Page 54 of The Wondrous Life and Loves of Nella Carter
I laugh despite my melancholy. “But other parts, they don’t hurt at all. And then there are the good things I’ve forgotten. I don’t think I could have done this without you.”
I take another sip, grateful for this rare moment. However alone I was the night I left René, I’m not alone now.
“One last time: Do you want to stop?”
“Why stop? The story will be over soon enough.” My guilt twinges.And so will everything else ... Death will be angry at me for breaking his rules ... and for showing my whole self to someone again.
He sweeps a springy curl from my forehead and stares into my eyes. “The things you’ve seen are remarkable. I still can’t believe it. Therational part of my brain wants to reject it, but another part of me, the details you know ... only someone who’s lived it could know so much.”
“I’ve seen more than I should.” I rest my head on his shoulder.
“Where did you go after Paris?”
I sit up, and my mind toggles through that decade, the memories coming in flashes. “I wandered for a while, first to Africa, Freetown in Sierra Leone, working in orphanages and hospitals with the Krio people, then to Algeria as the personal secretary of a merchant family, and afterward, I found my way to what is now known as Turkey as a correspondent for a British newspaper.”
I lean over to pluck a silky red shawl from the trunk—a dupatta, luxuriously embroidered in gold with birds, leaves, and flowers.
Another gift, from another love.
It’s lain here, heavy with meaning, only a memento, for decades. Even though these memories cut me to the bone, the pain rising raw and fresh, a bit of joy peeks through too, as I remember the day I received it.
Sebastian adjusts his glasses. “I think I already know the answer to this question, but ... Why didn’t you return to America?”
“Newspapers reported on the plight of us. It was terrifying, what befell Black communities at the time. I sent money, but I couldn’t send myself. I simply wasn’t ready. The ghosts still felt too real.” I say these things, and my heart twists with a familiar guilt. Could I have done more here at home? Should I have returned and tried to help?
But I know the truth. My heart was shattered. If I’d tried at that point to wrestle with the past, I wouldn’t have survived.
“I wanted to find a place where I could lose myself in nothing but words, so in time, I found my way to London at the turn of the century, years before the First World War began.”
Part IV: London
The Dupatta—1901
Seventeen
Iwandered until I could no longer feel the pain of René shadowing me from place to place. I’d settled in London, writing under a male pseudonym for theRivington Chroniclewhile attending lectures at University College London, trying to use the long years of immortality to expand my understanding of the world. I bustled in the door, the cold gusting as I made my way to the back of the hall, thankful to be out of the weather. Even after a year in London, I still hadn’t grown used to the constant dampness crawling into my bones, so different from the warmth of Freetown, Algiers, and Constantinople.
I supposed that was what I’d asked for. London felt like a world away from my other life, with few reminders of René and the years I’d spent in France. I avoided art museums and galleries for a time, but the pull of beautiful things always won. Even the blustery and gray city had its own grim beauty. It was as good a place as any, and the bleak weather matched my mood.
I slid into a corner seat in the hall and opened my journal, ready to take notes. London felt like the center of the world, with access to information through lectures and classes and plentiful papers and cultural institutions. Instead of traveling the world over, I could hear from many experts on things I couldn’t conceive of knowing otherwise. I navigated barriers—some talks closed to women and some due to my race—but most of the time, it was nothing a few well-placed guineas couldn’t fix. My banker in Paris knew me only by an account number,so my change in identity—I’d adopted “Arden Bell” as my alias on newly forged documents when I arrived—was no issue.
Still, London’s rigid social order quickly reminded me of where I fell. While my skin didn’t draw the same reaction it had in my time in Savannah and New Orleans and Paris, it still marked me as different, leaving me to navigate yet another societal in-between where the rules were blurry and constantly rewritten.
I watched the students file into the room, the attending women piling into our designated section. A woman named Barbara Hale came up almost immediately, beaming, her pale hair swept back in a bouffant. “Arden! So glad you could make it.”
“You extended the opportunity so graciously,” I said, happy to see a familiar face. “How could I not?”
“I’m simply tickled that you could come. We have several speakers and then refreshments. I do hope you find learning about our cause interesting.” She smiled at me like she always did, her eyes finding my curls as if I were a peacock that had flown in from some faraway place.
“I surely hope so,” I said. I thought I could write something interesting about the organization for theEnglishwoman’s Reviewor another publication. Death wasn’t the only being who needed reminding of what good humans were capable of.
Barbara beamed and fluttered away to greet more guests as they poured in. We’d met at a literature course I’d audited. I could attend as long as I didn’t matriculate, and provided I wasn’t “a distraction” as a tiny fly in the milk.
I’d met Barbara in the female commons room as she campaigned to get as many women as possible to register to vote in Britain, raising money and awareness for her cause. She’d been a good contact, also involved at Girton College in Cambridge, the first university-level institution for women in the UK.
“The more we make our presence known, the better,” a woman shouted. “Deeds, not words, ladies.”
Thunderous applause filled the room as they parroted the slogan of the suffragette movement.
