Charis in the World of Wonders

by Marly Youmans

  I surveyed her, not quite smiling because I was not sure whether she was joking or serious. Surely that was a singular, strange way to speak of a sister, and a little alarming.

  “I am Mehitabel Holt,” she said. “And nobody minds me at all. My mother hates that I take after my father’s mother, so she mostly ignores me. Except to plot against my choices, that is. And to scold me and Lizzie. She is determined to marry us off.”

  This candor amused me, and I thought that in Mehitabel Holt I might just find a friend, or at least someone who was not eager to condemn me.

  “And you, what are you determined to do?”

  “Mother says we were evidently predestinated by the Lord to be just the sort of irksome, provoking persons who would be trials to her constitution and give her fits,” Mehitabel said. “Me, I want to stay in Andover and have nothing much happen to me. Too much happens to people in this life. I want to be jolly—‘tis very hard to be jolly in this house—and have seven children who have good health and good spirits. And a merry husband, too,” she added. “Preferably someone who will think I am wondrous fair and will let me rule the kitchen without arguing with me, and who will be lively in bed but kind.”

  I laughed out loud at this closure. “Well, that is a great deal to want, but I hope you find your sweet-tempered husband and your seven healthy children and your innocent and peaceable life where no bad things come to pass.”

  Mehitabel fussed with her apron, twisting it in her hands. “Mother also says I am too careless about my words. I did not mean to offend. She told me what happened to your family, and I am very sorry. We have family in Newbury, and I would hate to think that they were murdered and gone.”

  I had not intended to refer to my own situation, but Mehitabel assumed that I did. She plunked herself down on the floorboards and hugged her knees. “Most of them, anyway,” she added softly.

  As if unconnected to me, my hands found a grosgrain ribbon and pulled it back and forth through my fingers. “Oh, I am not—I am not at all offended. I was not contemplating such things. In the late evening when I have no work to do, my mind runs on them, and at night I dream of the dead. But in the day it is otherwise.”

  Mehitabel looked at me uneasily. “Why do you suppose such events are allowed to happen? They are so ghastly.”

  I crossed my arms, suddenly cool beside the slightly raised window, and leaned forward. “The French plot against us. They draw the tribes to them, give them old matchlocks and pleasing toys, make them promises, and talk against us. We give them alien sicknesses. And we possess many of the Indian hunting grounds now. I expect they cannot love us, even when we pay them fairly—but that I do not think we do. Or so my father said, and I have come to believe he was right.”

  Mehitabel gave a little twitch of the shoulders. “All too late now, isn’t it? We cannot go back. We can only go forward. And they are savage in their ways.”

  “The world is what it is, and we are each what we are,” I said. “And we English are so numerous here already.” Again I remembered the young Wabanaki man in the huckleberry bushes, a Mi’kmaq intent on murder, yet who like us had a family and some place where he belonged.

  “But God let the Indians kill your people,” Mehitabel said. She looked up at me with an expression I had come to recognize, her sympathy blended with fear.

  “I do not think so. He is with us always, in all times and all places, but I do not believe my family was destined to be killed. The colony government chose not to defend Falmouth properly. More, human hearts are willful and wayward and can be as angry as fire. The tribes are moved by passion and unrest, just as sometimes we are.”

  My words surprised me. I had voiced my secret thinking to someone barely met, who had plunged into my life without so much as a how-do-you-fare. And I remembered the bright figures I had seen in the sky, the shapes that in my daydreams seemed a joyous glimpse of a three-personed God who did not will our harm. I fancied them as spilling over with gaiety and love as they frisked around a mercy seat of cloud. I imagined that they sorrowed for me as they danced, though they knew some secret that I could not know and so rejoiced.

  “You sound ancient,” Mehitabel said, “but you are years younger than I am.” Elbow on knee, hand on chin, she contemplated me, and there was neither appraisal nor condemnation in that gaze.

  “I grew older in a wink,” I said, putting down the ribbon. “Death and I have been companions ever since. He seeks me in my dreams. He courts me with his black designs. But I am glad to see the faces of those I loved. They come to me also, and I know them and call them by name. The nights are awful and yet a strange comfort.”

