I looked at Evans. For a wicked moment I wondered if my father had been one of those who had caught him and scared him near to death. “You pissed your pants, didn’t you?”
“Well,” he said, not denying it, “you find yourself alone at night surrounded by men in painted sheepskin and see how well you hold your water. People were frightened out of their wits. Some of the old folks thought it was the real Indians come back. Matrons hid toasting forks about the house, determined to defend their honor. We sent riders to Albany, but for all we knew, they’d been caught and hanged from some tree.”
I picked up the broom. “I see Delhi is still here.”
“Yeah, well, we had guns too, and more to eat than they did—them riding around like that. But then Sheriff Steele got shot over at the Earle farm. Caught a bullet in the gut—took two days for him to die. Then all hell broke loose. Soldiers came and over two hundred men got arrested. If you so much as gave a glass of water to a farmer who wasn’t payin’ his rent, you were guilty of Steele’s murder—that’s how Judge Parker saw it.”
“I know,” I said. “My Uncle Tom was one of them. He was in church that morning, thirty miles from the Earle farm. Spent twelve months in jail just waiting for a trial.”
“But not your father?”
“He wasn’t arrested.”
That much was true, but my father might have been, having been accused by people whom he had thought of as friends. This I learned from my mother later on. Most of the bad things had happened west of us, but something inside father got broke back then. Neighbor testifying against neighbor. Who would be arrested next? Some men were waiting to hang. Finally, Father sold our farm and moved us all to a new place along the Delaware. At the time, I saw it all as a big adventure and not a flight from ugly memories.
“Are people here still angry?” I asked.
“You bet they are,” said the sheriff. “And you’d best know where they stand on that one before you scratch the scab.”
I stopped my sweeping. “So I’ve learned.”
* * *
By my second winter in Delhi, my duties expanded, and I was sent to work two days a week for Mrs. Elizabeth Caldwell, a widow who lived in a large house west of the square. By then, I was a common sight in town. A spinster in pants.
I had learned from Mrs. McNee that Mrs. Caldwell had a sister in New York, a daughter in Buffalo, and a husband in the grave in Tennessee. But Mrs. Caldwell didn’t share a word of this with me. She gave instructions and, after that, nothing that could be thought of as conversation.
She walked with her hands clasped, back straight, as she moved about the house without a sound. From what I could see, she might have been born into this world with a gray head of hair and a hooped petticoat. Her face, stern and still beautiful, seemed like a doorway to a dark room. The house shared her mood. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a staircase to an attic that Mrs. Caldwell visited on occasion. I was never given any duties there. On the first floor was a dining room with an oak table that seated six. There Mrs. Caldwell would take her tea and look out over the empty places to a window and a meadow beyond.
While dusting in Mrs. Caldwell’s library one afternoon, I paused by the fireplace and looked at the books. One caught my eye, and without thinking, I took it down. I opened it and began to read, just to remember the feeling, having not read a book in ten years. The words tumbled off the page as though they were musical notes that formed not a sentence but a song.
“What are you doing?”
I turned and saw Mrs. Caldwell by the door, standing there like the queen of Prussia. Almost weekly, Mrs. McNee had told us never to touch a personal possession of our employers. Now I had one in my hand.
“I know I shouldn’t have taken it down,” I stammered. “I just did.”
Mrs. Caldwell was not moved. “What book is it?”
“One by Mr. Dickens,” I said, taking a quick glance to be sure. “
The Pickwick Papers
.”
Hearing this, her face softened. “Joseph, have you read any books by Mr. Dickens?”
“Yes. When I was young. I read this very book, but I couldn’t tell you much about it now.”
“And were you Joseph then?”
“No. I was Lucy then.”
“Why did you change your name?”
I looked at the floor. This was a story too long to tell, but neither could I lie. “I gave up my name when I gave up my daughter. Anyone who gives up her daughter cannot be a woman, surely not a mother.” I stopped, certain that I had said too much. Mrs. Caldwell wanted to know more.
“Where is your daughter now?”
“In Pennsylvania. But until two years ago, she lived here in Delhi. At the almshouse.”
Why had I told her that? I hadn’t told anyone, and now Mrs. Caldwell knew and was more curious than before.
“What’s her name?”
