BackWords
CHAPTER 1
He could not be dead. His pillow was still warm. At least it felt warm when she touched it. Perhaps it was her hand that conveyed the heat, playing tricks on her mind. Cruel tricks indeed. She smiled, remembering a recent sermon. “If thy hand offends thee, cut if off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched.”
Cutting off her hand would not bring her husband back. And it certainly would not keep her from God’s judgment.
Still, it was insanely difficult to remember that he was gone. Elizabeth had to remind herself. She could hear fragments of sounds from a lifetime together: his footsteps at the door. The snuffling throaty sound he made as he fell asleep. The smell of his hands after a day’s work, lampblack ink-stained, sooty like a chimney but with a varnish scent of fine furniture. His breath—warm and sticky, a curious mixture of garlic, onion and the milk-fed breath of an infant in the morning. The extrication of a soul is a messy, surgical procedure done unceremoniously over time. It is the result of layers of scars, of gouging out memories and cutting away nuances. No, he would not be truly dead to her for quite some painful time.
Elizabeth stood at the window and watched a cold rain slide down the windowpane, thickly, as if it were clear molasses. The crisp, cool, pleasant weather of Lewis’s funeral yesterday had finally, inevitably succumbed to a late December winter in the colony. The end of one thing heralds the beginning of another, she tried to console herself.
The service had been attended by great numbers, though, and most likely would have been greatly attended even in this dismal squall. Her husband had been well-liked, respected, even though he had been a Charles-Town resident for only a few short years. A tribute to their open hearts, and Lewis’s reputation as a good man of business and a right proper friend.
That burying business taken care of, however, Elizabeth should be hurrying out, just now. She was already late opening the shop. Past deadline, and she was a punctual person. But immobility gripped her, and a desperate want to just stay at the window, here in the relative warmth, and spend the day watching millions of small drops being pelleted by more drops, knocked loose from their comfortable spots and sent sliding down the glass into each other, some rushing all the way to the bottom and back into the earth. She drew up a chair, and sat heavily in it, unblinking. Puddles pooled; the packed ground softening like an unfired brick not yet ready for the kiln.
It would be a muddy walk to the grave site this afternoon. Her hem would take the worst of it.
She sat there for some unnumbered minutes, absently present in the motion of the day, a sojourner into a vacant place in her mind. When she returned to her surroundings, she realized her cloak was still wrapped around her. She stood clumsily, the loosely tied garment threatening to release its hold on her and drag the ground off her left shoulder. She reached to replace it, and fumbled around her head for the hat that was still pinned there, from the church service at St. Philip’s. She lingered at the window a moment longer, waiting for the blood to circulate and keep her on her feet. Tiny dark sparkles clouded her vision, but they would clear. Just a fleeting dizzy spell. It always passed.
She held the back of the chair tightly. Had she eaten? When had she eaten? She could not recall. No time for that now, she thought, even if she could muster up an interest. Elizabeth smoothed her gloves against the front of her winter coat and willed her body to move forward, out of the bedroom. Into the main room of the Timothys’ King-street home.
The children were safe enough under Louisa’s watchful eye. “Children,” Elizabeth said in characteristic authority, “I shall be gone for several hours. I expect you all to be on your best behavior for your sister. She is to be in charge while I am at work. You will listen to her, and do as she says.” Elizabeth turned to her eldest daughter now, knowing she was expecting much from the young girl of 15, her first born, still damp with tears from burying her father. “Lou, dinner is on the fire. Everyone is to be in bed promptly, and without dispute,” she said, as much to her eldest daughter as to the other children to remind them that obedience was expected.
”When will you return Mother?” Louisa asked.
“When I have put the newspaper to bed,” her mother replied, and stepped briskly to the threshold. “If I do not return home in time, put yourselves to bed.” Just before firmly closing the front door—noting again what a dreadful day this would have been to be buried—she called out one last directive: “Peter, I expect those shoes to be shined when I return.”
Only those who had business on King-street are out today, Elizabeth thought, shivering. She hugged her clothing around her tightly, thankful that she was wearing a high-collar dress. Stepping outside their home she noticed how indiscernibly gray the sky appeared: lower than usual, suffocating. Even the birds kept clear of it, those that ventured to take flight at all. It was as if they were afraid they would hit the ceiling and tumble down, soggy and dazed, to the corn meal block of earth below. The winter rain peppered pools of low ground; carriage ruts were long thin vessels holding a muddy mix the earth could not absorb.
