their percussion. Then it came again, a kind of whimpering.
I cracked the door to find Becky, Israel’s six-year-old, swallowed in an oversized white gown, blubbering and rubbing her eyes. She not only had her mother’s name, but her wilted, flaxen hair, and yet in some ways the child reminded me of myself. She had brows and lashes so light they were barely visible, giving her the same whitewashed look I wore. More than that, she chewed and mumbled her words, for which her siblings teased her unmercifully. Overhearing one of her brothers call her Mealy Mouth, I’d given him a talking-to. He avoided me nowadays, but Becky had followed me about ever since like a bear cub.
She rushed at me now, throwing herself into my arms.
“. . . My goodness, what’s all this?”
“I dreamed about Ma Ma. She was in a box in the ground.”
“. . . Oh, Sweet One, no. Your mother is with God and his angels.”
“But I saw her in the box. I saw her.” Her cries landed in wet bursts against my gown.
I cupped the back of her head, and when her tears stopped, I said, “Come on . . . I’ll take you back to your room.”
Pulling away, she darted past me to my bed and pulled the comforter to her chin. “I want to sleep with you.”
I climbed in beside her, an unaccountable solace washing over me as she edged close, nuzzling my shoulder. Her head smelled like the sweet marjoram leaves Catherine sewed into their pillows. As her hand fell across my chest, I noticed a chain dangling from her clamped fist.
“. . . What’s this in your hand?”
“I sleep with it,” she said. “But when I do, I dream of her.”
She unfurled her fingers to reveal a round, gold-plated locket. The front was engraved with a spray of flowers, daffodils tied with a bow, and below them, a name. Rebecca.
“That’s my name,” she said.
“. . . And the locket, is it yours, too?”
“Yes.” Her fingers curled back over it.
I’d never seen a trace of jewelry on Catherine or on Becky’s older sister, but in Charleston lockets were as common on little girls as hair barrettes.
“I don’t want it anymore,” she said. “I want you to wear it.”
“. . . Me? Oh, Becky, I couldn’t wear your locket.”
“Why?” She raised up, her eyes clouding over again.
“Because . . . it’s yours. It has your name on it, not mine.”
“But you can wear it for now. Just for now.”
She gave me a look of such pleading, I took it from her. “. . . I’ll keep it for you.”
“You’ll wear it?”
“. . . I’ll wear it once, if it makes you happy. But only once.”
Gradually her breath grew elongated and whispery, the sound of ribbons fluttering, and I heard her mutter, “Ma Ma.”
All week, Becky greeted me with a searching look at the collar of my dress. I’d hoped she would forget the episode with the locket, but my wearing it seemed to have built to an implausible height in her mind. Seeing I was without it, she would slump in disappointment.
Was it silly of me to feel wary? Wound inside the locket was a tendril of hair, Becky’s, I supposed, but the vaporous color of it must’ve conjured memories of her mother. If seeing the necklace on me brought her some fleeting consolation, surely it harmed nothing.
I wore the locket to the girls’ tutoring session on Thursday. The boys met in the classroom each morning with a male tutor who came from the city, while I instructed the two girls there in the afternoons. Israel had built a single strip of desktops and attached it to the wall, as well as a long bench. He’d installed a slate board, shelves for books, and a teacher’s table that smelled of cedar. That morning I wore my emerald dress, which had seen precious little wear considering how like the ducks’ feathers it was. The neckline contoured to my collar bones, where the gold locket nestled in the gully between them.
When Becky spied it, she rose on her toes, her body swelled with delight, the tiny features on her face levitating for a moment. For the next hour, she rewarded me by raising her hand whenever I asked a question, whether she knew the answer or not.
I had free rein over their curriculum, and I was determined my old adversary, Madame Ruffin, and her “education for the gentle female mind” would get nowhere near it. I