The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (31 page)

The cab stopped. Isaac told me this was the place, we were getting out. I didn’t wait for him to help me; it didn’t cross my mind—I was wondering why we weren’t at the train station. The street was lined with shops, and the sidewalks were crowded up with white people. They hurried past us, not seeing us, not knowing it was our wedding day. Some of the men had long hair and wore beards that came down to the top button of their black suits. “This way,” Isaac said, and I followed him into one of the stores.

It was the first time I had ever been in a jeweler’s shop. I had walked past such places before, and a few times I had stopped long enough to admire the diamonds that sparkled in the window displays. But being inside a jeweler’s and being surrounded by all that beauty was a glory all of its own. Jewels glittered in the glass cases that lined both sides of the narrow shop.

A white man with gray, thinning hair was behind one of the glass cases. He was hunched over a square of black material, and like most of the men on the street, he wore an odd black cap too small to keep out any kind of weather. He studied a pocket watch laid out on the material. He looked up at us when we came in. Pressed in one of his eye sockets was what looked to be a little telescope about an inch long. The man took it out and eyed us for a moment, surprised, I thought, to see a Negro man in uniform. Then he cleared his throat as he slipped the watch into his breast pocket. “May I help you?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Isaac said. “I want a wedding band.” I looked at him, taken aback. Never for a minute did I expect a band. My mother didn’t have one. Mrs. DuPree did, but she had married a doctor.

The jeweler smiled slightly. “Ah, yes. A wedding band.” He looked at me and then back to Isaac. “And this is your bride?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re a lucky man,” he said. I bit my lower lip, but I smiled all the same. He waved me closer to the counter; I obeyed. The jeweler said, “Will you do me the kindness of taking off your glove?”

My smile disappeared. My hands were rough and chapped even though most every night I soaked them in buttermilk and wore cotton gloves to bed. But both men were looking at me, so I put my cloth bag on the countertop and took off my left glove, my face hot with shame.

The jeweler studied my hand, his forehead drawn. I imagined him thinking that a gold band would look out of place on such a ragged hand. Instead, he said, “Long fingers. Very nice.” He picked up my hand. I drew in my breath. I’d never been touched by a white person before. He ran his pasty forefinger and thumb along my ring finger. I felt faint; his touch was soft and cool, and I wanted to pull my hand away. He didn’t seem to notice. He said, “Little boned and no knuckles to speak of. A size four I’d say.” He let go of my hand and stepped away. I steadied myself. He got a ring of keys from his pants pocket and unlocked a case. Humming a little song to himself, he pulled out a tray. He brought it to us and, still humming, he studied the wedding bands, his eyes looking at my ring finger from time to time. Finally, he put three gold bands on the square of black material.

One band was wide—it would cover the lower third of my finger. It was the kind the ladies in Mrs. DuPree’s Circle of Eight wore. It wasn’t meant for work; it was for show. As pretty as it was, I didn’t want it. I looked at the band beside it. It was nearly as thin as a pencil point; hard work would wear it away. It wouldn’t last long. The third band was not too big, not too small. I felt a surge of desire for it. It wouldn’t get in the way of hard work, and yet it would hold up. From the corner of my eye, I saw Isaac as he studied the three bands. His forehead was furrowed, and it came to me that he was embarrassed to ask how much. My face flushed; he was sorry he had brought me there. It was foolish to buy such a thing when he was giving our marriage only a year. It was foolish when there were cows and horses to buy. I turned to him and whispered, “I don’t need a band.”

“Yes,” Isaac said, his voice snapping. “You do. You’re my wife. I won’t have people thinking otherwise.”

Stung, I took a step back. The jeweler made a soothing sound in his throat. “If I might suggest,” he said. He held up the thin band, the one that would wear out too soon, the one that looked to be the cheapest of the three.

“No,” Isaac said. He pointed to the in-between band, the one that I wanted. “This one,” he said to the jeweler, not looking at me.

“Yes,” the jeweler said. “Excellent choice, excellent.” He held it up in the light as if expecting to see something wrong with it. When he didn’t, he polished it on the square of black material. He handed it to Isaac. “She’s your bride,” he said.

Isaac started to give me the band, and then he stopped as if understanding what the jeweler meant. He picked up my left hand. I held my breath as he worked the wedding band down my finger. It was like I was getting married for the second time that day. When the band was in place, I thought I felt Isaac give my hand a little squeeze before letting go. I stared at the band, the gold so bright that I went woozy from the beauty of it and from all that had happened that morning.

