Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) (5 page)

“Sarah Dowling, you act like I’ve made you a problem. You could act a little glad.”

“Well, you might not like it out there. You don’t know what it is to live hard.”

“If I don’t like it, I won’t stay.”

“That’s what I’m scared of.”

“If I don’t stay, you’ll be alone, just as you would have been anyway. Where are we going?”

“York Sate.”

“Yes, but where there?”

“Genesee. The Genesee country.”

“So far?”

“There’s a good road.”

“A toll road. But I’ll have money.”

“Pa’s got brothers out there. They’ll help us.”

My spirit dropped at the thought of any help except what we would give each other. “Let’s go somewhere else then,” I said.

“Everybody goes where they’ve got kin. Who’ll shelter us but kin while we build our house? Who’ll roll up the logs for our house? Who’ll help us raise our roof? Who’ll feed us while we wait for our crops?”

“I guess I just don’t like kin much,” I said, sulking. “I thought we’d do everything ourselves.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, it’ll be hard enough. It’ll exercise us. If you still say the same thing Sunday.”

I was so put-off I came near to telling her that
I
was raised to call that day Sabbath.

Along about Friday, Martha took sick. Edward came by to tell me so and ask me back. I was working on Lot’s Wife, enjoying myself, but for the first time I didn’t mind going back because I knew it wasn’t my fate anymore. Edward was expecting me to mind, though, so he didn’t notice that I didn’t. He was grumpy, at Martha for being sick (as she was carrying a child), at me for not doing my part, at the general make and trend of the world.

“Pa didn’t mean you to do nothing,” he said.

“Brother, what would you give to be rid of me?”

“Don’t talk looney. Just come on.”

“I will sell out reasonable and be on my way to Genesee,” I said. I was corking my color bottles carefully, acting mostly interested in them. The main thing was to set him thinking.

“You could get Martha some steady help. A man of your means should anyway. And the whole house would be yours.”

“Just come on,” he said.

“I’ll be there in a minute.”

He should have left then, but I had his attention. He didn’t want to show that I did, so he didn’t ask any questions.

I laughed. “Run along, Brother. I’ll be there.”

He frowned and stomped off.

Martha was on a pallet in the kitchen where she could keep watch. She looked away when I went in. The children were clustered timidly around her, so quiet and good. Afraid their mother was dying, I think. Afraid of something as big and terrible as that. And of course it was certain that one such time she would be. If not this time, the twelfth or twentieth; Edward would fill her as often as necessary.

I felt the sadness the children always made me feel, but something new too – something for Martha.

I thought what it would be, to live her life.

“Did you eat?” I asked her gently. And being gentle made me remember a dream from the night before. In the dream, Martha’s bosom was bare and I went, very afraid but full of longing, and put my mouth against it. I expected her to push me away, but instead I felt her hand on the back of my head, pressing me close, and she murmured, “Of course, of course.”

I wonder if that dream would have changed me even if I hadn’t remembered it. Remembering it made the end of a time in my heart.

Martha looked so puzzled, and I asked again, “Did you eat?” – ashamed that so simple a human thing from me could puzzle her.

She shook her head. “I couldn’t,” she whispered, and I saw that her eyes were full. I knelt down on her pallet and held her face against my shoulder, wondering why this had stopped being possible and why it was easy now.

I poached an egg in milk for her and watched her eat it. I remembered something I tended to forget, that Martha had been my friend first. She came to our house because she liked me, to see me, and then she saw Edward and liked him better. I think if I’d found words for how I felt when that happened, they would have been, “You chose him – now choke on him.”

Strange not to have the words until they’re not true anymore.

I wondered how much sooner there might have been a way to live our days, or if there was a rule that you can’t see the way until the end.

Because Martha and I were ended. I was going with Sarah to feed her and hold her head against me when she was sad and knead her shoulder when it ached. From the beginning I was going to, unless there was a rule that you can’t until the end.

Chapter Three

I won’t claim that I’m fearless or that I disdain to lie at any cost, but I will say that I don’t bother to lie about every little thing. So when Edward asked me Sabbath morning after breakfast why I wasn’t readying myself for Meeting, I didn’t say I was sick; I said, “I’m not going. I’m expecting Sarah Dowling today.”

I didn’t know what time Sarah might come. It wasn’t even certain that she had a way of telling time. I only knew that she didn’t go to Meeting.

“Sarah Dowling?” Edward said.

Martha said, “That – that – ” but her language was not equal to her thought. “Freak” is what she was groping for, I imagine. I allowed myself to feel a little flattered. If she slandered my friends, it could mean she liked me.

“She’s a very fine person when you get to know her,” I said. I wanted to say “lovely” too, but reconsidered.

“You shouldn’t miss Meeting,” Edward said. “It’s not a light matter to miss Meeting.”

That may sound like something to impress children, but from Edward it was not. Even as a boy he was earnest and serious and afraid of being ill thought of. One time back in school, Edward’s grade was studying Heaven, and since I always paid attention to all the other grades, I was listening from my smaller, more lowly seat. “And there shall be no night there,” the teacher said. Edward’s grade, which means Edward and one other big boy, reacted with appropriate bafflement. “No
night
?” “No night,” the teacher said, smiling conceitedly. And then Edward stood up and asked, all solemnly, “But won’t there be a – period – of – lesser light?” I was so proud of him I could hardly contain myself. My big brother! Such wisdom! Such a question! So well put! The teacher said, “No. No. No indeed,” but I could see that he was taking some credit for Edward too.

