by Cathy LaGrow
Minka stood at the small coal stove and discreetly glanced around. This house was as neat and clean as her own home, but it didn’t smell the same—there was no overlying scent of train smokestacks and barn animals. The three adults excused themselves, speaking quietly as though at a funeral. Lowered voices moved up the stairs and through the rooms as Tante showed Honus where to place Minka’s bag and they discussed plans for the girl.
Honus and Jennie remained for less than an hour. They were needed at the dairy and hoped to return before the evening milking. A thick lump rose in Minka’s throat, threatening to choke her. She had a childish urge to wrap her arms around her mother’s legs, to beg Jennie to take her with them.
In Minka’s whole life, she’d only been away from her mother once before. She’d been around eleven years old and had just had her tonsils out. Her mother couldn’t leave Uncle’s farm, so Minka spent a week in Aberdeen with another Dutch family, to be near the doctor. Although recovering from surgery, Minka had been expected to get up and help tend to a passel of little kids for the week. She’d been terribly homesick and had been weak with relief when she got back to Uncle’s, back to Jennie.
Now, she’d be much farther away, for months. And she was facing a much more frightening ordeal.
Minka walked outside with her mother and stepfather. “I write. Will try . . . every day,” Jennie said and embraced Minka, clinging a moment longer as if she too fought against this good-bye. Then Jennie dropped her arms. Mother and daughter stood facing each other, eyes locked in an acknowledgment of shared resilience. In that moment, Jennie saw herself all those years ago, facing insurmountable obstacles and being completely alone. She couldn’t spare Minka from this burden, no matter how much she wished it.
Minka understood the basics of the days ahead. She would live with Tante Hogerhide and her adult son Bill for the coming weeks. Minka’s stomach would get bigger. It still amazed her to think a life was growing there. She would have a baby, then not have a baby. Eventually, the milk truck would return her to the dairy, to Jane, to milking cows and working at the slaughterhouse.
It would be as though nothing had changed. Was that even possible?
Minka watched her mother and Honus climb into the milk truck without a backward glance. The windows were fogged, but she thought she saw her mother swipe at her cheeks.
With her arms wrapped above the small bulge of her stomach, Minka remained stock-still until the truck disappeared down the street. She turned inside without protest or tears. She did not run after the milk truck, as her heart and feet yearned to do. As Minka closed the door behind her, she wondered what she should do next.
At home, nearly every moment was filled with scheduled chores. Now she stood awkwardly until Tante told her to sit. Minka clasped her hands tightly in her lap. She wished Jane were there with her easy chatter. Minka believed that if her sister tried, she could charm a starving man into handing over his last piece of bread. Jane would never have let this room descend into such uneasy silence.
That first night, Tante refused Minka’s help getting supper on the table. Her son Bill came home, parking his car in the garage and joining them in the dining room. Minka tried releasing the tension she felt around them both, particularly around Bill. She caught herself straightening her posture, then remembering and trying to cover her stomach. Her face burned when Bill seemed to notice.
“You’ll like it here, I think. It’s nothing like Minneapolis or Chicago, but it’s a sight better than Aberdeen,” Bill said with a jovial wink.
“Aberdeen is a nice town too,” Tante said with a frown to her son. “South Dakota . . . it is all a nice place. Dey have lakes, and de Black Hills . . .”
“Yes,” Bill said. “But do they have a president-elect?”
Tante tilted her head in acknowledgment.
“No, I suppose not. But is still a nice place.”
Having trounced his Roman Catholic opponent the previous fall, Republican Herbert Hoover was awaiting his March inauguration. Hoover had been born in eastern Iowa, and although he’d left ages ago, proud Iowans claimed him as their own.
Minka smiled at Tante’s attempt to defend Aberdeen, and she realized that for the first time adults were speaking to her as if she were one of them, including her in the conversation.
Minka ate quickly. The meal, like the house and everything else here, was pleasant but different, enough to make her feel unsettled. Afterward, Tante wouldn’t allow Minka to help with the cleanup.
“You must be tired, ja? Rest now.”
Bill invited her to listen to the radio, but Minka excused herself to the quietness of her upstairs bedroom. A cast-iron apparatus Tante called a radiator took the chill from the room. Minka slowly unpacked her belongings, refolding linens several times, setting them into an empty wooden dresser. This was the first time she’d had a room to herself.
Daylight had vanished outside, and when Minka held up a lantern near the window, she could see snow falling in the dark. The delicious feeling of solitude drained away and was replaced by a sense of lonely abandonment. She changed into a loose nightgown and slid between the cold sheets. Minka felt convinced that she’d never sleep, not with her thoughts crowding one on top of the other, not without Jane’s warmth beside her. Change had really come—there was no going back. It was terrifying.
Minka woke to a sensation that something was wrong. Then she remembered where she was. Someone walked past her door and into another room.
The night passed in restless dozing, interrupted by spans of being fully awake, staring into the pitch-black night. The suburban quiet, unbroken by sounds of animals and trains, was disconcerting.
Long before winter dawn touched the horizon, Minka sat up in bed, drawing her knees to her chest. Jane would be awake, putting on her overalls and heading to the barn. How had her sister slept on her first night alone? Minka wondered.
