A Voice of Her Own

by Barbara Dana

  “Who?”

  “Gould.”

  I sat on the grass next to Abby. A bobolink hopped along the path toward the barn. “Did who kiss Gould?”

  “Tempe!”

  “Who knows?”

  “She said she did.”

  The sun’s rays slanted through the branches overhead. I wondered what might follow the kisses of which Abby spoke, yet wondered not so much as at the majesty of the Sun, that ball of fire, suspended in space, so large that one cannot imagine its size! “Oh, Abby,” I said, “how chief a thing it is to be alive!”

  “They went to the mill last week. . . .”

  “Sometimes I gasp at the thought of it!” As you may have surmised, I was referring to none other than that giant Star and she to Tempe’s adventures at the mill.

  “What do you think happened?” asked Abby.

  My mind was far from her query. “Where did we come from?” I continued. “Where will we go?”

  Abby sat up tall. “Are you listening to me?”

  “Will there really be a Heaven?”

  “Of course there will.”

  “And who will go there?”

  “All of us.”

  “The elephant in Africa? The toad behind the barn?”

  “You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said!”

  “Oh, Abby, don’t it thrill you some? Not even a little? Life is so unknown and yet it’s all there is. Or is it?” I wanted to share my questions of Life and Death with my dearest friend. Ben had opened my mind to so much that had been inside me since a child and later hidden in the shadows of “supposed to.” Others seemed not to be interested in lofty matters—only Austin, and he had been so cold of late, so busy. I pressed on. “Oh, Abby, what do you think of Death? Is it separate from Life, or a part of the selfsame thing, unknown until we reach it?”

  “We were talking about Tempe and Gould at the mill.”

  “I know. But hear me! The wonders of Existence are exceeding Large, yet people make the world so thin!”

  “Thin?”

  “Oh, Abby, don’t you think they do? They take the heft!”

  “What heft?”

  “They mute the world to shadows and put in too much noise!”

  “I never know if you mean the things you say or just enjoy the drama.”

  “A little of both maybe.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a shame what people make of the world?”

  “I don’t think about it much.”

  “Oh, Abby, you must! You have a brain as wide as the sky! And we both know how Large that is!”

  “I have other things to think about.” Abby lay back in the new April grass, looking up at the branches of the great Elm tree. I could feel her slipping away—or was it me?

  I felt a terror then.

  “Oh, Abby, don’t you see? Why must we cover our senses? Why must we bury the joy of living? It don’t seem right!”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Nobody does anymore. Don’t you see? We don’t know what Heaven will be—and Earth is so beautiful. I don’t think Heaven can be better. And what if there is no Heaven? What if this is all there is and we waste it?”

  “Don’t let your father hear you talk like that.”

  “I don’t care! My Puritan blood calls, ‘Think for yourself!’”

  Abby folded her legs beneath her and smoothed her skirt. I kept on. “Life is so grand a thing. It can boil the blood! It can pierce the bone if you let it!”

  “I don’t care to have my bones pierced, thank you very much.”

  “You shall get what God gives you, if he lives long enough.”

  “Our Great Protector can turn his back on the faithless, you know,” said Abby, sounding a trifle sanctimonious. “It is not beyond the possible.”

  “If our Great Protector is as great as he is reported to be—omnipotent, as the saying goes—surely he can do as he wishes, and if he does not wish to protect us, he ought to have a better reason than that one of his children spoke casually of his fate. If God is such a fair-weather friend, I for one will not put my existence in his hands, however capable they may appear to some. He must be of finer stock to move my heart!”

  Abby looked down the road. “You must grow up one day.”

  “That seems a formidable business.”

  “It’s just what happens.”

  “When I see ‘adults’—as they are called nowadays—I wonder if that is the way. Men with their starched shirts, women with their dimity convictions. Oh, Abby, we must soon be women.”

  “I should hope so!”

  “What is a woman’s place in the world?”

  Abby looked puzzled.

  “There used to be an order,” I continued.

