Little Women and Me (36 page)

“What
is
so funny?” Amy spoke sternly, wheeling on us.

“Emily said something uproarious,” Jo said, punching me in the shoulder in a friendly way as she tried to stop laughing.

“I only did that because Jo did it first,” I said, giving Jo a friendly shoulder jab right back.

“Yes, I can see something is funny,” Amy said in exasperation, “but what exactly?” Before either of us could answer, she shook her head.

“Never mind that now. We are at our first stop, the Chesters’. And do please refrain from punching each other when we are inside. It is so unladylike.”

Amy may have made a good impression at our first stop, what with her ability to make lame small talk, but Jo and I didn’t. The need to behave had been so ingrained in us by Amy that we
remained stiff the whole time. I’m sure the Chesters thought we were totally boring.

The second stop, the Lambs’, was even worse, but in reverse. We were
too
chatty there, with Jo telling embarrassing stories about Amy as a young girl, and me adding embellishments, leaving the Lambs to conclude we were “great fun,” while Amy just glared at us.

At the third stop—I didn’t catch the people’s name, which made it very difficult to speak politely to them—Jo had yet more fun, and I had fun with her, talking to a bunch of guys our age. With the exception of that time Laurie had taken us picnicking with his English friends, had I spoken with any guys close to my own age? Funny, I couldn’t remember. While we talked to the group of guys, Amy focused her attention on just one: a Mr. Tudor, whose uncle had married an English lady who was third cousin to a real live lord. I couldn’t see anything great about him, but Amy, being in love with the idea of royalty however far removed, did. Well, Amy would.

At the fourth stop, the Kings’, no one was home so we left a card.

At the fifth stop, the young ladies of the house were home but otherwise engaged—too busy to see
us
? But we were so cool! So again we left more cards.

Finally, we arrived at the last stop, Aunt March’s.

Which was how we had arrived at Aunt March’s to visit with her and Aunt Carrol.

Aunt Carrol: who was this mysterious new relative, really?

She looked like a troublemaker to me.

Jo hadn’t even wanted to go inside, claiming she’d rather
risk her life for someone else than be pleasant to people when she didn’t feel like it. Remembering the rude parrot, Polly, I’d agreed, but Amy shot us down.

And now we were here.

Jo and I, restless with all these visits, kept popping up from our seats to look at books in the bookcases or pace the room like caged animals. While we did that, Amy sat on the sofa with her back ramrod straight, close to this Aunt Carrol person.

Suck-up
came the uncharitable thought.

Even though I was enjoying looking at books and stretching my legs with Jo, far more than I would have sitting with Amy and the aunts, after a while I began to develop a strange sensation of something going on beneath the surface. I turned just in time to see Aunt March and Aunt Carrol exchange a series of meaningful glances: first at Jo, then to each other, to Amy, and to each other again.

What was going on here?

It was immediately obvious that whatever the aunts were trying to figure out, Jo was suffering from the comparison. Well, of course
they
would prefer Amy, with her perfect clothes and her suck-up manners.

Blech.

“Do you speak French?” Aunt Carrol asked Amy, out of the blue.

“Oh yes,” Amy replied enthusiastically. “I speak it quite well. Ever since the time I stayed here when Beth was ill, and during my subsequent visits since Aunt March arranged for art lessons for me, I have been able to practice with Esther, her maid. Esther is French, you know.”

“And how about you, Josephine?” Aunt Carrol turned her
attention to my restlessly strolling sister. “How are you getting on with languages?”

A chill went up my spine at her words. I don’t know what came over me then. I only knew I had to stop Jo from answering. The aunts were testing Jo and Amy, and I suddenly knew that whatever impulsive, brash thing Jo said next would cause her to flunk that test.

“Isn’t it lovely out this time of year?” I began chattering just as Jo opened her mouth to speak. “I love everything about”—
what month and season was this?
my mind screamed—“whatever month this is. Why, whenever I hear the birds or see the”—what kind of flowers would be out now?—“
general
flowers blooming, I am always reminded of”—gosh, what could they remind me of? I spied a book on the shelves—“the part in Shakespeare where—”

“Emily, what
are
you talking about?” Jo said, cutting me off when I was really doing so well. “Not knowing what month it is,
general
flowers blooming—and what does Shakespeare have to do with anything?” She shook her head at me, annoyed, before turning to Aunt Carrol. “Don’t have any other languages. I’ve got English and that’s plenty for me, the only one I have any use for.”

Oh, Jo.

She was always her own worst enemy.

I tried to tell myself it didn’t mean anything, the rapid meaningful glances that once again passed between the aunts. As the visit wore on—and on and on—I continued to tell myself that everything was going to be fine, that I’d simply been imagining things. By the end of the visit, I’d almost convinced myself of that.

But as we finally left I felt an impulse to go back, and used the excuse of wanting to borrow that Shakespeare volume from Aunt March.

