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smackenzieJames Christopher Shaw Godwin is seven years old. He lives in a tall house in New York with his mother and father, his two sisters, and two of his seven brothers. They have a housekeeper, Mrs O'Donnell, and a cook, Mrs Malcolm, and a driver named Linwood Sewell, who James and his siblings have been told to call Mr Sewell rather than Linwood.
(James' brother Con calls him Linwood to be contrary, but Linwood himself does not seem to mind.)
James and his sister Aimee, who is nine, have a nanny called Luisa, who came over on a boat from Italy when she was three years old. She has four younger brothers and sisters, who James has heard about but never met, and sometimes she tells James and Aimee and James' other sister Julia stories from the Old Country, which she has heard from her parents and their friends. James' mother Natalie wants Luisa to teach the children to understand Italian, so that when they attend the opera they will know what they are listening to.
James' mother loves the opera, and believes all the best ones are written in Italian. She also loves the ballet and the symphony, and has been trying for years to get the Godwin children to appreciate the fine culture she enjoys. James is perhaps still too young, although Aimee and Julia have developed an appreciation for the ballet, and William, who is the next brother after James, likes the symphony. Con will not come out and say that he actually likes the opera, but he willingly goes to see the ones where a lot of people die. And he likes Wagner, but possibly only because his stepmother does not.
(James' mother is his father's second wife. The first Mrs Godwin mothered seven children before rumor says she went crazy, and she and James' father were divorced. Con, who was her last son, does not always get along with his stepmother. Although to be fair, he doesn't always get along with his father either.)
All of James' brothers but William are technically half-brothers, but he never sees Gabriel, who lives in Chicago, and he rarely sees Nathaniel, who is "convalescing" in a quiet spa upstate, or Marcus, who cannot agree with their father about anything and thus does not want much to do with him. But they are all just "brothers" to James. They come and go and write letters and send him presents for his birthday and Christmas, and once a month his parents try to get as many of them as possible over to the house for Sunday lunch.
Matthew, who Con always refers to sarcastically as "the good son", is engaged to a pretty girl named Alianor who is from Philadelphia but has been living in New York with her aunt while she and Matthew plan their wedding. Sometimes he brings her to lunch on Sundays. She is quiet and calm and has long curly brown hair, and she always brings sweets for James and Aimee and William, and James likes her.
But James' favorite person, of all his family and the staff in the house, is his sister Julia. Julia is fourteen and adventurous, and if she wants to go to Coney Island on a Saturday and ride the carousel and eat Nathan's hot dogs, James is the one she drags with her. She reads to him at night after Luisa has gone home, or she makes up stories for him when they are stuck at home and bored, or they pretend to be pirates on the Spanish Main and menace each other with their father's walking sticks or pokers from the fireplaces until one or the other submits and gives up their treasure and their ship.
She always has time for him and she talks to him like an equal, not like a baby, and she is not afraid of anything and he loves her more than he loves anyone.
James has dark hair, nearly black, and blue eyes, and he looks like his beautiful mother Natalie. Julia's hair is long and curly and light brown faintly shading towards red, and in the summer sun she freckles, and she looks like her mother, the first Mrs Godwin, crazy Ginevra Parker. There is physically nothing of his father in James, but anyone watching him and Julia together would know that they are siblings.
William is another matter, as are Lucas and Nathaniel, the twins. They are adopted, the three of them, from black girls who could not care for them and had no family. Lucas and Nathaniel's mother, whose name was Jessamyn, worked for Mr Godwin in one of his factories, and when she got sick with cancer and knew she was going to die, she went to Mr Godwin and made him promise to look after her boys, to make sure they went to school and grew up to be good and decent Christian men and productive members of society. Her husband had gone to Detroit where he had family to look for work, and she had not heard from him in eight months and she could not go to him, and she had no one else. Mr Godwin, who is not without faults, nevertheless felt pity for her, and when she died he assisted with her burial and adopted her babies. And the first Mrs Godwin, for all her crazy, loved the boys and raised them as if they were hers.
William's mother, whose name was Rachel, must have heard the story of how Bryant Godwin adopted the sons of one of his black factory girls when she passed away, because she went to him with her own tale of woe. But what that tale is, no one knows. The current Mrs Godwin does not think it is anyone's business, and Mr Godwin is not interested in discussing it, and none of the older Godwins, much less William, knows the story to repeat it.