  “To what?”

  “To everything! There was Father’s House and Father, Mother, Austin and Vinnie . . .”

  “The cats . . .”

  “God save us! And school . . .”

  “You will get used to life without school. . . .”

  “It’s not just that,” I said. “Life used to have edges.”

  “What edges?”

  “School, friends, my room, my garden . . .”

  “You have those now, except for school.”

  “But all will change!”

  “Not all,” said Abby.

  “We must soon be women!”

  “And?”

  “Where does a woman’s fate take her? To marriage, to an unknown house, good deeds for the poor? Dusting?!”

  “You don’t want to get married?” Abby’s amazement knew no bounds. She could as well have been saying, “You don’t want to breathe?”

  I opened my arms wide. “I want more!” I felt a longing for I knew not what—for Truth, for Beauty, for the very essence of being, for the trees and the sky, for the oneness of all, for Freedom. “Oh, Abby, I want to run in the air of Nature! I can’t be shut in!”

  “Shut in where?”

  “I feel it, Abby. I feel it coming and it scares me. I look at Mother and I think I would rather die than live as she does. If her girlhood dreams live on, they are locked so deep as can never be touched—may never be remembered! Is that what growing up does? Does it turn us into shadows of our younger selves?”

  The light was fading. Abby lay back in the grass again, observing the purple sky. A beetle passed by the edge of her skirt. A little bird just near hopped to the side to let the beetle pass, a gracious gesture, and then not moments past an angleworm appeared without warning—to me at any rate. I noticed the creature, not thinking much about it. Not so of the “gracious” bird, who turned his head and with a sudden jerk bit the worm in halves.

  Life is barbarous!

  Abby stared at me. “You don’t want to get married?”

  “I think I should want to, but I don’t know! When I see all the handsome Whiskers, their dark smiles and waiting eyes, I feel I am sure to fall under the spell of one—or many—and to tell the truth, I have—several times.”

  “I know that. We are not best friends for nothing.”

  “But marriage! I think it’s not for me.”

  There was a great scuffling from the pond. Carlo had spotted a squirrel anxiously proceeding in the direction of the woods with a large nut. Carlo charged, as well as his great awkward paws could carry him, out of the water and after the frightened creature, who was surely about to be snapped up and swallowed for dinner in a single bite. “Carlo!” I shouted. “Carlo, come!”

  He paid me no mind—and me in all my glory running after him, without my gaiters, or a way in the world to catch him. Lucky for him, the squirrel made a sudden change in direction and leaped—flew nearly—nut firm between stubborn jaws, landing on a branch of the Elm. Abby screamed in surprise, jumped up and ran toward the house, as Carlo stopped beneath the tree, shaking himself, sending water in all directions.

  When recovered from the great Hurrah, we sat once more, some distance from the soakin
g Carlo, who stood staring up at the self-satisfied nut gatherer, waiting for the next round.

  “Why do you question marriage?” asked Abby.

  “Take Harriet Merrill, for instance.”

  “What is your point?”

  “You know what they say.”

  “What?”

  “‘She has given her life to her Husband.’”

  “And?”

  “There is no ‘and—about it. That is the phrase at the very center of the dilemma!”

  “What dilemma?”

  I could not believe my ears. My friend saw nothing amiss? No awesome misappropriation of the very essence of justice?!

  I rose up high on my knees, assuming a most unladylike posture. “She has ‘given her Life to her Husband’!” I shouted.

  “Don’t shout.”

  “The words shut down my brain!”

  “There is nothing wrong with my hearing.”

  I took a deep breath and sat back on my heels, attempting as best I could to quiet the fire within. “The thought of marriage used to be a merry contemplation. Whom would I choose? What would he be like? The suspense! My mind was a peacock and I with all my feathers out—a rainbow fan! Such vanity! Such presumption! And beneath it, the desperate question—May two live together as one and keep the two?? I have never seen it!”

  Abby was quiet.

