“Ja, ja, okay. Good. You’re right. She’s fine.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Mama. It wasn’t.”
Mama sighed. “I didn’t listen to God’s guidance,” she said then. “That’s my fault. I didn’t listen for His voice telling me right or left, walk this way. I prayed for wisdom, but only after I accepted the wager. I thought He opened the door to save our farm, but He didn’t. I never should have left. Remember that, Clara. Listen for His voice; don’t trust your own.”
TWENTY-THREE
The Way of Wounds
Swallowing my pride, I approached the Stapleton residence. It was futile, I knew, but I hoped I’d find Forest at home for the summer and maybe move our relationship along. Absence made the heart grow fonder, didn’t it? I wouldn’t be as foolish as my mother had been, forced into a marriage without love. With a year passed, Mrs. Stapleton might relent and consider hiring me again, opening a door the trip had closed.
She had not and did not. Nor would she give me a letter of reference. “Your choice will have long and far-reaching consequences,” she told me. “No one in Spokane will hire you as a domestic. That latest news article, about your writing a book about that ridiculous trip? Nonsense. Your father must be mortified to have a wife and daughter who are so public about your financials.”
I wondered how mortified he would be when our farm went into foreclosure.
But her hostility toward me forewarned. I was refused interviews, not hired at the one or two I was given. No suffragette women sought a domestic, apparently. It would take time for our story to be forgotten. Until then, I daydreamed again, but this time about how I might make contact with Forest to have that luncheon he once promised.
The newspaper carried the story in the spring of 1898 announcing the engagement of Forest Stapleton to a local girl. Forest worked in his father’s bank, and the newlyweds would make their home in Spokane.
I stuffed the letters I’d written to him since the theft into a packet, along with the clippings and the signatures and my sketches. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out.
I found the scissors and cut my hair. It would be easier to care for while working in the fields.
The farm became my refuge. I relieved Olaf so he could find work that paid, as his reputation hadn’t been sullied. I plowed the fields, harvested grain, milked cows. I stopped dreaming about Forest or even going on to school anymore. The one chance I had for acquiring a large sum of money meant writing the book and hoping the sponsors would honor their commitment, but that was a lost dream too. To attempt it would put Mama at risk and probably myself as well. I could move away to another city and try to write the story. But I was no author. I knew that. Even to call myself an artist was questionable. No, I was good with numbers and figures, with solving problems that weren’t a part of a family’s journey. I could design a breast supporter that I didn’t need now that we weren’t walking, walking. I hadn’t worn it since we’d come home.
No Estby would speak of our trek again. Our efforts would keep up the farm, but it was clear: there’d be no miracle of rescue. A foreclosure notice would be posted soon.
In the next two years, Ida mellowed. With no mention of the trip and Mama’s fading, her quiet sewing, her allowing Ida to discipline the little ones, Ida assumed a position of authority in the family as though she were the oldest sister. Ida no longer needed to send angry barbs at either Mama or me. Only if one of us forgot and spoke of the trek would she say, “Now, Mama, we’ll have none of that.” My mother clammed up as though slapped. Even Arthur spoke those words if we talked about anything that could be associated with the walk. Once, when I recalled the Chicago exposition, Billy said, “Now, none of that, Clara.” He sounded like my stepfather.
But otherwise, the family appeared to accept—or perhaps ignore—us.
My mother and I were passive participants in this family reconstellating. I felt powerless to change our status and so took solace in the fields, in watching the grain come up, in pulling at weeds, in feeling the heads between my fingers with the wish for a good harvest. I hoped for food to eat and maybe enough leftover to pay down the debt. The companionship of the landscape also kept me from watching my mother disappear into a woman I no longer recognized.
When everyone was asleep, I’d often pull out the old sketches I’d made and reread the news clippings as a reminder that once I’d done something unusual and brave, that I wasn’t always this woman who waited for her life to begin, who couldn’t hear the voice tell her to go this way, walk this path. I suppose it was a reminder of how a life can change. What we’d done had been remarkable by some standards, but foolish too. Perhaps the path to wisdom required making mistakes.
Our weekly routine included trading eggs for staples, and butter and milk for boots or coats for the growing children. At Christmastime, Ida made the julekaga. Mama slept, and when awake, she sighed. She was as fragile as a sandbakkel. Even the children singing in the Christmas choir didn’t brighten her eyes. Nothing seemed to interest her except conversations about saving the farm.
“We will keep this farm,” she said when my father counted out the money available to pay the interest on the loan. “They won’t foreclose. God will see to that.”
She carries a fantasy again, I thought. But then, we’d been back nearly three years, and still we hung on to the property. Maybe there was a guardian angel looking out for us.
In our Little Norway, as our neighbors described the Mica Creek valley, we lived inside an aquarium where everyone could see how we fared. They acted as though we were still under quarantine. Ole played cards with his friends, but few came to visit with Mama. I swam around in the same routine. My companions were family and the dog. And I was totally dependent on others for my survival.
I awoke in the night with hot sweats, fears of living my entire life this way, a wakeful nightmare.
