A Voice of Her Own Read online

  That he was born for him—

  Not her, nor cat, nor others—way—

  Not time, nor tides, nor “shoulds.”

  —Just he alone and no one else

  Directs his course by day—

  So it will be for all of time—

  Until Eternity!

  I was proud of that poem. I was getting a sense of saying a thing “just so” and no more. It was a thrill—a secret thrill—as no one knew but me!

  Once up and back to the garden, I wrote a poem about Father’s shoes. It was an amusing verse. Funny or sad, it mattered not. The feeling was the same. Alive and at rest! A part of all there was and all there was to be. No time and endless time and my certain place in all. I kept the poems in a little box that had a circus elephant painted on the lid. The color was faded, but you could tell the elephant was gray. Its trunk was up and a red banner about its neck. When it was once again time for school, I put my elephant box on the highest shelf I could find. The poems would have to fend for themselves until such time as I could afford them some companions.

  While we were at school, our parents received “notices,” in the manner of brief reports as to each student’s performance in the classroom. Father read these telltale descriptions out loud, commending us, or passing a critical pronouncement as he deemed necessary. That second fall—after my sick summer, my new poems and my return to “life”—I remember ours all. Vinnie’s notice was complimentary, making mention of things like her “enthusiasm” and “quick wit.” Austin’s was not bad, but not nearly so glowing as those of his illustrious sisters. Father said Austin had far more Dickinson Discipline than was mentioned in the notice, which stated something about Austin’s being “a fine lad” and “extremely intelligent” but “not applying himself.” Father cared not for that. Mother was not perplexed that I could see, but was careful to say little, so as to appear to be in agreement with Father. She quickly turned the conversation in the direction of her chillblains and a cold sensation in the bones. Mother often plays the invalid to her advantage.

  This was my notice. I recall it word for word. “Often absent. A good student. Strikingly original compositions. Needs no discipline. Appears frail.” I have little perspective on most of the points, except two. It is true that I was often absent. In fact, I missed an entire term of three months, and me in bed with a pain in my head that was awful. Any light at all was too much to bear and a knife in my chest and a spiteful cough.

  That my compositions were original is a fact that cannot be disputed. Modesty dictates I refrain from elaborating on the matter. However “strikingly original” my compositions were, I leave for others to decide. Father continued to refer to me as the “best little girl in Amherst.” I don’t know why. It was surely due to no unusual possession of righteousness. When I think of the extraordinarily large number of wicked thoughts inhabiting the dark portion of my brain, not to mention the little miserly ones scampering about my heart, it is really quite terrible. And I not yet eleven!

  It seemed to me that many people must have been feeling wicked that year, as there were many revivals going on throughout all of Massachusetts. I wondered if people were feeling wicked in other states as well. I felt that they were but had no way of knowing for sure. Judging by the number of revivals I heard of, people must have been feeling wicked throughout all of New England! A revival, from what I could see, was a great swell of religious purpose to get everyone to accept Christ as their Savior. I thought it should be enough to simply love him and follow his teaching, but that seemed not to be sufficient.

  There was a revival in Amherst that year, and as everyone else was going, I thought I would go and see what it was about. I found the main point to be based upon the idea of Original Sin—how we all are sinful at birth and must be cleansed—an idea that has never struck my fancy. As I love Christ, read the Bible, and go to church, I considered myself a Christian, but that is not “scientifically” how it is. One must first receive the call to give one’s heart to Christ.

  There were many religious activities at the revival—including, but not limited to, sermons, hymns, studies and daily meetings of our prayer circle. There was concern among many of my friends that they might die before becoming a Christian and thereby miss going to Heaven altogether. I myself worried about this very much. For a short time I really did feel as if I had found my Savior. I had a love for God that was quite wonderful really, but I soon lost the desire to pray. The thought irked me and I found myself caught up once more in the earthly joys, which everywhere abound.

