“Thee is lovely,” he said, mouth brushing my ear as he unbuttoned my bodice; on reaching the busk of my corset, “I’ll just open this”; in a low and humming voice as he opened its clasps, “I never believed I’d find a woman who could make sense of me, and who makes sense to me”; untying the neck of my chemise and pulling it to my waist and gasping at my appearance, in a sort of exaltation: “Thee is that woman.” Then, as my hand toyed with the red curls at the back of his neck, he nuzzled his way downward to my breasts, and the kisses and sucks he gave there took away my last remaining sense. I yielded to his requests for more, then more. I allowed him to do whatever he wanted—indeed, what I wanted. I floated and floated until the rules of land were but a memory farther than the stars.
I disliked his entering, however, and what came next felt highly peculiar. These parts of ours couldn’t truly be meant to go together, it seemed—until mine widened to admit his. He moved his swelled part farther into me, smothering his face in my neck and hair, and his voice came from deep in his chest when he said, “I love thee.”
I replied with equal ardor. Then all at once a pulse began to pass between our parts, and some radical force transfixed him, as though he held his hands on a bolt of lightning. When that force released him, his weight collapsed upon me.
My head was pressed into his neck, where I heard his pulse beating fast, then slower, then slow and steady. My eyes swarmed with tears, for we had claimed each other, and I believed I’d found my home inside his arms. He seemed to me as guileless as a newborn lamb. When he raised his torso to gaze into my face, his own face shone like a beacon. Then my fingers touched the wetness between my thighs and found bright blood, which frightened me and loosed my tears.
“That proves I was thy first,” he whispered. “As thee was mine.” His face was serious as he reached for a cloth to place beneath me. “We’ve sealed our marrying intentions.” He wiped my tears with his hand, and we kissed some more, our former urgency replaced by a languor that was unfamiliar and precious.
“Thee is so lovely,” he said in wonder, and I rejoiced as I returned the sentiment. “I’ll write soon with our address and money,” he vowed, as he’d been promising for weeks. “As soon as Peter and I have work and a place for us all to live.”
I fastened my clothing while his fingers traced the outlines of what he’d so recently sucked and embraced. After a parting kiss, with our lips clinging and soft, I lowered myself down the ladder and returned to the small room I’d slept in for all my years of unknowing.
I lay awake awhile, feeling as if I’d been broken apart and waiting for my pieces to reassemble into a new whole. And as they did, I felt myself expanding into more than a young person who loved learning, an erstwhile teacher at the Meeting school, a daughter mourning her mother. In those moments I became a woman, with my curves finally knowing their fuller purpose, my mind understanding more of what draws and keeps the sexes together, my soul satisfied to know this man who would become my husband. There was sorrow in this passage, but also pride.
My time of shame began in glory.
*
The morning after I was thus transformed, at the first hint of light, Johan and Peter and I dressed and ate a hurried breakfast. Then we left for the depot several blocks away. We stood alongside the rails in near darkness, the two of them inflated with the hope brought on by any journey, me struggling not to spoil it all and weep. Peter’s hazel eyes were bright and his cheekbones rose in a half smile as they talked excitedly. The horses came into view, hauling the yellow car behind them; my dear men hoisted sacks of belongings to their shoulders, gave hurried embraces to the one they were leaving, and stepped aboard for their six-mile journey downtown. Soon after, they would catch a train to start them toward the thriving city of Pittsburgh, some 350 miles of track away. I had written down the route they’d take on various railroad lines, knowing I’d soon be taking it myself, and had tucked those notes beneath my mattress.
In the days that followed, I walked about in a half stupor, dreaming of times to come. I had no unfamiliar sights to entice me, no unknown places to explore, such as Johan and Peter had at every moment in that far-off city. I imagined what they might be doing—working amid gleaming machines in a factory aglow with molten metal, settling temporarily into a boardinghouse, seeking out the cottage or the flat we would inhabit. And I bathed in memories of my hour’s intimacy with Johan. I walked about the house and yard and did my marketing in a haze, as if lit from the inside by that awakening. It was a glorious Sixth Month, and my excitement blossomed along with the flowers. I relished the baby birds and animals bobbling about, the vegetables and fruits burgeoning in our back plot of green, the leafing of the trees. All around me lay proof of the gorgeousness that arises from the interplay of male and female parts.
Then my own body began to ripen and swell. My monthly flow was days late, then a week, then two. I feared these signs might indicate a state I’d never thought to face without a husband.
The blood remained obstinately absent each time I checked. Daily I grew plumper and more distraught. And Johan never sent the promised address and funds, nor even a word on his progress. Peter sent no letter, either, perhaps because he’d always been more easy with a chisel or a saw than with a pen. Nevertheless I felt betrayed by them both, when I wasn’t worrying that they’d come to harm. It seemed that these two men, the keys to my rejuvenated life, had dissolved into the ether.
Loneliness became my intimate companion. It wrapped my body head to foot. As I lay in bed some nights, my heart beat tight and hard in the little space that loneliness had left me. On one hot night I threw off my quilt and shuffled down the stairs and escaped to the backyard, where I shook my limbs and torso, trying to get that trap of loneliness off. It clutched me like a too-tight skin and stifled my breath, as if feeding on the air I needed, taking what could have kept me well. And when the nausea of pregnancy came, it seemed as if my loneliness came forth into the porcelain bowl on my washstand.
I wasn’t used to uproarious friendships. I expected no great gaiety from life. Mother’s fierce adherence to plainness and our obedience to it had always kept us isolated, even among Friends, most of whom saw no harm in playing games of whist or euchre or in wearing current fashions. Few were as sober as our family, as hardworking or grim. Yet this loneliness that overtook me after Mother and then Johan and Peter were gone, it took away even the small pleasures I used to hoard, leaving nothing between me and a hard wall of sorrow. By the time autumn came, as I grew a baby with a horrid knowledge that the baby and I couldn’t remain together except to our disgrace, I found no joy even in the blaze of leaves, the return of cool nights, or the scents and tastes of the vegetables and fruits that Patience and I spent weeks drying, canning, and otherwise preparing for the cold season ahead.