“Do you? I don’t. I’m glad I lived so that I might hold you to it.”
I couldn’t help myself. “I’m glad you lived too,” I said.
“I also wanted you to meet me here tonight so that I could thank you properly in person.”
“For?”
“My life.”
This was a different Kit now than the Kit I had known before he fell ill. I did not know what to make of this Kit, what to say to this Kit.
He solved the problem for me.
“You may go now,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I have achieved my goal for the night, and I do not want to keep you so long that you walk into a household already risen to greet the day. I don’t want you to get in trouble. You may go now.”
• Nineteen •
I was so tired the next morning at breakfast, I kept drooping over my eggs.
“And here I thought,” my father said, “the extra hours of sleep last night would have left you refreshed this morning, but I see now you are even worse. Are you sure you are not unwell?”
I was saved from answering, which would no doubt have involved me uttering a lie, by the sight of a servant entering with a letter on a tray.
“What’s this?” my father asked, slitting the envelope open with the knife he’d been about to use to butter his toast.
His eyes rapidly scanned down the page.
“Oh, no!” he said. “Martha has injured her leg!”
“How bad is it?” Mother asked, concern furrowing her pretty brow.
I roused myself enough to steal a glance at Aunt Helen. I cannot say she looked distressed over Aunt Martha’s misfortune.
“Well,” my father said, “she assures us most explicitly that she is not going to die, but she does add that being cooped up with our parents even more than usual is nearly driving her mad.”
“Oh, how awful,” Mother said, hastily adding, “not being with your parents, of course—but I do think that someone who likes to get out and about as much as Martha does must be very vexed by this turn of affairs. Perhaps she can come stay with us for a while?”
I stole another glance at Aunt Helen. Now she did look distressed over Aunt Martha’s misfortune.
“That is very kind of you, dear,” my father said, “but Martha already suggests and then immediately rejects such a solution in her letter. Apparently, she feels that such a long carriage drive might do further damage to the leg.”
“Then we must go to her!” Mother said.
Mother may have been upset at one point about Aunt Martha’s machinations concerning Aunt Helen, but her natural instinct was one of forgiveness, and she hated to see anyone hurt.
But my father had his work to do and everyone agreed that I looked too tired to undertake the journey. As for Aunt Helen, well, she did not offer, nor did anybody ask.
And so it was agreed that Mother would go alone. Within the hour she was packed up, everyone had been kissed, and she was gone.
No sooner did the door close on her back than it occurred to me how impossibly empty the house felt without her. True, she was often gone in the day visiting with friends and was just as frequently out in the evening, fulfilling some sort of social obligation. But it had never been like this. It had never been her going away for an entire night, or more.
The minute she was gone, I longed for her return, shivered at the sudden unwelcome thought of what the house would be like if we were one day to find ourselves permanently without her.
“You are cold,” Aunt Helen observed, seeing me shiver. “Why don’t you come into the parlor with me and warm yourself by the fire?”
“No,” I said, “I am not cold. I am merely still so very tired.” I yawned. “I think I will go lie down. Perhaps a nap will refresh me.”
. . . . .
Still in my clothes, I slept through lunch and no one woke me, slept through tea and no one woke me, slept through dinner and no one woke me.
When I at last opened my eyes it was to a dark and silent house. Somehow, I had managed to get my natural clock confused, exchanging what should have by all rights been day for evening.
I shivered in the dark, recalling the last dream I had had. In it, I was buried alive. No one knew where I was and the ceiling of earth above me kept inching down, ever closer to my face, the walls tightening as well. On some level I must have known that the dream stemmed from my secret meeting with Kit the night before—perhaps guilt was playing a trick with my brain?—but it is hard to rein in terror and hold tight to reason when you wake in your stale clothes in the dark, confused about the time or even what day it is.
Despite my age, I wanted my mother.
Halfway up the stairs to the third story, however, I remembered that she was not at home. And yet I continued on to her door, thinking that for once my father would have done just as well. There had been times, although rare, during my younger childhood when he had soothed me over some wound, physical or emotional. If he had done so before, he could do so again.
But when I tapped softly at his door, it swung open because it had been left ajar. Peering inside, whispering his name, there was no answer. I stepped into the room. There was no one there.
He must not be able to sleep without Mother here, just as my sleep has now been disturbed, I thought. He must have gone downstairs for a drink or to work, perhaps both.
I would not disturb him in either case, knowing that disturbance from me now would be unwelcome. But I did still feel the need for comforting, did feel the need to have human arms around me.
Shutting my parents’ door, I tiptoed down the hall to Aunt Helen’s room. This door was shut. But before I could tap softly, I heard her from within. She was making moans, groans unlike anything I had heard a human being make before. I didn’t know what I was hearing.
Was she in pain?
And yet somehow, it did not sound like pain.
I thought to call out to her, see if she was all right, but some instinct held me back.
I hoped Mother would be home in the morning.
• Twenty •
My body had been changing.
