Patience & Sarah

by Isabel Miller

  He’d never talked like that before, that backwards mean way. He even took a crack at Potiphar with the whip I’d always taken to be just an ornament. Potiphar was so surprised he looked around.

  “Parson, don’t be riled,” I said. “I can’t help it.”

  “Yes you can. You could help it very easily. You could consider that I might be telling you the truth. This is a common natural thing. Men love each other, Sam.”

  “Stop calling me Sam. I’m Sarah.”

  Chapter Four

  I swear Parson was surprised, even if he did claim not. He stared so before he started laughing, about how you laugh when you drop something on your foot.

  “Did you really take me in, for one single minute?” he said. “Didn’t I know? Somehow? Of course I must have. It’s so easy to see.”

  I said, “Maybe it’s why you – had feeling?”

  “No, no,” he said, like brushing off a skeeter. I was used to having him give a little thought to what I said. And even if I didn’t want him pestering me, it took me down some to think it would be plumb simple for him not to.

  I said, “Maybe you won’t want me around now.”

  “My dear – girl! Do you think I feel no responsibility towards you after taking you a hundred miles out of your way?”

  “Well, don’t worry about that. I don’t regret. It’s just that we might not be easy together, now.”

  “I feel completely comfortable. More so than before,” Parson said. It seemed to be true, and I mostly wanted it to be. How could he care for me as a woman when he already had a wife? So we stayed on our way together.

  But differences came creeping in, like Parson started helping with the book boxes and he never said another cuss word in my hearing, and I think a little at a time he stopped educating me. I mean, he seemed to stop saying whatever came into his head. There’d be little waits, it seemed to me, while he thought out what it was fitting or useful for a woman to know. He didn’t leave me alone nights if there looked to be a fight coming up.

  I thought, well, good and bad’ve come out of this. I liked the extra care and company he gave me, but then I began to see that he wasn’t getting the good of his summer if he didn’t feel free to have a dram and talk wherever he went, whenever he felt like it. I found that it’s worse than lonesome to be with somebody that would rather be someplace else, even when he keeps still about it and acts kind. I found that all the changes were bad. Not one was good.

  I’m not faulting Parson nor blaming myself either. I’m just trying to tell how it went. You wouldn’t think just a word could change a whole friendship like that. I didn’t get weak and gal-ish. Nothing happened but a word. But we couldn’t fix it, and I knew I had to leave Parson. I knew he would never ask me to, and that I could take advantage of his kind heart for a long time, but I had my pride and my own life to make.

  Summer being over, and Genesee further away than before, I decided I had to stay with him to New-York and work the winter there and hope to get started off early the next spring. I remember steering Potiphar along the Boston Post Road, along the Connecticut shore heading west for New-York, and making the plan while Parson slept. There’d be lots a boy could do in a city like that. Deliver wood, tend horses, carry messages. I didn’t worry I might have to turn to Parson and bother him in his home. I knew I wouldn’t.

  I wonder if it was how Potiphar perked up because he knew he was going home, that put it on my mind how my home was off that way too. Every day took us closer, and I got nervous, afraid what I might do, because I was so excited. I said a little of it to Parson, because it was so much on my mind, and he told me a story about a sea captain that had his sailors stuff their ears with wax and tie him to the mast so he could liten to the marimaids without doing what they told him to. They wanted him to run his ship on the rocks.

  I said that was it all right, that was just how I felt, just like that captain. “I sure wish you’d tie me to the whipple tree or lock the van door on me or something,” I said. Because I wouldn’t be able to leave home again as ignorant and hopeful as I was the first time, and there was the whole misery of Patience and how she didn’t mean what I did or feel what I did or else she could never’ve said what she did at the end.

  I didn’t tell Parson much about Patience. I just said there was somebody there. I lost her for telling Rachel, and I was scared to tell again, even somebody that didn’t know her.

  Either Parson didn’t take me serious, or he halfway wanted me to go. Or maybe he thought I’d calm down once we crossed the Hooestennuc and it looked like I’d stay. I thought my throat would break when we crossed that river, but we bedded down for the night the same as always and next morning pushed on.

