What Is Visible: A Novel

by Kimberly Elkins

  Whoever reads this to you does not need to understand, though I pray you trust them.

  Only you need to understand and to remember.

  I have never stopped thinking of you, but it was impossible to return. Dr. Howe wouldn’t allow me on the grounds and swore he would have me jailed.

  And then the baby came, and I have worked without ceasing all these years to support us. Now you have met her, our Laura. Isn’t she beautiful?

  I sent her because I still dare not come to Perkins, though I had to wait until she was old enough to come by herself. She doesn’t write much yet, but she is as smart as her mother.

  I am not well. All the years as kitchen slave have worn me to a nub. You would hardly recognize me. I am wasting away and cannot work. There is no one to care for us. There has never been. I don’t want Laura to end up in the almshouse as I did. It’s no place for a young girl.

  If you can think of any way to help us, I beg that you do it, and quick. I will send our darling back as soon as I can. She will kiss you for me.

  Sarah stops reading and I scratch at her wrist until she continues. It is hard for her. I don’t care.

  I still long for your touch, and no one has ever replaced you in my heart, where it matters. I pray that you can taste without me.

  Yours everlasting,

  Kate

  My hands are trembling as I loose them from Sarah’s. I must see her! How can I see her? She is ill. I could take care of her. Where is she living? Will Laura take me to her? When is Laura coming back? I can’t think, even as I can’t stop thinking. I have forgotten Sarah’s presence until she taps my arm.

  “The cook?”

  I nod. I had written a bit about Kate in my letters, though not about the passionate circumstances, and certainly not about the baby. I am not sure how much Sarah will understand from what she just read; the less the better, I think.

  “She wants money,” she says.

  “My friend.”

  “But it’s impossible…”

  I don’t want to hear her opinion on things that are beyond her ken. “I fix,” I tell her. “Not you.”

  “But you don’t have…”

  I almost slap her palm. “I fix,” I write again, though the truth is my mind is tumbling to figure out how to come up with a goodly sum. I have spent most of the last two years knitting only scarves for the Union soldiers, hardly anything just to sell. Generally, I put by about a hundred dollars a year from the sale of my antimacassars, crocheted purses, and lace collars, but I have spent most of the money on gifts for my friends and family. I have been too extravagant, but I didn’t know I would be responsible for a child. Maybe I could give her some Laura dolls to sell. There must still be people who want me, the little me. And my mere signature is worth something, if not much anymore, but I could sign reams and reams of Institution pamphlets for her to peddle. How capable is the girl? I reprimand myself for even doubting her—she is our girl, and she is of course clever. Kate says so. Kate. I would recognize her, no matter how worn she is, and I would kiss every beloved inch of her. I would not bite her now, not ever, if she didn’t want it. I would worship each mole and rough spot, spend an hour rubbing her feet. She must let me see her. I will push the girl.

  Sarah tries one last time. “I don’t think…”

  “Stop.” She is good and dear, but with this she cannot help me, so there is no need to involve her further. I don’t believe her love for Mr. Bond could ever match my fire for Kate, and so I don’t think it’s even possible for her to understand. But I still love my Wightie in a certain fashion, and she does not deserve my dismissal.

  “It is God come back,” I tell her, and it’s true. Through every vein in my body, every breath in my lungs, I feel the return of goodness and rightness to the world. The dead die, and the living live. And Kate and our daughter are just within my reach, my shining angels come back to earth. I weep in Sarah’s arms, and ask my Lord to forgive me for ever questioning His wisdom and mercy and the path He has set for me.

  She holds me close, and I can feel her warm breath in my ear. She is speaking. Whatever for? She knows better than anyone that I cannot hear. “Write!” I implore on the hand that grasps my shoulder hard, but still she speaks, the velocity and force of her voice only increasing, deep and ragged. Spittle scores my cheek and I realize she must be shouting. And then there is an arm between us, a man’s firm advance. Mr. Bond. Gently he pries Sarah off me, though she resists, holding on as if I were Jesus. She struggles and then goes limp. What was she trying to tell me that sent her into a fit? The spell has come and gone so quickly.