“Congratulations and best wishes,” the jeweler said. I looked up and smiled at him. He didn’t seem to see; he was leaning close to Isaac, saying, “Now if you’d care to step this way.”

It was me what did the stepping away. I went to the front of the shop while Isaac paid. I stood by the window and looked at my hand. I hardly knew it. I felt grand; I felt like a lady. But for all that, I wished that Isaac had bought the band to please me. I wished that he bought it because he cared a little for me. But he hadn’t. I put my glove back on.

Years later, my band was worn and scratched. My knuckles were swollen from all the years of hard work. It’d be hard work getting it off if the time came.

I held my baby boy to me one last time and kissed his cold cheeks and his closed eyes. I held him out to Mrs. Fills the Pipe. She took him from me and as she did, our arms tangled. She leaned closer to me over the bed to keep from dropping him. I shifted my baby’s weight to her, and it was at that moment that we both looked into each other’s eyes.

Her eyes were black like my mother’s. Her skin was brown like Alise’s. Her face was tired and sad like mine. Her sister-in-law was dying but she’d helped me because Mary asked her to. Mrs. Fills the Pipe kept my children from losing their mama. All that from an agency Indian.

Isaac hated Indians but that didn’t make it right. It didn’t mean that I had to. It didn’t mean I had to hold on to grievances that were never mine.

I couldn’t find those words, though, not to say them out loud. Instead I tried to say it with my eyes. Her eyes, looking into mine, went soft. I believed she understood.

She turned away then and put the baby in the cradle and pulled the cheesecloth over it. She went to the door and opened it.

“Mrs. Fills the Pipe?”

She stopped. I’m leaving, I wanted to say to her. For my children, the living ones. If it was just me, I’d stay the winter, I’d see to this baby. I’d put out food, I’d look for him to play tricks. But I can’t let another one die here. I can’t let the Badlands swallow another child.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe stood waiting in the doorway, her head turned away as if listening to something outside. She shifted her hip liked it ached. Her mind, I saw, was on the road, on her hurry to get her nephews back to their mother before she died. I said, “Thank you.”

She put her hand up, her way of saying good-bye, and then she was gone.

 

 

 

A lantern’s light jittered, throwing a nervous shadow on the bedroom wall, but it was the wind’s whistle that woke me up, and in that moment all that I had lost came back to me. The hurt of it choked my chest, making it hard to breathe. Then I saw Isaac asleep in my rocker, his chin on his chest. Relief washed over me. He was all right; nothing bad had happened to him. I eased air into my lungs, pain shooting through my belly and legs, and just that quick, I was angry.

I had had a baby coming with nobody to help but Mary and John, and it took a knife to get the baby, and he wasn’t breathing, and Isaac hadn’t been there for any of it. He’d said he’d be home by breakfast, but he hadn’t been. He’d thought I’d be all right, but I wasn’t. That’s what he always thought about me—it was what he wanted to think. Now he thought I could make thin supplies stretch over the coming winter. He thought a hired hand would mind me, and this hand—a white boy—would work alongside me. Me and this hand and Mary and John could upright broken-down fences and mend windmills when the snow was high and the north wind blowing hard. I could leave Liz for long stretches to mind her little sisters. He believed I could do all that.

“Isaac?” I said.

His head jerked up, awake all at once. “Rachel,” he said. “Thank God.”

“Where’s John?”

“Asleep, in bed. He’s all right. They all are.” In the dim light I saw Isaac’s eyes flicker toward the cradle. The muscles around his mouth pulled.

“Where were you?”

“A son,” he said, his voice low. “He’s—”

“Where were you?”

He put his hand to his face, pulling at the tight muscles.

I waited, looking at him hard.

“I got here as soon as I could,” Isaac said. “I—” He stopped, cleared his throat, shifting in the rocker as if gathering himself. He went on. “John got lost on the way, got turned around. After he got to Al’s place it took awhile for Mindy to find me. Al and me were out doing a roundup.”

Yes,
I thought.
While I was birthing this baby—this baby what died—you were picking out cattle, cattle that you expect me to feed and water and tend to this winter with nobody to help but children.

Isaac said, “Mary told me about the squaw.”

