Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (44 page)

“Take her,” I whispered. A string of vomit
hung from my lip. I broke it with my hand and wiped my mouth. “Take
her away.”

I lay there in the dust, staring at the sky,
while my husband roughly picked up the infant and walked some
distance away from the road, where he left her on the ground. He
did not even take the time to smother her. She screamed in shrill
wails, and each one of them tore at my heart. My fingernails dug
into the palms of my hands until they bled, but I did not feel any
pain.

My husband returned to me, and pulled me to
my feet. He held me up, for I was weak and wobbling, and waved to a
lone ox cart that was passing at that moment to ask the driver for
a ride.

We bumped along the road toward home. I
stared at the countryside, crossed my legs to stop the blood, and
pressed my arms against my breasts, which were suddenly hard and
full and dripping milk. I was numb, feeling no pain in my loins at
all, but could still hear the cries though they were far behind me
now and, in truth, had stopped.

•
~
۞
~•

I wanted no more of husbands and marriage.
The thought of it made panic rise within me, and any threat of it
made me churn with nausea. I chose a body that would not appeal to
men, and as a further safeguard, selected one that would ensure my
preference would be other women instead, although within the
constraints of that society, I would neither act upon that
preference, nor understand or acknowledge it. I would not be
enticed by urges that had brought me such grief in the past, and
would not be tempted by any man. I hid safely behind a wall no man
could scale.

I was born the middle child of a family of
nine in a place called New York. My father was a renowned composer
and violinist, and each of us was trained on a different instrument
from our earliest days. I was assigned the piano at the age of
three, propped up on books with my feet dangling, and I took to it
as I had never taken to another instrument before. It had such a
glorious sound! I grew to have a love for it that transcended that
of any instrument I’d ever played, and delighted my parents with a
talent they had never seen before in any child, except my elder
brother who exceeded even me on the violin.

We had nightly concerts in the parlor,
playing compositions by my father and many of our own, and as I
grew, my ability was recognized as exceptional. Still, I had a
brother even more gifted, and this piqued me to try harder than I
might have otherwise, even motivated as I was to learn every single
thing I could about music. My father exploited my talent and that
of my brother by having us play for audiences, but neither of us
minded. It was what we loved to do. There were nights when my
brother’s performance was a little weak and my own was spectacular,
and it was these nights that I lived for, and thought of long
afterward.

I adored my family. They were among the
intellectuals of the time, led by a brilliant man, my father, and a
mother who could charm the winter into spring with her warmth and
kind heart. We were raised to think and to question, to appreciate
art in all of its forms, and to respect ideas. Our library was
filled with books we were all encouraged to read and discuss, and
because of my father’s fame, I met an endless variety of people who
would argue into the night about religion and philosophy and
politics. Even as small children, we were allowed to sit on the
floor and listen and participate, and through the years I absorbed
it all, chewing on ideas and expounding upon them internally,
thinking at length about conversations that were forbidden to most
women of that age.

They came from all over the world, it seemed,
to visit my father, and my exposure to these people opened my eyes
to viewpoints I would never have known of otherwise. These
experiences colored my opinions until my thoughts began leaning
toward the eccentric, although I would only have behaved and spoken
in a way that was precisely as expected. I grew to have respect for
philosophies others in my time considered laughable or threatening,
and had an unquenchable thirst for more of them.

I developed an insatiable appetite for mental
stimulation, and craved association with people who were different
from me because I felt I had less to learn from people too like
myself. I yearned for conversations with immigrants, and slaves,
prostitutes and beggars–anyone at all who might have an interesting
or poignant story that would introduce to me another kind of world.
I wished I were a man so that I might travel and have adventures.
However, I was afraid to reveal my inclinations for fear that I
might be scorned for my curiosity, or thought of as odd. Instead, I
read everything I could find, and escaped with my mind.

On the face of it, I was just exactly what a
woman of my era was expected to be. Underneath, I supported causes
only the courageous could fight, but I did not have the courage to
join in. I might have done some good but for that, backing causes
that ranged from allowing married women to teach in the school, to
taking part, as I had heard the Quakers did, in assisting runaway
slaves on their journey to Canada. I daydreamed myself into heroic
roles, but did nothing.

In particular, I had a hatred for injustice.
Most of what I saw of brutality and pain was from the windows of my
enclosed carriage, and I could have easily ignored it and dismissed
it from my thoughts had I chosen, instead of craning my neck to see
more. I saw immigrants living in terrible slums, working for
pennies. I saw the poor taken away in chains because they could not
pay their debts. I saw children whose bones were brittle and bent
from poor diet and no sunlight, working in factories, carrying
crates too large for a man.

On one occasion, I saw several freed Southern
Negroes lynched for rapes an undercurrent of rumor suggested a gang
of white thugs had committed. Concerned, I questioned the wife of
the police commissioner who told me the police knew who had
actually committed the crimes, but wanted to rid the streets of
“darkies”. The world, it seemed, preferred rapists to black men.
She assumed I was in concurrence with this hideous, unspeakable
crime against the innocent, and smiled a little as she told me. I
said nothing to suggest I was not. I had never felt such
self-loathing as I did on that day.

I went to this public lynching to offer my
silent prayers and support for the men, since it appeared there was
nothing at all to be done to save them. I knew that very few people
cared whether the men lived or died, and that some did not ever
consider, nor were they burdened by the thought, that these
“creatures” were actually men with feelings and souls.

As for myself, I had an inexplicable
compulsive need to make certain those men saw one face that showed
grief, when their eyes scanned the crowd. I had to lie to my family
in order to cover up my plans, and had to go alone, but I was
adamant about being there no matter how silly my whim, or macabre
that whim was. And so, I was there, gripping my smelling salts to
be certain I remained conscious through to the end, pushing as
close to the front of the crowd as I was able.

