Zilah filled her cupped hands with water as warm as blood. As she drew her palms toward her face, her fingers looked pink instead of their usual olive and the lines in her palms seemed to move like tiny worms swimming across her wide hands. She splashed the water at her feet, staining her blue pajamas wet. She shook her head. She tried again to bring the alkaline liquid against her pocked face.
She stared at the bowl with the yellow bat on it that sat before her. When so much had been thrown out and left behind on this journey west, this precious gift from her sister still survived, still blessed her with the assurance of home and the sacrifices she'd agreed to make. It meant good fortune, the yellow color, and the bat itself stood for wisdom. The character for the word was the same as prosperity, and Zilah smiled at that thought as she washed her face with water held by both wisdom and riches. So far, on this journey of wagons with women, both had been her gift. Until the return of this sickness. She dabbed at her eyes with the wide silk of her sleeve.
Still, no one knew the future, one's “lot,” as the woman Mazy called it. Mazy spoke of a Lord said to know all their lots who was a kind father who wanted the best treasures for his children, “to meet the desires of their hearts.”
But Zilah had been orphaned early in her life and was unfamiliar with kind fathers.
Suzanne Cullver blinked her eyes open. She shivered with cold as her hands patted for the single blanket pulled from her. Probably her son Clayton gripped it in his pudgy fingers. No, he'd slept close to Zilah last night. She patted around, didn't feel the blanket or her son. She must have kicked it off herself. She felt the dry desert air take the moisture from her eyes, heard water again but knew now it was not the stream in her dream.
The Humboldt, that's what they'd called the river she could hear. They'd followed it for days now, and she could imagine the muddy banks with the lowering water levels like steps marked in varying colors on the side, but she could not see it. She'd heard about the green meadow surprising them at this ford, green in late September, and she'd felt the cool of the cottonwood trees and not just the shade of the wagon shadow at dusk.
She heard rustling sounds, muffled voices of the women she traveled with. Eleven women heading west to who knew what, bound together by the deaths of their husbands and brothers and loved ones— and their agreement to care for each other.
Then the lone man's voice, Seth Forrester's voice, reminding her that today was a different day. Seth had joined them at the Humboldt, had already been in California. He knew an “easier way through the Sierras,” he said, and he would lead them on that new trail, lead them to their new homes by another way.
She took a deep breath. The changes tired her, or perhaps it was the constant interpretations she had to make, still getting accustomed to her world without sight, without Bryce.
At least one thing was certain: She had a plan for her own future once they reached California. This was her focus. She smiled. She was not yet willing to accept that perhaps the Asian woman was an answer to a prayer—not her prayer. She didn't pray much herself these days. But it might be Mazy's prayer, or Elizabeths, that God answered. Those two insisted God was in their every day; he wasn't just someone sitting far off in a flowing robe.
Fate. That was what it was for Suzanne. Fate had placed her here as a blind widow, and now fate was tending her and her children. And fate would allow her to buy out the contract of the Asian woman known as Zilah. Doing so would help Sister Esther, who now had one too many Celestials for the number of husbands promised. Best of all, Zilah was someone who could tend her children but not interfere with Suzanne's life, not try to tell her how to raise them. It was a good blend of stepping out into newness while hanging on to something old and solid— it would accommodate Suzanne's need for independence.
“Clayton? Are you there? Zilah?” Suzanne listened for the breathing of her son. Odd, she heard no answer.
Maybe Zilah had taken him out already. “That won't be good,” she said out loud.
Pig, the slobbery dog, barked outside the wagon Suzanne slept in. “I know, you heard me and now you're pestering. I'm getting up,” she told him. The chill chased away the warmth. She felt her way into kneeling on the mattress, sweeping the air before her like a woman washing a table. She rose, then touched the hanging blanket that held her youngest son, Sason, a name that meant joy.
“I must have been delirious when I named you that,” she said softly, her touch swinging the shawl hammock. She listened for the baby's coos. Heard only the smacking of his lips in sleep. “I haven't given you much joy at all, have I?” she whispered. Her breasts ached, but she decided to dress first since Sason slept. She'd change, step out and call for Clayton, then get Zilah to help her place the baby at her breast.