  At the prayer-circle meetings we were given little books to read containing frightful tales—horror upon horror—Hellfire, Damnation, Retribution and Judgment! The most fearsome consequences of the minor mischievous deeds of fun-loving children were described in vivid detail. I do believe these books did much to dissuade me from pursuing my finer self, that is, from giving myself to Christ. This was a shame as I felt so happy during the brief time during which I fancied I had found my Protector.

  Austin and I discussed the matter at one of our Night Talks, and the fire going and the house as still as a stone. “When I think of those little books it amazes me that innocent children don’t run screaming from the Lord and all His Mercy every day,” I said, wrapping my shawl tight about my shoulders.

  Austin spoke like a ghost. “The hor-rors of Re-tri-bution . . .”

  “Dreadful! Like those religious journals Father sends us . . .”

  “Fingers chopped oooofff, children burrrning in vats of boiling oooiilll . . .”

  “I like the one about the disobedient youth who bites off his mother’s nose just before he’s beheaded.”

  “That’s a good one,” Austin agreed.

  I hugged my knees. “And the fearsome pictures! An arm lying in the road . . .”

  “Blood dripping down a chin . . .”

  “Boys with their feet chopped off . . .”

  “Demented eyes, blazing from skeleton sockets . . .”

  “It’s a wonder we survive at all!”

  “We may not!”

  “It makes no sense!”

  “Nooooooo sense!” Austin was playing the ghost once more, an attempt to scare me, but it didn’t work.

  “Surely there is mischief in all the children of Amherst!” I proclaimed.

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “There is and you know it! Why we are not dropping like flies throughout the entire Connecticut Valley I cannot say! God help us, for surely no one else can do it!”

  “Noooooooo one!”

  “Why does Father send us those wretched journals?”

  “He wants us to be well brought up.”

  “If we live long enough!”

  Austin shifted a log in the fire with the iron poker.

  “I hope he hasn’t read them,” I said. “I hate to think he could knowingly inflict such gruesome torment upon his own children.”

  “Father means well,” said Austin, a fact I knew to be true but of small consolation.

  We watched the fire in silence.

  Abby’s Fish

  During our second winter in the new house, Father was elected to the State Senate. That meant many long months without him, as he would be in Boston discussing matters of the utmost importance with learned gentlemen and buying ink. Father always bought ink when in Boston. I’m not sure why.

  I think Mother worries more about everything when Father is gone, and I don’t blame her. It must be hard to run an entire house by oneself. Mother bears it all with quiet dignity and a simple steadfast spirit I don’t understand and yet I admire very much—at times, that is. I sometimes wish she would throw up her hands and rush into the wind, calling out the innermost voice of her heart, but that I fear is not to be.

  My health permitted me to attend much of the school term, which suited me finely as I loved all my subjects very much indeed. They were Mental Philosophy, Geology, Latin and Botany, as well as Reading and Composition and Music. How Larg
e they sound! And for friends? Jennie was gone then, off to school in Southwick. I missed her awfully. Abby was sick much of that term, missing quite a lot of school. I used to wonder whether being an orphan had any to do with it. Having no parents from the age of three is a fate too horrible to imagine. Could a blow to the heart shake one’s will to live? Could it weaken the Soul? Could it open the body to all manner of sickness? I asked Abby about it one day when we were at the pond, looking for unusual fish. “Did you ever wonder at how often we get ill?” I asked. We were on our knees and staring below the lily pads into the brown pond.

  “There’s one!” said Abby. She meant a fat fish with pop-out eyes, just below the surface.

  My mind was not on the fish. Having recently recovered from weeks in bed, the question of excessive illness had claimed a large part of my brain. “I thought you might be weak inside from losing both parents and you so small.”

  “I don’t feel weak,” said Abby.

  “Never?”

  “Rarely.”

  “I often do.”

  “What kind of fish was that? I can use it for my report.”

  “Not if you don’t know its name.”

  “Oh, you know what it is! I know you do!”

  “I don’t and I have a most important question about Life and Death and the effect of horrible events on the well-being of our bodies.”

  “You think too much,” said Abby.

  “And you too little!”

