My Search for Air (eBook)

CHAPTER 1

I was born Lilith Mary Brown in Plainsville, Pennsylvania on Friday, February 13th, 1878, at 4:13 a.m. to Philip and Mary Brown. Three other girls followed within the next three years and were obedient (unlike yours truly) and popped into the world without resentment. Our names seemed to destine who we would become: Mine, Lilith (the girl who won’t conform), Penelope (the weaver who became an accomplished seamstress), Rose (the flower whose beauty was known throughout the county), and Adelaide (the noble one). Adelaide went onto marry an attorney—considered nobility by my family. And, let me not leave out Aunt Odessa, my father’s younger sister. I thought of her as my other mother, but the one who loved me unconditionally—no rules imposed, no judgment handed down. If she had raised me, perhaps my rebellion could have been channeled into some noble aspiration. But my parents set the protocol for appropriate behavior, and they taught the rules early while the mind was still malleable. My sisters did not have a problem with this indoctrination. To me, it was coercion.

The first three rules

Rule 1: Know your Bible.

We were to recite a new Bible verse at the breakfast table each morning. This rule was easy as it was rote—no thinking involved.

Rule 2: Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

This rule meant one should be pure and wholesome, but I thought it meant following good hygiene rules, and I became obsessed with cleanliness. I washed my hands until they were raw, scoured my face and body with a course cloth at least twice a day, and washed my hair once a week with castile soap. (My mother rationed the castile soap, but sometimes I snuck in an extra washing if I felt exceedingly sinful.) After all my cleansing, I sat statue-like in hopes of not being contaminated with sin.

Aunt Odessa must have been watching me for a few days, and one morning she asked, “For the love of God, what are you doing?”

“I am staying clean and pure to ward off sin.”

She must have been thinking, “the girl is a complete ignoramus,” but kept this to herself and instead handed me a book and convinced me reading would not taint me. Of all the books she could have given me, this was a most interesting choice: The Fairy-Land of Science. It encouraged freedom and exploration: “If you go through the world looking upon everything only as so much to eat, to drink, to use, you will never see the fairies of science. You must ask yourself why things happen and how the great God above us has made and governs this world of ours.” Questioning was the very thing I was trying to avoid, but she must have known this was the push I needed to keep me from plunging into insanity.

Each day, I read the book sitting in my clean, statuesque position and gazed out the window waiting for the fairies of science to appear; when it dawned on me, I wasn’t going to find anything wondrous by looking out a window. Then, my eyes fixated on the muddy field behind our house. It beckoned, “Come forth; sin is calling you.” Before I could change my mind, I jumped up and ran faster than the gingerbread man to that field. Running was an unwise decision as I slipped in the mud at least twice. Oh how wonderful the ground smelled—earthy, pungent, and downright filthy. But my time was limited, and I knew I must make good use of the minutes I had. A voice inside me screamed, “Try something. Don’t be a dullard; use your imagination.” It didn’t take long.

First, I was a butterfly and had just been released from my cocoon, transformed from a creature trapped inside a dark cell to one floating on a breeze. I flitted around for a bit but soon became bored. Now I was Black Beauty and galloped around looking for a field with no corrals. When I tired of that, I climbed a tree and hung upside down from a branch to see if the world looked different in that position, my skirt up around my ears, showing my wears to anyone who happened to walk by.

Then, I noticed the most unusual site—a large mound of dirt. A heap of dirt sounds none too exciting, but you would be amazed at the potential contained in a pile of dirt. I jumped down to take a closer look and saw a little castle, and ants were marching back and forth with great precision. Here it was, my first opportunity for experimentation and the chance to find out why the great God above made ant castles! I poked a stick into the structure and stirred around a bit, and an entire army of ants marched out with their sights set on me. In a matter of seconds, the army claimed my body as their hostage, but they would not take me so quickly, so I plotted my counter strategy—I screamed at the top of my lungs. My mother, Aunt Odessa, and my sisters came running but halted when they saw me, I’m sure hoping this girl covered in mud and ants was a figment of their imagination. Aunt Odessa must have accepted the imagined thing was real. She grabbed me, rushed to the water pump, and flooded my body with the ice-cold water as if I were on fire. This strategy wiped out the army, but I was a casualty of war. How pathetic; consumed by ants. She carried me to my bed, stripped off my clothes, and covered me with chunks of ice.

