All the Truth That's in Me (17 page)

His wrath appeased, the schoolmaster finishes the afternoon’s lessons, skipping me entirely when he makes his rounds. I watch clumps of soft snow fall from branches outside the window until it’s time to leave. They are white, and soft, and lovely. Like Io, when she was a cow.

I think of myself transforming—the horns that aren’t there, that everyone sees, receding into my head.
But I am no cow, and there is no goddess to forgive me for what I never did.

XXVII.

You pass by the window. I turn to see. Is that, in fact, you? It’s you, and you see me now. The schoolmaster half rises from his seat.

He rings the dismissal bell and reaches the door before the students can grasp their freedom and get there first.
“Whiting.” His voice is hearty and convivial. As if you and he are longtime friends. “Good to see you. What brings you here?”
“I’ve come to help the Finches home.” Your voice reaches me through the press of students jostling for their coats.
His delay betrays him, but only to me. “Good man,” he says. “Right neighborly. Judith! Darrel!” Not Master and Miss this time. He turns and catches me with a gleaming eye. “Your royal escort awaits.” The girls titter, the boys scoff, and the schoolmaster returns, satisfied, to his seat.

XXVIII.

You lean against a tree, with Jip romping around your heels. Good old Jip.

“Good afternoon, er, Miss Finch,” you say, and extend me a hand, then seem to hesitate, as if embarrassed. I seize your hand and shake it.

Darrel’s comrades, two tall boys, drag him out, his good leg and his bad one dangling over the snow. They deposit him on his sled and clap you on the back, eager to show they’re nearly men now themselves. Which one of them plastered me with snow this morning, I wonder.

“I thought you could use a hand with the sled this afternoon.” You take hold of the rope and start out over the muck. “This thaw makes the going rough.”

“Thank you,” I say, nearly as well as anyone else might. “Tomorrow, why don’t I pull you in the mule cart?” you say. “This mud will only get worse.”

“You
are
a royal escort,” Darrel calls out. “Driven to school in the mule cart! Hurrah!”
You glance at me, and we both smile.
The school is far behind us now, and the air feels freer to me already. Only when my shoulder aches begin to fade do I realize how much the day’s worry has tied up my flesh into tangled knots.
“Say, Lucas,” Darrel calls out, “you wouldn’t believe how Gillis treated Judith today. Something awful.”
You stop pulling the sled, and Darrel flops forward.
“Watch it!” he calls. I look to see if his fall affected his stump.
“You all right, Darrel?” you ask. When he says yes, you turn to me.
“What did he do to you?”
I try to remain nonchalant. Are you angry? Not at me, surely?
I speak slowly, which gives me time to form the sounds as near as I can. “He didn’t care for how litthle I know.”
Darrel can’t bear this. He waves wildly to get your attention. “He sat her in the front of the class, right at his desk, so he could tutor her specially. Whispered in her ear all day, more like. But he must have said something cruel, because she up and left his desk in the morning and sat with the fifthlevel girls. Did he ever get vexed! So then in the afternoon he made everyone do double recitations and examinations, and he punished her for saying nothing! Gave her fifth-level words to spell, too.”
Your fingers flex inside your gloves. “What did he say that upset you?”
Darrel! I glare at my brother. Why did you do this to me?
“I can’t sshay,” is my answer. The words come out limp and pathetic, as they are.
“Won’t say, you mean.” Your voice is bitter.
You set off again with a heave at the rope on Darrel’s sled. I’m glad to be moving. But what have I done wrong?
“Show him your hand, Judith,” Darrel calls.
You stop once more, and I know you won’t be appeased until you’ve seen my palm. I peel off my mitten and hand it to you. There’s a raised welt where he struck me. On the third stroke it bled.
You take my hand carefully and examine the stripe. “I should report this to the aldermen.”
“Dhon’t,” I say. “They care for me lesh than for you, now.”
And that, I can see, was both foolish and mean. You deposit the sled at the door of the house and retreat after the briefest of good-byes.
Maria has taught me anew how to speak; I must teach myself better, when not to.

XXIX.

Darrel sits up after Mother has gone to bed, listening to me read through my primer that night. The words are easy to read:
cat
,
rat
,
sat
,
sit
,
bat
,
bit
,
fat
. They’re less easy for me to say.
Catth
.
Ratth
.
Satth
. My thick stump of a tongue can’t make the delicate sound of a single
T
. That requires the flick of a narrow tip. Whatever I do, a
th
tail lingers behind.

