Where We Belong

by Lynn Austin

  Petersen tried not to sag with relief. “When?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “Today. They pack caravan now and go.” The sheikh rose and returned to his camp with his men, taking the rug with them.

  There was a flurry of activity in both camps as the tents were struck and the camels loaded. Petersen was carrying the sisters’ baggage out of their tent when Miss Flora stopped him. “You did a very brave thing today, Soren. We’re grateful and very proud of you.” She turned to address Kate, who looked sullen. “You need to show him some gratitude, Kate. He’s risking his life to try to save you and the rest of us.” Kate didn’t reply—but Petersen hadn’t expected her to. The girl seemed incapable of being pleasant. “And we all need to thank Almighty God for answering our prayers,” Miss Flora finished.

  “Amen!” Miss Rebecca said.

  Within the hour the Bedouin had the caravan loaded, and Petersen was swaying in the saddle as the camels plodded toward the monastery beneath the desert sun. At least he hoped that was where they were going. Their lives had been spared—for now. Maybe there was a God who had created all the stars, and maybe He did answer the prayers of good people like Miss Flora and Miss Rebecca. But when Petersen thought about his past and all the terrible things he’d done, the deaths he was responsible for . . . he doubted that God would ever be willing to answer his prayers.

  Chapter 24

  CHICAGO

  1876

  FOURTEEN YEARS AGO

  No trees grow to the sky,” Soren repeated to himself as he sat in the dark stairwell outside his family’s apartment. Tears streamed silently down his face. He was five years old and certain that his mama was dying. He wiped his nose and cheeks with his fists, then tried to cover his ears, but he still could hear her terrible screams. “Go wait out in the hallway, Soren,” their neighbor, Mrs. Donovan, had said when he’d begun to cry. “You can come back inside after the baby is born.”

  Mama gripped her belly, her moans growing worse, but she’d managed to say, “Be a good boy now, Soren.” He’d done as he’d been told. The two rooms he shared with his mama and papa were on the third floor of a crowded tenement. With Mama in the first room and Papa asleep in the second, there was no other place for Soren to go but out to the hallway. The stench of mold and urine filled the windowless space. People weren’t always careful when they carried their slop buckets down the steep, dark stairs every morning to empty them in the privy outside.

  “No trees grow to the sky,” he whispered again. That’s what Mama always told him. And as he waited, he wondered if she was thinking of those words, too. There weren’t many trees in the Chicago neighborhood where he lived because most of them had burned up in the Great Fire five years ago. But Soren knew what Mama meant when she said it: Nothing lasts forever. When he and Mama were hungry or cold, “No trees grow to the sky” meant that the bad times would end soon. And when they did have food and coal for the fire, “No trees grow to the sky” meant that they should enjoy the food and the warmth while they could.

  The door behind him rattled open. Soren turned and was surprised to see his papa. “Pretty hard for us fellows to catch a nap, isn’t it?” he asked, raking his hand through his tawny hair. Before Soren could reply, Papa said, “Any room for me on that step?” Soren slid over as Papa sank down beside him with a huge sigh. For most of the hours that Soren was awake, his papa was asleep. He didn’t leave for work early every morning like all the other fathers in his apartment building did. Soren would wake up as they clomped down the wooden stairs in their thick shoes, but his papa was just coming home at that hour. The other men in his tenement wore work clothes that were stained and torn, and they came home at the end of the day smelling of the stockyards or the docks or the railyards. Papa didn’t leave for work until after the stars came out, and he dressed from head to toe in clothes that were as black as the night.

  “Hey, now. There’s nothing to cry about,” Papa said when he saw Soren’s tears. “Your mama will be just fine in a little while.” Another scream mocked his words. Soren could tell by the way Papa kept raking his fingers through his hair and clearing his throat that he was worried, too. “Sit on my lap, and I’ll tell you a story. Which one do you want to hear?”

  Soren scrambled onto his father’s lap. “The one about the fire.”