She thought of the dream as she pulled the ribbons of her nightdress, then lifted it off over her head. Her heart ached. She missed her husband, missed the scent of him, his tender touch. Only in her dreams did she see those she loved as they appeared before she lost her sight. Only in sleep-swept images did her husband still smile and gaze at her through eyes of devotion and love. In her sleep, Suzanne saw him and herself—ageless—along with familiar landscape and color and light. Only then and not when she chose. It was just one more desire out of her reach.
Suzanne Cullver, former photographer and wife, desired now to just get dressed by herself in a wagon near the Humboldt River. She sighed, slipped her arms inside the wrapper, pulled it around her. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons. Then she found an apron to tie against her waist, gathering the yards of material around her slender frame.
What had Bryce said? Keeping focus. A photographers sound advice even to a woman without sight. She scoffed to herself. Bryce had always stained the world with positive colors.
Still, she had direction now: Zilah could care for her children while she found a way to make a living before her resources ran out.
Elizabeth Mueller yawned wide, glad for the cool nights that flushed the hot sand of its blistering heat. This place, this Lassen Meadows it was called, at least offered temporary shade. Even if the cottonwood leaves clattered in the fluttering wind making her think for a moment it just might be a rattler there beside her tent. Elizabeth grunted as she rolled in her blankets. She was big as a house but still lacked enough padding on her hips to scare off the morning pain. Ah, well, it could be worse, much worse, and for many on this journey of women begun as wives and sisters and daughters it was.
Faster than a flash flood, what began as a journey west from Wisconsin and Missouri and places even farther east became first eleven wagons of widows turning back home, then ended with three wagons turning west again. They tried to grasp that life as they knew it had ended. They could never go back to what was.
What they had now was each other, all together in one place. And they'd come this far, stretching themselves to do new things, helping each other, getting through storms, desert crossings, arguments and misunderstandings and grieving. Lots and lots of grieving. Elizabeth wore two years of widowing on her own broad shoulders, but for her daughter, Madison “Mazy” Bacon, it was now just three months wearing a widows threads.
Elizabeth pushed her arm against the warm earth and sat up. The eastern sky unveiled a pink as deep as ripe cherries streaked white with wispy clouds. Wasn't there something sailors on Lake Michigan always said about morning pink meaning warning? Well, that couldn't apply to this part of the country. This land was made up of all sand and shore and not a sea in sight. Elizabeth counted on smooth sailing.
Zilah watched, wary. People stirred.
What they want? Trouble me. They trouble me.
She moved closer to her water bowl, the bat's wings on its side open in flight. Clayton ran under a wagon.
That a small boy or white fox?
Her attention turned to the sounds of the woman Elizabeth walking with her slip-hip from her tent to the bumbling woman Lura's tent. “Get up, Lura. Time's awasting.”
Why so noisy? No
need make noise.
Zilah pushed her hair back with wet fingers, twisted the shiny black strands into a butterfly at the base of her neck, held it hostage with long wooden sticks. Someday, she wanted ivory hair sticks and pure rice powder pressed against her cheeks to fill the pockmarks. But for now, she settled for the warm water and feeling clean if only for the moment. She shivered again and held herself with her arms, squeezing her eyes shut, hoping to stop the shaking.
“You ladies best bury those morning toilets,” Seth Forrester said, walking up from behind her.
Why so loud? No reason, no reason make so much noise!
Zilah turned to him, scowled. The tall, yellow-haired Seth man—as Zilah thought of him—had been present at the crossing of the Missouri when there were many wagons, many men, husbands and sons. The Seth man offered kindness, tipping his tall hat even to her, a simple Asian woman on her way to marry a foreigner. Traveling with them the first few days out, he'd helped Sister Esther and her brothers teach English classes to Zilah and the other three Celestials, and then he'd ridden on, not bound to any wagon train or person. “I'm a gambling man,” he told them all. “Though all of life's a game of chance.”
