Chapter 3: Lessons in Survival

2.

In the first few years, I sometimes imagined myself as the heroine of those historical romance stories before falling asleep.

I’d trace the faded wallpaper in my bedroom with my eyes and pretend it was velvet. I’d imagine balls at grand hotels in Cleveland, or being swept off my feet by a mysterious stranger at a county fair. But soon, the old American South showed its ugly side without mercy.

When I was seven, my mom sent me to a girls’ school.

It was a white clapboard building just past the church, the kind where the bell rang at eight sharp and the windows rattled when the train passed. Judge Livingston’s ten-year-old daughter went with me.

I loved the handkerchiefs she embroidered most. I begged her for one with violets, then another with dogwood blossoms.

She treated me like a clingy little sister and always agreed with a smile.

Blushing, she’d tell me not to be silly, to learn embroidery well, since I’d need to make my own cedar chest one day.

I’d reach out and poke her soft, pink cheeks, teasing her for being shy.

She’d get so annoyed she’d throw a crumpled note at me.

Before leaving school, we promised to embroider the violet pattern together the next day.

But after that day, I never saw her again.

The classroom felt emptier without her, the air thinner. I missed her and wanted to ask if she’d finished those two handkerchiefs.

I went to ask the teacher, but she only looked grave and said nothing.

She pressed her lips together, eyes darting to the hallway, and sent me back to my seat without a word.

I wanted to find her, but after coming here, I realized all I could see was this square patch of sky.

Later, I overheard the maids and older women gossiping, and finally learned the truth.

I was hiding beneath the porch steps when I heard their voices—soft, urgent, as if the story might leap out and bite someone. She had twisted her ankle getting out of the carriage that day and accidentally fell into the arms of the stable boy. The boy instinctively reached out to steady her.

But someone saw.

Judge Livingston, fearing she had brought shame to the family, had someone cut off her hand that very night.

The words hit me like ice water. My hands went numb. I pressed my fists into my skirt, trying to stop them from shaking. In our world, shame was a noose—and mercy, a rumor. The horror of it rattled my bones for weeks.