A Tendering in the Storm (Change and Cherish Historical)

  “Asking might be a good way to begin,” I said pulling the bag from her grip. “Imagine if I just took your Louisa for months at a time, just whisked her away while you weren’t looking?”

  “And would you have let us take Andy?” Andreas said. “If we had asked?”

  “He belongs with me, his family.”

  “He needs us in his life too,” Barbara said.

  “Ja, and it is the grandfather who must lead the child now. We let you have your mourning time. Now you must come to your senses. There must be a man in this child’s life. It is the right way.”

  “Karl Ruge, his teacher, is in his life. You lead him. Martin does, don’t you know. He has many good men to influence him. Isn’t that the very benefit of the colony? He needs one good mother to tend him. He’s only five,” I pleaded.

  “The age of Kindergarten in the old country. Some in the States, too, begin school at such an age and the Kinder stay where they can be easily schooled.”

  “Ja, ja, I know.” I’d stepped back and Andy leaned heavily into me.

  “Then we will see him in school,” Andreas said. I nodded. “And you will bring the children to visit.”

  “I always did.”

  “More often.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Ja. And in return, you will never take him away from this valley and from me without my agreeing.”

  “We will never take him away again without you agreeing,” Andreas said. “But you must think about the possibility of the benefits for the boy living somewhere besides with you.”

  “It will never be better for him to live anywhere but with me until he’s old enough to be on his own,” I said. “Never.”

  “You speak boldly, Emma Giesy,” Barbara said. “Yet one never knows what life holds for us.”

  “My children come first, that much I can know.”

  “We’ll see,” Barbara said. “We’ll see.”

  Andy took the knapsack from me. “Let’s go, Mama,” he said.

  We turned, me carrying Christian at first, then as we moved down the road, I let him walk. Kate skipped beside her Andy, swinging his hand. Andy hadn’t spoken after I’d interrupted him except to ask that we leave. As we walked, though I cajoled him, he didn’t say a word.

  But the farther we got from Fort Willapa, the more he relaxed. He smiled at Kate, who kept hopping beside him, or jumping in front of him. He laughed once at Christian, who attempted a somersault and landed with cedar boughs blanketing his hair. At the river we waded across, it was so shallow in this season before the rains. Since Kate and Andy were barefoot, they splashed on ahead. I took off my leather-soled shoes, tied the laces and swung them over my shoulder, then lifted Christian as we walked across. The mud felt cool and oozed between our toes. On the other side, I decided to stay barefoot, to feel the dry grass beneath my feet.

  The water splashing freed Andy and he laughed now with Kate and then came beside me and took my hand in his. It felt cool.

  “When you were sick, when I saw you last,” I said, “your hands and face and legs were hot to the touch, you had such a high fever. It’s good to feel how cool you are, even on this warm day.”

  “You didn’t come to get me.”

  “I did try, Andy. I couldn’t bring the babies that far with the weather so bad and sometimes Auntie Mary couldn’t watch them. But I did try. Did you get the little paper pictures I cut for you? Jack said he’d bring them to you.”

  “They weren’t you.”

  “I know. Then one day I came to take you home, but they’d already taken you to Aurora. When I learned you’d gone my heart felt broken, as broken as when Papa went away.”

  “I thought you’d gone like Papa!” He wiped at his eyes. “They told me you were home. Then we left and I didn’t know why you didn’t come with us.”

  I should have tried harder.

  “Did you like Aurora?” I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I liked the orchards. We went to a fair before we came back.”

  He’d found good things to like despite his disappointment. This was the sign of a wise child in the making. Secretly, I was relieved that he hadn’t said he loved Aurora or that he wanted to go back or that he wished he could stay with Barbara and Andreas forever and ever. He’d forgive me in time, I felt sure of it.