“He no teach us chance games,” Zilah had complained to the other girls. “Just English.”
Then months later, just a day past, he'd ridden back to them from the west, already having taken a shortcut known as Noble's Cutoff.
All together, the women voted to let him lead them to Shasta City, California, leave the safety of the familiar trail where the dust drifted thick with the wheels and feet of previous travelers. They would rise up across the desert, then rumble through the mountains, not over them, but through, the Seth man said. To a new home in mining territory. Then Zilah and Mei-Ling and Naomi would take a wagon or the stagecoach south to Sacramento City, to their husbands, instead of walking there in quick-quick steps, beside this river as they had been.
“There's gold in every stream, I'm saying,” Seth told them at the campfire. Zilah felt chilled and feverish even last evening, but she heard the words through the canvas as she helped put the boys Clayton and Sason to bed. “The place is humming with new blood, new life, wealth from the water and the land, and wealth to all the folks bringing in wares to supply them. Even folks from your homeland, Mei-Ling. Chinese by the dozens there, I'm saying, and not many women, of any race.”
“Indians?” Adora asked, her voice a too-high whistle. The sound had grated on Zilah's ears. Adora traveled with her daughter, Tipton, and had lost a husband to cholera and a son named Charles to disappointment.
“Yes ma'am. There are Indians. All the miners and such moving in is stretching their ways a bit, but I think we'll work things out with them. They're reasonable, and there's gold enough to go around, by my eyes. Don't have to be greedy. Truth is, the Indians aren't interested in the gold, just the streams. They prefer the salmon.”
Elizabeth grunted. “Best you talk to the Mohawk tribe and the Virginia slaves about our nations history of reason and greed,” she told him. “And how we use cruelty as a tool to get our way, too. There's a history to ponder.”
“History can hold a soul hostage,” Seth said. “Make you think you cant change. California, that's a place that welcomes change with open arms, says ‘step right up and see what you can do you never thought you could.’ Look at me, leading a train of women. Is that a risky gamble or just good luck?”
Zilah's eyes furrowed with the stream of words. She knew neither Mohawks nor Virginia slaves. She did know stories of cruelty. And women with little say in their own destinies.
Uncertain of what waited for them in “the States,” as the Seth man called California, Zilah had voted for the plan to head to Shasta City. In her history, she had never been asked such a question, where she wanted to go. Even coming west had not been her choice, but a way to save face, to send money to her brother-in-law who had taken a worthless girl into his home and fed her to keep her alive. Yet in this new land, next to a dusty wagon, someone asked her desire, and she had nodded her head and said, “I go Noble's.”
Then everything changed. Another death—Betha—this one not the cholera that took most of the men. This one leaving four small children needing more tending and new paths to walk. Her heart raced again.
No, no.
That death and the others had happened before the Seth man arrived to lead them from the river, hadn't it? Yes, she was sure now. An aunt returned to care for the four motherless children. Ruth Martin. Yes, the woman with the whip who rode horses. She wore mens clothes, with mens pants covering her legs, just as Zilah now did.
But that was before, weeks before. She pressed her fingers against her temples. Zilah's head felt full of webs, mixed up her thinking. Was that when her throat began to hurt, her eyes start their watering? She shook her head. She'd forgotten her straw hat.
Everything different here, like rice paper once wrapped around treasure that now crinkles, never smooth again.
She squinted at the morning sun. Seth closed in on her, where she stood beside the wagon. Her heart raced. He walked close enough to touch her, leading a pair of oxen. He tipped his hat, then stopped the oxen in front of Suzanne's wagon, talking and working them back on either side of the wagon tongue. His white hat shaded one of the animal's heads as he leaned to the oxbow. The man ran his hands along the oxen's backs, disrupting flies as he drew the chains to the wagon tongue.
The noise of the oxen shaking their heads at flies and the chain being strung startled Zilah. Her ears hurt, and her eyes ran water like snow melting from high mountains in spring.
Why crying?
