A Mending at the Edge: A Novel (Change And Cherish)

  Kate waited for us at the entry point. Christian had joined her. He rushed to me and hugged my skirts at my knees. I blinked back tears.

  “Wasn’t that fun, Mama? Did you pray for others going out?”

  “I did, Ida,” I said. I still held Christian, looked at Andy then back to my daughters. “You’re a good little teacher.”

  She beamed. “We need to eat now.” She grabbed at Christian’s hand, pulling him away. “That’s a lot of work. We worked up an ap-tite.”

  I smiled. I’d heard those same phrases from Kitty when we finished the laundry.

  “You’ll come too, won’t you, Andy?” I asked my son. He’d held back. But with my invitation, he moved up beside me, and we began to follow his brother and sisters.

  “Father Keil lets John Giesy speak at the service,” Andy said then. “John talks of being helpful one to another.” I tried not to see John as a hypocrite, speaking of goodness to one’s neighbors while he inflicted pain on his own extended family. Here I’d just prayed for him, and so quickly I was ready to condemn. I sighed.

  I hadn’t attended either of the two services they’d held at the Keil house since this whole thing with my sons had happened.

  “It’s always good to be helpful,” I said.

  “You didn’t want Martin to take care of us, I know, Mama. But you are being helpful too,” he said.

  “By not fighting to keep you with me? What kind of mother does that make me?”

  “We’re with you,” Andy said. He reached for my hand as we walked. The touch of his wet fingers to my palm made me suck in my breath. How I love this child. “I can help Martin now. And they will send me to school, Mama. I’ll be a doctor. Like you said I could be. Martin says that can happen because you let it be so. That I should thank you for thinking so far ahead. He says you sacrificed for us, that you put aside your own wishes in order to give us this chance. That’s a Christian thing to do.”

  “Martin tells you these things?”

  “He says you took a hard thing and turned it into something better. He…admires you. He tells me I should admire you too.”

  I watched my feet, gripping my son’s small hand while my heart took in those healing words. I slowed my pace to match Andy’s. My sons didn’t condemn me. They didn’t expect me to fight. I could lower the standard I’d carried all my life. Nothing else that called could ever be as important as this moment in time.

  Johanna and Lou, my sisters, leaned against their garden forks, ceasing their work as I approached. Both were tall and slender with hair the color of straw, the opposites of Christine and Kitty and me. They all lived in the small hut next to the mill my father had bought from Keil, and I imagined they used the common smokehouse or the storehouses of the colony for their staples. But we all had our own kitchen gardens too, and I could see they’d been digging potatoes. Pumpkins rose in a pyramid beside a small pit. They’d line it with straw and place the orange globes inside, covering them with leaves like a quilt, pulling them out as needed through the winter. Chickens scratched at the ground shaded by weeds they’d wisely let grow just for that purpose. Window boxes spilled what remained of large blooms.

  “You can take some seeds,” my sister Lou said as I eyed the flowers. “William grows them. Bigger than a fish head, some of those blooms.”

  “Is Papa here?” I asked.

  “Working,” Lou said. She wore that lopsided smile.

  “In the mill?” I asked, nodding toward it.

  “Delivering flour,” Johanna said. “Jonathan came by to help him.” She stared as though considering whether to say what she said next. “Papa’s getting on in years, you know, Emma. You really should come by to see him and Mama more. They miss you.”

  “Do they? Mama hasn’t even been at my home yet, and the path goes both ways. None of you except Kitty has sat at my table and let me serve you.”

  “All we need is an invitation,” Johanna said.

  “A family shouldn’t have to wait to be invited,” I told her.

  “We’ve never been a typical family, now have we?” she said. She dropped her pitchfork then, to grab Lou’s elbow before my sister lost her step. Johanna steadied her. I hadn’t even seen Lou look like she would stumble; Johanna had a discerning eye. “Mama’s inside,” she said and returned to her work.

