What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  I am in and out of the hours, days, and nights cut from the same cloth. Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! Over and over Sarah pulls my hands from the bedclothes and opens my palms. Tap-tap-tap. My last connection with this world. Tap-tap-tap. Once I am awake for a bit and up to a spoon of gruel, when I realize she is writing about Miss Dix. I force myself to attention, struggle to focus on her fingers. She reads me a letter: Miss Dix has raised funds for a companion for me. For life. For my life. She has written to Doctor. I ask Sarah to read it again and again until I understand that it is true. I must lie back and rest now. The news overwhelms me. When I wake, I am certain that I have imagined this wonder, but Sarah assures me that the offer is a fact. I hold the paper in my hands and feel myself begin to stir.

  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee.

  Hungry. Mama brings me soup, and I let Mary spoon it to my lips. It tastes of nothing but warmth, but that is enough.

  More letters from Doctor. Julia has given birth to another daughter, and they have named her Laura Elizabeth after me. I wonder what he promised Julia to make her consent to such an extraordinary thing. I will have to go soon to hold her, the little Laura. In my head I add her to my collection of dolls. And the blinds: I am often dismissive of them, even facetiously so—my God-given singularity my defense—and yet I know that my very life offers proof to them that if I can accomplish some, then they can accomplish more.

  The girl twirls her parasol and is gone, at least for now.

  Chapter 17

  Sarah, 1851

  Sarah woke in a panic, thrashing the netting above her. She cried out and Edward jumped from the chair beside the bed, throwing his blanket on the floor.

  “It’s all right,” he said, trying to untangle her as she struggled. She shook her head and shrunk away from him. “It’s for the mosquitoes. I put it up after you fell asleep.”

  She tried to rise from the low rush bed, but his arm stopped her.

  “You’re making it worse,” Edward said. “You’re confused.”

  Sarah stopped moving. “I know where I am,” she whispered. She was still wearing her good dress, the one she’d married him in yesterday, but it was wrenched up on one side, leaving one calf visible. She saw the darning tracks in her stockings and the large hole that had not been darned, through which her skin shone pink. She had rubbed herself almost raw when she took a much-needed proper bath at Reverend Carpenter’s house between getting off the Morning Star and getting married. A hundred and twenty-seven days of grime accumulated aboard ship from Boston to the Sandwich Islands.

  Sarah covered her legs and let him pull the netting from her limbs. Their fingers touched for an instant through the tiny holes in the silk.

  Edward backed away from the bed. He had taken off his dark waistcoat from the ceremony, but still had on his white shirt and suspendered trousers. “I’ll let you get yourself fixed. There’s the basin.” He pointed to the ceramic bowl in the corner. “No looking glass to be had.” He left the room, but there was no door to close.

  There were no windows either, not one in the house, unless you counted the outside door, which he opened in the central room to let in the light and the breeze. Sarah had kept her surprise to herself last night when Reverend Carpenter drove them home in his brougham; she thought Edward’s house would be like the minister’s, except less grand—a regular frame house with low stone walls—but it was little more than a thatched hut. She slid off the bed and craned her neck to make sure he couldn’t see her; no, but she could hear him humming and the clank of a spoon on metal. She splashed water on her face and smoothed her pale hair back into its bun. Her trunk sat against the far wall, unopened.

  She bumped her head on the low opening of the room, but not hard enough to really hurt. Her boots crunched against the thin layer of gravel on the floor.

  “You can buy rugs,” he said. “I haven’t fixed it up yet because I wasn’t expecting…Here, sit.” The sun floated in, illuminating the small wooden table, but not the corners of the room. He set a bowl in front of her. “Breadfruit, like you had at the Carpenters’, but raw. It’s good.”

  She took a piece and nodded. She looked at the stone fireplace, the one pot slung on a hook.

  “You can let me know what you need for cooking. I have a few things here—tea, sugar, salt pork—but make a list and I’ll pick up everything in Lahaina.”

  He had given her a tour of the town’s one street the night before: the dry goods, the stable, the butcher, the smith, with the Methodist mission at one end and the Congregationalists at the other, all surrounded by swaying palms. The Methodists and Congregationalists had been here for thirty years, he told her, but the Unitarians had only arrived two years ago. Edward had come to be part of the fledgling Unitarian mission.

  After she washed the plates in the basin, Edward took her outside and showed her the yard: the chicken coop behind the house where she would gather eggs, the bench he’d built to sit and read, the twelve-foot ti plant waving over the house made from its own leaves, and the pili grass of the fan palms.

  “When the winter season is over next month,” he said, “those yellow-and-red flowers will turn into berries. They’re not much for eating, but you can use them for digestives.”

  Sarah smiled at him. “You might find that necessary with my cooking.”

