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the New York City Abolition Society gathered in Reverend Joseph’s parlor to bemoan the tragic injustices of the South and to compose tracts to be distributed to all merchants who participated in trade with known slaveholders. On Wednesdays, several members of Reverend Joseph’s church came to his home to have a somber evening of prayer and petition for the needs of his congregation. Every third Thursday, the table in the formal dining room was covered with ledgers and lists of the month’s charitable donations, and the elders of the church gathered to discuss their dispensation. And on Fridays, Reverend Joseph sat placidly in his parlor, reading his Bible or some evangelical text, while acquaintances outside his congregation paid social calls.
    The Friday morning visitors usually consisted of middle-aged mothers and their marriageable daughters. They arrived sheathed in propriety, managing to carry on conversations bemoaning the plight of the poor without dropping a single crumb of fruitcake, all the while scanning the elegance of the furnishings with wistful, hungry eyes. The mothers hung on every one of Reverend Joseph’s words, tilting their heads and eyeing him as if looking through a scope. The daughters kept their eyes downcast, as if entranced by the pattern in the fabric of their skirts.
    When Kassandra was still a very little girl, her head still sporting tufts of soft, sandy blondness, the women would fawn over her, admiring her large gray eyes and applauding her ability to carry their emptied cups on a tray twice the width of her small frame.
    “You’ve not found a home for this one?” they asked in sweet soprano voices.
    “No,” Reverend Joseph would reply “Families want American children. Her English is not yet strong enough.”
    As years went by, Kassandra’s status grew from being a foundling to an adorable little girl, and the mothers would comment on their own daughters’ love for children, to which Reverend Joseph would smile and offer them an opportunity to volunteer in the schools and orphanages supported by his church.
    “Now really, reverend,” the aggressive matrons would coo, “don’t you ever intend to marry?” To which Reverend Joseph would smile and reply that he hadn’t yet met the woman who would be content to give away as much money as he did.
    Kassandra’s very presence in the house became, after a time, a sore spot in the eyes of Reverend Joseph’s ministerial and social circles. More than once as Kassandra passed through the rooms, she heard the mutterings and chastisements of his colleagues and invited guests.
    “You simply cannot just keep her, reverend. Not without a mother in the house.”
    “She is becoming a young woman. It simply isn’t proper.”
    “People are beginning to talk.”
    But Reverend Joseph dismissed their criticisms and suspicions with a sweep of his hand, saying, “God brought her to me for a reason. I cannot simply turn her out.”
    Each time Kassandra heard Reverend Joseph defend his right to keep her, she bowed her head and gave a prayer of thanks to God. But still, she was careful to be as inconspicuous as possible, especially when the Friday morning visits of the matrons and their daughters came with ugly glares and suspicious mumblings whenever Reverend Joseph left the parlor. It was at those times that Kassandra would lift her modest eyes and smile with a ferocity that defended his generosity, her virtue and, most of all, their territory.
    The spring that Kassandra turned fifteen, she was summoned away from a particularly stifling Friday morning social call by an insistent pounding on the back kitchen door.
    “Clara?” Reverend Joseph called to the house at large, before Kassandra could remind him that Clara was out paying a call on a sick neighbor. When he began to rise from his chair to answer the pounding, Kassandra, loath to be left alone with Mrs. Weathersby and her dull daughter Dianne, leapt from her chair, insisting that the