  I entered and found my mother sewing. She patched my father’s jeans, or maybe they were David’s or William’s. They were those hard canvas pants, what the miners used who came up from California. “These things wear forever,” my mother said. “But you let a hole get started and pretty soon it’s a cavern. You’ve got to nip things in the bud, like pruning a good grape vine.”

  “I wonder if I should try to fight this thing that John and Keil have set forward,” I said, blurting out the thing that most crushed against my heart.

  “Oh, and what would that be?” She raised her eyes to mine.

  Can she really not know? No, she knows. Her eyes hold compassion. Surely it is meant for me. “They’ve given the boys to Martin, so he can raise them.”

  She winced, I thought, but said, “Martin’s a good man.”

  Her words stung. I thought she’d be appalled and say so. “What choice do I have?” I began, as though she’d found fault with my actions. “If I insisted they stay with me, Keil would ask me to leave the house. I’d have to move back in with them or impose on the Schueles or…come here and move one of my sisters off her mat.”

  “There’s always your husband,” my mother said.

  “Jack? Oh, Mama, he hurt me and the boys, he really did. I didn’t make that up. And Andy, well, Andy hates him; I’m afraid of what they’d do to each other if they had to be under the same roof again.”

  She put her mending down. “Then you must make the best of the choices you have. I’m sorry, Emma. Sorry for the decisions you’ve had to make, and for some of them not working out well. But we all have to deal with such things.”

  “Should I talk with Papa about…moving in here?” I said. “Do you think that might dissuade Keil and let me have the boys again? We could all live right here.”

  “I wish we had room.” She lifted her palms to the walls of the tiny house. “And if we came to live with you, it wouldn’t make Keil let you have your sons back, of that I’m sure. Besides, your father wouldn’t do that now. He’s disillusioned with Keil and wishes your brother would see the problems the colony has as well. Your brother is devoted. I remember when your father was too.”

  “Jonathan hasn’t even talked to me since this happened.”

  “I’m sure he will soon. He worries you’ll force him into something. He doesn’t want to distress John, who has so much on his mind.”

  I mocked myself. “The infamous Emma Giesy, strong as an ox, able to convince grown men to do things they otherwise wouldn’t.”

  “You did talk Christian into staying at Willapa.”

  “He wanted to stay! He saw how it could help us all. It wasn’t all me, Mama, despite what Louisa and Helena might tell you.”

  “Ja, ja, I know,” she said. “And the Willapa people had good lives there, or they’d have left long before so many did.” She watched me for a moment, then lifted her mending again. “Things change, Emma. Sometimes for the good, sometimes bad, ja, but always, they change. You fall in love; you grow old. Your sons live with you; they move away; they go on to school. One mends the edges of one’s life to keep it from fraying. In due time, Emma. It will be better in due time.”

  “Christian said I was impatient.”

  “It is a Wagner trait,” she said. Her smile was kind. “But so is doing what must be done for the good of one’s family. You’ll do that too, Emma.”

  Perhaps, as Andy said, I already had.

  Wishful Thinking

  September 15. First true guests sit in my parlor.

  September 30. Wild geese make their way across the sky. They call to each other, they trade places, the leader tiring from the effort of pushing aside the wind
to make the others have an easier flight. A new path is formed; all the while it looks as though they’re in the same formation, never changing, but they are.

  The knock on the parlor door sounded almost like a dog’s scratch. It grew louder. I could hear it from the backyard where I had my chickens penned. I’d let them loose for the day and finished gathering up their eggs, holding the blue ones aside for Ida’s and Kate’s lunches. I assumed someone else would answer the door, but no one did. The knocking grew insistent. It was an early hour for visiting.

  I peeked through the window to see Louisa Keil and Helena Giesy standing there, carrying reticules, wearing bonnets, and dressed as though they were attending a cotillion or something almost as formal. I retied my scarf at the back of my neck but untied my apron. It was so early. They were granting me an honor by coming to call all dressed for the occasion, and yet the early hour assumed almost a family right to intrude. I took a deep breath and opened the door. I looked a fright against their freshly laundered calico dresses.