(There are of course persistent rumors that the "adopted" Godwin boys are in fact Mr Godwin's illegitimate children, and not fathered by their mothers' husbands at all. But there is nothing of Mr Godwin in any of their faces, and William is stocky in a way that none of the other Godwin boys are, and Mr Godwin's adoption of them, and their birth certificates, are matters of public record. But the rumors persist.)
There is a large and decorative illustrated Bible on a polished wooden stand in the Godwin house, open to whichever page someone was interested in last. (Con usually turns it to the Song of Solomon or the illustration of Jonah being swallowed by the whale.) On the inside of the front cover is an inscription: "Presented to Ginevra Alexandra Parker and Marcus Bryant Godwin on the occasion of their marriage. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. In love and faith, Georgette Cora Gardner Parker 15 April 1888". Listed under the inscription are the names and birth dates of the Godwin children, all ten of them, interrupted towards the bottom by a mention of Mr Godwin's marriage to the second Mrs Godwin, Natalie Pierson, James' mother.
When James was old enough to ask why he had three brothers who did not look like him, and when he was old enough to tell Julia that a boy at a party had said that William couldn't be his brother because William was a negro, Julia showed him the inside cover of the wedding Bible and said "That boy was stupid. Of course William's your brother. See, we're all written in here with our birthdays. There's William, and Nathaniel and Lucas" - and she pointed to their names - "and that's you, and that's me. That means you're a Godwin, and William is too."
"But why don't they look like us?" James asked.
"Because Daddy adopted them. That means their momma gave them to him to raise as his own. He went through the court and everything so they could be Godwins."
"Why?"
"Because he wanted them. Because he promised their momma."
"Why did she give them up?" Being four, and the child of a mother who clearly loved him, James could not conceive of a situation in which a mother would want to give her children away.
So Julia told him the story of Jessamyn and Lucas and Nathaniel, and if she embellished a bit, James could not tell. She made up a story about Rachel and William, which James later repeated to Aimee, which she repeated to William, by which time it was changed enough that William didn't recognize himself in it.
It has never occurred to James since then to doubt that the three dark-skinned Godwin sons are really his brothers, no more than it would occur to him to doubt that Aimee was his sister. Aimee looks like their father, so there is no question whose child she is. Every once in a while a rumor will float into the house about William's parentage and Mr Godwin's reasons for taking him, but James is young enough to ignore them.
Sometimes Mrs Malcolm, the cook, will tell him about her own son, also named James, who lives in Pittsburgh and works in a steel mill. His handwriting is nearly illegible, she says, and when he writes to her she has to ask Mr Sewell, the driver, to decipher the letters for her.
("It's not that she can't read his handwriting," Con whispered to James once. "It's that she can't read." James just stared at him, uncomprehending. Was Con playing with him? Every adult knew how to read. Later, James was proven correct when Mrs Malcolm read him an article from the newspaper about Andrew Carnegie, who had once owned the steel mill where her son worked.)
Mrs O'Donnell, the housekeeper, also has sons, two of them. Sean is a year older than James, Liam a year younger, and every so often when James is bored, Mrs O'Donnell will suggest she bring them over one day so James can meet them and they can play together. James' mother is not convinced of this idea. Julia, however, thinks it is brilliant. She wants to meet Mrs O'Donnell's boys too.
"One Saturday," Mrs O'Donnell says, as she polishes Mr Godwin's desk in his office and James sits on the floor and watches. "I'll bring them over. You'll be a good influence on them."
James doesn't think he knows how to be a good influence, but he can't tell Mrs O'Donnell that. He doesn't see his older brothers enough to learn influence from them, so he only has Con and Julia and William to look up to. Aimee is too close to his own age. William is too impatient with him, Con is a troublemaker, and Julia is too stubborn and too determined to follow her own whims. So he can't be much of a calming factor for the O'Donnell boys. But they'll be at the house, and someone will no doubt be around to keep an eye on them, so what does it matter?
words: 1862
today's quickie research: popular baby names in 1880, biblical quotes, italian girls' names, coney island rides, and andrew carnegie.
