Her Kind, a novel (4 page)

Jesus was a carpenter.

That was the first thing Zenas said to me when he had met all four of us children at Grandpa Syl’s the day after he arrived from back east.

I seemed to already know his story as if it were written down somewhere.

Zenas had learned his first vocation as a carpenter’s apprentice and saved enough money to acquire 400 acres between Greene and Washington Counties. Left with his eldest son, Ira, who had stayed there to follow Syl to Iowa for his last days.

He was named Zenas Jabez for the sons of Philip Condit son of Peter Condit, son of John Cunditt, the ancestor.

Blue-blood, Grandpa had always said under his breath when Grandma Laura had said too much about her heritage.

I did not understand the difference back then.

Rosie, your last name may be Parmlee, but you are a Condit who can actually name your ancestors.

Ask Moses if he can do that, Grandpa Syl would say to me, but he was not really saying it to me.

Zenas Jabez carried the name of his father, Jabez Condit of Prosperity, Pennsylvania, a town named for the wishes and prayers of its founders and a petulant contrition.

There was nothing more American than Washington County. Named for none other than the first president it had been, Grandpa Syl told me when I was five. Memorize all of them, he had said, and recite them in order when you can prove it. Assignment given and delivered before I turned six. He knew I was bright; he told me so when I had completed my presidential recitation. Especially for a girl, he always added.

Zenas wasn’t quite as generous with his compliments, though he was not with us long by the time he arrived in Iowa. All of the Condits back east feared liturgical debate with him, Grandpa Syl had explained to me without pride.

I could not imagine how Zenas had ever been a father to anyone.

Fanatic.

Even at 81, he would puff his chest and stand up straighter as if it were a badge of honor. That and the fathering of his 8 sons (5 daughters) were enough to satisfy his entry into heaven.

Grandpa Syl was the second son, which I always guessed was how it was us who ended up with Zenas in those final days and his brother ended up with the farm.

Who else would take such abuse and still bathe the old man?

At least he never saddled me with that name.

I overheard him tell this to Grandma Phoebe as they readied the house for the viewing.

I would never meet my Pennsylvania cousins. Too far, they had all said, to come for the funeral.

I would be fourteen years old before I ever found a solitary moment to be alone again with the Sargent family Bible. There was no Parmlee family Bible to be found anywhere.

No names.

No legacy.

No history there. Only the one we would make for ourselves in Iowa was what Grandpa Moses had always said. Crossing the river gave that privilege, I guessed.

What we had was our Treat heritage. Even as a teenage girl, I could not understand how Moses had persuaded Grandma Laura to come with him to the new territory.

She was of
the
New England Treats, founders of Watertown and Glastonbury. Advocates for the purest of religions and education of the
new
England in Connecticut.

A fine New England family with the cleanest of lines back to England.

Grandma Laura told me often of the stories of great-great-great grandpa Treat, the Reverend who went to Yale, whose great-grandfather, another Reverend Treat, actually knew John Harvard!

That’s why you are such a good reader, Rose, you get it from my side of the family, she would proudly declare, staking claim to part of me as her own.

No family Bible was needed for me to explore her family tree. Her tapestries openly told her lineage and ours the few times she let me take a look, but never on my own. She was right by my side turning the fragile pages herself, pointing out the names as if it were the Tudor genealogy on English parchment.

Each time she would share the Treat stories, out would come the carefully wrapped, delicate parcels pressed in the center pages of an immense Bible.

At the bottom, she had always stitched the same quote

In the soft scenes of life when cares are small and few I show to others of my age what busy hands can do.

L.A.T, 1805

Miss Anna Cornwall’s School for Girls

Grandpa Syl had hammered that last nail in the house on River Road on a Thursday morning and they had begun to move in.

By Thursday afternoon, Grandpa Syl was dead.

Fortunately it was May, so he was in the ground by Saturday morning. As I stood at the carefully dug grave site atop the hill that we used to call pioneer cemetery, but would later be named Parkhurst Cemetery as more and more Condits and Sargents would find eternal rest there, but not the Parmlees, I swore I heard him call for me.

RoseEmma.

By then, Emma had so many of her own ghosts, that I could not share this startling event with her. But I distinctly heard Grandpa Syl call out my name as he always had when he could not find me. Saying it as if it were all one name.

RoseEmma.

It was only then that I had cried.

Grandma Phoebe had some money after Grandpa Syl died.

She had no idea of his monetary worth when he was alive, but his attorney had seen to explain it to her. It was almost acceptable for a widow to own property and even wealth in 1881.

