Her Kind, a novel

This is a work of alternative historical fiction and the appearance of certain historical figures is therefore inevitable. All characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination and any resemblance or similarities with persons living or deceased are entirely coincidental or used fictitiously.

Her Kind, a novel

Robin Throne

Literary Fiction

Published by 918
studio

ISBN-10: 0985194448

ISBN-13: 978-0-9851944-4-4

www.918studio.com

Copyright © 2013 Robin Throne

All rights reserved

Cover and interior design
Sarah Ploehn

eBook Edition
Rivertown Creative

“Her Kind” [poem] reprinted by permission of SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright by Anne Sexton.

William Stafford, Ask Me from
The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems
. Copyright ©1977, 1998 by William Stafford and the Estate of William Stafford. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

for Emma

& all the other ghosts at 918 River Road

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch,

haunting the black air, braver at night;

dreaming evil, I have done my hitch

over the plain houses, light by light:

lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind.

A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.

I have found the warm caves in the woods,

filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,

closets, silks, innumerable goods;

fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:

whining, rearranging the disaligned.

A woman like that is misunderstood.

I have been her kind.

I have ridden in your cart, driver,

waved my nude arms at villages going by,

learning the last bright routes, survivor

where your flames still bite my thigh

and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.

A woman like that is not ashamed to die.

I have been her kind.

Anne Sexton

My sister, Rose Emma Parmlee, wrote and assembled this manuscript on her deathbed in 1957. Quite amazing, considering her declining health. I have preserved it only out of respect for the one member of my family who blessed my marriage to my first cousin and loving wife, Lillie May Belle Sargent Parmlee. Please remember that we came from a good Iowa family, and these pages are simply the ranting of an aging spinster and nothing more.

H.D. Parmlee

February 6, 1961

I am 90 years young today.

They laugh as they tell me this as if it is some sort of a humorous barb that will lift my spirits. I am now certain that I will see them all again, very soon now. Perhaps then they will answer my questions, put the final pieces together of what I cannot yet know. Although I do know most of it by now and that is why I am putting it down here.

I do not feel that I will see 91, but I do not tell these guardians this today. They have tired of hearing of my age and circumstance so it is quite kind of them to remember me today.

I ask the Lord my soul to keep.

It seems so odd to me now that I had never felt fear as a child when I was told to say this prayer aloud. I recited it so mindlessly with no real passion or understanding of what it actually was for that I so resolutely prayed.

If I shall die before I wake, I ask the Lord my soul to take.

I have begun hearing my grandmothers these days. My grandfathers, too. Their voices are as real as my childhood. I remember so clearly how my grandmothers would stand over our beds.

Say your prayers now, girls.

I would like to be that child again.

Resolute.

Fearless.

Calling out death. Let it come for me now. I am ready.

Praying only for a safe passage if death should come this night.

Perhaps if it does come soon, I will finally be lifted from this life that has been just a bit too long.

Cross my heart and hope to die.

Ten fingers!

Ten toes!

How many times in my life would I live to hear these exclamations over a baby’s birth? Never as many as my mother had.

When Mrs. Parkhurst exclaimed the digital outcome for Lillie May Belle Sargent it truly was a reason for rejoicing, and would likely be so at every birth in the Treat-Condit-Sargent-Parmlee family to come.

When Lillie May’s mother, my Aunt Mary-Ann, had shown me the family tree in the fragile front matter pages of the Sargent family Bible, I was nine years old. By then I was the best reader in all of Parkhurst School, including all of the sixth graders, so I could not help but follow the asterisk that Uncle Asaph’s great-aunt Martha had noted next to seven of Asaph’s 13 brothers and sisters.

As Mary-Ann made the new entry to record Lillie May’s birth, I carefully scanned the lineage of my mother’s sister’s husband.

My aunt must have thought me such an obedient and faithful child then, retreating to the east sitting room on each visit, pulling that worn King James family Bible into my lap and reviewing page after page as closely if I were the Scott County magistrate reviewing his decree for improper punctuation, so meticulous was our search.

The magistrate peering through spectacles; me, reading with the clear eyes from my Condit side. No, Mary-Ann did not caution me about tearing the fragile pages. She did not even look over my shoulder to review my reading. Perhaps she never even knew what I might find.

There it was.

In the upper left corner of the first blank page behind the book of Revelation, I found Martha’s careful asterisked script:

*Eleven fingers, eleven toes

They cannot blot out my memory, my right to feel this pain.

It simply comes with this ridiculous privilege of aging. This final letting go of all that is or ever will be.

I want it.

I want to live with this feeling, these thoughts, until the end as I dust out these webs that have remained here far too long now.

I am done with it.

Let me speak.

Great-grandpa Zenas Jabez Condit was a zealot.

I first heard that lacerating word as it was whispered by Grandma Laura during baby cousin Lillie May Belle’s christening.

Should have stayed in Pennsylvania.

I felt her sharp add-on in Grandpa Moses’ ear as they sat in the pew directly behind us at First Presbyterian. Maybe she wanted us all to hear, especially Zenas.

Hhumpf.

Zenas muttered loudly then followed the phlegm-starter by a cough as if he actually had something coming up his throat besides disdain.

We all knew better that this was not the place for such a moment. When he turned back to give the devil’s eye that we believed him famous for, it was not Grandma Laura who was the target.

Mind your wife!

Zenas glared the words in a direct line back at Moses who ignored the eye glare.

He ain’t my preacher.

Moses said this to anyone listening.

By now, I could see Mrs. Jones leaning back to hear from five pews up. Four-year-old Clara sitting next to me took my hand to still herself from the adult emotions surrounding her.

Emma was doing her best to be present then, but she provided little comfort or protection as we would later learn.

Poor cousin, Lillie May Belle. She would never know there was such an extended family stir up on her baptism day, but I would never forget the Old Testament lesson from that service.

I remember looking up at Zenas during the reading, watching him silently recite the passage, mouthing the words as it was read by an elder. His narrow, wrinkly lips moving in synch and his right fist clenched as if he were going to raise it up for emphasis. An ordained ruling elder of the Upper Ten-Mile Presbyterian. He had brought this privilege with him.

The fear of God was no match for my trembling that Sunday morning seated next to Great-grandpa Zenas.