Libertie Kaitlyn Greenidge (ebook reader browser txt) 📖

to revere obedience, at least in the abstract. Louisa and Experience, these girls I loved, who I thought held providence on their tongues, were so sure of themselves. I began to doubt myself. Perhaps the rules Mama and Lenore and Madeline Grady lived by were wrong. Or not wrong, but they seemed only to apply in the velvet waiting room and whitewashed examination room of Mama’s practice or in the humid air of Mrs. Grady’s laundry. And how good was a rule, how strong, how sensible was it to obey, if it lost all meaning as soon as you left your front door?

I wondered who Experience and Louisa would pick if they could pick their mate, since it was so important. Both were ignored by the men of Cunningham College, though they did not seem bothered by this.

“The other ones here, they call us the Graces because they think they’re clever,” Louisa told me. “Look at Experience. She’s bright, but gawky.”

I tried very hard not to look at Experience. “No, she is not,” I said.

Louisa laughed. “Yes, she is. Not naming it isn’t gonna change it.”

“I’m gawky,” Experience said, and that set Louisa to laughing.

“And I’m like you, Libertie,” Louisa said. “Pretty but dark. And fat. And this scar. Altogether helpless. They called us the Graces, and maybe it’s meant to be an insult or a tease or a joke, but I think it’s a love note.”

“It makes it easier to sing for them,” Experience said, “when you think of it that way.”

“My mama made it a point to never comment on another woman’s beauty, or lack thereof,” I said, and this made them both laugh, though I wasn’t sure why.

It was the same way when they sang. They looked each other in the eye, and it seemed like they always kept their gaze like that. Nothing broke it. It was deeper than whatever was stitched across that musty quilt in the dining room. It was the same connection that exists between a flower and a bee, between a river and its bank, between a muscle and a bone.

And it was because of that I thought perhaps they were right and Mama and Mrs. Grady were wrong, and something turned over again inside me, some resolve that pushed me away from Mama a little bit more.

I did not go home for winter term, so my grades were given to me directly to mail to my mother, which I did not do. I was close to failing—not quite, but close, and I took the letter with this message and pressed it into my old anatomy book and put it at the bottom of my trunk, resolved to think about it when I could get the sound of the Graces out of my head.

Over the Christmas break, the snow was so high we did not have mail for many weeks, so that when my mother’s letters came, there were five of them to read in a row, and each one, every single one, was filled with the addition of a new name: Emmanuel.

He is a student of homeopathy, recently graduated from a medical school in Philadelphia. He is eager to study under anyone, including, he says, myself, “though you are a woman” (ha).

It was only one pair of parentheses, but Mama may as well have written me in dried berry juice. What did this “ha” mean, from a woman who I knew would bristle at a dismissal like that? A woman who had never been fond of parentheses.

Madame Elizabeth has sent him to me—he is lately of the city of Jacmel, Haiti, before he came to America to study medicine. He was not able to find a doctor who suited his interests in that city. So Madame Elizabeth and the church who sponsored him have sent him here, and he has been a welcome addition to the practice.

He sleeps in your bedroom—he has found it most comfortable. He has also suggested a new way to organize the garden—we will try it come this spring.

He recently saw one of our most persistent cases, Mrs. Cookstone, the judge’s wife, who lives on Pineapple Street. She was resistant that a colored man should treat her, but Emmanuel is able to get by. He is a high yellow homme de couleur (as Emmanuel is known back home in Haiti, he tells us). She relented once she saw him. She agreed that he should consult with her from behind a sheet. Lenore conducted the actual physical exam, and Emmanuel asked questions.

As you remember, Mrs. Cookstone is a bit of a nervous case, but she has written already to tell me that under Emmanuel’s care, she already is quite recovered from the pain in her chest and is even able to walk in her garden now, for a few hundred paces without needing to sit down and rest.

And here, the letter continued, enumerating all the ways this Emmanuel was a wonder.

Emmanuel has brought with him an album … He is collecting all of the plants and wildlife of Haiti, and we spend evenings comparing the plant life of his homeland to that of Kings County.

Emmanuel has created a tea that sweetens the breath, which we are now able to offer our wealthier patients. Sales have boosted clinic revenues by 2 percent alone this month.

Emmanuel is an especial favorite of our child patients and has a light touch with even the most fearful ones.

I counted each time she wrote that name. I knew enough that it was ridiculous to be jealous of a name on paper, but I could not help it, though I dared not mention it to Madeline Grady—or Experience and Louisa.

Mrs. Cookstone is now complaining of a pain in her calf muscle, which she says she also feels in her left shoulder. Emmanuel has already prescribed something that has done wonders, but I’m wondering if you can guess what it was.

This was even worse, to be set against a rival I could not even see,