Sarah
The idea of a new sibling didn’t strike me as happy news. Shut away in my
room, I absorbed it with grim resignation. When pregnant, Mother’s mood
became even fouler, and who among us would welcome that? My real
dismay came when I took paper and pen and worked out the arithmetic:
Mother had spent ten of the last twenty years pregnant. For pity sake!
Soon to be twelve, I was on the cusp of maidenhood, and I wanted to
marry—truly, I did—but such numbers petrified me. Coming, as they did,
so soon after my books being taken away, quite soured me on the female
life.
Since Father’s dressing-down, I hadn’t left the four walls of my room
except for meals, Madame Ruffin’s class three mornings a week, and
church on Sunday. Handful kept me company, asking questions to which
she didn’t care to know the answer, asking only to animate me. She watched
me make feeble attempts at embroidery and write stories about a girl
abandoned to an island in the manner of Robinson Crusoe. Mother ordered
me to snap from my inwardness and misery, and I did try, but my despair
only grew.
Mother summoned our physician, Dr. Geddings, who after much
probing decided I suffered from severe melancholy. I listened at the door as
he told Mother he’d never witnessed a case in someone so young, that this
kind of lunacy occurred in women after childbirth or at the withdrawal of a
woman’s menses. He declared me a high-strung, temperamental girl with
predilections to hysteria, as evidenced by my speech.
Shortly after Christmas, I passed Thomas’ door and glimpsed his trunk
open on the floor. I couldn’t bear his leaving, but it was worse knowing he
was going off to New Haven to pursue a dream I myself had, but would
never realize. Consumed with envy for his dazzling future, I fled to my
room where I sobbed out my grief. It gushed from me in black waves, and
as it did, my despondency seemed to reach its extremity, its farther limit,
passing over into what I can only now call an anguished hope.
All things pass in the end, even the worst melancholy. I opened my
dresser and pulled out the lava box that held my button. My eyes glazed at
the sight of it, and this time I felt my spirit rise up to meet my will. I would
not give up. I would err on the side of audacity. That was what I’d always
done.
My audacious erring occurred at Thomas’ farewell party, which took place
in the second-floor withdrawing room on Twelfth Night. During the past
week, I’d caught Father smiling at me across the dining table, and I’d
interpreted his Christmas gift—a print of Apollo and the Muses—as an
offering of love and the end of his censure. Tonight, he conversed with
Thomas, Frederick, and John, who was home from Yale, all of them in
black woolen topcoats and striped vests of various colors, Father’s flaxen.
Seated with Mary at the Pembroke table, I watched them and wished to
know what they debated. Anna and Eliza, who’d been allowed at the
festivities, sat on the rug before the fire screen, clutching their Christmas
dolls, while Ben pitted his new wooden soldiers in battle, shouting
“Charge!” every few seconds.
Mother reclined against the red velvet of her rosewood Récamier, which
had been brought up from her bedroom. I’d observed five of Mother’s
gestations, and clearly this was her most difficult. She’d enlarged to
mammoth proportions. Even her poor face appeared bloated. Nevertheless,
she’d created an elaborate fete. The room blazed with candles and
lamplight, which reflected off mirrors and gilt surfaces, and the tables were
laid with white linen cloths and gold brocade runners in keeping with the
colors of the Epiphany. Tomfry, Snow, and Eli served, wearing their dark
green livery, hauling in trays of crab pies, buttered shrimps, veal, fried
whiting, and omelet soufflé.
My prodigal appetite had returned, and I occupied myself with eating
and listening to the whirr of bass voices across the room. They conversed
about the reelection of Mr. Jefferson, whether Mr. Meriwether Lewis and
Mr. William Clark had any chance of reaching the Pacific coast, and most
tantalizing, what the abolition of slavery in the Northern states, most
recently in New Jersey, boded for the South. Abolition by law? I’d never
heard of it and craned to get every snippet. Did those in the North, then,
believe God to be sided against slavery?
We finished the meal with Thomas’ favorite sweet, macaroons with
almond ice, after which Father tapped a spoon against his crystal goblet and
silenced the room. He wished Thomas well and presented him with An
Abridgement of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Mother
had allowed Mary and me to each have half a flute of wine, my inaugural
taste, and I gazed at the book in Thomas’ hand with a downy feeling
between my ears.
“Who will send Thomas off with a tribute?” Father said, scanning the
faces of his sons. Firstborn John tugged on the hem of his vest, but it was I,
the sixth-born child and second daughter, who leapt to my feet and made a
speech.
“. . . . . . Thomas, dear brother, I shall miss you. . . . . . I wish you God’s
speed with your studies . . .” I paused and felt an upwelling of courage.
“One day I intend to follow in your footsteps. . . . . . To become a jurist.”
When Father found his tongue, his tone was full of amusement. “Did
my ears deceive? Did you say you would follow your brother to the bar?”
John twittered, and Fredrick laughed outright. Father looked at them and
smiled, continuing, “Are there female jurists now? If so, little one, do
enlighten us.”
Their hilarity burst forth, and I saw Thomas, too, was laughing.
I tried to answer, not fully comprehending the depth of their derision,
that his question was for the benefit of my brothers alone.
“. . . . . . Would it not be a great accomplishment if I should be the
first?”
At that, Father’s fun turned into annoyance. “There will be no first,
Sarah, and if such a preposterous thing did occur, it will be no daughter of
mine.”
Still, I went on stupidly, blindly. “. . . . . . Father, I would make you
proud. I would do anything.”
