Lyddie

Embarrassed to have talked so long about herself, [Lyddie] asked, “But I reckon you know how it is with families, ey?”

“Not really. I can hardly remember mine. Only my aunt that kept me until I was ten. And she's gone now.”

Lyddie made as if to sympathize, but Diana shook it off. “I think of the mill as my family. It gives me plenty of sisters to worry about.”

I stared down a black bear, Lyddie reminded herself. She took a deep breath, fished out the broken ends, and began to tie the weavers knot the Diana had shown her over and over again the afternoon before. Finally, Lyddie managed to make a clumsy knot, and Diana pulled the lever, and the loom shuddered to life once more.

Lyddie could not keep the silly song out of her head. It clapped and whistled along with the machinery.

Oh! I cannot be a slave,

I will not be a slave….

She wasn’t a slave. She was a free woman of the state of Vermont, earning her own way in the world. Whatever Diana, or even Betsy, might think, she, Lyddie, was far less a slave than most any girl she knew of. They mustn’t spoil it for her with their petitions and turnouts. They mustn’t meddle with the system and bring it all clinging down to ruin. She liked Diana, really she did, yet she found herself avoiding her friend as though radicalism were something catching, like diphtheria. She knew Mr. Marsden was beginning to keep track of the girls who stopped by Diana’s looms.

“I got good news, Lyddie,” he said, a little of the boy she knew creeping into his voice. Her heart rose.

“The Phinneys have taken me on as a full apprentice.”

“Ey?”

“More than that, truly. They treat me like their own. They don’t have no child but me.”

“You got a family,” she said faintly.

[…] She wanted to scream out at him, remind him how hard she had worked for him, how hard she had tried, but she only said softly, “I wanted to do for you, Charlie. I tried—”

“Oh, Lyddie, I know,” he said, leaning toward her. “I know. But it waren’t fair to you. You only a girl, trying to be father and mother and sister to us all. It were too much. This will be best for you, too, ey. Don’t you see?”

Lyddie spent the night with Diana. Everyone was kind. Diana had her family at last. Then why had something snapped like a broken warp thread inside Lyddie’s soul? Wasn't she happy for Diana? Surely, surely she was—happy and greatly relieved. “You must write to Brigid and tell her you are fine, ey?” Lyddie said as they parted the next morning. “She can read now, and she worries.”

“I’m off…” [Lyddie] said, and knew as she spoke at what she was off to. To stare down the bear! The bear that she had thought all these years was outside herself, but now, truly, knew was in her own spirit. She would stare down all the bears.

[…] Tarnation, Lyddie Worthen! Ain’t you learned nothing? Don’t you know better than to tie yourself to some other living soul? You'd only be asking for trouble and grief. Might as well just throw open the cabin door full wide and invite that black bear right onto the hearth.