“Did you always obey when you were a girl, Ma?” Esther asked, pushing the chair back to the table.
“Yes,” Ma said firmly. She opened her mouth as if she wanted to say more but wasn’t sure if she should. In a few moments she added, “But my little sister Tatiana did not. She was always laughing and imagining things—like you. She did not always take rules seriously.” Ma’s voice was suddenly so soft, Esther could barely hear her. Tatiana again! Esther wondered why Ma had never spoken of this sister before.
“Is Aunt Tatiana still in Russia?” she asked. Esther knew she had aunts and uncles in Canada. They sent letters and cards sometimes. There was Aunt Marta and Aunt Sophia, and Uncle Walter. But no Aunt Tatiana. If she still lived in Russia, that might be why she was mentioned so seldom.
“She is in Russia, yes,” Ma said, but her voice sounded funny.
“Maybe she can come to visit us sometime,” Esther said.
One corner of Ma’s mouth quirked into a sad smile. “No, Esther. She cannot come to visit.”
Esther frowned. “But why not? Uncle Josef came once.”
Ma sighed. She rested one hand gently on Esther’s shoulder. “Tatiana was willful. She had been told many times to stay away from the stream that went through our land. The current could be very strong, especially in the spring. But one day when she was five years old, Tatiana went in wading anyway, and she drowned.”
“Oh! That’s terrible!” Esther cried.
“Yes,” Ma agreed. “And it wouldn’t have happened if she had not disobeyed.”
Esther gulped. Right then she made up her mind to stay home on Wednesday. Ma knew best. And it would be wrong to disobey her.
• • •
When Wednesday morning came, though, Esther began to have second thoughts. She imagined Bethany getting ready for her visit. She imagined her watching and waiting when it got near lunchtime. And she imagined how disappointed she would be when Esther never came. Then she remembered how Bethany had copied problems from the blackboard for her. She remembered how Bethany had waited for her on the day of the picnic. She hadn’t even wet her toes in the water until Esther arrived.
Truly, Bethany was a good friend. Her best friend. And Esther felt in her heart that this one time Ma was wrong. It was just an ordinary mole on Bethany’s cheek, not a mark of warning. Esther hated to disobey Ma. But she decided she had no choice.
• • •
“Ma, I finished all the lamps. Is it all right if I go pick some raspberries?” It was midmorning. Esther had spent the past hour polishing the kerosene lamps. It was a chore she hated because the smoky smudges on the glass were so stubborn. She had to rub and rub until her shoulders ached. But the last lamp was gleaming on the kitchen table. Now was the time to try her plan. She crossed two sets of fingers behind her back.
Ma was washing clothes in the yard. She used two washtubs for the job. One had soapy water in it for the washing. The other tub had clear water for the rinsing. Somewhere in the middle of the wash, Ma would empty both tubs into the grass. Then she would carry buckets of hot water from the kitchen and cold water from the well until both tubs were filled with clean water again. The buckets were too heavy for Esther to carry, but Ma was strong. And even though washing clothes was much harder here than it had been in the city, she never complained.
Ma was on her knees scrubbing one of Pa’s shirts on the gray rippled washboard. Sweat streamed down her face. Hearing Esther’s question, she stopped and wiped her forehead on her arm. “Raspberries and cream would be a good treat,” she admitted. “You know where these berries grow?”
“Yes, and I’ll bring home lots,” Esther promised. She held her breath.
Ma smiled. “Go, then. There are buckets in the barn. Too bad I need Violet to help me or she could pick, too.” She looked across the yard to where Violet was hanging wet clothes on the line. It was a chore Esther couldn’t help with yet because she was too short.
“Thanks, Ma.” Esther ran for the buckets.
A few minutes later Esther was on her way. Ma had wrapped a sandwich in waxed paper and set it inside one of the buckets. “You will get hungry,” she told Esther. Then she nested that bucket inside the other one. “There,” she said when she was finished. “Now they both have something in them,” she explained. “To carry an empty bucket is bad luck.”
Esther didn’t know how Ma kept track of so many ways to avoid bad luck, but she took the buckets and said, “Thanks, Ma. I’ll bring home lots of berries.”