(James' brother Con calls him Linwood to be contrary, but Linwood himself does not seem to mind.)
James and his sister Aimee, who is nine, have a nanny called Luisa, who came over on a boat from Italy when she was three years old. She has four younger brothers and sisters, who James has heard about but never met, and sometimes she tells James and Aimee and James' other sister Julia stories from the Old Country, which she has heard from her parents and their friends. James' mother Natalie wants Luisa to teach the children to understand Italian, so that when they attend the opera they will know what they are listening to.
James' mother loves the opera, and believes all the best ones are written in Italian. She also loves the ballet and the symphony, and has been trying for years to get the Godwin children to appreciate the fine culture she enjoys. James is perhaps still too young, although Aimee and Julia have developed an appreciation for the ballet, and William, who is the next brother after James, likes the symphony. Con will not come out and say that he actually likes the opera, but he willingly goes to see the ones where a lot of people die. And he likes Wagner, but possibly only because his stepmother does not.
(James' mother is his father's second wife. The first Mrs Godwin mothered seven children before rumor says she went crazy, and she and James' father were divorced. Con, who was her last son, does not always get along with his stepmother. Although to be fair, he doesn't always get along with his father either.)
All of James' brothers but William are technically half-brothers, but he never sees Gabriel, who lives in Chicago, and he rarely sees Nathaniel, who is "convalescing" in a quiet spa upstate, or Marcus, who cannot agree with their father about anything and thus does not want much to do with him. But they are all just "brothers" to James. They come and go and write letters and send him presents for his birthday and Christmas, and once a month his parents try to get as many of them as possible over to the house for Sunday lunch.
Matthew, who Con always refers to sarcastically as "the good son", is engaged to a pretty girl named Alianor who is from Philadelphia but has been living in New York with her aunt while she and Matthew plan their wedding. Sometimes he brings her to lunch on Sundays. She is quiet and calm and has long curly brown hair, and she always brings sweets for James and Aimee and William, and James likes her.
But James' favorite person, of all his family and the staff in the house, is his sister Julia. Julia is fourteen and adventurous, and if she wants to go to Coney Island on a Saturday and ride the carousel and eat Nathan's hot dogs, James is the one she drags with her. She reads to him at night after Luisa has gone home, or she makes up stories for him when they are stuck at home and bored, or they pretend to be pirates on the Spanish Main and menace each other with their father's walking sticks or pokers from the fireplaces until one or the other submits and gives up their treasure and their ship.
She always has time for him and she talks to him like an equal, not like a baby, and she is not afraid of anything and he loves her more than he loves anyone.
James has dark hair, nearly black, and blue eyes, and he looks like his beautiful mother Natalie. Julia's hair is long and curly and light brown faintly shading towards red, and in the summer sun she freckles, and she looks like her mother, the first Mrs Godwin, crazy Ginevra Parker. There is physically nothing of his father in James, but anyone watching him and Julia together would know that they are siblings.
William is another matter, as are Lucas and Nathaniel, the twins. They are adopted, the three of them, from black girls who could not care for them and had no family. Lucas and Nathaniel's mother, whose name was Jessamyn, worked for Mr Godwin in one of his factories, and when she got sick with cancer and knew she was going to die, she went to Mr Godwin and made him promise to look after her boys, to make sure they went to school and grew up to be good and decent Christian men and productive members of society. Her husband had gone to Detroit where he had family to look for work, and she had not heard from him in eight months and she could not go to him, and she had no one else. Mr Godwin, who is not without faults, nevertheless felt pity for her, and when she died he assisted with her burial and adopted her babies. And the first Mrs Godwin, for all her crazy, loved the boys and raised them as if they were hers.
William's mother, whose name was Rachel, must have heard the story of how Bryant Godwin adopted the sons of one of his black factory girls when she passed away, because she went to him with her own tale of woe. But what that tale is, no one knows. The current Mrs Godwin does not think it is anyone's business, and Mr Godwin is not interested in discussing it, and none of the older Godwins, much less William, knows the story to repeat it.
(There are of course persistent rumors that the "adopted" Godwin boys are in fact Mr Godwin's illegitimate children, and not fathered by their mothers' husbands at all. But there is nothing of Mr Godwin in any of their faces, and William is stocky in a way that none of the other Godwin boys are, and Mr Godwin's adoption of them, and their birth certificates, are matters of public record. But the rumors persist.)