It was my fault. I had brought her to the secret, and now I couldn’t put another name on my daughter. “Helen. Helen Slater.”
The woman seemed to lose her balance. “Helen Slater is your daughter?”
“Only by birth, I’m ashamed to say. Did you know her?”
“Helen? Yes. She worked in this house.”
Now the floor seemed to move under me. Had Mrs. Caldwell also been a mother to my little girl? Was I in some strange station of hell? I gathered my courage. “Did she work here long?”
“Not long enough. Someone stole her from me.” Mrs. Caldwell appeared distressed. “Joseph, I must tell you that she said her mother was dead.”
“And well she might say that. In any case, God has told me that He wants me to have no more to do with her.”
Mrs. Caldwell gave a disbelieving look. “How did He tell you that?”
“By taking her from here a month before I came. I am to leave her alone. He is watching her now.”
Mrs. Caldwell nodded as though to say she understood. I couldn’t tell what she was really thinking.
The following week Mrs. Caldwell again found me dusting in the library—this time, no book in hand. I waited to hear her instructions, but there weren’t any. Instead she asked if I had read anyone besides Mr. Dickens.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, trying to remember things from a long time ago. “I’ve read William Thackeray and Mr. Hawthorne and some of Mr. Emerson.”
“You read, then,
The Scarlet Letter
?”
“I did.”
“And what do you suppose Mr. Hawthorne was trying to say?”
I think this was Mrs. Caldwell’s test to see if we were talking about the same Mr. Hawthorne. I hesitated but a moment, for I remembered the book. “I think he was saying that there are things we know about and things we don’t.”
“Indeed,” she said with an approving nod. “Joseph, would you like to borrow a book now and then?”
Had Mrs. Caldwell offered me a gold coin, I could not have felt more excitement.
I said I would, and Mrs. Caldwell went over to the bookshelves and started running her finger over the books, looking for something. “Here,” she said, pulling out a book and handing it to me. “You might like this.” On the cover in gold letters was the title,
Adam Bede
, and the author, George Eliot.
“I don’t think I’ve read anything by Mr. Eliot,” I said.
Mrs. Caldwell let out a sound that I had not heard from her before, something like a chuckle. “Well, I’m sure you will like it. More so when you know that Mr. Eliot is really a woman.” She paused to measure my surprise. “And I have a few other books by women who first wrote as men. You might like this.”
She took down a book titled
Jane Eyre
. I hadn’t heard of it, but Mrs. Caldwell said it was now very famous and that the author, Miss Brontë, had first published it under a man’s name. She handed me the book, and I brought it back to the almshouse where I read it in my room at night. I took delight in Miss Eyre’s adventures and more delight in the news that women were now writing books of their own, and that they had begun by disguising themselves as men. When I finished
Jane Eyre,
there was another book to replace it, and thus my world began to grow.
But the books that I borrowed changed little between me and Mrs. Caldwell. It was not like years earlier when I would talk about books with Burton in the dining room of the Hotel Wayne. They didn’t lead to conversations. Mrs. Caldwell might ask me a question about the book I was returning. I would reply, and she would nod her head and say, “Yes.” That I had read it seemed enough for her. And in this way and others like it, Mrs. Caldwell remained to me more a spirit than a body of flesh. On some days, she seemed only half there, part woman, part shade, come back to this world to watch over needy souls like myself, as though it were she, and not Captain Caldwell, who had fallen at Shiloh.
A
S THE SEASONS passed, I rose in the ranks of the poorhouse. Unlike many who lived there, I knew my grammar and could write in a clear hand. I became a
senior resident
and was given the duties of correspondence. For this, I got two dollars a month and my own little table in Mrs. McNee’s office. I also wrote letters for Sheriff Evans. He said things sounded better when I wrote them.
Every four months or so, a letter from Helen would arrive. Mrs. McNee would take it to her room and read it to me the following day. Helen’s letters told of the difficulties on the Fortnam farm—the washouts and the droughts, the coughs and the fevers, the bossy sister and the nosey aunt. From our distance, Mrs. McNee and I watched Helen grow up. Then one day she wrote that she had met a young man named David Stone. She said she saw his soul the moment she laid eyes on him. I felt uneasy. I hoped that she would bide her time and not, like her mother, rush into something. Of course, I couldn’t write to tell her this, because I was too ashamed to bring myself back from the dead.
