Lyddie

by Katherine Paterson

  At last Lyddie exploded when once again the girl’s inattention caused a snarl and a ruined piece. “You must mind, girl!” she shouted. “Forget everything else but the loom.”

  “But I canna forget,” Brigid cried out. “Me mother sick unto death and no money for a doctor.”

  “Here!” She snatched all the change from her apron pocket and stuffed it into Brigid’s. “Here. That’s for the doctor. Now—mind the machine, ey?”

  The next few days went better than those before. She coaxed a few words from Rachel, and the suggestion of a smile, when she read aloud from the book of verses.

  “Doctor Foster went to Gloucester

  In a shower of rain;

  He stepped in a puddle

  Right up to his middle,

  And never went there again.”

  “Well,” said Lyddie, “that’s mud season in Vermont, ey?” And Rachel smiled. Encouraged, Lyddie tried to make a rhyme for Rachel herself.

  “Uncle Judah went to Bermuda

  In the April rain

  He sunk in the ooze

  Right up to his snooze

  And never was heard of again.”

  This time there was no mistaking the smile.

  Work was going better as well. Brigid was pathetically grateful for her gift. She beat Lyddie to work in the mornings and had two of the machines oiled and gleaming before Lyddie even entered the room.

  Mr. Marsden was very pleased. By Thursday, he smiled across the room continually. Lyddie resolved not to glance his way, but she could see without looking the little rosebud mouth fixed in its prissy bow.

  How hot the room seemed. Of course it was always hot and steamy, but somehow … Perhaps if she hadn’t been burning up she could have kept her head, but she was so hot, so exhausted that Thursday in May, she wasn’t prepared, she had no defenses. He stopped her and made her wait until everyone had gone—just when she felt she must lie down or faint, he stopped her and put both his fat white hands heavily on either sleeve, dragging his weight on her arms. He was saying something as well, but her head was pounding and she couldn’t make it out. What did he want with her? She had to go. She had to see Rachel. Her whole body was on fire. She needed a cool cloth for her head. And yet he kept holding on to her. She tried to stare him down, but her eyes were burning in their sockets. Let me go! She wanted to cry. She tried to pull back from him, but he clutched tighter. He was bringing his strange little mouth closer and closer to her fiery face.

  She murmured something about not feeling well, but it made his eyes grow soft and his arm go all around her shoulder.

  What made her do it? Illness? Desperation? She’d never know. But she raised her booted foot and stomped her heel down with all her might. He gave a cry, and, dropping his arms, doubled over. It was all the time she needed. She stumbled down the stairs and across the yard, nearly falling at last into the door of Number Five. He had not tried to follow.

  * * *

  * * *

  She did not go to work the next day or for many days thereafter. Her fever raged, and she was out of her mind with it. Once, she realized that someone was putting a cold cloth on her forehead, and she raised her arm to bring it down over her burning eyelids. A tiny cool hand rested on her hot one and stroked it timidly. Somewhere, at a great distance, she heard a small voice croon: “There, there.” And then her heavy arm was lifted and put back gently under the quilt.

  Dr. Morris was summoned. She tried to protest. She couldn’t waste money on doctors, but if the words came out at all, they came out too thickly for anyone to understand.

  The bell rang, but it was far away now. It no longer rang for her. People came in and out of the darkened room. Sometimes Mrs. Bedlow was spooning broth into her, sometimes another of the boarders. Diana was there, and Brigid, though who would have sent for them?

  Brigid had brought some Irish concoction that Mrs. Bedlow seemed to be trying to refuse, but the girl would not leave until she had been allowed to spoon some of it into the patient’s mouth. And always, whenever Lyddie swam up the fiery pool out into consciousness, she knew that Rachel was there beside her.

  She’ll get sick, Lyddie tried to protest. Make her go away. Or move me to the infirmary. She’s too frail. But either she never got the words out, or no one could or would understand, for whenever she was in her right mind, Rachel was there.

