Free What Is Visible: A Novel by Kimberly Elkins

me as a burden, like a blind dog to be watched after to make sure it didn’t upset the churn or fall down the well. I think Addison still looks at me that way sometimes, though I know how much he loves me because he hugs and kisses on me so much. But no one—save Doctor—loves me the way that Asa does. Asa enjoys my company. I know he would marry me if he could, but he is too old.
    He’s waiting in the yard, and Mama says he’s been there for hours, whittling me a stick pony. He grabs me up in his arms, and I pull off his old wool cap. As I pat his head, I realize that he has lost some of the hair he had three years ago. Asa’s hair is like the last bits of roasted meat off the bone, spare, greasy strings, though the back is long and his beard as full as ever, hanging down to his heart. Mama’s hair plays nicer on my fingers, and Mary’s too, but I’ve never gotten to touch Papa’s. I do forget a few things, like how to hold the mustard seed when I pound it, but I don’t forget the features of any person. I wonder if Papa’s head is mostly skin like Asa’s. Mama and Mary don’t have the skin mixed in with their hair, and I don’t either. Both are nice, though. It is always the most fun to have many different things to touch on a friend.
    Asa tickles me with the rough, tangled ends of his beard, but when he rubs it under my chin, I push his hand away. Now I realize he is dirty; I roll the grease and the grime between my fingers. Before, I never noticed, maybe because everyone at Perkins keeps so clean, as do I now. Hugging Asa has no doubt soiled my jumper, but that I will bear for my oldest friend. It is probably good that I cannot smell him, though. I can now understand why my family wasn’t that keen to have the old man around; they let him come because he could take me off their hands, out to fetch the eggs or to skip stones in the creek down by the mill. He was my minder, this filthy, old man. No one seems to have any idea exactly how old he is. Papa said he’s lived down the road in Hanover since he was a boy. And he’s never had any family, as far as anyone knows.
    He lifts me onto his stooped shoulders and falters beneath my weight. I was such a tiny thing last time he held me, and though I am still thin, I am full tall for a fifteen-year-old gal. I know to duck my head low as we enter the house, and I feel the shiver through him as Asa whoops his greetings to my family. Doubtless they do not whoop back. I insisted we have rabbit stew, Asa’s favorite, and though little Mary refuses to eat it, dear Addison caught the hares and skinned and cleaned them. I admit I skipped that bloody task, but helped Mama roll the biscuits. I am a very good roller, though Mama says I always end up covered in flour.
    Asa sits beside me at the table with Addison on the other side—my two favorite men after Doctor! I feel very lucky, like a princess, so I even try to eat the stew. I feel my work in it: the potatoes and carrots peeled clean, and I’m proud. At supper Addison talks of training to be a Baptist minister or a doctor. I think I would like to be married to a minister, especially one with such thick and wavy hair, a cowlick that curls over his brow.
    “But I am Unitarian,” I remind my brother. Our whole family is pure Baptist but me, and this is something they apparently all worry about, even Papa. He is not concerned with anything about me, it seems, except my religion.
    “Change to Baptist,” Addison writes slowly, and I feel the biscuit crumbs in each letter. So he does not take my religion seriously. Is it because I am young or because I am so deficient?
    “Doctor made me,” I write, and it’s true. He did not only make me a Unitarian; he made me in every way that matters. I left this family unformed, an illiterate creature less useful than a dog, and he has transformed me into one fluent with the language and with the world.
    “Can’t turn back,” I say to Addison, and I hope he understands. He