Bittersweet (6 page)

STUDYING HARD TO EARN TIME TO WATERCOLOR, AND TO PLEASE
Miss Grelznik, Sarah passed the winter quickly. Imogene’s attention and Sarah’s added zeal made up for the sketchy education of previous years, and by May, Sarah, at fifteen and a half, was ready to graduate from the eighth grade. She was second in her class.

There were six graduates, and the small school could scarcely contain the friends and families that had come to attend. They spilled outside, visiting with one another and watching the black clouds, big-bellied with rain, make their slow advance. The storm that had been just lace on the horizon at noon now covered half the sky. A breeze, rich with the smell of rain, ruffled the women’s light shawls and teased at their bonnets.

By the time the people were assembled indoors and quiet, the rain was falling. It came down in torrents, pounding against the roof and darkening the windows. Imogene raised her voice to be heard over the din and formally introduced the graduating students; each stood as she said his or her name.

“It is traditional at commencement to ask those who have received the best grades to give a speech. Jana Jenkins is our valedictorian, and Sarah Mary Tolstonadge our salutatorian. Salutatorian will go first.” Shyly, Sarah stared at the floor. “Sarah?” Imogene urged. Shooting Imogene a last, frightened glance, Sarah stood and stared
at the crowd of familiar faces. She stepped forward slowly, the color draining from her lips. Her hands were shaking, rattling the sheets of paper on which she had written her speech. She bent her head over the page and began in a low, dry voice. “The class of 1874…”

“Teacher’s pet!” Karen hissed over the drone of the rain, and smiled sweetly at Imogene.

Sarah looked up.

“Go on,” the schoolteacher said quietly. Sarah stared blindly at the sheets of paper clenched in her hands, desperately trying to find her place. The silence grew and stretched taut. Sarah’s throat was working as though she were trying to swallow, her eyes hard and frightened. The blood drained out of her cheeks and she started to sway. Sam Ebbitt began to clap, then Mam took it up. A wave of palpable relief swept the room as applause caught on and built. Sarah stumbled to her seat. She didn’t raise her eyes even when Imogene gave out the diplomas, and when the ceremony was over, she pushed her way through the congratulating hands and darted out into the rain.

Imogene found her huddled by the firewood under the lean-to behind the school. She rested her hands on the low crossbeam and leaned down to look in, rain darkening her dress. “Sarah Mary,” she said gently, “why don’t you come out of there? It’s awfully cold and wet.” Sarah covered her face with her hands, and her sobs broke out afresh. “May I come in, then? I’m getting soaked to the skin.” Sarah nodded wordlessly and Imogene crawled under the low shelter, dragging her skirts through the mud, and sat silently by, hugging her knees and watching the rain. Sarah wiped her eyes, sniffling.

“I’m sorry, Miss Grelznik.” Her voice was a thread of sound, rough with crying.

“What for?”

Sarah looked at her with red-rimmed eyes. “You’re not ashamed of me?”

“No, never ashamed.” Imogene stroked her tear-streaked cheek. She took Sarah’s wet head and rested it against her shoulder, smoothing her hair. “You mustn’t ever think that.” Sarah started to cry again, quietly, without the wrenching sobs. Imogene held her, murmuring soft words.

“I don’t want to graduate,” Sarah burst out. Imogene tilted the girl’s face up so she could see it.

“What do you mean, Sarah?”

“I won’t see you anymore if I’m not in school. There’ll be no one to teach me about painting. Miss Grelznik, you’re the only one that understands me,” she cried.

Imogene suppressed a smile. “Nonsense. You’ll see me. I’ve grown very fond of you.” She stroked the soft hair.

“Miss Grelznik, I’m real fond of you, too,” Sarah declared.

Imogene laughed nervously and pulled herself free from the girl’s warm embrace. “Now that you’re no longer a student, you must call me ‘Imogene,’ ” she said, to change the subject. “We’ll be peers.”

Sarah didn’t know what a peer was, and didn’t ask. She wasn’t to be comforted. “Will I really still see you?” she insisted.

“I will tell you what,” Imogene replied. “I’m going to Philadelphia in a few days—I’ve business there—but as soon as I come back, I want you to pay me a call. Will you do that?”

