What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  May 1845, Laura to Julia

  Here at Perkins, we all speak of nothing but baby Julia Romana. You have picked the most beautiful and perfect name. I can’t wait to hold Doctor’s baby. You don’t have to worry; I will hold her very softly and be careful with her head. Miss Swift showed me how to do it with a doll, and I am practicing every day. Of course, I am too old for dolls! I am ready for babies. Julia Romana will be my sister, and you can also be my sister, and we will all live happily together in Doctor’s apartment. And Jeannette too, if you would like.

  I can’t wait to hug you and kiss you and your baby. It is all I can think about for now. I promise that I will always set an excellent example for your children; I know the difference between right and wrong, as our dear Doctor has shown me. Please write to me, and I will know that you are keeping me also in your devoted heart.

  May 1845, Charles Sumner to Dr. Howe

  P.S. All that I may offer to you and Julia on the birth are the fruitless congratulations of a bachelor’s heart, forever ignorant of the gardens of delight in which the happy parents revel.

  May 1845, Julia to Louisa

  Children are not like poems.

  June 1845, Miss Swift to Dr. Howe

  Congratulations on the birth of your daughter. We are looking forward to making her acquaintance.

  I want you to be prepared: I found certain religious tracts in Laura’s room, hidden beneath her pillow. They were not in raised letters, but if they’re in her possession, it is possible that she found someone to read them to her. I don’t know how this happened, because I have been very careful, as you asked, though my withholding on these matters has come at great spiritual expense to myself.

  It was inevitable, sir, even if you didn’t wish it.

  June 1845, Laura to Julia

  I am crocheting Julia Romana a pink cap, but I need to know the exact measurements of her head. Could you please send to me?

  June 1845, Dr. Howe to Laura

  I am told that you have been given certain tracts by those who do not know you, who do not understand you as I do. Believe me that God has appointed the day when you should know Him, but He will tell only me. Be patient, Laura, for Him, and for my return. Some things must change as we all adjust to my new life, but the important things will remain the same.

  July 1845, Dr. Howe to Charles Sumner

  Baby Julia Romana is the world’s most compelling creature, as you will soon discover; her mother, however, does not seem to find her so. And the verses are gushing forth again—she actually leaves the papers about the apartment in Rome for me to stumble upon. I will not bore you with the effluvia of the Muse except to say that in one she rhymes dead with marriage bed, and in another, enfeebled blind with behind!

  I thought I had chosen one whose spirits were nearly fireproof. I am more than a bit lost except for the child. And I yearn, more than ever, to touch your face. Very soon.

  July 1845, Laura to Dr. Howe

  Please, Doctor, I had a dream that your tiny baby was thrown into the sea and torn apart and eaten by a giant whale. I tried, but I could not save her. I am plagued with dreams, I can’t sleep. It’s always dark, but still I can’t sleep.

  July 1845, Dr. Howe to Jeannette

  The time has come for you to do me a very large favor: Miss Swift is to be removed from her post well before we return in late September. I will send a letter, but it will need to be carefully written, so you must move ahead since it will take it so long to reach Boston. For now, simply tell her that she has disappointed me, and disappointed Laura. Leave it to her to decide if she has also disappointed God.

  Miss Wight is my choice for Laura’s new teacher. She is modest, articulate, and most of all, Unitarian. I was not wise in trying to see the best in human nature, regardless of creed, but I have learned my lesson.

  And here is perhaps the more trepidatious task I set you, sister: please begin moving Laura out of the apartment. My private residence is no longer the right place for her now that I have my own family. I think if you carry out a few things at a time, while she is in classes, then she can be eased into the main wing. Nothing sudden or frightening, and the Exhibition and Visiting Days should continue as usual. But the last thing Julia needs is a scene the moment we arrive.

  August 1845, Julia to Laura

  Thank you for your kind words and many letters expressing interest in my welfare and that of my family. Please forgive me for not replying sooner; the travel, not to mention the multitudinous tasks of being Dr. Howe’s wife and mother to his child, are sometimes quite exhausting.

