Drowning Ruth

by Christina Schwarz

  Once I had thought this place was the only one like it in all the world, but now I knew better. Lakes were scattered all over this part of the country, their outlines different, but their innards just the same. They were drops and drips and splashes on the land. They were holes and craters lined with skin too thin to hold back the springs that rushed to fill them, and most of them were dotted here and there with stubborn little islands, knobs of land that refused to dip their heads under the water.

  To the old farmer who'd sold my parents their land, my island had been nothing, or worse than nothing—a useless piece of soil. He never mentioned it to my parents when he pushed the deed toward them across the heavy oak table in what had only moments before been his kitchen and was now ours.

  They didn't discover they owned the island until several years later. I was twelve and Mattie four the day my parents spread the papers out on that same kitchen table to determine whether a spring to the north that would have been handy for them really belonged to our neighbors, as the Jungbluths claimed.

  “What's this here?” My mother tapped her index finger on a blob marked with an X that looked to be in the middle of nowhere.

  My father studied the map. “Well, Mother,” he said, “it looks like we own the island out in Taylor's Bay.”

  Mattie was standing close to him, as she always did, one arm crooked around his leg. He scooped her up and tossed her toward the ceiling. “What do you think of an island, missy?”

  “Again!” she shrieked. “Again!”

  And so he tossed her several more times, while she squealed, until at last he lowered her to the ground, his large hands rucking her dress under her arms.

  “Do it again! Please!” she whined, pulling at his trouser. “Again! Please! Again!”

  Finally he raised a warning finger, and she started to cry. He turned to me. “Take care of your sister,” he said impatiently.

  “We're busy here.” And then he and my mother went back to trying to bend the northern boundary.

  After everyone else was in bed that night, I crept down the stairs and unrolled the map to examine the shape for myself. How oddly small and plain it looked, so different from the rocky, tangled place I knew. I rubbed at it with my finger. On paper, it might have been no more than a smudge of blackberry jam.

  Under the rush of the wind now, I became aware of the ching-ching of sleigh bells coming up the road. I wrapped my muffler tight around my throat and lifted my bag. I was about to step outside and hail the driver, when the horse crested the hill and I saw just whose animal it was. I shrank back and pulled the door to. I had done something that I didn't want Joe Tully to know, something worse even than my dismissal, and I couldn't stand for him to see me with that shame in my heart. In the darkness, I pressed against the straw-covered blocks of ice and, my eyes closed, my breathing stilled, waited for the bells to cease, for the sound of footsteps, for the light to flood against my eyelids, because surely he'd seen me, had at least seen something and would wonder. Joe was not the sort who could ignore a glimpse of an intruder, or of someone who might need his help.

  The bells came on, nearer, nearer, until I could hear the horse snort and the hiss of the runners on the snow, and then they passed by and jingled more and more faintly, until at last they were buried beneath the wind. He must not have seen me after all. But if the stranger I had recently become was relieved, some other part of me shuddered with despair, and I found myself weeping, the tears searing my frozen cheeks, at the thought that I'd had to hide myself from a man I'd once loved.

  And then, finally, I had to go on. One can only cry so long, and it would be dark soon and colder. Although the wind was fierce, I had only one more hill to climb. At the very last, when I could see the yellow farmhouse and the smoke from the fieldstone chimney, I began to run, taking huge, wild steps, picking my feet up high out of the snow and throwing them down again, swinging my bag, as if I were just a girl, propelled by the excitement of coming home.

  I was about to knock at the kitchen door when it flew open. Mathilda stood on tiptoe, her cheeks flushed from sitting near a warm fire.

  “Amanda! You've come back!” She had to lift her arms high to throw them around me, for while I had long ago grown into a tower, she had stayed tiny and delicate, like our mother, a little sprite.

  I was pleased by her embrace, but I was less demonstrative than my sister, and I stood rather awkwardly, still holding my bag, until she began to pull me inside.

  “Wait, Mattie. You don't want snow all over your clean floor.” I stamped and brushed at my shoulders.

  She laughed. “Bring it in! Bring it in! Bring all of you in!”

