Except where our oystering was concerned. My in-laws had strong opinions about that and expressed them. “Christian would do well to come back here and prepare his house and farm,” my father-in-law intoned over gravy and beans, “instead of playing with the oysters. He receives a payment now, for his marshalling. He’ll need to know what’s happening here to best represent us in the territorial legislature. How can he meet those obligations while he is busy playing at sea farming?”
“Karl Ruge thought it a good idea,” I defended. I stitched in the candlelight, kept my eyes to my work. “And this way he’ll represent not just us Germans but others, too, when the legislature is in session.” My husband was seen as a leader by those outside of the colony. Another reason for Herr Keil to want us to come back under his wing, no doubt.
“We Giesys belong to the soil.”
“When was Christian named the marshal?” I asked.
“I’m surprised he didn’t tell you,” my mother-in-law said. “It was during the Indian scare, before we got here.”
“Maybe he didn’t tell me because he felt embarrassed that he was a marshal with a gun but not allowed to use it, not even for hunting,” I said. “Herr Keil acted like the marshal.”
“Christian has nothing to be ashamed of,” my father-in-law said. His tone left no room for my reply that I hadn’t said Christian should be ashamed at all, just embarrassed. Maybe to this family these were one and the same.
I looked over at Andy and wondered if as young as he was, he could sense the disapproval in his grandfather’s voice.
“Oystering gives my husband a new pearl to seek,” I said.
“A pearl he would not be looking for without the influence of his wife, ja?”
I knew he meant it as an insult but that isn’t how I took it.
Even though my children and I stayed in the Giesy Place—what had once been the meager home Christian and I shared—and daily took tea with my in-laws and sewed while Andreas read the Bible each evening, we talked very little toward any topic that satisfied. I’d propose a question, about service for example, and how in the book of Luke, the apostle pointed out that John and Peter, two of the Lord’s disciples, performed “women’s work” by being sent to prepare the Passover meal and looking for a man carrying water.
“Ach,” Andreas scoffed. “He did not call it women’s work.”
“Well, no, but it must have been. Women usually prepared meals, and they always gathered at the wells getting water. That’s where our Lord found them. Or they washed men’s feet to be hospitable to guests, so they gathered water for that. Here, Sarah tells me that Indian men serve meals when guests come. And they handle canoes and help gather the food too, even though the women prepare it. I think that’s very enlightened.”
“Women’s work is defined biblically,” my father-in-law replied. He took a draw on his pipe. “Women are less able to perform heavier tasks or ones that require a weighty mind.”
“Those water jugs must have been heavy. I certainly feel it in my shoulders when I carry the bucket from the river. And didn’t women work together with the apostle Paul? I’m sure I read where he sends greetings to women who work with him, which couldn’t mean just serving food to him. They studied with him. And isn’t that what Mary and Martha argued about?”
“They serve the men,” my mother-in-law cautioned. “That is what women do, and Martha was right to bring our Lord’s attention to Mary’s wishing to be like the men. Women need to know their place.”
“But our Lord didn’t chasten Mary. He told Martha not to complain. And then later we read about men helping with the water so—”
“Enough, Emma Giesy,” Andreas said. The Swiss men always seemed to shout. He looked over his spectacles. “You don’t want to set an argumentative example for your children.” He nodded toward Andy, who watched me the way a blue heron studies fish.
Andreas was right about one thing: if Christian wasn’t oystering, we’d be living in our own home now, and I’d be out from under the wary eyes of Andreas. Maybe Christian would take me with him to Olympia when the legislature was in session. Maybe that was why he hadn’t told me about his election, because he knew I’d want to accompany him if we had no home of our own. Mary and Boshie’s home had been finished first, then the mill, followed by harvest and then building a barn on the Giesy Place with stalls. We would milk cows there when someone went to Oregon to retrieve the cows that had been here before Keil himself sent them south. We needed hay storage as well and root cellars for our garden supply. And smokehouses for the meat. None of us wanted to repeat the winter we had just survived. We’d be better prepared and would use our ammunition for game when we needed, too. We weren’t a colony but a community able to live separate lives.
In August, we women gathered up the mat grasses from the cattail flags. Mary and I loaded the bundles onto the mules and led the animals to Sarah Woodard’s house at Woodard’s Landing. Sarah knew how to make the mats, though first we’d strip the flags to dry them in the sun. “In the winter, when it’s raining, we’ll weave these,” I told Mary as we walked along. “The Indians wrap belongings in them to keep things smelling fresh and dry, and they line their walls with them to help keep out the wind and rain, and they lay them over soft moss to sleep on. Sarah says they aren’t as attractive to bugs as our feather mattresses.”
Andy carried his own little bundle, and Kate rode like a veteran in the board I carried on my back. Mary’s little one also rode on her back and we both giggled once when I said I wondered if we’d be mistaken for Indians walking single file along the path with babies on our backs. “Not likely,” Mary said. “My straw-colored hair will give me away, and you’re slender as a cattail. Most of the native women I’ve seen since we’ve arrived in this country are built of sturdier stock.”
“I’m sturdy,” I protested.
“In your mind, maybe.” She crossed her eyes and I laughed.
