Fervent Charity (13 page)

She thought of the house, full of sturdy old furniture, its cupboards and mantels laden with Grandmother Caine’s pewter, how it had seemed at times to sigh like a dowager who had had a good life but regrets it wasn’t the one she wanted. The symphonic whisper that started in the back rooms and echoed down the square added to the whisperings and sighings of the other old homes throughout the city—the sound of subtle, inexorable disintegration. Trees grew and rubbed their branches against the houses while their roots tried the foundations. Ivy clung to the outsides like a garment that feeds upon its wearer. The whole city sprouted moss from every shaded patch, whether on walls or underfoot. Buildings, steps and stairs leaned and sagged. The very stones were being worn away by moss and vine and the feet of men and horses. It had not been difficult to leave a place where even the light seemed old.

Gustie thought of her father and the worn strip of Persian carpet that provided silent passage down a twilight length of hallway to its end where a dark wood door loomed. Even now, her hand remembered the feel of the etched brass doorknob as she turned it. Garden air drifted through the open French doors diluting the mustiness of old books and leather upholstery. Judge Magnus August Roemer was behind his desk, which was, Clare had observed dryly, the size of Iowa. Stepping into that room, even as an adult, Gustie often felt like a small white flag in a gale.

The judge was never the same after Philippa died
. Gustie had heard that refrain from various people all her life. She remembered little of her father before the death of her mother, and she remembered nothing of her mother except for a feeling of sweetness that filled her whenever she heard a piano played well. Gustie had tried to learn to play but had no aptitude for it. Even though no one in the family could play it, no one dreamed of getting rid of Philippa’s baby grand that still inhabited the parlor. It stood there now, Gustie knew, as she watched a small whirlwind pick up a shovelful of snow. The snow devil careened madly around the pasture eventually wearing itself out in a fall of crystals.

The father Gustie had grown up with was a man irrevocably changed by grief. And while she was never afraid of him, she had often found him easier to avoid than to confront. Now she wished she’d had more courage. No—more
will
to confront him, to draw him out. She had left the sighing house, that old city, her eccentric aunts, and Michael and Oksana in anger. Anger at him. Comparing her memories to the view outside her window, she realized that he could have asked her to stay and she would never have come to this place. Clare would still have died, only instead of her dying free of her mean-spirited brother and content at last under the expanse of blue prairie sky, she’d have breathed her last breath in her own dark house or worse, in a hospital surrounded by strangers, and her brother would have seen to it that Gustie was not allowed at her side.

If Gustie had not left Philadelphia, she would have still lost Clare but would not have found the friends she had now. She wouldn’t have calluses on her hands from doing her own house and barn work. She wouldn’t be strong from carrying endless buckets of water for laundry and baths. She wouldn’t know the exhilaration of running to an outhouse on a cold wet morning instead of treading down a carpeted hall to a water closet where, with a pull of a velvet cord, fresh water swirled into a blue-flowered porcelain bowl. She wouldn’t have learned to catch a fish, clean it and cook it. She wouldn’t have learned to ride a horse. And she wouldn’t know the love of the woman whose hand now rested on her shoulder.

They both gazed out through the window at the horizon where a dullness was beginning to encroach on the brilliant sky. There was still a little time for the horses to enjoy the pasture before they brought them into the barn out of the snow that was clearly on its way. Such a place! Where you could see the weather brewing at the rim of the earth, where the trees were young and the light on a clear day was always like the first morning of creation. She had never been sorry she came and she had no desire now to leave.

“I think you should go back.” Jordis’s voice was gentle but firm, as it always was when she offered an opinion that Gustie hadn’t asked for.

Gustie took a deep breath. “Why?”

“It would be good for you.”

“It was good for me to
leave
.”

“You are not going back to stay.”

“Why, then?”

“That letter.”

“What about it?”

“You have worn it out reading it.”

“You notice everything. It’s annoying.”

Jordis laughed softly. Then, she said, “Go back and find out why you cannot put that letter away.”

Chapter 10: January 1901

G
ustie didn’t often meet those
eyes, but today they looked back at her with more clarity and humor than they used to from the mirror in her room in her father’s house. There, she had had a full-length mirror. Here she had only a small, cloudy rectangle that framed her dimly from the waist up. Still, it was enough to see the scars: a splash of scar tissue on her chest, and the matting of twisted tissue along the insides of her wrists. Few people saw the extent of her scarification. Jordis, of course. And Dorcas, who had treated the wounds. Lena had only glimpsed the bandages and inquired about the cause of her injury. She described a clumsy fall from her wagon, which hadn’t been such a great lie. While getting used to life in South Dakota, she had suffered plenty of bruising mishaps.

