Hester(84)

The crystal clarity that I have felt only twice in my life—when the men came in Glasgow and again when Nat came to my door—comes to me now. Perhaps I don’t need the Cherry Street ladies in order to go to Philadelphia. Perhaps Charlotte, who once took me into her greatest confidence and relied on my trust, will help me now.

I craft a careful note to her; I write that I’m proud she thought to share her joy with me and that I wish her and the child the greatest health. I ask what styles the ladies in Philadelphia covet for autumn and winter and what trim and decoration she favors.

I would like to gift you a dress made entirely to your desires. I am prepared and eager to visit you before the winter comes. We can make a splendid dress befitting your new position in Philadelphia society.

I wrap the note around a pair of gloves adorned with wisteria, send them off with Nell. And I wait.



* * *



I WAIT FOR my morning sickness to pass. I wait for the heat to break. I wait for sorrow and bitterness to let go its ugly grip on me. I wait for Charlotte’s reply. And I wait for some word from Nat.

All through August the ladies knock at my door—servant girls, tired mothers and wives, poor American and Irish, Scottish, and Black women.

“My sister is to be married—”

“A sleeve to hide my twisted arm—”

“A dress to conceal my condition so that I can go to work—”

Some bring cloth, others bring coin. One brings a stepping stool made by her husband; another brings two blue glass cups. Most bring food: warm bread, boiled eggs, a ham hock cooked with pepper, cod cakes.

My cottage becomes a crowded workshop filled with cloth, half-done garments, and foodstuffs that fill my shelves.



* * *



“IF YOU CAN’T eat it all, there’s plenty who will,” Mercy says when she sees my shelf stuffed with food that will soon spoil. “We’ll take care of it.”

She returns the next day to help me pile baskets into the cart, then climbs into the seat beside Zeke.

“Where shall I sit?” I ask.

“Best you stay at home,” Zeke says carefully. “We take Mr. Remond’s banquet extras all the time—sometimes we call on the poor folk out past the pig yards where things are worst.”

I have never told a soul about the poorhouse that began my journey here, but I have great sympathy for any who might be in need of help and protection.

“I see no reason why I should hide from the trials of poverty.”

“We’re going far,” Mercy says. “Past the old ironworks in Marblehead and the stables in Lynn behind the shoe factories.”

“If you’re going to Lynn, I need to see a cobbler.”

Mercy eyes my waist, where I have left the apron ties loose.

“I’m strong enough, and my boots are in terrible need of repair.”

I lift my foot so she can see the broken sole and she gives a nod. It doesn’t please her, but she squeezes next to Zeke and makes a place for me on the seat.

Seated beside Zeke I think of the day I saw him near the sycamore, the same day Nat taught me to swim. I don’t like to think on that afternoon, for it seems it is the moment everything changed—the seals poked their heads up and I thought of the selkies. I asked Nat about slave ships in Salem and he told me slaves are no worry of his.

Is Nat a cruel man or is he a weak man?, I wonder for the hundreth time. Perhaps he is both. Without my name I’d be nothing, he said. Perhaps one leads to the other, although I cannot think of what might come first, cowardice or cruelty.



* * *



“SICKNESS IN THERE. Disease, death,” Mercy says when we reach the almshouse. “You can’t go inside.”

“I’m not afraid of those things.”

“You should be, especially in this heat,” she says. “Stay put.”

While I wait in the yard, two children with bare feet and tattered clothes run up the path and stop at the almshouse door. A man with one leg comes next, wearing one shoe and using a crutch that is anchored around his opposite shoulder with a soft leather binding.

My mind goes to young Lily, whose cloak is troubling me. I’m not happy with my work, for it won’t do what the girl so desperately wants, which is to hide how she is different. I am thinking of it when a woman carrying two buckets suspended from a smooth pole yoked across her back trudges up the hill, and an idea comes to me.

In Lynn we travel the twisted lanes behind the stables. Unlike Salem, where even the most crowded streets have a taste of the sea air, Lynn stinks of glue and curing leather mixed with animal and urine, and it overpowers the narrow lanes. Zeke stops the cart in front of a tall wooden building with a five-high row of windows that puts me in mind of Glasgow factories. Girls my age pour out the front and side doors, their hands stained the color of burnt leaves from the leathering. Beyond that, behind the shoe lanes, are small streets lined with shacks where children who seem to have no minders are running about, some crying, some squabbling, one with a terrible cough that makes me turn away. A lone mother, thin and forlorn, stands in a dark doorway holding a babe on her hip. The deeper we go into the squalor and despair, the more worried I become. This might be me, if I am not careful.

We reach a small cluster of brick homes and Zeke stops the cart. Mercy takes a bundle of burlap from beneath her seat and goes to the side door of one of the houses. It seems she’s just climbed the step when the door opens, the package is exchanged, and Mercy is back in the cart.