Emma Kithcard<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n He is gone. He\u2019s really gone<\/em>. Emma repeats this mantra to herself in the hopes that it will finally feel real. Back in the quiet of their ho\u2014correction, my home<\/em>\u2014Emma allows her intrusive thoughts free range in the empty plane of her mind. The tight reins she once held on them during the funeral are slackened as she sinks into the worn out cushion of their\u2014I mean my<\/em>\u2014living room chaise lounge. The funeral in question is that of her late husband, William Curtis Powell. At the thought of his name, Emma lets out a dry, humorless laugh. William Curtis Powell. The drunk<\/em>, Emma thinks to herself, much to her chagrin, as she recalls the meager amount of people in attendance. The small crowd, if you can call the four people present a crowd, consisted of his coworkers from the gas fitting company. The same group of coworkers who enabled William\u2019s horrendous drinking habits. No<\/em>, Emma thought as she stood up from her place on the chaise lounge to enter her bedroom to stand in front of her dressing table\u2019s mirror. I can not blame them for a grown man\u2019s decision, especially a man like my husband<\/em>. Apparently, William was intemperate, lacking the self-control to moderate his behavior. William drank like a fish, driving himself to madness. Mania potu was the doctor\u2019s diagnosis<\/em>, Emma recalls. Flashbacks of locking herself in the bedroom to escape the flying glass dinnerware WIlliam was throwing in one of his drunken fits or rising early in the morning to avoid witnessing William\u2019s morning stupors came rushing back like water freed from a dam. 2 years. Emma endured 2 years of this behavior until he died during one of his manic episodes in which Emma helplessly watched, but now he is gone. He\u2019s really gone<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2 MONTHS LATER Isabella Taylor <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There she goes again<\/em>, Isabella muses as she watches the young woman breeze past the storefront. Isabella is so accustomed to this woman\u2019s comings and goings around this time, that she often glances up to catch a glimpse of her. What activities are you partaking in that have you so committed<\/em>, Isabella often wonders from behind the counter as she does the final rounds before closing the shop. However, after a particularly \u201cstrenuous\u201d morning with her husband, Isabella decides to wonder no more. Like clockwork, the young woman appears in front of the tailor\u2019s storefront late in the afternoon, and Isabella, peels herself from the entrance of the tailor shop to block the woman\u2019s path. Before the young woman could look up, Isabella, feeling her courage dwindle each second she stands in front of the woman\u2019s path, blurts out, \u201cWhere do you go everyday at this time?\u201d The young woman, registering Isabella\u2019s sudden appearance, blinks blankly before a wry smile creeps across her face. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you join me to find out?\u201d And without further invitation, the woman walks around Isabella, who stands stiffly in shock, to continue her path down the street. At first, Isabella continues to stand there in uncertainty, but then a flash of her husband\u2019s red, sweaty face sends her chasing after the woman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As they enter the bar, Isabella\u2019s gaze flits around the establishment in open wonder, but the young woman whom she has followed takes unwavering steps towards the bar, where she confidently slips the bartender an indiscriminate amount of money to then proceed to an inconspicuous back room with seating. Unsure of what to do, Isabella continues to stare at the young woman until her drink is brought over. After she takes a sip of her drink, the young woman introduces herself, \u201cI\u2019m Emma. So you\u2019re the girl who works in the tailor shop. What made you follow me into this \u2018unholy den of sins,\u2019\u201d Emma finishes mockingly, taking another swig of her drink. Maybe it is her sarcastic tone, maybe it is the way she confidently orders her drink, or maybe it is the way she gives Isabella her undivided attention, but Isabella immediately feels comfortable in Emma\u2019s presence and begins to relay the details of her life to Emma, a woman she met less than 10 minutes ago. However, this ease must have been mutual as Emma sits patiently and listens to Isabella\u2019s ranting. Isabella discloses how she had married young and has been married for three years, but the marriage is far from a happy one. Her husband physically and verbally abuses her in fits of jealousy though he is a serial cheater. She goes on to reveal how she has attempted to return to the guardianship of her loving father, but like the cliche her life is, her \u201cevil stepmother\u201d tries everything in her power to make her