This was Gustie’s biggest secret—the one she kept from everyone—even Jordis. How hard it had been.

Digging Clare’s grave (she remembered every shovel-full of dirt) had left her hands bloody, her muscles on fire, her body ill and spirit broken. After she recovered and took up residence in her house, she had had to learn, from scratch, how to live.

Every ounce of water that she drank or used to wash herself or her clothes or water her horse had to be brought up from the ground by strenuous effort at the hand pump in the yard and carried, one bucket at a time. To heat the water for baths or laundry, or even a pot of coffee, to warm her house, or to iron her clothes, she had to light a fire; the coal had to be carried in and ash carried out.

The labor was hard and mistakes cost her in cuts, bruises, scalds, and burns. She became adept at bandaging her own wounds before she acquired the skills to avoid them.

Going anywhere involved a long walk, or hitching the horse to the wagon. She learned to ride, not only because Biddie could travel faster without having to pull the wagon, but also because, once she learned how, it was easier to saddle her than hitch her, and she found that she enjoyed riding. She thanked God for Biddie and for the Swede in Wisconsin who, when Gustie explained she wanted to buy a gentle horse, had led the tall black mare out of the stable. Biddie had been forgiving of her mistakes.

Worse than the labor and the self-inflicted wounds were some of the creatures she had encountered, if only during the warmer months.

The first time she’d lifted the square of floorboard that had been cut to fit neatly over the hole in her kitchen floor where she stored vegetables, mice had poured up and out, skittering in all directions. Gustie dropped the lid with a clatter and screamed. There was no one to hear her, for which she was grateful. She shook for half an hour, gasping and whimpering in horror and revulsion, fighting tears of humiliation and helplessness. Finally, with a half sob, half laugh she said out loud, “They’re only mice.” Every nerve had been frazzled, but she had learned that day that edibles had to be kept in sealed crockery containers. Will lined her cold cellar with tin, and while she still saw a mouse or two, she never again had to face an entire congregation.

She found ants and spiders, earthworms and white grub worms and creatures she couldn’t name at all. With each surprise first encounter, she screamed and had to overcome her fear and aversion by sheer force of will. She had no choice. And she learned with time and experience, that none of these creatures would or could inflict any harm on her. All of her injuries were the result of her own ineptitude. After a year or so, she was able to live her life with fewer bandages and less screaming.

Gustie could now look at herself with satisfaction. In Philadelphia, the women of her class did not have muscles. Nor did they have calluses on their hands. Gustie had both.

In her father’s house, an army of people, most of whose names she never knew, came and went in order that not a speck of dirt should come to a complete rest on any surface. The one exception was her father’s study. He did not allow Oksana and her “hoards and minions,” as he called them, access as often as she would have liked. There were people who cleaned and waxed the floors, people who beat the rugs, laundresses and wielders of the hot irons. The windows were without smudge or streak. The water in the vases of the fresh flowers was always clear enough to drink. All the copper and metal fittings of doors, windows, fireplace, and light fixtures gleamed. The house was warm from coal that came in and ash that was carried out without Gustie’s ever having seen a spot of coal dust.

And, while all of these people had deferred to her with curtseys and tipped hats, murmuring a deferential “Miss Roemer,” it was Oksana who actually managed the keeping of the house. Gustie would have learned had she stayed. But she didn’t.

She wished she had paid attention.

For laundry, how much soap was enough, and how did one boil the linens? How did one cook a meal with more than two dishes and get them ready to serve at the same time? How did one strike a balance between cooked well enough to eat and burnt?

Gustie saw shiny floors wherever she went. She knew she’d never again have one of her own. All she could manage was a mop and a broom, which she found useful for sweeping out more than Oksana would have dreamed of. Like the small garden snake she found one day placidly curled in the middle of her living room, soaking in a warm pool of sun. She almost hated to disturb it, but she didn’t see herself with a snake as a permanent houseguest. She had realized on that day she was a fully initiated resident of the prairie, because, without a sound or a twitch, she gently shepherded the small reptile outside with her broom.

She still liked best to clean her barn. Physically strenuous, this chore involved no fussiness. She shoveled and raked and spread the straw and carried the hay and the oats and the water. She groomed her horse, whom she had grown to love, and oiled the tack. She never got tired of it, and she never got burnt, scratched or scalded. What was more, she found the mice in the barn less disturbing than the ones in the house.