  “To give one’s life away is so Large a thing, wouldn’t you say?”

  No answer.

  “It deserves, at the very least, a moment’s consideration as to whether it be the wisest choice. But no time is taken, no questions asked. And it is always the woman who does the giving away. Why is that, do you suppose?”

  “I don’t know.” Abby was slipping away from me.

  “Oh, Abby, don’t you see? It’s true! And all of us await our turn to do the same, to give our minds away—our very Selves! There’s you and Harriet and Mary and Tempe and Jennie and it don’t bother you any! It seems to me when I take it to the bone, our Selves are all we have.” I was up on my knees once more, a volcano inside. “Life is too Large a thing to spend it withering in a corner—dusting! If there is a God . . .”

  “There is!”

  “. . . Then I cannot believe he wants that! Why would he give us talents and wishes? Why would he give us a mind if he did not want us to use it? I swear on the lives of a thousand grandmothers, it makes no sense!”

  Abby lay back on the grass. “If you tell me you did not enjoy that carriage ride with Emmons last week, I won’t believe you. His body next to yours . . .”

  “I loved it!”

  “The kiss on the bridge?”

  “Grand!”

  “You would leave all that behind?”

  “I don’t want to, Abby, but I don’t know! Look where it leads! Dusting, dimity and teacups?! There must be more!”

  “Your husband, that’s what!”

  “I wonder at the word ‘husband.—We give our lives to this man, but what of ours? What of our loves, our desires, our talents? Must they remain unspoken as this husband plods his ‘larger purpose’—wife behind, cooking his food, running his house, agreeing with his thoughts only? What of our own?!”

  Abby looked away.

  “Have you never had these thoughts?”

  “No.”

  The trapdoor opens. Down the shaft. Alone.

  At long last my “particular friend” spoke. “I loved our girlhood games, but I always thought of the future. I used to think, ‘One day I will have a husband and a family of my own.—Why would you not want that?”

  As I felt I had answered her question, there was nothing left to say.

  I Beat the Plate to Death

  In the days that followed I thought about my talk with Abby many times. My concerns about leaving girlhood seemed to have taken root in my being. It was as if the dread of losing my Self had attached itself to my bones and weighed down my days, covering life’s joys with a sense of dread.

  In June I experienced an unpleasant surprise. Carlo and I had been for our evening walk, north on Pleasant Street, past the row of houses to the fence along the fields and out. Upon our return I reached for the knob of the back door.

  Something is missing.

  It was Carlo’s ever-present softness against my leg, the warmth of his body sensed through the fabric of my skirt, the brushing past in innocent presumption to be the first inside. I turned to look for him and there he was, sitting squarely on top of my freshly planted daisies! He was panting heavily, mouth agape, tongue hanging, eyes locked upon his mistress. “Carlo, come!” My coaxing was to no avail, as straightway he lay down in the newly turned dirt, my flowers much the worse for it and I the spurned lover, abandoned at dusk. Request for company denied!

  I spent a lonely night wondering what I had done that he should not be desirous of my company. The washroom was not by my side, but far closer than an outdoor flower bed! Not only that, he had disregarded my command. This caused an unpleasant turn of mind and heart. I lay beside my snoring sister, adrift in a sea of restless concern.

  The morning found my shaggy ally sitting outside the door, waiting for breakfast. He came in to eat, but when finished returned to the yard. For the rest of the summer he came inside for meals only.

  Ben left in August. I felt as if my claim to life were cut, and I left without a way to breathe. Who else knew my secret—my Destiny?! None save Carlo. And who cared? I told myself that I must care and that would be enough, but did not believe it. Ben left for far-off Worcester to pursue his studies. I felt that if he cared more for me, he would have stayed—a vain thought. Before leaving, he signed my book of messages from friends, mostly gone now. Here is what he wrote: “All can write Autographs, but few paragraphs; for we are mostly no more than names.” After signing the words, he told me I was one who could write paragraphs. My spirit touched the skies!

  But soon he was gone.

