Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction

by Russell, Vanessa

  Fine, I’ll listen but I don’t have to look at you. I focused on his flared nostrils.

  “You are no longer permitted outside this house, without my permission. You will remain here and look after the children as you are supposed to do.”

  I raised my eyes to his. They were examining my mouth with concern, but his lips were pinched and stern. He let go and threw the washcloth into the water. I stared down at the water slowly turning pink.

  “I’m going downstairs to read. You stay here.” He turned his back to me and headed toward the door.

  To see him turn from me, cut me off, what was he thinking? To leave me here, to imprison me? From deep within my gut, a low ember caught flame and I felt the heat quickly spread through to my very fingertips and toes.

  “Robert, talk to me!” I cried through clenched teeth, spewing through my swollen lips.

  He paused at the door and looked back. “Why should I? I no longer trust you.” He turned to the door and twisted the knob.

  How dare he! I snatched the washcloth from its reddened pool and threw it at his back with many years of pent-up anger behind it. It slapped loudly in the middle of his back and he arched as one might in being shot. He turned and looked down at the limp rag at his feet.

  Fear seized me but it was too late now. I raised my chin. I walked toward him, hands clinched in fists and spat out, “Talk to me, I said!”

  He picked up the rag and rolled it into his own fist. “Fine,” he said. “Fine!” He came toward me and my body steeled itself for the blow. He shook the fist at me. “I’ll talk to you! I’ll tell you this! My shop has lost a good deal of business, did you know that? Of course you didn’t! And do you want to know why?” He was up in my face now, his cheeks splotched, his brown eyes glazed with fury. “Because of you, Ruby! Ever since the parade, I’ve had to deal with comments in town about how I can’t control my own wife, my own household, so how can I manage a business? Some men stopped buying from me altogether, saying they go into Syracuse now, where they can trust the merchant to know what he is doing. And the jokes about your women’s group parading yourselves around town. Here is one for you: What is black and white and read once a month? I’ll give you a hint; it is not the standard punch line, newspaper. The punch line is, marching women on their periods! Understand, r-e-d? Ha! Not so funny, is it? Jokes are one thing, which I hear plenty of, but there’s more. Do you want to hear more?”

  He began pacing the floor. “Of course, a parade was just getting your feet wet, wasn’t it? You had bigger ways to disobey me. You had to go on public display and air out our personal problems into a damn megaphone for the whole town to hear. About how you want to reach others in need, when you can’t even fill the needs of your own children? Hell, you haven’t even spent time with your children, I bet this entire summer! Your idea of spending time with them is to drag Bess to a convention so she can watch her mama berate men with a bunch of bitches!”

  He raised his hands up in the air. “And that’s not all, Ruby, no that is not all. You may be quite proud of your little group but let me tell you what it did to me.” He stopped and glared at me. “You remember me, don’t you Ruby?” He jerked his thumb to his chest. “I’m one of those men you hate. Well, I’ll have you know that I lost my biggest contract because of you!” He pointed his finger at me. “For years I had a contract with the textile mill for steel-toed boots. After your public outcry in a God-forsaken convention, the owner of the mill comes to me and says he didn’t realize that my wife was part of the petticoat rebellion. That’s right, petticoat rebellion! You are a laughing stock! He said that, thanks to this group of women, he has several women now crying for better work conditions, and more money. It may run him into bankruptcy. He blamed me for what you are doing out there and canceled his order. I now have a stock of one hundred and twenty-eight pairs of boots and no buyer.”

  He walked back to me, his bottom lip trembling. “Let me explain that to you in simple English. That means that I have a hell of a lot of money spent on stock, but no money coming back in. Do you see what I mean, Ruby, do you?”

  He turned away and I stared at his white shirt – at the large wet spot blotched with red. His shoulders were lower now, his head down, his energy spent.

  I felt stronger somehow, as if in relinquishing his words to me he had relinquished his strength to me.

