The spiritual aspects of being a sister seemed very complicated to Mother St. John, but the daily work was not. She liked the nursing and the caring and the teaching parts of being a sister. But the Church’s tenets, the words, the prayers, the required beliefs were sometimes difficult to accept. There were many things Mother St. John did not understand. So, always, when she felt doubt or questioning come into her heart or her mind, she got to work. Mother St. John returned to the girl’s cot and found the babies asleep and the papers resting there too. She read them over. She admired her own words, the care with which she formed the letters. Then she scolded herself for vanity.
She pulled the quill from the ink. Where Lydian had left blanks for the children’s names, Mother St. John wrote Scholastica and Clement. She couldn’t remember for sure, but she thought them to be the names of pious twin saints who’d prayed together in inclement weather. Mother St. John took great care to select proper names for all her children. The only person at the infirmary who would not accept a Christian name was Big Waters, though years ago Mother St. John had tried to christen her Sarah. Mother St. John kept careful record of each Indian child’s tribe and tribal name but baptized all of them with the names of saints. These children needed the protection of all the patrons and matrons she could muster. For a surname, Mother St. John chose Piety, a gift of the Holy Spirit. Scholastica Piety and Clement Piety. Goodly names, she thought.
The babies slept for many hours, until hunger woke them. Mother St. John fixed a cloth soaked in sugar water for the girl, and Big Waters did the same for the boy. The two women marveled over the children’s features. They let the babies clutch their fingers as if they were aunts or grandmothers, even. The two women smiled and smiled down upon the faces. An onlooker would never guess that these infants were in any sense abandoned, orphaned, or alone.
The babies, more aware now and opening their swollen eyes to their surroundings, searched the wrinkles of Big Waters and the broad nose of Mother St. John, but their little brains made no connection to these elders. They fidgeted. They listened but couldn’t hear the beating-heart lullaby they’d grown dependent upon. They sniffed but could smell nothing familiar, and so they began to cry.
Mother St. John gently bounced the girl up and down. She swayed her to and fro. She laid the baby across her lap and patted her back. Still the girl cried. “Hungry, maybe,” suggested Mother St. John. The noise of his sister inspired the boy to louden his whimper to a wail. Together they sounded like clamorous cats. Other little children left their mats and peeked in through the crack between the door and its frame.
“Go back to bed,” Mother St. John urged them. One little boy pushed a stuffed sock through the door. It was filled with cloth scraps, and he’d stitched eyes and a nose onto it. “Elmer, the babies don’t want your bear. Get that dirty thing out of here.”
Elmer scrambled in, picked it up off the floor, and then rushed out. He was new here. His parents had died the past winter, frozen solid in a soddy to the south. They gave every last bit of food they had to Elmer and starved themselves. Elmer was found by a Sioux youth who’d come by to check on the German family. The youth had bundled up Elmer and brought him to Mother St. John. For days, the boy had slept with her in her bed, whimpering and sucking his thumb. Now she felt sorry for yelling at him.
“Elmer?” she called. “Elmer, come back. I think I was wrong. I think these babies would like your doll, thank you.”
Elmer crept back in and handed her the doll.
“Bless you, Elmer,” said Mother St. John. “Now, I left a little sweet roll in the kitchen. You go get one and share it.” Elmer walked out with his head down, again not watching where he was going, but she didn’t scold him for that.
Even as a girl, Mother St. John had wanted to be a mother. She had wanted a dozen children to hug and kiss and guide. Now she had so many, she hardly could keep them straight. But she asked for God’s strength and patience and kindness, and she worked very, very hard to be a good mother to all the children. She believed, more than anything else, that they needed to be filled up with love.
In her earlier years, she had been assigned to other orphanages and had witnessed how badly the sisters treated the children. How they beat them with spoons or paddles. How they withheld food. How they kept them in dark rooms for wetting themselves. How they called them names. She remembered those sad faces and determined to never, ever treat a child in such a way. And now that she had her own place for the sick and unwanted, she could organize it like a regular family, with God as the head and her as the wife and mother. She was glad that Big Waters, a grandmother of sorts, was there to help.
The babies whimpered persistently. Mother St. John speculated first that they were too cold, then too hot, hungry, too full, gassy, constipated, tired, bored, lonely for their mother, stirred up too much, sick, premature, colicky, swaddled too tight or not tight enough. Then, when she was at her wit’s end, she put the children side by side and watched. The boy curled around his sister like a shell around a nut and became quiet. “Well,” said Mother St. John. “Why didn’t I think of that earlier?” The girl fussed until Mother St. John dabbed the corner of a cloth in sweet water, twisted it, and put it in her mouth.
The girl babe sucked happily and quickly fell asleep. The boy could smell an elemental scent, hear a common heartbeat, feel a familiar breath and an ancient link. Here was his sister. His twin. His blood and bone. And he would never let go of her. Clement Piety’s little fist again took hold of a handful of his sister’s hair. But she did not cry this time.
As quickly as the children quieted, Mother St. John’s frustration and panic disappeared. She looked at them and wondered if there was anything in the world sweeter than a sleeping infant.