After the funeral several friends and business acquaintances had lingered at St. Philip’s, offering condolences to her. I am so sorry for your loss. What a tragedy. How old was your husband? Pity. You and your family have only recently moved to Charles-Town. Tsk, tsk, tsk. If there is anything you need. God be with you. We will pray for you and your family. God, in His infinite wisdom, has a purpose. Your husband is with the angels now.
The words floated around her. She could hear them buzzing; she could see them swarming, but she refused to let even one syllable light on her skin, enter her nostrils or brush past her lips for fear it might sting her soul. The emptiness of it all was like a disease. Still, with all her fortitude she had smiled, nodded graciously, offered appreciation for their sentiment. And silently prayed they would all just go away.
No, work was what she needed now. And since it was Tuesday, December 30, she had very little time to finish setting type in order to make Thursday’s deadline for publishing the South-Carolina Gazette.
Subscribers would understand if the newspaper were delayed. There was the historic peace pipe ceremony to include in this edition. And, of course, the unhappy death and funeral of the Gazette’s publisher, so soon to the colony. Her husband Lewis had arrived in 1734, just four years ago, with Elizabeth and the children following several months later. The Timothys knew many people in town due to their work; printing was a community profession, after all. Newspaper printers knew the news first. And busybodies were not endemic to any particular locale. What news the Timothy Print Shop did not know, many wag-tongued townspeople were delighted to provide.
The citizens of Charles-Town would understand if she failed to meet deadline. But right now, Elizabeth needed to be absorbed in what she knew. She needed something, anything, to crowd out every other thought. Some might talk, wondering how a pregnant widow, expecting her seventh child momentarily, could choose to put out the next edition instead of mourning with family and friends. Some might ask why she was not in reclusion as polite society prescribed, removing herself from all business and social situations for at least one year while she wore the black uniform, head to toe, of a mourning widow. Some would talk, as some always do: “Why is she not distraught?” they would whisper, conjuring up that most insidious concoction known as Doubt. “She is taking his loss so well,” others would pretend to compliment, “not at all overcome with grief.”
Elizabeth could not have cared less about appearances.
She had no time to grieve. Nor did she wish for any. She knew that if she did not pick herself up and shove all emotion down deep, life literally would not go on for her and her family. Until Peter reaches majority, she was head of household. And Lewis would want her to tend to business. It is what she had always done. What he had come to expect. What he had come to rely on. His wife was arguably better than he at putting words together on a printer’s stick. She was inarguably better than he at keeping the books. Ben Franklin, Lewis’ publishing partner in the Carolina colony, had said so himself.
Lewis’s accidental death meant that much of the work had already been done on the next edition. It was not like he had taken ill, and could not work. He had been working when he died, preparing for the next issue. Or, rather, Elizabeth had been preparing. She herself had done most of the work. She knew by heart most of the stale news and ads that ran in the weekly newspaper. She could put words together, letter by letter, on a printer’s stick with her eyes closed. And this was just the sort of mind-numbing, rote activity she desperately needed to be swallowed up in, like an insane patient picking at a sore with the intense single-mindedness of someone who would not be deterred, regardless of the deleterious physical effect. If she could not mindlessly “pick at her sore” by setting type, she feared she might not survive the next horror-stunned days. There would be time to digest the loss of him some other time.
The guilt, of course, would remain in her throat like a goiter, reminding her with even the most basic of bodily functions that it cannot, will never be, swallowed.
It was a short walk from the Timothy home to the church yard. Shaking and cold, she stood beside her husband’s fresh grave. The recently dug ground, hemorrhaging trickles of water that ran down bumps and bruises in the wet earth, was beginning to settle again. Soon the wound would scab over. But other wounds would not.
Wet and cold, but no longer pommeling rain, Elizabeth walked quickly back to King where she turned the key in the lock and entered the print shop. The familiar incense of ink and leather filled her nostrils and she shut the world out behind her with a comforting, wooden thud of the door so quick upon her entry as to very nearly catch her skirts in the process.