My mother asked in a frosty voice, “Lilith, what in the name of heaven were you doing?”

I was going to be in so much trouble; I had better think up some excuse. “I was gathering wildflowers so I could arrange them in the parlor. I have been thinking of taking up water coloring for some time now, and painting wildflowers would be the perfect way to start. It is quite a ladylike pastime, and wouldn’t you know it, while searching for the most beautiful flowers, an army of ants attacked me.”

“I didn’t see one wildflower anywhere near you, and ants do not belong to armies and do not attack people,” my mother said.

“Mother, there is an exception to every rule, and I must be that exception.”

“You seem to be the exception to any rule,” she said and then left the room.

Upon her return, I saw she held a bowl of honey and onions, which sounded none too tasty, except she didn’t feed me this potion; she began rubbing it on my body. I was being prepared as a meal and would be served to a witch like the one in Hansel and Gretel.

“Mother, I will be a better girl and follow the rules, but I beg of you, do not feed me to a witch!”

“Whatever are you talking about? Don’t be a simpleton; this will alleviate the itching.”

It did relieve some of the discomfort; however, I developed hideous welts on my body. My sisters came in frequently to stare and taunt me. “Look at ugly Lilith, once again in trouble and paying for her sins.” I knew how to fix them.

“Shoo, or I’ll rub my welts on you, and you’ll grow ones more gruesome than mine.”

They ran screaming from the room to tattle to our mother. So much for my first experiment on how the great God above governs ant houses. I received two punishments for my misbehavior—a lecture from my mother and Bible verses to memorize.

“If you followed the rules, you would not be suffering from this painful indignity,” she said. “Perhaps it will be beneficial if you add fifteen minutes to your Bible reading each morning and be sure to enlighten your father and me with any verses you think may help you overcome your failings.”

I memorized a verse from the book of Proverbs, which I felt was appropriate, and knew it was for me: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.” I interpreted that I was a sluggard, had gone to the ant, but not given a chance to consider her ways and grow wise as those ants would have devoured me had it not been for Aunt Odessa. I did not want any other opportunities to consider the ways of ants and decided to give up contemplating God’s great mysteries for a while.

I correlated rules 1 and 2, and still to this day, when I commit a misdeed, I recite a Bible verse and wash my hands.

Rule 3: Speak civilly.

This rule meant that one should not talk incessantly, never comment on family matters, not speak of others’ unpleasant, embarrassing, or questionable family affairs, and only speak when spoken to by adults. None of these were easy for me. I was referred to as a chatterbox, had once blabbed to our neighbors that my mother was suffering from a nasty bout of diarrhea, and if I waited for adults to give me a chance to speak, I might as well have been mute.

The time for sharing the events of the day was each evening at the dinner table. My father would talk about his day, and when he finished, my mother and Aunt Odessa were permitted to speak. We were always last. One evening, I could barely sit still and eat my meal; I couldn’t wait to tell them about my day. I waited and waited and thought they would never finish.

After what seemed forever and twenty days, my father said, “Girls, how did you spend your day?”

Before any of my sisters could speak, I barreled ahead. “I spent the day with my friend, Loretta Bishop. Her father has a farm.”

My father smiled and asked me what I thought of the farm.

“I had fun!” Mistake one. This word was considered shallow with no redeeming quality.

My mother said, “You mean you enjoyed yourself.”

“Yes, that too! We looked at crops, and Mr. Bishop explained how he grew food. He showed me their farm animals. The horses were the most interesting.”

They asked why.

“It appears they can do things with their bodies that other animals can’t. Those horses were tangled together most awkwardly. It looked...