“Her name is Mrs. Fills the Pipe.”

He didn’t say anything.

“The Badlands has taken the last of my children,” I said.

Isaac looked at me.

“Me and the children. If you go off to the gold mine, we’re leaving. For the winter.”

“Not this, Rachel. Not now.”

“I can’t run the ranch alone.”

“You have to.”

“I can’t.”

“Do it anyway.”

I looked away. He didn’t believe me. He had it fixed in his mind that I couldn’t leave. I didn’t have any money. This was all talk, that’s what he thought. But he didn’t know. I’d find a way. Like he found a way to buy more cattle.

Isaac got up, his knees popping. He stood over me for a moment, his shadow spreading across the foot of the bed. I couldn’t make out his face, but I knew what he was thinking.
Stop complaining.
I heard the words as if he was saying them.
You knew what you were getting; you asked for this life. You bargained for a year, and I gave you a house and children. I took you out of another woman’s kitchen; I gave you my name. I pulled you up.

Isaac turned and went to the cradle in the corner. He pulled back the cheesecloth and picked up the baby. His back to me, he held our son. The lantern’s light made Isaac’s shadow tall, narrow, and jerky. Outside, the wind whistled low, making a hollow groaning sound. All at once, Isaac’s shoulders slumped and shook, startling me. This man what pushed himself hard every day, what never gave up, what wouldn’t let anyone else give up, this man was crying. I’d never seen him cry before, not even when Isaac Two and Baby Henry died. I didn’t know that he could.

Isaac was a man of ambition; he was the kind of man I thought I’d wanted since the day I saw Ida B. Wells-Barnett in Mrs. DuPree’s parlor. He hadn’t just pulled me up; he’d pulled himself up. The land had done that for him. He believed it would do the same for our children. He’d never let go of it.

But I had to leave; I had to take the children. Maybe there was a time when I would have stood the winter without Isaac. Maybe I even could have gotten us through. But that was before the drought; that was before I’d birthed eight children. That was before I’d lost three boys. And that was before I understood that our children needed a dab of sweetness, that they needed to see there was a world outside of the Badlands.

Isaac put our baby back in the cradle and pulled the cheesecloth over it. Without looking at me, he said, “The burial will be tomorrow. I’ll get started on the coffin.”

The burial. Then, “Isaac?”

He turned back.

The birthing, I wanted to say. It could’ve killed me. Tell me you were wrong to be gone. Tell me how this scared you bad. Tell me how it made you see just what I meant to you. Tell me how grateful you were to the woman what helped me. Instead, I said, “Why? Why do you hate Mrs. Fills the Pipe?”

He gave me an odd look, one that I didn’t know the meaning of. He said, “Because they bowed and scraped. Because they gave up.” And then he was gone.

I
never said another word about leaving. Isaac didn’t believe me, I knew that, but I was all out of ways that would make him see it. I had nothing left but a scrap of hope that he’d change his mind about going to the gold mine. Holding on to that hope, I got up from our bed and did my best to make like that September was no different than any other. As Isaac expected, me and the girls sorted seeds for the fall garden. Heavy with sadness for my baby and all that I might lose, I planted those seeds, thinking it might not matter that I was doing this so late in the season. I patted them into place anyway, my mouth set, not having much to say to anybody.

In late September, Isaac got two hands in—neither of them much older than sixteen—to help drive the cattle to market in Scenic. When they got back, he wore a downhearted look and that told me the cattle were worth even less than he’d hoped. The winter supplies that he brought home then, short as they were, likely took most of the money. Without Isaac saying so, I saw how those cattle prices made him all the more determined to work the mine. All the same, I hoped.

By the end of September, me and Isaac had become like strangers, polite and saying only what was needed. We stepped around each other, our eyes not meeting, our hands not touching. The days turned shorter as nights came earlier and stayed longer, carrying a chill. That chill scared me bad; it made my blood cold; I couldn’t get myself warm; my teeth chattered even when I was working at the cookstove. It was only October, but for me it was January. Nights, I couldn’t sleep for thinking about stories of people snowed in, going hungry, running out of cow chips, freezing in their sleep. Fixed on those stories, my heart would seize up with fear and before I could stop myself, I’d get up and hurry to the children in their beds. I’d bend over them, close, needing to hear them breathe. If Isaac noticed any of this, he didn’t say anything. Likely he thought I was grieving for the baby.