Sanctuary.
Inside, Elizabeth closed her eyes, and breathed her first deep breath in days. She drew air into her lungs, filling them from the very bottom and expanding them upward until she reached the very top of the rise, where she finally, deliciously, crested the hill. The air spilled over, expelled in an audible, satisfying sigh. She followed it to its conclusion, where there was no more air to let go. Her head slumped forward, and her shoulders—how long had they been up around her ears?—followed.
Thank goodness most of the South-Carolina Gazette had already been laid out. Thank goodness there was still some of it left to do. Lewis always saved the front page for late-breaking news. This was her preoccupation now, as she took account through the shop window of the fading light of a short winter day dark from its nascence. She lit only one candle—just enough to set by—and placed it as close to the type form as possible. Quickly she reached for Lewis’s ink-stained deerskin apron and tied it around her huge belly, covering the seed that ripened within her. The high stool at the workbench was perfect for taking pressure off her lower back; she could work here, in the dark, loading type together on Lewis’ composing stick.
Reaching up to the four wooden trays containing Roman and italic type, she began threading characters into words, backwards words, for printing. Letter by letter, she added to the lengthening column of print, double-spaced, in her hand. If she heard the knock, she did not acknowledge it. But the visitor did not wait for an invitation. The door opened, and Dr. Dale walked in.
Expecting to find her distraught, perhaps even giving birth prematurely in the agony of her grief, he had called at the Timothy home. When the children told him their mother was at the print shop, he wasted no time. He was surprised to see her in Lewis’s apron, working.
“Trading widow’s weeds for a printer’s apron Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth did not look up. “Did you think you should find me lying prostrate with grief, a victim of my own ‘unhappy accident’ Thomas?” Elizabeth’s doctor knew her well enough to understand that, if she did not sink herself in the mundane task she had come to love, she would drown in the depth of her despair. Her slow, even tones were a signal to Dale, though; he knew she was barely treading water. And with her pregnancy almost full term, he was concerned for both his patients.
“Elizabeth. Your doctor orders you to come down from that stool and walk with me back to your home. This is neither the time nor the place for a woman to be working. Not even you.”
She turned her head toward him and offered a half-hearted smile that seemed chiseled in the ashen face of a statue. The work did not halt. Without even looking she continued to feed characters onto the lengthening column of print in her hand as if she were asleep. He felt as though he was an observer in her dream; she was not really working. She was not really even there. Only her agile and animated hands betrayed life behind dead gray eyes.
Shock, the good doctor reasoned. Like the gentle rocking back and forth of a child whose mind cannot make sense of a horrible tragedy.
Before he even uttered them, Dr. Dale knew his orders would be ignored. This patient was one of his most difficult. It was part of what made Elizabeth Timothy so endearing. Pulling up a stool beside her, he sat with her, a human presence, while she finished loading each stick onto a galley. He tied it off for her, without her consent, and transferred the page form to the imposing stone to be locked into the chase.
Elizabeth picked up a block of wood and a soft mallet made of deerskin and began pounding the back of the type form to ensure all the letters would make an impression on the white paper. Dale knew there was no arguing with her; she would not stop the process now. If he wanted her to rest, he would have to assist her in finishing the work. Only then would she agree to return home to a chair and her children.
“You pull and I will beat,” he said with resignation. Elizabeth placed a sheet of ragpaper in the tympan and folded the frisket over it while Dale took up a wooden brayer and spread ink on a mixing block. “I trust I will perform this job no more satisfactorily than you would treat dysentery,” he said, attempting to elicit a smile. Long silences were difficult for him; in his field, he found he worked even harder to treat a very sick patient for fear of the funeral. He never knew what to say at times of loss. “I am sorry” sounded as if he was assuming responsibility for the death. “He will be missed,” was a moot statement of fact. Still, he found himself babbling over a surviving family member like some feeble-minded idiot who could not contain his tongue, digging holes in a conversation out of which he could never climb. Elizabeth, at least, had the decency to be unresponsive to his babble.