  You sound very well and very eager, as always, to join with us in our joy. I look forward to you meeting little Julia Romana, but we must be careful with her in ways that might prove difficult for you, Laura. A baby is far more delicate to play with than a dog, and I remember the howls of poor Pozzo as you stepped on his tail more times than I can count.

  I was sorry to hear about dear Miss Swift. She was as good as she was large, as is often true of broader persons generally. I think perhaps it is we leaner ones of us who are more viperish.

  The Institution is spacious and beautiful, and I am sure we will all be happy there over time. We will all be fixed very soon, to the best of the abilities God has bestowed upon each of us.

  Chapter 8

  Laura, 1845

  I have spent all afternoon entertaining Governor Briggs, and I am fairly tuckered. Over five hundred today in the hall, so many that my feet shook constantly from the activity. I wish that the Institution would limit my visitors to a reasonable number, perhaps a hundred at a time. Much is expected of me, and much I deliver—today I topped off the show by devising a poem on the spot and writing it out on the board. At least on days such as these, I do take in a fair bit of money from the sale of my lacework and purses, working away like one of Mr. Dickens’s heroines, though in much nicer surroundings. I thought I should keel over by the time all was done, and then there was the governor at me again, begging that I write out the verses I’d composed to take to frame and hang in his mansion.

  Miss Wight, my new teacher and companion, has stuck fast by me the whole day, even filling my palm with descriptions of the visitors, more than I could glean from their fingers. She is quite good at such portraiture, describing the governor’s head as an ostrich egg and his wife’s as a quail’s. But she also reminded me, more than once, that I am meant to be an Inspiration to Others, that that is God’s plan for me, to show how much can be achieved in the face of greatest adversity. I know that Doctor has told her to say that. It is very tiring to be an Inspiration, and I’m glad now we just sit together in the back parlor alone. I am so thankful that Doctor picked her for me; it is more than proof that he was thinking about me and my studies all the time he was away. Miss Swift rode hard on me, and so I reared and kicked; the problem was to be found in both our natures, though the world seems always to fault the student. But for sweet Miss Sarah Wight I will be the nicest filly ever for her to lead where she pleases. She is only twenty-two, just seven years older than me, so we will be great friends.

  Wight doesn’t wear a lace collar. It’s good to be plain, I’m often told, but I do like nice things on ladies to touch. I will tat her some lace and she will wear it for me. Oh, what plans I have for my new teacher! She will be my very own Wightie, three fingers spread for the W. She has let me touch her face before―she’s been here at Perkins going on a year riding the little blind girls, working her way up to me―and her skin is smoothly pleasing except for a few tiny bumps on her chin which must be changeable with the weather because they’re not always there. She doesn’t have Swift’s plump cheeks, though. I will miss those cheeks, for certain. Wight’s face is long, a little longer than mine, over one and a half hands’ lengths, and when I make her stand with our backs together, she measures in full about three inches taller. So she is tall and reasonably soft, with fine hair that Doctor says is so blonde it’s almost white. It’s stuck very close to her head, a little sl
ick even in its braids. I wanted a teacher with curly hair, very curly hair, so I could spring it and bounce it, but Doctor said that curly hair is hard to find in Boston, and also that it’s not important what kind of hair a teacher has. Doctor’s hair is curled sometimes over his ears or around his collar, tickling at my fingers when he lets me hug his neck. I have not touched him for eighteen months, and at my worst, I believe he is gone from this earth. We will find out in two weeks. And the baby? I am not sure it exists. I am sick of cradling the doll in anticipation, but at least the doll doesn’t wriggle or vomit. Maybe Julia won’t come back. Doctor thought my Julia noise was the best one of all, but Jeannette told me that Julia hated it. I give her my best and she despises me. Sometimes I think she even fears me.

  When Tessy was angry that I let Oliver play with the Laura dolls instead of her, she told me that the newspaper warned against pregnant ladies coming to the exhibitions to see me lest they swoon in fright and their babies be cursed with my afflictions. How might just one look at me brand another human being for life? I cried for days after Tessy told me that, until finally she hugged me in bed for a whole hour. I realized that is probably why Julia has stayed in Europe while she is with child: the fear that it could turn out like me. I wonder if Doctor is afraid too. I cannot let myself think about this or I will run screaming into the Charles.

