; how does she walk upright with the weight of all this sorrow?

  I wait a few days until Mama and I are alone shucking corn. I take the shock from her hands and brush away the stray kernels. “2 babies die?” I ask, though I already know the answer. Her hand squeezes mine so hard that it hurts, but in a good way. We sit at the table, holding hands amid the piles of corncobs, and I understand: she had no more tears left for me, and that is all right. I know she still loves me.

  When the carriage pulls up to the front porch to take me back to Boston, everyone hugs and kisses me good-bye, and Addison writes one last message from Papa: “Don’t come back till you can speak. Even the half-wit can speak.”

  Chapter 7

  Letters, 1845

  April 1845, Julia to Louisa

  I have been too tired to write to you. Measure forgiveness by the heaping cup, I beg you, like we did when Cook let us help with the cake baking.

  I am reduced to something less than human, while I remain married to one who believes himself divine.