He locked the chase onto the bed of the press. Taking up the wooden handles of two leather-covered balls, Dale collected the sticky ink and transferred it evenly onto the type. With stained fingers Elizabeth pressed the paper against the inked type. Dale noticed the skill and strength, paired with a certain gentleness, which she employed in the process. He wondered what anger at her husband’s death seethed beneath the surface. Surely she was mad at God, taking Lewis from her so suddenly, especially after his recent bout and recovery from smallpox just months earlier. Dale wished she would throw the form on the floor. This pent-up anger was not good for the baby.
When the impression had been successfully made, Elizabeth carefully pulled the long sheet from the form. Dale helped, holding a corner as she worked her way down, pulling the freshly printed page of wet type away. When the ragpaper was clear of it, she turned it over to inspect her work.
Dr. Dale looked at his patient. He would have thrown his arms around her, had she not been holding the first impression of Thursday’s paper. He would have held her so tightly his grip would have squeezed the tears out of her. He would have pressed her convulsing, weeping face into his shoulder and vowed to stay there until the well was dry. But Elizabeth was not that kind of woman; he knew that all too well. He was that kind of man, right enough, but she was not that kind of woman.
“An ‘unhappy accident,’ Elizabeth?” Dale asked softly. Without response, she let him take the wet sheet from her hand and hang it to dry.
The remainder of the imprints for their loyal and growing number of subscribers needed to be printed and dried before distributing. She had help: Peter, her son, of course, who was apprenticing to take over when he reached majority, and two journeymen at the press and another learning the vat and coucher work. The Negro had fled, and he was wise to have done so. No matter, though; Dale knew Elizabeth wanted to do it alone. Still, though she would never have asked for his companionship, she was grateful Dr. Dale had come by.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked, and she knew he meant it.
“Yes,” Elizabeth replied. “You can tell me how I got here.”
Dale wasn’t sure what she meant but before he could ask, she added, “How did I get here, to Charles-Town, from my girlhood in Holland? What am I doing here, with no husband, and six children with another on the way any moment, in a place that is so far from where I began?” She was on the verge of tears, but she fought through it, forcing the words from her mouth. “How, do you suppose, will I manage to move forward from this, into an uncertain future?”
Her doctor considered a response. In Elizabeth’s own way, she was begging him for an answer that made sense of it all. He wanted to give her that. She was a smart woman, as evident by the skills and acumen that had made her and her husband Lewis such favorable business partners of Benjamin Franklin. Dale knew Franklin to be a man of great intellect, and in Elizabeth he had found his female equal. He knew she was astute enough, however, to know there was no satisfactory reply, save the one she had just printed by her favorite author on the Gazette’s front page. And that being the case, he chose to consider the question rhetorical, rubbing her shoulders with his large hands and nodding his head in silent agreement.
No, whether she chose to believe it or not, what she wanted now was a friend. A friend who would quietly take that first step into the uncertain future with her.
CHAPTER 2
”Hurry along children,” Elizabeth herded the children like a female mallard directing her ducklings toward a desired destination. Louis and Elizabeth had lectured the children for weeks about their responsibilities on the voyage to America, and the consequences of disobedience.
“Louisa, grab Peter’s hand.” Her eldest child reached for her brother’s hand but Peter shook off her hold and stuffed his hands in his breeches’ pockets. “Peter,” Elizabeth warned, “I will whip you where you stand, young man. In front of God and these witnesses, I swear I will.”
“But Moeder,” her five-year-old whined, “it is not fair!”
“What are you two squabbling about now?” Elizabeth asked.
Louisa opened her mouth to respond but Peter beat her to it. “She stole my name! Make her give it back!”
It was a familiar discourse lately between the two—one Peter enjoyed purely for the pain it caused his sister. “Peter,” his mother said through gritted teeth, “you know your sister is not to blame for bearing your father’s name.” The boy believed the name belonged to him as first-born male. It was not Louisa’s fault, of course. But Peter knew better than to blame his parents. And he had learned to unleash his anger out of his parents’ earshot. Elizabeth had whipped him enough to force this new strategy, and Louisa was no tattle.