“Try them again, Judy,” Darrel says. He’s caught Maria’s fever, and forgotten that his job is to be my reading tutor, not my elocution mistress.

“Sitth. Batth. Bitth.”
“Cut it off shorter,” he says. “You’re almost there.” “Catt. Ratt. Satt.”
He’s right. It is sounding better. The
H
is fading. But it

will never sound right. Thrusting my tongue so far forward to compensate for what it has lost makes me sound mentally weak.

There was a big lad in the village when I was young whose mind wasn’t fully right. Nor was his speech. He didn’t live long. He drowned in the river when the spring floods were high. I hear his odd voice in my attempts, and I close the primer.

XXX.

A warm wind blows through the night and I lie awake in bed listening to icicles melt and drip off the eaves.

I think of returning to school. I’d rather disappear. Or better, strangle Rupert Gillis.
No. I should never jest like that, not even to myself.
I saw Lottie strangled. Her life was snuffed out like the wick of a lamp. Even foul Rupert Gillis deserves his fetid breath.
But how can I let his Latin poems and his stinging ruler prevail? I want to learn. I deserve to read and write. Thoughts for company, and a pen for a voice. Who is more entitled to those privileges than I?

XXXI.

I saw life choked out, squeezed out of my young friend. Saw the lights in her eyes extinguished by a pair of hands, hands so filthy they soiled the triangle lace of her dress collar.

To think of dirty collars at such a time.
Whose hands they were, I couldn’t see.
I watched her lose her breath forever while I sat in the

willow tree holding mine, lest he find me, too, and his hands press into my soft neck like dirty boots into new-fallen snow.

XXXII.

Morning comes, and nearly all the snow is gone. There is no need for you to drive us to school in the mule cart. But you come. Darrel sits in back on a hay bale, and Jip twists in happy circles at his feet. I go to sit next to him, but you insist I sit beside you. A courteous gesture.

I fix my eyes on your mule’s rump and smell the woodsmoke scent that rises off your brown wool coat.
You chuck the reins and we set off.
“Ugly, isn’t she?”
I look up. You mean the mule.
I protest this. My speech is slow and careful. “Nott for whatt she is.”
You grin. “Where’d you get your speckled mare?”
I wait for Darrel to answer but he doesn’t. I turn to see him; he’s watching the passing scenery with a determination that I don’t trust for an instant. But it appears I must speak. I choose my words carefully.
“At the battle. Her owner was killed.”
“Oh?”
Phantom could have been one of the soldiers’ from Pinkerton, but I imagine you know she wasn’t.
“I call her Phanttom.” My conscience compels me to add, in a lower voice, “She should be yours.”
“Get along! Git!” you shout to your mule, who has found a patch of greens unearthed by the snow.
You settle back into your seat. “Phantom. Where’d you come up with that name?”
“She’s more ghostht than animal.”
Your eyes invite me to keep talking.
“Shometimes I think she reads my thoughts.”
You laugh a little. “
My
thoughts would make dull reading. Git along, you dumb mule!”
Then I start to laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“
Dhumb
mule.” I tap my breastbone.
Your face flushes. I try to suppress my laughter.
“Well, you’re not!” you say.
I’m surprised at your vehemence. “Mostt people think I am.”
“Hmp.”
You turn back to the road, even though your mule could drive us to town blindfolded. I go back to watching her swaying rump and trying not to laugh.
“Why have you waited so long to speak?”
It is Darrel’s question all over again, and still I’m unprepared for it. No one wanted to hear what I had to say. I didn’t think I could. Mother wouldn’t let me. I didn’t want to. I don’t know. I was waiting for Maria to decide I could. None of your affair.
I sit up a little taller in my seat. “Now is better than later.”
You watch me, then turn away, but not before I catch you grin. You tip your hat to me, like one who admits he’s been bested in a friendly duel. “And so it is, Ladybird.”
I turn in astonishment, but your gaze is fixed upon the road.

XXXIII.

We pass the first houses of town. When you speak again, it startles me.