  “That story?” He laughed. “That one will give you nightmares, boy.” But Soren waited, hoping he would tell it anyway. “Let’s see now . . . You were only a tiny baby when the fire destroyed this city. The neighborhood next to ours had caught fire the night before, but the firemen put it out, you see, before it reached us. So we figured we’d be fine when the alarm bells started ringing again on Sunday night. But then our rooms started filling with smoke, and we saw a bright yellow glow in the sky like the sun was coming up, and everyone started yelling that we needed to run. The fire was coming right at us, you see. Your mother grabbed you from your bed, but before I had time to think what to pack, we heard flames crackling on the roof—that’s how fast it spread. There was a devilish wind blowing that night, you see. So we ran out the door, leaving everything behind—and just in time, too. When I looked back, I saw the roof caving in, right where we’d been sitting a moment ago.

  “We kept going, hurrying to get across the river where we figured we’d be safe. The streets were filled with all kinds of people—rich and poor, young and old, all carrying sacks and trying to drag their worldly goods to safety. They chose the strangest things to save—a chair, a clock, even a birdcage with a parrot in it. I didn’t have anything to carry, you see, so when people got tired and started leaving things behind, I stopped to look through some of the bundles. ‘Get across the river,’ I told your mother, ‘and I’ll meet you at the Great Central Depot by the lake.’ I knew this was a golden opportunity for me to get ahead in life, you see. The flames were as high as the sky and racing toward all those grand homes near the lake, and those rich folks were running for their lives, too. Now was my chance to take whatever they left behind. They didn’t want it, and it was all going to burn up anyway, so why not? Besides, there were a lot of other fellows who had the same idea as me and were doing the same thing, right?”

  Soren nodded, hoping Papa would continue. He told the story a little differently each time, with one or two new details added. But Soren loved the delicious fear he felt as he listened to him describe the danger and the race to outrun the soaring flames.

  “I got two nice suits of clothes that night. I put them on right overtop my own while standing in some gentleman’s bedroom. One suit over the other until I looked as plump as a rich man. That way I wouldn’t have to carry them, you see. But I mostly took small things, valuable things like gold jewelry and silverware and such, and I stuffed them inside some pillowcases I found. The rich people had jumped clear out of their beds without bothering to look back. I could’ve gotten rich that night, taking whatever I pleased from those homes, but there was no safe place to stash the goods, you see. The fire was going to eat up the whole city.

  “I managed to stay just ahead of the flames as they roared across Chicago, helping myself to whatever I could find. It was like the fires of hell itself were chasing me, raining down on me like brimstone.”

  Soren didn’t know what brimstone was, but he pressed closer against Papa’s chest as he imagined Mama fleeing from it with him in her arms. If only he could help her now as she cried out in pain from the other side of the door.

  “I reached the train depot, but you and your mother weren’t there,” Papa continued. He was well into his story now, and Soren could tell he enjoyed retelling the tale. “It was the dead of night, but the sky was almost as light as day. The heat was like standing beside an oven, and I was sweating like a dockworker with all those clothes on. The fire was spreading toward the depot, and with the flames behind me and the lake in front of me, the only way to run was north. Your brave mother fled for many miles that night with you in her arms while the firestorm chased her all the way to L
incoln Park. I found her in the cemetery the next morning with thousands of other people, leaning against a tombstone. Both of you were sound asleep. She nearly jumped out of her skin when I shook her awake. She didn’t know it was me, all dressed up in my new clothes, my face and hair black with soot. She thought I had burned up.” Papa laughed, but Soren didn’t understand why.

  “When it was all over and we could go home again, there was nothing left. We had no place to live. But neither did an awful lot of other people.”

  He paused, and Soren was about to ask him what happened next, when suddenly he heard a different kind of cry from behind the closed door. It was a baby’s cry, like the dozens he heard every day in his tenement. “Sounds like your mama just gave us a new baby,” Papa said. He looked relieved. He lifted Soren off his lap and set him down on the step before standing. “I’ll go inside and see what’s going on. Stay here until I come back.”

  Time passed slowly, and Papa didn’t return. Soren kicked his feet against the steps, causing an army of black ants and several shiny roaches to scurry out of the cracks. He wished Papa would hurry up. At last their neighbor, Mrs. Donovan, opened the door behind him. “You can come inside now, Soren, and meet your new baby sister.”

