And I considered the lie that will underpin my own life. The lie that Charlotte never grew in me, was never born, that all this never happened. We each have our own version of that lie. It’s the currency with which we buy our return ticket to society.
I wanted to call out to the reverend: How can anyone here truly live in service of God, or create an honest love with any human being, with this lie forming the rotten center of our selves?
Steeped in this alienated condition, and whether despite or because of it I didn’t know, I felt an odd state overtake me. I began to float away from the scene at hand, as if I were a passenger on the deck of a boat that was leaving. Then it seemed as if an insistent wave pulled me overboard—and I was engulfed by a warm and luscious sea. I was insensible to the others. I breathed underwater, like a fish. A buzzing sound entered my head, and I felt this: unbounded happiness. As if occupying some antechamber of God’s house, I floated alongside a pure and vibrating force. I began to shiver as waves of joy passed over me.
Was this the joy I’d heard other Friends describe? An ecstatic union with my Inner Light of God?
It must have been. Yet with that joy came a crystal-clear awareness of my failings. I saw laid out the whole of my upbringing, which had urged me to live honestly; my coming situation, where lying would be the rule; and the cowardice that had kept me from admitting this divergence.
In Meeting for Worship, at school, and at home, I’d been taught not to conform to the world as it is. My mother, grandparents, and teachers, our Meeting’s elders, and the writings of weighty Friends had exhorted me to live instead as if the world were what it ought to be. Mother reminded me not to be ruled by convention or by shallow pleasure every time she forbade me to wear a ribbon in my hair, or when she chose plain cloth for our attire, or refused to let me see a concert or a play or read a fanciful book. “Our time and skills are meant for beneficial use,” she’d say when she had me join her in sewing clothes and quilts for other families on First Day afternoons rather than roaming with the neighbor children. “We mustn’t distract ourselves,” she’d tell me. “We must keep our eyes and minds free of intoxicating influence, to perceive the wisdom that grows beneath the surface.”
Year after year, she strove to scour away the vanity that might make me timid to stand out. I was meant to grow into a person who would dare, as she did, to act on the inspoken words of my heart, the messages of my Inner Witness to the Divine will.
Yet our circumscribed life had kept me faithful to the bounds it dictated. Had I ever needed, before her death, to put myself at odds with anything but my desire for frivolity in order to pursue right? Not once. The guidance at hand had never failed me. I was ruled entirely by convention.
And now that I faced an actual choice, I wasn’t planning to distinguish myself. I would cast away the baby who sustained her life at my breast. I would refuse to bear my personal cross. Like so many others in my circumstance, I would let myself be turned into a fraud.
Amid this scouring of my soul, I heard dimly the needling voice of Reverend Williams: “Repent of thy sin, and accept the saving grace of thy heavenly Father.”
But the moment I let go of Charlotte and pretend she never existed, my life of sin begins. Lies will color—no, suffuse—my most intimate relations. The pain at my center will stay closed in and festering, while lies spread like a layer of lard beneath my skin.
A message sounded in my brain: Remember the courage of thy ancestors.
Some early Friends suffered beatings and imprisonment and sacrificed their homes and livelihoods in order to uphold their right to draw close to God without a minister’s interceding. My own elders were raised amid slavery and condemned it when doing so was hazardous. They forswore the luxuries created by slave labor, such as cane sugar and cotton. They gave goods and funds to help the enslaved escape; some even helped transport those who were escaping. These Friends risked much to behave rightly and retain their freedom of conscience, yet I planned to take the coward’s way.
My throat grew clogged till I could barely breathe. I dropped my knees to the floor and lowered my head.
After some period, the vibrations in me quieted. The reverend’s voice had ceased, and those around me were rising to their feet. Gina nudged my arm from above, her face questioning. I found myself able to stand. I walked unsteadily to the kitchen and reclaimed my bastard from the cook, who’d taken her for a stroll and was extolling, remarkably, upon the quiet contentment of this baby. Then Gina followed me to the recovery room, wanting company. Seated in a wooden chair, her belly resting on her thighs, she told me she couldn’t wait to leave this institution behind and begin to regain her virtue. She settled into tatting lace for the sleeves of her baby’s christening gown—since a christening is one of Angela’s first plans.
It seems Gina and I are caught in opposing tides. She is eager to ride the incoming waters toward shore and to walk a jetty of lies into a more righteous life. But my body is trembling, despite my having slid beneath the covers and applied Charlotte to my breast, for a new awareness has pulled me so far out from solid ground into the wild ocean that I may never find my way back.
My baby sleeps in my arms, in blameless beauty.
Fourth Month 16
Sorrow ate into me last night like a rat chewing through a wall. For I was still planning to hand Charlotte over to the adoption agent, despite my chapel awakening, as I have nowhere near the courage of my ancestors.
I rose before seven and stepped with Charlotte to the kitchen to fill a breakfast plate, as Delphinia hadn’t come. Then I returned to eat in the recovery room, hunched in bed with Charlotte at my breast. Soon after, the door opened. Emmeline entered, removed her wrap, and took the chair beside me. Avoiding my eyes, she proffered a shabby envelope, which I tore open.
There was a strangeness to the letter’s language. It seemed to convey not a real family’s sentiments but someone’s idea of what I would wish to hear. We’re well supplied with money and a large house. We’ll give your baby a happy life. Insipid platitudes, rushed together, and put far too bluntly.
So I questioned Emmeline—aiming to find out if only the letter was a fake, or if even the existence of a decent family should be doubted. She offered more of the same: “They’ll treat her like their own, they will,” and “None but the best families come to this agency, ye needn’t trouble yerself.” Her long face flushed with extra warmth, which happens to those unaccustomed to lying. Then I asked if anyone from the agency would visit Charlotte to be sure the family was caring for her properly, and if I could receive a periodic report.
She took a breath and held it. Leaning over my bed, she released her breath, giving me a hefty dose of spring onion. “If ye care that much,” she said—and then she halted.
“Then what?” I shifted a restless Charlotte from lap to shoulder.