“No, seriously, even if we look fragile, like Sarah does, we’re still strong as oxen. You ask Sarah. She’ll agree. It’s something I’ve learned about myself since coming here. What we can do on the inside isn’t always reflected by what’s on the outside.”
“Sounds like an oyster shell,” Mary said, as we reached Sarah’s and laid the bundles near their warehouse.
I laughed. “Women of Scripture were capable, and we can’t look much different from them. They were small-bodied too. They must have had good minds to have even decided to follow our Lord in the first place, to take that risk of being ridiculed or even killed. What was on the inside wasn’t reflected by what was on the outside.” I settled that thought with a nod of my chin.
“You’re not saying women were like the men who followed him, are you?”
“Don’t you ever wonder that if we were made in God’s image, man and woman, how then God must be like us, too, and not just like our men?”
Her eyes were as big as horse apples but I continued.
“I mean there’s all that talk of blood in Scripture, and we women know about that, don’t we? And we understand water and baptism, feeling like we’ll die before we give birth.”
Mary stopped in her tracks. “That’s … repulsive,” she said. “I could never imagine God as being … soft and … sideways, tricking people into things, without saying something outright, the way we women do. Or silly thinking. God’s nothing like a woman.”
“But that’s just it, Mary. We aren’t soft all the time or we’d never have survived last winter. You wouldn’t have come across the plains pregnant with Elizabeth. And as for being sideways, well, think of scriptural Jacob who tricked his brother and his father. That’s sideways thinking not left to women. And we wouldn’t do it nearly as much if we could just be ourselves, nice and direct, without having to worry about offending the men. And silly? Ach, look at how we have to plan ahead and organize so our children are fed each day, or learn how to dye wool and spin it into clothing, or use the land to gather these very stalks so we can
have mats to sleep on. We know how to live in … Eden. We’ve learned to read, even to speak another language. We’re born with those abilities to learn. Don’t you want Elizabeth to grow up feeling that she’s as capable as any brothers she might have? I want that for Kate. I don’t want her thinking she isn’t as important as Andy.”
“You better not let Andreas hear you spout such things,” Mary said. Her voice shook. “Even if Christian lets you.”
“Christian’s never heard it before,” I said. I took a deep breath and quieted my voice. “Sometimes I come to wisdom by saying thoughts out loud and I hear it myself for the first time, just when you’re hearing it too.”
“Oh, Emma,” Mary laughed then. I know she thought I teased but to be certain, she added, “I think I’d keep that kind of talk buried inside your oyster shell.” She tapped my head.
“You couldn’t have said anything more uplifting to my soul, except for the part about having to keep it all quiet,” I told her.
Christian and Joe both came from Bruceport, and along with his brothers, we all worked together to build my house at last. Our house, I knew, but it was difficult for me to think of “ours” knowing I’d be alone there with the children more often than not.
Even with the help, the construction still took two solid weeks.
Ours was a crude building, ten by fourteen feet with a loft and two cutouts for windows and, of course, a door facing east to catch the morning sun. The men pegged the cedar beams so the loft would be sturdy and a safe place for storage, and as our family grew, it could accommodate more feather ticks, mats, and children too. The scent of the beams would fill the house. We built a fireplace and cat-and-clay chimney so the loft would be warm in the winter. This was perhaps a luxury, but one we could build with the availability of more tools like the big auger that Rudy brought, which pegged the beams, and the frow with its slender blade set at a right angle to the handle. Shingles! How I coveted them, especially after the memories of living under a canvas roof.
If the scouts had carried such tools we’d have made better time in building up our colony, but we traveled light and fast and despite Herr Keil’s belief, we were frugal with the money and didn’t pay to buy many tools.
We all worked to make the fireplace, stacking logs over, each other, then mixing mud and riverbank clay with dried grass and boughs. I tried to think of some herb or spice to mix in with the clay so when we heated our supper there’d be an added aroma, but spices were scarce. For now. Andy loved playing with the mud and forming it into little loaves that Christian called cats. My husband helped his son pat the mud dry and both of them nodded approval at each other with smudges of dirt on their faces.
Christian and Martin worked late to build a little cover for Opal, the goat, so I’d have some place out of the wind and rain to milk her. Goats are hardy but can’t stand the rain. That first night, I laid on the floor the elk hide we’d been given by a helpful Indian, and there Christian and I whispered. I would have liked to go outside but the mosquitoes raged after sunset. “When they finish the other houses, the men will come back and build a half barn for the mule and cows,” Christian said, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake the children.
“We’re to have a cow?”
“I’ve worked it out,” he said, his eyes sparkling in a tease. Bugs buzzed at the lantern sporting new tin slats Christian had made.
I said, “Maybe from your marshal pay or legislative allotment?”
“Maybe,” he said. He dropped his eyes.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t named for doing anything grand,” he said. “Indeed. Just recognition of the stockade being built, that we did a good thing to help people. Sam suggested me since we have more Germans here now than other Americans. If someone away from here has a problem, then I can bring about a solution. I don’t expect much of that in our colony.”
Our colony? “You mean here in Willapa?” He nodded. “Won’t you have to make arrests?”