There is a large and decorative illustrated Bible on a polished wooden stand in the Godwin house, open to whichever page someone was interested in last. (Con usually turns it to the Song of Solomon or the illustration of Jonah being swallowed by the whale.) On the inside of the front cover is an inscription: "Presented to Ginevra Alexandra Parker and Marcus Bryant Godwin on the occasion of their marriage. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. In love and faith, Georgette Cora Gardner Parker 15 April 1888". Listed under the inscription are the names and birth dates of the Godwin children, all ten of them, interrupted towards the bottom by a mention of Mr Godwin's marriage to the second Mrs Godwin, Natalie Pierson, James' mother.
When James was old enough to ask why he had three brothers who did not look like him, and when he was old enough to tell Julia that a boy at a party had said that William couldn't be his brother because William was a negro, Julia showed him the inside cover of the wedding Bible and said "That boy was stupid. Of course William's your brother. See, we're all written in here with our birthdays. There's William, and Nathaniel and Lucas" - and she pointed to their names - "and that's you, and that's me. That means you're a Godwin, and William is too."
"But why don't they look like us?" James asked.
"Because Daddy adopted them. That means their momma gave them to him to raise as his own. He went through the court and everything so they could be Godwins."
"Why?"
"Because he wanted them. Because he promised their momma."
"Why did she give them up?" Being four, and the child of a mother who clearly loved him, James could not conceive of a situation in which a mother would want to give her children away.
So Julia told him the story of Jessamyn and Lucas and Nathaniel, and if she embellished a bit, James could not tell. She made up a story about Rachel and William, which James later repeated to Aimee, which she repeated to William, by which time it was changed enough that William didn't recognize himself in it.
It has never occurred to James since then to doubt that the three dark-skinned Godwin sons are really his brothers, no more than it would occur to him to doubt that Aimee was his sister. Aimee looks like their father, so there is no question whose child she is. Every once in a while a rumor will float into the house about William's parentage and Mr Godwin's reasons for taking him, but James is young enough to ignore them.
Sometimes Mrs Malcolm, the cook, will tell him about her own son, also named James, who lives in Pittsburgh and works in a steel mill. His handwriting is nearly illegible, she says, and when he writes to her she has to ask Mr Sewell, the driver, to decipher the letters for her.
("It's not that she can't read his handwriting," Con whispered to James once. "It's that she can't read." James just stared at him, uncomprehending. Was Con playing with him? Every adult knew how to read. Later, James was proven correct when Mrs Malcolm read him an article from the newspaper about Andrew Carnegie, who had once owned the steel mill where her son worked.)
Mrs O'Donnell, the housekeeper, also has sons, two of them. Sean is a year older than James, Liam a year younger, and every so often when James is bored, Mrs O'Donnell will suggest she bring them over one day so James can meet them and they can play together. James' mother is not convinced of this idea. Julia, however, thinks it is brilliant. She wants to meet Mrs O'Donnell's boys too.
"One Saturday," Mrs O'Donnell says, as she polishes Mr Godwin's desk in his office and James sits on the floor and watches. "I'll bring them over. You'll be a good influence on them."
James doesn't think he knows how to be a good influence, but he can't tell Mrs O'Donnell that. He doesn't see his older brothers enough to learn influence from them, so he only has Con and Julia and William to look up to. Aimee is too close to his own age. William is too impatient with him, Con is a troublemaker, and Julia is too stubborn and too determined to follow her own whims. So he can't be much of a calming factor for the O'Donnell boys. But they'll be at the house, and someone will no doubt be around to keep an eye on them, so what does it matter?
words: 1862
today's quickie research: popular baby names in 1880, biblical quotes, italian girls' names, coney island rides, and andrew carnegie.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 08:39 pm (UTC)...er. aside from james-the-main-character and james-the-cook's-son.
(i do in fact have a photoshop file of what it says on the inside cover of the fancy-ass bible, handwriting fonts and all. i should post it for the confused.)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 09:13 pm (UTC)I was going to say you should do that but I didn't know it existed & didn't want to detract from writing-time.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-04 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-05 10:28 pm (UTC)