  And just west of Stratford I left Potiphar in charge of himself, because I knew a stop would wake up Parson, and I got my clothes and gear out of the van, and wrote on my slate, “Gone home,” and looked at Parson asleep and felt sad. I went around and stopped Potiphar and weighted his lines with a rock, and gave his fine big round rump a pat.

  Parson, as I kind of knew he would be, was looking out the window by then. He rapped so I went around back to the door. He opened it. “I’m going home,” I said.

  “So I see. But without goodbye?”

  “I just can’t hardly stand goodbyes.”

  “How far will you be by dark?”

  “All the way, if I step along.”

  “I wonder if I should take you.”

  “Potiphar wouldn’t stand for that, smelling home like he does. I’ll be just fine.”

  “I’ll give you some food at least,” he said.

  I waited in the doorway with my back to him, listening to him dig around.

  When he came back he roughed my hair and said, “Here’s some dinner. And here’s the number of my house. And here’s something to remember me by.” It was the book he’d been hearing me read from, Garvey’s Speller and Reader. It gave me tears in my eyes, but just eyes – not enough to run down.

  “I’ll never see your like again,” I said.

  He said, “You know, I won’t see your like, either.” I think he just then knew that.

  I stuffed his gifts inside my shirt and started back along the road. I needed the river to guide myself home.

  Inland from the Sound there’d been hard frosts. The leaves had all turned bright, so pretty they made me sad. The air smelled cidery from windfall apples. I didn’t know where to turn my thoughts to get away from sadness and worry and guilt. Remembering Parson had its drawbacks just then, with parting so new. Thinking ahead to what Pa’d say about me coming back after the corn was cut and shocked, the year’s field work all but done, was bad too. Worst was the thought of Patience, but she’s what I mostly thought of, and the kiss she might give me, or might not. One of my feet knew she’d kiss me, and the other was sick because it knew she wouldn’t. I had no opinion of my own. All I knew was how dry my mouth was.

  Chapter Five

  I ached to go right straight to Patience, not go home first at all, but I was dirty from the day on the road, and my mouth tasted gluey from worrying and hoping all day, not fit to kiss. I didn’t dare make any more mistakes about Patience. She cared what people thought, and what would people think of a boy-girl that showed up scared and dusty at twilight like the soldier tired of war’s alarms? So I took myself in hand and went home.

  The dogs heard me and trotted out meaning business, but then they knew me and started yelping and jumping on me and slobbering all over me and running in circles. Near knocked me down, but they made me feel better. Then out came my folks, not so spry as the dogs but in the same spirit. They hugged me, all that could, and hugged each other when there wasn’t hugging room left on me and called my name and laughed and cried. I was welcome. I had a place, just like Pa’d said.

  We went inside. They’d been at supper. Rachel filled a plate for me. I played I didn’t see her take from others to do it. They wanted to give me something, so I couldn’t make a fuss. The food seem
ed odd, without the extra leaves and things Parson always put in them, just boiled and salted.

  I couldn’t get over how small and dark and poor the house was, and how maybe it was up to me to make it better. Maybe I’d have to stay my whole life here, doing my part for them.

  Their voices sounded odd. They said mine did. They wanted to hear everything. Who was this Daniel Peel that wrote to them? I talked and talked, because they expected me to. They knew me to be a talker, and I think I still was, but not with them. I mean, not natural like before. Because now I had secrets from them. Like, Pa said, “Did you let on you’re a gal?” and I said – “No.”

  “I’m not plain thankful to that man,” Pa said. “Without him you’d’ve been back sooner. I’d’ve never let you go except I figured you’d be right back. Now you think it’s easy on the road. You didn’t learn a thing.”

  “I learned to read, Pa. And I can teach you all. Parson gave me a book.”

  “Learn to read and you want books,” Pa said. “One more fool thing to want and not get. I won’t have it.” His face was so mulish I quit for then. I was too tired to explain to him that he was perishing in darkness.

