The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (21 page)

It all came down to this: I still wanted to make Isaac glad that he had married me. I wanted to live up to his admiration. I wanted to hear it again in his voice.

He found my hands. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get some sleep.” I let him pull me to my feet. My hands in his, he rubbed his thumbs along my fingers.
Maybe I can do it,
I told myself. Isaac had a way of making things work out. It might be a mild winter. Fred Schuling could bring supplies. The shame of giving up would be a burden too heavy to carry. Better to try than to quit.

“All right,” I said.

“You’re made of grit,” Isaac said. He put an arm around my shoulders and steered me to the door. The letter in my apron pocket crackled. I put my hand to it.

“Not now,” Isaac said. “It’s late.”

I nodded. Whatever Sue had to say could wait.

N
othing’s too big for you.
Those were the words I heard in my mind the next day. I heard them when the rain started back up again, beating the tin roof. I heard them as water ran into the downspouts and gushed into the rain barrels. Rain pinged in the basins that lined the edge of the porch, and the words tapped in my mind. Three days of rain and everything was better. Three days of rain and a fast-moving stream coursed through the wash by the cottonwood.

It was a day for inside work. Isaac and John were in the barn going over equipment, seeing what needed cleaning and oiling and what needed fixing. Me and Mary worked in the kitchen and the little girls played under the table with their rag dolls. Mary stirred the big pot on the cookstove; she was boiling pillowcases. I folded one that she’d finished and cranked it through the wringer. A basin caught the squeezed-out water. I’d use it again. I wasn’t about to waste a drop.

A cool breeze came through the kitchen window.
Fall,
I thought.
It’s come.
The baby still hadn’t kicked, but the bleeding had slowed down. Emma’s burned hand was some better. The drought was broken; determination had taken hold of my mind. I believed myself able to face all things, even Isaac’s faults. I was determined to live up to his admiration. Me and the children would stand the winter without him.

I hung the pillowcase on the clothesline we’d put up earlier in the kitchen. It’d be a few minutes before there’d be another one to wring. I put my hand in my apron pocket and felt the unopened letter from Sue. “Mind the girls,” I said to Mary.

I went to my bedroom, closed the door, and got out Isaac’s magnifying glass. I eased into my rocker; it was good to get off of my legs. I slipped my thumbnail along the flap of the envelope and pulled out the folded pages.

My nerves balling up on me, I held the pages to my nose and breathed them in. I could almost smell the black ink. The letter came from a home that had electric lights, a kitchen sink with running water, and an icebox packed with cuts of meat. It came from a city where people went to movie houses, listened to music on phonographs, and drove Model Ts on paved roads. Telephones rang, and in narrow apartment hallways, neighbors spoke to one another.

I smelled the pages again like I could bring that kind of life to the Badlands. Then I told myself it was time. I held the letter to the light that came through the small window over the bed. I put the magnifying glass to Sue’s words. They rose up big before me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pages dropped to my lap. I felt like crying and laughing all at the same time. I thought it would be my mother. Johnny never crossed my mind. I read part of the last sentence again. Johnny is dead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I folded the pages, careful to keep the same creases. I put the letter in the envelope. Johnny had been dead almost ten weeks, and I never even had a feeling about it. When we were children, I always knew when something was wrong with him. I could read his face; I could tell what he was thinking. He could do the same with me. When Mama scolded one of us, it hurt both of our feelings. If one of us did good on a school examination, we were both happy. That was, I always believed, because Mama raised us as twins. Johnny was just eleven months and three days older than me.

We weren’t twins, though. I was everyday plain, but not Johnny. He was the one with a God-given gift. He played the piano. He played so well that his music glided in the air like loose strands of light blue silk long after he bowed his head and his fingers left the keyboard.

Pain squeezed my chest. Johnny couldn’t be dead. But the words were on paper, and those papers were in my hands, and that made it true.

I put the letter back in my apron pocket. I got my shawl. I walked through the kitchen. “Mind the girls,” I said to Mary.

“Mama?” she said.

“Mind the girls.”

I put the shawl over my head. I went out into the rain and stepped off of the porch into the mud. I sank up to my ankles. I lifted each foot, one at a time, the mud sucking at my boots. It coated the hem of my dress. I made my way down the rise to the barn, seeing nothing but Johnny’s face. From the time he turned fourteen, his brown eyes carried a nervous look. That was about the time when Dad started talking about Johnny being old enough to work in the slaughterhouses.