The new century found us in the same straights as we’d been in before, and I almost hoped the foreclosure would happen so we could move on. Instead, my stepfather’s health improved. He felt up to working in the fields a little more, his back stronger than it had been in years. He told me he’d be managing the farm from now on. My help was no longer needed.
“Haven’t I done well with it?” I said.
“It’s a man’s job,” he told me. “Now I’m good enough. I can do it. You can find work in Spokane.”
“Doing what?” I said. I guess my mother hadn’t told him about my blacklisting by the Stapletons. Had he thought I’d chosen to stay on the farm of my own accord?
“What you did before,” he said. “Service. It’s what good Norwegian girls do.”
“I’m an American girl,” I said.
“Then find something American.”
I lay awake that night annoyed that I’d become a pawn. Maybe Mama’s desire to make the walk had been more about escaping her daily routine than about serving the family. No, she’d wanted to save the farm and have an adventure at the same time. She’d been encouraged by Spokane’s reform women. There must be one or two out there who would give me a serving job. I tried to remember the name of the surgeon, the woman who’d helped Mama after her injury and the failed lawsuit.
Mary Latham. I sat up in bed. I’d pulled the name out of the air. I took it as a sign.
What I wanted from Dr. Latham wasn’t sympathy for my travails but her ability to open doors. She hadn’t wanted to interfere with our “book deal” by giving us assistance when we’d asked for help while in New York, but perhaps now she might help me find work. She was a reform woman who had railed against Washington State’s decision when it transitioned from a territory to a state to take away the woman’s vote. Dr. Latham had assumed a profession specializing in female problems and wasn’t the least shy about it. She’d even requisitioned a patented device to help in women’s surgeries. She would be an ally, I was sure. Why hadn’t I thought of her before?
I took the train to Spokane, where Dr. Latham invited me in, a wom
an wide where I was thin. She asked after my mother’s health and then, when I told her of my need for work, sat thoughtfully. “It’s not a domestic job, but rather a secretary or bookkeeper.”
“I’m good with figures, though I’ve had no training,” I said.
“I suspect they’d train you. Let me see what I can do,” she said. “Do you have a card to leave me?” I shook my head. “That’s a must,” she told me. “Domestics don’t need cards, but professional women do, and Clara, you will one day be a professional woman. Of that I have no doubt. You come from good stock in your mother.”
And perhaps even from my father, though that I’d never know.
The idea that she saw possibilities in me buoyed my spirits. I needed to be around people who looked forward and not always back, or worse, attempted to stay the same.
So it was that a week later I received a letter asking me to come apply for a position of secretary to a small business. The owner and interviewer was Olea S. Ammundsen.
I didn’t need to look for her card. I remembered her: the woman on the train.
I dressed as carefully as I could, grateful that the corset I wore again still fit. My hair had grown out enough to pull into a chignon that fit under my hat. I’d miss the privacy of the fields, I decided, and the satisfaction of hands in earth, the smells of horses as they nuzzled me with their velvet noses. But this is what I’d prayed for, a chance to be on my own, more than a servant, on a path to a career. I’d paid my dues for the family these past three years. The new century would be my new beginning too.
I walked from the station toward the address given, past the rushing Spokane River falls that raged through the center of downtown. I hopped across a streetcar track as the vehicle came around the corner.
A pleasant house on Sixth Avenue bore the address I looked for. The well-built home had a wide front porch and was painted white with soft green trim. A cedar tree took up much of the front yard and offered shade. I rang the bell, my heart fluttering.
“Come in, please,” a rather short, plump woman said. “You must have walked so far. We should have given you tokens for the streetcar.”
“I’m used to walking.”
“Well, of course you are.”
I wondered if this woman was the domestic, but she wasn’t dressed as one. She wore no apron, and she moved through the house as one who owned it. She showed me into a finely furnished room. Elegant vases holding peacock feathers stood beside divans with smooth lines and fur throws over the back. In fact, almost all of the furniture had some accessory of fur. “I’m Miss Louise Gubner,” she said, then suggested I sit in a high-back chair. I sank onto a throw of silver fur, adjusting it against my back. “I believe you’ve met my associate and cousin, Miss O. S. Ammundsen.”
“Olea to my friends,” Olea said as she entered the room. Tall and elegant, she put out her hand and I stood. “Welcome, Clara. I hoped we’d meet again. You remember meeting on the train? Yes, I knew you would. Louise and I returned to New York after that trip. But earlier this year we decided to make the move permanent, manage our business from the West. Rather exciting, we decided. And we have need of a bookkeeper. We hoped you’d wish to assist? Mary Latham is a friend of ours. She suggested you. Please, sit.”
“I’m good with numbers, but I have no training, none at all as a bookkeeper.”
“Something to remedy. You’ll be attending Blair Business College when the session begins in the fall. We’re sure you’ll qualify. You qualified for the university some years back, I understand.”
“Yes. But.” My mind spun with the goodness of what was offered. “I’ll pay you back, I will.”
“You’ll keep our books, maybe assist in the household duties.”
“I’m a fair cook,” I offered.