feel unwelcome and unwanted. As a result, she works at the tailor shop to avoid any interaction with her husband though after closing, it can no longer be avoided. After hearing Isabella\u2019s story, finding much of herself in this young woman, Emma offers, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you come keep me company after work instead of going home to that wretched husband,\u201d and from then on the women picked up a routine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Emma would wait by the entrance of the tailor shop for Isabella to close before they linked arms to proceed to Emma\u2019s favorite bar, where they stayed into the wee hours of the night. This routine continues until one fateful night, maybe because of the holiday season, Emma drinks herself into a stupor, where she proceeds to call out the name of her late husband. Knowing that her husband drank himself mad, Isabella knows this is a cry for help. On December 29th, Isabella carries Emma to the Rosine Association Home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2 YEARS LATER <\/p>\n\n\n\n After visiting Emma at the Rosine Home, Isabella, feeling nostalgic, goes to visit Emma\u2019s favorite bar, ordering a whiskey on the rocks like her companion once did. It is always hard visiting Emma and seeing her, a shell of her former self, but it is necessary because if her friend continued on the path that she was going, it was not going to end well for her. That\u2019s rich coming from you, Isabella quips as she gulps down her own drink. Isabella has taken up drinking, much to her husband\u2019s disapproval. He shows his displeasure with her new habit by becoming more physically violent, which only furthers her desire for alcohol. Maybe because it is the second anniversary of Emma\u2019s admission into the Rosine Association or maybe because she feels lonely during the holiday season, but Isabella drinks until she becomes unaware of where and who she is. By the end of the night, Isabella, driven by pure instinct, finds herself on the front steps of the Rosine Home, shouting for her friend, and like Emma, she is taken into the Rosine Association Home as a new inhabitant on December 29th. Poetic, isn\u2019t it. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Works Cited <\/p>\n\n\n\n By Cheaka Wilson After including a lengthy piece of speculative narration about the relationship between two women confined to the Fulton County chain gang in the 1850s in her book, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity, historian Sarah Haley admits that its purpose is \u201cnot an attempt to romanticize… Continue reading Speculative Narration of Emma Kithcard and Isabella Taylor<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":266,"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions\/266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.swarthmore.edu\/spring2022\/s22-hist056-01-police-prisons-and-protest-rosine-association-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
It\u2019s time<\/em>, Emma thought to herself as hustles out of her closet of an apartment. Emma checked to make sure she had enough change to slip to the bartender at her favorite establishment, a back alley bar whose employers would only serve alcohol to her in secret. The thought of this secret transaction made Emma\u2019s palms sweat with anticipation. Of course, this is my only option, <\/em>Emma muses to herself since the use of alcohol by women such as herself would be charged with vagrancy much to her chagrin; however, her move two months ago to the inner depths of downtown Philadelphia makes tight lipped arrangement that much more convenient even if her apartment is more hovel than apartment. But at least it\u2019s some place that I can confidently call my own<\/em>. In order to afford her own place, Emma hires herself out for work, usually domestic work, like she once did before she married William. Only now, she no longer has Mrs. Laurence, her former guardian, to help supplement her income, but that\u2019s fine because alcohol makes it easier to cope with\u2014everything. All of it. William\u2019s death. Work. Everything<\/em>\u2014or at least that is what Emma tells herself. On her way to the bar she frequently haunts, she passes a tailor shop. From the window of said shop, she can see a woman busying herself behind the counter, but she is so focused on the bar and\u2014What should I order? Whiskey on the rocks? Gin and tonic?<\/em> It is now a quarter after 5 and the woman in the tailor is a distant thought as Emma\u2019s desire for sweet drunkenness and its wonderful ability to take the biting edge off her pitiful existence takes up the space in her one track mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/digitalcollections.tricolib.brynmawr.edu\/iiif\/2\/sc%3A152582~JP2~d71c013cbfc7da98fbe923626989a8cf269f6c0f12b3a4ccb72b4710d45ad7bf\/full\/pct:10\/0\/default.jpg\")
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