I had known this would happen to me one day, hadn’t I? Surely I had known, if nothing came to kill me first, that I would inevitably complete the transformation from girl into woman?
And yet, it had always seemed such a long way off.
And yet, now it was here.
Over the past year or so, hair had begun to sprout, slowly, under my arms, on my legs, even between my legs in that place I had no name for. I tried to regard these changes scientifically, but I could not help but think that were I a blonde like Aunt Helen and Mother, these changes would not seem so shocking. As it was, with my black hair, each new strand that erupted, however short, created a stark distinction against my pale skin. Then, too, the flesh in my breast area had grown yet larger as well. The whole—the hair and the flesh—made me feel as though I were a tree in the garden that had looked the same all its life, barren, and yet was now through some alchemy transforming itself into an entirely different and exotic tree.
I had even grown a little taller.
No one in my home hardly ever remarked on these changes, and that made me feel odder still. My father said nothing at all, as though it were not happening, while Mother merely commented that soon we would need to have Mrs. Wiggins come to remeasure me for new clothes.
My parents and Aunt Helen were entertaining the Carsons and the Williamses. Herbert Dean, while having been given no further encouragement by Aunt Helen, was in attendance. The Tylers, sadly, were not. Christmas was fast approaching and Mrs. Tyler had insisted on the family going to visit her parents before spending some time by the sea. It might have been cold out, but she thought the air would do Kit’s body good after his bout with typhoid.
Normally, I would have enjoyed staying up late and listening in on the adults, but on this occasion, with Kit gone, no sooner had we finished with the pudding than I began to grow bored w
ith all the talk of books and plays and, on Mr. Carson’s part, money. I did not care what he thought was a good investment, and I certainly had no wish to hear his wife gossip about Mrs. Tyler, which she had begun to do roundly in her usual insidious fashion.
In addition, all through the meal, I had not felt completely well.
“I’m going up to bed now,” I informed Mother, gently and deliberately laying my napkin beside my plate.
. . . . .
I awoke in the middle of the night to a strange cramping sensation in my lower abdomen.
Pushing the sheets down away from my body, half rising, I saw bloodstains on my white gown.
Oh, no! I thought as a strange guilt flooded through me. Have I somehow broken something in myself?
Having already panicked that I’d done myself some harm, I forced sanity to flow back in. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I deduced that it was somehow part and parcel with my changing body: the new hair, the larger breasts. Or at least that is what I tried to tell myself.
It’s a good thing, I told myself as I climbed out of the bed, that I am such a sensible girl. Elsewise, I might think I was bleeding to death.
I suppose I might have stayed in bed until morning, waiting for someone to find me, hoping that whoever found me first could tell me what I was to do about this latest development. But I did not want to wait. I did not think I could get back to sleep just then, not with everything that was happening. Then, too, I worried that if something wasn’t done about it immediately, I really might bleed to death.
Taking up the candle I had lit before falling asleep, I tamped the panic back down again as I ascended the stairs to the third floor in search of help.
My first instinct was to go straight to Mother, but as I raised my hand to knock, I hesitated. If I woke her, surely my father would wake too. I looked down at the bloodstains on my white gown. I did not want my father to see me like this. So instead I proceeded down the hall to Aunt Helen’s room at the very end.
It occurred to me that if I knocked, others might hear me; but that if I didn’t knock and merely walked up to the side of her bed to wake her, I might scare her half to death. So I settled on turning the knob gently and poking my head into the room just enough to whisper, “Aunt Helen?”
“Lucy?” She sat up in bed, looking as beautiful as Mother in the light of the fire she had burning in the grate. “What is the matter?”
I entered the room, closed the door behind me, showed her.
“Oh!” She sounded surprised. “I was sixteen when it first happened to me,” Aunt Helen whispered. “I would have thought that you would have still had another year or two before you for this.”
“I would have thought so too,” I said wryly, having no clue as to what she might be referring. Was she really suggesting that it was the normal course of events for a female to one day find herself bleeding between the legs? In fact, I would have even thought “never.” Then I added, the fear creeping its way back, “Could something that I have, er, done caused this to happen to me?”
“I hardly think so!” She laughed. “Unless by ‘done’ you mean the mere act of growing older.”
At least, I thought, one of us had found something to laugh about in all this.
She must have seen my dismay, for her expression grew concerned.
“Are you frightened?” she asked, rising and sashing a gown around her waist.
“Not frightened,” I said, realizing I wasn’t, certainly not now that I was with her. “But I would like to know what to do.”
Aunt Helen strode swiftly to her wardrobe, removing some items from the drawer. Then, going over to the washbasin, she took a cloth and moistened it with water.
“Remove your gown,” she directed me. “I don’t think you’ll want this one anymore,” she said, taking it from me, tossing it on the fire. “When we’re done here, I’ll go to your room and get you a fresh one.”
Then she got down on her knees and cleaned off the place between my legs. The wet cloth felt soothing against my skin.
