Stone Mirrors

by Jeannine Atkins

  I’ll ever have to go to school, at least one like this.

  If something happens to Thomas,

  I’ll be all alone and must earn a living.

  Maybe you’ll see him in Boston.

  Even if the regiment hasn’t left Massachusetts yet,

  a soldier can’t leave the army

  just because a girl wants to hold his hand.

  I need to graduate. Teaching is the only way to rise.

  You should teach, too.

  You know I hate classrooms.

  They must be different if you stand at the front.

  Promise me you won’t clean kitchens.

  Don’t tell me what to do. Edmonia can’t say No

  enough. She’ll practice the word the way she memorizes

  the rules of perspective. Her neck aches,

  the way it had when waiting for the judge to speak.

  I have to disappear. That’s what could happen

  to girls behind mops and brooms.

  I suppose this is a chance to leave the past behind you.

  My past is all people see. And it’s not over.

  They only admitted there wasn’t proof to jail me.

  I have to show everyone I’m innocent.

  How can you do that?

  I don’t know. Or even remember exactly

  what was said, who poured spices in the cider.

  It wasn’t right that Hagar had to leave.

  She did nothing wrong. What happened to her?

  Didn’t I tell you? She found a safe place.

  You’re lying.

  The good book doesn’t say everything.

  But Hagar made a new home.

  She was in the desert,

  but an angel brought her a cup of water.

  Did she ever stop being angry?

  Water wasn’t enough.

  Was she ever happy?

  You will be, Edmonia.

  No one knows. She runs her hand

  over her hair, dark, curling like smoke.

  The Train

  At the depot, Ruth steps forward, arms

  stretched out with a carpetbag.

  Edmonia can’t hear her words past the window,

  pasted shut with ice and grime.

  The train speeds ahead by fields and words

  scattered like stones around tracks she can’t see.

  She left behind even that packed carpetbag,

  afraid someone might accuse her of stealing

  something she kept on her lap or behind her feet.

  She carries only bread and water.

  With all Ruth’s talk about where she’s going,

  Edmonia never asked where she came from.

  What was she was going to tell that day

  she asked Edmonia to listen? What chance was missed?

  The unspoken words fit like tight sleeves

  Edmonia can’t shrug off, even as she tells herself

  they don’t matter. She won’t see Ruth again.

  The locomotive shears past ancient stones,

  hemlocks, swamp oaks, gooseberries, and milkweed.

  Red birds fly to escape the shriek of skidding wheels.

  Silently, she chants, Faster, faster,

  wanting to move more swiftly than memory

  or manitous who won’t stay under branches, stones,

  or skin, but shift shape or disappear like shadows.

  She has only the future now, a place her aunts

  knew was necessary but dangerous,

  as they stitched a slow way forward with thin thread,

  making blankets and baskets too small to be used.

  No one can steam straight ahead like the train,

  for time buckles. The past insists on a chase.

  Will she ever again see her aunts hunching over baskets?

  Reeds bend when they’re damp, so her aunts lifted them

  to their mouths, breathing in life. They held birchbark

  over flames, just close enough for it to soften, then curved

  it into small canoes they spread on blankets.

  Tourists offered a few coins for swift

  journeys to places where they’d never live.

  The train rattles on, unsteady as cheers

  that can turn in an instant to threats.

  Edmonia’s arms ache as if pulling back the string

  of a bow with no arrow to shoot forward.

  She won’t look back through glass and smoke

  to snowy woods where no boy will take her hand

  in a promise or a lie. She won’t ever again stand

  before a judge with the power to put her behind bars.

  She won’t find herself alone in a dark field.

  She won’t be like her aunts being chased out of the forests

  or her father going north in the night

  or Hagar heading into the wilderness.

  She means to leave behind everything but the sky.

  No place is safe. Danger is everywhere.

  She is the clatter and drum on train tracks,

  certain she’s going the wrong way

  and that she can’t turn back.

  Boston, Massachusetts

  1863–1865

  The Good House

  Checkered curtains catch dust and sunlight,

  keep the world from fading the tablecloth.

  In the kitchen, Edmonia presses dough into a rough

  circle, patches a tear, flutes the edges, wonders

  if Mrs. Child scrubs the sink and sweeps floors

  the way her aunts burned cedar branches

  to keep their home safe. Could a row of jars

  capturing currant jelly do the same?

  Don’t roll the pin more than three times

  or the crust will turn coarse, Mrs. Child warns.

  Before filling the pail for the pig,

  salvage scraps good enough for the grease pot.

  And make sure nothing’s in the grease pot

  that’s fit for the table.

  Edmonia slides three pies in the oven,

  two for needy neighbors, feels a surge of heat

  before shutting the iron door. She must

  make a home here where every scrap

  of wool is turned into mittens or muffs,

  every fallen feather fixed into a duster.