  I’ll try to say my new teacher’s name out loud now. I’m not supposed to, but I’ll bet she doesn’t know that. “Wightie! Wightie!” I call, and she is tapping my hand, so she heard me. Did she hear her name, her real name, or just a sound, an ugly sound? I make it very small, very tiny, like a mouse practicing in a little hole in the floor, and she lets me. She is a good woman, and I promise for her I will be a good girl. I will try to be a good girl. Well, I’ll do the best I can.

  All right, I can’t speak or sing—for now—but I can do a little dance to celebrate my new teacher. Come dance with me, Wightie; give me your hand—ah, I’ve got one finger to pull. Come on! Doctor says exercise is good for me, how can you resist me one spin? I tap my foot on the floor, tap tap, the way I’ve felt the beats reverberate from the cabinet piano played in the parlor. Today I make my own music—tap-tap-TAP, tap-de-tap-tap—and I pull Wightie’s hands up and over my head, in a twist, in a twirl that I memorized from the raised pattern in the Institution’s one dance book. We will have to do a waltz since there are only two of us. The Viennese waltz is the one I learned, and I write that on Wightie’s other hand, including the sixty measures a minute with a clockwise rotation.

  “A what?” she asks. “Sixty what?” And I realize that maybe she doesn’t know dances, maybe she is not that kind of young woman, perhaps she is too plain to be asked to dance, or maybe she is too religious and strict to indulge. I don’t care. I’ll make her dance. I have waltzed three times with Doctor, and for a summer party we did the Virginia reel with six ladies and six gentlemen in rows. Jeannette says that I’m an excellent dancer. I can see the patterns in my brain shooting straight down to my feet, and my feet in turn relay the calling of the music through its vibrations for a certain type of movement. Oh, the dancing I would do if I were a normal girl: I would jig home to Hanover and back—no, all the way to Africa, where I read the Negroes beat crazily and loud on enormous drums with sticks. I would love it in Africa with all the drums talking to my feet. I wonder do they have pianos there and flutes―“W, do they have pianos in Africa?”

  What a stalling she does, this one; she is just going to have to get used to my questions, what Dr. Combe labeled my “pathological curiosity.” But why have a brain if you don’t want to fill it up with things? Miss Swift wouldn’t answer but a tenth of my queries, and only the most stupid, boring ones. I hate waiting for answers, and it seems most people definitely do not think as fast―or even as much―as I do. Is this arrogance or just the truth?

  Finally, W allows: “Only pianos in Africa if a missionary brings.”

  Still she is resisting me on the waltz. Arithmetic is finished; geography is done; I have signed fifty silly autographs, until my hand aches, including one to send to the President’s wife, Mrs. Polk, though she has not yet deigned to visit me, and now it’s time. Wightie can’t seem to follow the count, so we’ll just try twirling. I’ve got her arm up and it’s over my head, but my shade seems to be caught on something. It’s yanked upward, and I try to stop her arm. The ribbon is riding up the back of my head, but now Wight’s tapping too―tap-te-tap―she is in the mood at last, and my face is caught in the crook of her arm, as if she is protecting me. It must be the buttons on her sleeve that have caught the ribbon, and as her arm goes higher still―TAP-TAP-TAP―she yanks with it some hair from my braid, and I cry out, I mouth her name, but she doesn’t stop, she is tapping away, and I’m trying to stop the spin, all in one or two seconds that are sprinkled with bright lights in my head, and then I’m turned―tap-te-tap-tap-TAP―she has turned me most the way around―tap-tap―and the shade pulls clean off my eyes―TAP―and Sarah Wight stops completely, stumbling back a little when she sees, I guess, what has happened, and taking my shade with her.