  * * *

  * * *

  She woke one morning with a start. The bell was clanging, banging away at her dully aching head. She sat up abruptly. The room swooped and dipped about her. More slowly, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, but when she tried to stand, she fell over like a newborn calf. “Rachel,” she called. “Help me. I got to go to work.”

  Rachel raised up from the other bed. “You’re awake!” she cried. “Lyddie, you didn’t die!”

  She fell back onto her pillow. “No,” she said weakly. “Not yet. We can stil hop.”

  17

  Doffer

  It had been two weeks since she fell ill, and Dr. Morris still refused to let her return to work. Her mind roared protest, but her legs could hardly carry her to the privy. Her body had never betrayed her before. She despised its weakness, and every day she heard the first bell and ordered herself up and dressed, but she would only be up a few minutes, not even through washing herself at the basin, before the sweat broke out on her forehead from the effort, and she was obliged to let Rachel help her back to bed.

  There was too much time in bed. She slept and slept and still there were hours awake to worry when her mind skimple-skombled back on itself like threads in a snarled loom. Why hadn’t Charlie written? She should have heard from him long ago. Perhaps her letter had been lost. That was it. She sat straight up.

  “Better rest, Lyddie.” Rachel was there as always. “The doctor said.”

  “Get me some paper and my pen and ink from the box there—the little one on top of the bandbox. I must write Charlie again.”

  Rachel obeyed, but even as she handed Lyddie the writing materials, she protested. “You ain’t s’posed to worry, Lyddie. Doctor said.”

  Lyddie put her hand on Rachel’s head. Her hair was soft as goose down. “It’s all right, Rachie. I’m much better, ey? Nearly all well now.”

  Rachel’s brow furrowed, but her eyes were clear, not the dead, blank eyes of her arrival. Lyddie stroked her hair. “I had me such a good nurse. I couldn’t have believed it.”

  Rachel smiled and nodded at the writing box. “Tell Charlie,” she said.

  “I’ll be sure to,” Lyddie said. “He’ll be monstrous proud.”

  By the next week she was feeling truly ready to go back to work and remembering with every breath her last act at the factory. Merciful heavens. There was probably no work to go back to. Had she really? Had she truly stomped on Mr. Marsden’s foot with her boot heel? She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. She sent a note to Brigid—most of the girls were wary of speaking to Diana under Mr. Marsden’s nose—asking her and Diana to stop over after supper.

  That evening both Diana and Brigid came as she hoped. Brigid brought more soup from her now fully recovered mother and a half bottle of Dr. Rush’s Infallible Health Pills. “Me mother swears by them,” she said, blushing.

  Diana handed Lyddie a paperbound book—American Notes for General Circulation—by Mr. Charles Dickens. “Since you’re such an admirer of the gentleman, I thought you might like to see what he wrote about factory life in Lowell,” she said. “I suppose he was comparing us to the satanic mills of England—anyhow, it’s a bit romantical, as they say.”

  A book. By Mr. Dickens. “How did you know—”

  “My dear, anyone who copies a book out page by page and pastes it to her frame …”

  Lyddie sent Rachel and Brigid down to beg a cup of tea from Mrs. Bedlow. “Diana, I got to ask you. Has Mr. Marsden said anything of me?”

 
“Well, of course. He missed you at once. You’re his best girl.”

  Lyddie felt her face go crimson.

  “I told him I’d ask after you. That’s when I learned how ill you were. A lot of the girls have been out with this fever—especially the Irish. There’ve been many deaths in the Acre.”

  Lyddie looked away, out the tiny dirty window of the bedroom. Thank you, God. How could I leave my baby girl?

  Diana reached over from where she was sitting on the edge of the other bed and put her hand lightly on Lyddie’s arm. “I’m grateful you were spared, Lyddie,” she said softly.

  Lyddie pressed her lips together and gave a little nod. “I reckon I’m too ornery to die.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Can you recollect—can you remember just what Mr. Marsden said when he asked about me?”

  “He didn’t speak directly to me. He doesn’t like to think that you and I are friends, you know, but I know he was worried. He wouldn’t want to lose you.”