Elizabeth turned toward her daughter with a deliberate thrust of her bustle in Peter’s direction, almost knocking the boy off his feet. “Louisa, do not let him ruffle you,” Elizabeth said. She knew her eldest tried hard not to fall into her brother’s trap, but it was difficult not to defend herself. More than once Peter had successfully reduced Louisa to tears. How disappointed Mother and Father must have been, he told her, when they found out you were a GIRL. It struck a nerve that was wound tightly around her opinion of herself, a constrictive snake of a thing. To her credit, though, Louisa had developed a repertoire of retaliations, not the least of which was reminding Peter that she bore their father’s name because she was most like him in appearance, temperament and intellect. “They could have named you Louis,” she told him frequently, to which he had little response except to say that most of her father’s name had already been wasted, and it would be cumbersome at best to have two children separated by barely two years and only one vowel.
Elizabeth knew her husband had prayed for a first-born heir. What man could honestly say he did not? Providence had seen fit to begin the Timothee family with a female, though, and no amount of harassment would change that fact. Louisa—practical, mature, trustworthy—was the very epitome of a first-born child, male or female.
“Let me assure you, Peter,” Elizabeth said, “your sister was deliberately named after your father as first-born, and nothing you could say or do will ever change that fact.”
The boy hung his head, with the slight evidence of his tongue stuck out on the side of his mouth only his sister could see. “Well they must have thought you quite an ugly girl, to name you after a man and not after your own beautiful mother,” he shot back.
It was lamentable, Elizabeth thought to herself, that her daughter was not strong enough to wield a switch, at least not without risk of having it turned on her. A sound whipping from his older sister might just have been what the boy needed.
“Louisa,” Elizabeth bent down to speak directly to her daughter, “take the baby.” Dutifully, the child took Charles, just barely one year old, from her mother’s embrace. Without being asked, she held her free hand out to Mary Elizabeth, a toddler. Her eldest would make a fine mother herself one day, Elizabeth thought.
“Peter, your father will require your assistance when we reach the dock,” Elizabeth warned him in advance. The boy, barely out of clouts himself, nodded reluctantly and rubbed his ornasburg sleeve laterally across his runny nose. It would take everyone’s help to get aboard with their belongings and find a suitable place to stay.
Elizabeth surveyed the crowd: mostly German Palatines mingled with Dutch passengers. Many of them had no chests to bring aboard. Some had several, and it was for these travelers that Elizabeth held the most empathy. The more chests brought aboard, the more probable that they contained all the family’s worldly possessions. America was the spot on a map where they had pinned all their hopes and dreams.
For now, the waiting throng was orderly. Women and girls dressed in millinery ware, gloved and buttoned up tight with whalebone corsets, and many in what appeared to be their finest Sabbath garments, remained at the top of the wharf while the men and boys over 16 years of age were culled aside, preparing to load each family’s belongings on board. Overhead the jackal cry of seagulls, soaring and diving for fish, mingled with boatswains’ chatter and the incomprehensible din of voices murmuring in a dozen different tongues. The ship slapped the water rhythmically and the footfall of boots and supplies being dragged across wood planks was borne on the salty breeze.
As soon as all cargo was loaded, the men would board. Each, with his own belongings, would stake a claim to a room—if one could be had—or at least carve out a spot on deck where the fresh air would minimize the possibility of illness while under way. Then, when women and children had been loaded, the first mate and boatswains would cast off.
Captain Franklyn would collect fares upon arrival in Philadelphia. The Timothees were cash customers; Louis figured 5 pounds sterling each for himself and his wife, and 3 pounds sterling for each child. The fare alone came to almost 245 guldens, but he knew they might need to purchase items from the ship’s store, and would certainly need to let a room in Philadelphia. He had 300 guldens, a few dozen stuyvers and as many penningens tucked in his wallet and slung around his neck for safekeeping. Another cache was sewn into the linings of their garments—his wise wife’s idea. All told the Timothee family had enough to pay everyone’s passage, with some to spare. But Louis knew he would need to secure work as soon as possible in the New World.
Elizabeth introduced herself to a young woman, about her age, standing next to her. People were packed in everywhere on the dock, waiting to board. In such close proximity it was difficult not to at least chat casually with the person with whom you were rubbing elbows. “My apologies for jostling you!” she said.
“Oh no! Not at all!” replied the lovely young German. “I see you have several beautiful children with you. What a blessing. My husband Wilhelm and I hope to start a family soon. I fear my childbearing years are running short.”