“So, a horse that can read your thoughts. Wonder what she sees.”
I speak without thinking. “You do?”
“I figure you do some of the better thinking that goes on in this town.”
Ah. Men in Roswell Station, men everywhere for that matter, don’t usually consider it a virtue for a woman to be adept at thinking. But I wonder. I think about my father. I believe he was proud of Mother’s strong will and quick wit. Perhaps I judge too quickly.
“Mother isn’t happy about Phanttom,” I say.
“Oh?”
“Too much for feed.”
“Hm.”
We pull up in front of the schoolhouse. I see Rupert Gillis’s face peering out through a smeared windowpane. Darrel is grabbed bodily by two of his friends and hauled into school, leaving Jip yapping.
“You could stable Phantom at my house,” you say.
I feel conscience pressing in on me. I should have given her to you at the start.
“She should be yours,” I repeat.
“No,” you say, “she’s yours. But I can board her for you. And you can come visit her as often as you like.”
Before I can comprehend your words, I’m nodding and accepting the offer. If you take her, I don’t really lose her, and I never want to say good-bye to Phantom.
Jip squirms into the front of the cart and licks your face. You shoo him off and help me down from the cart.
“Don’t be upset, though,” you say, “if I ask Phantom to tell me what she sees when she reads your mind.”

XXXIV.

Rupert Gillis shows no reaction when I sit down in my seat with the fifth-grade girls. Throughout the morning he operates as if all is normal. He comes to my seat, corrects my work, and assigns me new exercises and words to copy. He gives me nothing beyond my grasp. He instructs indifferently and moves on to the next pupil.

I begin to think I’ve prevailed. Perhaps yesterday was nothing more than a juvenile attempt he’ll abandon. We can move forward as teacher and student, and I can learn to read. Already my writing is improving, and I’ve read several lessons ahead in my primer.

At lunchtime he dismisses the class, but calls me to his desk. I prepare myself to be silent in both face and body.
“I had some visitors yesterday, Miss Finch. Interestingly enough, they all came to see me concerning you.” He waits for me to respond, then continues. “The first ones were Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, whose girls sit by you. Mrs. Robinson objects to your presence in the school. She claims you are an immoral influence on her girls. Her husband shares her concern.”
Robinson. Eunice’s younger sisters. I pretend to cough.
“It left me in an awkward position. Naturally I tried to reassure them both. Frankly, I don’t see what’s immoral about you sitting in class. But I was hard-pressed to counter their charges concerning your virtue.”
He’s startled me despite my defenses.
He nods at my changed expression.
“The other visitor was a friend and protector of yours, it seems. He used language ill fitting a gentleman to urge me to treat you fairly in my classroom.”
My insides squirm. Did you do that? Confront the schoolmaster on my behalf?
Perhaps some child took home a report of my ill treatment, and his father spoke on my behalf out of Christian decency.
But I don’t think so.
“Some for you, some against you. A woman of controversy.” The schoolmaster pushes back his chair and stands. “Your mind is not inferior, Judith.” He comes around the corner of his desk. “You’re sadly behind for your age, but you could learn much if you had closer instruction.”
He stands so close, he is peering down the length of his nose at me.
“I could help you. I could tutor you at length this evening, at my home, if you came to me.”
There is no mistaking the gleam in his spectacled fish’s eyes.
I back away but he seizes my wrist. His grip is surprising for one so thin. I shake my head violently and try to pry his hand away with my other.
“A maidenly display,” he says. “But we both know differently.” I can smell his heat through his musty woolens. “There is no use pretending you don’t know what I need, when I’ve seen you come from Lucas Whiting’s cabin, scarcely dressed, in the middle of the night.”
No. Oh no no no.
He knows he hit a mark that time. Again he traces circles on my captive palm with his free finger.
“If him, then why not me? I like a girl who doesn’t tell tales.”
I struggle to free my hand. Then I stomp my foot on his toes. He lets me go, utterly at ease. There is a sound of stamping boots at the door. We both look to see one of Darrel’s friends come indoors. I feel smeared in grease, so polluting are the schoolmaster’s words and eyes upon me.
“If not, then we’ll let Mrs. Robinson and the town decide if you deserve to be taught. Yes, Master Pawling? What can I do for you?”

XXXV.

When you come to drive us home from school in the mule cart, Darrel and I are bundled and ready, but we must wait while Rupert Gillis flaunts his pretended friendship with you.