  “What fish is that?”

  I believe we went into the woods then, abandoning all questions to the glory of the trees.

  Vinnie was nine that spring and improving as regarded the amount of common sense she displayed. However, her cats still “ruled the roost,” as Mother liked to put it, and I must say the phrase applied. Pussy had acquired the dubious habit of climbing up the draperies, while Roughnaps and Snugglepoops ignored her and went about killing birds. Tiger Boy liked to startle innocent humans by staring at them unannounced from various places about the house, his sharp yellow eyes driving an uneasy shaft of knowing into one’s very Soul. The top of Father’s bookcase was his favorite spot. One night Austin shooed him off by dropping a large book with such a crash that it wakened Mother, who hurried down the stairs overtaken by a terror that a robber was murdering all three of her children with a club.

  All in all we managed well enough and yet a balance was missing from the house. At times I felt as I would fall off the side. And then early in March Father returned, bringing gifts for us all—nothing large or unnecessary—just some small token for each, a book, a handkerchief, a bit of calico, some sign that one had not been forgotten.

  The night of his return Mother made Father’s favorite supper, roast lamb with peas, rice croquettes and custard for dessert. It was a merry meal, Vinnie to my left, then Mother, Austin across and at my right hand, Father. The Special Five! And didn’t Father go on about his learned friends in the Senate and how one had sneezed repeatedly during an important vote, bringing on several offers of handkerchiefs, many blows of the nose and so much noise as to demand a recount. Father laughs rarely but when he does one could light the sky by it!

  All was right with the world as Vinnie and I climbed into bed that night, and the next day and the next. Then one morning after prayers Father closed his Bible and said that Austin would be sent away. It was innocent enough on Father’s part. Austin should spend a year at boarding school, one Williston Seminary in Easthampton. He needed to improve, though in what way I could not imagine. It may have had something to do with his less than impressive notices from the Academy. I disagreed with Father on the subject but remained powerless to affect the situation.

  My brother—gone? The only one who understood me—gone? And why? He could rise to his potential at home in Amherst as well as anywhere, better perhaps, but Father has his own way of looking at a situation. His thoughts are stiff, with many corners. I don’t know how Mother felt about Father’s decision to send Austin away. I don’t imagine she cared for it. With Father gone so much, Austin was the man about the house, a strong arm for her to lean on. I don’t believe Mother saw any need to send Austin away. But one never knows how Mother feels.

  Before we knew it Austin was gone. The house was a dreary place without him—his coats gone from the hooks, no slippers beneath his chair—and so quiet! I was a sorry figure, wandering from room to room with a face as long as a month of Sundays and a spirit to match.

  More sad news that spring. Aunt Lavinia lost a daughter, a sweet little girl of four. The word from Boston saddened us terribly. Mother was most affected. She was already in an anxious state over Austin’s departure and would he lose his luggage and would he have enough to eat and who would do his laundry. She had settled the laundry question by deciding to do it herself. She told Austin to collect all his dirty clothes in a bag and send them back to Amherst with whoever might be traveling at the time. She would wash them straightway and return them as soon as possible.

  Mother had trouble sleeping after Austin left, tossing and turning throughout much of the night and dozing in the afternoons. We had often to be quiet. Shades drawn. House gray. It was then that I started to have some disruptions of the mind that were quite puzzling. These were of no apparent consequence but unusual in their frequency and in their deep insistence.

  The first.

  Austin has been gone for several days. We sit at the table for dinner, silent within our blighted lot. Mincemeat and peas, not my favorites. I simply cannot eat another mouthful. Some peas remain. I look at the peas, alone on the plate, their companions gone, swallowed, chosen to live with me while they themselves are forgotten. I feel I simply must eat those lonesome peas. I cannot bear to hurt their feelings. And me, all the while knowing that peas do not have feelings, not cooked peas, at any rate!

  It was quite surprising really, and more surprising that I ate them. I could not bear their plaintive thoughts echoing inside my brain!

  Another.

