The Cliffs

by J. Courtney Sullivan

But all the anxiety assumed that this was a new problem, when in fact the vast majority of women’s writing—their love letters, their diaries—had always been discarded. Burned by the creator or her children, thrown away, lost.

Her mother once told her and Holly that if you couldn’t think of something nice to say, you could always just state a fact with enthusiasm, and it would be received as a compliment.

“Notice not one of them is named, like, Jennifer or Kim,” Allison said.

ha!

You have to hand it to men, they’ve managed to convince us that the things that make women powerful are weaknesses.

Motherhood is the most radical act in the world, and we’ve turned it into tapioca pudding. What’s more toothless, more invisible in this culture, than a mother?”

Jane considered the notion that mothers were radical creatures, that the act of bringing life into the world contained some sec...

“It happened with alarming frequency. When the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, one of the first things they did was come across mounds in the earth. Out of curiosity, they dug them up. They later wrote that finding buried there a Wampanoag man and child, they made off with ‘sundry of the prettiest things.’ Thomas Jefferson did the same. He sent his slaves out to excavate burial mounds and then displayed these Native people’s remains and sacred items in the entryway to Monticello.”

I thought of the promise I made Agnes at the start, to stay as long as Hannah needed me. No one had promised me anything in return.

I thought of Hannah, how many times she nearly died attempting to bring a child into the world. If she had been taken in that pursuit, would he have spoken of her mission with such reverence?

I could have pointed out that though Maine was established specifically to be a free state as part of the Missouri Compromise, and people like Agnes took great pride in this fact, it was also true that Agnes and Hannah’s family and almost all the others in Awadapquit were very much involved in the slave trade. The slaves in question were laboring in the Caribbean, out of sight. But the sugar and tobacco they harvested came back to America on the ships of New Englanders. No one wanted to discuss this.

In every graveyard in every town in all the world, there lie buried stories more remarkable and strange than a name, a date, a designation on stone could ever in a million years convey.

“I guess I’d better get a move on, spreading joy to the children of Awadapquit like I do.”

Jane was thrilled to know the world was still producing girls like this.

Throughout Jane’s own career, at every stage, women who saw something in her had given her a chance. They were often the ones who had made it on their own. It was like the opposite of an old boys’ club. Women connected by their lack of connections, helping one another rise.

There was one exhibit that moved Jane to tears, on the subject of Native Americans and epigenetics, the newish field of study that said the effects of mass trauma—genocide, slavery, colonialism—got passed down from one generation to the next at the cellular level. Native Americans referred to this as the soul wound. Some believed it played a role in high rates of addiction, mental illness, suicide, and sexual violence in their community today.