“Indeed. But there’s little crime, and the sheriff will handle most things.”
“But winning an election as territorial representative. I didn’t even know you campaigned.”
“I didn’t. It was a vote at a meeting same time as John was elected school superintendent and Sam elected sheriff and John Vail as fence viewer.”
“I wish you’d told me yourself,” I said. “So I could honor you too.”
“Ah, Emma,” he said. He reached his arms around me. I felt the strength of him. He smelled like a man of the sea, not the earth. I kissed him, tasted salt on my lips. “You honor me by being my wife and staying here through all that has happened. But we’re as different as flowers and bees. You bloom vibrant while I, I just want to slip by, have a taste, but never stay long enough to be noticed.”
“It’s no sin to stand out,” I protested. “You do no one a favor by pretending you aren’t a worthy man. You’re a good leader with a fine mind. A loving husband and father. Responsible to others. Inventive. To deny that means to question your Creator, doesn’t it?”
He was thoughtful. “Maybe.”
“And besides,” I said snuggling beneath his shoulder. “We may be as different as flowers and bees but I believe both are needed to make things grow. And the flower definitely needs to stand out so the bee can find her!”
The fresh scent of peeled logs filled our heads. It was the first night in four years of marriage that we were together, just our family. I wouldn’t hear the snoring of a brother or sister, or the sounds of the scouts turning in their tents right beside ours, or the entire community gathering together in the stockade to survive the winter. We were alone at last.
I’d preserved wild strawberries in the spring, dried them, and now added them to goat’s cheese to make a kind of fruit pudding that each of us could eat. It tasted sweet and the lumps mixed in our mouths. “This is good, Emma,” Christian said. I beamed. “It is good to be with you and the children. Good to be home.” He kept spooning the soft food into his mouth, feeding Kate just a taste as she’d wakened, then fell back asleep. His blue green eyes looked darker in the shadows. But they had life, pools fed by the rivers of wrinkles beginning to flow into them.
He finished, wiped his reddish beard with his hand, then set the bowl down on the mats covering the earth floor. “But you should have made enough for all of us,” Christian said. “All those who helped with the house. It would have been a godly thing to do.”
“I didn’t have enough berries,” I said. “Besides, I wanted to celebrate with just us, for our family. We don’t have to do everything together here, do we?”
“Everyone here is our kin,” Christian said. “Even the scouts. Joe. Karl Ruge.”
“Well, I know, but I meant—”
“I know what you meant. I just wish you didn’t have to enjoy so much being separated from them, Emma. They love you and want to make your life easier. They’re generous people. They open their hearts to strangers and friends alike.”
“They love Andy. And Kate,” I said. “I know.” I defended against his eyes raised to disagree.
“You don’t know,” he said. “You are afraid you’ll disappear in this large family, but you will always stand out.”
He knew me so well. “They love me like a child of God. But my earthly ways and my ideas, well, those the Giesys could probably do without.”
“Not this Giesy,” he said and reached for me.
That night we lay on mats and he held me while owls hooted. Treetops split the moonlight that spilled through the open window. Tomorrow I’d tan hides to cover the opening. There were shelves to make, pegs to auger into the walls to hang drying herbs and our few clothes. So much to do.
“Emma,” Christian said. “Be here with me now.”
“Ja,” I said. Staying in one place with another is as difficult sometimes as praying. But I became as whole that night with him as I’d ever been alone. With his caresses I lost the questioning in my
mind. My thoughts of things to do were silenced by arms holding me, soft words whispered at the nape of my neck. The busyness of my hands found calm as I pressed my fingers against his bare back and tasted of the sweetness of his mouth. His temple where my lips brushed that soft depression was as sweet as a baby’s breath. And when he kissed my face, holding it in the cocoon of his hands, I lost myself in him, my husband. I surrendered, unafraid, as unfurled as an apron string in the wind. I marveled later that I had.
In the morning, I thought I’d tell Christian about the images that washed up before me as he held me close, but I decided I couldn’t find the words to speak out loud so I’d hear what I knew. But I wondered if what I’d felt that night with my husband was what a holy relationship should be: safe, attached to someone loving, sinking into mystery, surrendering, receiving, finding meaning in the unexplained, being refreshed from the encounter.
I was in love with Christian Giesy as I’d never been before. Such love was marked by trust, surrendering one’s all as though to a watery world without the fear of drowning. He knew me well and loved me still, my husband. I imagined that these were the marks of a spiritual relationship as well.
Just for a short time I imagined that, forgetting that even great tenderness can be a harbinger of change.
4
Louisa
My husband, Dr. Keil, set the rules for constructing das grosse Haus. Each team of men—four to a team—must cut one entire tree down before they can eat their breakfast. If meat is scarce, they must shoot a deer, and I imagine Rebecca had quite a time dressing out four deer between breakfast and noon. But then, it was easier to cut the trees on Deer Creek near the Pudding River, where we’re building up our colony, because they are not so big as those in Willapa. Not that I excuse what happened there, the poor progress the scouts made. Well, maybe I do excuse it some. They had fewer men and they had Emma. Rebecca was chosen for her skill at doing what she’s told without retort.