  Vinnie and I are in our room. Vinnie sits on the bed, drawing some little pictures—of cats, I suppose. I am planning to join Abby for a walk in the woods. Some wildflowers will be up. I must see the newest signs of spring. I stand, bonnet in one hand, shawl in the other, wondering which to take with me, or whether neither one is necessary. “What do you want me to draw,” asks Vinnie, “a chicken or a tornado?”

  “A tornado,” I answer, thinking it the more lively of the two.

  Vinnie commences drawing dark circles of unrest, swirling conelike motions of the arm, as once more I contemplate my choices. Shawl, or bonnet, bonnet, or shawl? After some moments I set the bonnet on the bed and then, in the depth of my center, a fist high between the ribs, a knowing.

  If I leave the bonnet on the bed something terrible will happen.

  And don’t I pick up the bonnet straightway and set it on the chair!

  I missed Austin very much that spring. Aunt Elisabeth was with us for a time, which was pleasant. However, she was afraid to sleep alone, which meant I was out of my bed and she with Vinnie, and me in the extra room without my Jennie, and Tiger Boy peering in the dark and no one to laugh with.

  The months passed, as they do, regardless of Circumstance. Mr. Washburn took care of the hens, the chickens grew, Mother did Austin’s laundry, and Father, when home, looked after the horse. Some skunk made off with a new egg from the coop, and Austin’s rooster, Albert, nearly got killed by two others, but survived in the end as did we all.

  Sophia

  I was thirteen. Austin was home again. Life was more right, but Death was in the air. Always outside the window funerals were passing, a child, an old man, an infant in the tiny wooden box, the freshly dug grave, the soundless tears, the line of black mourners. Grief stopped Time for such as these, while the world went on, the spiders unconcerned, the frogs, the caterpillars and all the moths not knowing, or if they did, not stopping to offer consolation.

  First, Emily Fowler lost her little brother. It was a fever took hi
m. They said he spoke of being in a deep well, and no way to get out. Emily’s mother died soon after. The shock of losing her boy was too much—that and consumption. I tried to comfort my friend but met with small success.

  That same February one more mother was taken. This time it was Helen Fiske and her gentle sister, Ann, who were called to bear the pain. Consumption again was the culprit. When I got the news I walked the gravel sidewalk to their house as I wanted to be of help, but they did not want a visitor and so I left. I took the long way home. The hills were laid out in ribbons—backdrop behind backdrop. The clouds hung between the hills in shades of gray and the fog rested as I could not. It was after three by some and on toward evening. I could see the farthest hills above the fog and below the curtain of clouds above them. Fields, then trees—some pine, some branches merely—then more fields, a barn or two, and then the hills. No sun that day, leastways not to my sorry eyes.

  When I reached Home the oil lamp was lit above the gate. Father would be home soon, if Providence might grant us such a blessing. Mother would be resting or in the kitchen baking bread. I felt a chill.

  Death could claim them too. And how would I go on?

  I could find no answer.

  Cousin Sophia had always been frail. Her skin was fair, “see-through” I liked to call it, and her hair—sunlight on wheat, spun from the whitest gold. Her thoughts seemed born in the ether of Heaven. That spring she was not looking well. I noticed a dull look in her eyes and darkness underneath. This worried me. I spoke of it to no one. Perhaps it was to put a distance to my fear, as if its very spreading could infect my friend.

  It began with a cough and a headache, then chest pain, then the sudden fever. I went every day to be at her bed. It was two weeks I went and never missed a day to hold her hand and read to her when she still had Reason. She loved the stories of Dickens. She would lie, her head on the pillow, the linen so white and the lace trim, her eyes half shut, her gold-white hair about her face and a look of contentment, such peace, needing nothing, as the words of the great writer washed her clear. At times she would close her eyes and her head would fall to one side as she slept. That was my clue to stop reading and remain just quiet, holding her hand. Father did not care for my visits as he felt I might catch whatever illness she had. But the doctor said no, it was typhus and I wouldn’t catch it, and so Father let me go.