by Julie Berry
I nod. Undoubtedly they and a dozen other schoolboys will be there today after morning chores are done. “Class’d be cancelled, anyhow.”
His teeth chatter slightly. I’m not cold yet; the poor goose hasn’t enough meat on him to be out here in such weather.
I try to steer him back, but he refuses to budge. If I try to force him I’ll knock him headlong into a drift.
He looks at my face as if he’s just now noticed my nose.
“I want to go back to school, Judy,” he says. “It’s my only chance.”
I study his blue-gray eyes. I understand.
“Will you help me get there?”
My thoughts swirl and scatter like snowflakes on an errant wind. Will I help him make something of his life? Who will help me? Why does everyone presume that I, as damaged merchandise, forfeit any claim to happiness? That I expect nothing, have no ambitions or longings of my own? When was it agreed that my lot would be to gladly serve as a prop and a crutch for others who are whole?
And what rules of economy dictate that a boy without a foot is more whole than a girl without a tongue?
If I presume that Darrel has even given two seconds’ thought to me and my desires, I’m the fool the town supposes I am.
“Whaddya say, Judy?” He grins his dimples at me.
Darrel still thinks about his own future, as he should. And he’s right. Mother will do all she can to prevent him going, and without schooling, what can a cripple do?
Not much, as I know well.
But if I promise to help him, it locks me here, where you will always be nearby to rub salt in my open wounds.
I’m trapped for this winter. Come spring, we’ll both be more able to move. Darrel can walk to school with a crutch, and I can walk away to my new home.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?
Could I, by some miracle, find books to take with me to the colonel’s cabin? And could I, before winter is over, learn enough to read them?
I won’t be Darrel’s crutch. I make a decision. If I must stay, my delay will purchase me something useful. I clear my throat.
“You . . .” I say. His eyes widen. “You . . . go. I go. I rea—” I am struggling with the word. “Reab,” it comes out.
“Judy!”
His face is all astonishment. It has been many, many years since Darrel heard my voice.
“I wan tho reab.” I try again. “Readth.” I pull the stump of my tongue forward. “Wlearn to readth. You heowp me . . . wlearn . . . to . . . readth.” Each word demands my total concentration.
Darrel blinks like he’s seen a heavenly messenger. “You want me to help you learn to read.” He’s immensely proud of himself. My brother, the genius. “I’ve seen you working on it already. But, Judy!” He grins. “Listen to you talk!”
I glare at him. He retreats a bit. “It’s a start, anyway. . . . Mother doesn’t like you to speak, does she?”
I shake my head, then shrug. Mother’s days of making my rules are numbered.
He chews on his lower lip. “She won’t like me going to school. Nor me teaching you to read.”
I shrug. “You wan tho go, you heowp me readth.”
He nods.
I scribble an imaginary pen through the air. “An wriye.” “And write.”
Yes.
“Can’t you write?”
I shake my head.
He nods slowly. “Too long ago to remember much.” His eyes are alight. “Here’s how we’ll do it. You bring me to school, and you stay and listen. You be a student with the other girls. And at home, at night, I’ll help you. Agreed?”
Stay at school all day? Away from Mother, away from your house?
“Yesh.” To seal the bargain, I toss him over into a snowdrift.
He lands flailing and sputtering and is nearly half buried. His laughter rings out and bounces off the gray bones of forest trees.
VIII.
The snow lets up later in the afternoon. The sun appears in the white sky, and the house, so well insulated by drifts, grows warm and cozy until nightfall. I sit sewing by the fire and remember last night, before the snow. It might have been another world, another century, when I ran across dry leaves to you at midnight, in only a nightgown and coat. I remember the changing mood in your eyes, and ponder what it meant.
I stab a needle through the dry, tough skin on my knuckle by mistake, and inspect the empty tunnel of white flesh that’s left behind when I yank the needle out.
IX.
How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
X.
The next morning, I go outside, swathed in scarves and shawls and armed with my bucket. It’s an effort to push the door open. At last I do, yet I remain rooted to the threshold. “What’s the matter?” Mother calls to me, hurrying over to shut the door behind me.
I point to the ground around our house. It is covered in footprints, in front, in back, at every window. Where the snow piles deep, the prints are troughs, as if someone waded through.
“Lord have mercy,” Mother says, then pulls me in and shuts the door.
XI.
“Could be that Whiting boy,” Mother says, peering out through a gap in the shuttered window. I make sure my face betrays no emotion. I know from the pigeon-toed prints that it isn’t you. But the boots were large, whoever wore them. “Or someone from the village, stopping by to inquire after us in the evening,” Darrel adds.
“Some tramp or other, who’s gone on his way by now?” Mother looks to me as if I might have the answer. She thinks it’s my lover. I return her gaze.
I hope it’s the village boys, in the mood for mischief and nothing more. Though mischief itself can be quite enough where overgrown boys are concerned.
After some time of peering out each window, Mother grows impatient enough with the threat of danger to thrust me out into it. Person must be milked, after all. I stamp my way through the snow, which has a hard crust over it, leaving my footprints crude and unintelligible. Not so for the other footprints, though. They must have been made earlier, when the new snow was still soft and powdery.