  She poked me playfully in the ribs as she took my coat. “Getting a little stout, aren't you? Too much pie?” She giggled.

  “I'll be skin and bones again in no time eating your cooking,” I said.

  “Oh, I'm not going to cook anymore. Not now that you're here.”

  We laughed at this, knowing how right she was.

  “Look at those boots, those gorgeous boots!” she exclaimed, bending over to admire my city footwear, spoiled now with wading through the drifts for which they were perfectly unsuited.

  That was my Mattie, thrilled at a pair of new boots, not even thinking to ask uncomfortable questions about why I'd come or what I intended to do. She was simply pleased to have me there.

  “And Ruthie? Where's my baby?” I asked.

  “Right here, of course.” She swooped down on a pile of rumpled quilts that lay on the rocker near the stove and plucked the little girl out. “Wake up, Ruthie. Your Aunt Mandy's here.”

  “Oh, don't wake her,” I begged, but it was too late. Ruth blinked at me and yawned.

  Mathilda thrust her into my arms. “Here, you hold her.”

  The way things had been with me lately, I was afraid the child might scream, but when I settled into the rocker, she nestled against my shoulder and went back to sleep. It was exactly as I'd hardly dared hope it would be, the three of us warm in that familiar kitchen. I almost forgot to ask after Carl.

  “He can see all right again,” she said. “But there's some infection in the leg, and he still doesn't know when he'll be coming back.” She'd told me in her letters about the gas that had blinded him and the shrapnel that had made a hole in his thigh practically big enough to stick a fist through. I'd assured her that a man was pretty certain to recover from those wounds, but she wanted to worry. “You're here now, though,” she said, raising her eyes to mine, and she tossed her head, almost defiantly.

  So I would take care of her. That was all right then. That was something I knew how to do. For a moment or two I could almost believe that things were the way they had always been, before Carl or anyone else had come between us.

  Chapter Two

  Ruth

  Aunt Mandy told me to be quiet, but I didn't be quiet. And then my mother went away.

  Amanda

  “My sister's gone,” I told the sheriff.

  He yawned and rubbed his face. When there wasn't any law-breaking, which was most of the time, the sheriff was just Mr. Kuhtz, a farmer. I'd gotten him out of bed. “What's that?”

  “I can't find Mathilda.” I shifted Ruth, bundled in a feather quilt against the cruel November night, to my other hip. My arms were nearly limp with weariness, and she was heavy, but I couldn't let her go. I'd been home less than a year, and I had lost my sister.

  “Well, how long has she been gone?”

  “Hours. I don't know how many. We all went to bed and then something woke Ruth. That's when I saw that Mattie wasn't in her room. Wasn't in the house at all.”

  “You still out on the island?” He frowned, and I knew Mathilda had been right. People had been wondering about us. “You come over on the ice already?”

  Just then Mrs. Kuhtz appeared behind him. “Why are they standing out in the cold, Cyrus?” she scolded. “Come in. Sit down, and I'll get you something hot to drink.” She had a very good face for trouble—she
looked stricken, full of concern. “Here, give me the little girl. Ain't you just frozen, sweetheart?” She held her arms out for Ruth.

  “No!” I said. I pulled Ruth against me so hard that she yelped. “We have to get home. In case Mattie comes back.”

  “Cy'll find her,” Mrs. Kuhtz said soothingly. The sheriff had already gone to put on his clothes. “He'll bring her back.”

  I turned then, and went off across the frozen grass. When Ruth shivered, I opened my coat so she could share its warmth. Under the quilt she had nothing on.

  Where were we going? I wasn't certain, despite what I'd told Mrs. Kuhtz. Not back to the island—that was unthinkable. With no plan, I staggered along the same road I'd traveled eight months before, this time with Ruth, heavy as an anchor, clutched to my chest. Although we were moving away from the water, the lake itself seemed to be beneath my skin, for I leaked and dripped with every painful step. My wet hair had frozen on my head. The front of my dress was sodden under my coat; my vision was blurred. But my feet knew the way, just as they had in March. Back I went to the dark, cold farmhouse, the place we never should have left, where we'd all have been safe, if not for me.

