What Is Visible: A Novel by Kimberly Elkins Page A

time, while she is in classes, then she can be eased into the main wing. Nothing sudden or frightening, and the Exhibition and Visiting Days should continue as usual. But the last thing Julia needs is a scene the moment we arrive.
    August 1845, Julia to Laura
    Thank you for your kind words and many letters expressing interest in my welfare and that of my family. Please forgive me for not replying sooner; the travel, not to mention the multitudinous tasks of being Dr. Howe’s wife and mother to his child, are sometimes quite exhausting.
    You sound very well and very eager, as always, to join with us in our joy. I look forward to you meeting little Julia Romana, but we must be careful with her in ways that might prove difficult for you, Laura. A baby is far more delicate to play with than a dog, and I remember the howls of poor Pozzo as you stepped on his tail more times than I can count.
    I was sorry to hear about dear Miss Swift. She was as good as she was large, as is often true of broader persons generally. I think perhaps it is we leaner ones of us who are more viperish.
    The Institution is spacious and beautiful, and I am sure we will all be happy there over time. We will all be fixed very soon, to the best of the abilities God has bestowed upon each of us.

Chapter 8
Laura, 1845
    I have spent all afternoon entertaining Governor Briggs, and I am fairly tuckered. Over five hundred today in the hall, so many that my feet shook constantly from the activity. I wish that the Institution would limit my visitors to a reasonable number, perhaps a hundred at a time. Much is expected of me, and much I deliver—today I topped off the show by devising a poem on the spot and writing it out on the board. At least on days such as these, I do take in a fair bit of money from the sale of my lacework and purses, working away like one of Mr. Dickens’s heroines, though in much nicer surroundings. I thought I should keel over by the time all was done, and then there was the governor at me again, begging that I write out the verses I’d composed to take to frame and hang in his mansion.
    Miss Wight, my new teacher and companion, has stuck fast by me the whole day, even filling my palm with descriptions of the visitors, more than I could glean from their fingers. She is quite good at such portraiture, describing the governor’s head as an ostrich egg and his wife’s as a quail’s. But she also reminded me, more than once, that I am meant to be an Inspiration to Others, that that is God’s plan for me, to show how much can be achieved in the face of greatest adversity. I know that Doctor has told her to say that. It is very tiring to be an Inspiration, and I’m glad now we just sit together in the back parlor alone. I am so thankful that Doctor picked her for me; it is more than proof that he was thinking about me and my studies all the time he was away. Miss Swift rode hard on me, and so I reared and kicked; the problem was to be found in both our natures, though the world seems always to fault the student. But for sweet Miss Sarah Wight I will be the nicest filly ever for her to lead where she pleases. She is only twenty-two, just seven years older than me, so we will be great friends.
    Wight doesn’t wear a lace collar. It’s good to be plain, I’m often told, but I do like nice things on ladies to touch. I will tat her some lace and she will wear it for me. Oh, what plans I have for my new teacher! She will be my very own Wightie, three fingers spread for the W . She has let me touch her face before―she’s been here at Perkins going on a year riding the little blind girls, working her way up to me―and her skin is smoothly pleasing except for a few tiny bumps on her chin which must be changeable with the weather because they’re not always there. She doesn’t have Swift’s plump cheeks, though. I will miss those cheeks, for certain. Wight’s face is long, a little longer than mine, over one and a half hands’ lengths,