The haunted look in my red-rimmed,
saucer-round eyes caught the eyes of one man, a particularly
proud-looking Negro, as someone slipped the noose around his neck.
He nodded to me without lowering his eyes, which under other
circumstances would have earned him a lashing. Had his hands not
been tied behind him, and had he been wearing one, he would have
tipped his hat.

I touched my gloved hands to my mouth to
cover a gasp as the platform was kicked from beneath him, and he
hung.

For years that scene reappeared in dreams to
trouble me. Most troubling were the nightmares that placed me on
the scaffold, where it was I who wore the noose. Those Negro men
always stood in judgment against me for my silence.

I seethed inwardly over that incident and
many others, grieving over all injustice, over all cruelty.
However, I could not move a finger against any of it. I was afraid
to not be liked. It was so comfortable, to be as loved and accepted
as I was. I would do nothing to jeopardize that.

There were many who would have appreciated my
support. There were many people who stood alone and fought for
things I too believed in, while I averted my eyes and stayed
silent. I betrayed these people, and myself, by publicly taking
popular stances that diverged from my convictions, just to incur
approval from those who listened when I spoke.

I envied courage more than any other virtue,
and wondered how one gained possession of it, for I was certain
there was no courage at all within me.

۞

As a respectable woman, born to a high
social strata, I led a very sheltered life. I could not travel any
distances without the company of a brother, and spent most of my
time studying or visiting friends, or performing charitable works
throughout the town.

There was no mischief in me, or disrespect,
or dishonesty. I was a good daughter, a good sister, a good
neighbor, a good friend and a good aunt. I took great pains to do
nothing to disappoint anyone. I could not force my own wishes onto
others, was thoughtlessly ordered about by my siblings, and felt
guilty if I did not volunteer for every chore or do twice the work
of any of the others. There were many who took advantage of me, but
I accepted this, for mostly they treated me with kindness.

I had a reasonably contented life except for
one thing: I wanted a child of my own with desperation so intense I
could not even describe it. I spent many hours doing volunteer work
that would place me near children, working with the school and the
orphan home, or caring for children when their mothers were ill. In
place of children in my home, I kept animals, as many as I could
find and of any species: rabbits, dogs, cats, horses, ducks,
squirrels and wild things I found that needed care. I stepped over
insects rather than kill them, caught them in my home and set them
free in the yard, speaking to them as I let them go. I mothered
everything, my siblings and their offspring, my parents, my
neighbors, and even the plants in the garden, and the furniture in
the house.

I watched my sisters and my friends marry,
one after another, but felt no temptation to follow them, except to
envy them the children they bore, and to wish I had one of my own.
I had daydreams of a baby girl, although a boy would suit me as
well. It did not matter as long as it was a child.

My mother fretted about finding me a husband,
for I was short and squat and large boned, given to excessive
weight, and had a face that was mannish. I took after my Russian
father, whereas my sisters favored my willowy Scottish mother. I
had never had a suitor, and my mother thought this brought me
grief. I reassured her often that I wanted no marriage and
preferred to spend my life caring for her and my father. It did not
pain me, I insisted, to remain the “maiden aunt”. I was not lonely
with a large, ever-growing family close by. My father had enough
inherited wealth so that I could be assured of an income throughout
my life and would never need to live with a sibling or a niece as
the recipient of charity when I grew old. Only the prospect of
being a burden to my family might have prompted me to consider
marriage.

I had thought of all that, when I selected my
place in this life. I chose to see that nothing about my
circumstances would ever force me to wed.

My entire family was close, but it was toward
Emma, my younger sister, that I directed most of my devotion. We
shared a room and all of our thoughts, and throughout childhood,
could always be found together, Emma doing mischief and me fretting
that she would be caught and punished.

When Emma married, I was ecstatic. More than
any of the others, I knew that her children would seem closest to
being mine. It took her many years, but finally when all hope was
lost and she, scandalously, was old enough to have had
grandchildren, she got pregnant.

For months I fussed over her and visited her
daily, cooking and cleaning while she rested or sat with her giant
belly, and gossiped and watched me. We talked endlessly about names
and plans for the baby and, as the birth approached, my
anticipation kept me awake in the night. I knitted tiny sweaters,
and embroidered little dresses to calm myself, and babbled to my
mother every detail of the conversations Emma and I had had earlier
that day, repeating them oftentimes until my mother rolled her eyes
and laughed.

I was at her side when Emma gave birth. I was
the first to hold the baby, whom I cradled in my arms, pretending
it was mine. I was so enraptured that it took me a moment to notice
the doctor’s sweating brow and frightened eyes, and to allow his
frantic motions to register, while he bent over Emma and
desperately tried to save her life.

“She was too old to try for a baby,” he
muttered, as if the fault lie with Emma, and not God’s will or the
doctor’s own impotence when faced with inevitable death.

Then, she slipped away without ever having
held her little daughter.

The doctor took the baby from my arms to show
it to Emma’s husband, and to tell him that his wife was dead. I
remained in the bedroom with Emma, sobbing, tenderly smoothing her
hair and patting her hand, stunned, shaken, wondering how I could
continue to live without my beloved sister. I had never known such
shock, grief and loss before.

Emma’s husband was stricken with terror at
the thought of raising his child alone. He was an older man, unused
to children, and he looked at his daughter in bewilderment.

“I cannot. I would not know how,” he
whispered plaintively with tears welling in his eyes as the doctor
held the baby out to him. He recoiled, even from touching the
infant, and the doctor did not insist.