What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  Jeannette brought a vase of fresh-cut lilies into the parlor and surveyed the scene. “At least she didn’t dump the whole pan on you like last time,” she said.

  Laura reached down and felt the wetness, and began to pat wildly with the rag. She covered Sarah’s nose and mouth, and Sarah pushed her hand away more roughly than she intended. The girl’s anxiety was telegraphed through her fingers, though Sarah knew it would be even worse if she sent her to her room. Relieved of her duties as teacher’s nurse, she would spend the night in an agony of retribution. Nothing made Sarah’s headaches worse than the sound of Laura’s keening in that frightening, guttural way of hers, unaware that her sorrow made her far less sympathetic. Sarah had delighted in teaching Laura the Bible, knowing how long the Good Book was kept from her, but she had to admit that the introduction to religion had made the girl much more highly emotional, and worse, even harder on herself than she was before.

  “You’ll be drowned if you let her keep on,” Jeannette said and tried to take the rag from Laura’s hand. A tug-of-war ensued, during which Sarah got even wetter. Jeannette finally wrested the cloth from her, and Laura turned round and round in near panic. Her fingers quivered on Sarah’s arm until Sarah wrote that she was the best nurse ever and that she was all better.

  “You spoil her to bits,” Jeannette said. “I’ve warned you. Tell her it’s supper, if you can get her to eat.”

  Sarah pried Laura’s arms from her waist. “She’ll likely skip table entirely in this state. She’s wasting under my care.”

  Jeannette snorted. “She’s always been a terror to get fed, worse than a two-year-old. She used to throw half the food down the table and spit the other half out on her plate. A mess to clean, every blessed day. Only reason she’s up to eighty pounds is to impress Chev. Stuffed herself for weeks before he came back.”

  “Dinner,” Sarah signed into Laura’s palm and the girl shook her head vehemently. “Doctor wants you to eat,” she tried again.

  “Doctor eat with me?”

  “No, but I will.”

  Laura smoothed the front of her dress, considering. “Feed me?”

  Sarah cast a despairing glance at Jeannette, who laughed. “Ladies eat on their own.”

  Laura stood up straighter. “I use fork better than blinds,” she wrote, and Sarah agreed. She took her arm to escort her to the dining room.

  “How’s the spell?” Jeannette asked. “You still look peaked.”

  “I’ll be lucky not to lose my soup,” Sarah said, “but it will be worth it if she eats hers.”

  “My brother has found an angel.”

  “Send that birdsong into his ear then because he finds me far too human.”

  “Heaven help him, he rarely gets the worth right.” Jeannette walked with them down the hall.

  “You mean Julia?” Sarah whispered.

  Laura poked her teacher in the arm. “What talk?”

  “Worth her weight in gold or coal, I cannot say.”

  “You tempt me with such palaver and deliver nothing,” Sarah said. Laura poked her harder in the arm. “We say how nice Julia’s having another baby.”

  “Stay fat,” Laura wrote.

  “She’s sick most every morning,” Jeannette said. “Says the house full of blinds bodes ill for her laying-in.”

  “All this time, and I think she’s still actually afraid of them,” Sarah said. “Or afraid she’ll birth one herself, God forgive me.”

  “Afraid of that one most of all.”

  “As well she should be.” Sarah helped Laura into her chair at the head of the first table. Laura pressed her teacher’s arm to sit beside her.

  “You’ll catch your death, still half-drowned,” Jeannette warned.

  Laura held Sarah’s hand tightly and banged their twined fists upon the table. When the dishes were served, Sarah found she could only manage a few spoonfuls of soup, which was nothing more than hot water afloat with a few limp vegetables. Since Doctor believed that any spices added to the food would be too stimulating for the blind, Cook was not allowed to use even salt or pepper, and no sugar for tea. Fruit was never served raw, but cooked for so long you sometimes couldn’t tell if you had an apple or a pear before you. Desserts only on Christmas, when the girls devoured them and, sure enough, were often sick. Maybe Doctor was right—maybe they were too sensitive—but Sarah missed sweetness most of all, a good chess pie, even a fry-up dusted with sugar. Of course, it was all the same to Laura. Sarah ended up spoon-feeding her half the bowl of soup, but Laura removed from her mouth each of the beans and placed them around her dish. “Like bugs,” she said. It was always something.