  “I had forgotten how funny you are,” he said, but he didn’t laugh. “It’s good to have you here.” Together they watched steam rise off the grass. “Well,” he said, “I’m sure you have a lot of unpacking or resting, or whatever you’d like to do. I’ll be taking Regina.” He gestured to the bay horse tied up at the gatepost. “Past her prime, but you will come to love her.”

  “What if I need to go somewhere?” Sarah asked, moving closer to him.

  “You’ll have to walk the six miles into town, one more to the Carpenters’,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have only the one horse and no prospects of another. I can ask the reverend to check on you perhaps or send his man.”

  “Is it safe here? The door doesn’t even have a lock.”

  “It is as safe as I can offer. You can push the table against the door when you’re in, if you’d like, but you’ll shut out the light.”

  “But the natives? They look like yellow Negroes, but wilder. And half-naked!”

  “And more than half-Christian, at this point. In most ways, you are safer than you were in South Boston.” He patted her shoulder and walked across the wet grass to his horse. He mounted easily and looked down at his wife. “Except for the mosquitoes. The story goes a Mexican sailor fell in love with an island girl, but was refused. He sailed home to Mexico, brought back a barrelful of mosquitoes, and released them on his beloved’s shore.”

  “And let her be bitten too?” Sarah asked.

  “Revenge, I suppose. The sting of love.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, squinting up at him through the glare. She noticed how blond the line of his hair waved against the tan of his high forehead. In Boston, he had seemed to her like a pale child, if a child could be balding.

  He bowed his head slightly and clicked his heels against the horse’s flanks. She watched him until he disappeared on the path through the dense foliage. Then she walked around the yard bounded by trees whose names she had yet to learn and kicked dirt into the chicken pen. The birds treated it as an offering and pecked through it for anything worth eating. She kicked more dirt at them, harder this time, and ran into the house. She left the door open while she inspected the kitchen—two pots, a pan, a few utensils, three cups. She stood in front of the table, scooting it toward the door with he
r foot, but then left it in the middle of the room.

  She unpacked all the clothes she owned in less than half an hour, folding them to fit on the low, narrow shelves by the bed. There were no closets, but his clothes took up only one shelf. Her books and undergarments she left in the trunk. She touched his pants, the waistband first and then the leg, fingering it slowly. She unfolded them and held them out in front of her. Though he was shorter than she was, he still seemed much taller than she remembered. She thought of him strolling by her side with Laura on the grounds at Perkins, fidgeting, always fidgeting. Half-bowing every time she came into a room or left it. Though she was considered virtually a spinster at twenty-eight, she had never had any other serious suitors, and the truth was she didn’t expect any, plain-faced, plainspoken woman that she was, but she had had no great struggle of heart or conscience saying no to him just eight months ago. He had not seemed like a man really, not like Dr. Howe, or even Cook’s husband or Sumner. Maybe he appeared taller now because she had been looking up at him on a horse, or maybe because there were no other men around with whom to compare him.

  She picked up the blanket from the floor where he’d thrown it. The wool was scratchy and stiff; he’d given her the softer one. She lifted the netting and arranged his blanket beside hers on the bed. She stared at it for a long time and then took it off and moved it back to the chair.

  The heat wasn’t terrible yet, more like a moderate New England June than a dog’s day August so far, but enough for her to take off her long-sleeved broadcloth dress now that she was alone, and slip her day shift over her petticoat and corset and chemise. She had decided she would wear her crinoline only when they ventured into town. She unwrapped the daguerreotype of Laura and set it on the top shelf. She had written to Laura and Julia and to her sister Elizabeth while she was at sea, but the letters weren’t mailed until she disembarked on the Big Island three days ago. Those letters had been full of shipboard misery—the food, the illness, the doubts―though she had tried to leaven them with anecdotes about the other passengers, like the redoubtable matriarch who’d tried to marry off both of her enormous daughters in the course of the voyage. She had succeeded in the engagement of the larger one to a ship’s mate, which Sarah viewed for the girl’s station and sweet character as a worse match than none at all.

  She found her letter box and pen and settled herself under the mosquito netting. The table might be more comfortable, but as Edward pointed out, the mosquitoes were something she could at least spare herself; they weren’t a serious malarial risk here, the ship’s captain had told her, but they could carry other diseases. She would write first to Laura, who needed her most.

