Patience & Sarah (Little Sister's Classics) (13 page)

“See, all you needed was the right kind of a man,” Rachel said. “You was always a woman at heart.”

“Too much,” I said. Oh, sly.

“That with Patience White was just her being the first outside one to show you kindess.”

“There was Simon,” I said, to sound honest to a fault. Simon was a young man that stopped for food at our place on his way up the valley, and took a liking to me and wanted me to marry him and go along. I thought some of doing it, because I liked him, but as soon as he kissed me I knew I couldn’t live a life where that happened all the time.

“Simon wasn’t much,” Rachel said.

“No.”

Rachel said, “Patience White – ” I thought of Simon to slow my heart down “ – she said to let her know anything we heard from you. She said she was sorry the two of you’d had differences. Did you?”

“Oh, not to speak of. I expect I better get over to see her one of these days,” I said, offhand, thinking of Simon.

With everybody so glad to see me, I maybe could’ve loafed a few days, but I rolled myself out next morning with the rest of them, and started three days of hauling in corn. I wanted to do my part so I could feel free Sunday afternoon to go to Patience. There was no use going sooner, knowing she’d be too bound up in family work to see me. Fall’s when woman’s work is heaviest, with all the winter food to lay by.

I thought and thought how Sunday I’d borrow a dress off Ma and cover my cropped head in a bonnet and speak lady-like. All told, do nothing to make Patience ashamed of me. I thought up good topics to speak on, such as what the ladies in Massachusetts wore – women talk. I thought how if Pa said something against going, I’d just look surprised and say, “Why, I got nothing against her,” and if he went on from there I’d say, “Oh, that! That was nothing.” And if he beat me again to keep me from her, I’d try one of the throws Parson taught me.

By Saturday afternoon I’d got myself into a fine state with all the figuring. I was in the field with my sister Mary. She was driving the cart and I was heaving corn up onto it. She was coming along all right as a boy, but we still gave her the easiest jobs.

I had sweat in my eyes, but Mary could see fine and was higher up, so she was the first to notice Patience coming across the field to us. Mary said, “Who’s that with the girls?” Even while I wiped my eyes, I somehow knew, and then I saw the sun on that bright fox hair, and that good little busy step, and my sisters all pushing to be the ones to hold her hands.

I lit off towards her as fast as I could run, which was pretty fast, but then as I got nearer I remembered how I had bare feet and a sweaty shirt so my running dwindled off and I stopped and stood there looking at her.

“Yo, Sarah!” she called. I would’ve answered but I couldn’t.

“We’ve got Miss White, Miss White!” my sisters kept yelling. All I wanted to do was fall on my knees.

Then she was so close I could see her freckles. “I just heard that you’re back,” she said. The girls still had both her hands so there was none for me.

I swallowed and nodded. It was like being with Parson hadn’t taught me a thing about not being a bumpkin.

She said, “I’m glad you’re home. Will you come by my place tomorrow?”

I nodded.

“Can we come?” my sisters said. “Can we come?”

“No, babies. Not this time,” Patience said.

They felt the iron schoolmarm under all her sweetness and said no more.

Patience said, “I can’t stay. I left a hundred things undone. I just had to say I’m glad you’re back. Come after noon. I’ll be at Meeting in the morning. If I’m not home yet when you get there, go on inside.”

I walked to the road with her, pushed entirely away from her by my sisters of course, and yet I felt peacefuller than I would’ve expected to. I didn’t need to touch her if I knew I was welcome.

Sunday noon, decked out according to my plan, I started for Patience’s place. Nobody tried to stop me or go along. Maybe Rachel’d explained that I was suffering over Parson, or maybe Pa’d decided that what’s not flattered by notice will go away. I don’t know. I never asked and they never said.

I tried to walk slow, because Patience wouldn’t be home yet anyhow, but naturally I just tore along. I go there. Her house seemed different, smallish and plain, not scarey. That hired man, Tobe, called off the dogs and said, “Go on along in. She said to look for you.” Parson would’ve said, “Thank you,” so I did too.

I went on inside to wait for Patience. It got me by the throat to see the bench and the table and like that. I came very near to kissing the bench, but I didn’t want to let myself out of hand in case Patience just wanted to be ordinary friends. I would be anything she wanted, even stay away if, God forbid, she wanted that. And I wouldn’t kiss her bench or sniff at her clothes or hug her pillow until she gave some sign to let me.

I sat at the table where I could look out the window. I kept the bonnet on so she’d see I’d made a good appearance for Tobe. It would’ve looked good to be found reading, but I also wanted to show that I could be trusted in a house not to go looking for books where I hadn’t been asked to. It’s likely I couldn’t’ve kept my eyes on words anyhow, with the yard to watch for her coming.

After almost longer than I could stand, which maybe wasn’t really long at all, she was there, jumping down before the horses stopped, and I breathed careful and looked at the door but didn’t stand up.

She came in. “You’re here,” she said.

“Yes.”

