Fever 1793

On a hot August day in 1793, Matilda Cook’s mother awakens her in the bedroom they share above the Cook family’s coffeehouse. Polly, the family’s maid, is late, and Matilda’s mother needs her to get to work. Wishing she could stay in bed, Matilda reflects that even though Mother came from a rich family, she was an industrious, “perfect girl” who “stitch[ed] entire quilts before breakfast” (2). Matilda’s morning is made worse by a mosquito bite on her forehead, and the cat Silas depositing a dead mouse on Mother’s bed. As Matilda dresses, she notes that her “clothes [are] shrinking” and “the ceiling [is] getting lower” (3)—she is growing taller by the day.

Matilda looks out the window to see that “my city, Philadelphia” (4) is “wide awake” (4) and full of activity. She spies the blacksmith’s shop, where Polly is probably visiting the blacksmith’s son, Matthew, instead of coming to work. Matilda looks to her “favorite place”—“the waterfront” (4) and decides to visit later in the day. She sees the prison where Blanchard flew a hot-air balloon and thinks that she too will “one day, slip free of the ropes that h[o]ld me” (4-5). She’s revealed this dream to