Little Women and Me - By Lauren Baratz-Logsted Page 0,36

would ever save anyone else’s life?

Then Marmee said how much she missed Papa but how she’d told him to go to war because she wanted to give her best to the country she loved, and then Marmee counseled Jo to turn to her Heavenly Father for guidance, Amy woke up with a happy cry to see Jo there, the two hugged and kissed, and everything was forgiven and forgotten.

Well, I wouldn’t forget.

Amy could have died because of Jo … and Amy destroyed Jo’s book!

These Marches were nuts!

Nine

I needed to find out what a fortnight was.

It had been making me crazy for years. Why hadn’t I ever looked it up before?

I’d come across the term when reading Little Women when I was eight and I’d been puzzled by it, so I’d asked my mother. She’d said, “Look it up in the dictionary!” And I’d automatically assumed her advice really meant “I have no idea!” and I’d of course failed to look it up, coming up with my own definition. I’d figured a fortnight referred to four nights, something like a long weekend. Fortnight. Four nights. It made sense to me.

But now as I watched Meg pack what the others termed the “go abroady” trunk for a fortnight at the Moffats’, and I observed all the junk she put in that trunk, it struck me that my definition couldn’t possibly be right. A fortnight had to be longer than four nights …

It would have been nice if there were a dictionary handy, and with Jo being such a great writer, you’d think there would have been, but I’d long since become aware that whenever I wanted a particular thing, it was impossible to find it in the March household. So I did the next best thing: I pulled Beth aside from the others. It’s not like Beth was known for her brain power, but at least she could be counted on not to laugh in my face if I asked what the others thought a stupid question.

“A fortnight is fourteen days,” Beth whispered, “or some people think of it as two weeks, but it is somewhere in there.”

What was wrong with these people? They expanded “fifty” to the lengthier “half a hundred” while compressing the precise “fourteen days” to the confusing “fortnight.” Why couldn’t they be straightforward for once?

That was when Beth laughed straightforwardly in my face.

“Silly Emily!” she said between giggles.

Silly Emily? Seriously, Beth?

I was used to the others laughing at me at various times—or casting aspersions on my character by implying I wasn’t the sort of person who’d save my own sister’s life when she’d fallen through a crack in the ice—but never Beth. In fact, I was so stunned by her outburst, I couldn’t reply at all.

“I’m sorry,” Beth said, at last managing to gain control of herself, “but don’t you realize that I can see what you’re up to?”

“Up to?”

“Why, yes! You are asking me a question that everyone knows the answer to, while pretending you do not.”

“And, er, why am I doing that?”

“Why, to make me feel just as intelligent as the others, of course! You know that I am shy about my lack of book learning, and you want to make me feel as smart as anyone else.” She gave a happy sigh before turning serious. “That is so like you: always looking to do the kind thing.”

I was getting credit for being kind? Coolio! “Yes, well, kind.” It made me feel suddenly guilty that Beth thought of me that way, when all I cared about now was figuring out the meanings of terms I had no clue about. “I don’t know about that. But while we’re on the subject, could you tell me what a tarlatan is?” I’d heard Meg say something about packing hers.

“Silly Emily!” She started to laugh again. “There you go again, being kind!”

“Yes, heh, there I go.”

It turned out that a tarlatan was a type of fabric, in this case referring to a slightly shabby-looking gown Meg intended using as her “ball dress.” It was obvious Meg wanted something finer—apparently the Moffats were very wealthy compared to us—but there just wasn’t enough money.

“Anyway,” Jo said cheerfully, “Marmee has given you so many things from the treasure-box, I wouldn’t think you’d mind so much wearing an old dress to the big party, since so much else of what you’ll have on that night will be new. Well, at least to you.”

The treasure-box—I’d been able to figure that out without resorting to pumping