  Mr. Bond holds Sarah away from me, and pats me awkwardly on the shoulder since we can’t communicate. Sarah had always been our translator. It is odd but welcoming to finally feel this man’s touch after so many years, and to remember that I considered, even for a moment, that he might prove my champion. I had no genuine feeling for him, only a strong instinct that he was a gentleman, which he has proven to be for my Wightie. To think I might have given my love to him and never known Kate!

  Maybe I will taste again. Taste sweetness. Whatever comes, I am forever grateful to have briefly experienced the excitement of that sense, even if it was a lie I told myself. Love, I think, is by necessity constructed of a ladder of lies you climb together. Still, I long for Kate as ardently as I did on that first night, intoxicated by the warmth of her whiskey and her flesh. For the time being, I am left one-sensed, and the rest was perhaps nonsense. We will see. I do not need to know the truth.

  There are several church groups here today. The Baptists, as always, want to know if I will ever turn their way, as it’s common knowledge through the publicly distributed Annual Reports that I have balked at the strictures of Doctor’s Unitarianism.

  “Be baptized!” the proselytizer scribbles repeatedly, to which I finally reply, “Might.” I have often thought of it, but I know that Doctor would as surely wish me drowned entire than to undertake that ceremony. But his God is too remote from me, and his religion does not encourage me to come closer; nay, even discourages it. Intellect over heart.

  The girl does not wait to greet me. She flies straight into my arms and kisses me long on the cheek. My Laura, come again, after a long wait, almost three weeks. It breaks my heart that we cannot easily converse and get to know each other, but that of course will come. I will teach her the finger spelling, and we will hold hands always. Well, except when I am so engaged with her mother. Eventually I will show her the ridged beauty of her own name carved into the choicest flesh of my left inner thigh; her mother’s name is carved into the right, so that when I squeeze my legs together, we are all together, warm and secret and safe.

  I am ready for her. I slip the tattered purse from my bosom and press it into her hands. “147,” I write slowly. Surely she knows her numbers. Yes, she does, for she buries her face in my neck, her hair prickling my cheek. One hundred forty-seven dollars I have scrounged up, and I plan to work hard to give her more. “MORE,” I write three times in block letters, and she puts my hand to her face as she nods yes, then kisses my palm. It has taken me years to save up that amount—and it is not much—but it should be enough for them to live on for a while. At least I think so; I do not know much about the prices of things, having never gone shopping by myself. I asked Jeannette how much some items cost—flour, about a nickel a pound; coffee, fifty cents a pound; lard, twenty-five cents to the gallon—and so I think they should have ample monies. Laura’s joy seems to indicate it. I have also crocheted two purses, one for each of them, with the word Love worked into the center. I pray it is legible, at any rate.

  Now that she knows she can trust me, she will take me to her mother. “KATE,” I write and then again. I reach for her face, but she shakes her head no this time. I hold the cusp of her chin gently and push her head up and down, up and down, but she resists me. I do it a little harder, and she pulls away from me. I am too rough already with my own child, and I begin to cry. After a moment, sh
e strokes my cheek and I rest against her dear palm.

  She slips an envelope into my lap. We rock together awhile, and then one last kiss and she is gone. I clutch the letter, rub it over my lips, my nose, press it between my breasts. I can feel Kate’s heart beating through the thin paper, her fingers smudging the ink. I calm my breathing and hide the letter in my bodice, then go straight to Doctor to ask when I might have the carriage again to see Sarah. Everything will be explained, and I will know the date and time when I will be reunited with my love.

