"ANNE, YOU OUGHT to be finished with that broom today. You can't shilly-shally over it much longer."
I was in the detached kitchen, making a broom out of broomcorn. Patsy would have it made out of nothing else. She said brooms were made of it in Italy near two centuries ago. And Benjamin Franklin planted seeds and raised some of the corn. And so did Thomas Jefferson.
"After, you can start the gingerbread."
I'd finish the broom, all right. But afterwards I'd right well get on my horse, Patches, and ride out into the countryside. We could well afford to buy brooms in town, even those made of guinea wheat, made up in Connecticut. But Patsy would hold sway over me.
She'd been doing so, or thought she'd been doing so, for two years now. And I'd been fighting her, bucking her, just like a new calf bucks its mother to get some milk.
Still, she had me doing everything in her effort to keep me from becoming like Mama. Her goal was to make me a woman of unsullied reputation, a woman who was affable, cheerful, cleanly industrious, and perfectly qualified to direct and manage the female concerns of a plantation.
Maybe, I thought for the thousandth time, I should have made a better lie of it. Maybe I shouldn't have told her I was the one to inherit the bad blood.
Maybe I should have said it was Betsy.
At four, Betsy can almost stitch a hem. And she'd become a solemn little thing, on her way to being a cleanly industrious female already. She follows Patsy around like a hound dog. Don't think it didn't come to me to put the curse on Betsy.
But that would have been taking the easy path. I'm not as all-fired educated as Patsy, but it reasoned to me that Patsy would have worn Betsy right into the ground.
So I said it was me.
I said it because Patsy never would have believed the truth. She would have thought I lied. And it was really her. And then she never would have wed MyJohn. And he's a man of good parts, and smitten with her. And we need him around here to defuse Patsy's harshness.
So I said it was me.
At least I have the mettle to fight back. Although there are times when it does try my spirit. And Pa—don't even think of Pa. Pa, who is so brisk for justice, has never once stepped in to keep Patsy from plaguing me. And that's what hurts most of all.
***
IT HAD SNOWED yesterday, but this morning the snow was gone and the sun as warm as May. MyJohn called it an "aberration of nature." I had to ask him to explain to me what the word meant.
"It means it goes against what is right. It goes against the true nature of things," he said.
Well, I wanted to say, a lot of things around here do. Then I wanted to ask him if keeping Mama in the cellar was an aberration, but I didn't. Because he is such a good person, I couldn't give him sass. He's to wed Patsy, isn't he?
I was determined to ride this day. In the house, Pa was secured in the front parlor, going over papers for a meeting Mr. Randolph wanted on March 20.
Patsy was likely with him. She was always with him.
"Can I help with the gingerbread?" Betsy came into the kitchen. Her little round face was anxious, asking for my approval, anybody's approval.
"You can make it," I said. "Nancy will be here in a minute and she'll help you."
Pegg's Nancy was almost ready to take over for her mother in the kitchen. She was nine, same as me. We'd long since ceased running about barefoot together, poking into bees' nests. Nancy has been aware of the different roles we have to play out, if I'm not. I'd just as lief be friends with her, but she's done the distancing, not I.
"Did you see Mama this morning?" Betsy asked.
"Yes."
"How is she keeping?"
What if I told her? Mama's in a strait dress, the arms of which are wrapped around and tied behind her, so she can't try to set fire to the house again like she did last week.
But I could not. "She's middling well," I said.
"How long can somebody live with brain fever?"
That was the latest story Pegg had told Betsy and Will. Brain fever. And they had to stay away from her, else they'd catch it.
Two years of brain fever.
"I don't know," I said.
"Why don't you catch it when you go to see her?"
I was ready with the lie. "Because Pegg gives me a special potion so I don't catch it."
She hadn't yet come to the next question, but I expected she would soon: Why can't Pegg give me some of that potion?
I was ready with that lie, too: Because you are too small. It will make you twitch and groan.
God help me for my lies. I'll burn in hell for them one day.
"I must go now," I said. "Here comes Nancy." She was coming down the covered walkway. She was near as tall as her mama already, and her walk just as graceful. "I'll stop by for a piece of that gingerbread when I come back."
"Where you off to?"
You couldn't walk out of a room on Betsy without she didn't ask, "Where you off to?" She was afraid you'd never come back Pa says it's on account of Mama.
"Patsy won't like it."
"I'm sure she won't. Which is why I shall enjoy it twice as much."
No, Patsy wouldn't like it, I thought as I walked to the stables. She'd say I was filled with "virile boldness" and "daring manliness" and "a breach of modesty." Those are Patsy's words, not mine.
