FLEURETTE NEVER ASKED why she was schooled at home. There were no other children on Sicomac Road, and it might not have occurred to her that there was a school in town she could have attended. She simply accepted the idea that little girls do lessons under the supervision of their families. She didn’t know that Mother insisted on keeping her hidden, that Mother’s fear of scandal and her mistrust of paperwork and government and organizations of any kind made it impossible for her to consider sending Fleurette out of the house.
We used to argue that the school would not question a woman in her late forties with a young daughter, but Mother was convinced that someone would put the puzzle together. Although we had adoption papers, which should have made these matters easier, we had never told Fleurette that she was adopted, so the papers did us no good. This left us in a difficult position. It seemed easier—at least in Mother’s mind—not to discuss it at all and to just keep the child on the farm.
To explain Fleurette’s birth to the family, my uncles were given the impression that our father had returned briefly to our lives and then left again. Fleurette must have had the same general idea, although we almost never spoke of our father.
Nothing about the situation seemed odd to her, until one day when she was about nine and had been told to read aloud from a book of pioneer stories for children. She was reading about Daniel Boone. None of us were paying much attention, as the sound of Fleurette reading her lessons aloud was such a familiar part of our day that we only pretended to listen as we went about our work.
I was balancing our ledger books and had my back to Fleurette as she read, “‘At last they turned to go home, when suddenly two fierce-looking Indians sprang out of the woods and seized the boat.’” I looked over at Mother, alarmed, but she was intent on her needlepoint and didn’t seem to hear. Mother thought nothing of letting children read the most terrifying tales of ogres and witches and adventures gone terribly wrong. It was one of our points of disagreement about Fleurette’s upbringing.
“‘Betsey fought with her own oar,’” Fleurette was saying, “‘but it did no good: the Indians carried them off through the woods.’”
I put down my pencil and made ready to say something. Fleurette was a sensitive and imaginative child. She’d be up half the night after a story like this.
“‘Betsey reached up and broke the bushes as she passed along. She knew that her father would look for her, and she hoped that he might follow her by seeing the broken bushes.’”
That was enough. “Mother, don’t you think—”
Mother looked up, but before I could finish, Fleurette had closed her book and was standing in front of her. “Where is our father, maman?”
“What have you been reading?” she said, fumbling with her needlepoint.
“Pioneer stories,” I said. “I was about to say that they’re too much for a little girl.”
“Don’t we have a father?” Fleurette said, climbing into Mother’s lap. “Doesn’t Francis have a father?”
Mother pushed her back to the floor and smoothed her skirt. “Of course,” she said. “Everyone has a father.”
“Where is he?”
Mother looked at me for help. But she was the one who refused to speak of our father, and who seemed determined to make sure that he never heard about Fleurette and never knew where we lived.
“I’m afraid he’s . . .”
I shook my head. It seemed unfair to Frank Kopp to say that he was dead. She’d called herself a widow before, but never in front of Fleurette. Besides, the man could appear at our front door someday, and what a shock that would be!
“Gone?” Fleurette said. “Gone to fight the Indians?”
Mother smiled and patted her hand. “That’s right, chéri. He’s very brave.”
I couldn’t believe how easily she lied to the child. Then again, what else would she have said?
“Is he coming back?”
“I’m afraid not. He’s gone very far.”
IN SOME WAYS, we all raised Fleurette. She was a wild and unpredictable child who was as happy stomping through the creek in search of frogs as she was in a dancing frock on a make-believe stage. It required the attention of all three of us—and Francis, before he married—just to keep her working at her lessons and her chores. As she got older, Mother couldn’t match Fleurette’s energy and abdicated more and more of the responsibility for bringing her up to me and Norma.
But for the first ten or twelve years of the girl’s life, I stood by and watched my mother raise her. When she had a fever, Mother took care of her. On her birthday, Mother planned the party. And if she skinned her knee or got chased by one of the roosters, it was Mother she ran to with her tears.
It was never me. Fleurette never needed a thing from me—until now. I would stand on the corner with a gun all night if that’s what it took to keep those men away from her.