On her way to the road, feeling guiltier than ever, she fed the sandwich to Mickey so it would not go to waste. Then she put the crumpled sheet of waxed paper back in the bucket so it wouldn’t be empty. She spotted Pa walking through the wheat field. Still no rain had come. Pa’s walk was slow.
Walter skipped behind him, raising little clouds of dust. Esther looked up at the sky. There were a few clouds off in the distance. Please, please, rain here, she begged them silently.
It was a long walk to Bethany’s house. It was even farther away than the school. To make the walk more interesting, Esther pretended she was a brave explorer alone in the jungle. The cows in the fields were elephants. The horses were giraffes. And the dogs and cats in the farmyards were lions and tigers. She skulked past mailboxes on silent feet—the lions and tigers mustn’t hear! She trotted along the fence line with one spirited giraffe. And she made monkey noises at the elephants. They twitched their ears and one or two turned to stare.
Esther laughed and chattered and loped along, swinging her buckets. In a surprisingly short time she was turning off the road at Bethany’s farm. And Bethany must have been watching, because she came running to meet her.
Suddenly Esther remembered what Ma had said: “She is marked to warn people that she is dangerous.” An icy shiver trickled down her spine.
“You came!” Bethany cried.
Her grin was enormous. Its warmth melted Esther’s fear in an instant. “Of course I came,” she said.
Esther grabbed Bethany’s outstretched hand. They ran the rest of the way to the house. The closer they got, the more astonished Esther became. She had never seen Bethany’s house close up before. She’d only seen it from the road, and trees had partly blocked it. Now she could see it was white with green shutters. It had pots of geraniums on the porch, and even a rocking chair. It was just like her dream house, only bigger and better. She didn’t realize she had stopped to stare until Bethany tugged on her hand.
“Come on,” Bethany urged. “Mama’s waiting.”
Dazed, Esther tripped up the porch steps after her friend. Inside the house, she tried not to gawk. She had expected Bethany’s home to be much like her own. But it was far more like Shirley’s pretty home in Chicago than the Vogel farmhouse. There were carpets on the floors and pretty wallpapers on the walls. There were vases of flowers on the tables and snowy-white lace curtains at the window. And nowhere was there even one nasty old kerosene lamp. They had electricity.
“Hello, Esther,” Mrs. Klause greeted her from the kitchen—a kitchen with a real sink, a coal stove, and an icebox. “I hope you like pancakes, fried apples, and sausages.”
Esther’s mouth watered. “I love them!” she said.
Lunch was delicious, but more than that, it was fun. Lunch for the Klause family was not just a time to eat. It was a time to talk and share and laugh together. Mr. Klause especially never seemed to run out of interesting stories to tell.
“Old Brownie got a real close look at a rabbit today,” he said with a grin. “He nearly put his hoof right on the fool thing before it woke up!”
Little Rose’s eyes widened. “Did the bunny hop away, Papa? Did he?”
“You just bet he did, Rosy-Posy. You just bet he did,” Mr. Klause assured her. “But that silly old Brownie gave the biggest hop of all. That’s how scared he was of that little bitty bunny.”
Esther laughed along with everyone else, picturing the big workhorse leaping into the air like an enormous rabbit.
Later, when the meal was nearly finished, Mr. Klause turned a suddenly serious face on Bethany and Esther. “Just be sure to put more raspberries in your pails than in your stomachs,” he warned.
Esther sat up straighter and nodded. She didn’t realize Mr. Klause was teasing until she heard Bethany’s unladylike snort. Bethany pointed a finger at her father. “You’re the one who eats as fast as he picks!”
“He surely does,” Mrs. Klause agreed. “If I left the picking to him, the rest of us would never see a berry.” But she smiled at her husband. And Esther noticed that Mrs. Klause gave him an extra-big serving of raspberry pie for dessert.
Everyone laughed when Rose licked her dessert plate and got a raspberry stain on her nose. Mrs. Klause kissed Rose’s chubby cheek and said, “Now you are for certain the sweetest baby in Wisconsin!”
