AS THE SEASONS passed, I rose in the ranks of the poorhouse. Unlike many who lived there, I knew my grammar and could write in a clear hand. I became a senior resident and was given the duties of correspondence. For this, I got two dollars a month and my own little table in Mrs. McNee’s office. I also wrote letters for Sheriff Evans. He said things sounded better when I wrote them.
Every four months or so, a letter from Helen would arrive. Mrs. McNee would take it to her room and read it to me the following day. Helen’s letters told of the difficulties on the Fortnam farm—the washouts and the droughts, the coughs and the fevers, the bossy sister and the nosey aunt. From our distance, Mrs. McNee and I watched Helen grow up. Then one day she wrote that she had met a young man named David Stone. She said she saw his soul the moment she laid eyes on him. I felt uneasy. I hoped that she would bide her time and not, like her mother, rush into something. Of course, I couldn’t write to tell her this, because I was too ashamed to bring myself back from the dead.
* * *
I was working on the ledger one chilly autumn day when I heard my name called. I came onto the porch and saw Mrs. McNee and a man I didn’t know standing by a wagon.
“Joe, there’s a woman here. Help this man carry her inside.”
In the wagon, a woman lay as though dead. The man took her shoulders and I her feet—she weighed almost nothing. We carried the poor creature upstairs, down the hall, and onto the spare bed in my room, Mrs. McNee close behind.
“Where’s she from?” asked the housemaster.
“Don’t know,” said the man. “I found her at the rail station, on her knees shiverin’. My house ain’t fit for a mule, so I brought her here.”
Mrs. McNee thanked the man, calling him a Samaritan. She told Audrey to take him downstairs and give him a meal. We undressed our visitor and found her hot. Mrs. McNee passed over her with a wet cloth, and I dried her with a towel.
The woman lay there for two days. At times, when she stirred, I sat her up and got her to drink. The fever continued. On the third morning, I brought her tea with sugar, thinking I would wake her, but her eyes were open when I came into the room. “Who are you?” she asked in a thin voice.
“I’m Joseph,” I said, setting down the tray. “What’s your name?”
“Marie. Where am I?”
“You’re safe, Marie. At the almshouse. In Delhi.”
“Oh,” she said, though I’m not sure she understood. I got her to take the tea, and in the afternoon, I brought her soup. I tried to feed her, but she wanted to do it herself. When I handed her the spoon, she used it to point.
“That bed,” she said. “Who sleeps there?”
“I do,” I said, thinking that would assure her.
Marie gave me a funny look. “Joseph, are you a man?”
I laughed. I hadn’t thought of how it might be to wake in a strange place and see someone who looked like me. “No, I’m not.”
“Are you a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Then why do you wear those clothes?”
“Because I like to.”
Marie nodded, but I could see that my strange appearance was more than she cared to think about. And when I asked where she was from, she shook her head to say she didn’t want to speak of it.
Two days later Marie was still in bed but better. She was thin as a goat, but her eyes were bright. She was sitting up and eating porridge when Mrs. McNee came into the room, house register in hand.
“We need to make this official,” she said to Marie. “What’s your name, dear?”
Marie turned and gave me a frightened look, but I didn’t know how to help. She turned back to Mrs. McNee but hesitated. “Marie Louise … Martin,” she said finally, her voice suggesting that the last name was not her real one.
Mrs. McNee ignored the confession and wrote in her book. “Where are you from?”
“Jersey City.”
“What was your business on the railroad?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. McNee. “Of course you can.”
Marie pulled the blanket to her chin. “I am disgraced.”
Mrs. McNee gave a tired smile. “My dear, in this house, we are all disgraced. That is our specialty. But we must contact your family.”
“No!” she cried. “I’d rather die.”
Mrs. McNee paused then patted Marie’s hands as if to say there was nothing to fear. For the present, no more questions.
I had been at the almshouse for four years and had a room alone, except when the other bed was needed. Marie was left with me, and I was to care for her. In a few weeks, her face filled out, and the color came back to her cheeks. She was pretty, and much younger than I had first thought. Nineteen, she said. She was well-spoken, but careful not to talk about her past. Her few possessions were kept in a double-handled cloth bag that she kept under her bed. Of worldly goods I had less than she did. My one visible possession was on the table—the book I was reading, which, of course, wasn’t mine. Marie asked about it, and I said that I had borrowed the book from a woman I worked for in town. She picked it up and brightened when she saw it was Villette by Miss Brontë. “I love Charlotte Brontë,” she said. “I wanted to be Jane Eyre when I was fifteen. Didn’t you?”
I smiled and told Marie that I hadn’t read Jane Eyre when I was fifteen, but rather just two years ago, but, yes, I did like the book. And that, I think, was the beginning of our friendship. Her question showed that she thought of me as a girl in my younger days, despite my present appearance. I liked this, for many people couldn’t seem to see me that way, as though I must have been a very strange creature back then just because I was one now. Beyond that, having a book in common gave Marie and me the feeling that we shared certain secrets. But not all secrets—her past was still not to be spoken of, and neither was mine. We were, of course, bumping into these walls all the time.
One night as we were preparing for bed, Marie was so forward as to ask if I had ever done something very bad. “I mean,” she said, “something so bad that it could never be undone. Something that hurt the ones you love.”
Such a thing to ask. And of me, in particular, for what hadn’t I done to hurt those I love? On another day, I might have found a way to avoid the question, but just then it seemed easier to answer. “Yes,” I said. “If you must know, I have.”
