Margaret, who held out the longest, came to me one day before Christmas with tears in her eyes. She had blood on her dress and stockings, and the look of a girl who was sure death was near. With calm reassurances, I helped her change her soiled clothes, explained what was happening, what to expect in the future. I could tell she was relieved, not just that she would live, but that someone would tell her the truth of things. She hugged me for the first time before she left my room. I felt her arms tight around my waist.

“You don’t wear a corset, ever?” she asked me when she pulled away.

“I don’t care for them,” I told her.

“Why do I have to wear one, then?”

“Do you?”

“Mother says it’s a practice corset, and that I must. But it seems the only thing I’m practicing for is not being able to breathe.”

I smiled, seeing my young self in her. “Have you told her so?”

“She scares me. It would appall her if she knew my real thoughts.”

“I was afraid of my mother too. She was cold and distant—”

“And featherheaded?”

“I sometimes thought so. But I feel sorry for her now. I’m not sure it was her fault—her choice—to be that way.”

“But you tell us we must try to be true to our nature, fashion our own choices.”

“I wish that for all women, and yet feel compassion for those who don’t know themselves, and can’t find words for what they wish for, which seems to me a prerequisite for trying to get it.”

She licked her lips—for Margaret, a prelude to thought. “Well, I don’t like girl clothes at all. Mother dresses us like bonbons. I wish to wear boy clothes, in fact.”

“Hmm. I do see the difficulty of convincing your mother of that. But when you are grown, you should dress exactly as you wish, not as the rest of the world demands you do.”

“Then I will,” she said. “Dress as a man someday.”

“I have no doubt you will,” I said.

Margaret was devoted to me from that moment on, and I to her, to Caroline and Mary. The Kingsborough girls became my reason to live.