  Dr. Howe had allowed Laura to return to Perkins from Hanover, but only because she was at the brink of death. The endless carriage ride back to Boston haunted Sarah still, Laura shivering in her arms, too weak to write more than a word or two. Sarah had been sure she would not make it through the two-day journey. Doctor was waiting at the door when they arrived, and he lifted Laura from the coachman’s arms, clearly shocked at her condition. In his eyes she’d hoped to see guilt or at least contrition, an awareness of his part in her downfall, but she read only alarm and curiosity in his flickering gaze. He had banished Laura on the pretext that he had nothing left to teach her, that he saw no need for a paid companion, much less a teacher. He promised Laura that he’d find her another companion, but when Sarah asked outright about Dorothea Dix’s offer, he told her that Miss Dix had specified that the woman hired could not be an Irish and that he would not have her telling him what to do. What a joke; Sarah knew he’d never hired an Irish for a serious job anyway. Turn the sum over to him to use for the Institution as he saw fit, he told Miss Dix, with none of your restrictions. She had declined, being nearly as bullheaded as he was. It didn’t matter; the money would not have gone to Laura. Doctor had turned his face from her, just short of letting her die. Without someone always beside her to translate the world and its comings and goings, she was left utterly alone, in a vacuum, at the mercy of those who happened into her palm, or not. Laura had ardently declared that she would never love another teacher as much as her dear Wightie, but Sarah could not bring herself to tell her that there would be no one to replace her, though she knew it was probably more cruel to leave the poor darling strung out with hope. Laura’s and Sarah’s fates both changed at the snap of Doctor’s fingers, and worst of all, they were banished from each other. With Sarah’s parents dead, there was nowhere for her to go. She should feel blessed that Edward had accepted her with a dowry of only twenty a year, even though she had declined him when she had a position.

  She hadn’t seen much of the Sandwich Islands yet, but she described for Laura what she could: the almost nauseatingly sweet smell of the orchids and plumeria blooming along the road from Lahaina that Edward had pointed out from the barouche; the briny tang of the ocean and the raw fish and whale meat piled on the docks mixed with the sweat of the shirtless yellow-brown men swarming them, crying out in singsong to help load the bags. Laura would thrill to all these words, as she did to all words, in trying to share her teacher’s experiences, but Sarah knew that the only thing Laura would be able to completely understand was the weather—how something felt―so she took great care to detail the warm and gentle play of the breeze inland, where the house sat, compared to the wild assault of the wind at the shore when they’d arrived, and the great variations in the heat from the night to day. She finished the letter and thought she should try to make something from the salted meat Edward had shown her.

  She woke in the dark to Edward’s low snores from the chair beside the bed.

  The next few nights he also slept in the chair, and so in the second week of her marriage, Sarah told her husband that he looked awfully tired.

  “You’re yawning over breakfast,” she said. “I know I haven’t yet mastered the fine art of cooking poi, but it’s not that bad, is it?”

  “No,” Edward said. “Very well done.”

  She looked down, brushing the crumbs from her lap. “You don’t have to sleep in the chair, Edward.”

  He waited to finish chewing. “I am so grateful for everything. You knew me and you came here anyway.” He rose from the table. “I have to ride across the island today to Kihei. The mission is looking to purchase a plot to build the church.”

  “And will you preach there when it’s done?” she asked.

  He patted her cheek. “You are too good to me.”

  That afternoon, she named the old rooster Dr. Howe and pelted him with pebbles when he harassed the chickens.

  Sarah dreamed of writing on Laura’s hands, having Laura write on hers with those endlessly moving fingers. She had considered it a nuisance then, all the touching that the girl required, but now she realized how much she longed for it.

  Edward wasn’t in his chair, squirming and snoring, as he’d been the other nights. He must still be in the other room at prayer.

  On Sunday, they rode into town for services. Rather than worship in the churches of their Protestant rivals for the islanders’ souls, the small band of Unitarians—fewer than twenty, including the families—met in the parlor of the Carpenters’ frame house. Sarah hadn’t seen anyone but Edward since the wedding a fortnight ago, so she was happy to be among people. Only the reverend and his wife had been at their ceremony. Edward had wanted them wed as soon as she arrived, so they wouldn’t have to inconvenience his employer by having her stay more than one night.

  Reverend Carpenter delivered a sermon from Ecclesiastes and the group sang hymns together. Afterward, the women retired to the large terrace for cold jasmine tea and pineapple, while the men stayed inside to talk church business. At first Sarah didn’t know who Mrs. Carpenter was speaking to when she said, “Mrs. Bond, please pass the sugar.”

  Sarah laughed. “I’m not used to my new name,” she said to the other ladies, but no one made any mention of her marriage to Edward. And not a soul had asked her about Laura, though the Carpenters
knew she’d come straight from Perkins. Had Laura’s fame really begun to dim so quickly after the last terrible report? How lonely she must feel, her hands bereft of the hundreds she was used to clamoring for hers, and now not even a companion. And even if the people still wanted to see her, Sarah knew Doctor had cut back on the Exhibition and Visiting Days. Laura had spent most of her short life being celebrated, performing and being praised, and now she was left to her own thoughts and her darkness. Sarah prayed that she kept up her spirits enough to eat.

  She mentioned Laura to the women and they nodded politely; of course they all knew who she was, but they asked her nothing. She’d never met anyone who wasn’t brimming with a thousand questions about her former charge. Sarah wondered if the oppressive heat made folks less talkative than in Boston, but no—soon the women were chattering on about everything, especially the indolence of their servants, even the converted ones. It sounded like everyone had servants but she and Edward.