  Mehitabel stared at me. Tears collected in her eyes, and a droplet dashed down her cheek.

  Life is trial; is the path of suffering; is the measure and test of us. So I concluded, meditating on the glistening rivulet of that tear.

  I clapped my hands together. “They are gone where I cannot find them or follow, but you are here, and I am here, and life is to be journeyed through to the end. Someday beyond my days, I hope to see them again, face-to-face. So why not be as merry as you wish, when we may have leave to do so?”

  At that, she gave me another smile and, after putting one steadying hand to the floor, sprang to her feet so lightly that she might have been a birdlet. It made me smile in turn, and I thought that perhaps we had each found a friend.

  “You could call me Bel.”

  “Bel,” I said, “a pretty nick off your name. And I like it better than Hetty or Tabby, which I have also heard as shorter names for Mehitabel. I will call you so, and thank you for the favor.”

  The summer days were gone, and there was not so much strength of light for sewing as might have been desired. Goodwife Holt was constantly put upon by her desire to continue the work of stitchery on one hand, and the need to purchase better candles on the other. Being dissatisfied with the light from her store of tallow candles, she laid in several bundles of beeswax candles, though she complained mightily and with vigor on a daily basis, as if she thought I might squander the light if I did not continuously recall her dislike and fear of waste. But she had spent too much coin on imported cloth to risk losing her investment.

  In the end, she decided that I must do the main part of my labor in the day, with tallow candles as needed and meals brought to my room by Bess or John, but that in the evening I could use the precious beeswax candles in order to prepare the work for the morrow. That included the fitting of garments onto my two subjects, a process that was, not surprisingly, perilous when it came to Lizzie Holt, who was as likely to become hornet-angry as to be pleased, and amusing with Bel, who treated the matter of her mother’s desire to hunt down a fine marriage and the making of new clothes for the purpose of luring a husband into an open game bag as a kind of continuing pleasantry and jest. As she said, with a droll look my way, “Goody Holt and I have very different views of what constitutes an agreeable husband.” Bel was a help to me, sitting close by to trim the candle wick, and often putting seams in the garments, though I am afraid that I took entirely too much amusement in her verbal thrusts against her mother. And while I knew her words were not proper, I found a certain satisfaction in them.

  I was glad not to endure the stinking of tallow candles as I stitched in the evening hours, and the work was not unpleasant. My only consistent break was on the Sabbath when we walked to the meetinghouse for services and so spent much of the day separated from signs of toil, hunching in the cold to listen to the young pastor who preached so much of Satan, hell-fire, and sin, or else the elder one, who sometimes rambled but never failed to dwell on the beauty of Christ’s love and mercy. I liked him the better for it, as I had had enough of flames and hell right here on earth and wanted to receive and give mercy as best I could. When I spoke to the young minister between services, after a long diatribe on the subject of “woman, a desirable calamity”—his exposition made livelier by much gaping, whispering, and laughing, a volley of walnuts from the
galleries, and the accidental stabbing of a small child by a careless whittler—he already knew something of my story and appeared to judge that my kin had deserved their fate, for had they not been disposed as the divine mind wished? And had I not spent far too much solitary time in the wilderness, Satan’s dancing ground? “For when a woman thinks alone, she needs must think evil,” he said, and cautioned me to bow to Goody Holt’s guidance.

  “Sir, I did not choose either to be or to think alone,” I told him, and he admitted that it was so.

  But the elder man took my hand and held it a long time and told me that I would be glad to see lost faces again in paradise, and that when the worlds were dissolved at the end of time and re-made, we would be full of joy and together forever. The old one made the tears rise up against me and betray my feelings, but the young pastor made me burn with coals of his own heaping.

  Goodwife Holt—yes, I called her Mistress when I could not avoid speaking her name, but I shall not here, for she did not merit the title—resigned herself with many grumbles to having me installed near her, though she again objected to the quality of my clothes. Earlier she had indicated that I must find my place with Bess, as the seating committee had failed to mandate where I must be. But when one of Pastor Dane’s daughters invited me to sit in the pew for the minister’s family, Goodwife Holt interrupted to order that I be seated with Bel and Lizzie. I already knew her well enough to feel that she meant no kindness by it; she could not endure for me to appear so much higher than her own family.