  “Robert, how would I have known this, except that you – why, I had no idea!” I touched my swollen lip wishing that this of all nights I could speak clearly. “You and I live in two different worlds. You don’t know mine any more than I know yours. But my world is much more confining. Sometimes the walls are closing in on me, Robert. I don’t mind my chores, I just want to do more! Don’t you see? I could help you in other ways, too – I could earn wages, if you are having financial difficulties—”

  “This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you, Ruby,” he said, his voice tired now and void of emotion. “Now you look at me as a man who cannot provide for his family. And I can. And no wife of mine is going to work outside this home.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “Let me put it to you this way. I’ve thought a great deal about this here lately. I’ve given you everything my parents worked for; this house, this furniture, and I’ve given you everything that I have, money for food on the table, clothes on your back, the children. All I ask from you is that you maintain what you have been given. That is all. If you don’t remain inside and do what God intended you to do, what you made an oath to do when you married me, then by God, I will divorce you. That is my right as a man. I will divorce you and you will have nothing; no home, no husband, no children.”

  He threw the tightly clenched rag into the bowl, water splattering the mirror. “Anything else you want to talk about?”

  Divorce ... no children. I sat down hard on the bed and shook my head. I could think of nothing else to say.

  Note from Bess: Mama is not well. “Writing took its toll,” she explained from her bed. She asked me to use her diary excerpts to finish her year of awakening. She marked these pages:

  November, 1910: I had a dream early this morn: Maple leaves fall around me, golds and deep reds, on this densely wooded hillside. One red lands softly on one of my two thick braids, braids dangling long below my breasts. My horse snorts loudly, jingling the harness that straps her head, chewing at the bit in her mouth. She receives a pat on the head, but a pull at her reins, for we must climb faster. I must keep up with him. I look ahead to see his backside walking beside his own horse, watch how nimbly he steps over a rock that I must soon climb, his sheepskin coat adding thickness to his broad back and arms, the thick piled collar pulled up slightly against the strong wind, his ponytail long now, dangling down his back. I don’t see him speak but I hear his voice in my mind saying, “Don’t stop, Ruby, you must keep moving.” I bend my uncovered head against the wind and push forward up the steep incline. On we go, across a small plateau, and down the other side. We reach the bottom and come to a clearing. A wide fast-flowing river is revealed. A hundred yards across and on its other shore, sits a log cabin, smoke breathing life up its chimney, a mist shrouds behind it. I walk along the shore of the river looking for a way to cross. I see the cabin clearly but it is so far away. I long to be there but my steps only take me farther away. I stop. The mist thickens to fog and stretches across the surface of the brown water. The fog reaches our shore in front of him and he walks into it, is absorbed by it and slowly disappears, his horse’s back end disappearing last. “Don’t stop, Ruby,” he says again. “But how do I get to the other side?” I cry out to him. “How do I get there from here? How do I …”

  Robert woke me. I was “whimpering”. I reached up, half-expecting braids, but only found my shortened hair. Yesterday I sold my three-foot long braid through Aimee, my only connection to town, who sold it for enough money to pay off Robert’s account to Jed’s General for the booth lumber. What little hair I had left I pulled back this morning into a tight tiny bun
and tucked this into a white Amish cap, appropriate for Opal’s wedding.

  Robert said grace at breakfast: “We can give thanks, children, to your mother, for her public shenanigans this summer that cut my shoe contracts in half.” He folded his hands together in mock prayer and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Ruby, for this food we are about to starve on.” Victor laughed but Jonathan knew better. He nudged his big brother.

  Bess immediately stood up and spooned eggs onto everyone’s plate except hers, saying she wasn’t hungry.

  He squinted at her like she was too bright. “And I suppose you weren’t hungry last night when your mother served chicken gizzards? And the night before with eggs and potatoes? All charity from her brother.” I’m guilty as charged. And embarrassed about my measly vegetable crop; it didn’t seem I had enough time this summer to jar much from my garden. The children became quiet, picking listlessly at their food. Robert tapped his fingers on the table and finally sighed. “Bess, you will eat eggs with the rest of us. We will all go to the wedding where we will all eat a delicious Amish feast. We will survive and soon enough my business will pick back up.” He smiled and winked at Victor. “Your mother needs to lose some weight anyway.”