  No one must mention how the basement can flood.

  The pump may break, the well go dry,

  the oven explode. Rats nest in rags under the sink.

  The spitting iron scorches a shirt.

  A teacup cracks, and glue

  scores a line through a painted rose.

  Rules

  Edmonia tosses dust and ashes in buckets

  she tucks behind the kitchen door. Every day

  she sweeps away signs that anyone was here.

  Mrs. Child looks up from the suspenders

  she knits for soldiers. My back doesn’t bend

  the way it did when I was young. I’m thankful

  to have help, but now that you’ve been here a month,

  I should point out that Mr. Child and I don’t make

  so much work that we can’t spare you part of each day.

  You’d be wise to earn something to put aside.

  Girls your age think about little but weddings,

  but every young lady should be prepared

  to earn her own way. No one can tell what may happen.

  I know. Memory traps and snares words

  spoken over teacups, and warns

  about the future she means to keep small,

  like a stone in her hands.

  I married a respected lawyer, but he takes only

  virtuous clients, who often don’t have a dime to pay him.

  I’m grateful I can write books and spin rhymes. But

  we were talking about you. Mrs. Child’s knitting needles

  clatter. Perhaps you could teach girls and boys their ABCs.

 
No one would trust me with their children.

  Goodness, no one listens to old stories.

  But perhaps you could work with dear Mrs. Bannister

  who tends to the hair of distinguished colored women.

  Her husband is quite an accomplished painter.

  A colored man is an artist?

  The girl Edmonia used to be catches

  the scents of clay, plaster, and paint.

  I believe he even makes a living at it, with the help

  of his hardworking wife. A good Christian woman.

  I might persuade her to take you on as an apprentice.

  Maybe I could be a painter.

  Mrs. Child clears her throat. Of course there should

  be more than one colored artist, and why not women,

  too, though I’m sure I’d be scolded for saying so.

  But I’m afraid your future is uncertain enough.

  Edmonia nods good-bye to the girl who mixed paints.

  Back when I wove mats and beaded belts,

  my aunts said I had clever hands and eyes.

  In Oberlin, we stitched blue shirts for soldiers.

  You can sew? Mrs. Child’s face brightens.

  It’s a tragedy how many girls today are brought up

  without learning how to use a needle.

  I know ladies with dresses to repair.

  It’s important to be useful.

  Your work needn’t be glamorous. Useful rarely is.

  The Art of Disappearance

  Edmonia fetches clothes to be mended

  from brick houses with little land between.

  She carries baskets past ladies who are tight-belted,

  buckled, buttoned, their necks straight below hats

  burdened with flowers cut from cloth

  and feathers taken from birds they can’t name.

  Boys toss balls. Girls run behind sticks and hoops.

  Boston’s curving streets aren’t courtrooms.

  Here Edmonia doesn’t have to shove past staring,

  but her story still follows her like a fox.

  She returns to the parlor to stab a needle

  through cloth, shorten sleeves, widen waistbands.

  The bottoms of fashionably full gowns

  take entire mornings to hem.

  Memories won’t lie still, but stun, startle, dart

  like her hand moving up and down, as if casting

  a spell to hide the girl who holds a needle,

  to make a world small as her stitches,

  the needle’s brittle point

  the blades of scissors

  a wrist’s soft skin

  coiled red thread.

  Stains

  Edmonia sews while Mrs. Child writes recipes

  for pickles and puddings, directions for crocheting

  penwipers and purses, remedies for stomachaches:

  Steep tea in boiling milk and sprinkle in nutmeg.

  She narrates ways to clean spots on gloves,

  vanquish bedbugs, raise bees and silkworms,

  and keep girls from turning vain. How close

  to invisible can a girl get before she disappears?

  Mrs. Child writes a letter to the president, then wipes

  the steel nib of her pen and looks at Edmonia.

  God’s war shouldn’t make us forget other injustices.

  My first book was a romance between

  a white woman and a Pequot Indian. I was charmed

  by Mr. Longfellow’s poem about Hiawatha.

  She takes a breath. I heard your mother comes from

  people I’ve long admired. Can you tell me

  about her and how you grew up?

  She leans slightly forward

  as Edmonia wishes she leaned toward Ruth,

  back when Ruth asked her to listen.

  Plain interest unlocks the cage inside,

  but she doesn’t know where to begin.

  Mrs. Child takes up her pen again, using

  her third-best stationery now. She nibbles pie

  left from breakfast, seals and stacks envelopes.

  She says, I’m asking friends to send coins to a hardworking

  but needy widow. Remember there’s always someone worse

  off than you are. She offers a scrap of crust to the cat,

  who earns room and board hunting mice.

  I don’t mean to pry, but is there anyone who waits

  for your letters? Or prays for you?

