The Daughter's Walk (21 page)

“You may think it's about family, Mama. But from where I sit, it's still all about money and maybe power too.”

“Oh, Clara.” She patted my back. Then, “Where's Lillian?” Mama stood, looking to the barn, the house, back toward the fields. “Where is she?” A frantic look filled her face.

“She was right here, Mama. I'm sure she's all right.” Mama started toward the barn, turned back toward the house. “There, Mama. In the barn shadow. Looking for eggs maybe. She's fine.”

“
Ja, ja
, okay. Good. You're right. She's fine.”

“It wasn't your fault, Mama. It wasn't.”

Mama sighed. “I didn't listen to God's guidance,” she said then. “That's my fault. I didn't listen for His voice telling me right or left, walk this way. I prayed for wisdom, but only after I accepted the wager. I thought He opened the door to save our farm, but He didn't. I never should have left. Remember that, Clara. Listen for His voice; don't trust your own.”

S
wallowing my pride, I approached the Stapleton residence. It was futile, I knew, but I hoped I'd find Forest at home for the summer and maybe move our relationship along. Absence made the heart grow fonder, didn't it? I wouldn't be as foolish as my mother had been, forced into a marriage without love. With a year passed, Mrs. Stapleton might relent and consider hiring me again, opening a door the trip had closed.

She had not and did not. Nor would she give me a letter of reference. “Your choice will have long and far-reaching consequences,” she told me. “No one in Spokane will hire you as a domestic. That latest news article, about your writing a book about that ridiculous trip? Nonsense. Your father must be mortified to have a wife and daughter who are so public about your financials.”

I wondered how mortified he would be when our farm went into foreclosure.

But her hostility toward me forewarned. I was refused interviews,
not hired at the one or two I was given. No suffragette women sought a domestic, apparently. It would take time for our story to be forgotten. Until then, I daydreamed again, but this time about how I might make contact with Forest to have that luncheon he once promised.

The newspaper carried the story in the spring of 1898 announcing the engagement of Forest Stapleton to a local girl. Forest worked in his father's bank, and the newlyweds would make their home in Spokane.

I stuffed the letters I'd written to him since the theft into a packet, along with the clippings and the signatures and my sketches. I couldn't bring myself to throw them out.

I found the scissors and cut my hair. It would be easier to care for while working in the fields.

The farm became my refuge. I relieved Olaf so he could find work that paid, as his reputation hadn't been sullied. I plowed the fields, harvested grain, milked cows. I stopped dreaming about Forest or even going on to school anymore. The one chance I had for acquiring a large sum of money meant writing the book and hoping the sponsors would honor their commitment, but that was a lost dream too. To attempt it would put Mama at risk and probably myself as well. I could move away to another city and try to write the story. But I was no author. I knew that. Even to call myself an artist was questionable. No, I was good with numbers and figures, with solving problems that weren't a part of a family's journey. I could design a breast supporter that I didn't need now that we weren't walking, walking. I hadn't worn it since we'd come home.

No Estby would speak of our trek again. Our efforts would keep
up the farm, but it was clear: there'd be no miracle of rescue. A foreclosure notice would be posted soon.

In the next two years, Ida mellowed. With no mention of the trip and Mama's fading, her quiet sewing, her allowing Ida to discipline the little ones, Ida assumed a position of authority in the family as though she were the oldest sister. Ida no longer needed to send angry barbs at either Mama or me. Only if one of us forgot and spoke of the trek would she say, “Now, Mama, we'll have none of that.” My mother clammed up as though slapped. Even Arthur spoke those words if we talked about anything that could be associated with the walk. Once, when I recalled the Chicago exposition, Billy said, “Now, none of that, Clara.” He sounded like my stepfather.

But otherwise, the family appeared to accept—or perhaps ignore—us.

My mother and I were passive participants in this family reconstellating. I felt powerless to change our status and so took solace in the fields, in watching the grain come up, in pulling at weeds, in feeling the heads between my fingers with the wish for a good harvest. I hoped for food to eat and maybe enough leftover to pay down the debt. The companionship of the landscape also kept me from watching my mother disappear into a woman I no longer recognized.