  The wedding … dismal. How beautiful Opal would’ve been as a Baptist bride! Evil thoughts while watching the three-hour ceremony: Remember, Opal, to give yourself to him is to lose yourself to you. Goodbye my little sister for you will be a changed woman tomorrow. Submit, give, love – but keep some for yourself. Tonight as I write this I can imagine Jacob in their new bed smothering, pushing, taking, and she losing her girlhood to his needs, opening, clenching, giving.

  I am guilty and evil and alone I have these thoughts.

  December, 1910: Cady’s funeral was today. Her last words to me go over and over in my mind. Ruby, don’t fret it. Do what you must do.

  Thomas sat on the front pew, his head hung low. I didn’t know men could cry so.

  I clutched the side of Cady’s eternal bed and I didn’t recognize her with her eyes closed and her lips sealed. Lying down is not how she would want to be remembered. It seems almost indecent.

  I dropped the carved dove down into the satin where it rested by Cady’s side, red eye blinking in the candle light.

  I left the church and walked on to Main Street, heading to the park. The town center looked different at night. It had its shutters and shades closed like every building felt the grief. It’s hard to imagine the sunny festive air of the long-ago 4th of July parade here. I pulled my cape tighter around me.

  A sheepskin coat appeared at my side. “You almost stepped out in front of my horse back there at the church,” he said with a misty breath as if the ghost in him came out through his mouth. Here I was saying goodbye to memories and now I must face my most beloved ghost alive. He was robbing the air that I breathe with that smile.

  He kicked away a mound of snow in my path and talked of his travels with Mrs. Catt but I heard little, only felt his presence. “You’re taking steps through the snow as carefully as if it’s piles of dung,” he said.

  “I must be careful not to fall.”

  “I’ll pick you up if you do.”

  “I’m heavier than I used to be.”

  He stopped at a street lamp and held my arm to face him. He saw then. “You are carrying a child?”

  “To be born in March,” I answered with a nod.

  He dug his hands into his pockets and looked away to the distant gazebo, where I had planned to sit in the cold with his memory. To have his actual body there radiating heat and stirring sensations was like lying under a very heavy woolen blanket. “Walk with me there?” I asked.

  Within the gazebo, I felt braver to face those eyes, now a dark velvet in the meager lamp light thrown in here and there. “I dreamt of you.” And then I told him about the dream and ended it with saying, “The mist reached for you and you disappeared into it and to the other side of the river but I couldn’t find the way.” I touched his sleeve. “You were wearing this sheepskin coat – how did I know that?”

  Magically our space had become one and all else ebbed away. How does he do that? He reached into his pocket and with his other hand reached for my own. “Every creature deserves a mate of its own kind.” The carved dove he placed there was slightly smaller than the first one. I knew this immediately for I had held that one many times while rocking on the veranda, always looking to my left, always making a wish that he’d appear on his horse as before. “Keep this with your other one and somehow you will find a way.”

  I wished he hadn’t given this to me – better to be buried with its mate, but it was too late now and I knew it would go home with me to live a lonely life. I did not have the courage to tell him this.

  Instead I hugged him, laying my cheek against his chest, wanting to crawl inside his heart. I felt his cheek on my head. He breathed in deeply. “Ah, your scent of lavender.”

  “Then take these,” I said and handed him the sachet of lavender seeds. I had meant these for Cady, too, but had forgotten. “Plant these and I’ll be there.” Then I lightly kissed him – yes, it was I! I pulled away then and stepped down the gazebo stairs one step at a time, with a heavy heart and darkness all around me, not light-footed as that summer day. Life takes such unexpected turns.

  Oh Diary, I must continue on. I must say that I knew he’d followed me home, staying at a distance like a dark angel. Again, that sound of his presence. You must keep moving, Ruby. I didn’t turn around. Snow began to fall. The wind picked up and whipped my cape around my skirts. I bent forward, tucking in my chin, pushing my feet through the higher snow drifts. My legs became heavy and stiff from my wet woolen stockings. My skirts blew out like storm-swept sails, my bonnet’s strings let go and away my bonnet flew. Ears, fingers, feet frigid with cold. You must keep moving, Ruby. As if in slow motion I marched higher and higher through the rising white, the wind pushing me back in a whisper to give up, to stop. Tears froze on my cheeks. “I must keep moving,” I said out loud through chattering teeth. I rounded the corner and out of the blue I see Robert’s home. No, my home. Warm light shone yellow from the parlor window onto the snowy lawn. I had an urge to lie down in it. What a welcoming way to bring a lost soul in.

