“Grady says a boy isn’t ready for a proper education till he’s seven,” she’d told me that first day, “but it’s never too early to learn to press.”

“You’ve got to press the memory out of ’em,” she told the children, who stood back in a circle, frightened of the heat, as she laid out each shirt and pulled the wrinkles out of the cloth. I heard the thud of the iron, the creak of the cotton, and I closed my eyes. When classes started, I told myself, I would be pressed clean at Cunningham—the wrinkles of my mother’s passivity and stunted ideas smoothed out of me.

As Mrs. Grady worked, the room filled with the smell of other people’s sweat, and she said, “Lord, it’d wake the dead.”

She said this constantly about her work and did not wait to hear a laugh in response, but I provided one, because I wasn’t sure what else to do. She teased Grady all the time, and he seemed to enjoy it. But for me … should I laugh at each one? Should I stay serious and ignore her? Should I add my own? She had a freedom I had never seen before. The freedom to laugh. Mama would have dismissed her for that. I felt myself doing the same, but then stopped.

The point of an education was to learn to do better, wasn’t it?

Dear Libertie,

I trust you are finding the Gradys’ home comfortable. I do not know what you mean when you say I do not approve of poetry. I am eager to hear of where you live now.

You did not ask about the hospital. It is doing very well. We are busier than ever, and Lenore has asked me to hire a girl to help her, now that you are gone. We have so many patients I fear we may have to turn some away. I have written to Madame Elizabeth for advice. Reverend Harland has suggested that we stop serving unmarried women, and that we cannot do, as you know.

Miss Annie put on a wonderful concert last Sunday, all the children singing truly beautifully. I went downtown to hear the most interesting lecture on botany—I have included a clip, describing what was said, from the Eagle. I have also been twice to the theater the past few weeks—a very good Macbeth and then something very silly that a patient told me all the girls go to see. I enjoyed both—even the sillier show, I think. I suspect you would have, as well.

Please write as soon as classes begin.

Your

Mother