Two things had driven other people out of this country or out of their minds, the space and the quiet; but, except in the winter, the prairie wasn’t silent. There were birds and the continual buzz of insects, and around creeks and lakes, bullfrogs that could wake the dead; even so, it was a different, softer voice than the city. Gradually a quiet spaciousness had opened up inside her, and not once had she missed the city’s constant thrum. She welcomed winter when she was free to immerse herself in her books, which she did not have time to do in the summer. She, thus, learned to ride the rhythms of the seasons. She felt that this place had welcomed her home and rewarded her for learning how to live her new life.

“Remember, oh, most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone that fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence I come to thee, oh Virgin of Virgins, my mother. To thee I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful, oh Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petition but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.”

Mary Kaiser finished praying the
Memorare
and, trembling, brought the crucifix to her lips. “Oh, Mother of God, what am I to do?”

She sat staring at the rosary draped over her hand. She could not let Walter find her like this.

The wind rattled the windows and whipped a tree branch against the side of the house.

Mary put her boots on and her coat. She tied a wool scarf around her head, tucked the rosary beads in her palm as she pulled on mittens, and left her house. Her face, wet with tears, burned in the icy wind.

She needed to talk to someone. Not her priest. She was afraid of Father Nicolay. She had never made a confession to him of her sin. A sin unconfessed was a double sin.

She walked south for twenty minutes, shielding her face as best she could. Then she took the road east out of town, laboring, head down against the wind in ankle-to-calf-deep snow. After fifteen minutes, she stopped, and turning her back to the freezing blast, covered her mouth with her hands and wept in frustration. She wanted desperately to talk to Gustie. But she would surely die getting there. Maybe that was the thing to do. Walk into the freezing wind, lie down, fall asleep. Wasn’t cold a merciful killer? No, she didn’t have the courage for that. She didn’t have the courage for anything. She stifled a cry with her mittens and headed toward Lena’s house.

“Good night, Mary, you’re half frozen!” Lena ushered her sister-in-law into her kitchen and made her sit down. “Let me fix you some warm milk. What in blazes are you doing out on a day like this?”

January was a dangerous month. So were the other eleven, but for different reasons. Lena could understand Gustie, a newcomer, trotting out half dressed in the cold, but not Mary. Mary was born here. She poured milk into a saucepan and placed it on the stove, her irritation bristling. “What were you thinking, going out on a day like today, Mary?”

“I started to go to Gustie’s. But I couldn’t make it.” Mary was cold beyond shivering.

“Why did you try to walk? For heaven sakes! Walter can’t have his team out on a day like today? Why didn’t you hitch up your buggy?”

“I can’t handle those big horses. The Percherons, they’re too much for me.”

“Well, Walter should get you a nice horse you can handle. Why doesn’t he?”

“I’ve never asked for one.”

“Well, if you’re going to take it into your head to go wandering around in this weather you better ask him. Believe me, if we could afford another horse I’d have one. A nice little brown mare all my own. You bet your life I would.”

Lena poured the warmed milk into a cup. Mary could hardly hold the cup in her hands. Lena helped her. “Now tell me what in Sam Hill is the matter.”

Alvinia recognized the set of Lena’s jaw. It meant no good news. Mary Kaiser, right behind her, looked bloodless. They stamped the snow off their feet in the entryway, and Alvinia swooped Gracia up in her ample arms. “How’s my beautiful girl? You’re getting soooo big.” She cooed and bounced the baby while Lena helped Mary off with her coat and then took off her own. Alvinia called for her second eldest daughter, who appeared from the next room holding Kirstin by the hand. “Honey, look who’s here.”

Alice, shorter and plumper than Betty, was, of all her siblings, most like Alvinia in looks and temperament. She greeted the two Mrs. Kaisers and took the baby. “Gracia can stay with you and Kirstin in the front room,” Alvinia said, then assured Lena, “The stove is hot in there. It’s nice and warm.”

Lena asked, “Where is everybody?”

“The boys were outside chasing around like jackrabbits. But it’s so cold I made them go to the locker. They can work off all that steam helping their dad. Malvern and Lavonne stayed over last night with Annie Erickson’s girl. I don’t suppose I’ll see them till after dinner. Betty’s working at Olna’s and Kermit’s out cleaning the barn.” Alvinia shut the door to the living room, poured coffee for all, placed a plate of fresh donuts on the table, and sat down.

Reassured that they were now alone, Lena began, “We’ve got trouble, Alvinia.” She shook her head and sucked the tip of her forefinger. “Mary came to me, but I don’t know the best thing to do.”