  Edmonia hears a train whistle,

  an echo of wheels scraping tracks,

  sees smoke and an iced-over window

  between her and Ruth holding out her arms.

  There’s no one, she says. She won’t pen a letter

  until she’s certain of her address and how to sign it.

  Sincerely is not a word she uses. Neither is Love.

  Small

  Everything she left, the wisps of smoke curling

  from the stove, stinging her eyes, the stench of ashes,

  is beautiful. She couldn’t see that the day

  she asked Ruth to burn her old moccasins.

  Could she disappear, like those deerskin shoes

  or the canoes and bark houses her aunts shaped into toys

  to barter to people who wanted a past

  fit for children’s eyes?

  Delivery

  Edmonia folds mended clothes into a wicker basket,

  winds a shawl over her shoulders, and tugs on her mittens.

  She walks past bookshops, taverns, walls plastered

  with handbills for lost dogs or lectures on Nature and Faith.

  Here trees grow in rows, not from seeds snagged

  in the paws or tails of foxes, dropped by birds, swept by rain.

  All were planted by human design, in a city

  determined as she is to forget what came before.

  A wrought iron fence corrals elm and beech trees

  on the Common, where men scoop hot chestnuts

  into paper cones. An organ grinder tosses peanuts to a monkey

  wearing a red cap. Soldiers in blue jackets and trousers muster,

  practicing marching in step, firing muskets,

  swinging bayonets, and running like the devil.

  A thin man with an empty sleeve pinned up

  uses his one hand to hold out a Union Army cap for coins.

  People say the veteran can feel the arm he lost.

  She’s glad to be outside, even if not in the woods.

  Thoughts come from trees as much as books,

  whirl into the shapes of clouds. She watches

  strangers. Mouths can lie. Eyes can hide.

  But she has learned to read backs.

  She passes shops carved into slopes so she can look down

  into windows displaying rows of currant cakes, gingerbread,

  red-and-white peppermints, gloves, lace-edged parasols,

  and rows of gold rings set with garnets and jade,

  strings of pearls, looped like the sun’s path. She climbs

  a street of brick townhouses on Beacon Hill.

  Not one dried leaf appears on potted geraniums behind sparkling

  windows. Edmonia considers that a seamstress isn’t a servant,

  but she’s not a guest either. She chooses the back steps.

  A girl with skin the same shade of brown as hers

  opens the door and takes the folded clothing.

  She offers Edmonia a peek into the parlor that smells

  of lemon balm and beeswax, stale tea, an antique rug.

  She shows off what she dusted: the crystals on a chandelier,

  leather-bound books, portraits of grim ancestors,

  a white bust atop a shiny black piano.

  Edmonia hurries out. The basket she brought,

  now empty, feels heavy with the girl’s pride

  in what she’ll never own, not even the shine she created.

  Still


  Sleet starts to fall as she heads down Joy Street,

  where children choose cold over crowded homes.

  Girls jump rope, rock rag dolls.

  Boys shoot marbles, chase dogs.

  A woman with a baby on her hip,

  her dress loosely tied around her ankles

  to keep it from blowing in a delirium of wind,

  pulls snapping shirts off a clothesline.

  A ball skids across the street.

  Checking for horses and wagons,

  Edmonia kicks it back. A boy catches the ball,

  then throws it to a friend without a nod to her.

  She tucks her chin, insists there’s no need

  for the ordinary life that can’t be hers.

  She climbs a hill past the old burying ground,

  where slate stones are carved

  with skulls, hourglasses, and angels.

  A man touches her arm. Wings press her chest.

  A beak nips her throat. She pulls away,

  skids through a puddle, meaning to escape

  Memory, who creeps through the dark,

  but pounces in broad daylight, too.

  Her breath turns choppy as a river under a cold wind.

  She ducks under brown birds who dart and swoop

  for broken bread in the shapes of small fists.

  Sleet melts in their small footprints

  and on the dark metal of a larger-than-life

  figure with a high forehead. The statue

  is shown in a coat and vest pulled over

  a plump belly and breeches of an earlier era.

  She’s seen busts of famous men, but never a statue

  of a whole person. Alone on a pedestal, he can’t break.

  She runs her palms over the cold

  curves of his boot. She must forever be content

  with metal and not skin. Tears are stronger

  than her effort to hold them back. She can’t

  ever again gaze into the eyes of an uncaged deer or a boy.

  But perhaps she was wrong to wish

  for smallness. Memory can find her anywhere.

  Chance

  Edmonia carries in logs for the woodstove,

  then tells Mrs. Child some of what she saw.

  Ah, that statue of Benjamin Franklin? He was right:

  “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

  Though I think these days money could have been better

  spent feeding the hungry than on decorations for a park.

  Edmonia runs her hands over books she dusted

  but never opened, framed tintypes of people