  “I’ll make it up to you, Andy. I’ll take you to school each day and wait for you if you want, so you’ll know that I’ll be there. Would you like that?” He nodded. It would take a great effort and the younger children would have to come too, but it would be worth it. “We’ll get up early and I’ll milk the goat and we’ll pack something to eat and we’ll get you to school. We’ll make it a festive time.”

  “What will you do all day?”

  “Why, we’ll visit Sarah and sometimes we’ll stop at Fort Willapa and see your Oma and Opa, so they’ll know that you’re where you’re meant to be, in school. It’ll only be for a month or so before the rains start and then we’ll be at home, just you and us. Our family.”

  We walked a ways farther, passed where Karl and Jack and Mary and Boshie lived. No one came out to greet us and I was grateful. I just wanted for us to be home.

  When we rounded the path where our cabin stood in the distance, Andy sped up. He pointed at “his” special cedar tree that shot up beside the barn. He called for Opal, who offered happy recognition bleats and a swinging tail. The cows mooed, more for their need of milking than Andy’s call to them. He danced around and then he stopped. We caught up to him. “Is everything all right?” I said.

  “It’ll be hard for you to take me and Kate and Christian to school every day, Mama.”

  “We’ll do just fine.”

  “I wouldn’t leave you if I didn’t have to go to school,” he said. “It’s all right. I know how to get there and back. I wasn’t sure I’d remember.”

  I squatted to his level and pushed the hair back from his face. Barbara had kept it trimmed well. They’d done all the right things—except let him be with his mother and brother and sister. “You’d remember,” I said. “You have a good mind. But we’ll take you. That’s what we should do.”

  “Because sometimes we do what’s hard, even when we don’t want to?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Because it’s what’s good for everyone.”

  “Ja. Exactly that, my little wise one. How did you get to be so wise?”

  “It’s what Opa always says.”

  18

  Emma

  Gruel or Guide

  I rose in the dark, milked the cows and goat, gathered the eggs and fed the chickens, then woke Andy up to grind the corn for mush. I packed us cheese and venison cakes with berries and a hard-boiled egg for each—good, hearty food for our journey. I even told myself that this was the true calling of a woman, to prepare food for her children and keep the hearth warm and ready, and perhaps that’s all Eve had intended in that garden long ago, nothing tempting at all. The thought—and how Herr Keil would cringe at it—made me smile.

  Next I roused the children, dressed them, checked their road-hardened feet for slivers, then put Christian on my back. We could probably get leather shoes if I asked a Giesy, but it was one more “generosity” I wanted to avoid. Instead we’d save for Sundays the thin-soled shoes, or for when the weather changed. Our clogs we saved for muddy days. Kate walked sleepily beside me, carrying a doll I’d made for her out of one of Christian’s socks. I’d wound yarn for curls and painted on the face and given her an ever-present smile. I wished sometimes I could do the same for me.

  Dawn lit our river crossing. Sunlight shining through the trees revealed an opaque sky sliced by sharp cedar boughs. At first it looked like giant balls of spider webs hanging as though ornaments in a Christmas tree, but it was bouquets of sky peeking through the branches instead. A small gray bird sang to accompany us and the smell of earthy loam near the river richly marked our way. Christian awoke at the water and then walked partway. But he tired easily and I so
on put him on my back. We arrived at Fort Willapa, the schoolhouse, just as other children arrived. Andy walked inside and before we could head to Barbara and Andreas’s, Karl Ruge came to stand at the door.

  “By golly, you made it,” he said. “Gut for you.”

  “Ja, it took some effort,” I said, “but we are all here for Andy.”

  “It makes a long day for the Kinder,” he said. He nodded at Kate, who leaned against my leg. Christian hadn’t stirred so I knew he still slept.

  “I keep my commitments,” I said.

  “Ja, by golly, I know that about you. Even when they’re tough ones.” He smiled and waved me off as he turned to respond to loud voices I heard coming from inside. Andy nodded at me like a little man and turned toward the sounds of children.