  Ruth was asleep by the time we reached home, her head drooping along my arm. Her nightgown was back on the island, so I wrapped her as well as I could in one of my father's old shirts and my mother's shawl. I lit the stove and rocked her in my lap, while I waited for water to heat. Then I filled the hot water bottle and tucked it beside her in bed under the eiderdown. For a moment, her deep breaths paused and I held my own breath, waiting for the worst, but she only sighed and slept on. Satisfied that she was warm and safe, I went down to the kitchen and removed my mittens.

  My hand wasn't as bad as I'd feared. Most of the blood had dried and the punctures were small in circumference. Many of them were deep, however. There would be scars, a ring in the meat at the base of my thumb. Who could have imagined such a little thing would have such strength? Who would have thought she would struggle so fiercely? I found my father's whiskey and dabbed a little on my wounds. Then I drank a glass. People said it made you forget.

  When Ruth awoke the next morning in a room she hadn't slept in for months, she called for her mama. I was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for the night to be over. My body had striven against me for sleep, for escape from the sores and bruises and the paining muscles, but whenever I closed my eyes what I saw behind them was unbearable. In the daylight, I'd promised myself, everything would be different. They would find Mathilda at a neighbor's house, somewhere along the lake, or maybe even in the woods around the bay. She would be wet, maybe, and freezing. She might even have caught a chill. Her dress would certainly be ruined, but that would be the worst of it.

  I would heat a bath for her and make a strong soup and bundle her into her bed. We wouldn't talk about what had happened.

  We'd only be glad that it was over and that we could go on as we had before. I had only to make it through the darkness, and then she would come home. I promised myself that.

  Or maybe nothing had happened. I hid my hand in my lap and told myself it had all been a nightmare. When the sun rose Mathilda would come down to the kitchen, and we would laugh about the craziness of dreams and how real they can seem so that you wake up hardly able to breathe for the speed of your heart. She would say how silly I'd been not to slide into her bed for comfort and how I would be no good to anyone without a night's sleep. She would tease me about being afraid of my own shadow, and we would make pancakes together for Ruth.

  Yes, that was how it would be when the sun came up. As long as I didn't check—that was important—as long as I didn't check to see that Mathilda was in her bed, but simply waited faithfully through the night, in the daylight things would be different.

  So in the morning when Ruth called for her mother, I waited, listening for Mathilda's step across the upstairs floor. I listened, and I heard it. Yes, I was quite sure I heard it. But Ruth didn't stop calling. She was crying now, a frustrated cry. Why wasn't Mathilda comforting her?

  Finally I went to Ruth. “We'll let Mathilda sleep,” I said to myself as I climbed the stairs. “She must be very tired.” But the truth pierced me with every step. In between the moments when I was convinced that Mathilda was most definitely in her bed, I knew she was gone.

  Deep under my heart, I knew it, but I refused to look at it squarely. My mind slipped off the idea. I focused on the shape of the spaces between the lilies of the valley on the wallpaper; I noticed the twist of red and blue in the rag rug at the top of the stairs; I thought hard about what was in the kitchen that could be cooked for breakfast.

  Ruth let me lift her from her crib, but when I set her down, she ran straight to Mattie's room.

  “Where's Mama?” she asked, so bewildered, so trusting, it broke my heart.

  How could I tell her what I couldn't tell myself? My head would not make the words.

  “Shh, sweetheart,” I said. It wasn't the right thing to say, I know that. I know that! But it is what I said. “Shh, sweetheart. Let's make some pancakes, shall we? C'mon, let's you and me make some pancakes.”

  “I want my mama,” she said, and when I tried to take her by the hand to lead her down to the kitchen, she wrapped her arms and legs around the bedpost and held on. “I want my mama!” she screamed over and over again.

  “Don't,” I said. “Don't. It's all right. Really, it's all right. She'll come back soon.”

  But Ruth would not be fooled. She wailed, and I stood there helplessly, letting her despair for both of us.