The money drew suitors and speculators and looks she would simply disregard at the ladies aid. Privately, she enjoyed a great humor over this. Think what Syl would say now, she would say and laugh and laugh. She was more beautiful when she laughed, even though she never thought so.

It would be weeks after the funeral before I could again visit Aunt Mary-Ann and find alone time with the Sargent Bible.

But, of course, weeks become months become years.

Back here! I had yelled, carefully closing the doors on the Bible stand.

Where’s Mary-Ann? Grandpa Syl had asked.

She took Lillie May and went to check on Mrs. Parkhurst, I replied.

Just finished hammering the last nail in the new house! he gleamed through a grin like I had never seen on him.

Let’s go find Grandma and celebrate.

We’re moving in!

Even after 90 years of this view, the thought of never seeing this river again is almost as painful as the thought of giving up breathing.

At the close of each day, I look out over the ever-moving surface and picture her on the river porch as the sun would set in a pink and lavender haze behind the one and one-half story wood frame, her faded gray skirt’s frayed edges tipping the tops of her high-buttoned black hard leather shoes that mangled bone and cartilage, molding wide feet to narrow and aching against the day, contrasted against a soft palette of subdued rose light, softer than that of the orange and red gloriousness that arose over the river each morning and gave her no solace but a brilliant call to start each day as if every day were Easter morning.

Rather, it was only in that soft, end-of-day light that Emma let her emotions she had carried throughout another long day emerge briefly. As short as an exhale, the sun’s decline allowed her to lower the resistance that she held intact till it began to set.

Taking in the sunset gave her a peace that may have been the only peace she felt in a world where she believed that being on guard was her female duty, her obligation to herself, her own assemblage of protective structures.

Only a weakness of heart, a weakness of birth could understand why she kept it all so hidden.

At least in this act of self-protection, she had done her day’s penance and as she looked at the back of her hands as she raised them to align with the colors of the sky, she felt strength in her own ability to keep everyone out, since dying was not an option until the dear Lord told her it was time to come home.

No one can understand what it was like when you crossed the river unless you had, Emma had always said.

Everyone became your family then.

Emma clutched Amelia, hugging her porcelain head so tightly as she took her almost-three-year-old steps across the expanse of ice, so wide, so cold.

Phoebe was far ahead with the baby in her arms. Above her, she could see the outline of their guide’s bull straw hat at the front of the line, reminding them of the spring to come and where they were headed. So tall and lanky was the guide that Emma could see him even from her position as last in line.

Heaviest folks in front!

The guide had yelled, a false confidence it likely was, but they so wanted to believe he was genuine.

Grandpa Syl kept his fears to himself.

No one should have been crossing the ice once the open waters had begun to break up.

Huge ice chunks floating through the rapids near them.

The old Red Bird had told the guide that the island canal was the last of the ice to break. At 12 to 18 inches deep, even a heavy load was safe, she had said. He believed her still.

Thank god we left that wagon in Illinois.

Hired to cross this chasm to redemption, a new life awaiting, and if he sank any settlers, he would have to go back and beg shop work from that Illinois plow maker and his grandiose delusions.

He quickly broke his own rule when he heard the cracking begin and Phoebe gave a look back to Emma, a good-bye look that she would never forget. Emma was running now, almost with a little skip so that she did not slip on the ice.

Jack be nimble. Jack be quick.

A widening crack in front of her appeared as a wide cavern ready to devour her and separate her forever from Phoebe, Syl, little sister Mary-Ann, baby John.

Emma would not be left behind them!

Come Lord Jesus, let’s be blessed.

1-2-3-4

Jack jumped over the candlestick.

She kept skipping in place as the crack widened in front of her and she knew she would never skip, much less step, over this widening expansion that may as well have been the entire river for how it seemed to Emma. Water began to bubble up over the ice, turning it all to slush, soon ankle deep and freezing her ribbon-tied shoes.

Crossing this river would forever overwhelm her.

The great river they had bragged on all night at the fire. The river would now swallow her up, never allowing her to touch the shore of this new place that she could see as firm ground just ahead of her family. She had been left behind.

The rough gloved hands slid neatly under her little arms as she watched the porcelain head of her Amelia fall away, forgotten. Amelia would take her place. She did not yet know that one day she would prefer to have been Amelia.

From atop the head of this giant, whose long strides carried her over the widening crack her short legs could not, she kept her eyes toward the tallest oak on shore.

You broke the rule, Emma whispered into the guide’s ear.

I sure did.

Emma found the courage to steal a peek above his bull hat brim to see the rest of her family already climbing up the short bank.

Did she cry it aloud? She could never remember.

I want to go home.

But there was no going back now.

Up the bank they climbed.