“I rather like doing that myself,” Louise said. “I hope you have a good appetite. You look a little puny if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Puny? I like to eat.”
“Well then, we’ll work out your wages. We’re hoping you can start immediately,” Olea said. “We’ll need to go to the college and get you enrolled. Then you can return home at the weekend and pick up your trunks.”
“I only have the one,” I said.
They were a whirlwind, and I was at the center.
It occurred to me that I ought to put on a business head and negotiate for wages. But I was too excited by the possibilities ahead to quibble over details. I wondered if that same anticipation had affected my mother when she first agreed to that wager so long ago, hopefulness blinding her to truth.
TWENTY-FOUR
Moving Forward
I think it would have been better if I’d gotten the job,” Ida said when I returned on the weekend for my trunk. “It’s not a domestic job, right, Clara?” This was Olaf. “It’s bookkeeping.”
“A little domestic work,” I said. “But Louise, I mean Miss Gubner, likes to do the cooking and cleaning. She’s round as a pumpkin and really sweet. Miss Ammundsen is always looking at birds through these little binoculars she wears like a necklace. But she’s the one with a good business sense. She’s a good teacher too. I’ll learn more at Blair College.”
“You’re going on to school?” Ida said. “No, that doesn’t seem fair.”
“You’re needed here, Ida,” my stepfather said.
Ida nodded agreement, and part of me envied her for being told she was needed, that she had a place to belong. Now I would too.
Mama sighed. “Maybe I can do more of the cooking, resume my duties,” she offered. “Then you could work in the city, Ida.”
“Nonsense,” Ida said. “You need care.”
“Have you met the instructors?” Olaf asked me.
“Yes. There’s only one female, for English. The typewriting and shorthand and penmanship classes and commercial law instructors are all men.”
“Ja, as it should be,” my stepfather said. “Men know how to lead.”
I caught my mother’s gaze; then we looked away. The meal was completed in silent chewing, only Olaf enthusiastic about my good fortune.
Mama and I walked to the pig shed, where I slopped the hogs for the last time, at least for a while. She leaned over the half door, as slender as a child. Her hair had begun to turn white at the temples.
“I’ll visit,” I said. She looked so sad. I set the bucket down.
“I can never be near this shed without thinking of …”
“Maybe you should ask Ole to tear it down,” I said.
“Oh, I already asked, but Ida insisted it remain. A memorial, I suppose.”
“Or a way of hanging on to her outrage,” I said.
“She did the best she could,” Mama said. “I forgive her.”
“She hasn’t forgiven you, I don’t think.”
“In time,” Mama said. It would be good for me to be away, so good.
After breakfast in the morning, I said good-bye to my family, and Olaf carried my trunk to the train and waited with me. “This is right for you, Clara,” he said. “You need this chance.”
“I’m glad for it. I plan to earn enough to send home but also put a little aside for your schooling. You need a chance too.”
He shrugged. “I may be one of the Norwegian bachelor farmers like Papa says were in the old country. Like he almost was before he fell in love with Mama.”
I wondered if I should tell Olaf. I’d told no one of what Mama shared at Dale Creek about my place in the family.
“Olaf, if I tell you a secret, will you promise not to tell anyone?”
“I can keep a secret.”
“Papa didn’t exactly fall in love with Mama. Bestefar introduced them, and they married quickly because … because … Mama was with child. With me. It was for the good of her family that she married him.”
“Ah, no,” Olaf said. He frowned. “That can’t be.”
“It is. And they had a child right after me, before you, one who didn’t live long, Mama told me. I’m actually a year old
er than everyone thinks.”
“But then … who is your father?”
“I don’t know his name. Mama wouldn’t tell me. Someone in Michigan. Mama worked for his family. But it explains why I’m. different.”
“You’re not.”
“I am. All the Estbys have white-blond hair, and here I am, a dirty blond. You all have such thick, strong hair, and mine is as limp and stringy as Sailor’s tail without my curling iron.”
Olaf shook his head. “So that’s why you called Papa ‘Ole’ that time.” He brushed aside a curl that had escaped from beneath my hat. “You’re different because you’re smarter than the rest of us,” Olaf said, “if you’re different at all.”
“I’m not.” I bumped his shoulder, pleased by the compliment.
“You’ll always be my big sister,” he said. “The rest doesn’t matter. I’m glad for you. When one of us makes his way, it gives the rest of us hope that we’ll make our way too.”
“What do you think Mama will do if the farm is foreclosed on?” I said. I fanned my face with my straw hat.
“What will they do? I think it will be the best days of their lives once they get over the shock of it.”
“Olaf!”
“It’s true. The farm has consumed all of us. I know they love the land and it’s fed us, but it devours too, taking every dime we’ll give it but not in proportion to what it demands. There is more cost than just dollars, Clara. Once they got behind and borrowed with no way to repay it, then with Papa’s injuries, trying to hang on to it has been like holding on to a cow’s tail in a cyclone. You know you’re going to get hurt and separated. It’s just a matter of how much pain you’ll endure before you let go. They’ll hate it, the humiliation. But it will free them. All of us.”
“Mama walked east for the farm,” I said.