Watching Mrs. Klause with Rose, Esther felt an actual ache in her heart. Had Ma ever kissed Esther like that? She did not think so.
Esther started to clear the table, but Mrs. Klause shooed her away. “This is your holiday. You girls go and play. I can manage.”
So Esther and Bethany went outside and, swinging their buckets, headed toward the raspberry bushes. They hadn’t gone very far when a black cat streaked across the grass in front of them. “A black cat!” Esther gasped, plowing to a stop. “Where did he come from?”
“From our barn,” Bethany said with a laugh. “Dad says Licorice is the best mouser we’ve ever had.”
Both girls watched as the cat slowed and flattened himself in the grass. He crept forward, closer and closer to something in the grass that only he could see. Esther turned away when the cat pounced.
“Doesn’t your father worry about bad luck?” she asked Bethany.
“Nah. He’s just happy to have a barn with no mice.”
Esther couldn’t believe how calm Bethany was. Didn’t she realize that bad luck was heading toward them, ready to pounce like Licorice had just pounced on that poor little creature in the grass? Esther grabbed Bethany’s arm. “Come on,” she said. “We have to undo our bad luck—fast!”
Bethany looked startled, but when Esther bolted for the barn, she followed. Only after they plunged into its cool shadows did Esther stop. She blinked until her eyes adjusted to the dim light. Then she scanned the walls.
“What are you looking for?” Bethany wanted to know.
“This!” Esther announced triumphantly. She set down her buckets and darted over to a low shelf where several horseshoes lay. Esther grasped a cool, heavy shoe in one hand and rubbed its ends hard with the other. Then she insisted that Bethany do the same. “There,” she said, setting the shoe down again after Bethany had obeyed. “Now we’re protected.”
“But from what?” Bethany asked.
“From whatever bad luck your black cat was going to send us,” Esther explained.
“I don’t think Licorice has ever sent anyone bad luck,” Bethany said doubtfully, “but I guess it can’t hurt to be careful.” She picked up the buckets Esther had dropped moments before. “Can we go pick raspberries now?”
Esther grinned. “We sure can.” She gave a little skip into the doorway. “Heaps and heaps of raspberries.” She was proud of herself for remembering what Pa had taught her that first week on the farm. For one horrible moment after she had seen the black cat, she had thought that maybe bad luck was meant to be her punishment for disobeying Ma. But because Esther had remembered Pa’s lesson, she had chased the bad luck away. Of course, Pa had said the tips of the horseshoe had to be hung pointing up so the good luck didn’t fall out. The horseshoe she had found was lying on its side. Maybe the good luck in it wasn’t as strong as it should have been . . .
But as quickly as the worry blossomed, Esther cast it away. Even if a teeny bit of luck had spilled out, much more must have stayed inside. And a few minutes later, when she was filling her pails with raspberry after plump raspberry, she was sure of it. This was a perfect day and not even a black cat was going to spoil it.
The girls had a lot to talk about, and the faster they talked, the faster they picked.
“Were there really games at the lake?” Esther asked.
“Yes,” Bethany said. “I’m sorry you couldn’t stay. I wanted you for my partner.”
“That would’ve been so much fun,” Esther said, not even trying to keep the disappointment out of her voice.
“We’ll do it next year,” Bethany said, waving off a fat bee that buzzed around their heads.
Esther thought of Ma and squirmed, but she said, “Yes. Next year for sure.”
When their buckets were full, the girls turned cartwheels and tried to do handstands, but the grass was dry and prickly. The sun was hot and the bees kept buzzing overhead. Esther knew they only wanted the berries, but she couldn’t help being nervous. Bugs—especially bugs that stung—still frightened her a little, even after her months on the farm. She was glad when Bethany said she was thirsty and suggested they go back to the house.
Mrs. Klause poured them each a tall glass of lemonade. Esther drained the glass, one tangy mouthful after another. She had never tasted lemonade so good. But everything about that day seemed special. She wished it never had to end.
“This is so pretty,” she said when Bethany took her up to her bedroom. Blue flowered wallpaper, white lace curtains, and a blue-and-white quilt made the room bright and cozy. A small white bookcase stood against one wall. Esther hurried over. “Oh! You have Five Little Peppers,” she cried. “I loved that story. And you’ve got all of Louisa May Alcott’s books, too!”
