The Immortal American

  ~*~

  Short, quick days passed as Hannah made the silver gray dress for me. A few years ago, she had stopped using fashion plates and only employed her imagination and me as her mannequin. She made the bodice painstakingly, lovingly. The stomacher was the silver gray silk blend with black for sleeves and the minutest of light peachy pink details. The neckline opened wide, which I dare say I needed a neck kerchief considering. But, of course, Hannah insisted she wouldn’t make one for the dress. She did so love dressing me scandalously. Oh, but it was hard to pay attention to societal fashion rules when one saw the pretty pinks that reflected silver in the right light, the silver gray that shone like pink, and all of it surrounded by black.

  Pink-silver rosebuds interlaced around the hem of the sleeves and all the ruffles and around the neckline. Its sleeves ended just above my elbows where Hannah had the light silver fabric ruffle. It looked like a summer dress, a dark summer dress.

  In a couple more days’ time the skirt was developed. Usually, Hannah made the skirts full and wide with panniers—the hoop petticoat that would create a gigantic rounded expansion within a gown. But she had a different plan for my dress. She smiled vibrantly (and my heart rejoiced) as she explained that she was creating something that would revolutionize the fashion industry. The skirt flowed from the tight waist, but instead of puffing about, it slid down my body with fluid form. It was predominately black, but a silver gray triangle washed down the center, the slender point of the triangle met at my waist, at the beginning of the stomacher. The pink rosebuds pierced the skirt’s silver gray with a criss-cross pattern in the center.

  I tried on the finished product only a short time from its conception. Before I was fitted into the dress, Hannah made me wear my corset more in the fashion and cinched my laces as I exhaled out all the air in my lungs. For farming I would lace my own stay until my breasts wouldn’t be a bother and not worry about my waist. After she began to sweat and huff from the exertion of getting me in my stays she measured my waist and rolled her eyes when she held up the number to me.

  “Good Lord, you eat all the time, but have such a tiny waist.” Hannah might have sounded like she was complaining or jealous, but there was a gleam of admiration in her eyes.

  “’Tis just the stays. You laced me up but tight enough for me to faint.”

  She giggled softly while she shook her head. “What do you think of your new dress?”

  It was a dark night, and I didn’t need any silver looking glass to see my reflection, just the window. In my mirrored image, I saw that she had made the waist look like it disappeared into a black oblivion, and the pink details appeared to wave as if the tiny rose buds were alive and dancing on my dress. I looked like a dark otherworldly angel.

  I swallowed in awe.

  “Oh, Hannah.” My voice shook as I spoke.

  “Hannah, this really is your best work.” My mother’s voice also quivered.

  “This should be shown in . . . amongst the Royals,” I remarked. “Queen Marie would beg for your services.”

  Hannah just smiled.

  “Miss Hannah, you’ve made Miss Violet into a princess,” Mrs. Jones said in a tiny soft voice.

  No one would ever think me a lady who dug my hands in the soil and could swear like a sailor. I did look like royalty.

  “Let’s do her hair.” Hannah’s eyebrows arched in excitement.

  Mrs. Jones, we had come to discover, was brilliant at teasing. Being a personal slave to the woman of the house, she knew how to make hair gigantic, Virginia-style. She teased both my tresses and Hannah’s. A little more than a couple hours later, we were all giggling at our gargantuan hair.

  Hannah helped with Mother’s locks. I would have never noticed she was growing so many gray hairs, if I weren’t close to Hannah teasing our mother’s tresses until Marie Antoinette herself would have approved. Mother’s mix of blonde and gray looked distinguished, even if it was fluffed a foot above her eyes.

  I made Mrs. Jones’ hair enormous. Her hair was like black silk in my hands. I loved the kinks of her curls. It was so easy to tease, so malleable. It smelled divine too. She told me she washed it in a gardenia and lily potion her auntie had concocted. I loved the term auntie. I would find Hannah a good husband so a batch of children would call me auntie.

  I had both my sister and mother smell Mrs. Jones over and over again, declaring her the most exquisitely scented woman ever created.

  We were drunk by then—quite drunk. Every year we made batches of beer and hard cider, and mostly used the hard cider for special events. Someone, I think it might have been Hannah, thought that my trying on a dress that I wore for more than a couple hours merited getting into the special brew. I got the very best stuff I could, a mixture of apple, a touch of peach, and honey cider, and we couldn’t seem to stop drinking the delicious beverage.

  It was an unusually warm spring night, and we had the doors and windows open. With our colossal hair we all were chuckling in the parlor.

  “Did you hear that?” Hannah asked. She didn’t let us answer. “A cricket. Summer’s fast approaching.”

  We all listened to the sound of the insect. Sure enough, there it was serenading us. “That’s beautiful,” I whispered as I leaned my swimming head on Hannah’s shoulder.

  “I love the sound of that. It’s like nothing else,” Mrs. Jones said.

  I nodded. “I also like the sound of summer storms, how the wind whistles through the barley and oats’ grass, making the grains look like waves in the ocean. Green waves. It’s so . . .”

  “It’s like another world, you know,” my sister finished for me. “Instead of the ocean’s blue gray waves, we have green yellow. Instead of violins, we have crickets. It’s another world that many scoff at, calling it simple. I used to be one of those people.” She took a quick sip of a breath. “But now I see how complex and elegant it is.”

  It wasn’t her words, but her voice that had turned soft and wistful. Only too much so. It was like slurping down a cupful of freshly sugared maple syrup. I wanted to cringe, but tried to grin at my sister for her poetic sentiments.

  Looking down at my dark silver and black dress, I didn’t want to take it off. If I could, I would have slept in it. Perhaps with getting so intoxicated, I would get my wish, and just fall into a slumber wearing it. How had Hannah done it? How had she known exactly what I was like on the inside and shown it on the outside?

  “Your father would have been proud of us, girls. We drank four bottles.” My mother chuckled. By then, Mrs. Jones was just considered another one of my mother’s daughters.

  Mrs. Jones leaned her own head on Hannah’s other shoulder. “We done good,” Mrs. Jones whispered then hiccupped.

  “We done good,” my sister and I repeated. Then we all laughed.

  “What are you women doing?”

  We struggled as one to turn toward Mr. Jones’s voice.

  “We are getting drunk, husband,” Mrs. Jones retorted.

  My sister and I buried our heads closer, trying to hide our giggles as Mr. Jones walked in to get a better look at us.

  “What happened to your hair?” he asked.

  We then couldn’t hold back and burst forth with peels of donkey-like laughter.

  It was the happiest moment I’d known in so long. I clutched at my sister suddenly. She hadn’t spoken of running away, but at every opportunity I spoke of Philadelphia, Quebec, Paris, even Madrid. I spoke a little Spanish, why not?

  She would smile every time, and I hoped that with enough persistence we could move. Why not just leave? Why stay here? We would, of course, take the Joneses and mother. I could figure out how to escape Concord with the little money I had and run with my sister wherever she wanted.

  Maybe Hannah didn’t want to get married any longer or have children. So what? I’d adjust. If Hannah wouldn’t have children, then I didn’t want any either. As long as I had my sister, I didn’t care about any of the other details. I had m
y sister.

  I had my sister.

  Mr. Jones swept Mrs. Jones up into his arms and carried her out of our house complaining that he loved his wife so much. Then, I noticed Hannah while she watched Mr. and Mrs. Jones. All I saw was a bone-crushing sorrow. I panicked and wrapped my arms around her and pulled her up the stairs to our chamber. She complied with a sad smile.

  Chapter Thirteen: Murder