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

When Louisa had said that home was in Experience’s arms, and when she had defended Experience from every call questioning her coldness … they had been traveling to another country, I realized. They had lived there all along, while I stayed a citizen of this one, a land without sighs.

Mama, before I had left for college, had made oblique mention of what could happen to girls in school—“Girls, when they are left on their own, they become each other’s sweethearts sometimes”—but she had told it to me as something her white-lady patients sometimes fretted about, and for me, she made it clear, it was only another possible distraction to avoid on my way toward greatness. She had not suggested it could be like this. A closed door with a mystery behind it that I could never know.

Up until then, I had told myself that my disgrace at Cunningham College was a blessing. I’d thought I could endeavor to make this trip with the Graces into a permanent state of being—I could become their manager, writing to the respectable colored ladies of the North and finding drawing rooms and church floors and forest clearings where the Graces could sing. The three of us would never have to return to the place of my shame—we could indefinitely live in the admiration of colored women who would otherwise have scorned me for the failure I had become.

I did not see how that was possible now. Because in my fantasy, Louisa and Experience would stay with me always, would never leave me—we would travel together; there would be no secrets between us. And eventually, with a long enough proximity, I would understand the covenant between them and enter into it on my own.

But there was no room for me there. Perhaps that was what I had been responding to in their voices all along—their desire. As wide as their desire was, it could not make room for me. I knew that. It was a bride song, a song for twin souls, for one mate to call to another. And I, a fool, had mistaken it for a song of federation.

And so I was alone again. On the wrong side of a locked door. An interloper in what I had been so certain would someday be my country.

We were to take the train to New York for the last part of our journey—Lucien and Madame Elizabeth accompanying us. We left early the next morning—Experience’s cheeks flushing red at the sight of me, cramped in the same chair, by the fire, but Louisa looked up at me through her lashes and said, “You should have knocked louder, for us to hear you.”

She was so bold that, for a moment, I thought that I was mistaken, but I noticed that as she said this, her fingers trembled, and so I only nodded and looked away.

The train used to have mixed seating, but at the station we discovered it had a newly implemented car solely for colored passengers. Lucien wanted to contest it—“I’ll speak to the porter,” he said, but Madame Elizabeth waved her fan.

“I am tired,” she said, and Lucien fell back beside her, willing himself to swallow all of it.

Experience and Louisa tried to smooth over the ride by telling Madame Elizabeth how comfortable a train was, compared to a stagecoach—even Experience made an effort to say something merry, though all four of us were watching as something slowly ate Lucien up from the inside. He would not look at any of us, only at the country that rushed by the open window.

He seemed to recover by the time we reached New York. I had not written to my mother directly, had arranged for the LIS to welcome Experience and Louisa at the church. But when we arrived, there was my mother, standing among the group of women, looking almost hopeful.

A year and a half away, I had not forgotten her face, but I was shocked by the changes to it. Her hair was not as bright—it was fainter— not yet given over to gray but closer to it than when I had left. And when I stepped close to her, I saw that her face was threaded with a thousand little lines of worry. As I embraced her, I heard Madeline Grady’s instruction: You’ve got to press the memory out.

Even her embrace felt different—my mother’s arms were not a place I knew well, but in my recollections of them, her arms had always been heavy and strong. They felt lighter now, and her skin, where it touched mine, felt soft.

Is Mama ill? I remember thinking for one terrible moment, but then realized, with a shock, the truth was more awful. I had not noticed her age when we were together. But seeing her, after we were apart, all her years on this Earth came down between us.

I pulled away.

“We have missed you,” she said. And then she looked over my shoulder expectantly. “Is this your great cause, then?”

“Miss Louisa and Miss Experience,” I said. I saw Louisa quickly reach for Experience’s hand and then drop it as they moved forward to greet my mother.

“Libertie speaks so much about you,” Louisa said.

“And this,” my mother said, “is Monsieur Emmanuel Chase.”

He was only a little bit taller than Mama. This is the first thing I remember noticing about him. He had been there this whole time while I embraced her, just back behind her elbow, but I had not noticed him in the excitement of reunion.

He held out his hand, the other tucked behind his back, the model of a gentleman.

I took it.

He was most nearly white—Mama had been modest when she said he could get by. He was even lighter than she was. His hair was fine, but balding at the temples, narrowing back into a widow’s peak, the rest of it slicked back with oil, though