At the Mercy of the Sun

Whatever gossip our classmates heard, the truth was worse. Our teachers were alerted to watch the “moods” of the Hooper girls, and the other students were instructed not to make play of death or madness in our presence. An occasional slight from one outside the circle and the cruelty lurking beneath the surface of childhood reminded me of where I stood in time – past, present, and future.

You’re going to end up like your mother, Clover Hooper.

I wanted to be happy, like my name, growing green and effortless in the sun. But every time I tried, even for a moment, someone was there to remind me that such happiness was not mine to claim.

My older sister Nella took upon herself the impossible burden of protecting my happiness; impossible, because she and I were bound together by what happened in Mother’s room that winter.


Mother was sick for three days with fever and convulsions, vomiting and severe pain. The family tended to her, not knowing the cause, but worried for both her and the babe. A child of only five, I was sent to fetch fresh water and warm cloths from the kitchen every few hours. On the morning of the fourth day, I returned from my errand and entered the bedroom as the infant was finally expelled, without effort on Mother’s part as she was nearly unconscious by then. Doctor Phelps was called in hopes that the child, though too early, might still be saved. Father stood across from the bed, stunned. Aunt Cary leaned in at her younger sister’s head, smoothing Mother’s brown hair back, and shouting orders and questions at the doctor or at anyone who might listen. Doctor Phelps was all action, opening his bag and pulling out bandages and salves, his face betraying any knowledge of what was actually to be done in this situation.

What was the situation? I have since tried so desperately to discern what I could have known or been told as a child compared to what I know now. I knew that Mother had a baby inside of her, but I had never witnessed a birth. I wondered if the baby might still emerge and cry and be fine. Perhaps this is just what women have to go through. No one had ever spoken to me about the possibility of Mother dying. I had a horse that died once, but we just found him, sleeping peacefully on his side in the stable one morning. Father said the horse had reached old age and was tired out. But Mother wasn’t old and tired. Just the week before she was walking with us outside, collecting gold and red fallen leaves to decorate our table, remarking on the coming chill and on my brother Ned’s return from school.

Mother convulsed again but made no sound. Aunt Cary scolded me and Nella to leave the room at once. Nella ran to our bedroom and hid herself under the quilts, a place where she remained for the next week. I ignored my aunt, who was too busy to notice if I followed through on her command, and moved my body silently against the cold wall until I made myself invisible behind the plank door. The doctor pushed Mother down on the bed and tried to roll her nightdress up over her resisting body. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and then all was quiet, the room collapsed. I was soon forgotten in the chaos and grief and thus witnessed from the crack in the door the moment my mother expired in a pool of blood, without a cry, the limp babe still attached by a knotted rope the color of ash in the forgotten corner fireplace, intended to warm her through the previous night. I strained to see the baby – I wanted to see if I had a brother or a sister – but the doctor wrapped it up and placed the silent bundle away in his bag. Aunt Cary screamed in anger – she screamed at Father for doing this to her and at the doctor for not doing enough. Father slid to the floor and covered his face with both hands.

Doctor Phelps revealed to the immediate family that the loss of both mother and child was not an accident of illness. Mother had inserted into the birth canal a small wad of arsenic-soaked wool, which was expelled immediately before the delivery of the child. Father and Aunt Cary did not accept the doctor’s words as explanation for this double tragedy and sent him away, though he was a trusted friend and presented the bloodied wool as evidence.

They could not deny, however, that my mother had access to arsenic, as Father was a regular physician and had numerous bottles of remedy solution on hand as a general cure for imprecise complaints. Although some gossiping neighbors blamed my father for making the poison so easily available, a physician’s approval was not required and many fashionable ladies easily acquired it for cosmetic purposes. My mother’s intentions were clear, however, and the manner in which she had administered it to herself brought great shame upon the family, who spoke of neither the incident nor the fact of the child.

Forever hushed that voice whose welcoming
Was the last note the unsphered soul did sing –

My mother could have been a great poet, but she was undone as a mother of three (nearly four) who lived just long enough to share her gifts, but not enjoy their flourishing in the world.

I grew up feeling that, like my mother, and her mother before her - for our Grandmother Sturgis deserted her family and later ended her own life under the mental strain of losing her only son in a swimming accident – my life would be cut short. I took some odd comfort in acceptance of this fact of nature’s cruelty and understood from an early age that such entanglements as love and marriage lead only to pain, especially for women. Young girls who dreamed of filling their lives with weddings and houses and cradles did not want to hear such pronouncements, however, and so my sister Nella was my only childhood friend.

No image of my mother exists to remind us of her likeness. Three children and a dozen poems: This was all the proof that she had existed. Though I strained to develop the vision of myself as a mother, the image remained unclear.

Those poor motherless Hooper girls, how can they be raised up without a mother?

I was raised up with a mother, though – just not a living one.