Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“You’re spoiling them,” Addie tsked, watching my boys dig into a pie before finishing their vegetables.
“You’re starching her too stiff,” I said when she made her daughter rip out her embroidery for the third time and start over.
“Sometimes I envy how you let them go their own way,” she admitted once, “but then I think of all the things that can go wrong.”
One Sunday afternoon, after church, I let the children—mine and Addie’s both—wade in the creek. Their good clothes lay scattered
across the rocks, and mud streaked their faces as they splashed and shrieked. Standing on the bank, I watched Stephen teach
the younger children to catch minnows with cupped hands.
“Sallie.” Behind me, Addie’s voice was tight. “You should’ve consulted me.”
“For pity’s sake, it’s such a hot day.” I kept my eyes on five-year-old James, wobbling on a slick stone. “They’re children, Addie. Let them be.”
“What we teach them now—” she began, just as James lost his footing and sent a wide spray of muddy water over her face and
bodice.
The children froze mid-splash. Addie stiffened. A single drop of water slid down her cheek, and she wiped it away with precise
fingers. I braced myself for the scolding.
But then—to everyone’s astonishment, including my own—she bent to remove her shoes. “I suppose there are worse sins,” she
said, gathering her skirts and stepping into the water.
We stared in disbelief as she waded toward James, skirts damp, hair slipping loose from its pins. Then, laughing, she splashed
him back.
The children hesitated only a moment before their laughter rose again, water flying in all directions.
Watching Addie push a damp strand of hair from her face, her expression girlish and unguarded, I thought of another creek,
years ago, on our father’s farm, when we’d rolled up our skirts and plunged into the water together, shrieking at the cold.
Mostly, I stayed on the farm, content to move within the rhythms of my new household. All summer, the children and I picnicked
at the creek below our house, the sun-warmed rocks smooth beneath our hands. In autumn, we picked apples, the scent of ripe
fruit clinging to our skin. As winter approached, we sat around a bonfire in the yard, flames snapping in the crisp air.
By the following spring, 1854, there were enough children between our two households to warrant a school.
Addie and I had often spoken of it, trading ideas while mending clothes and darning socks.
Until now, our children had received their education at home.
At our farm in Wilkes County, mine had learned their letters from Miss Garvey, a stern-eyed woman who traveled between our property and three others, carrying books and slates in her worn leather satchel.
After we moved, I continued their lessons myself, setting aside time each morning while the little ones napped.
Addie had done the same with her children.
Now, with our husbands’ support, Addie and I oversaw the building of a schoolhouse, a simple one-room structure with a shingled
roof and sturdy wooden benches. We hired a young man named Jeb to teach, newly graduated and recommended by the Baptist minister’s
wife, with earnest eyes and chalk-dusted sleeves.
Each morning, her children crossed the field to join mine. I watched from the kitchen window as their small dark heads bobbed
through the tall grass, tin pails swinging, voices drifting on the air. When they reached the schoolhouse, their shoes were
damp with dew, their cheeks pink from the walk.
In those first months, I often sat with the younger ones, reading aloud while Jeb instructed the older children in mathematics
and history. The room filled with the scratch of pencils, the rise and fall of recitation, the promising smells of chalk and
ink.
Our children sorted themselves into tribes, not by family but by sensibility. The musicians, the readers, the animal lovers,
the dreamers. Some took after their parents; others were fiercely, irrepressibly themselves. They each had their quirks and
stories, their hungers and mysteries. A few shared my love of gardening, kneeling beside me in the dirt, pockets full of seeds.
Others gravitated to Addie’s sense of order, arranging linens and polishing spoons under her careful eye.
Addie’s Susan sat with her picture books, placid and content, while my Patrick scaled everything in reach, as if gravity were a suggestion he could ignore.
Her daughter Nancy’s sweet singing voice carried across the fields; Stephen hammered bits of wood into makeshift contraptions, the patience of his father, Eng, reflected in his measured movements.
Katie had a mind for numbers; Christopher’s wit flashed like a flint.
James could keep time with anything that rattled or hummed.
Victoria, Addie’s youngest, toddled after them, a collector of caterpillars and daisies, a singer of tuneless songs.
After lessons, Addie’s children lingered. They played whist and euchre on my porch, tossed quoits in the yard, rode the horses
to the far fence line, carried fishing poles down to the pond. They waded in the shallows, trousers rolled, skirts tucked
in waistbands, hunting crawfish with nimble hands.
They got along like siblings, which is to say they played and quarreled, confided in one another, hurt each other’s feelings
and made amends. They formed shifting alliances, whispered secrets in corners, staged elaborate games that stretched on for
weeks. They didn’t seem to mind that Papa and Uncle were sometimes at Addie’s house, sometimes at mine. In their own way,
they understood something most people struggle to grasp: that family is both simpler and more complex than the neat lines
society tries to draw around it.
I think Addie and I both took comfort in the cousins’ closeness. It was a proxy for ours. Watching them together was like
witnessing a shadow play of our own childhood—the easy intimacy we’d once shared returned to us in theirs.