The Immortal American (The Immortal American Series) (19 page)

I tried on the finished product only a short time from its conception. Before I was fitted into the dress, Hannah made me wear my corset more in the fashion and cinched my laces as I exhaled out all the air in my lungs. For farming I would lace my own stay until my breasts wouldn’t be a bother and not worry about my waist. After she had began to sweat and huff from the exertion of getting me in my stay she measured my waist and rolled her eyes when she held up the number to me.

“Good Lord, you eat all the time, but have such a tiny waist.” Hannah might have sounded like she was complaining or jealous, but there was a gleam of admiration in her eyes.

“’Tis just the stay. You laced me up but tight enough for me to faint.”

She giggled softly while she shook her head. “What do you think of your new dress?”

It was a dark night and I didn’t need any silver looking-glass to see my reflection, just the window. In my mirrored image, I saw that she had made the waist look like it disappeared into a black oblivion, and the pink details appeared to wave as if the tiny rose buds were alive and dancing on my dress. With the foamy stomacher, the rose buds, and other details, I looked like a dark otherworldly angel.

I swallowed in awe.

“Oh, Hannah.” My voice shook as I spoke.

“Hannah, this really is your best work.” My mother’s voice also quivered.

“This should be shown in . . . amongst the Royals,” I remarked. “Queen Marie would beg for your services.”

Hannah just smiled.

“Miss Hannah, you’ve made Miss Violet into a princess,” Mrs. Jones said in a tiny soft voice.

No one would ever think me a lady who dug my hands into the soil and could swear like a sailor. I did look like royalty.

“Let’s do her hair.” Hannah’s eyebrows arched in excitement.

Mrs. Jones, we had come to discover, was brilliant at teasing. Being a personal slave to the woman of the house, she knew how to make hair gigantic, Virginia-style. She teased both my hair and Hannah’s. A little more than a couple hours later, we were all giggling at our gargantuan hair.

Hannah helped with Mother’s locks. I would have never noticed she was growing so many gray hairs, if I weren’t close to Hannah teasing our mother’s tresses until Marie Antoinette herself would have approved. Mother’s mix of blonde and gray looked distinguished, even if it was fluffed a foot above her eyes.

I made Mrs. Jones’ hair enormous. Her hair was like black silk in my hands. I loved the kinks of her curls. It was so easy to tease, so malleable. It smelled divine too. She told me she washed it in a gardenia and lily potion her auntie had concocted. I loved the term
auntie
. I would find Hannah a good husband so a batch of children would call me auntie.

I had both my sister and mother smell Mrs. Jones over and over again, declaring her the most exquisitely scented woman ever created.

We were drunk by then–quite drunk. Every year we made batches of beer and hard cider, and mostly used the hard cider for special events. Someone, I think it might have been Hannah, thought that my trying on a dress that I wore for more than a couple hours merited getting into the hard cider. I got the very best stuff I could, a mixture of apple and a touch of peach and honey hard cider, and we couldn’t seem to stop drinking the delicious brew.

It was an unusually warm spring night, and we had the doors and windows open. With our colossal hair we all were chuckling in the parlor.

“Did you hear that?” Hannah asked. She didn’t let us answer. “A cricket. Summer’s fast approaching.”

We all listened to the sound of the insect. Sure enough, there it was serenading us. “That’s beautiful,” I whispered as I leaned my swimming head on Hannah’s shoulder.

“I love the sound of that. It’s like nothing else,” Mrs. Jones said.

I nodded. “I also like the sound of summer storms, how the wind whistles through the barley and oats’ grass, making the grains look like waves in the ocean. Green waves. It’s so . . .”

“It’s like another world, you know,” my sister finished for me. “Instead of the ocean’s blue gray waves, we have green yellow. Instead of violins, we have crickets. It’s another world that many scoff at, calling it simple. I used to be one of those people.” She took a quick sip of a breath. “But now I see how complex and elegant it is.”

