Chapter Nine
brAINTREE
Massachusetts Bay Colony
My husband oft said that calamities come together. Fire, sword, and famine keep company and visit a country in a flock. Thus
did pestilence steal into Braintree.
First, a farmhand collapsed in the barn. The illness spread to our tenants and boarders, then to our servant girl Patty, and
then all three of my young sons. The disease leaped from person to person until our entire household sickened, and no visitor
dared step over our threshold except Dr. Tufts.
I’d scrubbed everything down with vinegar to get rid of the stench. Yet, it still lingered. And with a kerchief over his nose
and mouth, Dr. Tufts said, “It’s dysentery.” When he saw my confusion he added, “It’s commonly called the bloody flux.”
I wilted, finally apprehending the true danger. “What can be done?”
“Barley water calms the intestines,” he advised, despairing that his physician’s training didn’t avail him of better remedies.
“Molasses revives the spirits. Willow bark for the pain.”
But I had none of these things, and he didn’t either.
I would just have to make do.
With the servants all sick, and my sons writhing in their beds, only my daughter and I seemed immune to the plague that laid
everyone else low. I was so grateful to Nabby for helping me keep a cauldron boiling in the yard for the bed linens, which
were soiled anew every day. She was acquiring a maturity much beyond her years, and I didn’t know whether to be glad of it
or despair.
It was still hot that season—too hot to be standing out under the sun stirring boiling water with a paddle. I took off my straw bonnet to wipe the sweat away. And that is the last I remembered before I collapsed to the ground.
When next I awakened, cool water on my face and hair, I blinked up at my daughter standing over me, panic in her little eyes.
“Mama!”
She’d dumped a rain bucket over me. But not before trying to rouse our near relations and neighbors. She’d run from house
to house to get help, but everyone was sick. Even Reverend Wibird was so ill there were no meetings on the Sabbath. Now she
was breathless, tears streaking her cheeks as she relayed the news that her uncle Elihu Adams and her baby cousin had died.
The rest of John’s family were terribly sick, too.
Poor John, I thought in near delirium. He’d be pained to learn of his brother’s passing. I could only pray that he wouldn’t return
to find the rest of us dead, too.
“Just help me inside,” I whispered to Nabby, for I wasn’t even strong enough to crawl unassisted. “We dare not ask anyone
else to come. It’s too contagious.”
Nabby all but dragged me up the stairs, where I collapsed again, landing half atop the bed and half still hanging over the
edge. I was so thirsty, so dizzy, so drenched in fever sweat . . .
“Where is John?” I murmured as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I murmured it again upon waking to tremendous pain in
my abdomen, clutching my belly. I murmured it again hearing my toddler cry in his crib.
Little Tommy was dehydrated and suffering. I tried to reach for him, but I could scarcely lift my head.
Where is John?
Better he stay away, lest he die with us. Better that everyone stay away.
Below stairs, poor Patty shrieked in nightmare. Strange visions passed before my eyes, too, so I could scarcely believe that
I wasn’t hallucinating when I felt a cool cloth pressed to my cheek, and the rim of a glass of lemonade held to my lips.
I heard my mother’s voice, serene but distant. “You did well to fetch me, Nabby. You took good care of your mama, your brothers, and all the others. But you’re still a little girl, and you must let Grandmama take command here.”
You shouldn’t be here, Mother, I tried to say, shaking my head. It isn’t safe. But as I spasmed in agony, I could only whisper, “No.”
“Hush now, Abigail,” my mother said. “So sickly and mortal a time the oldest man cannot remember. Dr. Tufts tells me there
are eighteen dead amongst your neighbors alone.”
Eighteen. I could scarcely believe it possible.
She told me that Patty’s mother, poor Mrs. Copeland, was dead, Mrs. Randle lost her daughter, Mrs. Bracket hers, Mr. Thomas
Thayer his wife. More dead in Weymouth besides. Then she asked, “Did you think I’d tend your father’s parishioners while leaving
my own daughter in want?”
Trying to ward her away with one hand, I rasped, “Take Nabby and leave here at once.”
Nabby wasn’t sick yet, so if my mother took her, at least one of my children might survive. These were the disordered thoughts
that filled my mind.
My mother would not hear of it. “You need me now, Abigail. I remember when you were young—how my worrying after your health
always vexed you. You ran from me whenever you had the chance. Well, now you are too sick to run.”
In spite of all, it brought a smile to my chapped lips to remember the headstrong girl I’d been. Now my mother’s solicitousness
filled me with relief for my sake and anxiety for hers. She could see it in my eyes as I surrendered and took another sip
of the lemonade. “Abigail, you must let me help you. Otherwise, I fear you’ll be carried off and then who will mother my grandchildren?”
I didn’t have the strength to make her go. I let her nurse me and the children that day. I let her return the next, and the
day after that. I truly couldn’t have survived without her.
When I was finally able to sit up in bed, I said, “Surely there’s a letter from John.”
Even in Philadelphia, he would’ve heard by now about the deaths in our town. He would’ve known his family was distressed. Even a few scribbled lines would’ve been a healing balm. But having no letter at all made me agitated.
“Calm yourself,” my mother said, lifting a bowl to my lips. “Letters often go astray. Now take some of this broth.”
