In another era, I died at this age.
When I died, I was an old woman – my hair lank and heavy, my face seamed and lined from sun and wind and from squinting into both, my joints swollen and aching.
At fifteen, I had been married off to a farmer, then kept his house and cooked and cleaned and raised chickens and grew a garden for fourteen years. I also bore him nine children, though to our sorrow only four of them lived. The tenth child I bore killed me, trying to propel himself into the world and ripping me apart in the process.
This was my story:
1.
“Wake up!” I tried to ignore the insistent, shrill voice next to my ear by burrowing further into my pillow. What I couldn’t ignore was the feather that began tickling my nose.
“Stop it!” I ineffectually swatted at the annoyance, and the hand holding it.
“Wake up!” The voice demanded again, even shriller.
I opened one eye, just a crack.
“Lisbeth!” My little sister Annie stood next to my head, her face a mask of irritation. “You need to get up for school!”
At eight, Annie was already quite the scholar. She loved school, didn’t mind walking to it in sweltering heat during spring and fall, or even the deep cold and snow during winter. She constantly badgered our teacher, Mr. Pemberton, for books to read, and devoured them, handing them back in pristine condition as if they had never been read at all.
I had never been much of a scholar, never cared to do much beyond what I had to in order to miss a beating from my father. He fancied himself a “man of letters”, though in truth he was only a shopkeeper. Of course, that meant Annie was the favored child, while I, the oldest of his five children at thirteen years of age, spent most of the time in disfavor.
After more berating from my sister, I groaned, then got up.
Annie shoved a dress my way, brushing out my hair while I dressed. I was still fastening buttons as we went downstairs to meet our siblings.
“Slept in again, did ye?” said my brother William, named of course after the bard Shakespeare. At two years younger, he thought he was much wiser than I, and resented the accident of birth that had made me his elder. Gwendolyn, younger than him at ten, snickered behind her hand. My father had named her after Merlin’s supposed wife.
The baby of the family, Michael, after the archangel, clung to my hand, the only one of my siblings who didn’t seem to scorn me.
“Well, let’s go then,” I said, marching out, my head back the way I thought the queen I was named after might. They trailed after, even Annie, named after the queen’s daughter, lugging their books.
Our mother just watched from behind the counter, making incomprehensible marks in the ledger.
We made it to school just in time and arrayed ourselves in the desks according to age, along with the rest of the children from town. Most of the children from the outlying farms were too busy planting to make the trek in, but sometimes they would join us, and to my eyes, they never looked quite clean.
Mr. Pemberton began the day, as always, with a prayer. In the midst of his sonorous tones – for he thought God wouldn’t hear him unless he sounded a certain way – there was a ruckus on the porch.
“What in God’s name?” Mr. Pemberton said, evoking giggles from everyone. Mr. Pemberton did not ever use God’s name in vain, and would smack our hands with a ruler if we did it.
Peter Laughlin, one of the farm boys, walked in then.
Of course, he had to sit next to me.
So. You’re probably wondering what happens next.
So am I! I have no idea.
My notes show I wrote this snippet in 2004, and never wrote another thing on it.
So what do you think? Wanna know what happens to Lisbeth and her siblings?
P.S. Mr. Pemberton is the name of the school principal I had when I was in seventh grade. I rather liked the man.
