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

  “Twins!”

  “Will they have two biblical cords?” Ida asked. We’d looked at each other and laughed.

  The prospect of twins set us all to spinning and knitting, and we agreed how good it was that Matilda would have sisters-in-law living with her, and wasn’t it interesting the way things worked out sometimes, the very thing you thought you didn’t want turned out to be something you didn’t know you’d need. She’d have good help with two children being born at once. She was older to be having a first child—children—so being attended by someone with medical training was a gift as well.

  Many of us at the house church had taken turns sitting at the loom through the rainy months, and now we rolled out the rug woven with braids of color: purple and blue and a pink hue. I’d quilted a Nine Patch pillow top, and Kitty and Christine had begun two cradle quilts for Matilda’s twins. They chose an Old Maid pattern that Matilda chuckled at. My own mother joined our gatherings now since I’d made a special effort to invite her. She brought Johanna and Lou with her. My mother pointed out that we could mark the place for stitches on the quilt top with soap. It made the needles go through easier and would wash out. All of us stitched the quilt pieces that Matilda had created during her first year of marriage, a new quilt she’d worked on since completing her Sunflower quilt. She backed this new covering as she had the other, using strips of flannel or whatever she had, including pieces her mother had brought from Pennsylvania and a striped piece from Bethel.

  A quilt, I decided, allowed us some control in an often-powerless world. We could put pieces together in the way we wished, with no one grumbling much about how we did it. Even the mistakes could be fixed with little thinking, unlike in life sometimes. Quilting was better with the presence of older women like my mother to dribble little bits of wisdom into the room as we worked.

  “I’ll remember this time of family,” Matilda said, “each time I look at this quilt.”

  Matilda didn’t think she’d be able to join us very often after her move so far out from the village, but after the babies came, she thought she could. They were expected in the spring of 1867, and she promised she’d bring them along to meet us all just as soon as she could.

  “For me to play with?” Ida asked.

  “Ja. So you can check on their biblical cords,” Matilda told her.

  We kept Matilda from lifting a thing, while Jacob and his friends carried the furniture he’d built for them down from my home, placed the bed and dresser in the wagon, and drove south a few miles to what we now called Stauffer Farm.

  Despite the rain and mud and our own loss at having them go, we made the move memorable. Jacob had planted apple trees near the split-rail fence and maple trees to line the rutted road. The log house boasted two stories and offered a beautiful view of the prairie land surrounding it. I suspected that from the second floor window, you could almost see the steeple of the church that rose one hundred fourteen feet into the Oregon sky. Facing east, I wondered if on a clear, clear day one might see the snowy cap of Mount Hood, the way I could from my home. A clothesline stood ready to catch the wind and the quilts Matilda would air there.

  Stauffer Farm was what I’d always imagined Christian and I would have one day. Yes, we’d had a small cabin on the Willapa, but that was only to have been the beginning. I found myself wistful, watching Matilda and Jacob begin their new lives. It was never easy for me to say good-bye to routine. I took a deep breath and walked up the steps. Being hopeful for them scrubbed the dust of change off of me.

  “Maybe we should move back into their room, now that they’ve gone,” Kitty said. “We could have more privacy that way.” We were in our usual stitching place, starting a new project of some table runners. It was just the four of us plus my girls.

  “I’ve gotten used to having everyone in the same room,” Almira said. “My husband and I had a small cabin, and the children all slept within breathing space of one another. This has sort of reminded me of that. It’s comforting.”

  “You really miss them, don’t you, Almira?” Kitty asked.

  Almira lowered those gray eyes. “More of late. I wonder if I did the right thing in leaving him. Them.” No one interrupted. Then she said, “I’ve thought perhaps I should ask him to take me back.”

  We cast questioning looks at one another, not sure what to say.

  “What would be different?” Christine asked then. “Don’t go doing the same thing and expecting a different result. That makes a person crazy. Trust me. I know.”