“Big Waters,” said Mother St. John. “If I wasn’t a believer in Mary and Jesus and their love and forgiveness, my heart would break over all the abandoned and orphaned children in these parts. Do you think it’s so bad everywhere?”
Big Waters nodded.
“Certainly,” said Mother St. John. “How does the world take it? How can any woman know of an abandoned one and not want to take the poor thing to her heart?”
Big Waters crawled into bed and pulled up the blanket.
“If I ever had a baby,” said Mother St. John, “I’d move heaven and earth before I’d choose to desert it upon the world for some other to care for. But I took the vow of celibacy, so I suppose my love is for children like these.” She draped another blanket over the babies. “When you hold the orphaned ones,” she asked, “does it take you over like it does me?”
Big Waters rubbed her feet together beneath the blanket. She sniffed, and Mother St. John wondered if she was crying.
“Like a flock of night birds,” Big Waters whispered, “landing on your chest.”
“What?” said Mother St. John, even though she’d heard the old woman. “Goodness. Yes. That’s what it’s like. Heavy and grave.”
Mother St. John turned down the lantern.
“I suppose we will be awakened a few times tonight to feed these.” Mother St. John went on about keeping the fires burning all night and how little babies make a place feel special. She talked of a young mother who died in childbirth maybe a year back. She told of the woman’s husband, who’d been away in the timber camp. She recalled how she’d kept that baby for a week or so until two of the woman’s sisters came to claim him. She told Big Waters how each thought she was better qualified to raise up the baby right. One was married with a family already. The other was a single schoolteacher somewhere east of here. Mother St. John said she didn’t know which woman took him, in the end. Either way, she said, he was lucky to be so much wanted, even if those women were some kind of Lutherans. She told Big Waters how Father Paul had baptized that boy before the women had ever arrived, so he’d go in the correct direction when he died.
Big Waters snored boisterously. She wasn’t sleeping but clearly wanted to be. Mother St. John pulled the door shut
and went about other business, mumbling the Joyful Mysteries of the rosary as she did so.
10
Eliza and Child
JUST AS MOTHER ST. JOHN was hanging the last of the laundry to dry, a shadow crept past the window.
“Now who could that be?” she said, talking to herself, a thing she did often and didn’t mind. “At this time of night.” It occurred to her that perhaps the mother of the babies was returning. She rushed to open the door for her and called, “Up, Big Waters. Put hot water on for tea.”
She’d invite the mother in, warm her up, tell her these fears were natural. But when she opened the door, she found not the mother of the twins, but a young Negro woman holding a small child by the hand.
“Oh,” said Mother St. John, looking behind the woman, and then to the left and right. She was looking for white people, for minders, for masters, for caretakers. But no others were there. Only the night and the wind and endless drifts of snow. Mother St. John had never seen a black person unattended. “Oh,” she said again. “Hello?”
She stared into the Negro woman’s face. She’d heard that the Virgin Mary and her people were not white, but closer to a brown color. Mother St. John didn’t know whether she believed this or not. But the woman in her doorway, now that she looked, was closer to brown than black. And she had a blue shawl draped over her head, so that the idea of a brown Holy Mother seemed more feasible.
“Help us, please,” the woman said. She stepped into the doorway. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Mother St. John had read that the Virgin Mary was just an adolescent when she birthed the Lord, and she imagined that the Mother of God must have looked as pitiful as this woman when she and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem and were turned away time and again.
Then the woman pushed the small child into the room. “This boy’s my son,” said the cloaked woman, “and they mean to take him for a slave.” She leaned over and coughed. Even through her dress and cloak, Mother St. John could see how bony her spine was.
Mother St. John stepped aside to allow the child and then his mother to pass. “Come.” She closed the door while Big Waters went to the kitchen to light the stove. Mother St. John patted the boy on the head. It was too big for his body, in the natural way of a child of four or five years. He clung to his mother. His eyes were wide, but they had the stare of curiosity rather than panic or fear. “Hi there,” she said to the child. She noticed now that his skin was lighter than his mother’s. “Are you alone?” she asked the mother.
“Long as we can help it, we are,” the cloaked woman said. She put her hand upon the boy’s shoulder. “They’ll come if they can find us.”
“Sit down for a moment,” said Mother St. John. “Calm down now. You’re scaring the boy.” Mother St. John moved to pull out the chair, but tipped it over instead. “Oh my,” she said. She set it upright.
“My boy’s real bright,” said the cloaked woman. Her voice was raspy and soft. “Smart as any white boy.” She put her hand to her chest. “I can’t let them take him south and slave him.”
Mother St. John prickled at the word slave. She simply didn’t like it and wished that the woman wouldn’t use it. In polite company, Mother St. John had heard the term servants used to describe the Negro race of the South. She preferred that. “We’ll have a cup of hot tea,” she said. “Who is it that will come and make a servant of your son?”
The young woman’s gaze flitted around the room and behind her as though she was worried that at any minute something might manifest out of a corner and snatch her up.
“I don’t want any trouble here,” Mother St. John said. “I have small children to think about.”