  Robert would be sitting in his chair there, reading, scowling – I was returning later than I had promised him, this being my first outing on my own in months. My stiff fingers still clutched the dove, its carved lines etched with sorrow, its weight grown heavy. I opened my fist and the dove fell into the soft snow and sunk deeper until it was covered completely.

  At a snail’s pace I reached the railing to the veranda stairs and looked up at the door. Whether he opened it or not, I resolved to make changes for the good.

  I took it one step at a time and knocked softly.

  The lock clicked and the door opened. He reached to where I stood and grabbed my arm and pulled me in. He looked down at my red, swollen face and ever so slowly his arms circled around me and he held on.

  April 5th, 1911: I painted my parlor walls a misty blue today – like the mist in the Blue Ridge Mountains! No more gray! Next I will tear away that thick twenty-year old wallpaper with the damask patterns in the dining room. All that dark dreary mahogany wainscoting and staircase – white! Those heavy red flannel curtains that his mother treasured? Gone! In their place will hang white shears with black lace trim!

  Next? Lavender paint for the bedroom walls! Robert has been carrying home a gallon of paint every Friday.

  With my near-death during the birth of Little Cady, Robert developed a soft spot not unlike Little Cady’s, on that hard head of his and had agreed to the alterations. (It didn’t hurt that he got a large contract with the textile mill for work boots.)

  Oh it wasn’t easy, I’ll admit to that. Every time he’d say, “NO, I like the way things are!” and deny my requests for wall paint, my stomach felt like my washing tub wringer was attached to my navel, cranking my pulled skin tighter and tighter and I’d suck in my br
eath and hold in what was trying to come out.

  But come out she did, assisted by one such argument and a forced intimacy that made me hope that the baby had a hard head like Robert.

  So upset I was that I ignored tending to his breakfast that morning and instead went to my favorite place here and rocked away, going nowhere fast. I’m here now as I write in my diary.

  The March weather felt only cool enough to require my black shawl and I could watch spring come to life through birds and buds on the tree branches, crocus, tulip beds in the next yard ... that’s when I saw it. There on the edge of the boardwalk laid a familiar shape. The sun’s rays caught a red eye and I was down the stairs and next door as fast as I could waddle. Not a dead bird, but a wooden one with ruby eyes. Lying in a slush of melting snow. Wooden, just like my heart, we belong together.

  How ironic that it was this same spot where he had handed me the first one. (It’s certainly a good thing that the neighbors on this side don’t know me!) Seasons change, all that was, goes away, and life begins again. I wiped it clean with my shawl (and today I continue to hold it while I write and Little Cady naps).

  As I was saying, that day I brought it back to the house and as I climbed the stairs, I was seized with a gripping contraction that gave me cause to squeeze the poor bird until surely its wings would splinter.

  My well of knowledge earned in last summer’s “shenanigans” didn’t help here knowing now that pregnancy causes more deaths than any other disease, except tuberculosis. Twenty-five thousand women die every year from this. I sputtered these statistics between contractions to Dr. Hughes who said this was only a wife’s tale. He left me alone while he went away to deliver another baby from a woman much older in much more need, saying that my baby will come, with or without him, and he was right about that.

  Women do love to talk in depth about their deliveries but I don’t have much time before Little Cady awakens. Suffice it to say, Bess and I delivered Little Cady, while Robert paced the parlor. He did assist a little before that, when I insisted he read to me, to distract my mind from body. He appeared at the bedroom door, his eyes darting about as if he’d never been here before. “For God’s sake Robert, you were here when the baby went in!” Can you imagine me saying such a thing? I wasn’t myself –but maybe I shouldn’t be - he did my bidding! He scooted a chair over to the bed and began reading from his newspaper about President McKinley. I kept the sounds of pain to a bare minimum for him, sounding like a trapped mouse. The newspaper rustled and with his head hidden behind it, he said, “Politics are more than you can understand. Here’s one you will enjoy. It’s not one I’d bring to your attention under normal circumstances–”