  “I’m wiser, that would be different. What do you think, Emma?” Almira asked.

  She walked on slippery rocks, as far as I was concerned. Our situations were too similar, and yet I knew she felt she’d failed her faith by securing a divorce. That was one reason I hadn’t sought a divorce from Jack, that and not wanting to bring yet one more issue of disgrace for my family to deal with or for wagging tongues to talk about. No one divorced quietly in these western places.

  “You could forgive him,” I said. “Because to not do that will only hold you hostage. But I’m not sure you should forget what he did, or try again unless there’s evidence you both have changed. You’re welcome here for as long as you like.”

  “He’s still living with the girl, well, she’s a woman now, isn’t she?” Kitty asked. “He hasn’t realized how much he hurt you, or showed that he wants it any different. You’d be going back into the same situation.”

  “I don’t know if he hasn’t. I haven’t seen him now for years. But it wouldn’t be the same. I’m different, even if he isn’t.”

  “Don’t you want tenderness from him now, though?” Kitty asked. “If you don’t get it, you’ll wish you had, and be upset all over again.”

  “Your older children…?” Christine said.

  “They say nothing’s different.” She sighed. “I miss them all so much.” Her voice caught. Across the room from her, Christine’s lip quivered too, and so did Kitty’s. Soon we’d all be crying. I imagined that Almira cried for the lost joys and for the separation from her children, as much as from missing her husband. But one didn’t know, not really. When she cried, we just cried with her and for our own losses as well.

  “Don’t decide now,” Christine said. She patted Almira’s hand. “It’s winter, and the rains weigh you down, and everything smells musty and damp, and even old ways look better in memory. None of us makes the best decisions then. Although I don’t always make the best decisions when the sun’s out shining either.” She wiped at her eyes, gave a wry smile to me.

  “I don’t want this to be all there is to my life,” Almira whispered. “Not that I’m not grateful to you all. I am. But—”

  “You want to feel useful,” I offered. She nodded. “To your family. I do understand.”

  We decided to keep Matilda and Jacob’s room open, use it as a dressing room but make it easier to invite others in to stay. We’d keep our bedroom constellation, so we could hear our sleeping breaths come out like stars in the quiet of the night.

  It was while Christine and I were dressing together before going to Keil’s church one morning that I noticed that she did not need a hoop beneath her skirt. As she turned, her body formed the flow while the cloth settled over a woman who was very much with child.

  Helena appeared at our house church gatherings after the church building was finished but before it was dedicated. Word was that the dedication would wait for the bells to arrive. We wouldn’t worship in the building until then. Louisa Keil, the senior, did not come with her that day. The group always changed a bit when they attended; it was much more difficult to talk about them when they were present! I wondered if I added more to a conversation when I was absent than when I was present. I pitched that thought away.

  Helena asked if any of us had been inside the new church, and I expected a chastisement when no one said they had.

  “We await the dedication,” Christine said. She held a pile of fabric lumped over her stomach.

  I?
??d peeked through the women’s door while the church was being built. Yes, I had suggested to my brother that they didn’t need separate doors for men and women, that we were together all week long; why did we have to be separate at church? But he said it wasn’t his decision to talk about doors. Someone else had already decided.

  “The sounds inside are splendid,” Helena said. “A speaking voice makes one think they are in those limestone caves back in Missouri, where a single note resonates, filling it full. You’ll hear a whisper at the back of the sanctuary all the way to the front.”

  “So we’d best not be chattering during services,” Kitty said.

  “Not what I meant,” Helena said. “I meant that it’s going to make all voices sound as though they sang in a heavenly choir.”

  “That choir ought to have both male and female voices,” Kitty said.

  “I’m sure they’ll let the girls’ choir perform, as well as the men’s,” Almira said. “So long as they remain separate.”

  “But imagine both men and women singing…together,” Kitty said. Her persistence surprised us all.

  Helena straightened her shoulders, and Matilda, who had joined us this day, said, “Let’s sing one of our rounds. You haven’t been here for those, have you, Helena?”

