Little Women and Me - By Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page 0,18

vague explanation that had dogs and horses and, I’m fairly certain, chickens in it.

Was this really the 1862 view of sex?

“Here.” Jo handed me my nightgown. “Here.” Jo stripped the sheets from my bed, shoved them into my arms.

“What?” she asked, when I only gaped at her, stunned. “Well, you can’t very well expect Beth to do your laundry, can you? Honestly, Emily!”

So much for our bonding moment.

I swore, if I ever made it back to my real life, if I ever heard anyone yak about the “good old days” again, I’d punch them. On the surface, things may have been sweeter and simpler in 1862, but doing laundry by hand sucked.

The holidays over and my first period attended to, now it really was time to get back to normal life around here.

Amy was doing math or something on a slate while Beth lay on the sofa, the cat and three kittens around her.

“Hurry along, Amy,” Meg said briskly. “Mustn’t be late for your first day back at school.”

“Are you sure it’s just a headache?” Jo said, placing a hand on Beth’s forehead. “You do feel a little warm.”

While the sisters did many things together as a group and some activities were split into the two youngest and two oldest, with me roving between the two duos, Meg was Amy’s confidante, while Jo was Beth’s.

So where did the middle March fit into all this? Seemed to me, I was odd man out here. Or at least odd girl out.

“Come on, muffs are getting cold,” Hannah called to us from the kitchen as Meg and Jo and Amy hurried into their outdoor clothes: cape-like cloaks, a bonnet for Meg, a wide-brimmed hat for Jo, and no hat for Amy, who simply took a few strands of hair from each side of her face and tied them neatly in the back with a blue ribbon.

What Hannah had called “muffs” turned out to be turnovers fresh from the oven. There were four of them, and since Beth was still on the sofa, I assumed I was supposed to go out with the others and that one of these turnovers was for me.

Suddenly I realized how hungry I was. Bringing the turnover to my mouth, I was about to take a bite when Jo shrieked, “What are you doing, Emily?”

I raised my eyebrows at her. “Eating?”

“You can’t eat your muff now!” she said to me with scorn.

“I can’t?”

“If you do,” Amy said, “how will you keep your hands warm on the long walk?” She laughed. “Sometimes, it’s as though you don’t know anything about how we do things around here.”

Oh no! Was Amy on to me?

“Oh, right,” I said with a nervous laugh, “the long walk. What was I thinking?”

Then I hurried into my own cape-like cloak and followed the others out the door, muff in hand.

I was happy the muff was so warm as we walked—stupid cold New England winters!

But where were we going? I wondered as we looked back at the house one last time to see Marmee at the window—nodding and smiling and waving at us, reminding me of a creaky mechanical toy or the queen of England—before we turned the corner.

“Oh, I do wish we could live lives of leisure as other girls do,” Meg said with a put-upon sigh.

“And we don’t because…?” I asked the leading question.

“Why, because we don’t have enough money, you know that,” Meg said. Another sigh. “Of course, we once had money.”

“And we lost that …?”

“Why, Papa lost the money trying to help an unfortunate friend, which is why we older girls have to work.”

Was I included in that “older” too? Did I work in some sort of factory? Was I a salesgirl in a shop? I’d bet anything if I was a salesgirl, I was a really rude one.

“You know all this, Emily.” Meg sounded exasperated, but then her tone softened as she looked self-pitying again, a faraway look in her eyes. “Or maybe you don’t remember what it was like when we had money. I suppose that I am the only one who remembers what things used to be like because I am the oldest and therefore I am the only one who ever—”

Jo yawned with such deliberate loudness, she snapped Meg right out of her self-pity party.

“I know you like to go on and on about being older than the rest of us,” Jo said to Meg, “but you are only one year older than me and I remember a few things