Bad-tempered as a molting fowl, she scolded Myrtis in the kitchen, noisily abused Posie and Buttercup until they wept and fled to their cabin. She criticized Pauline. She nagged at Floyd. Both her children were suddenly unsatisfactory to her. Why did they not marry and give her grandchildren?

Pauline had never favored men, as she herself had not when she was young. Nor had Pauline been favored by men, and there the parallel stopped, or its double lines collided. Men had always been after her, Lovey recalled with angry satisfaction. Pauline, they seemed not to see, or else to see through. Very well then. Pauline was fixed, set. If she wanted her life to be Selma’s, that was at least something, because Selma needed her.

But what of Floyd? Why did he not marry? He was alone. He had her, and he had Ezra, and that was good enough for both of them, and more than enough for Ezra, but it should not have been for Floyd. Floyd ought to have a wife. She knew he was not a man who does not need a woman.

There is always something you do not have, she reflected. If you have freedom, you no longer have the need of it.

10

When he was born, Roman’s face was like that of a sad old man. It was only as he grew older that he began to look like a child. In April of 1835, when he was fourteen, he had taken over entirely as teacher of the younger children, and he and Sarah were more like colleagues than boy and woman as they worked together in the one-room cabin that served as their school. If he had a problem in the work, it was that he was too gentle to impose discipline, and his younger pupils, who were naturally restless anyway, were quick to take advantage of him when Sarah was not present.