What Is Visible: A Novel (26 page)

V
isiting Day again, and I parry a bit with a Methodist minister, keeping my untoward thoughts about his employer to myself, and then we are down to the end of the line. The chapped hand of a young girl. It’s been a month, but I remember this one, the one who would not let me go. I feel a moment’s gratitude that trouble though she was, she has not flagged in her devotion. Once again, all she writes is my name over and over, until I think that she herself is perhaps in some way enfeebled. But then she places in my other palm a small, hard object, rough and flaky on the outside. I trace the irregular, lumpy circle, and pieces of the skin come off in my fingers. I hold it carefully, feeling the strange contours. A fruit or vegetable. Suddenly, I know it, and almost drop it in my surprise: garlic. The girl has given me a bulb of garlic. I close my fist upon it and time stops. Finally, I reach for her, that halo of curls―red, I’m guessing―and she rests her head in my lap, allowing me to coil and uncoil the ringlets.
Laura.
She has been writing her name! My Laura, after all these barren years. She raises her head and presses an envelope into my hand. I am confused; she knows I can’t read it, and she is not able to communicate with me. Wait. This is a letter from― I can’t bear to say her name, even in my head, lest all the hope gathers into the storm that has raged so long in me.

The girl rises and I let go of her hair. I pull her to me and kiss her cheek, and she kisses mine in return. I should have known her at once. Poor darling. She pats the letter on my lap, and I nod, though there is no one here that I trust enough to read it to me. Where is her mother? Does the letter contain bitter news? A meeting? Why couldn’t her mother come herself? And then I remember: I am also her mother.

At last I let her go, my shade soaked clean through with tears. The day has come at last, though it will take some figuring to discover what wonders or sorrows might lie ahead after all these years. Ten years. I know I must take the letter to Sarah. She is the only one I can trust with the greatest secret of my life.

Two months after my last visit I return to Wayland. I have agitated Doctor for a month, since the day I got the letter, but he has had excuses about the carriage, my health, the weather. I think he doesn’t want me to spend time with Wightie; after all, he is the one who tore us apart in the first place. Julia had gone to see her once and wanted to take me with her, but Doctor claimed that I was in a temper that day, which I was not. I am a bit afraid that Wightie will be talking of eels and volcanoes again, but when I arrive, she seems her old self. I bring each of the children a purse I have crocheted, but I can’t tell if they like them or not. Perhaps they throw them in the dirt. Sarah natters on about seeing her mother and sister after all these years, but I can’t concentrate. The truth is I don’t really try. I can’t stop for one minute thinking about the letter, pressed into the bosom of my dress, the letter that will open—or perhaps close—my world again.

Finally, I can’t take the waiting any longer, and I pull it from its hiding place and hand it to her without explanation. “Read me,” is all I say. She’s taking a long time to begin, and I believe she is reading it first to herself, perhaps gauging what, if at all, to tell me. I am furious. “Read!” I rap hard, and when another moment passes, I grab her arms and shake them.

“Calm,” she writes. “Who gave you this?”

“Just read,” I beg her. My head and heart are exploding.

“My beloved Laura,” she begins, but my palm is so drenched with sweat that she has to dry it with her handkerchief before she can continue.

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

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, she 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.”