  Mrs. Donovan led him through the first room, where Papa sat at the table with a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, and into the second room where Mama was sitting up in bed, smiling. She was beautiful, his mama was, with golden hair and eyes as blue as the sky. “Come meet your new sister,” she said. “Her name is Hilde.” She let Soren climb onto the bed beside her so he could see Hilde’s round, red face and tiny, clenched hands. “You’ll be a good big brother and help me take care of her, won’t you?” Mama asked. He nodded and took his sister’s tiny hand in his. He would protect Hilde with his life the way Mama had protected him from the flames.

  Soren was sleeping later that night when Hilde’s cries woke him up. His father was already awake and dressed in his dark clothes. Papa lifted the baby from the wooden crate beside the bed where she’d been sleeping and kissed Hilde’s forehead before placing her in Mama’s arms, holding her as if she might break. “Please don’t go, Erik,” Mama said, clutching his sleeve. “If anything happens to you—”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. I have three of you to support now, don’t I? I need to make a living, don’t you see?”

  “Then find a different job, a real job. You could work in the stockyards or down at the docks like the other men do.”

  He pulled free and stepped away. “I’m no good at taking orders, you know that. Putting up with some arrogant boss all day, and for what? They expect a man to break his back for a few lousy dollars. I can take in that much money and more on a good night.”

  “Yes, on a good night. But what about all the nights when you come home with nothing? At least the stockyards or the docks would be steady work. How will the children and I live if the police catch you and—”

  “They won’t catch me. I work with a good gang of lads. We know what we’re doing.”

  “No trees grow to the sky, Erik.” Soren heard the quaver of fear or maybe anger in her voice. “Some night your luck might run out.”

  Papa moved toward the door. “I’ll be leaving now. I’ll bring home something nice for you and the baby.”

  “Make sure you don’t drink it all away!” She was clearly angry this time.

  “A man has to do something to wind down after a long night’s work.” He closed the outside door behind him. Soren wondered why Papa’s feet didn’t rumble down the wooden steps like all of the other men’s did. He always moved as silently as the stray cats that roamed the alley behind the apartment. After Papa was gone, Soren thought he heard his mother crying.

  When Soren was six and Hilde was old enough to toddle around, Mama went to work as a seamstress in a shirtwaist factory. “I need you to take care of Hilde while I’m gone,” she told Soren. “Can you do that for me?”

  “Why can’t Hilde and I come with you?” he asked. “I want to be with you.”

  She smoothed the hair from his eyes, then rested her hand on his cheek for a moment. “They don’t let babies like Hilde in the factory. And if I don’t go to work, we may not have any food to eat or a place to live.”

  Tears filled Soren’s eyes as he watched her go. Then Hilde started crying, too. He knew it was his job to keep her quiet while Papa slept, so he carried her down the wooden steps and outside to the front stoop. He made up games to play with her and sang all the songs that Mama had sung to him as they waited for her to return home at the end of the day. He missed his mama and wished he and Hilde didn’t have to be alone all day. But no trees grow to the sky, Mama assured him as she kissed him good-bye every morning. And she was right. A second sister, Greta, was born a year after Hilde, and Mama worked at home while Papa slept, sewing buttons onto piles of thick, woolen coats that a delivery boy brought to their apartment. Now Soren had two sisters to take outside for walks and soothe when they grew hungry and rock in his arms when they were fussy. He loved Hilde and Greta with all his heart and practiced carrying both of them at the same time—one on his back and one in his arms—in case he ever needed to save them from a fire.

  Then Papa struck it rich. He arrived home one morning just as the sun was rising, laughing and bragging that he’d found a gold mine like the ones in California. “Erik, you’ll wake up all the neighbors,” Mama said, shushing him.

  He shouted all the louder. “Who cares? I got us enough loot to move out of this rathole!” He collapsed onto the bed without even taking off his shoes and was soon snoring loudly.

