When Israel and I visited the pond, we tossed crusts of bread on the water and watched the ducks paddle after them. There was a weathered rowboat turned upside down in the cattails on the far side, but we never ventured into it. We sat instead on a bench he’d built himself and conversed about the children, politics, God, and inevitably, the Quaker faith. He spoke a great deal about his wife, who’d been gone a year and a half. She could’ve been canonized, his Rebecca. Once, after speaking of her, his voice choked and he held my hand as we lingered silently in the deepening violet light.
In September, before summer left us, I was fathoms deep on the mattress in my room when the sound of crying broke into my slumber and I came swimming up from a dark blue sleep. The window was hinged open, and for a moment I heard nothing but the crickets in their percussion. Then it came again, a kind of whimpering.
I cracked the door to find Becky, Israel’s six-year-old, swallowed in an oversized white gown, blubbering and rubbing her eyes. She not only had her mother’s name, but her wilted, flaxen hair, and yet in some ways the child reminded me of myself. She had brows and lashes so light they were barely visible, giving her the same whitewashed look I wore. More than that, she chewed and mumbled her words, for which her siblings teased her unmercifully. Overhearing one of her brothers call her Mealy Mouth, I’d given him a talking-to. He avoided me nowadays, but Becky had followed me about ever since like a bear cub.
She rushed at me now, throwing herself into my arms.
“. . . My goodness, what’s all this?”
“I dreamed about Ma Ma. She was in a box in the ground.”
“. . . Oh, Sweet One, no. Your mother is with God and his angels.”
“But I saw her in the box. I saw her.” Her cries landed in wet bursts against my gown.
I cupped the back of her head, and when her tears stopped, I said, “Come on . . . I’ll take you back to your room.”
Pulling away, she darted past me to my bed and pulled the comforter to her chin. “I want to sleep with you.”
I climbed in beside her, an unaccountable solace washing over me as she edged close, nuzzling my shoulder. Her head smelled like the sweet marjoram leaves Catherine sewed into their pillows. As her hand fell across my chest, I noticed a chain dangling from her clamped fist.
“. . . What’s this in your hand?”
“I sleep with it,” she said. “But when I do, I dream of her.”
She unfurled her fingers to reveal a round, gold-plated locket. The front was engraved with a spray of flowers, daffodils tied with a bow, and below them, a name. Rebecca.
“That’s my name,” she said.
“. . . And the locket, is it yours, too?”
“Yes.” Her fingers curled back over it.
I’d never seen a trace of jewelry on Catherine or on Becky’s older sister, but in Charleston lockets were as common on little girls as hair barrettes.
“I don’t want it anymore,” she said. “I want you to wear it.”
“. . . Me? Oh, Becky, I couldn’t wear your locket.”
“Why?” She raised up, her eyes clouding over again.
“Because . . . it’s yours. It has your name on it, not mine.”
“But you can wear it for now. Just for now.”
She gave me a look of such pleading, I took it from her. “. . . I’ll keep it for you.”
“You’ll wear it?”