  “So I still got a place?”

  Diana looked at her as though she were crazy. “Why on earth not?”

  “I stomped his foot.”

  “You what?”

  “I was all a fever, only I didn’t know, ey, and he tried to hold me after the rest had gone. He wouldn’t let me go, so I—I stomped down on his foot.”

  Diana threw her head back and laughed out loud.

  “It ain’t a joke. He’ll have my place for it.”

  “No, no,” she said, trying to recover. “No,” she said, taking out her handkerchief and wiping her eyes. “No, I don’t think so. He’s probably more frightened than you are. Have you ever seen Mrs. Overseer Marsden, Lyddie? If word ever got to that august lady …” She stopped laughing and lowered her voice, her ear cocked toward the open door. “Nonetheless, I wouldn’t make attacking the overseer a regular practice, my dear. Do be more discreet in the future—that is, if you want to stay on at the corporation. The day may come when Mr. Marsden would welcome any excuse to let you go.” She smiled wryly. “It sounds as though I’m advising you not to sign any petitions or consort with any known radicals.”

  “But maybe he meant nothing. I was burnt up with the fever. Maybe I mistook kindness for—for—” She grimaced. “You know I’m not the kind of girl men look at that way. I’m plain as plowed sod.”

  Diana raised an eyebrow, but Rachel and Brigid were at the door with the tea, so she said nothing more.

  I’ll pretend, thought Lyddie, as she tried to unsnarl her brain over the steaming cup, I’ll pretend I was crazy from the fever and didn’t know what I was doing—can’t even remember what I did.

  * * *

  * * *

  “I want to be a doffer, Lyddie,” Rachel said. Lyddie had brushed her sister’s curls and was weaving them into plaits. Rachel wanted to pin her hair up like the big girls in the house, but Lyddie insisted that the braids hang down. She couldn’t bear for Rachel to look like a funny little make-believe woman. “Brigid says her little sister is a doffer and she’s no bigger than me.”

  “Oh Rachel. You need to go to school.” She loved to braid Rachel’s hair, but was suddenly ashamed that she had only string to bind it with. She should have splurged on a bit of ribbon. Rachel was so pretty, for all her being too thin. She ought to have bright bows to set off the two silky curls at the end of each plait. They would brighten her drab little dress. But ribbons cost money, and string bound the hair just as well. She twisted each curl around her index finger and gave it a final brush. “We got to get you into school. You don’t want to grow ignorant as your Lyddie.”

  “You ain’t ignorant a-tall. I seed you read.”

  “You want I should read to you, Rachie?”

  “No. I want you should let me be a doffer.”

  “We’ll have to wait and see, ey? When we hear from Charlie …”

  But they didn’t hear from Charlie. They heard from Quaker Stevens.

  Dear Sister Worthen,

  Thy brother asked me to look into the sale of thy farm. All inquiry has come to naught, but as I have business in thy uncle’s neighborhood on Wednesday next, I will inquire directly at that time. I trust thee and the little one are in good health. Son Luke asks to be remembered to thee.

  Thy friend and neighbor,

  Jeremiah Stevens

  She tried not to feel angry at Charlie for not writing to her himself. He had, after all, done the sensible thing. To the law and their uncle, they were only children. Judah would have to listen to Quaker Stevens. He was a man of substance. She was glad to know that Luke had gotten safely home. She had finally realized that the freight he had come to fetch was human.

  The letter meant, though, that she could wait no longer. Something would have to be done about Rachel. The promised fortnight had passed, and she must go back to work herself on the morrow. She sent Rachel to the bedroom, stuffed the letter in her apron pocket, and went into the kitchen.

  She didn’t start with the request, but with an offer of help to fix dinner. Mrs. Bedlow was always grateful for an extra hand in the kitchen, even though the house was now down to only twenty girls.

  “You give me more than the fortnight, Mrs. Bedlow, and I am obliged,” she said, once the cabbage had been chopped and the bread sliced.