Bethany nodded. “Mama got them for me. I haven’t read most of them yet.”
Esther was shocked. “Why not? I’d be reading ’til my eyes crossed.” She opened Jo’s Boys. On the inside of the cover there was flowing handwriting that read, To My Dear Bethany With Much Love From Mama. Esther swallowed hard.
“You can take it home and read it if you want,” Bethany offered.
But Esther put the book back on the shelf and shook her head. “No, I couldn’t. I might get it dirty or lose it or something.”
“You wouldn’t,” Bethany argued.
But Esther didn’t give in, much as she would have loved to. “I really can’t. But thanks,” she said. She couldn’t tell Bethany that there’d be no way to explain the borrowed book to Ma.
And, she realized with a pang of distress, she couldn’t tell Bethany they couldn’t be friends anymore, either.
She thought she’d find a way, but being with Bethany again had only made her more certain than ever that Ma was mistaken. Now she had to find a way to prove that to Ma, because she couldn’t bear to lose Bethany as a friend.
“I’d better go,” she said reluctantly. “It’s getting late.”
“I’ll walk a ways with you,” Bethany said.
Esther thanked Mrs. Klause for lunch. Then she set out for home with Bethany at her side. Esther carried one of the buckets of berries. Bethany carried the other. They sang songs as they walked, and they played follow the leader. They took turns deciding whether to strut or walk sideways or backward—whether to carry the buckets in their right hand or their left or even on top of their heads. Bethany walked a long way with Esther, but finally she had to turn and go back home.
She handed her bucket to Esther. With a sad smile she said, “I wish you could come every day.” Then she waved. “See you at church.”
Esther smiled and waved, too, but her heart slid down toward her stomach as she remembered Ma. Was it possible for her to stay friends with Bethany without Ma knowing? She always seemed to know everything. Esther chewed her lip and trudged down the roadside, thinking hard. Sunday school was held away from the parents. That was not the problem. It was before and after that was the trouble. Of course, a
lot of people milled around before and after services. Esther might be able to say quick hellos and good-byes to Bethany without Ma noticing. She would just have to be very careful.
Suddenly she thought of Violet. There would be no way to hide the friendship from her. And her older sister might feel it was her duty to tell Ma that Esther was still seeing Bethany. But Esther did not think so. Violet didn’t take signs as seriously as Ma did. Esther believed Violet’s sympathy would keep her silent.
Esther was not happy with her plan. She didn’t like the idea of sneaking behind Ma’s back. But the thought of hurting Bethany somehow seemed even worse.
When Esther returned home, Ma praised her for picking so many berries. Esther could barely meet her mother’s eyes. Ma could read so many signs. Could she see on Esther’s face that she had deceived her? Esther’s cheeks burned at the thought. But all Ma said was, “Next time remember to wear a hat. Your face is red from the sun.” She even rested her cool, rough hand against Esther’s cheek for a moment.
Esther nodded because she could not speak. She was too ashamed. How could she go on lying to Ma? But if she didn’t, how could she tell Bethany that Ma said she was marked? Esther didn’t know if she would ever be able to decide which was worse. If only Julia would hurry and answer her letter. Esther needed some good advice.
Surprisingly, there was word from Julia that very night, but not what anyone expected. The family had just finished supper when they heard Mickey barking. A few moments later a car door slammed. They all looked at one another in surprise. Who could it be? Pa rose and went to the screen door. Mr. Brummel appeared on the porch. A big man with shaggy white hair and a shy smile, he always made Esther think of a sheepdog.
“Good news,” he announced to a chorus of fairy bells as Pa invited him inside. “I bring you good news.” Because Mr. Brummel was the sheriff, he had one of the few telephones in the area. Important messages were often relayed through him. He pumped Pa’s hand and clapped him on the back. “Your daughter Julia just telephoned. She asked me to tell you that her sister had her baby tonight. A boy! Henry Christian. Both he and his mama are fine.”
What the Moon Said Page 8