When everyone was asleep, I'd often pull out the old sketches I'd made and reread the news clippings as a reminder that once I'd done something unusual and brave, that I wasn't always this woman who waited for her life to begin, who couldn't hear the voice tell her to go this way, walk this path. I suppose it was a reminder of how a life can
change. What we'd done had been remarkable by some standards, but foolish too. Perhaps the path to wisdom required making mistakes.

Our weekly routine included trading eggs for staples, and butter and milk for boots or coats for the growing children. At Christmastime, Ida made the
julekaga
. Mama slept, and when awake, she sighed. She was as fragile as a
sandbakkel
. Even the children singing in the Christmas choir didn't brighten her eyes. Nothing seemed to interest her except conversations about saving the farm.

“We will keep this farm,” she said when my father counted out the money available to pay the interest on the loan. “They won't foreclose. God will see to that.”

She carries a fantasy again
, I thought. But then, we'd been back nearly three years, and still we hung on to the property. Maybe there was a guardian angel looking out for us.

In our Little Norway, as our neighbors described the Mica Creek valley, we lived inside an aquarium where everyone could see how we fared. They acted as though we were still under quarantine. Ole played cards with his friends, but few came to visit with Mama. I swam around in the same routine. My companions were family and the dog. And I was totally dependent on others for my survival.

I awoke in the night with hot sweats, fears of living my entire life this way, a wakeful nightmare.

The new century found us in the same straights as we'd been in before, and I almost hoped the foreclosure would happen so we could move on. Instead, my stepfather's health improved. He felt up to working in the fields a little more, his back stronger than it had been in years. He told me he'd be managing the farm from now on. My help was no longer needed.

“Haven't I done well with it?” I said.

“It's a man's job,” he told me. “Now I'm good enough. I can do it. You can find work in Spokane.”

“Doing what?” I said. I guess my mother hadn't told him about my blacklisting by the Stapletons. Had he thought I'd chosen to stay on the farm of my own accord?

“What you did before,” he said. “Service. It's what good Norwegian girls do.”

“I'm an American girl,” I said.

“Then find something American.”

I lay awake that night annoyed that I'd become a pawn. Maybe Mama's desire to make the walk had been more about escaping her daily routine than about serving the family. No, she'd wanted to save the farm and have an adventure at the same time. She'd been encouraged by Spokane's reform women. There must be one or two out there who would give me a serving job. I tried to remember the name of the surgeon, the woman who'd helped Mama after her injury and the failed lawsuit.

Mary Latham
. I sat up in bed. I'd pulled the name out of the air. I took it as a sign.

What I wanted from Dr. Latham wasn't sympathy for my travails but her ability to open doors. She hadn't wanted to interfere with our “book deal” by giving us assistance when we'd asked for help while in New York, but perhaps now she might help me find work. She was a reform woman who had railed against Washington State's decision when it transitioned from a territory to a state to take away the woman's vote. Dr. Latham had assumed a profession specializing in female problems
and wasn't the least shy about it. She'd even requisitioned a patented device to help in women's surgeries. She would be an ally, I was sure. Why hadn't I thought of her before?

I took the train to Spokane, where Dr. Latham invited me in, a woman wide where I was thin. She asked after my mother's health and then, when I told her of my need for work, sat thoughtfully. “It's not a domestic job, but rather a secretary or bookkeeper.”

“I'm good with figures, though I've had no training,” I said.

“I suspect they'd train you. Let me see what I can do,” she said. “Do you have a card to leave me?” I shook my head. “That's a must,” she told me. “Domestics don't need cards, but professional women do, and Clara, you will one day be a professional woman. Of that I have no doubt. You come from good stock in your mother.”

And perhaps even from my father, though that I'd never know.

The idea that she saw possibilities in me buoyed my spirits. I needed to be around people who looked forward and not always back, or worse, attempted to stay the same.

So it was that a week later I received a letter asking me to come apply for a position of secretary to a small business. The owner and interviewer was Olea S. Ammundsen.

I didn't need to look for her card. I remembered her: the woman on the train.