The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb - Melanie Benjamin [149]
[ EIGHTEEN ]
A Terrible Conflagration
OH, WHO IS THAT LITTLE GIRL?” MAMA CRIED, PAUSING IN her rocking. She leaned forward and peered at me, as if trying to remember my name. “Little girl? I spoke to you—who are you?”
My heart squeezed up until my entire chest ached, even as I patted her arm and pushed the rocking chair, lulling her back into silence. How many times had I been mistaken for a child? But to hear my own mother do so hurt me beyond reason—even if it was only the result of a sick, muddled mind.
Charles and I had moved into the old homestead with my brother James and his family, this December of 1882, after letting out our house. Papa had died in 1880, but Mama was still alive. Infirm, growing deaf, content to rock in a chair all day, her hands were now idle, as was her reason. Even as I was glad that she could no longer remember Minnie, and so could no longer mourn her, I grieved that she could not recognize me. I was a stranger to my mother, to my entire family, really—and in a way, hadn’t I always been? James and his wife were kindness itself, but I felt they were always defensive about the simplicity of their life, comparing it, too often, to what Charles and I had grown accustomed to.
“I don’t suppose the Queen served sassafras tea when you all went calling there, did she?” my sister-in-law would say as she prepared for callers.
“No, Mary, but I’ve always liked sassafras tea,” I would reply.
“Well, it’s what we’re used to around here,” she would say, resentment flavoring the tea almost as much as the sassafras.
Or—
“I reckon they take wine with their meals in France,” James would remark at dinner, passing around platters of good boiled New England beef.
“They do,” Charles would agree.
“Well, we don’t go in for that around here, you know,” James would scold, mildly—as if we had asked for wine, demanded wine, threatened to lock ourselves in our rooms unless we were served wine.
I don’t mean to be ungrateful; my brother and his family did us a great kindness in allowing us to stay with them. But it was uncomfortable, nevertheless. So I did what I always did; I plotted my escape. If my family didn’t know what to do with me, my audience did; they smiled, they clapped, and in the spotlight, up on a stage so that all I could see were faces, not legs, I felt big. As big as my dreams.
But never as big as Minnie, who, after all, had been large enough to carry two beating hearts within her. Next to her memory; next to my sister-in-law, with her brood of children and happy domesticity; next to my mother, who, even in her confusion, often caressed the finger upon which her plain gold wedding band still resided—I felt insignificant; I felt small; I felt less.
So we were going back out on tour again; this time with just the Bleekers. No more circus trains for us! Just a genteel entertainment, singing, dancing, stories of our travels; we were even introducing a new feature, a stereopticon, to project images of the places we had seen. Mr. Bleeker was quite excited about it; it had been my idea. I couldn’t wait to try it out.
“Little girl! Do I know you? Are you Delia’s daughter?” Mama stopped rocking again; she was growing agitated, shrugging off her shawl, kicking at her skirt.
“No, Mama,” I said, placing her shawl back upon her shoulders. “I’m Vinnie. Remember? Vinnie—your daughter.”
“Vinnie?” She tilted her head like a parrot; she was very birdlike these days, the way her hands incessantly plucked at her clothing, and her eyes blinked constantly in any light stronger than a candle. “Vinnie? I used to know a Minnie, once. Whatever happened to her?”
“Minnie died, Mama.”
“Died? How?”
“I killed her,” I replied. Then I ran upstairs