  I went up to bed. Rachel came too. It was her first chance at me alone. She bundled up against me. I let her. I liked it. I found I didn’t hold it against her anymore, what she’d done. But all the same I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

  I didn’t ask for news of Patience, but Rachel gave it anyhow, what she had. “Patience White kept school summer term,” she said. I hid that I was interested, but Rachel’s head was on my heart, which thumped. “When that letter come, from Daniel Peel, I took and showed it to her.”

  “Is she who read it to you?”

  “No. Pa got somebody in town. Afterwards I took it.”

  I didn’t ask how Patience was, was she glad for news of me, was she healthy, was she happy? (Oh, let her not be happy till it’s me that makes me her be!)

  Rachel said, “Did you find someone else to care for, on the road?”

  “Parson. I care for Parson,” I said.

  “But he’s married,” Rachel said.

  “I can’t help that,” I said, chokey.

  I don’t know why people think I can’t be sly. They think I’m simple like a white plate, but how was that for sly?

  That chokiness made Rachel fancy a whole tale, of me caring more and more for Parson but trapped in my lie of being a boy, kept from speaking, suffering so much I finally had to leave him. I just laid there holding her and letting her tell it, and letting my thoughts go to Patience so Rachel would think the thump in my heart was for Parson.

  “See, all you needed was the right kind of a man,” Rachel said. “You was always a woman at heart.”

  “Too much,” I said. Oh, sly.

  “That with Patience White was just her being the first outside one to show you kindess.”

  “There was Simon,” I said, to sound honest to a fault. Simon was a young man that stopped for food at our place on his way up the valley, and took a liking to me and wanted me to marry him and go along. I thought some of doing it, because I liked him, but as soon as he kissed me I knew I couldn’t live a life where that happened all the time.

  “Simon wasn’t much,” Rachel said.

  “No.”

  Rachel said, “Patience White – ” I thought of Simon to slow my heart down “ – she said to let her know anything we heard from you. She said she was sorry the two of you’d had differences. Did you?”

  “Oh, not to speak of. I expect I better get over to see her one of these days,” I said, offhand, thinking of Simon.

  With everybody so glad to see me, I maybe could’ve loafed a few days, but I rolled myself out next morning with the rest of them, and started three days of hauling in corn. I wanted to do my part so I could feel free Sunday afternoon to go to Patience. There was no use going sooner, knowing she’d be too bound up in family work to see me. Fall’s when woman’s work is heaviest, with all the winter food to lay by.

  I thought and thought how Sunday I’d borrow a dress off Ma and cover my cropped head in a bonnet and speak lady-like. All told, do nothing to make Patience ashamed of me. I thought up good topics to speak on, such as what the ladies in Massachusetts wore – women talk. I thought how if Pa said something against going, I’d just look surprised and say, “Why, I got nothing against her,” and if he went on from there I’d say, “Oh, that! That was nothing.” And if he beat me again to keep me from her, I’d try one of the throws Parson taught me.

  By Saturday afternoon I’d got myself into a fine state with all the figuring. I was in the field with my sister Mary. She was driving the cart and I was heaving corn up onto it. She was coming along all right as a boy, but we still gave her the easiest jobs.

  I had sweat in my eyes, but Mary could see fine and was higher up, so she was the first to notice Patience coming across the field to us. Mary said, “Who’s that with the girls?” Even while I wiped my eyes, I somehow knew, and then I saw the sun on that bright fox hair, and that good little busy step, and my sisters all pushing to be the ones to hold her hands.

  I lit off towards her as fast as I could run, which was pretty fast, but then as I got nearer I remembered how I had bare feet and a sweaty shirt so my running dwindled off and I stopped and stood there looking at her.

  “Yo, Sarah!” she called. I would’ve answered but I couldn’t.

  “We’ve got Miss White, Miss White!” my sisters kept yelling. All I wanted to do was fall on my knees.

  Then she was so close I could see her freckles. “I just heard that you’re back,” she said. The girls still had both her hands so there was none for me.

  I swallowed and nodded. It was like being with Parson hadn’t taught me a thing about not being a bumpkin.