Minka thought of her sister every morning as the first day turned to the first week and to the first month. There wasn’t a single night that she didn’t miss Jane’s presence in the bed, or a morning she didn’t mentally walk through the milking chores with her. It was even harder for her sister, Minka guessed. It was always harder to be left behind.
While Minka ached for home, she was surprised by how well she’d adapted to a new life. The queasiness in her stomach passed. Even without the protection of her family, she did not fall to pieces. Physically she seemed to be as strong as ever, and she eagerly performed as many chores around the house as Tante permitted. The older woman exclaimed at how clean everything was with a girl instead of only boys in her house.
Tante moved with the same briskness as Honus, but less rigidly. There were no hugs or understanding talks, no direct mention of Minka’s pregnancy—that was danced around with comments: “until you leave” or “when your time draws near.” But Tante’s welcome was implicit in her kind words and generous nature, and Minka appreciated it. Tante even brought her a pattern and fabric for a new dress, one with an expanded waist.
Tante sometimes insisted that Minka rest. Since empty spaces of time could magnify the loneliness, Minka wrote letters. She addressed them to Jennie, but knowing that Jane would eagerly read whatever she wrote, she omitted any mention of her pregnancy.
By March the icy streets had thawed, and when Tante took her to church on Sunday or out shopping in the bustling city shops, Minka began to notice women pushing babies in frilly carriages. She was thankful that a large wool coat could help mask her now-obvious belly, but sometimes she caught someone giving her a long glance—and her face burned like a confession.
It was not uncommon for girls her age to be married, of course, and none of these people knew she wasn’t—that was the whole reason for her having come to this city full of strangers. Still, the thought that passersby might know her condition made her want to hide away in the house.
One sunny day Tante coaxed Minka outside to visit the Sergeant Floyd Monument, a striking, hundred-foot sandst
one obelisk towering over the Missouri River, built to honor the one member of the Lewis and Clark expedition who died during the journey. Much later, in 1960, the monument would become America’s first National Historic Landmark.
Tante did not treat Minka like a child. She spoke openly of her own concerns, lamenting over her son’s drinking. Prohibition was the law of the land, but alcohol was fairly easy to come by, especially in corn-rich Iowa. Some nights when Bill pulled his car into the garage at an especially late hour, Minka could hear Tante helping her son to his room and murmuring, “Oh, Bill, Bill, Bill.”
When Minka was alone, she unabashedly held her stomach and winced in troubled wonder at the sharp kicks and movements. How much larger could she possibly grow?
* * *
Back in Aberdeen, the Reverend Kraushaar had followed through on his promise to contact the facility in Sioux Falls that aided expectant unmarried young ladies. Not long after, he received the reply he’d been waiting for.
April 5, 1929
Dear Rev. Kraushaar,
We have your letter with reference to a case in your congregation who may need such care as we are able to give.
. . . our rates here are $25.00 per month while the patient is with us. Then there is the charge of $50.00 covering confinement care. All confinements are taken care of in one of our local hospitals, which insures the patient of the best of care, and they have made us this special rate covering each case.
Mothers are required to return from the hospital with the child and remain in the home one month before final plans are made for the child.
We require patients to furnish, before entering, a doctor’s certificate, showing that she is free from venereal disease as we are not equipped to care for diseased cases and we must protect the others who may be here. . . .
We do have a home finding department which finds good Christian homes for babies . . . and Lutheran babies are placed in Lutheran homes. . . .
We shall be very glad to cooperate in the care of this case, and shall be glad to hear from you again.
Very sincerely,
Miss Bragstad
Lutheran House of Mercy
One hundred and fifty miles east of Tante’s home, a mother of sons longed for a girl. Nine years earlier, Olava Nordsletten and her husband had adopted a baby son only weeks after her own newborn’s death. She’d taken him into her arms so soon that she was able to nurse him, a comfort to them both. The years following brought her more pregnancies, and these didn’t end with death, but with two healthy boys.
As the three boys grew older and explored the world outside, Olava imagined frilly dresses, matching aprons, and a little girl asleep in her lap. She went to her husband. Adoption was once again on her mind.
“I want a daughter to call my own.”
Chapter Five
“THE LORD GAVE, and the Lord hath taken away.”
Those meditative words had been with Reverend Kraushaar since he’d woken beside his wife on this Sunday morning in April, even though that Scripture from Job was not part of the liturgy he would follow today. The lectionary calendar of the season called for more joyous verses on this week. Yet the sober words from the Old Testament had followed him to the church.
Perhaps the season brought the verse to mind. Easter Sunday was just behind them, most certainly a reminder of the ebb and flow of Christ being given to mankind and then taken by man’s own hand, given again through the Resurrection, and then finally taken away by the Ascension. This Second Sunday of Easter began the anticipation of Pentecost, a new giving from God to His people.
