Many thanks to Jane Harstad, D.Ed., a Mille Lacs Band descendant and a member of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, for the thoughtful review.
For Margo Culley and Julia Demmin, who showed me the importance of hidden history
Oberlin, Ohio
1862–1863
Forbidden
Old branches crack as Edmonia breaks
a path through the woods. She wants
to outrun fury, or at least make a distance
between herself and the poison spoken
at Oberlin. The school is a shop where she can’t buy,
a supper she’s never meant to taste,
a holiday she can’t celebrate
though she doesn’t want to be left out.
She runs under trees taller than those in town,
where they’re sawed into lumber,
turned into tables, rifles, or walls.
These woods are as close to home
as she may ever again get.
When she was given a chance to go
to boarding school, her aunts’ farewell was final.
People who move into houses
with hard walls don’t return to homes
that can be rolled and carried on backs.
Edmonia crouches to touch tracks
of birds and swift squirrels sculpted in snow,
the split hearts of deer hooves.
Boot prints are set far enough apart
to tell her the trespasser is tall,
shallow enough to guess he’s slender.
Her cold breath stops, like ice.
She looks up at a deer whose dark gaze
binds them, turns into trust.
Then a branch breaks. The deer flees.
Hands
Brush rustles. A boy lopes through a clearing.
His hair shines like straw in sun. He says,
Hello. I’ve seen you at school.
Aren’t you friends with Helen and Christine?
With Helen. Maybe. We live in the same dormitory.
Friend isn’t from her first language.
She recognizes Seth as one of the boys,
about seventeen, in the class ahead of hers
and just behind those enrolled in the college.
She looks, as the deer taught her, for signs
of danger beyond weapons or words.
They say you make your own rules,
Seth says. I see they’re right.
You’re not supposed to be in the woods.
Or alone with a boy. Neither are you.
She was raised to respect fire, fast water,
and heights. But some school rules seem
like ropes meant to bind, choke, or trip
rather than keep someone safe. The woods
are her refuge from the school famous as the first
to open to both boys and girls,
white and colored,
rich and poor,
the good and the better-be-grateful,
though the lines between them are as firm as fences.
The trees call me, Seth says.
She looks up into the boughs. Is he teasing?
Or does he mean that trees call with
a hush and hum that never needs translation?
Each room at school—art, composition, geometry—
has its own language. Maybe the woods do, too.
I read Hiawatha, he says. Was your life like that?
Is it true you used to live outside?
When most people ask where she came from,
the question draws a line between them.
Most strangers want only a slip of a story,
like those the aunts who raised her gave tourists
to go with the deerskin moccasins
and sweetgrass baskets they bought,
reminders that history is as fragile as the present.
But Seth’s voice is soft as an opening door.
He seems to ask about the past not to measure,
but to touch. There’s no quiz in his eyes,
no examination of the pink-brown terrain of her palms,
the geography of her twisting hair.
She says, In winter, we stretched strips of bark
over trees young enough to bend, and slept
with our feet toward the fire in the middle.
I wish I could live like that. Seth raises
his voice. Or run away and help crush the Rebs,
never mind what my father says.
They walk silently a while to honor the dead
or missing slaves and soldiers.
They stop at the edge of the woods.
Smoke stains the sky. A train whistle blasts.
Small animals scurry across the field.
Seth crouches and holds his hand out flat,
as one would with salt for a horse,
as if he could tempt a hare back to the woods.
Here, homes are hidden—
burrows under snow, or in the hollows of trees—
as if secrets and dangers can’t be the same.
Snowflakes start to fall. She and Seth walk again.
Their breath claims the same rhythm
before a waterfall frozen in mid-motion,
its power and old noise half-hidden.
A brook below trickles over rocks
and around small islands of ice.
Seth’s eyes, green as the forest at dusk,
cast a spell. The wool of his jacket
mixes with the scent of his skin,
earthy and vaguely sweet, like clover.
He leans forward, offers a warm mouth.
Chickadees swoop and chirp.
Wind rattles dried grasses.
Edmonia hears another branch split.
Or is that the sound of old rules breaking?
Her breath unstitches.
She slips off a mitten.
Their fingers wind together.
Her small hand feels safe as an egg
within the nest of his wide one.
She feels a new pulse in her palm
keeping time with the snowflakes
melting on her face.