  I have lost her arm’s protection, and I go down at the end of my twirl, my dance, crouching on the floor with my hands over my face. Doctor has made it a rule that I am never to uncover my eyes for anyone but a physician in private, and he certainly brooks no argument from me on that point. It is as far from my desire as Boston is from the North Pole to offend my friends’ sensibilities, to frighten or disgust them.

  Stop touching me! Miss Wight is all about me, hands and arms, patting, poking.

  “So sorry.” Waiting. “We’ll put it back.”

  No, I am comfortable making my ball here on the carpet, with its beveled tufts against my cheek. Jeannette told me this pattern is roses and angels in blues and golds. How beautiful to behold roses and angels together. Sarah Wight is practically lying on top of me, causing us both to sweat, in her what―grief? anguish? embarrassment? I am the one eyeless, revealed, naked in the face in the cruelest way of all nakedness―why should she be aggrieved? If the eyes are the windows to the soul, as one of Doctor’s poet friends recited, then what kind of soul do I have, Wightie? What did you see of my soul before I went down, cowering on the floor like the wild child, the beast, I used to be? You have ruined the dance, you have ruined the day, with your sweaty hands and your big arms. You can’t even do a simple turn! What kind of lady are you? Leave me be on the soft carpet with these roses that will never die and the angels who might protect me. You cannot protect me even from your stupid self.

  “I won’t look when I put it on.”

  I slide one hand out of my position. “Did you see me?”

  “No.” The response too quick, and so I know she lies.

  “You did,” I stamp on her arm.

  “I saw nothing.” Her hand falls away. Now she is telling the truth, she saw the nothing. So the first day teaching, my new role model, this package of Unitarian virtue and womanhood, and we find she can’t dance, as a lady should, and that she lies, like a Christian should not. This is what I’m stuck with.

  If I could stay like this, exactly like this, frozen, for days, weeks, without a thought to any bodily needs, would I waste away or might God give in to my demands for another life? Would He let me die rather than grant me even one wish?

  I start. I must have drifted off. Wight is still here beside me, and dozing too by the slight rise and fall of whatever I’m poking. She is good to stay with me; I’m sure there are a hundred things she’d rather be doing than lying on the back parlor floor with me. I was too rough with her today; she probably thinks I’m a mad creature now. Maybe she won’t even want to teach me after the wildness of this afternoon. That would be terrible. I let myself go galloping off in my head like I do, not taking time to explain what I want, what I need. But would she understand if I did try to explain?

  Ah, well, let me touch Sarah Wight’s tears. I know they’re there. I can make a grown-up weep just at the sight of my ey
es―isn’t that a hoot and a holler?

  “I’m sorry, Wightie,” I write onto her outstretched arm, and she’s stirring, sitting up, though she doesn’t reach for me.

  “Time for tea,” she writes as if nothing has happened, and then she’s slipping the shade over my eyes, tying the ribbon tight above my bun, tucking in the ends.

  “Will you still be my teacher?”

  “Of course,” she says—it seems without thinking—and helps me to my feet.

  “I can teach you to dance,” I tell her.

  Chapter 9

  Laura, 1846

  I have tried to fatten myself for Doctor. He will be here in a week. My bones poke through my skin, and I think it is much nicer to touch the soft pillows of Tessy’s hands than to feel my birdy bones. But I must remember to eat, to eat more; I vow to chew and swallow all three meals every day. It is so hard, though, when I taste almost nothing. I move my jaws and grind my teeth and pass my tongue over the lumps of whatever it is that slides from the forks and spoons, but it seems a meaningless exercise.

  I would much rather dip my fingers into the warm pond of the soup and plumb its depths for legumes, rend the slick skin from the chicken and peel away the sheaves of muscle until I reach the hardness of the bone, tear the bread into a hundred tiny pieces and roll them into buttered balls I juggle over my plate, squish through the pliant mounds of the potatoes, ravage the soft pulp of the baked aubergines, and burrow both fists into pie I will never know the sweetness of. Soak the whole feast in milk. The only delights of food for me are in its destruction, and it so disappoints me that I can no longer indulge my play now, not at my age and not at my station in life as the world’s most famous woman, second only to Queen Victoria (second only to Julia!).