  To my smile and welcome each woman nodded, then took out a calling card with their names printed in lovely Fraktur lettering that Louisa had probably done. I had no receptacle for cards. I looked around. Then I took down an oyster shell from its shelf; I’d cleaned it and painted a picture on the smooth side; it would have to do. I set the shell on the small table beside the bench and placed the cards there, thanking my visitors. I directed them to the bench. I’d stuffed pillows with goose feathers and quilted the covers with pieces of the children’s clothes and new calico I’d purchased at the store. I motioned for them to sit down on the pillows, because the bench was so hard. They picked up the pillows, commented on the fine stitching, and then sat, with the toes of their shoes pointing straight east and looking like dark eyes peeking out from beneath their hems.

  “I’ll fix tea. Or coffee if you’d like.”

  “You have coffee?” Helena said.

  “Dried peas,” I corrected. Helena liked accuracy. “I throw in a few beans I’ve saved from each distribution.”

  “They weren’t too expensive for a time,” Helena said. “But with the war, everything is costly, don’t you find?”

  “I still call it coffee.” I sounded like my mother’s friends back in Bethel when they’d come to call.

  “Oh, no need to explain, Emma,” Louisa said. “We should expect that you’d have finery the rest of us only dream about.”

  “Finery?” I wanted to say, “At least no one took your children from you,” but five of her children had died, and such words would have been a cruel reminder.

  “Your own home, Emma. Before even the church is finished,” Helena said.

  Louisa gazed around. “Not that furbelows aren’t warranted. Didn’t you have them on that petticoat of yours one time?” She knew about my ruffles? “Frills are a good thing, especially when you make them yourself. You should put some of your paintings up. I liked your work.”

  “I’ve done so few,” I told her. I longed to tell her that I’d signed up for a class, but I hadn’t found a way to bring it up to Keil, to see if he’d honor that part of our agreement. In a perverse way, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of naming yet one more thing he’d claim I’d done for myself at the expense of the colony. Wanting to take the course felt like a violation of my sons now. How could I enjoy something when the one duty of my life I hoped to succeed at, being a good mother, was now in question? Still, it struck me as a pleasantry that Louisa had noticed my bare walls and suggested that my paintings might add charm to them.

  I listened for the activities of the rest of the household while I gathered the coffee things. Everyone remained quiet. They could come down the steps and into the kitchen without ever stepping into the parlor, but no one was in the kitchen yet either. The coffee boiled. I returned with it in the glass tumblers we women had made ourselves. I’d ground the edges down so they were smooth as a baby’s lip. I handed the women square quilted napkins to wrap around the hot glasses.

  “So you think you’ll stay home from the fair this year?” Helena asked. “That’s such a shame.”

  I’d told no one anything about my fair plans. It must be Helena’s way of making a suggestion, but I didn’t know which way she wanted me to go.

  “I haven’t decided. And I didn’t think anyone would notice one way or the other.”

  “It’s always so festive,” Louisa added. “My favorite time of year. Oh, Christday is too. And Easter. And, of course, my husband’s birthday.”

  “Someone needs to remain here to help cook,” I said.

  “Ah, but Christine Wagner, your new sister, has become quite a fine cook. Did we tell you she was living with us at the gross Haus? She seems a lovely girl and a hard worker. I’m not sure why your parents gave her up.”

  “She’s a woman complete unto herself,” I said. “Not beholden to a father, brother, husband, or son. She’s on her own at twenty. My parents likely had no say in giving her up, as you put it. She can choose to live where she likes.”

  “She doesn’t distract the men from their work, the way some young girls can,” Helena said. “Does Matilda still stay with you?” She’d untied her bonnet strings and let them hang loose on either side of her neck. “Kitty’s found a place here as well, we hear.”