“Here,” she said, holding up one of the items she’d removed from her wardrobe. It was a fairly large piece of cotton fabric, about two feet by one foot in measure. The central foot or so, lengthwise, was comprised of a thicker material, terry cloth, and I watched as Aunt Helen folded the whole into thirds. Then she showed me how I was to wear it on my body so that it would catch the flow of blood that would come at regular intervals now at the space of once a month and lasting each time approximately a week.
“That often?” I wondered. “And for that long?” I did not like to complain, but it was a bit much.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Now you are a woman.”
Did she have to point that out to me? Not that I was believing it for a second. Yes, my body was changing. Yes, I was changed. But a woman? Not now. Not yet.
“Wait here,” she said.
Several minutes later, longer than I would have thought it would take her to run down to my room and back up again, she returned with a fresh gown for me, helped me as I slipped it over my head.
“There,” she said.
Then she told me she’d taken it upon herself to wake one of the servants, directing that my bed should be remade with fresh sheets so that I would not have to sleep in soiled ones.
“It should be ready in a few minutes,” she said. Then she put her arms around me, a nice touch. “Or you could stay here with me tonight.”
“I am not scared,” I protested.
“I know,” she said, “I know. Only, sometimes, there are things that happen in life that can make a person feel lonely.”
Suddenly, I knew exactly what she meant. Suddenly, I felt that if I returned to my bed alone right now, after all that had happened on this night, I should feel very lonely indeed.
“Well, if you do not mind … ,” I said.
In answer, she pulled back the sheets on her big bed, held them open for me.
I climbed in and she climbed in after me, banishing the feelings of aloneness that just a moment ago had threatened to creep in.
Aunt Helen put her arm around my shoulders, let me rest my head against her shoulder.
I was tired now.
“This changes everything,” Aunt Helen said to the top of my head.
“It does?” I stifled a yawn.
“Oh, yes. Now you can make babies.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
Then Aunt Helen explained to me the making of babies. She explained it all.
I was not entirely sure I believed her at the time. The very idea of it seemed almost fantastical, filling me with the sense I had sometimes when, presented with certain unusual foods, the thought occurred to me, Now, what ever possessed a human being to think there might be tasteful nourishment in that? But it was certainly a good story.
• Twenty-one •
Christmas had passed, the Tylers were back in their home, and New Year’s Day was fast approaching.
Decorations still adorned our home, although we would be sure to remove them before Twelfth Night was upon us. Wreaths and holly were everywhere, every staircase railing adorned with garland that was in turn decorated with French horns, ribbons, and candles.
The large tree, centerpiece of our downstairs this past week, had been moved up to the ballroom. It still wore its candles, its paper cornucopias filled with treats, its Dresden ornaments that looked like metal but were in fact cardboard painted in silver, gold, and copper, fashioned into the shapes of animals and toy trains. Then there were the wax ornaments in the form of angels, children, animals, and fruit; I suspected the wax children were meant to be charming, but they always unsettled me. Last, there were the few blown-glass balls, my favorites.
The tree had been moved in preparation for the New Year’s Eve party my family was hosting.
It was to be a grand affair. Everyone was invited.
I had on what I thought of as my first truly adult dress: apple green satin with crepe over
it, the trimming minimal. My hair was even done differently. Normally, I wore it down with pins holding it back at the sides so that it wouldn’t fall in my face, but now it had been swept up and there were pins all over my head, making me feel elegant, if something like one of the cushions in Aunt Martha’s sewing basket.
I was already in the ballroom, having left my parents and Aunt Helen behind in the receiving line, when the Tylers walked in.
Kit was more dressed up than I had ever seen him: black superfine dress coat with matching trousers, well cut; patent leather boots; white vest and cravat; he even had a white cambric handkerchief poking out of his pocket, and on his hands were white kid gloves. Kit had always been handsome, I thought now, but nothing like this. Now he was splendor itself.
I wondered, if we played chess right then, if he’d let me beat him.
Mother, at my father’s insistence, had tutored me in the finer points of ball etiquette. Where, normally, if Kit were here on a regular visit I would go to greet him, I now knew that a lady was not supposed to cross a ballroom unattended. So I waited for him to come to me.
Kit gave a slight bow.
Then he looked at the table behind me, picked up a dance card.
“Let me see, Miss Sexton,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “what will be your pleasure this evening? I see there are four sets here—sixteen dances! Will you dance with me the schottische, a polka, the Lancer’s Quad? I know!” He snapped his fingers. “The Last Waltz!”
“Are you insane?” I laughed.
“Possibly.” He set the card back down again. “But it might be fun, you know, to dance.”
“I know how to dance,” I said. “I’ve been taught them all, but it doesn’t mean I think it would be any fun.”
“Ah, well. Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Thirsty?”
“No.”
“Then I suppose we shall just sit down here, like so, and watch the others.”
And that’s what we did, for hours, it seemed. We didn’t talk, as we usually might have done. Too stiff in our new clothes, we barely said a word.
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