* * *
I was working on the ledger one chilly autumn day when I heard my name called. I came onto the porch and saw Mrs. McNee and a man I didn’t know standing by a wagon.
“Joe, there’s a woman here. Help this man carry her inside.”
In the wagon, a woman lay as though dead. The man took her shoulders and I her feet—she weighed almost nothing. We carried the poor creature upstairs, down the hall, and onto the spare bed in my room, Mrs. McNee close behind.
“Where’s she from?” asked the housemaster.
“Don’t know,” said the man. “I found her at the rail station, on her knees shiverin’. My house ain’t fit for a mule, so I brought her here.”
Mrs. McNee thanked the man, calling him a Samaritan. She told Audrey to take him downstairs and give him a meal. We undressed our visitor and found her hot. Mrs. McNee passed over her with a wet cloth, and I dried her with a towel.
The woman lay there for two days. At times, when she stirred, I sat her up and got her to drink. The fever continued. On the third morning, I brought her tea with sugar, thinking I would wake her, but her eyes were open when I came into the room. “Who are you?” she asked in a thin voice.
“I’m Joseph,” I said, setting down the tray. “What’s your name?”
“Marie. Where am I?”
“You’re safe, Marie. At the almshouse. In Delhi.”
“Oh,” she said, though I’m not sure she understood. I got her to take the tea, and in the afternoon, I brought her soup. I tried to feed her, but she wanted to do it herself. When I handed her the spoon, she used it to point.
“That bed,” she said. “Who sleeps there?”
“I do,” I said, thinking that would assure her.
Marie gave me a funny look. “Joseph, are you a man?”
I laughed. I hadn’t thought of how it might be to wake in a strange place and see someone who looked like me. “No, I’m not.”
“Are you a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you wear those clothes?”
“Because I like to.”
Marie nodded, but I could see that my strange appearance was more than she cared to think about. And when I asked where she was from, she shook her head to say she didn’t want to speak of it.
Two days later Marie was still in bed but better. She was thin as a goat, but her eyes were bright. She was sitting up and eating porridge when Mrs. McNee came into the room, house register in hand.
“We need to make this official,” she said to Marie. “What’s your name, dear?”
Marie turned and gave me a frightened look, but I didn’t know how to help. She turned back to Mrs. McNee but hesitated. “Marie Louise …
Martin
,” she said finally, her voice suggesting that the last name was not her real one.
Mrs. McNee ignored the confession and wrote in her book. “Where are you from?”
“Jersey City.”
“What was your business on the railroad?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. McNee. “Of course you can.”
Marie pulled the blanket to her chin. “I am disgraced.”
Mrs. McNee gave a tired smile. “My dear, in this house, we are all disgraced. That is our specialty. But we must contact your family.”
“No!” she cried. “I’d rather die.”
Mrs. McNee paused then patted Marie’s hands as if to say there was nothing to fear. For the present, no more questions.
I had been at the almshouse for four years and had a room alone, except when the other bed was needed. Marie was left with me, and I was to care for her. In a few weeks, her face filled out, and the color came back to her cheeks. She was pretty, and much younger than I had first thought. Nineteen, she said. She was well-spoken, but careful not to talk about her past. Her few possessions were kept in a double-handled cloth bag that she kept under her bed. Of worldly goods I had less than she did. My one visible possession was on the table—the book I was reading, which, of course, wasn’t mine. Marie asked about it, and I said that I had borrowed the book from a woman I worked for in town. She picked it up and brightened when she saw it was
Villette
by Miss Brontë. “I love Charlotte Brontë,” she said. “I wanted to be Jane Eyre when I was fifteen. Didn’t you?”
I smiled and told Marie that I hadn’t read
Jane Eyre
when I was fifteen, but rather just two years ago, but, yes, I did like the book. And that, I think, was the beginning of our friendship. Her question showed that she thought of me as a girl in my younger days, despite my present appearance. I liked this, for many people couldn’t seem to see me that way, as though I must have been a very strange creature back then just because I was one now. Beyond that, having a book in common gave Marie and me the feeling that we shared certain secrets. But not all secrets—her past was still not to be spoken of, and neither was mine. We were, of course, bumping into these walls all the time.