The woman sat down and pulled the child onto her lap. He fell against her breast and closed his eyes. “I heard you help us. Have you?” She searched the space again. “Have you helped others? A man. Lighter than most? I heard you had ways of getting us into Canada or Chicago or New York?”
Mother St. John searched her brain for who might have said such a thing. Without thinking, she was shaking her head no. She stopped.
“Have you seen a big, skinny, kinda yella man come through here?” asked the woman. “Goes by name Jim?”
Mother St. John’s head began shaking again. “Who told you that?”
“You mean he was here?” said the woman.
“No,” said Mother St. John. “I mean, who told you we do such things?”
The woman face changed, suddenly, as if her jaw and cheeks had been pulled down. She pushed back the chair and stood. The weight of the boy nearly bent her over in half. “Maybe I come to the wrong place.” She looked around nervously. “Not supposed to ask who sent me. That’s one of the rules. Know that for sure.” She rushed toward the door.
Mother St. John went to the door too and put her hand on it. “Wait, wait,” she said. She wasn’t sure why she was about to convince the woman to stay, but the words were out before she could stop them. “You must calm down. I’m going to help you, of course. I’m only confused.” Mother St. John laughed lightly at herself. “I’ve had a long day already. I’m just not clear on what it is you want.” She sat down and crossed her arms over her middle. Her cramps were bothering her terrible.
“Some people told me you took care of all kinds of troubles and problems.”
Mother St. John felt a chill blast from under the door and into the little room. She wondered about the young mother who’d left not too long ago. She wondered about this young mother now. She wondered if God was testing her in some way. A test of righteousness? A test of will? A test of intelligence? A test of intuition? She considered her little Home for Orphans and Infirmed, which was already packed with needy souls.
Mother St. John decided. “You’re safe here,” she said. “I can be trusted. No harm will come to you here. I would never put a child in harm’s way. Never.”
The woman examined Mother St. John and at last her gaze rested on the nun’s eyes. “Thank you,” she said. She swayed on her feet.
Mother St. John put her arms under the child. “Let me carry him.” She took the boy from his mother’s arms. The woman leaned against the door and coughed again.
Mother St. John stepped away from the woman. “He looks like a bright boy. Let’s put him in a bed for the night.”
The young mother nodded, crossed her arms over her chest, and slipped to the floor.
Big Waters came in, saw the woman, and waddled to her aid. She put the young mother’s limp arm over her own aged shoulders and helped her stand. Together they shuffled toward the bed where Lydian had so recently birthed the twins. Mother St. John followed with the sleeping child. Big Waters helped the young woman into the bed, then she stepped back.
“He stays with me no matter what,” whispered the young woman.
Mother St. John placed the child in the bed too. “It’s clean,” she said.
“Name’s Eliza,” said the mother. “Prolly seen the posters about me and my boy?”
Mother St. John searched her memory for such a thing. Certainly she knew what kind of poster Eliza referred to. There were only two reasons for a person of black heritage to be featured on a poster, for sale or for reward. “No. I’ve not.”
“We’re with the Winstons, of the Missouri Winstons, if you’re wondering, which I’m sure you are, being you’re a woman and a religious one besides.”
Mother St. John spread a blanket over the boy.
“He’s Davis, my boy.” She kissed the top of his head and closed her eyes. “He’s such a smart boy,” she whispered. “Just like his daddy.”
Mother St. John closed the curtain over the window. “I don’t know the Winstons, but I know of them. Visitors to the fort, right? Trying to help the territory get organized and put down the Indian revolts?”
“Uh-huh,” said Eliza, her eyes still closed. She went on then, her words fading in and out. “I been . . . that fort fixin’ teas . . . suppers for . . . and that one. Been shinin’ . . . tall boots . . . and all the while pl
anning . . . from those people.”
“Sleep now, if you wish,” said Mother St. John. “You’re safe here.”
Big Waters tucked the blanket all around the pair.
Eliza whispered on. Nonsense mostly, about some man named Jim and freedom for her son.
Mother St. John was familiar with the phenomenon of runaway slaves, of Negro servants escaping their masters, but had never really developed an opinion about it and wasn’t sure if the Church had decreed an official position on the matter. She had read something about the Missouri Compromise but honestly couldn’t remember what it had determined. So much was going on in the country, Mother St. John had a difficult time staying abreast of the new territories being purchased, new states being formed, new railroad tracks being laid, Indian attacks, and wars. So little of it seemed to affect her daily life with the children. Way up here, in the north, slavery hadn’t ever touched her.
Eliza then seemed to be asleep. Mother St. John crept close to her and noted the dry, scaly texture of her skin. Big Waters went to her own bed and fell into it. Mother St. John pulled a chair from the corner and sat in it, determined to sleep upright. She had closed her eyes for all of thirty minutes when Eliza’s coughing shook the bed. Mother St. John opened her eyes to see the young woman, head pressed into the pillow, trying to stifle the cough. Mother St. John reached over and stroked the top of her head.
“Do you need water?” she whispered, so as not to wake the boy, Big Waters, or the babies.
Eliza nodded.
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