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

only daughter has not spoken a word to me since she has come home. That she has hidden behind friends and acquaintances. That she has not even given me a report of her year—”

“I wasn’t—”

“It is not enough that she has not come to visit our clinic, has ignored my letters for months. But above all of that, I find she has kept her worst secret from her own mother.”

How could she know? I thought. Who could have told her that I had failed, that I was cast out of Cunningham College? Briefly, I flashed in anger upon Experience and Louisa. But I had not shared my disgrace even with them. Who could have told my mother?

“You’ve lied to me. How long have you been lying to me?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mama.”

“Stop! It makes me sick to hear it.”

She had not moved from the door. She would not let me pass, I realized with terror. I stood out in that night air that had seemed so beautiful, so magical, just a minute ago. If only she would let me into the house.

I started up the stairs, but she moved from the door to meet me at the top step.

“How long? That’s all I ask. I put the blame on you. How long?”

“Please, Mama, let me inside.”

“I cannot trust you in this house anymore. How can I trust you even to sleep under this roof?”

I began to cry. “I am sorry, Mama. Please forgive me.”

“I can’t even trust those,” she said, her voice thick. I realized, with a start, she was crying herself. “Your tears are lies, too.”

“Please, Mama, just let me inside, and I will explain. I will explain everything.”

“You cannot sleep here,” she said.

“Please!”

“I cannot trust you underneath this roof.”

I do not know how I managed to be on the ground, but I was. I had sunk all the way down into the earth, and could only double over and cry. I knelt like that until I heard the swing of her skirts as she came down off the porch, as she stood over me. I could smell her perfume, the smell of the lemon juice she used to bathe her lily petals and keep her skin soft and bright, the hot cotton of her waistcoat—my mother’s good graces in the air around me.

And then she thrust something small and crumpled up underneath my nose.

In that queer purple light of the evening, I could just make out my wife … you would wish it, too … Emmanuel Chase.

“What is this?” I said.

“I am not a fool, Libertie. So do not treat me as one.”

I took the paper from her hand and turned it over in my own.

“This is what’s upset you?”

“You’ve compromised your honor with a man who lives in my house. Of course this has upset me! Have you lost your mind?”

She did not know. She did not know that I had failed. I heard myself give a short, hoarse laugh. And then she slapped me.

My mother had never hit me before. Even as a small child, she had not swatted me—only Lenore, on rare occasions, had done something like that. I cannot say it even hurt very much—her blow landed soft, like a brush of silk, as if she had changed her mind between raising her arm and swinging it down.

When it was done, we both could only look at each other in surprise.

She recovered first. “I cannot believe you could be so foolish.”

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You have ruined your future. You have spoiled our plans.”

I laughed again at that, in the same hoarse voice, which sounded foreign, even to me. “They’re already spoiled.”

She raised her hand again. “Don’t! Don’t tell me if you’ve sunk that low! Don’t say it!”

I should have said, I am a failure, but not in the way you think. I should have said, I cannot pass a simple anatomy class, and even if I raise all the money in the world from Tom Thumb weddings and girls singing, Cunningham College will probably not want me back.

Instead, I said, to the dirt beneath me, “I will never be a doctor.”

She sank down beside me. She was there on the road beside me, in front of our house, and her face now was merely her own, the moonlight masking the changes that had shocked me when I first saw her that day. My mother.

“You’ve given up your dream.”

“It wasn’t mine,” I said. “You dreamt it for me.”

“It was ours.”

“I cannot join you,” I said. “I am sick of the smell of other women’s blood, Mama. Please.”

“So you’ll leave me,” she said. “So you chose your body over your mind. So you were weak.”

“I am weak. But I did not fail you like that. Dr. Chase has been nothing but a gentleman. I have conducted myself with honor with him—”

“I have no reason to believe you,” she said. “You’ve already proven yourself a liar.”

She sat back in the dirt. Then she lay all the way down in the dust until she was looking at the night sky. We sat like that: Mama seeing stars, and me not daring to raise my eyes from the dirt, until she sighed heavily and settled even deeper into her skirts.

“I gave you too much freedom,” she said. “So much freedom and you gave it up for the first bright man who smiled at you.”

“I don’t want him, Mama.”

She took my hand in hers, still staring into the sky. Her voice was smaller now. “I know these tricks, Libertie. I hear them every day from the girls and women who come into my clinic, all big with child from a man who’s left them. They tell me, even then, ‘I don’t want him,’ but it’s only to save their dignity. You think he will do this to you, too? I should know that, at least.”

“He hasn’t done a single thing to me,” I said. “And I assure you, I don’t want him to.”

“You think it’s love,” she said.