MERCY: You forgot to phrase it as a question. We lived in Exeter, a small town about twenty-five miles south of Providence. We farmed corn in the impossible, rocky soil, raised assorted dairy animals. Life was hard. When humanity foolishly transitioned from hunting/gathering to an agrarian-based society, that’s when we became a miserable, or more miserable species, doomed to suffer from hunger and want.

ART: Sure. Who in your family was the first to die and when?

MERCY: My mother died in December of 1883.

ART: How did she die?

MERCY: Consumption. The wasting illness.

ART: Which is what we now know as tuberculosis, a bacterial infection of the lungs. It has killed millions of people worldwide and was especially deadly during the 1700s and 1800s when it was by far the leading cause of death in the northeast. Even now there are antibiotic-restraint strains.

MERCY: Consumption is more descriptive than tuberculosis. The sufferer is wracked by painful coughs, usually at night when they try to sleep, and their faces drain of color except for their cheeks that go a blood red. They lose their appetite and weight, become gaunt, emaciated, eyes sink into their skulls, like they’re being consumed from within. We all lived in fear of the disease because it ran through families and whole towns like wildfire. No one knew where it came from or how you got it, never mind how to cure it. Some people lingered for years with it, like my brother, and it would hide, like a hibernating bear, only to come roaring back. Or in my case, it could be a secret that you carried because you didn’t have any symptoms, but you still had it inside and you spread it without knowing. Such an evil thing.

ART: Your poor family suffered another tragedy shortly after your mother passed away, correct?

MERCY: My older sister, Mary Olive, died from consumption seven months after we lost my mother. Mary was twenty. Older than me by nine years, she was like a second mom to me because my mom was usually too busy on the farm. Everyone loved Mary and even though neighbors were afraid to be near my family and catch our illness, they came out to see Mary off. She knew she was dying and had picked the hymn everyone sang at her own funeral. Her voice was missing and would’ve been the most beautiful. When I was little, she sang to me until I fell asleep. She was the only one in the family I didn’t mind calling me Lena—but never Mercy Lena. I miss her terribly.

ART: Can you describe the years after Mary died, but before you and your brother fell ill?