Their hands around each other’s become
the warmest spot in the woods.
The First Promise
Before starting on separate paths back to the school,
Seth says, Don’t tell anyone.
Edmonia’s breath flows smoothly as a needle
through cloth. Her self fits within her skin
the way moccasins mold to feet,
a river wends through land,
or a crow slices her shape through the sky.
She says, I won’t tell. Ever since
she heard how her mother invited a man heading north
—a man who was free, but a dangerous color—
into her bark house, Edmonia understood
that hiding and courage were part of love.
Old Stories
Edmonia can keep secrets. She doesn’t speak
of her father, who, not long before her mother died,
left Edmonia with brown skin, round eyes, a wide mouth,
and not one memory. Still, his name is part of hers.
She won’t speak of manitous, good spirits
who may stay within stone, but might warn
with a cracking branch. Her aunts taught her much
that they warned could be ruined by revelation.
Edmonia won’t won’t even whisper what her aunts held close.
But she wishes she could hint about the kiss
to the girls who share a room upstairs. Helen and Christine
like tales of forbidden romance: Romeo and Juliet
defying their f
amilies, Hiawatha and Minnehaha
marrying despite fighting between Ojibwe and Sioux,
Cleopatra luring a Roman into a barge
filled with gold and roses, forgetting
her country, careless that she was queen.
Portraits
The art room is undivided by chairs set in rows.
It smells of charcoal sticks and spiral shavings
from pencils sharpened with knives.
Landscapes are pinned to the walls.
White plaster busts of heads with empty eyes
and casts of hands and feet fill the shelves.
Nothing is shown of the body between.
Only after long practice on what’s flat
are the older students allowed to work with clay.
They claim an art that takes up space
like the deerskin her aunts sculpted into shoes,
the baskets they wove from broken willow branches.
Edmonia and Helen work alone late in the afternoon.
Drawing is an invitation to someone
taking shape under a pencil
to come close enough to reveal what matters most.
She says, Our teacher is a snake.
He said the arms looked too soft,
and the hair couldn’t possibly be Cleopatra’s.
He criticizes everything, Helen says. That’s his job.
Though he can be bitter. I think he imagined himself
as a real sculptor. No one wants to teach girls.
Are all these his work? Edmonia looks around
at plaster casts of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.
Nobody could claim to know the shapes of their noses
or the texture of their hair. I’ll change Cleopatra to a goddess.
These are copies he collected. All made by men in Europe.
Helen’s short sentence holds a lot of history.
I want to see museums there one day.
I thought you wanted to show your work in one.
Yes, times are changing.
Wasn’t Cleopatra eighteen when she became queen?
We have two years to become famous.
Helen puts down her pencil, the same blue as her eyes.
We shouldn’t be late for supper. And I need
to get ready for the dance. You should come, too.
I mean to supper. You can’t afford another demerit.
I’m almost done. Edmonia draws a circle in the hands
of her goddess, as if she’s holding the world.
That’s better than being able to attend a dance,
though she imagines her feet fast on the floor,
a boy’s arm warming her waist.
After Helen leaves, she picks up some clay,
molds Seth’s face, then presses the clay back
to possibility. Nobody should see what she touched.
She looks through the window, past the field
where she and Seth ducked through twilight,
holding a shiver of skin on skin in soft twined fists.
Saturday Afternoon
Edmonia gets to the table on time. But the next day,
the bell for study hour has tolled before she enters
the room she shares with Ruth. Two beds are checkered
with faded squares of fabric cut from old dresses
neither roommate recognizes. Edmonia picks up
a paper swan that had been slipped under the door.
She unfolds and flattens the note,
reads Helen’s words across the wings:
A lovely dance last night. So silly you couldn’t go.
Christine arranged for a sleigh today
with two handsome escorts. Come advise on fashion?
I’m going upstairs, Edmonia says. Helen needs help
choosing what to wear for a sleigh ride.
We’re supposed to be studying.
You’re not a servant. Ruth scowls.
Those girls are too flighty to manage horses.
I expect the boys will take the reins.
Boys and no chaperone? Ruth shakes her head.
You have a fellow, Edmonia points out.
And you take advantage that Father Keep
is hard of hearing. No one else would let people like us
study right along with white students.
And you spend too much time with those girls.
If there’s trouble, you’ll be first to get blamed.
Lectures like that makes it hard for them to like you.