  I pasted on a smile as we headed for my in-laws. My exchange with Barbara and Andreas was strained, but we passed an hour or two. I helped Barbara spin while she cuddled with Christian, showed Kate how to thread a needle. “Begin to weave,” she said. “God provides the thread.” It was an old German saying my mother had given me. It once encouraged my days, but I hadn’t thought of it much since Christian’s death. I wasn’t sure God cared much about the weaving of my life.

  We had a light dinner and in the early afternoon, I said I needed to talk to Sarah and we spent the rest of that day visiting with her. We picked up Andy midafternoon and began the trek home. I knew once there I’d need to skim the cream from the morning milk and churn. I wanted to grind the corn so Andy wouldn’t have to do it at dawn. I’d split some kindling so each day we could have a hot meal at the beginning of our day. Dinner and supper would be cold. It was just the way it was.

  I reminded myself that we only needed to keep up this pace for a few weeks. I could do this until the rains began. A person can do most any dreadful thing for a time, as long as one knows there’s an end.

  The first day was the hardest, as we had not yet made it a routine. It was dusk when we arrived back at the bend that marked our property. Christian bobbed on my back. Kate begged to be carried too, but we were so close to being home I told her I couldn’t. She scowled and sat down in the path, arms crossed over her chest. She reminded me of my sister Johanna when she was little, marked by a stubborn pout. “I won’t go ’less you carry me,” she said.

  I sighed. “Don’t be difficult.”

  “Carry me.”

  “I’m carrying your brother. It isn’t much farther until we’re home.”

  “I’m hungry. I want to eat now.”

  We were all hungry. Tired and hungry and discouraged by effort we knew needed to be repeated. Trying to convince Kate that she wasn’t hungry or could keep going would be a useless effort too. Sometimes one just had to face a troubling thing straight on and see if it could be converted into merit.

  “Ja, ja, I’d like to eat now too,” I said. “I’m hungry enough to eat an entire … tree. Maybe that one there.” I pointed to a giant fir rising up so high Kate fell over trying to see the top. She looked up at it, lying on her back, then back at me, and little lines formed across her brow. “I’d chew the bark and have toothpicks already in my mouth to clean my teeth.” I bared my teeth at her the way a horse does when it’s smiling. “After that, I could eat a whole … horse if there was one here.”

  “I could eat a cow,” Andy said. “That’s how hungry I am.” He’d stopped for us.

  “Eat cow?” Christian said, waking.

  “Not our cow,” I told him. “I could eat … the river,” I said.

  “You drink a river, Mama,” Kate told me as she pushed herself up to sit.

  “Ja, you’re right. Such a smart girl.” I reached for her hand and pulled her up. “Come along then, what would you eat?” She offered up the house. Andy laughed at that and I smiled too. “Now that’s a hungry Kind,” I said.

  She went on to describe things inside the house, and Andy added the barn, and before we had eaten the fence rails, we were home, hearing the cows moo, and the goat bleat its discomfort with this new routine.

  I fell onto my rope bed that night as tired as I had ever been. My shoulders ached from carrying Christian, from churning late into the night. And yet I could not sleep. The soothing breathing of all my children underneath this roof should have been all the lullaby I needed, but instead I lay awake, the low embers of the fireplace casting the merest hint of pink against the logs. My throat had a scratch to it that I hoped wouldn’t go into my chest or worse, be something contagious. That thought forced me to sit up in the bed. What if I got sick? I coughed. Seven miles was simply too far to go twice a day. I lay back down. That could not happen, not now, not after all we’d been through. I turned on my side, the ache of my shoulder causing me to gasp out loud. I listened. The children slumbered on.

  Out of my aching came the words of a psalm, the sixty-ninth: “Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.” A psalmist somewhere once felt as disheartened as I felt. Yet if I remembered well, there were psalms of rescue too. What happened in between seemed far removed from me.