She hung her bonnet and cloak on the pegs. So slow. And asked for my bonnet and cloak and took them without looking at me or touching me and hung them slow too. She asked did I want tea? cider?

“No, nothing,” I said to lose no more time.

But she said, “Cider for me, I think,” and she took a pitcher to the cellar and took so long to come back I could’ve groaned. What made her jump down before the horses stopped? Thirsty?

At last she sat across the table from me, with her hands on the pitcher. I felt her looking at me. I raised my eyes to find out my fate. She had no smile for me. I was afraid.

I looked on up to her eyes and held there steady, thinking pretty soon she’d look away, and then when I knew she wouldn’t the silver thread our eyes were joined by began to hum like far-off bees. I felt my soul melt and flow out along it. I felt my heart melt and drip off my fingertips.

I am trying to tell exactly true.

“Do you forgive me?” she whispered.

“Yes.” I wanted to say more. I couldn’t, but it was enough.

We stayed that way a time that can’t be said the ordinary way. One minute – twenty minutes – a thousand years – I don’t know.

I felt her take my hand. I heard her say, “Come on,” and I stood up ready to go anywhere, to her bed or off a cliff or into the fire, anywhere she took me. My eyes were blurry and blind. Maybe she was sending me home. I stumbled along where she led me, and stopped because I bumped something. It was Patience herself, turned to me, arms open to hold me, face up to be kissed, but I couldn’t kiss her until my feeling got less. I stood there just holding her, until time got ordinary and earthly things got possible, like kisses and smiles and words.

I held her chin in my hand and moved her face to make her mouth be where I wanted it, and bent my head down. She is exactly the right height to bend to, and the right plumpness to fill my arm. I could’ve stood kissing her there for the rest of my life, but my knees went weak and I had to look around for a place to go. The closest place was the floor, but I couldn’t put her where she might not be comfortable. I just wouldn’t lose being pressed front to front by taking her to the bench.

It was getting to be a severe puzzle, with my knees giving out. I wasn’t bold enough to take her to her bed, but then she, who for all her womanly ways was always bolder than me, took me to bed. Into the bedroom and up onto that high white feathery bed. She stretched out and patted beside her to show me my place, and I went into it. I propped myself up on my elbow and looked down at her and words like hallelujah and glory kept coming to me. What do folks that never went around with an unfrocked parson think at a time like that?

I put my cheek against hers. It felt as good as a kiss. Oh what else is as soft and firm and downy smooth and cool as a woman’s cheek? It made me proud that mine was the same and I could give it to her.

“Stop that silly smiling,” she said. She felt it in my cheek.

“I can’t. I can’t. I’m happy.”

And she was smiling too, so who was she to talk?

I said, “When you came across the field yesterday, I couldn’t believe I ever kissed you, or ever would.”

“But I believed it,” she said.

“What made you – ” I began, and then I couldn’t ask it after all. She knew anyway.

She said, “I asked myself what was the worst thing that could happen to me. So then it was all clear and easy. Losing you, that was the worst. I can’t remember why I drove you away. Was it just to keep what I never liked anyway? I don’t know why I didn’t go with you.”

“Scared, that’s all,” I said. “If I’d had sense enough I would’ve been too.”

She said, “Don’t talk that way,” and turned her face to kiss.

I kissed her, but I also managed, between kisses, to explain that boys and penniless women don’t fare so easy on the way west, and they should thank the stars they got born under for a room and a tall soft bed to kiss on. “There’s nothing out west to beat this,” I said.

How was it possible to stand up and walk to the pegs and put my wraps on? I said, to head her off from warning me, which I couldn’t’ve stood, “This time I won’t tell.”

“As you wish,” she said. I didn’t believe her. Even if I wished to tell, I’d better not. I knew my lamb that much. But I liked having her say it like I had a choice: “As you wish.”

I couldn’t think of anything to want beyond what that day marked the start of. There was good hard work all week, and then those wonderful Sunday afternoons when I could hold Patience and lean over her face trying to find the exact name for the brown of her eyes, and studying her ear with the tip of my tongue, and feeling her clean breath on me, learning how born to fit her eyelid my mouth was, watching the daylight fade across her face. I learned the use of being beautiful. A person would have to be bolder than me to imagine something beyond perfect happiness and wish for it.

But I already said, Patience is bolder.

At first I didn’t know it was more she wanted. I thought maybe it was less, or different. Before long it was clear something was amiss. She got so she didn’t pay attention like I did. I always kept one eye open a crack, to look, because being looked at that way is the use of being beautiful, and on our fifth Sunday during one of our kisses, she wasn’t looking back at me, and I swear she was
thinking
. I’d suspected her of it before, but this time there was no mistaking it.

I backed right off, for I knew from Simon how a kiss feels when you don’t want it and I’d rather die than have somebody feel that way from any doing of mine. I got across the bed from her, flat on my back, and looked at the ceiling.

“We don’t need to,” I said. “Don’t think just cause you started you’ve got to keep on.”