Now the Reverend stood in his pastoral robe before the congregation he knew like family, taking in their faces. He’d preached along with the seasons the people lived and worked by, comforting and instructing immigrant farmers through sorrowful times: the Great War and the Spanish flu, droughts and fires. He’d shared their major life events of weddings, funerals, births, and baptisms. And he’d been with them in more private moments, the broken tears, the anger with God. The Reverend’s stalwart flock took adversity in stride, and his weekly instruction and private counsel eased their burdens, even if only in a small way. Often there was no reasonable explanation for heartbreak, for loss.
Thus the passage from Job seemed a theme in this land of hardship, among these people. To remember that “the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away” was to remember God’s goodness. It helped the Reverend himself to lean on God’s divine will, to trust in His sovereign, sometimes mysterious ways.
As he read the day’s appointed Scripture verses from the pulpit, Reverend Kraushaar’s eyes lingered a moment on Jennie Vander Zee. Her husband sat on one side and her younger daughter, Jane, on the other. Jane appeared not to be listening. Her eyes skimmed the congregation even though her face was turned respectfully toward the front.
In the months since Jennie had first come to him about Minka’s troubles, Jennie had visibly aged, though she was not yet forty. But today, Reverend Kraushaar had news he hoped would comfort the couple and provide the best arrangement for their oldest daughter.
The minister brought the sermon toward a conclusion a short time later. He’d been preaching and shepherding these people and this church since August 9, 1908. Now, over twenty years later, his time in South Dakota was about to end.
The Lord gave. The Lord took.
God had opened a new path for him and his family as president of the Lutheran College of Seguin, Texas. He felt honored by the offer, and he relished the new challenge at this time in his life. Yet it meant leaving the congregation he’d served for so long. He’d come to feel what he sensed was God’s divine love for this flock.
Around him it seemed a season of taking away, he thought, as his eyes again rested on the Vander Zee family. The call to help the girl and the family was heavy upon him. His work in Aberdeen was not quite done.
He’d known Jennie Vander Zee when she was still Jennie DeYoung, a widowed mother of three young ones who lived and worked as a housekeeper to the elderly Gus Pansegrau. In those days, Reverend Kraushaar had been an almost itinerant preacher, and so young! Then he’d served as a chaplain in the Great War and had earned the kind of knowledge that comes not from seminary books but from sharing mankind’s heaviest burdens.
The Scriptures charged the church with the care of widows and orphans. The still-young widow Jennie had done well for herself compared to others in her situation. The Reverend had been comforted by the security her family found during their many years with Uncle.
Jennie’s children had been raised with a firm yet loving hand. Her marriage to Honus Vander Zee further improved her situation, and the minister enjoyed watching two dedicated churchgoers—from his two different flocks—come together in such a pleasing union. The joined family appeared to flourish after they bought the dairy. They ran it well, although Jennie’s oldest child, John, had resisted the transition and had chosen a military life over milking. John was a tall, strong, fatherless boy. For such as he, the Reverend knew, soldiering was often a good fit.
If only John’s sisters had been allowed to continue their education, at least through high school. The Reverend placed a high value on education. But after two decades with his congregation, he understood his community. Times were hard, and immigrant families worked together. Education was considered a luxury by most.
God had been good to Jennie DeYoung and her children. The tragedies of other families, those who had lost sons to war or farms to drought, put that into perspective. They were safe, together, thriving with the new business it seemed. They, and their dairy, were an integral part of Aberdeen. But missing now from his congregation was Jennie’s middle child.
The Lord gives and takes away. As Reverend Kraushaar’s mind touched on this verse, he thought of the most oft-repeated question he heard as a minister, the one most wrestled with in the human experience: “Why?”
The Reverend knew the answer to that was usually a long time coming.
* * *<
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After the Lord’s Supper and the closing of the service, the minister stood near the back of the church, bidding his congregation farewell, watching the slow approach of the Vander Zee family as Jennie and Jane spoke to other women and daughters. When Honus reached him, the Reverend leaned close as they shook hands.
“If I may have a word with you and Mrs. Vander Zee in my office.”
Honus nodded. He caught Jennie’s eye and gave a slight motion of his head. She excused herself from a lively discussion. Jane remained behind but watched them with a slight frown.
“I received word from the facility that I spoke to you about,” the minister said after he closed the door to his office. He spoke German fluently but had noticed that parishioners seemed to prefer speaking English with him. Perhaps it seemed more proper.
“In Sioux Falls?”
“Yes, at the Lutheran House of Mercy.” Handing Jennie a piece of paper, he continued. “This is the letter I received. I have known the superintendent for many years, and Minnie will be well taken care of here, if it’s acceptable to you both.”
He noticed how Jennie gripped the letter as she read, concern etched into the wrinkles of her forehead. She winced, and he guessed she’d read the price or about the required test for venereal disease—an awkward matter, but understandably necessary. Jennie’s finger touched a place on the letter as she glanced at Honus, who leaned close to read it. This was most likely the price of Minka’s stay and the doctor’s fees.
“We pay,” Honus said without hesitation. The cost, $50 plus room and board, was a steep one, especially for a frugal Dutch family who diligently managed each penny, and in a time when bread cost eight to ten cents a loaf and a head of cattle could be sold for $59 each.
None of them could have guessed that by the end of that very year, the stock market would crash, ushering in the Great Depression. In five short years, the price of cattle would plummet to $17.50 per head.