She did not feel like crying, and yet the water came. She fisted her eyes, wished she could make the noise stop. It was the fault of the sounds and the sand and the heat.
“Make too much noise,” Zilah said. Seth stood at her words, lifted his fingers to the brim of his hat. “Why you look at me?” she asked. “Too loud, too loud!” She put her hands to her ears.
“You're shaking,” Seth said, reaching out his hand to her elbow.
Zilah found his words cunning, like a fox. She jerked away.
“Zilah? Something wrong?”
“Who Zilah?” she said, her shrill voice hurting even her own ears. “Name Chou-Jou. Who tell you my name Zilah?”
“Why, you did. And Sister Esther,” he said.
“Who Sister Esther?”
Seth shook his head. “You know who that is, she's your…the woman who manages the marriage contracts, why you're heading to California. Maybe it would be good if you stepped over to her tent. Here, let me help you.” He reached out.
Maybe he steady me. Maybe he strike me.
She couldn't be sure so she struck first, her fingernails leaving a track of red welts on the back of his gloveless hand.
“Hey!” he said, jerking away.
She could see by the look in his blue eyes that she startled him, but she couldn't think why. He was being thick, making a game of her. She had to defend.
“Looks like you're running a fever Zi—I mean Chou-Jou, is it?”
“You make fun of name,” she screamed. Her heart pounded, and she couldn't catch her breath. She breathed through her mouth, gasping in air.
“Best you sit down, Zilah,” he said. “I'll get us some help.”
“Name Chou-Jou,” she screamed, then, in her flatfooted gait, she brushed past him, holding the sides of her head, staggering toward Sister Esther's tent. Her eye caught something moving. A dog! No, boy. Small boy. Clayton. The child smiled at her as he stood next to the tall wagon wheel. He waved, and she thought she saw him sneer. He show teeth! No boy a dog. He try to bite! Stop him! She had to catch him, had to protect. She turned and headed toward this danger.
In the mirror on the back of the wagon, Tipton watched Zilah lumber across the sand then turn toward Clayton. Good, someone was looking after the boy, keeping him from trouble. Suzanne certainly didn't notice. Well, she couldn't, Tipton guessed, not really. T
ipton gazed at the mirror as she dotted alum onto the blemish on her narrow chin. Those Asian women had strange habits, running with their hands to their heads. Her eyes looked at the lupine-blue sky surrounding her heart-shaped face framed by wispy blond curls. At least her hair was growing back, and less of it remained on her combs when she pulled them out. Elizabeth said it was her eating that affected her hair. How ridiculous. Some old woman's thinking. Whatever the cause, neither her face nor hair could take much more filth and grime. She wore a bonnet every day to keep the sun off the peach complexion that everyone back in the States said “just belongs with that creamy blond hair.” Without soap and decent water, she didn't feel clean, didn't feel the least bit creamy or peachy at all. She just felt parched and dry and old, much older than her fifteen—almost sixteen—years that had already seen the death of her father and fiancé and the disappearance of her brother, though the latter she considered a blessing. Charles Wilson was not a man to be trusted.
With the tips of her fingers she pinched her cheeks until they blushed red. At least she had blood left. That was something. “Good morning, Mr. Forrester,” Tipton said, being bold. She watched as the man turned slowly away from his staring at Zilah, a frown on his face washing into warmth as he saw her. “You look quite smart this morning.”
Seth Forrester tipped his hat and smiled, showing even teeth, all still there and not yellowed by tobacco like so many old men she knew.
Tipton thought to carry on the conversation with him, but he seemed distracted, rubbing at his hand. He turned as though looking for Zilah, then bent to the wagon tongue. She picked up her combs and wash basin and headed toward her mother's tent. Seth was a nice man but old, probably twice her age. Tyrell, her true love, had been older too, but he was different. He'd been perfect. And he was gone. She'd never find someone to love her like that again, ofthat she was sure. Still, it was good to know that despite the devastation of this journey, the blast of wind and sand acting as pumice to her skin, even with thinning, matted hair, she could still engage in flirtation.