Love is Patient

My dearest Isaac,

I cannot believe it is finally happening – how long we have waited for this joyous day! I awoke this morning and smoothed the quilt over my twin bed for the very last time. Looked around the room I have slept in all these long, lonely years with fresh eyes. It is all so dreary and sad. That narrow bed where I cried myself to sleep many a night, feverish and aching with love for you.

My hope chest is overflowing with items I prepared for our life together. No other man will have such lovingly embroidered pillowcases, such exquisite table linens, and so many initialed handkerchiefs. I always knew it would be you.

Do you remember that halcyon summer, when all the children worked together to build a den in the red barn? How we struggled to lift the heavy bales, straw scratching up our arms and legs as we created tunnels and pathways to play in. Such laughter we all shared on those afternoons, with our chores completed and dinner so far away. Sharing our lunch pails as we played hide and seek in the cool, dark burrows we had made. I think that was the happiest time of my life. I know it was. The day you kissed me.

I remember every last detail. Your hair sticking up every which way, as yellow as the straw surrounding us. Your breath warm and sweet with the scent of strawberries, their juice still smeared around your lips. Your eyes the blue of glacial waters, sparkling like the first frost of winter. That dimple in your right cheek, and the tiny scar on your forehead where you fell out of the oak tree the summer before. You were so handsome, Isaac. So tall – 16 years old and golden from tending the farm. I couldn’t help but admire you, we all of us did. I remember whispering to Violet about my secret love for you, there in the tunnels away from prying eyes. She laughed at me, and said

“Oh Cassia, you silly thing! Isaac’s almost a grown man now. He’ll never notice a child like you.”

I knew she was wrong. I might only have been 11, but I was tall for my age. She sensed my anger, crawling out of the den and running away across the corn field.

I stayed inside the den. I loved it there - a sacred place, set apart from the dreariness of our everday lives. A place where anything might happen. You crawled through the narrow entrance, sun-blind for a few minutes as you grew accustomed to the shade.

“Hullo?” you called, sensing someone was there, but unsure who it might be.

I giggled.

“Violet? Is that you?” You asked, reaching forwards and catching hold of my long braids.

I kept quiet, my heart beating quicker as I felt your hands against my face, trying to guess my identity.

“If you don’t tell me who you are, I’m going to kiss you!” You teased, and my world stood still.

I knew you were pretending. Of course you had known it was me, known it from the moment you crawled in there beside me. Your own heart must have led you, just as mine beat only to the sound of your name –

Is-aac! Is-aac!

“Okay then, you asked for it!” You moved closer, your lips pressing against mine. A promise made, that kiss. Our lives intertwined for all eternity.

I still believe things would have turned out differently if Violet hadn’t had that accident. Or was it even an accident at all? I’ve often wondered about that. We built the tunnels well - how did they come to fall in on her and not the rest of us?

I was waiting for you that afternoon, in the hayloft. I was carving a heart into the wooden support beam, Isaac’s Cassia, even our names were reflections of each other. I was wearing my Sunday dress and my cleanest apron, my favorite blue ribbons in my hair. My lips tingled with anticipation as I heard you enter the barn below.

You climbed up to the hidden entrance of the tunnels, and I smiled, thinking how confused you would be when you found I wasn’t inside. As you stepped onto the top bale, something shifted, and suddenly there was a heavy thud as the bales toppled inwards. The air was full of dust, and a high-pitched scream came from below, muffled by the weight of the straw.

I was too frightened to move, frozen in place, watching from the loft. You sprang into action, so heroic as you strained to lift the heavy bales by yourself. Then a hand reached up through a gap in the pile, and you grabbed on to it, hefting her out like a cork from a bottle.

“Violet! Thank God you’re okay!” You said, pulling straw from her hair as you stared at her.

I knew then that she had bewitched you. She never could let me have anything for my own, so spiteful, my older sister. I couldn’t watch as you bent down, giving her the kisses that were meant to be mine. I buried my head in my hands, pretending it wasn’t happening, wishing time would wind back to the day before, when you had been mine and mine alone. But it doesn’t work that way.

The following Spring you announced your engagement, and on the longest day of the year, you wed my sister. As I straightened her floral wreath she looked me in the eye for the first time in a year.

“I’m sorry, Cas. I never meant to hurt you. We can’t help who we fall in love with.”

She was wrong, though. Because you never loved her, not the way you loved me. It was just her magic, dragging you in, intoxicating you. None of it was your fault.

So I waited. Tatted my lace doilies, knitted baby booties and cardigans for the children we would one day share. Poured my love into every stitch, and bided my time. I am nothing if not patient.

Violet fell sick when she was carrying her third child. The morning sickness she had felt with the last two was nothing compared to the violent spasms and retching that plagued her this time round. The only food she could stomach was my ginger nuts, which I made especially for her, even though it was too hot in the kitchen for baking that summer. You thanked me each time I visited, and I always made a batch of your favorite snickerdoodles as well.

Violet lost weight instead of gaining it, her cheeks hollow, her hair falling out in clumps. Her skin had a sickly sheen to it, yellow and waxy. Her eyes were bloodshot and her lips tinged blue. She could no longer care for her other children, just lay in bed, writhing as the cramps and vomiting wreaked havoc on her slender frame. I took them home with me, those wretched creatures, an abomination of your beautiful blonde curls and her dark, malevolent eyes. You thanked me again, calling me Sissy and hugging me as you cried on my shoulder.

By the time the doctor came, it was too late. Violet was gone, her cursed baby entombed forever within her. Hyperemesis Gravidarum, the doctor told us solemnly. Nothing we could have done. She was buried alongside my parents, in the family graveyard. I wore my favorite blue ribbons to the funeral.

I moved the children in with me, leaving you to grieve for the respectable length of time. I’d waited so long already, a few more months wouldn’t hurt. You were so grateful, your eyes full of sadness as you let me comfort you. I knew the guilt of my abandonment must have weighed heavily upon you, but there is no reason to feel bad. It was never your fault.

The kids called me “Auntie Sissy” and clamored constantly for snickerdoodles. I thought about making the ginger nuts instead, but held off on that. There is a time and a place for everything, though, and theirs will come.

Soon they will call me “Mother”. I tolerate them for you, my love, though I hope we will one day have our own little ones. Babies with their Daddy’s blue eyes and dimple, children brought into the world through love, not wickedness.

I must get ready now – it is my time to wear my grandmother’s wedding gown, my chance to shine. I will make you such a good wife, Isaac. Nobody could love you the way I have.