  I have finally finished Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I am bloodied to the core. Why didn’t Doctor raise this work earlier? I feel its worth is second only to the Bible. Mr. Lincoln has said that this is the book that started the war, and now I understand why. How could I have been so closeted, so naive, about the relentless evils of slavery? Kate could have been black, and I would never have known the difference while loving her just as fiercely. And oh, to be separated from one’s children, as I am from Laura. I didn’t know they took the slaves’ children away. Poor Cassy in her terror and madness even killed her child rather than have her taken. From Uncle Tom down to little Eva, all these things I learned about the treatment of the Negroes now mark me. I am mortally ashamed of my earlier opinions. One in my state should live in an extended universe of compassion, but I was locked in by my arrogance and self-pity. How could I not have recognized their full humanity? Perhaps being a mother has further opened my clamshell of a heart. I will speak out on Exhibition Days and try my best to make amends, as far as I am able, to God and to the Negroes. But still my situation leaves the quandary of my dear Addison, who I’ve just heard in a letter from Mama has moved South and is fighting under General Joe Johnston on what I now know is absolutely the wrong side, and yet he is my closest blood. God will have to allow my prayers for him, even with a split tongue.

  It is two endless weeks before Doctor lets me have the carriage, and I am prepared for polite conversation before springing the letter on Sarah. But instead, as soon as she takes my hand, she asks, “Can you feel my sores?”

  Sores? I travel the length and breadth of Wightie’s hands, even her wrists, and all is smooth, unblemished, as it has always been. “Nothing there.”

  “My face,” she says. “Check my face.”

  I am mystified, but I do as she asks, all around that heart-shaped, familiar face, right up to the delicate ears. I find nothing out of the ordinary and tell her so.

  “Sure?” she asks and begs me to check one more time.

  Maybe she believes she’s been bitten by insects. She must have been bitten often in the islands, but here it is not yet even mosquito season. I pat her hand and assure her that all is well.

  After a few moments, she calms down and lets me hold her again. I complain to her about the Unitarians. I know, of course, that she is one herself, but she is also my friend, so I feel the subject can be broached. They do not believe in even trying to touch God, and the services seem to be as much about man as about the Creator. Philanthropists, humanists, ralliers for all causes, abolitionism being the latest and now the bloodiest. And yet these do-gooders do not give the Good Book its full due.

  “Don’t believe all Bible’s words?” I ask.

  “Acts over words,” she tells me.

  For me, this makes no sense: the words must be engraved upon the heart before the actions are spent. Doctor hung his reputation upon his presumption that I would know God instinctively and not need instruction or even the Bible. I did have a sense of God, but how could I know of Jesus and the Holy Spirit? I was a child—how could he have left me in darkness, foraging alone for so long? How much I needed the poetry of the Psalms, the common sense of Proverbs, the miracles of the New Testament, even the horrors of Revelation to keep me anchored on the path! Jesus’ resurrection became real to me as my fingers traced his fate—and therefore my own—and the warmth of His embrace cannot be equaled by any man, not even Doctor, not even Sarah, not even Kate. Doctor has told the world I’ve failed him miserably by hying to the heart of religion, but he is interested only in the head, where his beloved bumps reside. That he should put phrenology above Christianity cuts me to the marrow. Over and over, my dear mother has asked why I remain a Unitarian if I do not find true solace in its doctrines, and I have told her that Doctor is the one who gave me my religion, and I’ve clung to it out of loyalty. But now that Mary has died, it seems possible that I should make my catechism match my heart. Mary was a Baptist, my whole family are Baptists, and a hot blood flows through their veins that never touches the formal vessels of Unitarianism.

  “I think I’ll change,” I tell Sarah.

  “Into what?”

  “Baptist. I want to be baptized.”

  She waits. “Yes,” she says. “You are a born Baptist.”

  Of course, we’re not born anything but children of God, and yet I get her meaning. “So you think it’s good?” I would like to have her stamp of approval before I take my case before Doctor.

  “Laura under water,” she says. That is true; it will be a full immersion, unlike the dainty sprinklings of the Unitarians. I deserve―no, I actually desire―the dunking. I have never been fully underwater. At the beach my attendants have always kept me close to the shore. Once a wave lashed as high as my waist, and I was salted and sanded between the legs, but that was it.

