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What was he leading up to? I could feel a faint stir of excitement in my breast.
“You know how much I think of you, how indebted both Trudy and I are—were—to all of you. And now—” He could hardly contain himself. He smiled at me. “I have Sara Louise to thank for the idea. You see, Trudy left a little legacy. I didn’t know what to do with it, because I swore to myself I would never touch her money. There isn’t a great deal, but there is enough for a good boarding school.” He was beaming all over. “I’ve investigated. There will be enough for Caroline to go to Baltimore and continue her music. Nothing would make Trudy happier than that, I know.”
I sat there as stunned as though he had thrown a rock in my face. Caroline!
Caroline jumped up and ran over and threw her arms around his neck.
“Caroline, wait,” my mother was saying. Surely she would point out that she had two daughters. “Captain, this is very generous, but I can’t—I’d have to talk with my husband. I couldn’t—”
“We must convince him, Miss Susan. Sara Louise, tell her how you were saying to me just the other day that someone should understand that special circumstances demand special solutions—that Caroline ought to be sent to a really good school where she could continue her music. Isn’t that right, Sara Louise?”
I made a funny sound in my throat that must have resembled a “yes.” The Captain took it for approval. My grandmother twisted in her chair to look at me. I looked away as fast
as I could. She was smiling.
“Isn’t that right, Sara Louise?” she asked in a voice intended to mimic the Captain’s. “Isn’t that right?”
I jumped toward the kitchen with the excuse of making tea. I could hear the Captain talking on to Mother and Caroline about the academy he knew in Baltimore with the wonderful music program. The words roared in my ears like a storm wind. I put the kettle on and laid out cups and spoons. Everything seemed so heavy I could hardly pick them up. I struggled to pry the lid from the can of tea leaves, aware that my grandmother had come in and was standing close behind me. I stiffened at the sound of her hoarse whisper.
“Romans nine thirteen,” she said. “‘As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.’”
15
I served the tea with a smile sunk in concrete pilings.
“Thank you, Louise,” my mother said.
The Captain nodded at me as he took his cup off the tray. Caroline, distracted with happiness, seemed not to see me at all. I took the cup that I had prepared for her back to the kitchen, brushing past my grandmother, who was grinning at me in the doorway. After I had put down the tray, I had to squeeze past her once more to get to the protection of my room. “Jacob have I loved—” she began, but I hurried by and up the steps as quickly as I could.
I closed the door behind me. Then, without thinking, I took off my dress and hung it up and put on my nightgown. I crawled under the covers and closed my eyes. It was half-past three in the afternoon.
I suppose I meant never to get up again, but of course I did. At suppertime my mother came in to ask if I were ill, and being too slow-witted to invent an ailment, I got up and went down to the meal. No one said much at the table. Caroline was positively glowing, my mother quiet and thoughtful, my grandmother grinning and stealing little peeks at my face.
At bedtime Caroline finally remembered that she had a sister. “Please don’t mind too much, Wheeze. It means so much to me.”
I just shook my head, not trusting myself to reply. Why should it matter if I minded? How would that change anything? The Captain, who I’d always believed was different, had, like everyone else, chosen her over me. Since the day we were born, twins like Jacob and Esau, the younger had ruled the older. Did anyone ever say Esau and Jacob?
“Jacob have I loved…” Suddenly my stomach flipped. Who was speaking? I couldn’t remember the passage. Was it Isaac, the father of the twins? No, even the Bible said that Isaac had favored Esau. Rebecca, the mother, perhaps. It was her conniving that helped Jacob steal the blessing from his brother. Rebecca—I had hated her from childhood, but somehow I knew that these were not her words.
I got up, pulled the blackout curtains, and turned on the table lamp between our beds.
“Wheeze?” Caroline propped herself up on one elbow and blinked at me.
“Just have to see something.” I took my Bible from our little crate bookcase, and bringing it over to the light, looked up the passage Grandma had cited. Romans, the ninth chapter and the thirteenth verse. The speaker was God.
I was shaking all over as I closed the book and got back under the covers. There was, then, no use struggling or even trying. It was God himself who hated me. And without cause. “Therefore,” verse eighteen had gone on to rub it in, “hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” God had chosen to hate me. And if my heart was hard, that was his doing as well.
My mother did not hate me. The next two days part of me watched her watching me. She wanted to speak to me, I could tell, but my heart was already beginning to harden and I avoided her.
Then Friday after supper while Caroline was practicing, she followed me up to the room.
“I need to talk with you, Louise.”
I grunted rudely. She flinched but didn’t correct me. “I’ve been giving this business a lot of thought,” she said.
“What business?” I was determined to be cruel.
“The offer—the idea of Caroline going to school in Baltimore.”