It was as I stood outside the parlor door that I heard Aunt March say to Aunt Carrol, “You’d better do it”; and Aunt Carrol say ominously in reply, “I certainly will, if her mother and father consent.”

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Thirty

Soon after our visit with Aunt March, a letter arrived addressed to Marmee from Aunt Carrol, fallout from that fateful day.

Marmee read the letter silently, a smile spreading across her face as she read. When she was finished, she announced the following news:

“Aunt Carrol writes that she is leaving in a month to go abroad and she wants to take—”

“Me!” Jo crowed, cutting her off as she began to prance around the room.

“Amy,” Marmee finished her original sentence.

“
Amy?
” Jo said in shocked disgust, ceasing her prancing.

“Yes, Amy,” Marmee said as the March girl whose name she just mentioned preened in personal delight and satisfaction. “Apparently the last time you were at Aunt March’s you each said things revealing that Amy would make the superior travel companion. And of course Aunt March is paying for the trip.”

“Oh, me and my big mouth,” Jo said. “But I’ve wanted to go abroad forever!”

“So have I,” Amy said.

And so have I
, I thought. This was wrong, on so many levels. But I saw something now that I’d never seen before, not when I was thinking only of myself.

I had to do something.

“Summon Aunt March here,” I said with authority.

The others looked at me as though I’d gone mad. Well, maybe I had.

“I don’t care how you get her here,” I went on. “Someone borrow the carriage from Mr. Laurence, I don’t care, but Aunt March must be made to answer for this.”

“Emily!” Marmee was shocked.

“I’m sorry, Marmee,” I said evenly, realizing as I said it that it was the only time I’d ever actually called her “Marmee” out loud, “but it’s only the truth. That old bat throws her money around just to get everyone else to dance to her tune. It isn’t right and she must be stopped.”

That’s what I told them, but it was about more than just putting Aunt March in her place. It was also about keeping Amy from going to Europe. It was about changing the story so it would go the way it
should
have gone all along.

Amy had her hands on her hips as she moved right up into my personal space. “Just who do you think you are to interfere so?” she said.

“I know exactly who I am,” I said, hands-on-hipsing her right back as I straightened to my full lack of height. “
I
am the Middle March.”

As we waited—
and waited
—for Aunt March to arrive, I had some time to think.

Yes, I was the Middle March, here and back home, but what did that really mean?

I’d always been in the middle, not just in birth order but in the middle of everything, on the fence—scared to say what I really wanted, scared to even
know
what I wanted!

And I’d also always been so down on myself, always looking to others to define my place in the world, wherever that world might be. I’d even accepted it when the others here told me things like “You don’t like to garden, Emily” or whatever else they said about me. Instead of resisting, I’d just taken it and walked away.

Who am I?
I wondered.
Who have I ever been?

I’d let myself be so defined by the opinions of others, it was almost impossible to answer that question. But I did know one thing, and that was who I wanted to be now:

I want
, I told myself,
to be the kind of person who stands up for what’s right.

Aunt March tromped in with her stupid cane and her stupid lorgnette. Thank God she’d left the stupid parrot at home.

“What
is
the meaning of this?” she demanded.

Who did she think she was, demanding anything? Honestly, we’d been waiting for her there for over two hours. It was a good thing my temper hadn’t worn off.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” I said. “What I’d like to know is: What is the meaning of
you
sending Amy abroad with Aunt Carrol when it’s Jo who should go?”

“Josephine?” Aunt March was so shocked at my outburst,
she forgot to turn the last syllable of Jo’s name into one long shriek.

“Yes, Josephine. Josephine’s the one who took care of you for years and years. The only reason Amy even entered into your world was because she’d never had scarlet fever. You may have fallen in love with Amy’s pretty ways, but Jo’s the one who deserves a reward. Why, at times she may be the most annoying person who ever lived, but when she’s not doing that, she’s always sacrificing for other people. She sold her own hair during the war so we’d have money when we needed it. And when she won a hundred dollars in that writing contest, she spent it all so that Beth and Marmee might go to the seaside.” I paused.
Oops, wrong plot, Emily! That happened in the original story!
“Okay, so maybe I did that, but it was Jo’s idea that inspired me.”

I paused to breathe and into the silence of that moment Jo’s voice fell with a stunned:

“Emily, I never knew you cared.”

“Yeah, well.” I brushed her off, like a hand on the forehead when one isn’t sick. I had no time for any of that now as I continued:

“If you send Amy abroad instead of Jo, why, it’s as bad as what happened to Great-Aunt Louise. She’s the one who had to leave school and go to work to help the family during the Depression while her sisters got educated, always getting everything. She’s the one who took care of all the older relatives as they died one by one. And what was there for her? No husband, no kids, she never even got out of the country, and the most amazing thing was, she never resented anyone else.”