Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge (best short novels .txt) 📗

in a quilt or rolling bandages. Sometimes, I sang the songs to myself with the words changed, to help me remember all the parts of a body—the names of bones and muscles and organs. I took a certain satisfaction in fitting those phrases into the loop of songs, the songs of work, the songs that made an art out of burden. But to say that to either Louisa or Experience, I knew, was a kind of insult.

It was a few weeks later when the women’s dean, Alma Curtis, asked to meet with me. She tapped on my shoulder as I sat and ate in the whispered companionability of the dining hall.

“Stay behind, Miss Sampson, if you will.”

Alma Curtis was a broad-shouldered woman of forty-five or fifty—back then, I thought of her as old. She was the only married woman who taught at the college. Just the year before, before I had come, she had married the college president, Thomas Curtis. After they had said their vows in the campus chapel and pressed their hands in front of the minister, Alma Curtis had dropped to one knee and bent her head, and requested, in front of the entire college, her husband’s permission to continue her career. And President Curtis had raised her up, cupped his hands underneath her elbows, standing her steady, and said, “Of course.”

Louisa and Experience had repeated this story often—it was always whispered when Alma Curtis walked by.

I had asked, “But how long did he wait to say yes?”

Louisa had blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Did he agree right away? Or did he make her wait?” I thought of a long silence in the hall, Alma Curtis holding her breath while her husband decided her fate, the flowers on the wedding bower shivering around them. And then I laughed. “It sure was clever of her, to ask for permission in front of a crowd like that.”

I had meant it in an admiring way. I had thought, What a slick woman! in the same way that, back home, Lenore applauded the barn cats when one of them swiped the biggest fish head.

But Louisa had looked at me coolly. “What a cynic you are,” she had said. “I happen to find it romantic.”

So I had learned another rule I had gotten wrong, and every time I looked at Alma Curtis, I tried to imagine her as an agent of romance—invisible cherubs and steadfast ivy curling around her everywhere she went. Which was difficult to think of, because Alma Curtis’s broad, jaundiced, straightforward face seemed to discourage anything like that.

I thought of this as I sat at the table, watching the other girls work together to clear the plates and food. When the room was nearly empty, when it had gone from quiet to silent, Alma Curtis sat on the bench across from me.

“We must discuss your performance, Libertie,” she said with unbearable kindness. “The other deans, they were hesitant to take on a young lady in the men’s course. They were not sure if she would be able to keep up. But your mother assured us, we were all assured, that you were capable. I personally intervened with President Curtis and asked that you be placed in the men’s course. And your work, when you turn it in, is passable. So, then, what is distracting you?”

I could not exactly answer. I could only swallow and say, “I am unsure. If you would give me more time. Perhaps it is being so far from home.”

She said, “You spend an awful lot of time in the music room.”

We let this sit between us for a moment.

“Yes. Yes. You see …” I licked my lips, readying for the lie. “You see, I’ve come to a sort of conclusion.”

Alma Curtis looked at me skeptically.

“The Graces—that is, Louisa and Experience—they mentioned that President Curtis wished for them to found a chorale. In the mode of the Jubilee Singers in Tennessee.”

“Yes,” she said. “I am aware.”

“And Miss Experience,” I said. I figured the formal address would help my cause. “Miss Experience was uncertain about performing the slave songs for a different audience. For our white friends.”

Alma Curtis looked unconvinced.

“She says she would feel distressed,” I said, “to sing the slave songs in front of them.”

Alma Curtis sighed again and under her breath said, “These young people.”

“So …” I wet my lip. “So I have been formulating an idea. A compromise of sorts. That they could perform in Brooklyn, for the colored people there. I know that the women’s groups are planning many celebrations for the summer. We could raise some good money. I could organize it. My mother has friends in Philadelphia and Boston who would gladly support. It would be a kind of jubilee.”

Alma Curtis blew out a breath.

“If anything,” I said, “it would help convince them that performing is possible. And then, perhaps, they would not be so shy of mixed company.”

The dean sat back for a moment. “This is what’s been distracting you?”

“I very much love this college,” I said, “and wish to aid in any way that I can.”

Alma Curtis shook her head. “You may love it,” she said, “but I have come to tell you that you cannot return next year. We do not have a place for you.”

I searched her face to see if she might regret it, if she might leave me an opening to argue. But there was nothing, not even pity, not even sympathy. Just resolve.

She patted my hand, and then she stood up, shook out her skirts, and walked away.

“For colored people,” I said to Louisa and Experience later that day. “The women’s club my mother founded will organize a benefit, and you two will be the stars. Louisa, we can raise the money for your home. And, Experience, you will not have to sing your pain for anyone else but people who already know it.”

“If these colored ladies are so rich,” Experience said, “why can they not just give the money to the college?