Suck on the Marrow

Unravel and Weave

72 Unravel and Weave When I hang Mr. Cartwright’s trousers on a line with no thought as to how the leg would taper down Joe’s calf, I am nothing more than myself, and happy to be Melinda Young, now Freeman. But, of course, I am no longer Young, and no more Freeman than Hattie down the alley, whose old man, Elijah the porter, went off ten years since with another gal, is a Porter’s bride. Because there has been no dirt turned over the body I love, because the hands that stole my plans were neither death’s nor some other seductress, because I have no body to blame, no betrayal to explain my kidnapped ambition, there are moments I can do nothing but forget I must be someone’s widow, someone’s abandoned wife. It is difficult to answer if I am more or less myself in the late evenings when I take calls from men like Richard Turnbridge, who would have me drop Freeman and fold myself into his name. And who am I when I am waiting on the corner? Just Melinda, watching for a break between the carts and carriages, wondering, only, when the time will come when it is quiet enough for me to walk into the road. ...