  She twisted her bread into a sort of animal shape—it had four legs anyway—and galloped it up her teacher’s sleeve. She’d mostly broken her student of playing with her food by constantly reminding her of her age—seventeen!―but this often led to a discussion of what other girls her age were up to—walking out with beaux, going to balls in carriages—and Laura usually ended up weeping at the bleakness of her own life. It was one thing to admonish her to act like an adult, and then another to refuse her any adult activities. Sarah wondered if this disparity could ever be resolved; might Laura at say, twenty-one, finally accept her limitations and be able to fashion some sort of real life for herself in the world? As difficult and heartbreaking as it was for Sarah, she hoped to stay at Perkins long enough to find out. Sarah finally popped off the head of the bread animal, which by now had lost a leg anyway, and pushed it into Laura’s mouth, caught open in a laugh. The girl chewed the bread, but complained that Sarah had destroyed her dog. In moments like these, Sarah found it almost impossible to reconcile the Laura who devoured the Old Testament and pelted her with incisive questions with the petulant, crumb-covered child before her.

  The blind girls chattered loudly in the hall, and today Sarah wished they were all deaf-mute as well. She offered up a quick prayer as the milksop was served, asking God to forgive her for such terrible thoughts. Usually she ignored the girls, so occupied was she with her one demanding charge, but today she heard something that pricked her attention.

  “She got up in my bed again last night,” said one of the older ones, gesturing at Laura. “Kept me awake all hours, petting me.”

  A pigtailed girl across the table nodded. “Just push her out. That’s what I do. But then she makes that awful noise, like a horse dying.” The girls instinctively inclined their heads in the direction of Laura’s table in case her teacher could hear. “I never push her hard, though,” the girl said loudly.

  “Doctor would have your head,” the first one whispered. “You must not injure the star of his shows.”

  The girl with pigtails said, “I think I’ll put a bag over my head so she can’t get at my hair,” and the table was overcome with giggling.

  Sarah was accustomed to the blinds discussing Laura right in front of her. Sometimes it was useful, but often it was cruel, and Sarah wished that she herself couldn’t hear. As much a trouble as she was, Laura was the beneficiary of all of her teacher’s stored-up love, for which she had no other object, with the exception of her family out in Wayland.

  Girls routinely slept together at the Institution, just as they did at home with their siblings. Only Laura had a private room, and though her teacher’s room was beside hers, Laura managed to sneak out quietly enough that Sarah missed it half the time. Whenever she did hear the patter of Laura’s slippered feet inching down the hallway, she roused herself from her bed and collared the girl. Sometimes Laura was so startled that she let out an alarming yelp, and then everybody woke up. No matter how many times she’d been reprimanded, Laura thought her midnight larks were funny, and so she was in high spirits for an hour before Sarah could settle her down again. Sarah knew exactly what the blind girl meant; her own hair seemed to be a source of endless fascination for Laura, who alternated between stroking it gently and pulling. It was only when her hands strayed down Sarah’s neck and began exploring below the collarbone that she
firmly pushed Laura’s fingers away and back up to her head. Sarah was constantly in a state of rearranging her bun as Laura dislodged it. A teacher must always be a model of modest perfection, even if her students couldn’t see her. “You can play my hair too,” was Laura’s open invitation, as she tickled Sarah’s nose with a stray lock. Sarah did play with Laura’s hair, brushing it, braiding and unbraiding, but she stopped short of the rougher work that the girl asked for. Why would anyone want their hair pulled? But then again, on the occasions when she helped Laura dress or bathe—she did most of her grooming herself now―she saw tiny lines of dried blood on the insides of Laura’s thighs and upper arms.

