I suppose that the most delicate way to speak of our birth would be to call it "irregular." Had my family had less money, my twin sister Livi and I would most likely be referred to by the "lower classes" as "those bastard girls whose mother won't say who the father is." The so-called "nobles," who were usually anything but noble, would have fluttered their eyelashes, held a fan in front of their mouths, rolled their eyes heavenward, and referred to us as "one of those."
Oddly enough I felt a certain affinity with the first group. They were at least honest. Vulgar, vicious, stupid, and intolerant, but honest insofar as they'd tell you to your face how they felt about you. The nobles now, well, the mildest word to describe how I felt about them was "despise." Or maybe "detest." (Yes they mean different things, look it up.)
Once we were old enough to understand why people spoke like that, we were, to say the least, shattered. Had anyone actually discovered that Livi and I also were "one of those" I don't know how we would have survived, even with the support of our family. Yes I know it doesn't make a lot of sense when I tell it that way. Let me go back a few years and explain where we came from, then maybe you'll understand.
It seems that when our mother was a child she'd have had to climb a hill or two in order to be considered "frail." Even "sickly" would have been an improvement. Fortunately her mind worked reasonably well. It wasn't like the tales where the weak shut-in has some sort of incredibly brilliant mind and uses it for, well, you get the idea. No, she was moderately above average in intelligence, but no more than that, which made her totally normal for our family.
Grandfather Brewster Witherspoon was and probably still is what one could call a "walrus of a man." He was tall, being 184 cm, but he was also big. He wasn't fat, but he was built something like a barrel. Claimed it was his "English heritage don't you know." He also affected a handlebar moustache. It was a small one as such things go, but with his round face and blondish-red hair it drew more attention than his size and shape did, even here in The City. I'd told that, on hot days, he'd huff and puff when going up the hill and would turn the color of a well-cooked lobster. All the while he'd be sweating heavily and blotting his face with a handkerchief every few seconds.
If that was all, he'd have been labeled as merely one more among the many "characters" living in The City. There were hundreds. Some hated, some beloved, and most ignored by almost everyone.
If you were the single oddball in a village, you were lucky if you were abused only occasionally. Mostly you were abused all the time. In The City just about everyone was more interested in making money than in making fun of someone who was different. Besides it would be pretty hard considering that there wasn't any particular group that made up more than about 30% of the population.
So Grandfather Witherspoon would have ordinarily been tolerated or ignored. Ordinarily. Like the rest of the family, he wasn't outstandingly brilliant or anything. However, at least as he tells it, it was when he was around 12 that he, and those around him, discovered his talent.
It had started simply enough. He was with a group of his friends, and two of them were talking about making money selling something or other at a particular location. All of a sudden Grandpa interrupted them and said, "Won't work. At least not there. You'll make a little money if you do it over on Bleek street, just north of The Park. Not much, and you'll have to work hard, but you will make a profit."
The other kids laughed, then set about their original plan. After they'd lost almost all their money, they shifted over to where Grandpa had told them and earned back all the money they'd lost. It took them three months, and they worked really hard, but they did make money, just like he'd said. It wasn't enough to keep going, so after they reached a break-even point, they quit.
I'll tell you one thing about business, and probably anything else that matters. Kids learn faster than adults. An adult will want to "save face" and look like they know more than they really do, which is why so many of them go broke doing something that everyone they know has told them is stupid.
Now kids, they don't have all that much to begin with, so the idea of losing it hurts, a lot. Which is probably why, after the incident I mentioned, every single one of them with an idea for making money ran it by Grandpa first. Sometimes he'd tell them right away if it would work or not. Sometimes he went away for a hour or a day or even a week before he came back with an answer. It didn't take long before all his friends realized that they'd fallen in the cream.
Sure, they often had to work hard to make a success of whatever it was, but Grandpa's "seal of approval" gave them the confidence they needed to make a go of it, especially when things got hard.
About the time Grandpa finished school, he set himself up as a "business consultant." Within six years, the family went from being tolerably well off to moderately rich, not that anyone would have noticed.
Grandpa lived and breathed The City's motto: "Honesty, Loyalty, Frugality, Profit." Or so he said when asked what was important to him. One of the only things I ever found to like about him was that he knew that things sometimes go wrong in spite of your doing everything right. That's why he never tried to show off how much money he had.
The family lived in a pretty big house, but it wasn't in one of the parts of town that rich people favor. There were a cook and a maid, which was fairly normal in that neighborhood, but they were treated more like family than most servants were. At least that's what Grandfather would have told you. They themselves? That's another story.
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There were a couple of nice paintings and one rather good, though small, sculpture in the house, but nothing that yelled "we're rich" to anyone who came inside.
Now let's get back to us, or how we were started. Somehow my mother, to everyone's surprise and apparent delight, managed to live into her adolescence. At first everyone was terrified that she'd have some sort of bleeding problem like aunt Darci had when her monthly started, but, thankfully, she was completely normal in that regard.