  “Doctor,” she writes and then she’s shaking, and I realize she is laughing merely at the thought of his response. She laughs so hard she falls into my arms, and within moments, the shudders turn to weeping, and she is staining my bodice, her heart thudding like a horse’s after a canter. I wanted water, I got water. How did Sarah ever endure my hysterics as a child? I find I am not fit to comfortably endure hers. Suddenly she stops and leaves the room without a word. What change was wrought across the sea in my dear Wightie, what baptism of fire?

  Ten minutes and she is back, her hand cold and wet. She has soaked her face apparently, and she does seem present once again.

  “The letter?” she asks.

  I’ve been so disciplined at waiting today, though I wanted nothing more than to throw it at her straight out of the carriage. I am grateful she understands my anxiety and anticipation. I wonder does she ever feel replaced in my heart by Kate, but she does not seem jealous, only wary.

  Darling,

  Thank you with all that I am for your generosity. You are my greatest love from heaven and my fiercest protector from hell.

  I miss your touch more than words can ever―, but I cannot bear for you to find me as I am now, so far gone from myself. My heart is stacked with hope that maybe someday I might be strong enough to see you again.

  Taste. Taste everything in remembrance of me.

  Kate

  “That is all?”

  Sarah nods.

  “Sure?” I ask again. I am reeling. She is not coming to see me, nor will she let the girl take me to her. And Laura! She doesn’t even say if she will send her back to me. Taste…in remembrance? What rot! Sarah does not add salt to the wound, but only holds me. How quickly she and I change places, again and again, a boundless circle of womanly feeling.

  Chapter 29

  Chev, 1864

  Sherman’s March to the Sea was almost complete, and the destruction looked to be finished by year’s-end. Having traveled to the South many times to raise money for blind education, Chev had a soft spot for the state of Georgia, and so his gladness at the Union’s progress was tempered by a weakness for magnolia trees and the lilting cadences of Southern women. And Lincoln had been reelected, at which he cried foul. Lincoln was a good man, had been a leader of strength and integrity, but he had proven far too lenient in his veto of the Wade-Davis Bill, which required the electoral majority in each Confederate state to swear past and future loyalty to the Union. What could the Union expect if not promised at least that allegiance? Of course, the South believed that a gentleman’s loyalty could never be legislated. Chev was wary of what would ultimately come about under
the guidance of the lawyer from Illinois.

  But at least the nation had Julia’s song, however that should help to raise the spirits of the republic. Yes, he understood that the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was indeed a hum-worthy tune, but it didn’t seem to merit all the attention it had so quickly accrued. And he still couldn’t believe she’d had the gall to set it to the melody of “John Brown’s Body.” That was a sword to pierce his side, and it was his own wife who had thrust it in and turned it. The song was indeed a fitting accompaniment to their married life at present: she had trampled on the vineyards where his grapes of wrath were stored.

  The week after the reelection, Laura came to the doorway of his office and asked him to take a walk with her. He told her that he didn’t have time, but she insisted that it was very important.

  “Come in!” he commanded, annoyed that he had to stand in the entrance of his own office to converse, but she shook her head vehemently.

  “Parker’s brain,” she said.

  Oh, Lord, the news had spread quickly through the Institution. Recently, his close friend and minister Theodore Parker’s brain had arrived from Florence, where he’d died of tuberculosis. Apparently, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with whom Parker had been staying, had had the brain preserved and left instructions on her death that it be sent to Chev, whom she’d thought might like to keep this gorgeous and much beloved specimen. He had been frankly taken aback by the generous gift. Yes, he’d examined many brains, but he hadn’t felt particularly keen to own one, especially one of his friends’. But obviously he couldn’t get rid of it; Parker’s congregation in Boston had over seven thousand members and Julia had loved him dearly. So here it was, prominently displayed in a glass case atop a marble pedestal in the corner of the room, the sunlight dappling the glistening congeries.