I was given a room of my own. It was but a closet, separated from the kitchen by a thin wall and a door, but it was big enough to hold a narrow berth, a pair of drawers, and a table a foot deep and two feet wide. And it was mine. I had my own bed, my own space. Being a female in a house full of sons had its benefits, even if one occupied the position of servant.
In the early days, the Thomas brothers kept their distance, eyeing me like I was a thief or a leper. It was Jeremiah, the littlest one, who warmed to me first. Perhaps it was that we were both loose ends, but he latched on to me quickly and made me his cohort. We were even born on the same day. I turned eleven the day he turned seven, and Jeremiah took that as a sign.
“Will you be my twin, Deborah?” Jeremiah asked, looking up at me with mournful eyes. “I have no one.”
I laughed. “You have nine brothers, Jeremiah.”
“But I’m the runt. I have no one who belongs to me. And you don’t even have a ma or a pa or sisters and brothers.”
“I do . . . somewhere.”
“Well, what good is that?”
“Not much good, Jerry. Not much,” I agreed, and my heart was oddly lighter for speaking the truth of it.
“So you can be my twin.”
“And what do twins do?”
“A twin is the person you love most. Do you think you could love me most?”
“That will be easy.”
“It will?” His toothy smile made my heart swell.
“It will.”
“I love Ma an awful lot, but loving Ma is kinda like loving God. She’s not really a person.”
“Jeremiah!” I gasped. “She is too.”
“I just mean . . . that she belongs to all of us. I want someone who just belongs to me,” he repeated.
“All right. But I will try to love your brothers too, because that is what Reverend Conant says I must do.”
“Even Nathaniel?” He looked doubtful. “And Phineas? He’s mean. He told you no man would ever have you.”
“No man will ever have me because I won’t have him. And I won’t need him.”
“I’ll have you, Deborah.”
“You won’t, Jeremiah. You’re seven years old. And we’re twins now, remember?”
“We don’t look like twins . . . but that’s okay, isn’t it?” Jerry was small and dark, and I was tall and blonde, as different as night and day.
“Looks don’t matter at all if your hearts are the same,” I declared, hoping it was true.
He’d grinned at me like I’d given him the world. I suppose I had. At least the little bit of the world that was mine. I doted on him like a mother and treated him like a prince, and he got me into all manner of trouble I would not have dared get into alone. Jeremiah was the first to call me Rob—short for Deborah—and the reason I answered to it without hesitation later on.
The Thomases did not treat me poorly. I was not family, but I was valued. The work was never-ending with so many mouths to feed and bodies to clothe. Reverend Conant was right. I was greatly needed, and I could not be spared for school, but no matter how many chores I was given or tasks I completed, I could not shake the restlessness that consumed me. I squeezed the Thomas boys for every drop of learning they would share, often doing their chores and mine for a peek at their primers.
And Reverend Conant did not forget me.
Over the following year, he brought me several books. My favorites were a collection by Shakespeare and a four-part work called Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. Reverend Conant called it Gulliver’s Travels. I read it after supper to the brothers and was lauded as a great orator.
Reverend Conant was quite the orator himself, and I sat on the pews of the First Congregational Church with the Thomases and listened to him preach. He believed every word he said. In a way, he radicalized me too, if faith can be called radical. I’ve come to think it might be the most rebellious thing of all.
I don’t know why Reverend Conant cared about my learning or my happiness, but he did, and it was because of him—a man who loved God and loved me, two ends of the mighty spectrum—that I began to see what a father’s love looked like. To him I was simply Deborah, worthy of expectation and affection, and the things that mattered to him came to matter deeply to me.
“You must continue with your memorization. I have known no greater comfort in my life than to be able to call upon God’s words when I am at a loss for my own,” he would frequently say, and I memorized everything, just to show him I could. Just to hear his praise. He also found me a tutor of sorts, an “epistolatory correspondent” in Farmington, Connecticut.