  She said, “I’m glad you’re home. Will you come by my place tomorrow?”

  I nodded.

  “Can we come?” my sisters said. “Can we come?”

  “No, babies. Not this time,” Patience said.

  They felt the iron schoolmarm under all her sweetness and said no more.

  Patience said, “I can’t stay. I left a hundred things undone. I just had to say I’m glad you’re back. Come after noon. I’ll be at Meeting in the morning. If I’m not home yet when you get there, go on inside.”

  I walked to the road with her, pushed entirely away from her by my sisters of course, and yet I felt peacefuller than I would’ve expected to. I didn’t need to touch her if I knew I was welcome.

  Sunday noon, decked out according to my plan, I started for Patience’s place. Nobody tried to stop me or go along. Maybe Rachel’d explained that I was suffering over Parson, or maybe Pa’d decided that what’s not flattered by notice will go away. I don’t know. I never asked and they never said.

  I tried to walk slow, because Patience wouldn’t be home yet anyhow, but naturally I just tore along. I go there. Her house seemed different, smallish and plain, not scarey. That hired man, Tobe, called off the dogs and said, “Go on along in. She said to look for you.” Parson would’ve said, “Thank you,” so I did too.

  I went on inside to wait for Patience. It got me by the throat to see the bench and the table and like that. I came very near to kissing the bench, but I didn’t want to let myself out of hand in case Patience just wanted to be ordinary friends. I would be anything she wanted, even stay away if, God forbid, she wanted that. And I wouldn’t kiss her bench or sniff at her clothes or hug her pillow until she gave some sign to let me.

  I sat at the table where I could look out the window. I kept the bonnet on so she’d see I’d made a good appearance for Tobe. It would’ve looked good to be found reading, but I also wanted to show that I could be trusted in a house not to go looking for books where I hadn’t been asked to. It’s likely I couldn’t’ve kept my eyes on words anyhow, with the yard to watch for her coming.

  After almost longer than I could stand, which maybe wasn’t really long at all, she was th
ere, jumping down before the horses stopped, and I breathed careful and looked at the door but didn’t stand up.

  She came in. “You’re here,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She hung her bonnet and cloak on the pegs. So slow. And asked for my bonnet and cloak and took them without looking at me or touching me and hung them slow too. She asked did I want tea? cider?

  “No, nothing,” I said to lose no more time.

  But she said, “Cider for me, I think,” and she took a pitcher to the cellar and took so long to come back I could’ve groaned. What made her jump down before the horses stopped? Thirsty?

  At last she sat across the table from me, with her hands on the pitcher. I felt her looking at me. I raised my eyes to find out my fate.She had no smile for me. I was afraid.

  I looked on up to her eyes and held there steady, thinking pretty soon she’d look away, and then when I knew she wouldn’t the silver thread our eyes were joined by began to hum like far-off bees. I felt my soul melt and flow out along it. I felt my heart melt and drip off my fingertips.

  I am trying to tell exactly true.

  “Do you forgive me?” she whispered.

  “Yes.” I wanted to say more. I couldn’t, but it was enough.

  We stayed that way a time that can’t be said the ordinary way. One minute – twenty minutes – a thousand years – I don’t know.

  I felt her take my hand. I heard her say, “Come on,” and I stood up ready to go anywhere, to her bed or off a cliff or into the fire, anywhere she took me. My eyes were blurry and blind. Maybe she was sending me home. I stumbled along where she led me, and stopped because I bumped something. It was Patience herself, turned to me, arms open to hold me, face up to be kissed, but I couldn’t kiss her until my feeling got less. I stood there just holding her, until time got ordinary and earthly things got possible, like kisses and smiles and words.

  I held her chin in my hand and moved her face to make her mouth be where I wanted it, and bent my head down. She is exactly the right height to bend to, and the right plumpness to fill my arm. I could’ve stood kissing her there for the rest of my life, but my knees went weak and I had to look around for a place to go. The closest place was the floor, but I couldn’t put her where she might not be comfortable. I just wouldn’t lose being pressed front to front by taking her to the bench.