  “Yes, I have,” Helena responded, but Kitty started us out anyway, by dividing the room into threes, telling us the song, and then leading the first group. We didn’t even need to watch each other; we could just sing. Kitty had the finest soprano voice.

  “That was lovely,” Helena said when we finished. She’d stopped working while we sang, folding her hands over her scissors in her lap.

  “A community of voice,” I said. “Covering up the individual flaws, ja?”

  “Kitty,” Helena said, “it might be a better dedication chorus if we joined our voices with the men’s. Since the bells have not arrived, we’d have time to practice.”

  I stared at her. Was this the Helena I knew, who thought we women should all remember our places, live only for Brother Keil’s directives? And she’d made a suggestion that Louisa would probably object to if she’d been present. “Helena,” I said, “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “Ach. What could be a more beautiful statement of dedication of our worship house than to express it in music of men and women, girls and boys?”

  “Do you think Herr Keil would allow that?” Kitty asked. “I’ve always wanted to sing in a mixed chorus. And not just to have time with the men,” she defended herself, as though anyone had challenged.

  “Ask the advisors,” I said. “See if they might really advise.”

  “This is a possibility,” Helena said. She turned to me then. “But maybe you’d do the asking, Emma?”

  “I can’t carry a tune in a candlestick holder,” I said. “Kitty would be more convincing.”

  “Ja, but you carry a tune with your words.” Both Kitty and Helena spoke at the same time. They laughed while the rest of the group agreed, “Ach, ja!”

  “You think I could influence Herr Keil in this way? I don’t know.”

  “You have much more persuasion than you might think, Emma,” Helena said.

  “Ja? Just not about what really matters.”

  While I considered when would be the perfect time to ask Keil about the music, I also wondered about the best time to speak to Christine. One evening, she and I were upstairs in what had been Matilda and Jacob’s room, changing from our modest hoop skirts into the straight lines of our nightdresses. Almira and Kitty chattered with the girls in the room beyond the hall. I tied the soft ribbon at my neckline and checked the stitching on the patch I’d had to sew on after Po jumped up in greeting, tearing a corner piece with his sharp claws. I stared at it much too long, looking for words. I knew I couldn’t wait much longer.

  “Christine,” I said, not asking, but thinking out loud, “you’re expecting a big change soon, aren’t you?”

  I heard her intake of breath.

  Her shoulders sank. “I’m not sure what to do,” she said. “I’m nearly four months along.”

  “I’m sure no one else has noticed,” I said. “I wouldn’t have except, well, we share a changing room here.”

  “One advantage of being a big-boned girl, as my father used to say. My real father, not yours.” Her eyes watered. “I’ll leave, Emma. I don’t want to put you into any difficulty with having an unwed mother staying with you. I didn’t know how to tell you. My becoming…this way…while I stayed under your roof could bring criticism to you.” She sat on the rocking chair now, at the edge of the seat. It didn’t rock or soothe.

  “You remain as long as you like,” I said. “Don’t even think about my reputation. I’ve done enough things to it myself.” Her lips loosened into a sad smile. “What have you thought about doing for yourself?”

  “Going to Portland, where no one knows me. I’ll have the baby and place it in a basket. I’ll leave it on the doorstep of someone kind. There are many kind people in the world. I’m sure I can find one of them. I thought at one of the churches. That’s what I did last time.”

  She’s been through this before. I forgot that.

  “Dare I ask about the father?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “From the fair,” I said.

  “Oh no.” She looked up at me. “That gentleman was a gentleman. We only talked and danced. I know you thought I wasn’t well behaved, but I was.”

  Had I judged her with my eyes?

