WOMEN
TUESDAY, JULY 20, 1779
“Noah!”
My mother is forever shouting at me. She has no patience.
“Noah!”
And I must show myself and answer her, no matter if I’m in the middle of something important or not.
“NOAH!”
I stumble out of the privy, tripping over the daylilies my mother insisted on surrounding it with, and head toward the cabin.
“I’M COMING,” I shout. After my father died, I thought I would be the man of the house, but my mother took the job.
“Noah, look at the crib. We’re almost out of wood. And we’re right in the middle of boiling lye water and pig’s grease for soap.” She stands in the door, hands on her hips. Her hair is pinned up but falling down in wisps around her face. She is pretty. It always strikes me as odd that someone with so sweet a face can be so … competent. “After you fill the crib, wash up. It’s almost dinner time.” She turns and enters the cabin in a sweep of buntlings.
My mother never stops moving, unless perhaps she’s taken up her quilting or is shelling walnuts, but even in those instances, her hands continue to move.
I sigh and turn toward the woodpile. I’m so bone-weary from my long walk yesterday. I walk every evening after my chores. I do it to prove that I can. When I was three years old, a visiting neighbor’s horse stepped on my foot, crushing all its bones. My father wanted my foot amputated to save my life. But my mother wrapped it tightly and nursed me through a two-week fever. People said I wouldn’t survive. Then they said that I wouldn’t walk again. They were wrong on both counts. Or rather, mostly wrong. I do walk, but with a limp. When Mary was a child, she would constantly ask me if it hurt to walk. I told her it didn’t. I told her this because it’s what I told myself. It did not hurt and I could walk … and so I do walk … every day.
I walk to the same place, a part of the woods that I call my “farm.” A small clearing about a mile southeast of our cabin, which is halfway between our farm and Van Auken’s Fort. It’s a good spot, closer to the Neversink River than our farm. The land is level and well-drained. The color and depth of the soil are perfect. And as to location for water, it could not be better. The Neversink is a smaller river than the Delaware, but it’s filled with trout and bass and carp. It’s just a good spot.
I hide a yawn. And then a second one.
I can’t look like I’m dragging or my mother will frown the next time I head out for my walk. She has never liked my walks. She knows I walk just to prove I can, and believes that if I’m to tax my foot, it should be in her service, and not for proving points. Not that she has ever allowed me to use my foot as an excuse to get out of chores—just as she doesn’t believe in proving points, she also doesn’t believe in excuses. Unless of course that excuse is one she favors, because she believes it’s perfectly fine to use my foot as an excuse to keep me from joining the war. We never speak of these things, we just frown at each other.
But my walks are mine and I will not give them up. The only time I have my head to myself is on my walks. At least, that used to be the only time. Now, of course, Eliza Little is always sitting at the fork in the path waiting for me. It’s like there’s a woman everywhere I turn.
“Noah,” my mother complains, “we need the crib filled today, not at some point this year.”
I load faster. What my foot lacks in strength I more than make up for with my arms. And if I am exhausted, I’m determined that neither my sister nor my mother will see it.
Mary comes to the door of the cabin. Her corset is loose and the sleeves of her white shift are rolled up past her elbows. Her dark hair is pulled tightly up under her cap and her cheeks are bright red from the heat of soap-making. She watches me load. “You look tired today,” she says.
Zounds! I cannot hide anything, living with two women. They are always looking straight through me. I miss my father. He would ruffle my hair like I was just a child and shout at the two of them to let me be. Even last year, when I was fifteen. But I never minded it.
“I am not tired,” I scowl. “I’m actually full of energy on this beautiful summer day, Mary Elizabeth Daniels.”
She laughs at me as she turns back to the iron cooking pot and her soap. Mary is a combination of both our parents. She has the drive and beauty of my mother and the comical spirit of my father. A happy and content girl who sees no reason why everyone else should not be the same. She also sees no reason, even though she is almost three years younger than me, why she shouldn’t tell me what to do and when to do it. I throw myself into my chair at the table and smile as broadly as humanly possible. I will not let women rule my life.
“Eat,” Mary commands, as she places a loaf of rye bread, a tankard of bee balm tea, and a bowl of cornmeal mush in front of me.
And I eat.