  I’d never prayed for the rainy season, but I did that night, my words hopelessly self-centered, asking that the rains might come early so I could keep my commitments. I did everything necessary to be the holdfast for my family, but when I imagined expending this much effort for the rest of my life, the floods overflowed.

  That night I dreamed of the river. Our small boat was moored for when the water became too deep to walk across. A ship of safety waited. But it was on the other bank, so far from where I needed it to be to help me make a safe crossing.

  In the second week of October Andy made his request.

  “No,” I told him.

  “Just until school is out, Mama,” he insisted.

  “No.” I coughed. There was something on the trail that made me sneeze and sniffle. It would pass. “There are only a few more weeks until the rains come, and then Uncle John will declare the school year over until spring. We can do this until then.”

  “Kate’s grumpy,” he said. “You stay up late. It would be better if I—”

  “Nein! It is a mother’s job to decide such things. You will not stay with your grandparents. You will not!”

  “Karl’s there. I could study at night. Now I’m too tired, Mama.”

  “I’ll ask Karl not to give you so much work to do.”

  “Just let me stay at Opa’s. I don’t want to see Christian all tired and you carrying him so much. You’ll get sick. It’ll be my fault. Because I have to go to school or I can’t live with you anymore.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “That’s why you make us go every day and take us all. So you’ll know I’m there and no one takes me away again. I know.”

  He’d come to his own conclusions and however distorted they were, he may have been right about a portion of it.

  “I want you not to worry about my leaving you again.”

  “But sometimes I fall asleep in school and Karl Ruge hits my fingers with a ruler to wake me up.”

  “He does?” I didn’t like hearing that. “Well, it doesn’t hurt you very much, does it?” He shook his head.

  “I don’t like the ruler. I don’t like sleeping when I want to stay awake. To do good for you, Mama. To do good for you, that’s why I go.”

  An obedient child, pushing every day, just to take care of me.

  “We’ll finish this week out and then see if the weekend comes and brings us rain. Then we won’t have to make any decision about it at all. All right? We’ll let things be and just wait and see.”

  “If it rains on Sunday can we stay home?”

  “Your grandparents will expect us. When the time comes, Andy, I’ll make the choice. It’s what mamas do. It won’t be on your shoulders, I promise.”

  The weekend was a balmy one, the
perfect weather for picnics and harvest festivals, so we made our way to the Sunday meeting. At least we’d had one day without having to leave the cabin. And we didn’t have to pack food for each of us for Sunday. Instead I’d gotten up early to make a Strudel and we carried it in a pan wrapped in a show towel. I knew there’d be plenty of other food for after the Sunday sermon, meat and harvest vegetables brought by those who lived closer.

  After the sermon I tied the strings beneath my bonnet and watched Andy stay away from the other children as they played. He looked tired and listless.

  Sarah and I talked, as she and Sam had joined the gathering this day. A few more of the settlers not affiliated with us Germans had begun to share our Sabbath time. If Christian had lived, he would have thought that a good sign. Sarah beamed in her pregnancy, her face flushed and smooth, her eyes sparkled as though they were diamonds. I so hoped that things went well. Mary was due anytime now too. In fact, she hadn’t made the trek this Sunday. Neither had Jack, and I found myself surprised that I noticed he was missing. Well before the afternoon waned, my little family headed back. We stopped at Mary’s and she was abed but said she was only tired. The baby was still a month away by her calculations. I told Boshie to be sure to come get me when needed. He nodded but had that confused look on his face. “You could stay with my children while I come back and midwife,” I clarified. “Or send Karl if he’s here, or Jack. They could do the same.”

  “Ja, ja. That would work,” he said. “Plenty of time, ja,” he said, and I could tell by the tone of his voice that he remembered their first child, who had died at birth.

  “Elizabeth was born strong and healthy. This one will be too,” I assured him, though of course, who could know?

  Upon arriving home I knew instantly that something was different. The cows weren’t mooing. The goat barely looked our way. A small stream of smoke rose up through the chimney, though I’d been certain I put the fire out before we left.