CHAPTER 1

I was born Lilith Mary Brown in Plainsville, Pennsylvania on Friday, February 13th, 1878, at 4:13 a.m. to Philip and Mary Brown. Three other girls followed within the next three years and were obedient (unlike yours truly) and popped into the world without resentment. Our names seemed to destine who we would become: Mine, Lilith (the girl who won’t conform), Penelope (the weaver who became an accomplished seamstress), Rose (the flower whose beauty was known throughout the county), and Adelaide (the noble one). Adelaide went onto marry an attorney—considered nobility by my family. And, let me not leave out Aunt Odessa, my father’s younger sister. I thought of her as my other mother, but the one who loved me unconditionally—no rules imposed, no judgment handed down. If she had raised me, perhaps my rebellion could have been channeled into some noble aspiration. But my parents set the protocol for appropriate behavior, and they taught the rules early while the mind was still malleable. My sisters did not have a problem with this indoctrination. To me, it was coercion.

The first three rules

Rule 1: Know your Bible.

We were to recite a new Bible verse at the breakfast table each morning. This rule was easy as it was rote—no thinking involved.

Rule 2: Cleanliness is next to Godliness.

This rule meant one should be pure and wholesome, but I thought it meant following good hygiene rules, and I became obsessed with cleanliness. I washed my hands until they were raw, scoured my face and body with a course cloth at least twice a day, and washed my hair once a week with castile soap. (My mother rationed the castile soap, but sometimes I snuck in an extra washing if I felt exceedingly sinful.) After all my cleansing, I sat statue-like in hopes of not being contaminated with sin.

Aunt Odessa must have been watching me for a few days, and one morning she asked, “For the love of God, what are you doing?”

“I am staying clean and pure to ward off sin.”

She must have been thinking, “the girl is a complete ignoramus,” but kept this to herself and instead handed me a book and convinced me reading would not taint me. Of all the books she could have given me, this was a most interesting choice:The Fairy-Land of Science. It encouraged freedom and exploration: “If you go through the world looking upon everything only as so much to eat, to drink, to use, you will never see the fairies of science. You must ask yourself why things happen and how the great God a