XII.
I finish my chores and bring in all the wood I can wrench from the frozen pile. As I work, I repeat the word: Maria. Maria. It’s all in the lips. The R is a bit awkward, but with practice, I can say it just like anyone else would. A listener would never know I wasn’t whole. After breakfast, I bundle up once more and strap on Darrel’s snowshoes.“And where do you think you’re going?” Mother demands. “Maria,” I say, savoring the way the word sails forth almost as much as watching Mother’s cheek twitch.
What can she say to that? There’s nothing cursed or devilish about how I say Maria.
I step out into the blinding sunlight on the snow.
Walking over the drifts in my snowshoes presents a new aspect of the world, one from three feet higher than usual. It makes me feel giddy, as though I might fall off my perch, even though my perch is everywhere.
From this high up, your house looks humbled and insignificant, engulfed by snow. By habit I glance at the windows for a sign of your whereabouts, until I remember not to.
There’s nothing for it but to enjoy my tramp through the snow toward the village. The snowshoes slap onto the crust of snow like hands on a drum. Every bird that swoops from branch to branch adds cheery color and movement to the cold, white stillness.
In town the sight is less pristine, where dozens of men battle with sleds and shovels to claw through the snow then haul it away. I reach Maria’s house and find her wrestling with a shovel outside her door. She’s not skilled at using it, and she knows it.
“Sorry about this,” she says, looking down at her boots. “Leon’s not well enough to do it, and I’ve got to get it done before the snow ices over any more.”
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“Me,” I say, reaching out my hands for the shovel.
She thrusts the blade deep into a drift. “What, ‘me’?”
It feels like Mother forcing me to say please when I was very young. I’m annoyed with her.
“Me,” I repeat, gesturing as if shoveling snow. If she’s going to be coy about receiving help, next time I won’t be so quick to offer.
“‘Let me,’” she prompts. “You sound like an imbecile. Use language worthy of your mind. Use what you have. Stretch it forward.”
My tongue would need to touch the backs of my teeth for the L and the T sounds in “let.” I know it won’t stretch forward that far. I’m angry enough to prove it to her. I thrust the stump of my tongue forward.
“Uueh me,” I say, sparing her none of my irritation.
“Excellent!” She beams at me. “I think there was a bit of T in there. Try it again. Cut the sound off abruptly. Land’s sakes, we hardly say half our Ts as it is.”
I am grotesque when I try to engage my tongue, like a drunken idiot. I glance around, but there are no witnesses except the icicles on Maria’s roof. I shove my tongue toward my teeth until its sinews ache, and loosen my lips trying to form the sounds.
“Ueh me. Ueh me. Ueht me. Wleht me.”
Maria shrieks and points at my mouth. “There, you see! Practice. Practice is all you need. You’ll never win an elocution prize, but you can make yourself understood, if you practice. Here, here’s the shovel. You’ve earned it.” She tosses the handle toward me with a wink and disappears into her house.
I don’t know whether to laugh at Maria or throw down her shovel and trudge back home. Let me. Let me. “Llleht me.” It’s near enough to an L that it couldn’t be confused for anything else. I practice the words once more. The L improves each time, though it’s never as good as hers. The T is a bit heavy, a bit moist, as though it has a small th at its end, but it serves as a passable T.
Maria returns with a second shovel, and I forgive her. “Leht me,” I announce.
We fall to shoveling. Snow flies in our faces like flour on baking day.
“See what other L words you can say,” Maria says.
I consider. I have to concentrate so hard on my tongue stump’s movements each time, I fear I may slaver on myself. “Lllap.” That was overdone. I wipe my lip and try again. “Low. Laugh.” This earns a smile. “Lamb. Lu . . .” I feel my face grow warm despite the sting of cold grains of snow.
Maria gives me a sly wink. “That’s all right. You can say his name aloud. It won’t bother me any.”
With an effort I control my face. That was a narrow miss. “Lu-cash,” I say, then shrug, as if you were any other word to me.
“Leonh.”
Maria smiles.
XIII.
The sky turns pink, and I bid Maria “goo-bye,” at which she applauds. As it happened, we never went indoors, but we cleared her a path to the street, her woodpile, and her shed. I am shy as I kiss her cold, red cheek. She kisses mine. How long has it been since I kissed anyone? I’m eager to get back. My feet and hands are damp. Passing down the main street, I see Alderman Brown in the doorway of his home, talking with Abijah Pratt, who stands on his porch. Alderman Brown shakes his head yet listens intently to Abijah. When they hear me approach, they turn to look. Neither says anything, but Alderman Brown inclines his head toward me. I hurry to get past them as quickly as I can.
I race against the dropping sun, which bronzes the path before me. I shade my eyes. It seems as though the sun sets right over my mother’s house. And, for that matter, yours.
You are going indoors when I pass by, your arms loaded with wood. You drop the wood when you see me and hurry out to where I stand. But you, in your boots, can only walk in the tracks you’ve dug out, while I skate over the drifts like a water bug on the stream. I look down upon you, and when you look back up at me the setting sun behind me blinds you. Your nose is red and dripping. I wonder if mine is, too.
