Her Kind, a novel (12 page)

When Grandpa Syl crossed the great river, it had been viewed as a natural boundary between civilization and barbarism.

Yet, I was never quite certain which side had been which.

It provided an auspicious border that allowed for a crossing over of sorts, a departing of the old for the new. From danger to safety.

From bondage to free will.

How can you not help a woman alone with her baby when snow is as thick as an ice block?

Emma had asked me this in desperation one day when I was about twelve and I, of course, had no idea of what or to whom she was speaking. At first, I thought she had somehow emerged from her usual torpid manner.

But then I saw her vacant look and I may as well have been the moon, because it was not me she was addressing. Usually, I knew better than to engage one of these encounters.

It was so not always so helpful to play out these scripts with Emma. It had begun when I was about eight, so now I was an old hand at drawing forth the scenes from her mind. Even then, I knew it was not right to do this, but it brought me an understanding of my mother that I could not otherwise find. Perhaps I was wrong to do so, but I still see no harm in it even now.

A baby as black as coal and her mother, a smooth fine Lagomarcino’s chocolate, Emma had said.

I stopped here. Silent. Waiting for what she would say next.

This was likely dangerous territory now, but I had never been more curious about what she was seeing in her mind’s eye, so I could not help myself from this one.

Take them to the cave, she ordered me.

Cave? I asked slowly, delicately.

The cave under Mrs. Trombley’s porch.

Hurry. Now!

Next door? I did not ask this aloud.

They will come for her tonight, Emma said in a careful hushed way to the wall by the clapboard. Drive them up to Low Moor, cross to Fulton, maybe Chicago, maybe the north country. To Canada.

Save that baby!

She screamed at me as if I were actually holding one.

Now I was scared. I had gone too far this time.

I had read about Mr. Scott. I knew all about what had happened to the Friends who had been caught in Salem and Keosauqua.

And, even then, I knew well why Mr. Lincoln had been shot before I was born. Why, I could even recite the Gettysburg Address by rote.

Emancipation Proclamation.

Yet, here was Emma, an iron-heart, trying to save a runaway woman and her child years before she could not even save her own.

Freedom.

She muttered this one word as if it were the answer to what ailed her. More like a pleading than a declaration.

Then, as abruptly, Emma returned to the stove to finish the cocoa frosting for my parents’ anniversary cake. Forty-four years now since they had crossed and came together in this place to bear and lose their own children.

She never spoke of this again.

The day the package arrived addressed to T
he Family of Laura Treat, Davenport, Iowa,
Emma could not remember my name.

As she sat at the bay window that Harry had replaced last summer on the river side of the sitting room, she repeated again and again the names of her eight daughters as if reciting the books of the Old Testament in church school. Each time, pausing between Hattie Jessie and Anna Viola, but never my name aloud, the child that came between. The child who cared for her now. Wiped her face, held her hand. Perhaps it was simply not possible to acknowledge the one daughter that put her to bed each and every night.

Say your prayers now Emma.

I would tell her this, taking her place. She was me now. My mother, afraid of the dark. Places traded for good. Rocking herself to sleep. Whispering, I love you, quietly to no one, to anyone.

Like a rose,
she said to me once, a play on my name without really saying it. She liked to do that and I played along. Like a rose, I would respond in the affirmative. She had almost given me her name first Grandma Phoebe had once told me, but quickly changed it just before my christening.

RoseEmma. Giving more than taking, but too sharp to touch.

I shook off the memory with a shudder and returned to the package’s postmark: Salem, Massachusetts.

Some cousin of Grandma Laura’s back east, John Harvey Treat, Harvard Class of 1862, had assembled
The Treat Family: A Genealogy of Trott, Tratt, and Treat for Fifteen Generations, and Four Hundred and Fifty Years in England and America, Containing More Than Fifteen Hundred Families in America…

With a glance at the title, my theory through all of these years had been destroyed. Perhaps we were not so special after all.

Then a note dropped from the immense book’s leaves:

Some families by the name of Treat are not included in this book, for the simple reason that either I had no knowledge of their existence, or because they made no reply to my letters of inquiry. It is my intention to continue my researches in order to obtain a fuller record of the family, and in due time to print an appendix containing such additions, and a correction of errors inseparable from a book like this.