“Well, America is a land of opportunity, I have heard. The perfect place to raise children. I am Elizabeth Timothee,” and she nodded to the woman in greeting.
“Christina Kerkes. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Do you have family in America?” she asked.
“No. We have none,” Elizabeth replied, “but my husband is a first-class printer and a master of the French language. We hope to begin a school and run a printing house when we arrive. And you?”
Christina told Elizabeth that she was traveling with her husband and brother-in-law Johan to join other relatives already established in Philadelphia. “They own a thriving bakery in town,” she told her new friend. “The German influence is strong in Pennsylvania. Wilhelm said that, if the other Kerkes made the voyage, we can too.”
The men were queued up at the water’s edge of the wharf, each family’s trunks ready for loading into the hold of the HMS Brittanica. The ship was formidable, but Elizabeth wondered if it could accommodate all the people waiting to board her, as well as the cargo the ship’s mates were busily stowing below deck. Elizabeth imagined she could see a slight sinking of the prow with each ponderous piece of luggage brought aboard. She wondered if every traveler had gone through the same painful exercise as she and Louis, deciding which of their worldly possessions was precious enough for inclusion in the trunk, and which family heirlooms must be left behind.
“What is your ultimate destination?” Christina asked.
“Philadelphia as well,” Elizabeth answered. “We have connections that we hope will result in employment.”
“You are fortunate to be traveling as a family,” Christina responded. “Many in my village could scarcely afford to send the head of household, much less the entire family.” Elizabeth surveyed the crowd: almost two-thirds of the passengers were men and boys. “My husband and his brother did not want me to make the voyage, but I could not bear the thought of being left behind, wondering if they had arrived safely. Of course they would send for me when they were firmly established,” she assured Elizabeth, “but I should not care to make the trip alone. No, my place is with my Wilhelm.”
Elizabeth returned the young woman’s gaze, acknowledging that she, too, understood the trip’s dangers. She considered her own family in Rotterdam. For a brief moment she thought about her husband, her babies, but willfully pushed away somber thoughts and pulled herself up to her full height. Her task was simply trusting and obeying—an area in which the Father delighted in testing her.
Self-Made Box
Sunny yellow walls, personal Listening Tom
eavesdropping on unspoken words:
A curious collection of light and dark,
of blue sky possibilities and long drowning drops
beyond a locked window, there for the opening;
remaining shut.
A box of unique and unremarkable fingerprint smudges:
mutely morse the dits and dots, the "I's" and "Oh's"
a desperate language of its voluntary prisoner,
too fearful to try and fail or succeed.
Domo Arigatou Pi
Begin
with a
stick of creamy
pale yellow softened butter
slowly absorbing a cup of
sugar--crystals mixed with two eggs,
beaten, binding and inclusive, enfolding unexpected flavors
of sweet tropical coconut and woodsy chopped pecans,
sun-dried, wrinkled golden raisins--the Lazarus of fruits--
mix well into an orgy of sticky decadence and pour
into a deep pie shell--after adding the most important ingredient
to the concoction before baking at 350 degrees for forty-five minutes--
something surprising: oriental, tip-of-your-tongue familiar but the mind cannot name:
vinegar! The titillating tang--this is no ordinary pi.
Getting Rid and Writing
She ran the hot water to get it boiling. Hot water will bring it to the surface, she thought as she folded a washcloth up tight and soaked it in the blazing stream. If she popped it now, it would not be angry and red by the time she visited her boyfriend.
These things have to be thought through.
It was a good thing she was a Forward Thinker. Imagine the horror of leaving it another day or two--allowing it to get larger and more inflamed. At that point it would be too late to take care of. It would be a pustule-filled wet blanket on the weekend. She had waited too long to see her boyfriend. And she wouldn't be able to see him again for a while. She could feel the stress of a perfect weekend making her skin more oily.
He was a freshman at a college upstate 2 hours away; she, a junior at their hometown university. The age difference might mean something now, but when they were old and in their 30s no one would even care. She packed a few outfits she looked good in and her laciest panties and bra, put her bag in the AMC Hornet and tuned the radio to a local disco station. She planned to arrive when his classes were out at 2pm.