The good people of Boston didn’t raise
scholarship money so I could have friends, Ruth says.
We vowed when we came here to be of a character
that no one can criticize. And don’t tell me
you’re an exception. No matter how many stories
you tell about your past life in the forest,
they don’t see halves.
You and I are the same in their eyes.
I’m not like you. Edmonia’s older brother
sent money he made mining gold
so she could enroll, though she hasn’t heard
from him since. My mother was Indian.
And my father a freedman.
Who happened to be walking north?
Of course he told people there were no papers
claiming he belonged to someone else.
It’s what any colored man would say to stay alive.
Edmonia flings open the door.
The world is changing.
The String of Pearls
Helen’s petticoat swirls over her ankles as she spins
to shut the door. She waves two dresses,
whose hems skim the floor. What do you think?
My poplin with puffed sleeves or the blue taffeta?
I like them both. Edmonia smooths the dress
she wears six days a week. The room
on the bright stove. Helen and Christine
come from families who don’t skimp on coal.
A hoop skirt flatters the waist. Christine takes a curling iron
off the cast iron stove. She winds a strand of her blond hair
around the rod. But when it comes between crinoline
and a boy being able to reach around my waist,
I cast my vote for dress reform. Besides, no one will see.
We’ll be under furs or quilts. With luck, the boys will be, too.
Christine turns to Edmonia. I heard you have an admirer.
Edmonia’s face turns warm. Had Seth told
someone what he’d asked her not to tell?
A boy named Thomas? Christine adds. Who sends
around petitions to start a colored army?
They were talking about Ruth.
Edmonia doesn’t point out they’re not alike.
She picks up a silver-handled hairbrush
and walks around Helen, examining
the shape of each side of her head.
She braids, twists, and tugs the brown hair
still straighter, pierces it with pins to clip it in place.
Helen holds up a looking glass and frowns.
It needs something.
You need something. Edmonia, will you pour
us some cider? Christine says.
Cleopatra wove pearls through her hair.
Edmonia stirs and pours the hot cider.
I have that necklace from my father! Helen sifts
through keepsakes on her bureau: a music box,
scissors shaped like a bird, and lily of the valley scent.
She finds a cedarwood box and opens the lid.
Its emptiness fills the room.
Helen’s gaze rises to Edmonia, whose teeth ache.
On the top of the bureau are pledges
of lasting devotion: locks of hair twined
into
charms, cards with pressed wildflowers.
A cameo pin has a profile carved
in pale stone; only half the face shows.
China Teacups and the Queen of Egypt
Helen’s eyes blur back to blue.
She bends to open a drawer. Christine, I knew
when you told me to hide my jewelry
I’d forget where I put it. Helen reaches
under rolled stockings and gloves
to pull out a necklace. She laughs,
as if no one had heard accusation
flicker over her tongue. I wasn’t hiding
it from thieves. But such trinkets are forbidden
in school so they don’t cause trouble.
My father gave me a necklace, too. Edmonia stands
straight as a guest alert to hints she’s stayed too long.
It was made of garnets. You can find them
near the river. I’ll put those pearls in your hair.
She twists them through smooth strands. Helen flinches
and sips from a china cup painted with roses,
then purses her lips. The cider is sour.
Did you put something in this?
Spices, Christine says. And a bit of something
my Albert says will make you fuss less about what’s proper.
Like Cleopatra’s love potions? Helen swallows.
She had to lure suitors? Christine asks. I thought
she was beautiful, clever, and rich.
She wanted men on the wrong side. Romans
kneeling at her feet, feeding her peeled grapes.
I expect that wasn’t all they were doing.
Christine pours more cider in their cups.
Didn’t she murder her brother and sister?
They say “assassinate” in history class, Helen says.
But yes. And she put poison in a rival city’s water.
Nobody rules by being kind, Christine says.
Didn’t she kill herself? Like Romeo and Juliet?
She didn’t poison herself because of love gone wrong,
Helen says. Rome was invading her country.
Her maids snuck in an asp curled among figs in a basket.
Why would she kill herself?
If the Romans won, they’d mock and chain her.
Maybe put her in prison.
Helen picks up the mirror again.
You can’t really see the pearls.
They must have looked better on Cleopatra,
white pearls and black hair together.
She had black hair? Christine asks.
Of course, she was queen of Egypt. I forgot