Her Kind, a novel (10 page)

Mid-west.

Not east; not west.

The in-between place.

Moses and Syl had brought their families to the middle and had no desire to go back east or beyond to the unknown west. Having crossed the great river was enough for them, so they laid it down here.

Midwest.

More than a stopping point.

It became the place defined by where they had settled, not by where they were headed. They were to go no further. They would not look back.

And it was here they stayed to join the others before them who had persevered on their own to establish a village on this bank of a river that had belonged to others. A first cabin ridded of savages, as the president had called them. Moved them out, the cavalry had, and now it was safe and free for my grandmothers to settle their domestic wares. To build homes. To raise families. To harden their knuckles and their brows to scrub bare floors and bear blinding blizzards. To lose children in a quiet forest of red and orange glory not last seen since a new England autumn. Glorious was a Lord who gave them strength drawn from a river so rapid that they kept moving as well.

The thousand encamped in their midst till they were again removed to another in-between, this one far from the great river. Not east; not west.

Black Hawk’s purchase. Section 85 of LeClaire Township was prospering. As it should, the president had said.

Then, when the followers crossed the great river, they knew where it was they had arrived.

The Midwest.

Iowa.

The new country had a center. It became a stopping point for those who could not or would not go on. Midwesterners: those who chose not to go further.

In every convex of people therein lies a gulf.

An expanse of space and time that creates a separation, a distance. A division that keeps us separate from those who are different than us.

The other.

To the south of my grandfather’s Parkhurst settlement lay an expanse of land they began to call the gulf years before I or my sisters were born.

To me, it represented the physical distance we surround ourselves with when we believe our differences make us unique, unlike others. It is easier to shun those we don’t want to define as our neighbors and can make their very existence difficult by our snobbery. Our visible disdain and dislike.

I could never understand if it was their difference in language or difference in religion or simply the food they cooked that really created the divide.

Silence as a weapon. It was just easier that way.

More civilized to ignore them.

Trees were used as the silent guardians of the division between Parkhurst and the gulf. Mr. Parkhurst and Grandpa Syl protected their village with this silent army: Walnut, Chestnut, Oak, Elm became streets. Suddenly the Presbyterians and Methodists got along.

Some think this was all about hate, but real prejudice can only exist within a deep-seated fear.

Fear of the other.

When the German emigrants became too many to count, Grandma Phoebe’s discomfort in living so close to the settlement was apparent to everyone except her husband. This was so odd for a woman who had never complained about building a wood frame in the midst of a relocated native encampment or crossing a semi-frozen river with a baby and three-year-old. Only to bury that baby a few days after reaching the other side.

Get your husband to move you, Grandma Laura told her when she tired of her hypocrisy and her mimicry of language and dress.

He did it once, he can do it again.

We did not have a hand in that, Phoebe countered as if guilty over what they had done, having the first-ever argument with her daughter’s mother-in-law.

It was the first cross words they had ever openly shared.

The English belong here. Besides, we were here first, she concluded her side of the debate.

It did not deserve a response.

She had learned the tactic from battling Moses when he knew he was in the right and no words would change it. No use to fight an unarmed man, she would smile to herself remembering her own father’s words of wisdom. Yet, this somehow did not completely ease her mind when debating a misguided woman.

Unladylike.

Years later, I recognized they rarely spoke of such volatile issues to each other ever again.

As the October chill meets a warm water surface, the steam hovers above a glistening current this morning.

The mist settles over the surface as if it is coming for me.

An illusion perhaps, but I could see Annie and Clara emerging from this cloud rising above the surface. They were coming closer and I feel their presence with me now in each of these days.

They are here with me.

I am not afraid.

My sisters’ walks were so different, as if they each carried on from only one side of our family. Annie with her refined, graceful steps, mimicking Grandma Laura, and Clara with her clodding, almost stumbling, forward, like Grandpa Syl when he had scoped out a new clearing near the Wapsi.

But Syl’s stride had led, and Clara could never really keep up with anyone.

I feel the sadness now as I remember how I used to make excuses for her awkwardness as if it were somehow a reflection of my own unworthiness.

Her walk on water this morning reminded me of how much I actually admired her inelegance. There was no pretense with Clara, only the simplest joy of life as she tried her very best to keep up with the rest of us.

She had so wanted to keep up and not miss out.

What was the main difference between the Parmlees and the Condits? I asked Emma as a delicate question once as I grew into a young woman and began to see the vast differences over similarities between her own clan and her in-laws.

The Parmlees paid their way across the river.

The Condits had to work for it.

But what about the Sargents? I asked, quite gingerly, as if she had forgotten.

They stole it.

The way she said it.

Felt like a rabbit run over my grave.

No one ever whispered their innermost fear at the first Woodbridge-Treat-Condit-Sargent-Parmlee birth.

We welcomed each of Harry and Lillie May’s children with a sigh of relief.

Normal.

No visible trace of too-close alliances coming to call on a poor innocent infant who had found his way to be born in Iowa through the three families who came to live together along the great river.

Midwestern was what they now called us back east.

Heartland.

Separated, not connected, by the massive coronary artery of the great river where Syl had found us a home. We stayed and became centrists of a sort.

Like some old county fair card reader, it was I who had pieced together these patterns. Forecasted a lot not worthy of Harry’s children. My work was done.

I would never be aunt to these children. I had raised my sisters and brother and that had been enough for me.

We were now three generations removed from the desire to pick up and head west as soon as one turned of age and had enough independent means to join a group of other ignorant fools who needed out for one secret or another.

Jealousy.

Property.

Bloodline.

A common triptych that had fired up the soul of many a second son. So strong did it burn that he convinced his wife, from an established family no less, to join him on his go-west excursion. Convinced her that they would seek their own fortune, carve their own place from the future out of a blank land that awaited their mark.

They had crossed a great river and dropped their souls onto the hallowed ground they named as their own. Gave birth to a generation that would forever remain here.

Born here.

Native.

Mary-Ann looked at me with the relief of a grandmother unburdening her bundle of guilt, having carried it for much too long.

They were close. Loved each other always. As cousins, best friends. There were no easy answers on this dilemma brought from back east.

Genetics, they were calling it later on.

Through some science of blood and cells and tissue, that we had not understood until after we had blessed these cousins to wed, the weakness in the family trees may come skipping through our generation and showing up in the next.

We had thought it was safe and good, only to begin to learn that it was too close, too linked, like the Wapsi feeding the bigger river. The water-year you, at first, so rigorously fight until you learn to accept and live within it.

Lillie May finished her birthing years at three children.

It was all that had mattered to her mother. Once the fingers and toes had been counted, Aunt Mary-Ann always headed back to work.

10 fingers! 10 toes!