She was right, and I nodded obediently, deciding to save my strength for baby Tommy, who was unwilling that anybody but his
own mama should do for him. Once a hearty and hale corn-fed boy, he’d become so lean and wan that his father would not know
him. But thankfully his fever had abated. Charlie and Johnny also seemed to be coming through it. Would that I could say the
same of poor Patty, who seemed to be putrefying where she lay abed in misery and suffering.
It wasn’t until the latter half of the month that I finally regained the ability to wash and dress myself without assistance.
Taking up a pen, I wrote a frantic letter to John asking him to find willow bark, rhubarb, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon for
medicines.
Whether this note reached him, I didn’t know, for woe followed upon woe, one affliction treading upon the heels of another
as my dear mother fell ill.
Now, our roles were reversed.
In her bed at the parsonage in Weymouth, my mother groaned as I held the cold cloths to her head, lifted the glass of lemonade
to her lips, and tried to coax her to take broth.
“It’s special medicine,” I told her, for Phoebe had allowed Dr. Tufts to transform the kitchen into an apothecary, every herb
possible now hanging over the hearth where she had a fragrant brew boiling.
Meanwhile, my sister Elizabeth scrubbed the parsonage with vinegar. And when I tried to help her with the bucket she said,
“Mama won’t let me send for our brother because he’s fighting. But she won’t let me send for Mary either. I know it’s a long
journey and our older sister will expose herself to pestilence if she comes. But there comes a time—”
“Mama will recover,” I insisted.
And I believed it even when, the next morning, I wiped my mother’s fevered brow and she whispered, “It is all right, child.
I’ll be with God soon.”
That could not be true. I didn’t know how I’d bear the loss of her, much less the knowledge that she’d met this fate because she nursed me and my children. The guilt would surely kill me.
“No,” I said, my voice quavering as I tried not to burst into tears over her bed. “You’ll be well, Mother. I’ll see to it. Because
you cannot have given your life to spare mine.”
Through her agony, she fixed me with a stare. “Abigail, wouldn’t you give your life to spare your children?”
At her question, the vision of my little ones flashed before me. Johnny and his inquisitive eyes. Nabby’s rosebud smile. Charlie’s
cherubic beauty. Tommy’s pudgy little arms, always reaching for reassurance. I loved each and every one; I’d put my body between
them and danger without a second thought. “But they’re still little children.”
“They’re your children no matter how old they get,” my mother replied. “And you are mine. God calls us all in the end. That I should be
called instead of you gives me satisfaction.”
This I could not accept.
I was back and forth from my house to the parsonage, from sickbed to sickbed, trying every cure I could think of, from sweet
mulled cider to bitter coffee, from feeding to purging, from cold air to warm air, from cold water to warm water, from exertion
to rest.
If I’d had leeches, I’d have tried that, too.
And as I worked to save my mother and all the others who ailed on my farm, I longed for my husband’s strong hand at the small
of my back to steady me in these grim times.
Try as I might, those in my care were slipping away. Our servant girl Patty died at the chime of midnight, and I sobbed silently
at the cruelty of it. She’d lived under my care alongside my daughter, and now I washed her corpse and tenderly wrapped it
in cloth, as if afraid to disturb her sleep. She’d be buried beside her mother—a woman who had done all she could to preserve
her children and still failed.
Then, already shattered in grief, I returned to the parsonage where my own dying mother asked for tea. Tea of all accursedly precious things. With the soldiers still visiting punishment upon Boston, it was hard to find bread, much
less tea.
But somehow Phoebe scared up a packet of leaves from amongst her fellow enslaved people. She pressed it into my hands with a grave expression. “You should be the one to give it to her, Honey.”
I was unutterably grateful to Phoebe for giving my mother one last taste of pleasure on her deathbed and allowing me to deliver
it to her. I resolved again to confront my father about giving this good woman her freedom. But first, I held my mother’s
sweat-soaked head up from her pillow so she could drink.
My mother swallowed a few sips, gasped, and fell back upon her pillow, then opened her eyes with a look that pierced my heart.
For it was the eagerness of a last look.
She closed her eyes but lingered until five o’clock that evening with my father praying at her bedside. It had been his day
to perform communions, but he’d led the congregation to pray for his beloved dying wife, and every eye had streamed, his own
heart almost bursting.
Alas, I finally knew that prayers would not spare her. Nothing would.
My mother was leaving us for a world infinitely better than this one. She’d be gladder there in receipt of her happy reward.
And yet, when she finally breathed her last, I nearly fainted with the distress of such a blow, for my grief mingled with
such heavy guilt that I could not bear up under it.
I knew that till now my portion of the bitter cup was small in comparison with others. But now I drank a large draught of
grief. And I couldn’t overcome my too-selfish sorrow. I longed for my mother’s smiling countenance, her kind advice, her tender
care, her prudent example, and her thousand amiable virtues.
Virtues I knew I would never find again in this life.
It didn’t matter that it was the natural way of things to bury a parent if we live long enough. Nor did it matter that our
duty as Christians commanded us to uplift others instead of sinking into the abyss. I simply didn’t know if I had the fortitude
of a Christian or a philosopher to bear this grief.