She'd wail that I had no "modest pliancy," that at nine I was already a "hoyden," a "plague," and did not "own a humble distrust of myself."
I am not without "knowledge of my infidelities." But I am very much in possession of my senses. Except for one matter that I cannot get a purchase on, no matter how I try.
When do you keep a secret and when do you tell?
Do you tell the truth, knowing it will hurt someone? Or tell a lie to keep from hurting them? How much does keeping it inside cost? Eventually it will come out, won't it? And hurt the person you are trying to protect, anyway.
Is my lying the worst thing that goes on in this house? No. Madness lives inside our house. Not just in the cellar, where Mama languishes. But the whole house.
Why can't Pa and Patsy see it? I know John sees it, which is why he stays in the stables most of the time. Sometimes he even sleeps in the stables. Tells Pa that Small Hope or one of the others needs him. Pa abides it because he knows John is like Pa's half brother John Syme, Jr., who built a racetrack at Studley Farm, where Pa grew up, and imported blooded stallions to improve the horses in the colony. Sometimes John goes to visit Uncle John. To learn more about horses, he says. I think it's to get away from here.
Sometimes he tells Pa he's going there and goes to visit Dorothea instead.
There's a thunderation. Pa still doesn't know John is seeing Dorothea. Says John is too young for serious courting. At seventeen. Well, I won't scruple or hesitate a moment to lie for John if I have to.
John and I have spoken of the mood that's become a fixture in the house. He thinks he is free of it. And I am not the one to disabuse him of the notion. For believing something is half the battle. And I will deal with God's punishments when they come.
***
THIS DAY JOHN was in the paddock, brushing down Small Hope.
"Hello!" His voice was hearty. He was as tall as Pa now, and broad in the shoulders, too. He wore his hair tied in back in the manner of the day.
"How is she doing?" I asked. I knew he ran her every day.
"She's about in as high perfection as she'll ever be."
Small Hope had won the purse in last fall's four-mile heat in Devil's Field. After that people were starting to respect horses that were Virginia born and bred. And John, as an upcoming horseman.
"I'm riding over to Dorothea's this afternoon," he told me. "Will you explain?"
I said yes. It meant, of course, lying to Pa and Patsy, saying he was riding over to Uncle John's. I saw he had his saddlebags packed with extra clothing.
"You missed breakfast," I said.
He grinned. "Pegg took care of me in the kitchen."
"Pa doesn't like your not being at table with us."
"I know. Here, let me help you mount." And he did.
I looked down from Patches's back at my brother John. He was no longer a boy. I knew how much he loved Dorothea, and I knew she had a lot of beaus.
Suppose she chose somebody else?
I ached for him. We were friends, he and I, cut from the same cloth, of the same mind about so many things. When I was Betsy's age, he'd protected me, even lied for me, often enough to save me from Patsy's wrath. Without him around here, I might indeed go mad.
"Have a good ride," he said. And I said I would. He waved to me and held the gate as I rode Pitches out of the paddock.
Sometimes he let me ride Small Hope, while he clocked her. It was our secret. Barley knew but would never tell. And oh, I felt so proud, riding her. So free, and proud because he trusted me with her.
Tucked under me, my skirts exposed my legs up to the thighs. But the warm sun felt good and John paid no mind, except to laugh.
"Your reputation is getting sullied," he said.
Lord knew, he'd heard Patsy's words often enough.
"Yes," I said.
"But you are affable, cheerful, and cleanly industrious, and perfectly qualified to ride Small Hope in the steeplechase. If they let girls do it, I'd let you ride for me."
Oh, and he would, too!
I hadn't worn my riding habit because to go into the house and get it would have meant a confrontation with Patsy.
I cantered across the field, feeling the wind on my face and wishing I was John and could just pack a saddlebag and leave for a day or two.
But I wasn't, and I had to face my own thoughts.
I know Patsy blames Pa for what happened to Mama. But when he comes home, she seeks to reclaim him with smiles and flattery. And Pa allows it because he needs her.
She lies, Patsy does. I've known for a long time that she drinks Mama's tea in secret. And wears her silk when Pa isn't home, and she sits at the head of the table. Oh, she says she doesn't like it, but I know she does. We don't tell, none of us. Which makes us part of her lie. It's important for her to wear that silk dress, I suppose. It makes her feel like the mistress of the plantation.
Well, one red silk dress wasn't going to insure or take away the freedom of the colony. Or even the country.
But her lies have no purpose. And mine do. At least that's what I told myself as I rode across the countryside.