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Boston Jane: An Adventure
by Jennifer L. Holm
from the series
Boston Jane
Papa always said you make your own luck.
But after being seasick for five months, two weeks, and six days, I felt certain that luck had nothing to do with anything aboard the Lady Luck, a poorly named vessel if ever there was one. I had just spent the morning of my sixteenth birthday puking into a bucket, and I had little hope that the day would improve. I had no doubt that I was the unluckiest young lady in the world.
It wasn't always this way.
Once I was the luckiest girl in the world.
When I was eleven years old, in 1849, the sea seemed to me a place of great wonder. I would lie on my four-poster bed in my room overlooking the street and pretend I was on one of the sleek ships that sailed along the waterfront, returning from exotic, faraway places like China and the Sandwich Islands and Liverpool. When the light shone through the window a certain watery way, it was easy to imagine that I was bobbing gently on the waves of the ocean, the air around me warm and sweet and tinged with salt.
We lived on Walnut Street, in a brick house with green shutters, just steps from the State House. Heavy silk drapes hung in the windows, and there was new gas lighting in every room. When the lights were on, it glowed like fairyland. I believed it to be the loveliest house in all of Philadelphia, if only because we lived there.
And my father was the most wonderful father in Philadelphia-or perhaps the whole world.
Each morning Papa would holler, 'Where is my favorite daughter?'
I would leap out of bed and rush to the top of the stairs, my feet bare, my hair a frightful mess.
'She is right here!' I would shout. 'And she is your only daughter!'
'You're not my Janey,' he would roar, his white beard shaking, his belly rolling with laughter. 'My Janey's not a slugabed! My Janey's hair is never tangled!'
My mother had died giving birth to me, so it had only ever been Papa and me. Papa always said that one wild, redheaded daughter was enough for any sane man. As for my sweet papa, how can I describe the wisest of men? Imagine all that is good and dear and generous, and that was my papa.
Papa was a surgeon, the finest in all of Philadelphia. He took me on rounds with him to visit his patients. I was always proud to hold the needle and thread while he stitched up a man who had been beaten in a bar brawl. Or I would sit on a man's belly while Papa set a broken leg. Papa said a man behaved better and didn't scream so much when a little girl was sitting on his belly.
I was the luckiest girl.
How could I not be with Mrs. Parker's cherry pie?
Mrs. Parker was our housekeeper, and she made the best cherry pie in the entire world. I ate it at every opportunity. Papa always said that I was going to turn into a cherry pie myself one day if I wasn't careful.
This was Mrs. Parker's cherry pie: all tangy cherries rolled up in a golden, buttery crust. It was as sweet as clean sheets on washing day, as warm as the chair by the kitchen stove on a cold afternoon. Just imagine it sitting on the plate waiting for you, all piping hot from the oven.
'There is nothing better in the world than a slice of Mrs. Parker's cherry pie after a long day of stitching up bleeding heads,' Papa always said, and I couldn't agree more.
After Mrs. Parker's cherry pie, the best part of the evening was talking to Papa. He had the most interesting way of looking at things.
'Papa,' I said one evening, finishing up the last crumbs of my pie. 'Mrs. Parker is complaining that she can't find any decent help because all the young girls want to take factory jobs.'
Papa leaned back in his chair and lit his pipe and puffed.
'Well, Janey, dignity is very important. Maybe some of these girls don't think it's very dignified washing someone else's laundry and emptying other people's chamber pots. What do you think? Would you rather work in a factory or empty chamber pots?' he asked.
It made me think, an activity Papa encouraged. 'Speak up, Janey; say what's on your mind,' Papa always said.
'I don't imagine it would be very nice to empty chamber pots,' I admitted. But I didn't think the factory would be very nice either. The women who worked in factories had swollen ankles from standing on their feet all day.
Papa brought home books from the Library Company, where he was a member, and we read them together after supper. My favorite story was 'Rip Van Winkle' by Mr. Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle drinks too much liquor, falls asleep under a tree, and wakes up twenty years later. Rip Van Winkle greatly resembled the men of Philadelphia who spent their evenings drinking at taverns until they were senseless. It seemed a very silly activity.
'Papa,' I asked. 'Why are men always drinking too much liquor and getting into trouble?'
'It is a great mystery, Janey. But'-and here Papa grinned-'it keeps your poor pa in business.'
And he was right, because sure enough, every evening after the taverns had closed, I'd be woken by some drunken fool roaring that he was bleeding to death on our front porch and would the good doctor please come out and sew him up? Papa would let me get up and help him, and when we were finished he would make me a glass of warm milk and honey and tuck me into bed.
(Copyright by Jennifer L. Holm)
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