  “No, it was, well, someone closer.” Her face turned beet red. “I suppose I didn’t resist his advances as I should have. I thought being at your house would help. I could be alone, away from temptation in the evenings after my chores were complete. Being my size, I didn’t expect any man to pay attention to me. I hoped none would after what happened, well, before. Then you invited me to the fair, and I found it was pleasant and I didn’t have to be afraid. But I didn’t know how to sort out a friend from someone…Before long, things just happened.” She looked up at me. “But that’s no excuse. It’s not his fault. He was only being playful, he said. I knew from the beginning.” She sighed. “But I was hopeful that he might really care for me.”

  “I’ve told myself similar stories with sad endings,” I said. I pulled a small stool up to her and sat, taking her hands in mine. “Does the man know there were consequences to his…playfulness?”

  She shook her head no. “But he isn’t a candidate for marriage.” I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.

  “You deserve better anyway,” I told her. “I wonder if there isn’t some other path for you to take, besides leaving your baby on a doorstep and having to find a new life somewhere far away.”

  “It’s for the best,” she said, “my plan. The loss of this baby will be just penance for what I did, twice now. I don’t deserve anything but punishment, for not learning from the first mistake.”

  “Ach, Christine, the size of our infractions doesn’t matter, at least I don’t think it does. Little acts can be as devastating as big ones.” I thought of my little indiscretions that had resulted in the colony removing my sons from me; at least I still believed my actions were the primary reasons. “‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines’ is a scripture right in the middle of one of the Bible’s great love stories. We can have wonderful romances, but then small things can spoil it. I’ve made my own big mistakes, but it’s the little ones that have caught me in the end. God is somewhere in this, Christine. In the big and small of it. We have to let ourselves be found.”

  “If that’s so, I wish God would show Himself,” she said.

  “That’s just what we’ll ask for, then.”

  We sat quietly for a time. I could hear the sound of her breath coming in and out steadily. The other women made noises in the next room, muffled as a child’s sleepy chuckle. I heard Po bark once in play. I knew, in these wilderness places, that’s where we’d find grace, but it was still so hard to accept it. I ached
for Christine, sent my arrow prayers. I stood up and found her a handkerchief in the hanky drawer of the cabinet. She wiped at her eyes and sighed.

  “Sometimes I’d like to go to sleep and then wake up and have this all be over with. Be a sleeping beauty who never gets kissed again into wakefulness.” She smiled a bit.

  “No prince is going to come along and wake us up, I agree with you about that,” I said. “I tried to make a man into a prince who wasn’t. At least you haven’t done that. I fell asleep all by myself, and unlike that Grimms’ tale, I was the only one who could decide to wake up. That’s when I accepted Karl’s help and came here. You’re my sister, Christine.” I took her in my arms. “The good news is once we do wake up, we find out we’re really not alone.”

  Sweet Scents

  Together, a few days later, Helena, Kitty, and I made our way to Henry C. Finck, to see whether he’d consider conducting a joined choir of both boys and girls, men and women at the dedication. We chose him first in our plan of action. I considered the consequences if we failed at this. Keil would have another black mark to put against my name. He could use this to move me from the house or, worse, take my girls from me so they wouldn’t be exposed to such a “contrary woman.” But Helena’s part in this gave me hope. And working with her and my sister made the risk worthwhile.

  “But of course,” Henry C. Finck said, exuberant. “It’s good Wilhelm has approved such a novelty.”

  Helena and I looked at each other. I wondered if her need to be precise and correct in all things would force her to explain that we had yet to talk to Brother Keil.

  “Well, he hasn’t exactly—,” Kitty began.

  “Yes, yes,” Helena interrupted. She explained rapidly that she thought it was a splendid idea. “Wouldn’t it sing great praises to our Lord, who had to wait so many years for this church to be finished?”

  Henry C narrowed his eyes. “Wilhelm hasn’t approved such a thing, has he? He’s not that…inspired in his thinking these days.” I swallowed. “But I am,” he went on cheerfully. “So we’ll rehearse, and if Wilhelm complains, we’ll explain that boys and girls singing together are no worldlier than having the railroad come to our hotel. He certainly wants that to happen.”