  At meeting, I encountered a great many people who had already learned my name but whose names I could not remember, and once a face swam up in the gloom that seemed familiar to me; he looked straight at me, his brow a little contracted as though pondering whether he knew me or not. It was a handsome face, straight-nosed and light-eyed with well-shaped brows that seemed inclined to join in the middle, but though the image hung in my mind for some minutes, I could not conclude where or whether I had seen his features before and at last concluded that I must have seen, when a child in Boston, many faces now scattered to newer towns.

  “Sss!” When Lizzie hissed at me, I was recalled to myself—lo where I sat, staring like a goose.

  Bel gave me a crooked smile as I flushed and looked away.

  I gathered my cloak around me and focused again on the hot brimstone of the young pastor, but his words did not please me. Moving restlessly in my seat, I closed my eyes and remembered the flight from Falmouth, and how I rode high in the air on the back of Hortus. I was as free as any Wampanoag boy roving the wilderness. And the wilds and darkness under trees had been alarming at first but sheltered me on my way. I had found neither dragon nor Satan in the shadows, only the sometimes ill company of my thoughts. Birds I had found, and eels, fish, deer. . . My back tired in the hours of meetinghouse sitting, and I often wished to tramp about the little town, mucky as it often was, and perhaps stretch my legs and skip about a nearby field when no one was watching.

  And so on the Sabbath I visited Hortus (if he was to be found in the barn and not away on a journey), combing and petting and talking to him for an hour. My Hortus. He heard my complaints of Goody Holt with the best creaturely composure, even when, as often happened, I had nothing sweet to tell. He even endured the vast Roman waterworks of my tears for everyone I had loved and lost that came on me unexpectedly in my first week, so violent and harsh and convulsive that it was like a storm blown in from the north. And perhaps it was just that, a sea of tears bearing the wreck of wishes, gusting in from the ocean-scoured cliffs at Falmouth. I am sure Hortus wondered why we did not wander away into the forest and leave these muddy streets and dreary dun-colored or silvery-gray houses.

  By the second week, I felt confident that I could manage my months in Andover. I had Bel Holt for company, though she could be melancholic at times and was weary of her mother’s ambitions and plots. I often talked with Bess when she brought me a meal, for the mistress did not want my company at the table. Nor could she bear for me to honor Bess and John with my presence. How different from life with the Saltonstalls, who seemed much less concerned with rank and station when it came to feeding the hungry! I found the contrast curious. When Bess or John came to my garret with aired linens or an armload of wood, we would chatter in friendly style. But I never grew to care for either Goodwife Holt or the elder daughter, feeling them to be sour, dolorous women who disliked me and were so lacking in courtesy as to be unashamed to show their scorn.

  The sewing was good for me. Often I was alone, the room absolutely silent save for the sound of floss whispering through the weave of cloth. To me, it was the murmuring of grief, the small low cry that seemed to needle straight through my soul—that tangled net of glistening, stirring filaments.

  I took to waxing the thread with beeswax from a candle, and the sound of the thread changed, became firmer. If the house was busy, the voices of the Holts and Bess and John diminished as I moved with the rhythms of stitchery, a steady and forward gliding that seemed itself a kind of meditation pulling my thoughts into peacefulness. The deadliness of always doing, the thought of the impermanence of everything I could make and achieve, came to me like an anxious piece of news and fell away again—my mind like a peaceful meetinghouse after the people have come and gone and nothing is left of the mortal frenzy of uncertainty about salvation, prayers beating against the windows, hurry, and business. And though I stitched my way through gowns and shifts, coifs and bonnets and petticoats, yet I sometimes felt an emptiness of thought that seemed sacred and sweet.

  In certain hours, I felt more alive than before, and that surprised me because I was more lonely than in Haverhill. But the sewing room was my refuge, my sanctum, my place to front the dark and light facts of my life. Like the outlandish dwarf who could spin straw into gold in one of Goody Waters’ German tales, I was spinning my worthless angers and moments of bitterness into a stronger and more precious thread. The chill September sunshine was pale in the open window, and only a few insects droned a song in the air.