Marie arranged herself on the bed. “I’m strangely comforted.”
I gave a short laugh. “Well, I’m glad my sins can do good for someone.”
“Perhaps even more if I knew what it was that you did. Does anyone here know?”
“No, Marie, they don’t,” I said, annoyed that she was ignoring our rules. “And what about you? You would know my greatest sin and not even tell me your real name?”
That did it. She buttoned up. Seeing how things were, I picked up my book and began to read. A minute later Marie asked the name of the book. I let out a breath. It had been on the table for the past two days, so I knew full well that she knew, but I told her it was Silas Marner, by George Eliot whose real name was Mary-something. I think she knew all about George Eliot, but she was playing the child, so she just nodded, and I went back to the book. A minute later she spoke again, now asking if I would read to her. I paused as though considering, but I already knew that I didn’t want to—my reading was my world. But I couldn’t think of a good way to say this. Finally, I gave up and turned back to page one.
Despite my misgivings, I liked the reading almost right away, and from then on, we didn’t miss a night. Soon we took turns, I one night, Marie the next. To keep our voices low we pushed our beds together. And I didn’t mind revisiting the first part of Marner. Despite the dreary landscape, the book now took on the qualities of adventure, as though Marie and I were out on the moor together with the evils of the world hiding in the weeds.
Once done with Marner, we decided to go back to Jane Eyre to have the fun of reading it together. But the book didn’t capture either of us the way it had before. Rochester, who, in the first reading, had come galloping in on a huge stallion, appeared the second time almost a bumbler—never able to say what he needed to say and always sighing, Jane, Jane. I began to imitate his moaning and soon it became our private joke. And the foolery didn’t stop with just Rochester. We made fun of Jane too, though we both still loved her.
Sharing stories at night reminded me of when I was a girl in Westerlo where we would begin our peas and beans in boxes set inside the window. There they could grow safe from the cold, and when it was time, we would take them out and put them in the ground. Reading books with Marie was a little like that. It was safe. We could laugh at the vanities of others. We could speak with certainty about what this one should have done, or how foolish he had been. We could judge harshly and be mean to no one.
One night as we were getting into bed, Marie broke our rule about questions and asked if I belonged to a church. I looked away from her as I tried to sort it all out. I hadn’t prayed to God since I had been out in Minnesota. And as far as I could tell, God had forsaken me and I Him, and who had acted badly first I couldn’t say. And that was no short story, so I gave a short answer in its place. “Not anymore.”
“But you did?”
I put my pillow up to the wall and leaned against it. “I was a Methodist, Marie. But I was cast out of that church. Twice, in fact.”
“Whatever for?”
“Once for daring to speak at a meeting. The other because my minister feared I was something of a God-in-nature philosopher.”
“Were you?”
“I didn’t think of it that way, but maybe I was. And now you.”
Marie stood and pulled the curtain over the window and then sat again on the bed. “Our family belonged to the Church of New Jerusalem.”
I shook my head. “Never heard of it.”
“It was founded upon the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. He lived in Sweden, two hundred years ago.”
“So you haven’t met him?”
“What do you think, Joseph? Did you ever meet Jesus?” I had to laugh, but Marie was not in a joking mood. She wanted to tell me about this Swedenborg. She called him “extraordinary,” which right away made me not like him. According to Marie, the man had studied medicine, philosophy, minerals, and other things I can’t remember. She said he engraved maps, constructed musical instruments, and designed a machine to fly through the air—and another that would go under the sea to attack boats from below.
“And he is your spiritual leader?” I asked. “This man who designed machines of war?”
Marie ignored me. “Swedenborg had a dream where an angel of God told him to bring the truth to the people. He was a changed man. He had conversations with spirits. The queen of Sweden summoned him and asked him to speak to her dead brother, the prince of Denmark, I think. He came back with a message, and she near fainted away, for it contained a secret that only she and her brother had known.”
“We have people who do similar things here,” I said, trying to act more respectful. “The Poughkeepsie Seer comes to mind, though many thought it was just parlor tricks. But what did Mr. Swedenborg preach that you find so remarkable?”
“Many things,” said Marie. “He denounced the churches for being rich when so many people were poor. He said the kingdom of heaven is open to any and all and not just those who have read the Bible or been blessed by a priest.”
“Did they nail him to a cross? That’s what they do to people like that.” Marie smiled. “I think I see, Joseph, why you were thrown out of church. But you’re right. When he was eighty and could barely walk, he was put on trial and branded a heretic. My church began after his death.”
“And is it still your church?”
Marie shook her head. “No. I abandoned it and everyone I cared for, for what I thought was love and freedom. I have only one thing left.”
Marie reached down for her bag while I thought about what she had said—abandoned all for love and freedom. A moment later she handed me a small book: The Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. On the inside was the inscription: To our dearest Marie Louise, with love, Mother and Father. December 25, Year of Our Lord, 1863.
I opened it and read, letting fate decide the passage:
Priests ought not to claim to themselves any power over the souls of men, because they do not know what the interiors of a man are. Still less they ought to claim the power of opening and shutting Heaven, since that power belongs to the Lord Himself.
I closed the book and looked up. “My, my,” I said. “Who do we have here?”
Marie smiled. She thought I was speaking about Mr. Swedenborg, but I was wondering about her.