  I wondered if Matilda and Kitty were subjects of the first part of her comment. “Matilda’s upstairs. We have a routine. Almira rises early with me to prepare breakfasts. Matilda and Kitty help clean up, then begin other tasks before they go off to take care of colony business. Well, Kitty goes off. Matilda stays here. As has Almira, looking after the children.”

  “Not all the time,” Helena said. I must have looked confused. “You don’t leave her alone with them, do you? She really isn’t supervised, Emma. Or haven’t you noticed?”

  “I notice Almira is helpful with my children.”

  “This Almira is not whom I referred to,” Helena said.

  “Matilda? Her work is praised from the tailor shop. She never complains but simply does what must be done. If she is sometimes off on her own, what is that to the rest of us? She is nearly thirty.”

  “Still, unsupervised…,” Helena said.

  “Weren’t you unsupervised as a young girl?” I asked. “Isn’t that how you met your bridge engineer, John Roebling?”

  She stiffened. “We were never alone.”

  “Not ever?” I asked. “Even your brother and I found time to get acquainted, standing outside the door at dances during breaks from the band. No one else could hear us talking, so I’d say we must have been unsupervised too.”

  “That got my brother a…spirited wife,” Helena said. She chuckled, but it didn’t take away the sting.

  “It got him a good and steady wife and three fine children, that’s what it got him. Is there some reason why you decided to visit this morning, Sisters, unannounced?”

  The two women looked at each other. Louisa sighed. “We don’t mean to pry. But the woman staying with you. What is her name you said? Almira. She looks after the girls?”

  “She does.”

  “Is her married name Raymond?” I nodded that it was. Louisa gasped. “You were right, Helena. She’s the woman written about in the papers.”

  “Suppose she is. Does that matter?”

  “We’re…we’ve become aware of her presence here among us, and it’s…unsettling,” Helena said.

  “The colony has always taken in widows and women in need,” I said.

  “Ja, bitte, it’s enough that you live here without a husband or brother in your own home. But to have a divorced woman staying here, influencing your girls, well, we’re concerned. And with single women here as well…”

  “For whose welfare? Mine? My children’s?” I calmed myself. I didn’t want to challenge them. I wondered if Almira’s presence would allow these two women to somehow bring about the removal of my daughters too.

  “We mean no harm, Emma,” Helena said, as though reading my mind. “
It’s for your safety we’ve come. Sometimes the perspective of others can be useful in making better decisions.” She placed the quilted napkin onto her lap and smoothed it. The coffee had cooled.

  “Other perspectives. Ja, I’m sure you’re right about that,” I said. “Let me introduce you to Almira. That would give you another perspective.”

  “Oh no,” Louisa said. She spilled what was left of her coffee. I rose and got her a linen. I thought of bringing Almira in and forcing them to meet her, to see that they feared someone out of ignorance. We tend to judge more harshly from a distance.

  I patted Louisa’s skirt with my linen. “You’d find her a quite refined Christian woman.”

  “Not if she’s…divorced,” Helena said. “I’m not sure you’d be welcomed here if you had insisted on divorcing Jack. Our Lord was quite clear about the place of divorce. He did not like it.”

  I sat with the damp linen in my own lap. “Doesn’t it strike you as interesting that a woman was even mentioned in Scripture in regard to divorce? I mean, women had no…power then. Why bother commenting that loving another while one was married was the only grounds that permitted a man to divorce his wife? That verse was more about how men should behave than about women. Up until then, a woman was like a…bench.” I nodded my head to the bench they sat on. “A piece of property for use by her husband. Almira’s divorce, from my understanding of it, resulted from her husband’s bringing another woman into his bed.” I hoped I wasn’t sharing a secret Almira would want kept silent. “For sixteen years she endured this. In Christ’s time, she would have had some status.”

  “That’s not how the newspapers recorded it,” Helena said.

  “Did you read it in German?” I asked. She shook her head. “Then maybe whoever told you what was written didn’t translate it well. Besides, men write the newspaper accounts, and it’s likely they would give her husband’s story the greater weight, over the real facts that might sympathize with a woman.”