Well, that’s just a little childhood memory, but it shows that Edward probably really meant it when he said it was no light matter to miss Meeting. I have always felt somehow responsible for Edward’s taking religion so hard. Wasn’t it in an effort to reach the untrembling hearts of the likes of me that the preacher laid it on so? If all faces had shown Edward’s terror, wouldn’t the preacher have been eager to reassure? Wouldn’t he have said, “My children, my children, God means you no harm!”?

“She’s not fit,” Martha said, meaning Sarah.

I said, “She’s very fit, a very fine young woman who happens to have the gumption to help her family. I honor her for it.”

“There’s fit ways and unfit ways,” Martha said. She was so agitated she forgot she was sick and she took the children away from me and dressed them herself.

I didn’t mind. It’s trying to dress children, especially shoes. They deliberately hold their feet odd, and I don’t feel they should be slapped just for that.

Edward was ready, dark-blue and white and stiff and dignified, standing by the fire. I went over to get some coals for my own fire.

I said, “She’s coming to talk about our plans for going out to Genesee.” I squatted down and heaped some coals together.

“That nonsense again?” he said, but he wasn’t surprised or even as gruff as he intended to be, so I knew he’d been thinking.

“Can you lend me a map of York State?”

“No sense in it.”

“Please, Brother.”

“What would folks think of me if I let you go off?”

I laughed. “They’d think it couldn’t be so bad after all, if Edward White did it. Please lend me a map. Just for today.”

He walked off. I felt the cold wind when he opened his parlor door. I had hopes for the map, but no certainty. Maybe he himself didn’t know until he handed it to me that he was going to. Besides the map, he handed me a small book entitled
A Description of the Genesee Country, in the State of New York
.

“Edward!” I began, but then I could only smile.

“Don’t carry these with coals,” he said. “They’re dear.”

Sarah wore a dress. “Don’t say nothing,” she said. She would have looked all right in it except that it made her so miserable that she hung her head and scowled and stooped. She reminded me of a dog we’d clipped once to help him against the summer heat, and he hid until his coat grew back. I must admit we drove him to it by laughing at him. He did look so comical. And so did Sarah, but I had the memory of the dog to guide me and I pretended she looked just the same as always.

“I have a map of York State,” I said. “I’m copying it for us. And wait till you see what else.”

“Ma said it would look better for Sunday,” Sarah said.

“Listen to me!”

“I can’t. I’ve got this cussed dress on.”

Since I’d been wanting to laugh anyway, that set me off, and her too, not very happily at first but she warmed into it.

“Why, I just don’t see how you stand it. My skirt’s all chunks of snow where it dragged. Like a sheep full of burrs. And where do you put your hands?”

“Here,” I said, holding mine out to her. “Now that you’re a woman I can treat you like one.”

She looked at my hands and then my face and then in confusion everywhere but at me, groping all the while for her breeches-top to hook her thumbs in.

I reached out and firmly took her hand. “Now,” I said, “would you rather get warmed up or see the map or see the book? Everything at once, I think.” I led her to the bench by the fire and then went over to the table where the treasures were. She began to pick snow pellets off the hem of her skirt and toss them slowly, one at a time, into the fire. They hissed and sputtered.

“There’s several things to say,” she said.

“Hundreds of things.”

“I told Pa I’m going.”

She stopped. To help her, I said, “I told Edward. He wants me to go. So much so that he feels duty-bound to stop me. He can’t help feeling that anything that tempts him so much must be wrong. I suppose your father feels he can’t spare you.”

“Well, but he won’t stop me. He can make another boy. The trouble is, when Rachel heard, she wanted to come too.”

“
Who’s Rachel
?” I shouted, and heard myself, and said again (fair decently), “Who’s Rachel?”

“My sister. You seen her.”

“I saw dozens of identical girls. How should I know which one was Rachel?”

“She looked growed. Some of ’em don’t.” Sarah tossed a pellet into the fire. “She’s set her heart on coming.”

“You told her no.”

“I told her I’d see.”

“You told her
I’m
going?”

“I told her you was thinking on it.”

“I have told you and told you and told you. How can I be more definite?” I was being a little rough with the map, I noticed, so I took it back to the table. I stood there by the table trying to collect myself, looking at Sarah’s back. She was bending to her hem again.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

Still bent, she mumbled something. To hear, I moved over and stood behind her. She said, “Rachel’s just like me. She never had things fine. She wouldn’t fret.”

“Would you leave me in this life I can’t stand because I’ve had things fine?”

“This might be just play for you. You even said you might not stay.”

“Did Rachel say she’d stay? Did she say, ‘I’ll stay, though I hate it and die of it!’? All right, I’ll say that. I’ll stay. Whatever happens.”

“There’s something else.”

I groaned.

“There’s what I feel,” she said. “You might not like it.”

“What do you feel?”

“I care for you.”

“I want you to. I care for you.”

“If it bothers you or anything I can stop. So tell me if you don’t want me to.”

“I don’t want you to stop.”