  They didn’t move after all, but for the next few months, Mama no longer had to take in piecework. Every day, she took Soren and his sisters around to the street vendors to buy potatoes and apples and sometimes a fresh chicken. It was Soren’s job to carry everything home so Mama could carry baby Greta in one arm and hold Hilde’s hand with the other. But then Papa’s gold mine ran out, and Mama went back to work in the factory. Greta was just learning to walk by then, and once again it was Soren’s job to guard his sisters while Papa slept. He didn’t mind. He loved them, and they loved him.

  One afternoon while Mama was still at work and the girls were napping, Papa woke up earlier than usual. “Would you like to learn a new game?” he asked Soren, “and help your mother and sisters out?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “If you learn to play the game well, your mother won’t have to go to work anymore.”

  “What game is it?” Soren asked. The only ones he knew were the games the neighborhood children played in the streets using sticks and metal hoops and other items they’d picked from the garbage.

  “I’ll show you in a minute, but first you need to promise me that it’ll be our little secret. Just between you and me and nobody else. That way we can surprise your mother, you see?”

  “Can Hilde and Greta play, too?” Soren asked.

  “Sure, when they get a little older. They’re not grown up yet, like you are. Let me show you what to do.” To play the game, Papa would hide things like coins or maybe a leather wallet in one of his pockets. Then he would close his eyes, and Soren would have to take the coins out again without Papa knowing he had done it. They practiced every day while his sisters slept and before Mama got home, until one day Papa said Soren was ready to play the game out on the street, in a crowd of strangers.

  “How will we know if the strangers want to play with us?” Soren asked.

  Papa laughed out loud. “We won’t, son. That’s the game, you see? We’re playing a trick on them, and they don’t even know it. The money you get for winning the game will buy nice things for your mother and sisters. You’d like to buy them nice things, wouldn’t you?”

  “Hilde loves peaches,” Soren replied. “So does Mama.”

  “That’s my boy! Let’s go see if we can make enough to buy them some peaches.”

  Soren was very good at the game. He was slender and quick, and co
uld slip in and out of a crowd of people in the marketplace or as they waited for the streetcar, lifting coins from their pockets and items from their shopping bags without them knowing. All the while, Papa used pretty little Hilde and Greta to distract the people so they wouldn’t realize what Soren was doing. They bought lots of nice things with the money from their game.

  Then one morning Soren couldn’t get out of bed. His head ached and his body felt as if it were on fire. He struggled to get up, panicked that the heat was from another fire. He had to save his sisters from the flames, but he couldn’t seem to move. “Lie still, Soren,” Mama said as she laid a cool cloth on his forehead. “It’s the fever that’s making you feel hot, not a real fire.” He was sick for a long time, sometimes burning like a log inside the stove, and sometimes shivering with cold as if he slept outside on the back stairway as the wind blew off the lake. His insides turned to water, and he couldn’t stop them from pouring out, nor could he make it all the way downstairs to the privy on fever-weakened legs. Mama took care of him, bathing his forehead and changing his clothes and whispering songs to him and Hilde, who lay curled on the bed beside him, her body as warm as a kettle of water.

  When Soren finally woke up, the fever was gone—and so were Hilde and Greta. Tears welled in Mama’s eyes when she told him that the angels had taken them to heaven. The sickness had been in the water—the same water that Soren carried upstairs from the spigot for his sisters to drink. “I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry,” he wept. She told him it wasn’t his fault, but he blamed himself. He was supposed to take care of Hilde and Greta and protect them. But he hadn’t.

  One morning a few months later, Papa didn’t come home from work. He didn’t come home the next morning, either. Or the next. When two weeks passed and he still hadn’t returned, the landlord told Mama they had to move out. Soren helped her pack everything they owned and move it to a room in the basement of a run-down building near the railroad tracks. The only window in the room had a chip out of it that Mama stuffed with a rag to keep out the cold. The water spigot, which was a long way from the building, was always crowded with people waiting in line. The reeking outhouse overflowed whenever it rained, and the contents ran across the barren ground and into their apartment building. Soren missed his home. It held the only memories he had of Hilde and Greta. He worried that he would soon forget all of the things they’d done together, like going for walks and singing songs as they’d sat together on the front stoop.