  When Ruth's cries began to weaken, I felt suddenly tired, so tired that I thought my legs would give way beneath me. I picked her up then—she was too exhausted to protest any longer—and I pulled her onto Mathilda's bed with me. The bed was stripped—we had been away from this house, this life, so long!—so we lay right on the blue-striped ticking, our cheeks pressed against ancient stains. My hand throbbed, and I couldn't stop shivering. I pulled the wool blanket that was folded at the foot of the bed over us and fell asleep.

  I dreamed that I was standing at the edge of the lake in summer. Across the dazzling water, I could see Mathilda, sitting on the rocks that rimmed the island and singing, as a mermaid would. So she was all right! Of course she was all right!

  “Mattie!” I shouted, relief flooding my voice. “Mattie! Over here!” But she wouldn't look at me.

  I waded in, then, toward her. I pushed forward until the water encircled my waist and then cradled my bosom. How easy it would be to disappear beneath that inscrutable surface. There would be no gaping hole to show where I had sunk, no frenzy of turbulent waves to give evidence of my struggle.

  “Mathilda!” I called, my chin dipping below the water as I opened my mouth. But she looked away toward the opposite shore, as if she hadn't heard a sound.

  I couldn't shout again. The water ran into my mouth, my nose, my ears, my eyes. I was afraid now, and the water was heavier, harder to push. I could barely get a purchase with my feet on the sandy bottom. I clutched at the lake with my hands, but it gave me nothing to hold. Still, I kept going. Mathilda was just ahead. I only had to keep going and I would have her again.

  And then I heard her crying. Yes, there you are, I thought, struggling as well as I could toward the noise. She sounded just as she had years and years ago, when she was my baby Mattie and wanted me to comfort her. “I'm coming, Mattie,” I called, and water filled my mouth.

  I was almost there. The crying was louder, but my legs wouldn't move. I leaned forward. I stretched my arms out. There was no more breath in me, but I reached; I strained; I would have her; she was mine. And then I woke up.

  It was Ruth who was crying, Ruth who needed comfort. Drowning in grief, I clung to her for dear life. I had no one but Ruth now, and Ruth had no one but me.

  Ruth's mother had drowned. That was a fact. In December they found her body, trapped in the ice of Nagawaukee Lake. The Sentinel reported it and Amanda clipped the articles and pasted them to
the black pages of a scrapbook, so there could be no question about what had happened.

  DECEMBER 4, 1919—WOMAN MISSING

  Mrs. Carl Neumann of Glacier Road, Nagawaukee, has been missing since the night of November 27, according to her sister, Miss Amanda Starkey, also of Glacier Road. Anyone with knowledge of her whereabouts should contact the Nagawaukee Sheriff's Department.

  DECEMBER 6, 1919—MISSING WOMAN FOUND DROWNED

  The body of Mrs. Carl Neumann was found yesterday evening trapped in the ice on Nagawaukee Lake by Mr. C. J. Owens of 24 Prospect Avenue, Milwaukee, and his son, Arthur, 5.

  Mrs. Neumann had been missing since the night of November 27.

  DECEMBER 7, 1919—FUNERAL FOR MRS. CARL NEUMANN

  Funeral services for Mrs. Carl Neumann are planned for 6:00 pm tomorrow at Our Savior Lutheran Church in Nagawaukee. Mrs. Neumann is survived by her husband, Carl, recently serving in France with the 32nd Division, a daughter, Ruth, and a sister, Amanda Starkey. Miss Starkey has requested that, instead of flowers, donations be sent to the Precious Blood Children's Home in Oconomowoc.

  Carl Neumann had promised to take care of Mathilda and now he would need taking care of. In late December, more than a year after the war had ended, he finally wrote to say that they were sending him home. “I can't believe,” the final paragraph began, “that in a month or two, I'll hold your warm, sweet self again, my little Mattie-bird.” There was more, but Amanda, blushing, folded the letter hurriedly and stuffed it back into its flimsy envelope. From New York came a final telegram: “HOME FEBRUARY12 STOP3:35 TRAIN.” Amanda was a little surprised. Surely, the letter she'd sent had reached him by now. Surely, he knew how little was left for him in Nagawaukee. But here he was coming just the same.