  At first, she’d believed Laura’s explanations: “Fall down,” she’d say, or “Pozzo scratch,” or “Blind play hard.” But after finding a very precise trio of cuts on her inner thigh, Sarah knew they couldn’t be accidents. “Who’s hurting you?” she asked, but Laura only shook her head. Perhaps it was retribution for the higher status bestowed on Laura—her own room, famous visitors, private time with Doctor—or maybe because Laura simply annoyed the living daylights out of some of the girls. Laura was plenty capable of protecting herself, however, as her ferocity in gym games had proven, and Sarah couldn’t imagine her being that abjectly passive. She certainly wasn’t with her teacher. Maybe it was some perverse adolescent game; she herself had never engaged in such activities when she was at school, but there had been a group of girls who fancied themselves some sort of secret society with strange rituals. Sarah shuddered at the thought of blind girls playing with razors. Maybe she should tell Doctor, but she was afraid to even ask the other teachers or Jeannette if any of their students suffered similar wounds. If they didn’t, she would only arouse suspicion about Laura, and goodness knows the child had enough on her plate as the only deaf-blind since Oliver left. But after months of finding the tiny incisions, Sarah realized that Laura herself was doing the cutting, though so far Sarah hadn’t been able to find the instrument. When she asked Laura why she did this, the girl denied it, her face a mask of pure innocence, not even the sly expression she usually wore when caught at something. Sarah held Laura in her arms and told her that she didn’t have to punish herself for anything.

  “Not punish,” Laura said. “God punish. Doctor punish.”

  Sarah lived in fear that her charge would cut too deeply one day in her quest for whatever it was and seriously wound herself, but she still didn’t dare tell Doctor. She considered taking Laura’s hatpins, but then how on earth could she secure her hats? It was a conundrum she couldn’t see her way clear of, so until she could come to some logical conclusion and solution, she kept Laura safe from prying eyes and prayed for guidance, for answers.

  Thank the Lord, Dr. Howe didn’t pay much mind to Sarah. He respected her, she thought, but he kept his distance and, at this stage, rarely inquired after Laura’s progress. Jeannette said he used to demand a daily report of her, which then dwindled to weekly, and now he merely asked offhandedly if he happened to pass Sarah in the hall. Now that he’d given in to Laura’s demands for the Bible, he seemed to regard her as a lost cause. Sarah knew from reading the papers, even before she had arrived at Perkins, how important a pawn Laura was in the battle that Doctor and Horace Mann waged against the Calvinists. Doctor insisted that the girl was a blank slate who would come naturally to God, proving man’s innate religiosity and spirituality and refuting the idea of original sin. But the crumbs he dropped were never enough for the voracious Laura, and though her moral sense was well developed, she insisted on learning the tenets of Christianity and studying the minutiae of the Good Book, contrary to general Unitarian beliefs. Sarah herself was a Unitarian; her father had been the first Unitarian minister in Wayland, but she still found herself leaning a bit dangerously toward Calvinism with its more concrete view of the Holy Trinity. Her father had once spanked her for going to services at a Baptist church with a friend. If he were still alive, he would have gotten along famously with Dr. Howe.

  When Doctor summoned Sarah the next week, she knew it would not be good news. Doctor didn’t take interest enough in the teacher or the pupil for it to be good. She came to his office at the appointed time and knocked repeatedly, but no one answered. Then she heard the low rumble of male laughter from within. She was ready to leave when the door opened and Charles Sumner emerged. Generally he was one of the best-kept gentlemen that Sarah had ever seen―white shirt collars starched, even a velvet riding jacket once―but now his wide cravat was askew and his dark hair tousled. He must have been riding.

  He bowed. “Good day, Miss…” And Sarah curtsied and supplied her surname. She didn’t expect the great Sumner to remember it. He extended his arm with a flourish, indicating the room within.

  “The Chevalier is all yours,” he said and smiled his thin smile.

  Sarah made it a rule to at least attempt not to think uncharitable things about anyone, but she could never summon anything but distaste for Doctor’s famous friend, probably because Laura disliked him so strongly, more than anyone. She claimed that Sumner was rough with her, and she wouldn’t let him even try to write upon her hand. Sarah had heard from another teacher that Laura had actually bitten him once, but she couldn’t believe the girl would go that far with Doctor’s dearest friend.

  “Come,” Doctor said and motioned toward the straight-backed chair in front of his enormous cherrywood desk. The desk was piled with newspapers and loose sheets and a teetering stack of books, and Sarah felt the itch to tidy everything up; that or sweep it all away. Didn’t he let the maids clean in here? She wondered how Julia felt about the office’s disarray. There was definitely not the slightest hint of a woman’s touch anywhere in the room. Sarah had to remove a book from the chair before she could settle herself. Her palms were sweating, her anxiety made worse by the fact that Doctor was not saying anything, only watching her with a slight frown and that wrinkle between his eyes that somehow made him even handsomer.