“Judith,” you say. “Please don’t go.” I look around for passersby, for the ubiquitous Goody Pruett. Out here in public, you could be fined for calling me by my Christian name. You are safe for today.
You move to one side so the sun is less cruel and look up at me again, scrutinizing me. I’m glad that this time I’m well covered from chin to toe.
You wipe your nose on your coat sleeve and make another attempt. “The other night I . . . I don’t know where to begin. . . . I wish I hadn’t . . .”
I can wait patiently for many things, but the sun might set before you finish a thought. And I have no wish to revisit that night.
“Yesh?” The sh is so slight, it might go unnoticed. You cock your head so abruptly it’s comical. Like a rooster. I want to laugh. This time I surprised you for certain. It makes me feel bold.
“Yesh, Mishder Whidhing?” I’m surprised and pleased at how close I sound to natural. Even in its foreign nature, my speech can be pleasant and warm, through the cadence and music of words. I don’t sound brutish. My father’s music is in my voice, and not even your father could take that away from me.
You’re roostering again. “You talk,” you say—rather stupidly, if you’ll forgive me.
Yes, I nod. Obviously. You look utterly confounded. I’m enjoying myself.
I rack my brain for the sounds I can and can’t make, the words I can and can’t say, searching for the choicest way to end this interview. And then I decide, it doesn’t matter anymore. There is no more shame. I no longer dream of pleasing you, so I’ll say whatever I wish to say, and what comes out will come out.
I make a small curtsy. “Goodh evenging, Mishder Whidhing,” as politely as Maria’s own mother might. And without looking back, I walk home toward the lip of the sun that hovers over my mother’s snow-shortened roof.
XIV.
I slip away to Sunday meeting, arriving early. Neither Mother nor Darrel goes. Convalescing is still their excuse, though I imagine they will not be able to stretch this pardon out much further. I come because it is the law, but I also come for words to fill my head, and people to observe from my pew in the rear. Not because I yearn for sermons and prayers. And not because I’m anxious to see you.
Eunice Robinson, on the other hand, clearly has no other objective in mind. At the tolling of the bells, she minces her way down the aisle and into the pew opposite you. She’s been pinching her cheeks in the entryway, I can tell. You reward her pains with one of your smiles.
Your hair is groomed to a shine, and your face freshly shaven. The ebony coat you’d had sewn for your wedding is brushed smooth. Shopping for a new bride already? Is it worth enduring more abuse from Leon’s relatives?
Not that your doings are of any consequence to me.
The villagers trickle in. The blacksmith, Horace Bron, and his wife, Alice, as small a woman as ever married a giant. The Cartwrights, senior and junior. The storekeeper, Abe Duddy, and his wife, Hepzibah. The Cavendishes and their six small children. William Salt, the miller, who still wears the black armband for his son, Toby. The Wills, the Robinsons. The pews fill. Sunlight slants through the windows in golden beams, like the morning of Creation.
Rupert Gillis, the slim schoolmaster, is the only one among us who ever studied music, so he leads us in the hymn. Then Preacher Frye, his limp even more pronounced, takes the podium. It seems to me that the silver streak in his hair is whiter than before. He takes his text from the eleventh chapter of Proverbs.
“The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them. Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death. The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way: but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.”
The room is silent. Not even babies dare to peep. I don’t like the way Preacher Frye’s eyes linger on you.
“From the Book of Lamentations: ‘Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.’”
From where I sit
I see only your back. Even so, I see you stiffen.
“Brothers and sisters, we had in our midst a deceiver, a wine-bibber, a man who dabbled in destruction. We believed, years ago, he had gone to his Maker to reap what he had sown.”
Oh, Lucas. Go home quickly.
“But he lay hidden away all these years, doing who knows what manner of mischief. Once he was rich, but did his riches profit him in the day of wrath? He appeared at the battle, and as the Scripture says, the wicked fell by his own wickedness. His perverseness has destroyed him. Be not misled into calling this man a hero.”
I am sick for you; I fear I will be physically sick for you.
“Thus saith the Preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes, ‘For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.’”
A late entrant opens the rear door, and a chill wind curls around the chapel. I feel it sharply on my sweating face. It is only Goody Pruett.
“Have we not found the answer to so many of our questions? Has the Lord not revealed to us the evil that has vexed us all these years? Thefts. Torments. Young lives taken. Altered forever.” Preacher Frye’s eyes rest on me. “There are no secrets in the eyes of God. He shouts the deeds of sinful men from the rooftops.
“Now, some among you will say, ‘Yes, Preacher Frye, but didn’t that man Ezra Whiting come and win the war for us? So it would seem. But listen, and I’ll tell you the word of the Lord on the subject.
“The Psalmist said it: ‘Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered thee in the secret place of thunder: I proved thee at the waters of Meribah.’”
He slaps the open pages of the large church Bible.
“Women and families, were we not praying for deliverance? Men of Roswell Station, was it not a place of thunder? Was not the river our own ‘waters of Meribah’? Were we not tested and proved there to see if our faith would hold?
