The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin Read Free Book Online

you mean?” Mama had stopped rocking; she was staring at me, her gentle brown eyes full of tears and pain. “What do you mean you never have been? Why, Vinnie, my little chick—aren’t you happy with us? Don’t we take good care of you?”
    “Oh, Mama, I didn’t mean that, but—we can’t continue this way forever! Someday you’ll—someday you and Papa won’t be able to look out for me. And what will happen then? What will happen to Minnie and me, stuck here on the farm?”
    “You’ll always have a home with one of us, Vinnie,” my brother James, who had been quiet until now, said. “We’ll always take care of you, you know that. We don’t mind.”
    “But that’s just it!” I leaped off my chair, carried away by my passion. Colonel Wood discreetly rose and left the room; the front door creaked open, and he took a seat on the porch. He had the decency to understand this was a family matter. “That’s just it, don’t you see? I don’t want to be taken care of! I don’t want to be hidden away, a burden! I want to make my own way! To have a greater purpose!”
    “But you do, you have your school,” Benjamin pointed out. Of all of them, even Papa, he was the most distressed, and I was reminded of that day when I was seven, and the teacher had threatened to shut me up in his overshoe. How ashamed Benjamin had been of me then; I knew, now, that he had never really gotten over it.
    “That’s not what I mean,” I said; I ran to him, clasped his big, rough hands in mine, and tried to get him to meet my gaze, buthe would not. “Even with the school, I’ll always be one of the little Bump girls, the spinster teacher who lives at home, who can expect nothing more than to be invited to the occasional Sunday dinner by those who pity her. If I stay here, don’t you see—there’s no escaping that fate. But if I leave—why, just think! I’ll see things we can only imagine here! I’ll experience not just books but life! I’ll be
remembered.
”
    “Why, whatever do you mean, Vinnie?” Mama exclaimed, her face so open and honest and agonized; I hated the pain I was causing her—but hadn’t I always caused her distress, just by
being
? She had always worried and agonized over me. “What do you mean you’ll be remembered? How could we ever forget you?”
    I shook my head. “I mean something
more
, Mama. I can’t explain it, but I’ve felt, for a while now, that if I stay here, I’ll just be forgotten somehow. Or worse—never even known in the first place. If I go with Colonel Wood, I’ll meet so many people. Why, maybe I’ll even meet Miss Jenny Lind! And General Tom Thumb! Wouldn’t that be nice, meeting someone like me? Someone else, that is.” For I could not forget Minnie, even in my excitement.
    And during the lengthy emotional discussion that ensued, my father and my brothers trying desperately to change my mind, which grew more determined with every plea, while my mother wept piteously, I did not forget my sister. Minnie’s face was before me always, even as I argued passionately to be allowed to go with Colonel Wood, who remained outside, calmly puffing away on his pipe.
    Finally, Papa held his hand up, silencing us all; with a resigned shake of his head, he said, “I’ve never known what to do with you, Vinnie. I’ve never understood why God made you the way He did. I can’t pretend to know what to do with you now. I’m just a simple man, but you’re anything but. So if you’re truly set on doing this, I don’t see as how I can stop you. For all I know, itmight be the very best thing for you. Just don’t bring shame to us, daughter. You have the best head on your shoulders of us all—use it.”
    Benjamin stormed out of the room. Mama burst into a renewed torrent of tears as she ran after him. But all I wanted to do was hurry upstairs and find Minnie.
    She was in the room that we shared; sitting on the low bed, made for us by Papa, she cradled her favorite doll in her lap,