  “Miss Wight, it has come to my attention…It’s been reported that…”

  Sarah realized he wasn’t angry, just terribly uncomfortable.

  “It seems that Laura has been, um, bothering some of the girls. At night, that is. Were you aware of this?”

  “I heard a girl mention it at table, but I didn’t think…”

  “You sleep in the room beside Laura, correct?”

  “Yes, sir, but she can be very quiet when she’s determined.”

  “Determined to what?”

  “Well, to seek…to seek affection.” Sarah felt the color rising in her cheeks and knew it would not go down.

  “Do you not give her enough affection?” Doctor asked.

  “I think I do, sir. Yes, I do. I care for the girl very deeply, but she seems to require more affection than I can provide.” If only you would give her a bit, like when she was younger, Sarah thought, if you could bring yourself to take her in your arms the way you used to. Sarah remembered her first year at Perkins teaching the other girls, the year before Doctor married, how he and Laura would walk hand in hand down the halls, how she’d run to him whenever he entered the room, and he’d gather her up and kiss her. Once she had seen him carrying the girl on his shoulders in the garden, her face turned upward toward the sun, lit with pleasure as she fingered the leaves on the trees. But she was no longer an adorable little girl, but a difficult and, yes, strange-looking adolescent. Sarah recalled her own early years; they had been trying enough without Laura’s heavy load. Sarah had been plain, was still plain, but at least no one had ever ridiculed her for that; instead, she was ignored, almost invisible, she sometimes thought. An invisible woman teaching blind girls—how perfect!

  Doctor particularly had never paid her the least notice, but now he stroked his beard and gazed at her with those penetrating eyes. He was so fine that even Sarah sometimes found it hard not to stare. She looked down at her lap.

  “Do you think it’s necessary for you to sleep with Laura? Miss Swift always―”

&
nbsp; Sarah shocked herself by interrupting him. “No. No,” she said, perhaps too vehemently. “Miss Swift cared for Laura when she was a child. Now that she is seventeen I don’t believe she needs her teacher sharing her bed.” Oh, Lord, please, if she had to sleep with Laura, she would never catch a wink, she knew it. The girl’s hands would never leave her.

  “Then it is up to you to make sure she does not crawl into the beds of others. The girls do not need to be harassed, and her behavior is unbecoming at this stage.”

  “But many of the girls snuggle in together, Doctor, even some of the older ones. Is it possible they are singling out Laura because―”

  “They are singling out Laura because apparently the extent of her…affection exceeds that of the other girls.”

  Sarah dared not think what he might mean, but she knew there was something to what he said, something she could not quite put her finger on, or didn’t want to. “I will mind her, Doctor. It won’t happen again.” How she was going to accomplish that Sarah had no idea. Tie Laura to the bed? Lock her in?

  “Miss Dix will be arriving this afternoon. Make sure that Laura is clean and at her best.”

  Sarah was stung by the remark and realized she was being dismissed. Laura adored Dorothea Dix and was always on her best behavior for those visits. The reformer was nearly as devoted to Laura’s cause as she was to helping the insane. Nearly ten years had passed since she’d brought about the changes to Massachusetts’ asylums. Before her graphic reportage, the poor lunatics had been tied up, kept in pens, lashed, starved. Sarah read in the paper that Miss Dix was now establishing hospitals in Illinois and North Carolina.

  Dorothea Dix didn’t look like a reformer, not like Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Lucretia Mott of the coming Seneca Falls Convention. Miss Dix appeared to lack the robust constitution necessary for such demanding work; she was as pale and nearly as thin as Laura, and the two could have passed for sisters. Miss Dix had the consumption, and it was rumored she’d had it for years, but every time she went down for the count―this last time in isolation for six months in Chicago—she bounded back and took up her causes again with renewed vigor. Of all Laura’s celebrated visitors, this lady was the one whom Sarah most admired. Here she was barely able to handle her one charge, and Miss Dix was off wrangling armies of the insane, some of them violent, drooling maniacs. She put even Doctor’s great enterprise to shame, and when they were in company, he looked like his collar was too tight; after all, he had advised her, assisted her in her early endeavors in Massachusetts, where she’d started, and now her work—a woman’s work, for God’s sake―far outshone his.