“The minute I hear you’ve got back.”

“Will you come inside with me now? The people have all gone,” Imogene reassured her.

Sarah dried her eyes with her sleeve, pushing the hair back from where it lay plastered to her forehead as Imogene eased out of the shed and pulled herself upright. She extended her hand to Sarah, helping her to her feet.

“You’re strong!” Sarah gasped.

“It compensates for being so tall,” she said wryly.

Sam Ebbitt was sitting under the canvas of his covered carryall. He started over as soon as he saw them.

“Is Margaret gone?” Imogene asked.

“I told ’em to go ahead on, I’d stay for Sare.” He combed his beard with his fingers; he wasn’t quite forty, and already it was streaked with gray. He hefted Sarah onto the front seat. She lurched, catching hold of his shoulders, her sodden skirts fettering her legs.

The rain poured down, pulling hanks of Imogene’s hair free form her bun and pasting them to her cheeks. She laid her hand on Sam’s arm. “Could I have a word with you, Mr. Ebbitt?” she asked. He looked at her expressionlessly, water dripping from his hat brim. “It’ll only take a moment.” He followed her from the wagon.

“Thank you for starting the applause this afternoon,” she said.

“Women ought not to be in schools. Making a spectacle of themselves. Embarrassing everybody. It goes against good sense.”

Imogene’s breath went out of her as though he’d slapped her.
She pulled herself up straight and looked down at him. “I am a woman, Sam Ebbitt, and I make my living as a teacher. In school.”

“You couldn’t get a husband,” he said bluntly, “and you got a right to live. That’s a different thing.” Imogene bit her bottom lip until it showed white around the edge of her teeth. Abruptly she turned and went into the house.

Sam slogged through the mud to where Sarah waited, small on the wagon seat. As they drove out of town, the rain let up and a crack of blue sky showed in the west.

“Looks like we’ll have a clear sky by sundown,” Sam said. The wind gusted, spattering the rain against their faces, and Sarah looked up. He pulled off his coat. “Put this on.”

The bright tear in the storm widened, chasing the black-bottomed clouds overhead. Sam nodded in time with the dull sucking of the horse’s hooves pulling clear of the mud. “You’re all done with your schooling now, you got some kind of paper. That’s more than enough for a girl,” he remarked after a time.

Sarah felt her pocket. She had shoved her diploma in it when she bolted from the schoolroom. She took it out and pressed it flat on her knee: a bright border of wildflowers and vines in watercolor, and the neat hand of Miss Grelznik in heavy black ink. Water had gotten to it, and the ink had run into the colors.

“Don’t go thinking on that speech or whatever it was supposed to be,” Sam said. “You made a fool of yourself, but it’s spilt milk now, and nobody thinks the worse of you for it.” Sarah let the ruined paper fall under the wagon’s wheels.

They drove on in silence. The rain stopped falling and rattled from leaf to leaf in the trees. Sam sat hunched, with his forearms resting across his thighs, staring between the horses’ ears. Sarah, beside him, was curled down in his coat. One of the horses stumbled, and Sam straightened and spat over the side. “How old’re you, Sarah?”

“Almost sixteen.” She looked up at him. His brow was contorted, his thick eyebrows pulled together above his flat-bridged nose. Sam held her eyes searchingly.

“You’re a young woman. Time you had a family.” Sarah pulled herself deeper into the folds of his coat, putting the collar between herself and his eyes. He watched her. “What do you think you’re goin’ to do with yourself? Your pa hasn’t much—David’s run off,
and Gracie and Lizbeth are girls. Four females and only Walter to help out.”

Sarah squirmed uncomfortably. “I could teach,” she said at last, her voice small and uncertain. He snorted.

“I don’t have to look far to see where you got that idea.” He glanced at her, hunkered down in the oversized coat. “Teach!” He laughed.

Sarah looked at the smeared ink on her hands and the mud caked on her skirt from hiding in the dirt behind the school, and hid her face with her hair.

“You’re no schoolteacher,” Sam said.

Saran nodded, then shook her head. “No, sir,” she said into the rank wool.

“I got a farm to run. I been running it alone, but a man owes it to himself to get some sons. I been talking to your pa; it’s time you were out raising a family of your own.”