That night, fumbling in the dark in a drunken fog, he was having trouble getting the key into the dorm room lock. "I can't find the hole if it doesn't have hair around it," he said, and it had taken her a minute to get the joke. She was drunk too, making everything witty and so much more funny. She laughed, feeling included and popular, and part of something inside and dirty. The best. Included is absolutely the best thing to be. She was having fun. This is what people do. She was so glad she had come.
After more beer and a joint, her boyfriend crashed on his dorm bed--not enough room to even turn a phrase but she was fine on the floor. Everyone crashed around 2am in varying places and positions; his roommate passed out lying in the wrong direction on his own little cot. Her head--spinning like a tilt-a-whirl at the State Fair and that constant cottony ringing in her ears--just finally turned off. She dozed for an unknown amount of time.
When she awoke, she wet her lips and rolled off of her numb hip. The floor was cold and hard. The blanket was thin, inadequate. Above her she heard voices.
Her boyfriend's roommate was whispering. She could hear soft little kisses, saw the shadow of his hand push away a lock of hair from her boyfriend's sleepy face. She felt sick.
Hemingway said, "Write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know." I can finally write that sentence now.
We are the sum of our scars, and it's the scars that make us beautiful.
BackWords
He could not be dead. His pillow was still warm.
At least it felt warm when she touched it. Perhaps it was her hand that conveyed the heat, playing tricks on her mind. Cruel tricks indeed. Would Christ have meant this type of offense when he said, “And if thy hand offend thee, cut if off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched.”
Cutting off her hand would not bring her husband back. And it certainly would not keep her from God’s judgment.
Still, it was insanely difficult to remember that he was gone. Elizabeth had to remind herself. She could hear his voice. Fragments of sounds from a lifetime together: his footsteps at the door. The snuffling throaty sound he made as he fell asleep. The smell of his hands after a day’s work, lampblack ink-stained, sooty like a chimney but with a varnish scent of fine furniture. His breath—warm and sticky, a curious mixture of garlic, onion and the milk-fed breath of an infant in the morning. The extrication of a soul is a messy, surgical procedure done unceremoniously over time. It is the result of layers of scars, of gouging out memories and cutting away nuances. No, he would not be truly dead to her for quite some painful time.
Elizabeth stood at the window and watched a cold rain slide down the windowpane, thickly, as if it were clear molasses. The crisp, cool, pleasant weather of Lewis’s funeral yesterday had finally, inevitably succumbed to a late December winter in the colony. The end of one thing heralds the beginning of another, she tried to console herself.
The service had been attended by great numbers, though, and most likely would have been greatly attended even in this dismal squall. Her husband had been well-liked, respected, even though he had been a Charles-Town resident for only a few short years. A tribute to their open hearts, and Lewis’s reputation as a good man of business and a right proper friend.
That burying business taken care of, however, Elizabeth should be hurrying out, just now. She was already late opening the shop. Past deadline, and she was a punctual person. But immobility gripped her, and a desperate want to just stay at the window, here in the relative warmth, and spend the day watching millions of small drops being pelleted by more drops, knocked loose from their comfortable spots and sent sliding into each other, sometimes rushing all the way to the bottom and back into the earth. She drew up a chair, and sat heavily in it, unblinking. Puddles pooled; the packed ground softening like an unfired brick not yet ready for the kiln.
It would be a muddy walk to the grave site this afternoon. Her hem would take the worst of it.
Stopping (adapted from Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)
Sometimes I steal myself away
Retreat in thoughts of yesterday
Ignite the flame--control the spark
Rewrite, recast a different play.
The car is off, the street is dark
Lit homes reverberate a bark
From some kept dog in some backyard
Or maybe from a nearby park.
The autumn night is coming hard
On heels of sun's abandoned guard
The shiver outward, inward too
I turn the key, tear up the card.
Memories, frozen, always true
But the mind can heat, recast a few
Imagination is ever new.
Imagination is ever new.
Self-Made Box
Sunny yellow walls, personal Listening Tom
eavesdropping on unspoken words:
A curious collection of light and dark,
of blue sky possibilities and long drowning drops
beyond a locked window, there for the opening;
remaining shut.
A box of unique and unremarkable fingerprint smudges:
mutely morse the dits and dots, the "I's" and "Oh's,"
a desperate language of its voluntary prisoner,
too fearful to try and fail or succeed.