“. . . Don’t bring Father into this. He would want me to be happy.”
“I cannot—I will not bless this!”
“. . . Then I’ll go without your blessing.” I was dazed at my boldness.
She drew back in the chair, and I knew I’d stung her. She glared at me with taut, blistering eyes. “Then go! But keep this sordid business of hearing voices to yourself. You’re going north for your health, do you understand?”
“. . . And what exactly is my affliction?”
She looked toward the window and seemed to survey a piece of the saffron sky. Her silence went on for so long, I wondered if I’d been dismissed. “Coughing,” she said. “We fear you have consumption.”
That was the pact I made. Mother would tolerate my sojourn and refrain from severing me from the family, and I would pretend my lungs were threatened with consumption.
During the three months I’d been at Green Hill, I’d often felt dislocated and homesick. I missed Nina, and Handful was always at the edges of my mind. To my surprise, I missed Charleston, certainly not its slavery or its social castes, but the wash of light on the harbor, the salt brining the air, Birds of Paradise in the gardens with their orange heads raised, summer winds flapping the hurricane shutters on the piazzas. When I closed my eyes, I heard the bells on St Philip’s and sniffed the choking sweetness of the privet hedge that fell over the city.
Mercifully, the days here had been busy. They were filled with eight forlorn children ranging from five years all the way to sixteen and the domestic chores I undertook for Israel’s sister, Catherine. Even in my most severe Presbyterian moments, I’d been no match for her. She was a well-meaning woman afflicted with an incurable primness. Despite her spectacles, she had weak, watery eyes that couldn’t see enough to thread a needle or measure flour. I didn’t know how they’d managed before me. The girls’ dresses were unevenly hemmed and we were as apt to get salt in the sponge cake as sugar.
There were long, weekly rides to the Arch Street Meetinghouse in town, where I was now a Quaker probationer, having endured the interrogation from the Council of Elders about my convictions. I had only to wait now for their decision and be on my best behavior.
Every evening, to Catherine’s immense displeasure, Israel and I walked down the hill to the little pond to feed the ducks. Decked in green iridescent feathers and fancy black hoods, they were the most un-Quaker of ducks. Catherine had once compared their plumage to my dresses. “Do all Southern ladies adorn themselves in this ostentatious manner?” she’d asked. If the woman only knew. I’d left the most grandiose of my wardrobe behind. I’d given Nina a number of silk frocks adorned with everything from feathers to fur; a lavish lace headdress; an imported van-dyked cap; a shawl of flounced tulle; a lapis brooch; strands of pearls; a fan inlaid with tiny mirrors.
At some point, I would have to un-trim my bonnet. I would have to go through the formal divestment, getting rid of all my lovely things and resorting to gray dresses and bare bonnets, which would make me appear plainer than I already was. Catherine had already presented several of these mousy outfits to me as “encouragement,” as if the sight of them encouraged anything but aversion. Fortunately, the un-trimming ritual wasn’t required until my probation ended, and I had no intention of hurrying it.
When Israel and I visited the pond, we tossed crusts of bread on the water and watched the ducks paddle after them. There was a weathered rowboat turned upside down in the cattails on the far side, but we never ventured into it. We sat instead on a bench he’d built himself and conversed about the children, politics, God, and inevitably, the Quaker faith. He spoke a great deal about his wife, who’d been gone a year and a half. She could’ve been canonized, his Rebecca. Once, after speaking of her, his voice choked and he held my hand as we lingered silently in the deepening violet light.
In September, before summer left us, I was fathoms deep on the mattress in my room when the sound of crying broke into my slumber and I came swimming up from a dark blue sleep. The window was hinged open, and for a moment I heard nothing but the crickets in