“Sarah, stop this nonsense! You shame yourself. You shame us all.
Where did you ever get the notion you could study the law?”
I fought to stand there, to hold on to what felt like some last dogged
piece of myself. “. . . . . . You said I would be the greatest jurist—”
“I said if you were a boy!”
My eyes flitted to Anna and Eliza, who gazed up at me, and then to
Mary, who would not meet them.
I turned to Thomas. “. . . . . . Please. . . . . . do you remember . . . you
said I should be the jurist?”
“Sarah, I’m sorry, but Father is right.”
His words finished me.
Father made a gesture with his hand, dismissing the matter, and the
band of them turned from me and resumed their conversation. I heard
Mother say my name in a quiet way. She no longer reclined, but sat upright,
her face bearing a commiserate look. “You may go to your room,” she said.
I slinked away like some scraped-out soul. On the floor beside my door,
Handful was coiled into her red squares and black triangles. She said, “I put
on your lamp and stoked the fire. You need me to help with your dress?”
“. . . No, stay where you are.” My words sounded flat with hurt.
She studied me, uncertain. “What happened, Miss Sarah?”
Unable to answer, I entered my room and closed the door. I sat on the
dresser stool. I felt strange and hollow, unable to cry, unable to feel
anything but an empty, extinguished place in the pit of my stomach.
The knock at my door moments later was light, and thinking it was
Handful, I gathered the last crumbs of my energy and called out, “. . . I have
no need of you.”
Mother entered, swaying with her weight. “I took no joy in seeing your
hopes quashed,” she said. “Your father and brothers were cruel, but I
believe their mockery was in equal portion to their astonishment. A lawyer,
Sarah? The idea is so outlandish I feel I have failed you bitterly.”
She placed her palm on the side of her belly and closed her eyes as if
warding off the thrust of an elbow or foot. The gentleness in her voice, her
very presence in my room revealed how distressed she was for me, and yet
she seemed to suggest their unkindness was justified.
“Your father believes you are an anomalous girl with your craving for
books and your aspirations, but he’s wrong.”
I looked at her with surprise. The hauteur had left her. There was a
lament in her I’d never seen before. “Every girl comes into the world with
varying degrees of ambition,” she said, “even if it’s only the hope of not
belonging body and soul to her husband. I was a girl once, believe it or
not.”
She seemed a stranger, a woman without all the wounds and armature
the years bring, but then she went on, and it was Mother again. “The truth,”
she said, “is that every girl must have ambition knocked out of her for her
own good. You are unusual only in your determination to fight what is
inevitable. You resisted and so it came to this, to being broken like a horse.”
She bent and put her arms around me. “Sarah darling, you’ve fought
harder than I imagined, but you must give yourself over to your duty and
your fate and make whatever happiness you can.”
I felt the puffy skin of her cheek, and I wanted both to cling to her and
shove her away. I watched her go, noticing she hadn’t closed the door when
she’d entered. Handful would’ve heard everything. The thought comforted
me. There’s no pain on earth that doesn’t crave a benevolent witness.
As Handful appeared, regarding me with her large, soulful eyes, I took
the lava box from my dresser, removed the silver button, and dropped it into
the ash bin by the fire, where it disappeared beneath the gray and white
soot.
The following day, the withdrawing room was cleared for mother’s lying-in.
She’d birthed her last six children there, surrounded by Binah, Aunt-Sister,
Dr. Geddings, a hired wet nurse, and two female cousins. It seemed unlikely
she would grant me a visit, but a week before her labor began, she allowed
me in to see her.
It was a frosty morning in February. The sky was bunched with winter
clouds, and the fireplaces throughout the house crackled and hissed. In the
withdrawing room, the fire provided the only light. Mother, who was a
week from her fortieth birthday, was sprawled on her Récamier, looking
perfectly miserable.
“I hope you have no trouble to speak of, for I have no strength to deal
with it,” she said through swollen lips.
“. . . . . . I have a request.”
She raised herself slightly and reached for her cup on the tea table.
“Well then, what is it? What is this request that cannot wait?”
I’d come prepared with a speech, feeling resolute, but now my head
swam with anxiety. I closed my eyes and wondered how I could make her
understand.
“. . . . . . I’m afraid you’ll refuse me without thought.”
“For heaven’s sake, why should I do that?”
“. . . . . . Because my wish is out of the ordinary. . . . . . I wish to be
godmother to the new baby.”
“Well, you’re correct—it’s out of the ordinary. It’s also out of the
question.”
I’d expected this. I knelt beside her. “. . . . . . Mother, if I have to beg, I
will . . . I’ve lost everything precious to me. What I thought to be the
purpose of my life, my hope for an education, books, Thomas . . . Even
Father seems lost to me now . . . Don’t deny me this, please.”
“But Sarah, the baby’s godmother? Of all things. It’s not some frippery.
The religious welfare of the child would be in your hands. You’re twelve.
What would people say?”
“. . . I’ll make the child the purpose of my life . . . You said I must give
up ambition . . . Surely the love and care of a child is something you can
sanction . . . Please, if you love me—” Lowering my head to her lap, I cried
the tears I’d not been able to cry the night of Thomas’ farewell or since.
Her hand cupped the back of my head, and when I finally composed
myself, I saw that her eyes were moist. “All right then. You’ll be the baby’s
godmother, but see to it you do not fail him.” I kissed her hand and slipped
from the room, feeling, oddly, that I’d reclaimed a lost part of myself.