  The third week began, and I was nearly a quarter of the way through my time in Andover and nearer the date of return to the Saltonstalls, whose welcome and goodness to me seemed more rare as each day passed. Even though the barn was not close to the Holt house, I made sure to keep visiting Hortus, who gave me the balm of love out of his great animal heart. I aspired to his strength and calm, and thought him more than any horse in all the colony or perhaps the world. He was my treasure, and I was disappointed whenever he was absent.

  Goodwife Holt often attempted to treat me as a sort of catch-all servant and wished me to tote her basket when she went to buy a cone of sugar or jug of molasses, or to fetch home some of the greenish glass that had arrived in a load of goods from Boston. I only half minded because it was pleasant to escape from the house more often than the one midday walk allotted to me, and surely I was younger and more vigorous than she. Goodwife Holt always insisted that her daughters accompany her, and that I lag behind them with the basket like some poor drudge. But I did not please her by my passed-on finery. More, it was an annoyance and grief to her that I was often waylaid by the town elders and others who had seen or met me at the meetinghouse. They wanted to wish me well, for everyone in town seemed to know my orphan state. Many knew the reputation of my family, and a few had met some now-lost aunt or uncle of mine and wished to share a recollection. People sympathized with my situation and often whispered a message of comfort, often with a glance first at the mistress who ruled my days.

  One day Goody Holt asked me to attend her to the goldsmith’s shop, and she ordered her daughters to put on fresh attire.

  “What do you do to yourself, Mehitabel?” Her voice was severe. “You have slopped milk onto your bodice and not cleaned it. Put on the dark crimson gown and tie the sleeves with yellow ribbons, and in haste!”

  Bel widened her eyes as she passed me, and I bent my head to hide a smile. Goody Holt had chosen that fine, delicate fabric, but Bel declare
d that she looked like a quaking custard in the gown. And though my own workmanship, I admitted that the dress did not flatter her shape, though the color went well with her chestnut hair.

  “And you, Lizzie, fetch your tiffany hood. Hard features need some delicacy around them.”

  Lizzie Holt frowned, more than ever resembling her mother. She was dressed in an indigo gown. I wanted to put her in pale colors, lighten up her clouds and thunderbolts of scorn a little. Lizzie would have looked better in what I was wearing—the handed-down rose jacket—but I was not allowed to choose what looked best on the daughters.

  Bess held the door for us, smiling at me as I skimmed over the threshold, the market basket on my arm. I expect she was glad to be alone with John, the two of them hurrying through their labors and talking over their future together and perhaps stealing a forbidden embrace in the shadowy house.

  Our shoes clattered and scuffed along boards until we came to a dropping-off point. There it was work to tiptoe through the half-hardened mud, accompanied by many exclamations of disgust from Goodwife Holt.

  Mehitabel winked at me and whispered, “You will be surprised when you find who—”

  “What?” I had been wondering if there would be a fire for the smithing of metals, and if I could warm myself when the others were busy displaying their finery to the goldsmith. “What are you saying?”

  “The one at meeting who—”

  “I do not have a relish for the senseless babbling of young women,” Goody Holt interrupted.

  At the goldsmith’s house, she ordered me to tarry while the three of them stepped inside. She gripped a large silver spoon in her hand like a bad scepter, the bowl malshapen. I stood with the basket in the cool breeze, looking across the way at bare houses and a field of beggary edged with goldenrod and asters. Then I turned and examined the goldsmith’s shop, admiring a window with glazed panes. He had arranged shelves against the glass, and on each were pieces of wrought silver. Even through the thick glass, I could make out a spoon, a wine cup, a spout cup, one lidded and one unlidded porringer, beakers, tongs, a pepper box, a sugar box, and a tiny octagonal teapot. The shapes seemed bold and strong, with bands and molded rims and gadrooning for decoration. I wondered if he found few buyers for gold work in the New World, and if he had been apprenticed in Boston, and whether he could make much of a living in the wilds of Massachusetts. Surely every family that could afford such artistry would buy fine plates, in part as investment and in part to pass down to their children. But it was likely that the people in such a wilderness would only buy the occasional article of silver.