*
One cold night in First Month of last year, barely three weeks after Mother had passed, I awoke in a state of vexation in my slant-walled room in Germantown. I lay on my mattress, waiting for my heartbeat to slow and the tendrils of some frightening dream to evaporate into the air. My mouth was parched from panting; I rose to fetch a cup of water, only to find the pitcher on my washstand empty. So I descended the narrow stairs into our main room and headed for the kitchen. Across the planks I walked, past Father’s bedroom.
Its door was ajar, its bed, empty.
Was Father staring at the embers of the kitchen fire again, too miserable to sleep without his dearest Helen? No; the kitchen was bare of life; its hearth was still and silent.
By the back window, as I ladled water from a bucket to a cup, a quick movement outside caught my eye. Something was moving in front of the outhouse. In air shimmering beneath the moon, a white shape billowed. It became recognizable as Father’s first cousin, Patience. She was a spinster from Ohio who’d arrived two days prior, ostensibly to aid us in recovering from Mother’s death. That woman stood in her dressing gown on the frozen ground, her pale hair loose and stippled with moonlight, her muscular arms clutching my father’s torso. And he, clad in faded woolen underwear, gripped her in return. Their pelvises were pressed together, and their faces seemed joined at the lips, as if consuming one another.
I clapped a hand over my mouth and ran upstairs to the shelter of my quilts. In silence I shivered, half waiting and half dreading for the darkness to yield some noise from that unseemly pair. When they did come inside, their footsteps halted on the first story, though Patience’s steps should have risen to the bedroom beside mine. The door to Father’s chamber clicked shut.
I knew little of such congress then. But I imagined nauseously their protuberances and indentations, their odd bits of bodies covered in curls of hair, fitting together in ways obscure and obscene. I lit a candle and stared at the cracks in my plaster ceiling, trying in vain to find the shapes that as a child I’d perceived as rabbits and mice, looking for the fissures that once had seemed to spell my name. I even picked up my book of Bible verses—but nothing took away the ghastly picture of my father, like a drowning man, grasping at a piece of flotsam.
It is many a spinster’s custom to travel relative to relative, staying as long as she’s needed. But in our little stone house, with its patriarch in grief, Patience had found a way to halt her wandering.
I intended to wake before dawn to prepare our meal. I wanted to witness their emergence from what had been my parents’ room and thereby to impose on them the shame they ought to feel. But I was trapped by heavy sleep till sun came streaming in and overheated me. I dressed and rushed downstairs to find Father, Patience, and my brother, Peter, seated at our oak table. Father and Patience wore bland expressions. Their bodies appeared to have softened, like butter placed near the stove. His hand brushed hers in passing the canned peaches, and her thin lips opened to expose her small teeth, then eased into a dog-like smile.
Peter saw nothing amiss, for he kept his eyes on his plate, as he had at every meal since Mother died. He chewed and swallowed bite after bite determinedly, as if taking care not to choke on his own restlessness. And when Father’s gangly, red-haired assistant came down from his attic room and joined our table, he greeted us as usual and fed heartily.
“Lilli,” said Johan, his broad cheeks pink with anticipation, “can we haul those scraps to Rittenhouse town today?”
The bits of linen left behind from Mother’s sewing and the rags too worn for use would fetch much-needed coins at the paper mill, and I’d be glad not to perform that sad errand alone. Such an outing, too, would allow Johan and me to share the fruits of our minds. On our return, freed of the sacks of cloth, we could ramble the snowy roads and stop for a sweet at the market, perhaps dangling our gloved hands near, even curling them together.
I had the freedom to accept his invitation. With Patience there, my home duties had lessened, and the students I taught at the Meeting school were on their winter vacation. So I answered Johan in the affirmative. Yet as I spoke, I felt a cramp of fear in my belly in place of my usual tingling anticipation of our heady talk. For in that kiss I’d witnessed, in the hunger that had made the bodies of my father and his cousin press hard into one another, a contagious force had come too near.
I watched as Father ate his sausage and dipped a hunk of bread in the fat, his lips and the surrounding skin growing greasy and slick. He never had been suited to Mother’s refinement. Clearly, Patience was another sort of woman.
Soon that woman bundled her sturdy frame against the cold and left to buy meat at the butcher’s. The three men entered their cabinet-making workshop at the side of our house. I went in as usual to straighten Father’s bed, which had been clumsily assembled. And strewn upon Mother’s pillow, where her chestnut hairs had always lain, was a tangled patch of Patience’s yellow hairs.
I raised the familiar pillow to my face and inhaled, hoping that a trace of Mother’s violet water still lingered. An odor of sweat as harsh as cat’s urine penetrated my nose.
I threw the pillow to the bed, the very bed on which Mother had died three weeks before, and left the room behind.
Dear diary, that moment cut me loose of family and left me rudderless.
*
Mother was injured while driving our wagon filled with donated goods to a family whose house had burned. A wild dog frightened our horse and the horse bolted, dragging the wagon across a heap of rocks. Mother was tossed to the rocks, and furnishings toppled onto her.
She was mottled with bruises, swollen in her head and a dozen other places, afflicted by pains that prevented sleep and comfort. To relieve the swelling, our doctor decided she must be bled. Mother, usually outspoken, always fell to muteness in the company of medical men, and bleeding had been a more acceptable method in her youth. For our part, Father and Peter and I had no grounds for doubting. We let the doctor do his ghastly work.
She was sitting up in bed when he began it, cutting a vein in her arm and placing his collecting bowl beneath. He considered the blood loss sufficient when she fell forward, unconscious. She opened her eyes not long after but remained slumped and fragile. I fed her raspberry-leaf tea and beef juice, and by the next morning she could rise. But by then she had head and neck aches so severe that she could hardly walk.
Saying her nerves were damaged, the doctor sent her back to bed and prescribed strong-smelling decoctions to ease the pain. When these didn’t help enough, Father informed him by letter, and the doctor called for increased frequency.