The compiler is not always responsible for mistakes.

Please thank Laura Treat for her pecuniary contribution to my efforts. I incurred great obligations to produce this continuing folio, and it is through such contributions that it has expeditiously come to you:

Laura Woodbridge Treat Parmlee, Davenport, Iowa, $3.00.

I turned quickly to the index of names that Mr. Treat had compiled at the end of his 637 pages, and there it was Parmalee, Parmlee, and Parmleee.

Then, just as quickly, I turned back to the C’s.

Not a Condit listed.

John Forest’s life had been measured in days.

We had named him John for the Baptist and Forest for added strength as Emma could not hold him, so Henry and I took our turns, and had the privilege of offering the second name.

I had been sent to help pick strawberries that afternoon. Sent out to pick while everyone else focused on their own tasks. No one would dare do such a thing to a child today.

It was just after 10 o’clock when something drew me back to the house, a dread that began at my heart and spread down to my fingertips.

No more picking.

It is surprising to me that I have less dread now in death coming for me than I did that morning.

I cared for her in that time as I would every day thereafter. Seems odd as I think back on it now. I felt so old, even then. But, I had seen Henry with the cows. I knew enough what to do.

Oh, how pleased Henry had been to see a baby boy when he shot into the house with a smile as wide as the Smith Island canal, but how quickly it was gone when he went to see the mausoleum engraver the first day that John would not eat.

It did not take long. Loss was something expected by then. At least the arrangements gave them something to talk about.

It was a better day when Henry Deacon came when I was 12. By that time, of course, we no longer needed a mother.

I remember the taste of bitter in my mouth and the pain in my heart when Mrs. Parkhurst actually had the gall to say I was too young to be in the room for his birth.

She can stay.

Grandma Phoebe had said quietly, but firmly. It was really unnecessary for me to be there as onlooker. It meant more that she had allowed it. Yet, I cannot recall how or why we named him other than the most obvious of reasons.

All that seemed to matter in the days and years that followed was that Emma finally had a son who lived.

Her real work was done now. Yes, it had surely been my fault that John Forest was dead.

Zenas would come to see that, too.

At first, I thought Emma was simply chilled by a damp late March as the weeks went on and she kept wrapped tightly to cloak herself within her forsaken burn.

But by fall, the burn had been allowed to incinerate her beyond recognition—the kind of burn that does not leave scars, but clears a new space for an oddly distorted flesh morphed over the old skin as it consumed so completely like the purple loosestrife brought to Iowa by Grandma Laura for her garden, bringing some to Parkhurst for our gardens.

Tunneling from our garden down the path to Front Street, it became an aggressive invader and eventually covered the entire river bank below Front Street. A weed that spread a swath like the river flood, engulfing all else in a sea of purple flowers merging into a somber, amethyst carpet leading to my altar.

So beautiful was this smothering swarm ready to engulf anything in its path.

Yet, it remained the only altar where I could eventually purge my sins. A purple carpet that cushioned my knees, facing east, praying for Emma. Perhaps it was me and my selfishness that actually lay at its root.

Woman!

Zenas had barked from his pulpit at Ten-Mile High Presbyterian that was now our east river porch as he would read his former sermons to me, the ones he pulled from a hoary leather portfolio wrapped with a formidable strap.

Had they not seen this peculiar setting of a child on her knees in the weeds, an old scoundrel yelling from the porch, one might have thought he were still an exalted lay preacher giving it to a congregation who hung on his words rather than a four-year-old reprobate who hung her head and wished she could disappear. Rocking alone in the Boston rocker, he gave his performance until he was spent and needed a smoke out back. My wound could have been tempered by ash and exhale, but since not, I lipped his words in cadence with his rocking, arms across chest. I held myself in that loss and likely did ever after.

Another Condit son was taken from us today. The dragon had slain him before his first year. It is another sign from God.

He preached with such gusto.

Grandma Laura had told him more than once that I was too young to hear Revelation, but she was not here to silence his weapons this time.

Woman, bear your pain.

The stars beneath your feet do not protect you. Live with your daughters of Eve. Take their strength and for god sake,
give your husband a son!

I had checked on Emma then to ensure she was asleep. Fortunately, she had not heard his harsh words this time.

I would bear her pain.