A Girl Called Samson (21)

I think of you every day, my friend, and pray for you, your daughters, and your beloved John. You must write and reassure me that you are well.

—Deborah



The summer of 1780 brought longer days and a journey to Plympton to see my mother for the first time in the decade since I’d left. She’d sent for me, begging me to come to her, and Deacon and Mrs. Thomas accompanied me there before continuing on to Boston to see the deacon’s brother, whom they’d not seen since before the siege had gutted the town in the early days of the war.

My mother was not greatly changed, though the brown of her hair was woven with sprigs of gray and the ruts between her eyes and around her lips were more pronounced. She took my hands and peered up into my face, perhaps searching for the girl I’d been.

“You are so tall,” she worried, the grooves deepening with her frown. It was not how I had imagined her greeting me after so long.

“Y-yes.”

“I don’t know if Mr. Crewe will approve.”

“Mr. Crewe?”

“Our neighbor to the north. I have told him all about you. He is quite well off, and he’s looking for a wife, Deborah.”

“Is that . . . why you told me to come?” I asked.

“Yes. It is an opportunity for you. You are released from your bond, and you are twenty years old. You must marry.”

She thought she was helping me. I could see it in her eyes and feel it in her eager touch. The knowledge helped me maintain my composure even as my stomach clenched with disappointment and dread.

My aunt greeted me kindly, her husband too, but they left us to visit at the small table set with a bit of butter and bread and sliced tomatoes from the garden. We ate in silence, strangers to each other, and she eventually returned to the subject of Mr. Crewe.

“You say you have told him all about me. What did you tell him?” I asked, lifting my eyes from my supper.

She hesitated, caught. How could she tell any man, any being, about me? She knew so little. We’d shared a handful of letters consisting of little more than evidence that we were still living, proof that we had not succumbed to the fate of poor Dorothy May. My mother knew nothing about me.

“I told him how able you are. I’ve been kept abreast of all your accomplishments. And Mrs. Thomas tells me you have not been ill, even once. Your teeth are strong and straight . . . your figure too. And you are an accomplished weaver. All the Bradfords are. I daresay there is nothing he will require in a wife that you can’t provide.”

“But what if he is not what I require in a husband?”

She blinked at me. “You are beyond the age where you can be too particular, Deborah. And you could do much worse. He is not much to look at, though I often think good looks are a cross. Your father was a very handsome man. We both suffered for it.”

I was too distracted by her last statement to be offended by her first. “Oh? How exactly did he suffer?”

“His good looks made him believe he deserved more than life gave him. Had he been plain, he might not have been so proud.”

“Had he been proud, he would not have abandoned his responsibilities,” I countered.

“He was lost at sea.”

“Lost at sea?” I’d never heard this part of the tale. “He did not drown at sea, Mother. He left us. Do not make excuses for him.”

My honesty seemed to stun her. “He was ashamed,” she murmured.

“His shame was more important to him than his family?”

“He was swindled out of his inheritance. It broke him. He tried to make a living as a farmer, but he was cut out for greater things.”

“Greater things?”

“He was so handsome and so smart. So gifted. ’Twould have been a waste to not pursue more than our circumstances offered. He had to try, didn’t he?”

She was lying to herself. I couldn’t decide whether she’d told the story so often she believed it, or if it was simply better for her to be a widow than a woman abandoned by her husband. I suspected that was so, and it made me angry at her and angry at anyone who would condemn her, as if his failures were her fault. A widow still had her dignity. A discarded wife did not.

“He wanted to see the world,” she explained. “He wanted to explore.”

“And you didn’t?” I asked.

She chuffed as if such things were ridiculous. “You children are all grown. All healthy. All strong. My work is done.” She had not really answered the question, but she wouldn’t. She had learned not to want impossible things.

I did not want to hate my mother, but I did not love her, and I could not listen to her rationalizations. She had not raised me. She had not worked for my welfare. I had done that with my own sweat and my own labor.

I rose, unable to abide her presence any longer. I was supposed to remain with her until the following day, when Deacon and Mrs. Thomas returned, but I determined in that moment that I would walk back to Middleborough if I had to. I was wearing sturdy shoes.

“Your sister, Sylvia, had another baby. She has four now,” she said in a rush, seeing I was ready to flee. “She writes that all are healthy and strong.”

“I am glad she is well,” I whispered. I hoped she was. She lived in Pennsylvania. I hadn’t seen her—or any of my siblings—since I was five years old. I could not even conjure a face.