“My hands,” he would tell me when no one else was around. “Butchering will kill my hands.”

“You don’t have to,” I always said. “Not you. You’re meant for more.”

I pictured him bent over a piano, his long fingers barely touching the keys. I saw a swinging baseball bat smack the back of Johnny’s head, knocking him into the front of a brown upright piano, its wood scarred with cigarette burns. Sheets of music scattered as the last notes that Johnny ever played crashed under his collapsed weight.

“Isaac,” I said when I got to the barn door.

“In here,” he called.

I stepped into the barn and wiped the rain from my face. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. Isaac was with Jerseybell in her stall. The rotten stink coming from her was so strong that I put my hand to my nose like that would make a difference. I went to her stall. Long, ropy strings of dark drool hung from her open mouth.

“I was just coming to get Mary,” Isaac said when he saw me. “I need a hand. Had to send John out to upright a few fence posts. A little rain’s nothing to him.”

“Isaac,” I said, but that was as far as I got. My mouth wasn’t working right, and my face was numb.

“She’s in a bad way,” Isaac said, and he could have been talking about me. He ran a hand along Jerseybell’s back. “Poor girl. She’s served us well, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.” My eyes began to water.

He said, “I’ve got one last thing to try. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to put her down.” He picked up a long, black rubber tube. “It’ll go hard on Mary. If it comes to that.”

Isaac had Jerseybell on a short rope tied to the railing. “Hold the lantern for me, will you?” he said. “Hold it high.” He pried open Jerseybell’s teeth and looked into her mouth. Her startled eyes rolled, but she didn’t make any effort to pull away. “Stinks,” Isaac said, shaking his head. He glanced at me. “This making you queasy?”

“No.”

Isaac looked again at me. “You look queasy. You all right?”

“I’m all right.”

He took me at my word. He cleaned the snot from her nose with a rag. I looked away; cow snot was the one thing I couldn’t take. Then, with one arm tight around Jerseybell’s neck to hold her still, Isaac snaked the tube through one nostril. When the tube was in her front stomach, Isaac said, “Get the castor oil going.” He kept one hand on the tube at Jerseybell’s nose.

I hung the lantern up, took off my shawl, and put it on a railing. I found the funnel and began pouring the oil into the tube.

Jerseybell didn’t bother to jerk her head away from Isaac’s tight hold. She watched me, her eyes rolling like she was pleading for me to stop this, like she wanted to be left alone so she could die in peace. “Don’t blame you,” I said to her.

“What?” Isaac said.

I cleared my throat. “I’m going to need milk in about a week’s time.”

Holding the tube in place, Isaac glanced at me, his eyes going to my bosom. I shook my head and said, “Something’s not right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. I’d just feel better if we had a milk cow.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Didn’t want to burden you.”

Jerseybell began to wheeze. Isaac used his fingers to clear the snot from her nose. My belly rolled; he wiped his hand on the rag that hung from his back pocket.

Isaac said, “Al’s got a milk cow he won’t be needing.”

“What’s he asking for her?”

“He’ll be fair.”

I didn’t have it in me to worry all that much about the money. I put my mind to pouring the oil down the tube. I measured it out slow; I didn’t want to drown Jerseybell. I did all this, but it was like I had stepped outside of myself and was watching from a distance. And yet everything was clear and sharp: the pain in Jerseybell’s eyes, the white in Isaac’s sideburns, the dirt under his fingernails.

When I started pouring the second bottle of oil, Isaac said, “I’ll get you a hired hand for the winter.”

“And have a man here with you gone?”

“It’d have to be a boy.” Isaac gave the tube a little twist. The oil gurgled. “Can’t pay for a man. A boy might be willing to work for food and board.”

Another mouth to feed. I said, “A white boy?”

“Most likely.”

“One what’s willing to mind a Negro woman?”

“He will if he’s hungry enough.”

“Mary,” I said. “There’s Mary to think about.”

Isaac shot me a quick look.

“A boy might—”

“She’s just twelve.”

The memory of Mary walking with Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s nephew came to mind. They had walked close with their shoulders nearly touching. Franklin had held Emma. He had put his hand on Mary’s arm when he passed Emma to her.

“She’ll be thirteen in a few weeks,” I said.