  What else that summer? Noopsie Possum disappeared, got by some wild creature, no doubt. Soon there was another cat to join the ranks—no, two! Two kittens from Stubbins—barn, Tender Boy and Tootsie, came to threaten the birds. Speaking of threats, the day the kittens arrived Father found Kavanagh under the piano cover, where Austin and I had hidden it. Father’s displeasure could be sensed all the way to Springfield! Father did not see fit to blame his “perfect” daughter for the misconduct. Austin was the culprit!

  At supper that evening there was the incident with the plate. When I set it on the table, Father complained of a tiny chip, remarking that he did not wish to receive that plate again. I felt awfully bad about it as I had been the one to set it before him, but the chip was so small as to pass notice, by me at any rate. I cared not to overlook the matter again so took the plate outside and beat it to death with a hammer!

  Shortly after fall arrived in all her orange splendor, we had a jolly climb up Mt Holyoke. It was the first I had felt of good spirits for many months. Our merry group included Vinnie and myself, Emmons, Cousin John, Gould, Abby, Mary and Thurston. Upon our return Father was in a black mood. He told Vinnie in no uncertain terms that the next time she went traipsing about the mountains, she had better make the trip a shorter one. It might have gotten dark. We might have been lost and eaten by mountain lions. I wondered why he expressed his displeasure to her only—as if I did not exist. I wished he had addressed me as well, despite the reprimand it would have meant receiving.

  In October Mother’s figs won first prize at the Cattle Show. That same day I was visited upon by another Terror. Although there was always the fear beneath that one would come, I had been spared the actual event for many months. This is how it was.

  For some reason I have occasion to attend church alone. I am sitting, back straight upon the unforgiving pew, listening to the Reverend’s sermon on The Difference Between Right and Wrong. To hear him tell it, some things are of one persuasion and some of the other. One must memorize these same and conduct oneself accordingly. As he speaks I am overcome by an unnerving
sensation. Sitting straight—shoes polished, hands clasped upon my Bible—the Reverend’s Brimstone fills the church, and I apart from it—apart from all—and the thought . . .

  My head is made of glass.

  It seems that everyone can look through my face and see my evil thoughts.

  I don’t like church. My back hurts. Mrs. Dudley’s hat is ugly. The Reverend is wrong.

  The Congregation can see my thoughts, I know. They can see my evil deeds as well.

  I should seek redemption. It’s quite the thing nowadays.

  I feel a chill.

  Don’t make light of your wickedness. See how bad you are?

  I remember my glass head. It not only allows others to see my thoughts, it is a shield between myself and the Congregation, impenetrable. I am outside the group—alone! My thoughts come at once—a timeless flash.

  It’s happening again. My legs are numb. I can’t breathe. Do I exist?

  I can’t find myself. There is nothing but the Fear. I leave the church and run—half blind—and on and on with legs that hardly bear my weight. I reach the House! Open the door! Up the stairs! Once in my room, I fall on my bed. Soon I am There and I can breathe.

  The next day I stayed in bed. The Sun made its arc east to west and I, a solitary figure beneath the covers, weak and worrying.

  What is wrong with me?

  I had no answer.

  Vesuvius Unchained

  The winter of my nineteenth year brought many occurrences, the exceptional quality of Mother’s figs being outdone by events mounting in cataclysmic array to put that legendary volcano to shame for claiming such grand proportion.

  Father left once more to join those “hairless gentlemen” in Boston, leaving Mother to follow her ever-present routine as Keeper of the House. Although aided in this noble pursuit by yours truly and by Vinnie—that dusting tornado of some renown—the burden of responsibility fell squarely upon Mother. Home now, Austin was busy at the College, his last year at Amherst, with little mind for else save an occasional charade. Not that Austin is ever much in the housework department. When asked to lift a bench or shovel snow, he is quick to respond in word, but as for action one must look elsewhere for assistance. I don’t blame him. It must be remembered that housework is considered a job for women—a questionable distinction at best.