Otherwise, not so much. She'd been too weak to go to school, so Grandma Beth had tutored her as best she could. Apparently she wasn't all that good a teacher, but, once Mama learned how to read, she took care of the rest by herself. She couldn't do much besides read, so after she'd finished all the children's books in the family library, and all the others in the house, Grandma's primary "teaching" job had been to fetch more books home from one of the libraries in The City.
Mama was about 18 and five months when everyone learned just how much Grandpa believed the city motto. Specifically the part about "loyalty." Mama's monthlys stopped. The family assumed that it was because of her health, but after four months the real cause declared itself. It was especially noticeable given how skinny she was.
Grandpa was occasionally a somewhat considerate man, something you wouldn't expect from someone with his size and looks. When there was no doubt about the fact that Mama was expecting, he asked her who the father was. I'm told that she opened her mouth to answer, but no words came out. The funny thing was that she could talk about anything else, but when she tried to answer that particular question, her voice would trail off and she would become totally unable to speak.
All this left the family with even more questions. Mostly it was variations on the same one, "How could a man possibly have gotten into the house much less into her room." Her room did have a large window, but it was built into the wall, and the three panes were each separated from the others by four centimeters. (Pretty much average for The City.)
Her room was at the very back of the house on the second floor. Any man would have had to pass every other bedroom to get to it. When you add to that the fact that even most of the family friends had never met Mama, and a goodly number didn't even know that she existed, the questions just multiplied.
Finally Grandpa gave up. He said that the important thing was Mama's health, or lack thereof. Even he knew that her chance of survival wasn't all that good, and he didn't want her death reflecting badly upon him. That was probably the reason that, when Aunt Darci mentioned having Mama seen by the doctor who had cured her bleeding problem, Grandpa jumped on board with the idea immediately. Well...at least after Aunt Darci assured him that the doctor wouldn't charge him very much.
The next day is written prominently in Grandpa's diary, all in bold letters. To be precise, it was the last entry he ever made. (Yes I read it when I found it years later, and no I probably shouldn't have, but we're not going to discuss it now, and probably not later either.)
It was May 9th in The Year 728 After the Founding. At 9:15 in the morning Aunt Darci's physician, a Dr. Kaho Fukui appeared at our door. After the introductions, which Dr. Fukui responded to by nodding and not saying a single word, she was taken up to Mama's room. After motioning Aunt Darci into the room with her, she shut the door leaving everyone else standing in the hall.
The general consensus was that this was a very rude young woman, but she had cured Darci, so they'd give her a chance. Time passed, and then some more time. By then everyone had gone back to whatever it was they'd been doing when the doctor arrived.
However they all came running back as a noise like a thunderclap sounded from the general vicinity of Mama's room. What they found was the pieces of the door to her room lying on the floor, the doorframe splintered, and a totally enraged being standing in the doorway.
Her mouth was working but nobody could understand what she was saying, though the cook, who could read lips (her hearing wasn't all that good due to a childhood illness) turned pale and ran back down to the kitchen with her hands over her ears.
By then Dr. Fukui was speaking loudly enough for everyone to hear, but what they heard wasn't very, let's call it "palatable" shall we?
"You flaming, stupid, asinine, idiotic, numbskulled, shit-for-brains, FOOLS! How could you? How could you abuse your daughter like this for so many years. Did your brains all dribble out your noses and onto the floor a decade ago?"
She advanced on Grandfather and kept going, "And you! Oh great business consultant. If you're smart enough to do that, why the heck didn't you put at least part of that mind (and I use the term loosely) into figuring out what to do for your daughter? Doesn't she mean anything to you?"
She spun around. "Then there's you Darci. You of all people should know what it's like to be sick all the time. Why in the world did you never think to bring her to me four years ago after we took care of your problem?"
The doctor held up her hand to forestall an answer. "Don't say anything. No matter what you say, it will be wrong, and I don't want to find myself undoing what I fixed. I really want to kill you all right now. I might even seriously consider doing it except it would look bad for a physician to murder a former patient and her family."
She spun around again and continued, "As for the rest of you so-called adults.... Bah! I'm wasting my time."
Suddenly she calmed down, seemingly at least. She closed her eyes, bowed her head slightly, then said in a quiet voice, "Mimi, Sven. I need you and a carriage, immediately. It's urgent."
After that she just stood there, with her feet apart, her arms crossed on her chest, and an incendiary look on her face. Nobody said anything. For that matter, nobody dared move at all. After several minutes Grandpa opened his mouth to say something or other, but he was interrupted by a knocking on the door, followed by the sound of it opening and feet coming up the stairs.
A young woman dressed as a maid appeared and bowed slightly to everyone and no one in particular. Dr. Fukui pointed her chin at the room behind her. Mimi made her way past the family and shortly emerged with Mama in her arms. She squeezed past everyone, followed by Dr. Fukui who turned her head and spoke over her shoulder.
"We're going to see Dr. Kastner. Darci, you show your parents the way, but not till late morning tomorrow. We're going to be busy all day, and probably part of the night. Besides, if I'm tired enough the next time I see you, I might just let you all live."