It wasn’t her words, but her voice that had turned soft and wistful. Only too much so. It was like slurping down a cupful of freshly sugared maple syrup; I wanted to cringe, but just tried to grin at my sister for her poetic sentiments.

Looking down at my dark silver and black dress, I didn’t want to take it off. If I could, I would have slept in it. Perhaps with getting so intoxicated, I would get my wish, and just fall into a slumber wearing it. How had Hannah done it? How had she known exactly what I was like on the inside and shown it on the outside?

“Your father would have been proud of us, girls. We drank four bottles.” My mother chuckled. By then, Mrs. Jones was just considered another one of my mother’s daughters.

Mrs. Jones leaned her own head on Hannah’s other shoulder. “We done good,” Mrs. Jones whispered then hiccupped.

“We done good,” my sister and I repeated. Then, we all laughed.

“What are you women doing?”

We struggled as one to turn toward Mr. Jones’s voice.

“We are getting drunk, husband,” Mrs. Jones retorted.

My sister and I buried our heads closer, trying to hide our giggles as Mr. Jones walked in to get a better look at us.

“What happened to your hair?” he asked.

We then couldn’t hold back and burst forth with peels of donkey-like laughter.

It was the happiest moment I’d known in so long. I clutched at my sister suddenly. She hadn’t spoken of running away, but at every opportunity I spoke of Philadelphia, Quebec, Paris, even Madrid. I spoke a little Spanish, why not?

She would smile every time, and I hoped that with enough persistence we could move. Why not just leave? Why stay here? We would, of course, take the Joneses and mother, but we could figure out how to do that. I could figure out how to escape Concord with the little money I had and run with my sister wherever she wanted.

Maybe Hannah didn’t want to get married anymore or have children. So what? I’d adjust. If Hannah wouldn’t have children, then I didn’t want any either. As long as I had my sister, I didn’t care what life would give me or not give me. I had my sister.

I had my sister.

Mr. Jones swept Mrs. Jones up into his arms and carried her out of our house complaining that he loved his wife so much. Then, I noticed Hannah while she watched Mr. and Mrs. Jones. All I saw was a bone-crushing sorrow. I panicked and wrapped my arms around her and pulled her up the stairs to our chamber. She complied with a sad smile.

When I opened my eyes the next morning I was surprised to find Hannah lying on the bedding, fully dressed, her face pale, but smiling.

“You seem so happy when you sleep,” Hannah said.

“Do I? Frankly, I’m not feeling the most gay right now. Good grief, did you knit a cape for my tongue this morning and put it on?”

She laughed. “We drank too much.”

“Aye, that we did.” My voice was as low as a man’s and raspy.

“A strong cup of coffee cured me of feeling like my tongue was as fuzzy as wool.” She pulled a cup and saucer from the nightstand and carefully handed me the aromatic, heavenly brew. I noticed she had poured my cup of coffee into my mother’s finest bone china with the little painted details of an English garden bordering the tips of the porcelain. It was the sole reminder that my mother had once lived in very different circumstances; it was rich, decadent, and usually hidden. I briefly wondered about the cup, but my head throbbed, making any coherent thought incredibly difficult.

I sipped the perfect cup of coffee. “Ah, Hannah, it’s so good, but sugar and cream? I’m not sure we can afford this.”

“Oh, Violet. Relish the moment for what it’s worth. What’s that saying? It’s French. Um,
carpe diem
?”

“Exactly,
carpe diem
—to enjoy while one can. But I believe it’s Latin.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “You believe?”

“All right, I know it’s Latin and was first written by Horace. Happy?”

Hannah quietly chuckled. “Perfectly.”

I sighed, thinking about my day and began to groan. “Oh, I have so much work today.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m going to plow the rest of the field, then I might sow a little of the oat seeds. ‘Tis so early this year, but—”

“It’s the beginning of April. Don’t you usually get to planting by now?”

“Not usually, not until later in April, often May. I’d risk too many frosts and snow if I planted earlier, but perhaps not this year.”

“Perhaps this will be the most fruitful year in a long time.” Hannah’s face oddly paled even more, and it seemed she struggled with her grin.