  “You were near to death, Lyddie. I’m not without heart.”

  “Indeed not.” Lyddie smiled as warmly as she knew how. “You been more’n good to me and mine. Which is why I dare—”

  “It won’t do, you know. I can’t keep her on indefinitely.”

  “But if she was a doffer—”

  “She’s hardly more than a baby.”

  “She’s small, but she’s a worker. Didn’t she nurse me, ey?”

  “She pulled you through. I wouldn’t have warranted it—”

  “Could you ask the agent for me? Just until I got things set with my brother? All I want to do is take her home. It wouldn’t be for long, I swear. Meantime, I’ve not the heart to set her out with strangers.”

  Mrs. Bedlow was weakening. Lyddie could read it in the sag of her face. She pressed on, eagerly. “It won’t be more than a few weeks, and I’d pay extra, I would. I know it’s hard for you with only twenty girls here regular—”

  “I’ll speak to the agent, but I can’t promise you—”

  “I know, I know. But if you’ll just ask for me. She’s a fine little worker, and so eager to make good.”

  “I can’t promise anything—”

  “Would you go now and ask?”

  “Now? I’m in the middle of fixing dinner—”

  “I’ll finish for you. Please. So I can take her over when I go back to work tomorrow …”

  It was arranged. Lyddie suspected that Mrs. Bedlow had added a few years and several pounds in her description of Rachel to the agent, but a skeptical look was all she got from the overseer on the spinning floor when she presented Rachel for work the next morning. And Rachel looked so bright and eager and smiled so sweetly that even the skeptical look melted, and she was sent, skipping down the aisle, to meet the other doffers under the care of a kindly middle-aged spinner.

  Slowly, Lyddie climbed the flight of stairs to the weaving room. Her worry for Rachel had pushed aside, for a time, her own fears of seeing Mr. Marsden again. She didn’t dare look in his direction, but went straight to her looms where Brigid was already at work, cleaning and oiling.

  “You’re looking much the rosier,” Brigid said. How pretty the girl was with her light brown hair and eyes clear blue as a bright February sky after snow. It was the smile, though, that transformed her into a real beauty. Lyddie smiled back. She did not envy other women their good looks. And even if she had been so inclined, she would never begrudge this bounty of nature to one so poor in everything else.

  “We covered the machines as best we could while you were gone, me and Diana. Though
”—she smiled apologetically—“you’ll see from your wage, the work was not near what it would be, had you been here.”

  It was all they had time to say before Mr. Marsden stepped on his stool and pulled the cord that set the room to roaring and shaking. Lyddie jumped, then laughed. How quickly she’d forgotten the noise! Within minutes she had settled in and forgotten everything else—Mr. Marsden, her weakness, the farm, Charlie, even Rachel. It was good to be back with her beasts again. She belonged among them somehow.

  By the breakfast bell she was almost too tired to eat. She would, if she could have chosen, sat out the break in the window alcove, but that would leave her alone on the floor. She glanced at Mr. Marsden and hurried toward the stairs. He didn’t speak to her. It was as if nothing had occurred between them, except that he never came over to her loom to pat and encourage her. Not once.

  She managed to eat breakfast, or some of it. Rachel was stuffing herself like a regular factory girl, talking excitedly at the same time. She stopped only to look at Lyddie and say through her full mouth, “Eat, Lyddie. You got to eat and grow strong.”

  So it was she got through breakfast and dinner, but by supper she could only manage a few bites of stew before she dragged herself up to bed. Fatigue was like a toothache in her bones. She would have cursed her weakness, had she the strength.

  Each day, though, she was a little stronger. At first she could not feel it, no more than a body can feel itself grow taller. But by the end of the week, she found that she had eaten a full plate at supper and was lingering in the parlor with Rachel, who was watching, fascinated, as a phrenologist sought to sell his services to the girls.

  “Please, Lyddie,” Rachel begged. “Let’s have our heads done.”

  “I know about my head, Rachel. Why should I pay good money to find out it’s plain as sod and stubborn as a mule?”