The setting sun poured down through the ragged blue hole, and a rainbow materialized from one side of the sky to the other, tethered to the ground by dark hills. Sam turned the wagon into the Tolstonadges’ short drive. Sarah jumped to the ground and ran inside without a word. The porch door slammed behind her, catching the sleeve of her coat. He sat in the carryall, waiting. The door opened again and she came out. She walked timidly back and set the heavy coat on the seat beside him. “Thank you, Mr. Ebbitt.” He nodded approvingly and she ran to the shelter of the house, plummeting headlong into Walter and Emmanuel on their way out to do the evening chores.

“Watch out,” Walter said as she stumbled into him. He caught her upper arm and steadied her.

“What’s got into you?” her father asked. “You look rode hard and put away wet.” Sarah pulled away from them and ran into the bedroom she shared with her sisters. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it, her breath coming in dry sobs.

The ceiling sloped away, the far wall only four feet high. Against it bumped the head of a wide bed, its foot thrust into the middle of the room; on either side of it were bright oval rag rugs that Mam had made to protect bare feet from the cold planks in winter. The sun had gone down and the room was full of twilight shadows. One of the shadows broke away from the wall and moved slowly toward her. Sarah heard footsteps and jerked her head up. Mam moved
into the half-light from the window, and took her daughter in her arms, pressing the girl’s head to her breast. Sarah clung to her, trembling.

“I’ve been waiting for you. Your pa said Sam had talked to him.” Sarah held tight, her teeth beginning to chatter. “You cold, hon?”

“I—d-don’t—know,” she stuttered.

Mrs. Tolstonadge stripped the wet clothes off her daughter and, bundling her into an old flannel nightgown, put her to bed. She tucked the covers close. “There. Our Mam’s going to get you something hot to drink. It’ll be just you and me for a while. I knew you’d be coming home full of news, and sent the little girls to Mrs. Beard’s.” Mam lit the lamp over the dresser and left her, carrying her wet clothes into the kitchen to spread by the stove. She returned with a steaming mug of hot milk, nutmeg grated on top. “Sit up, honey, so’s you don’t spill.” She sat on the bed and put her arm around her daughter. Sarah sighed, settling against the familiar shoulder. “Blow on it a bit, or it’ll scald your tongue,” she warned as Sarah took the cup.

“Mam?”

“Hmm?” The room had grown dark; the single lamp by the door burned unevenly, dancing the shadows.

“Am I going to marry Mr. Ebbitt?”

“Do you want to marry him?”

“What else can I do, Mam?”

“What else can any woman do?” Mam rocked her gently, humming. “Sam’s a good man; has a farm that’s paid for.”

“How old were you when you married Pa?”

“I was sixteen. Your pa was twenty-three. I remember how scared I was. I missed out on my sixteenth birthday because it was the day before the wedding and Ma was flustered. Just slipped her mind, I guess, and she never baked a cake up.”

“You like being married, don’t you, Mam?”

“Marriage isn’t to like or not like, hon. A woman’s got to get married if she can. That’s the way of things. I like it now. I can’t picture how I’d go on without you and David and the little kids.” Margaret smiled and nuzzled Sarah’s hair. “The babies make it all worth while. There’s nothing I’d trade my babies for. It’s why life isn’t just coming and going and cleaning up after folks in between. If a woman doesn’t have children of her own, she can be awful lonely.”

“If I get married, will I have babies?”

“I expect you will. I had David less than a year after I was married.”

“I’d have to go live at the Ebbitt place.”

Mam laughed and bounced her comfortably. “You sound so sad. The Ebbitt house is big enough to put this little place in and rattle it around.”

“It’s dark.”

“That’s ’cause Sam doesn’t have a woman to look after him. ’Course it’s dark. I don’t think those windows have seen a pail of washwater since Sam’s ma died.”

“Pa wants me to marry him, doesn’t he?” Sarah’s eyes were closed. She snuggled closer in her mother’s arms. Margaret took the cup from her hand and set it on the floor.

“Your pa’d like to have you married off safe, and he thinks a lot of Sam.”

“You want me to marry him, Mam?” Sarah’s voice was slow with sleep.