Brookland Read Online Free Page B

mother, gave me a mug of cool cider. He went on—If you seek a course of action, I suggest instruction in needlework. Busy hands will keep her from despond!
    Mother thanked him, thanked Jannetje, and drew me so quickly from the rectory, a hail of crumbs sprang from my lap to the floor. She rarely pulled me so, though I saw other mothers do it; and when I looked up at her, I could see her brown eyes were slick with sadness or anger.—I’m sorry I ate so quickly, I offered. As this did not make her slacken her pace, I told her I would’n’t mind learning to knit.
    â€”Please! she replied, & tossed a stray frizzled curl off her face.
    Two of the King’s men, currying their horses in front of the Livingston house, whistled to us as we passed, and one doffed his cap to my mother. I was too young to understand the politicks of the rebellion, but knew that my parents, unlike many of the neighbours (whom Daddy said were either too Dutch or too apathetick to care), sided with the revolutionaries. My parents were popular with His Majesty’s troops anyway, as they supplied to Joe Loosely’s tavern,—known then alternately for its location as the Ferry Tavern, for its construction as the Old Stone, and for its beautifully painted sign as the King’s Arms,—a gin rumoured to be as tasty as any across the sea, and guaranteed towallop its consumer. If I awakened before my parents, I sometimes winced to find a rabbit or grouse hanging by its legs from our
stoep
beams; a gift from the Fourth Prince of Wales, who took their guns out for late-night carousing. Mother nodded curtly to the soldiers, as if they were interrupting her thoughts, and continued on in silence until we reached the head of Joralemon’s Lane. Then, bending down to me, she said, in an evener tone,—He’s never been sad a day in his life, and he’s foolish to think it’s so simple. That’s all.
    She led me down through the ravine & brought me into the brewhouse, where the agitators were making a great din of the mashing, and told Father that Domine Syrtis had pronounced me hopeless; and that it was her opinion the only remedy for my melancholick spirits would be a younger sibling; and presently, she broke down in tears, audible even above the slosh & whine of the machines. While the workers looked on uncomfortably, Father packed me off into the yard, but I knew why she was crying: Infant after infant had quit her womb, unfinished. I had learned this from Johanna, who had, I thought, intimated the foetuses might have chosen to return to God because they were unwilling to call such a gloom box as me Sis.
    Yet my mother’s tears worked some alchemy, for that very winter, Pearl took root inside her. They did not tell me until I had long since deduced her imminence; and in my grief at being, as I saw it, first ignored, then displaced in their affections by some newcomer, I felt flashes of scalding hatred for the unborn child, and could not douse that inner flame.
    How it shames me to tell this to my own daughter! Particularly as I recall your joy at the birth of your younger brother. I have long shrouded all this from you, as if, by keeping my distance, I could prevent your curiosity. We both see now, it is not so. And if it is possible I can diminish your love for me by these admissions,—well, I shall pray it is not possible & press on.
    I tried to anticipate the baby’s arrival. I carried my doll, Nell,—for whom I’d never much cared,—everywhere with me, cradled in my arms; but when no one was looking, I pinch’d a hammer and nails from the cooper’s shed, lifted Nell’s yarn hair, and honed my skills on her wooden skull; though the very fact I wished to do so filled me with shame. When I paced along the crest of Brookland’s Heights, battered Nell inhand, I raged less against the interloper than against my own mortifying rage. My inner voice cried out to