Emma Field Book I - coming of age in the changing times of the mid-19th century

Chapter XIV - Never, No Sort of a Woman

Emma returned to the dressmaker's cabin the next day. "I had reason to come to the village again and I wondered if you needed me to do anything?" she asked Mrs. Henderson.

"Anything? Anything? My word, child – no one ever asks me if I need anything! I'm the one they ask to adjust this and place a tuck there and have something else done by yesterday. Bless you. Ask me that question again just so that I can taste the sweetness of it."

Emma smiled and repeated with deliberation, "I had reason to come to the village – well, no I didn't; I just wanted to see you – and I wondered if you needed me to do any – thing – for – you."

"'Tis sweet – 'tis sweet like honey! Yes, dear child. If I go one more day with the floor in this room unswept I shall throw myself in front of a bucking stallion. And I need more thread from Bishop's to finish this dress."

"Consider it done. The broom is in the kitchen?"

Mrs. Henderson nodded. "Behind the door. It is lovely to have you drop by like this. I do find the days a little monotonous at times."

"A little like school – only that's every day!"

"Now don't you complain about school. I didn't have the opportunity to attend a single day of school. I've worked since I could crawl – and now I sometimes crawl to work. Bless me, I'm tired. It's been a quiet day – no one else has come by. Is there any gossip out there I should know about."

"You're asking me? The only gossip I know has come from you, except that Jemima Williams is getting married at Christmas. And Daniel Williams too, though I don't recall who he is marrying. And one of Jane Morgan's brothers..."

"Oh yes, I know all of that. I have already made Jemima a beautiful blue silk dress. 'Married in blue, he will always be true. Married in yellow, ashamed of your fellow. Married in black, you will wish yourself back.' Jemima chose blue."

"Upon your recommendation?"

"All I did was to recite the verse." Mrs. Henderson smiled.

"There. What shall I do with the sweepings from the floor?"

"Throw them on the fire, please. And just put the thread on my account at Bishop's. Oh, it is so much better to have the floor clean again. Thank you, my dear."

•

The bells jingled as Emma closed the door to Bishop's General Store behind her. She looked to the back of the store, where three men leaned into the warmth of the stove and the chill of their conversation. Mr. Forsythe occupied his usual seat, facing both the stove and the main door. A boy sat on the floor next to him, leaning against his chair.

"...and she never was no sort of a woman," the man with a handful of nails was saying.

"Nope. No sort of a woman, no sort of a wife." Mr. Forsythe leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest.

"Ain't they the same thing?" inquired the boy, arching his neck to look at the older man.

Emma's father always said that a person could often hear things that weren't true by the wood stove in the General Store. "Like a backwards pearl," he'd say. "Rather than start with a speck of dirt and create a beautiful, smooth sphere of pearl, they start with a speck of something good and make it into a dirty, stinky pile of horse manure."

"But horse manure can be good," Emma had retorted the first time her father had made this proclamation. "You always tell me that when you clean the pig pens you call it 'fertilizer – God's fertilizer."