When I was seven and Sarah was ten, we spent all our time
together. People used to comment that we
acted like twins. We would laugh in
unison, and she would protest, “We look nothing alike!” It was true.
I was tall for my age, with lanky limbs that greatly contributed to my
overall clumsiness. More often than not,
by face was dotted with freckles, and my hair was windblown.
Even at ten,
Sarah was far more graceful than I. Her
hair and dress were always spotless and tidy, just like the bonnet that she
always wore to keep the sun off her face.
Mama used to
sigh after having to clean up one of my messes.
“Why can’t you try to be a little more like your sister?” she’d ask.
I would
shrug. I adored my sister, but it was
extremely difficult to live up to her example.
Once, Papa
told Mama, “Annabelle’s just fine.
She’ll grow out of this eventually.”
“I know she
will.” Mama said, “I just wish it would
happen today.”
I was not
terribly hurried to make my mother’s wishes come true. I was constantly coaxing Sarah to play with
me in our woods. She would walk, very
sedately, holding up her skirts. I would
run ahead, braids and skirt sailing behind me.
I waited for her, seated on a patch of moss. I’d listen to the birdsong and the chatter of
the squirrels in the trees. Rays of
sunlight danced along the ground, sometimes creeping into my lap. I would smile, not daring to break the
magical silence with my voice.
Eventually,
Sarah would arrive with our farm dog, Blue, trotting along beside her. He would chase the squirrels, and the
sunlight. I would laugh. The spell would be broken, and we would
play. Sometimes we fought. She always wanted to pretend we were great
ladies in horse carriages, going to a ball.
I came up with other ideas.
“Let’s play ‘house’”
I’d suggest.
“How?”
“Well, we can
make pies with mud to bring to the quilting bee, or churn butter, or…”
“Those things
are boring.” She would say.
“No, they’re
not!” I would exclaim, not understanding
why she was so disdainful.
Years sped by,
and I stopped imagining that I was making butter, and started actually doing
it. Then, the year that I was fourteen
and Sarah was seventeen, I finally convinced my father to let me help him plant
the fields. That summer, I checked them
regularly for pests and invasive weeds.
I groomed the horses, and talked to Blue while I milked the cows. I loved every minute of it.
I was far less
clumsy now, and Mama didn’t mind so much if I did make a little mess. We’d
laugh together while we made pies or mended socks. She never asked me to be like my sister.
I knew
why. I had discovered that growing up
was everything I dreamed it would be.
Every new job delighted me. Sarah
was not lazy, but every time she could get away, she would grab a book or a
newspaper and curl up and dream. The
farm had no joy for her, because her dreams were different than mine. She was still staring longingly at her
castles in the sky.
Mama
worried. Papa said, “Sarah’s just
fine. She’ll grow out of this
eventually.”
If Sarah had
been born a couple generations earlier, Papa’s prediction would have been just
as right as the one he made about me when I was seven. However, these were not our grandmother’s
childhood days. This was 1825.
One evening,
Sarah, Mama, and Papa stayed up late, talking.
I was exhausted, so I went to bed.
The next morning, Sarah told me the news: she was going to start a job
at one of the textile mills in Lowell the next week.
“Lowell is so
far,” I said, “You won’t be able come home in time for supper every night.”
“I’m going to
live there.” she told me, “They have rooms for the workers, called
dormitories.”
“You do not
have to work there,” I protested. “We
can get a spinning wheel and a loom right here, and sheep, too.”
“This is not
like that.” She said. “I’m going to do
the same job, every day.”
It sounded
boring to me.
“I’ll make
money” she continued, “And then I can buy dresses, nice, new dresses for all
three of us- you, Mama, and me. Wouldn’t
you like that?”
Her eyes were
so bright, so hopeful, that I couldn’t tell her no. I could not tell her how I honestly felt; how
I knew that no amount of dresses in the world would be able to replace my
sister. She would not have understood,
anyway. We were so different.
All of us
cried when she left the next week. “I’ll
miss you.” she said.
“Not as much
as I’ll miss you.” I thought, but I just
hugged her one more time.
She came to
Mama. “I promise I’ll write.” she told
her.
Mama cried
some more and said, “You’d better.”
Sarah was
smiling through her tears as she adjusted her hat and stepped into the
horse-cart, where Papa was waiting to take her to Lowell.
As soon as I
could, I ran to the woods. I laid down
on the moss. All my old friends were
still there: the birds, the squirrels, the sunbeams. Even Blue arrived after a while, except that
he was too old to want to chase things anymore.
I wanted to cry, but somehow I could not bear to break the lonely
silence.
Instead, I
thought about Sarah. The mill had
sounded strange and ugly to me, as she described it with an excited glimmer in
her eyes. I wondered what she would
think of the mill after a couple weeks.
Then Blue started tickling my ear with his breath.
I laughed, as
some of the loneliness dispersed.
Now I’m
seventeen, and Sarah’s 20. She comes
home at holidays, in pretty dresses, with gifts for everyone, and talking about
all her friends in the city. When she is
here, everything seems brighter, but she’s not coming back anytime soon. She loves her job.
I still love
the farm. You can usually find me
milking cows, plowing fields, or in the kitchen with Mama. Or, if those tasks are done, there’s a
certain clump of moss in our woods, where I go sometimes to think about the
past and smile at the beauty all around me.
