Lizzy Tries to Undo Mrs. Lacey's Baptism with an Asafoetida Bag

Lizzy Tries to Undo Mrs. Lacey's Baptism with an Asafoetida Bag centers on a small, deliberate act of care: Lizzy Enders places an asafetida bag around Violate Lacey’s neck because Violate had asked for it if she were baptized. The act cannot reverse the baptism, as Sister Roberta tells Lizzy, but it preserves a promise and gives Lizzy something concrete to do for a woman she fears losing.

The Promise and Its Limits

The attempt takes shape through a private exchange between Lizzy and Sister Roberta. As Lizzy leaves, Sister Roberta tells her that asafetida does not void baptism. Lizzy is embarrassed that Sister Roberta knows what she intends, and asks how she found out. Sister Roberta explains that Violate had asked her to make the same promise: if they baptized Violate, she should hang a bag of asafetida around her neck. Sister Roberta does not know where Violate got the idea. The parallel promises show that the bag is not Lizzy’s invention; it belongs to Violate’s expressed wish, carried forward by two people who care for her.

Lizzy pushes beyond the practical question of whether the bag works. She asks whether a person’s belief in something is enough, and whether that is what the people around her teach. But when Sister Roberta suggests that Lizzy needs to believe the bag will void the baptism, Lizzy rejects that requirement: she says she is doing it for Violate, not for herself, and does not need to believe in anything. Her distinction makes the act simultaneously tender and doubtful. Lizzy can keep faith with Violate’s request without affirming its religious premise; the promise matters even where its hoped-for effect is uncertain.

Sister Roberta answers that Lizzy’s refusal to believe is one way of avoiding disappointment. The remark gives the exchange a second stake: not only whether the bag can undo a baptism, but whether Lizzy can allow herself to hope. Her question about belief is directed toward Sister Roberta’s religious world, yet her insistence that the action is for someone else exposes a more immediate motive. She does not have to settle the theological question in order to act on Violate’s behalf.

Carrying Out the Act

After writing a letter, Lizzy folds the parchment carefully, puts Cleo in her apron pocket, and goes to Violate’s room. Violate is sleeping peacefully. Lizzy ties the bag around her neck. The narrative records the gesture plainly, without confirming that it changes Violate’s religious status or that Violate knows it has been done. The quietness is part of the act’s meaning: Lizzy does not debate the matter again or seek permission in the moment. She carries out the promise while Violate sleeps.

The letter and the bag occur together, but the evidence does not establish what Lizzy wrote or connect the letter’s contents to the attempted reversal. Their juxtaposition nevertheless sets two forms of action beside one another: a carefully folded message whose destination and purpose are unspecified, and a physical token placed directly on Violate. The bag is the part of Lizzy’s intention the narrative makes visible. It cannot make the baptism unhappen; it can mark that Violate’s request has been remembered.

Care Beyond the Bag

After leaving Violate, Lizzy stops in the kitchen, where Elena’s cradle has been placed so someone can always keep the baby in sight. Elena sleeps in a linen gown and bonnet. Lizzy feels love for her helplessness and recalls that the other girls have paid her little attention while occupied with their own concerns. Lizzy often picks her up, and Ramona has said Lizzy may help bathe her the next day. The passage thus places the attempted act for Violate within a wider pattern of attention to vulnerable people: Lizzy keeps the promise to the sleeping woman and is also drawn to the infant who needs constant watching.

Lizzy’s affection for Elena is sharpened by her own childhood as an only child. She has wanted a little sister, while her classmates in Independence had brothers and sisters. She remembers feeling that anything she did could either make her parents happy or break their happiness forever. The episode does not say that this history causes her promise to Violate, but it explains why the scene of care extends beyond a religious token. Her response to Elena is shaped by the kinship she has missed, while her action for Violate honors a request that others might dismiss as an unfounded notion.

Sister Roberta’s Intervention

Later, Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy disapproves of the bag. Sister Roberta removes it from Violate to please him, then puts it back after he has left without saying anything to anyone. Lizzy tells Sister Roberta about her discussion with the Bishop and cautions her that she perhaps should not restore it. Sister Roberta nevertheless holds to her promise. If the Bishop asks, she says, she will tell him that Violate had been coughing before she went into a coma.

That explanation does not demonstrate that the bag affects Violate’s condition; Sister Roberta offers the coughing as what she will tell the Bishop, not as proof of the bag’s power. Her choice instead makes the promise consequential in a different way. She accepts the risk of contradicting the Bishop’s wishes so that Violate’s expressed request is honored. Lizzy loves Sister Roberta even more for this, and offers to watch Elena after her last class so Sister Roberta can have free time. The act therefore passes from Lizzy’s private gesture to a shared commitment, answered by practical care for Sister Roberta in return.

The episode leaves the religious question unresolved. The bag is removed and restored, but no evidence establishes that it can undo baptism, and the passage does not report a change in Violate’s status. Its clearest effect is human rather than doctrinal: Violate’s wish persists through Lizzy and Sister Roberta, even when the Bishop objects and Lizzy herself says she does not need to believe. The episode’s tension lies in that gap between what the gesture cannot prove and what it faithfully does.