It chipped away at my heart to watch my sister’s face try to act so happy when I could clearly see something else. I had to get her to laugh again. “That sounded dreadfully like a toast. We toasted too many times last night.”

My sister’s sweet face made yet another attempt at a wide grin, but instead she appeared either disgusted or . . . heart-broken. I should have asked which, but, heaven help me, I wanted to run from the constant anxiety I’d been feeling since . . . since– 

When I glanced at Hannah, at the shadow under her eyes, her blue eyes turned gray, it was like watching a young sparrow in a blizzard. As much as I wanted to do something at the tiny shivering form, I wasn’t sure what I could do, but moreover if anything would help.  

Powerless and angry at my inability, I struggled to get out of bed. “I’d better get to work.”

Suddenly Hannah embraced me, hard.

“I’ve never told you,” she said in my ear, “at least never told you enough, how I love you, how I think you’re the most beautiful woman, how I love your strong spirit. Violet, listen to your heart, please, for me, do this?”

I swallowed and nodded as I wrapped my arms around her thin neck. “Of course, Hannah, of course. Thank you for the compliments, but I haven’t told
you
enough how beautiful you are.”

She pulled away from me, yet clung to my arms.

I couldn’t stand the bleakness in her expression, so I babbled. “You, why, you are the reason why men created myths like Helen of Troy. Because of you, women like you. You are perfect. And the fact that you are so talented. Ah! It puts the rest of us women to shame.”

Her smile jerked into place. “Good grief, Violet, but you can get so sappy. I had no idea.” Hannah’s voice cracked through her own smile, tears standing in her eyes.

She gave me one more squeeze around my arms.

I wish I’d have clung to her. I wish I could have stayed in that moment. To give her one more laugh at my expense or to just stay and watch her lovely face, so full of pain, give me one more crooked smile. But I left, and never had that instant back.

It was an hour past dusk when I saw Jonah come to gather me for our evening meal. I couldn’t make out his face in the oily dark, but I knew it was him. The clouds hung low to hide the moon and stars, but there was just enough scarlet sun to make silver pink etchings in the black sky. I had already let Bess back into her bin to eat her dinner, but wanted to restack some of the stones for the fence.

“I’m late. I know, I know,” I called out to Jonah’s still shadowed yet familiar form. “I’ve been trying to hurry, but I keep managing to smash my fingers in the rocks. Damnation, if I don’t have flat fingers, I don’t know what I’ll have then.”

I hefted another stone onto the pile, then straightened and turned toward Jonah, pushing my hand on a crook in my back and trying to work it out.

I stretched. “I don’t know if my back will ever be the same again. With the planting and sowing and rock pushing, I’m liable to get a stooped back. Someone has to invent a machine that will plant for us. Won’t that be something?” I laughed and noticed that Jonah hadn’t moved, hadn’t chuckled, hadn’t said a word.

“Jonah?”

“Violet,” I heard him whisper quietly, so quietly.

I knew that tone, why a voice can sound like that—it sounded of savage, senseless pain. I reached out for him with one of my soiled arms.

He rushed to me, and embraced me. “Violet.”

I began to wail before he told me.

He tried to comfort me as he whispered the brutal words. “Violet, Hannah . . . drowned . . . I’m sorry.”

“No!”  I screamed to the black heavens.

“Mr. Brown found her a couple hours ago. Said he  . . . went fishing. Found her in the river.” I crumpled under his words.

No! No. I couldn’t believe it. Wouldn’t I be able to tell? Couldn’t I know on a spiritual level that my sister was . . .?

I don’t know how, but I was suddenly back in my family’s house, in the kitchen. A lapse in time I have no recollect for. Mrs. Jones was screaming and throwing pots and pans. As soon as she saw me she raced to me. She embraced me, my body, my still alive flesh, sinew, bones, muscle and the little fat that I was. But I didn’t feel her body’s warmth against mine. I didn’t feel her comfort wrap around me, like the quilt that Hannah and I shared in our bed.