Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  Mother fought him, but he slapped her with so much force she fell over, knocking her head against the corner of the kitchen table. He kicked her before he picked her up and pushed her in front of him toward the bedroom.

  Mother had warned us before to stay away from the house when he wanted to use her in the bedroom. Hurrying outside, the four of us sat terrified on what was supposed to be our front lawn. I remember Mother screaming “Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me anymore!” until everything went quiet. From outside we could hear the bedsprings squeaking up and down, up and down.

  In good times Father would cut the grass out there, but there hadn’t been any good times since before the flu epidemic and mighty few afterward when he had appeared at the door one day, home again, drunk as usual.

  When he came out, he yelled at us, “Goddammit she’s my wife, and she has to do what I tell her!” and then he headed for the sauna again.

  We crept back into the house, none of us daring to enter the bedroom, even to help Mother. We just sat around the kitchen table until finally Aini said, “It’s time for us to eat.” Taking a loaf of Mother’s fresh bread, the butter, and the jam jar, she cut each of us a generous slice, and poured each of us a cup of coffee—Eino’s and mine half milk/half coffee.

  So upset was I that I was even afraid to take a sugar lump from the bowl in the middle of the table. Silently we ate our bread and drank our coffee, and finally, foregoing our usual Saturday night sauna, we crawled into bed—Aini and I into one, Ronny and Eino into the other. Mother lay still as stone in their bed, undressed, her housedress in tatters on the floor next to the remains of her apron and her shift and her under-panties. Turning her back on us, she looked at the wall and waited.

  We all waited… all through that long night… for Father to return from the sauna. In the morning, when he hadn’t, we stayed in bed while Mother dressed hurriedly and went to look for him. He wasn’t in the dressing room, she told us. Instead he lay in the sauna, his face red and his body mottled with red. She touched his neck but could feel no pulse.

  Terrified, she woke us up and sent Ronny to Lofgrens to get Irma, who was the closest thing to a midwife in the neighborhood, and Aini to get Mrs. Kivimaki.

  They confirmed what her examination had shown: he had died during the night of an apparent heart attack or stroke.

  “Your father died in the sauna last night,” she explained to us as she gathered us closely around her. “I think his heart gave out.”

  We tried to look solemn and sad, but inside I was so relieved I felt as if I had to throw up.

  She hadn’t mentioned the fact that he had been drinking himself into a stupor for days, but we knew.

  I have to confess I didn’t cry then or even later at his big funeral at the Hall. None of his big-time “friends” from town came, but everyone from our neighbor­hood in Korvan Kylla attended. One of the neighborhood women—I think it was Mrs. Hokkanen—had made a wreathe out of dried flowers and grass. It was so beautiful it made me want to cry. But I didn’t. I refused to cry. Not one drop.

  Mother did, of course, as did Aini, who’d had happier memories of Father as he had been before the demon alcohol got control of him, and even Ronny sniffled a little bit. But neither Eino nor I shed a tear. All we truly felt was relief—relief he could no longer terrorize us or Mother, that every cent of money Mother made would be used to benefit all of us, and we were finally free of his horrible “buddies” and his anger and cruelty.

  Years later when we set a stone on his grave, I still wanted to spit on it.

  And when all of that that was finally behind us, I was free to concentrate on my secret joy—my schoolwork and reading.

  * * * * *

  I had gotten as far as long-division in the arithmetic text, which was as far as the eighth grade lessons went. For geography, I’d memorized the names of the continents, of the countries within them and their capitol cities, the names of the states and their capitols and the major rivers. Memorization was easy for me, and I loved to read and memorize the poetry from a book the teacher lent me called A Hundred and One Famous Poems. I especially liked “Abou Ben Adhem.” I also enjoyed learning about the American Revolution (I especially liked the parts about the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Siege of Boston, and the winter at Valley Forge. Reading about those days made them come alive for me) and the Civil War, which had divided our country in half. I was happy to hear about the Minnesota Regiment, which had fought in the Battle of Bull Run and the Battle of Antietam.

  But I was proudest when I read about their finest hour, which occurred during the Battle of Gettysburg, when, according to the history book, “on the second day of fighting, they helped hold the Union line against the advancing Confederate soldiers. Outnumbered three or four to one, the First Minnesota fought the Confederates at close range over 300 yards of open ground near Cemetery Ridge. The next day, the First Minnesota contributed to the repulse of Pickett’s Charge, which effectively ended the Battle of Gettysburg and served as a turning point in the war. But the Regiment’s fighting at Gettysburg came at a cost: hundreds of Minnesota soldiers died or were wounded, and the regiment was nearly destroyed. Two soldiers from the First Minnesota—Corporal Henry O’Brian and Private Marshall Sherman—received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their fighting that day.” Wow! I remember thinking as I recorded those facts for posterity in my School Notebook.

  I also enjoyed reading about the life of Abraham Lincoln from a biography written by his friend, which included his relationship with Anne Rutledge, who I believed with all my heart was really the love of his life.

  My very favorite activity in school was reading. As eighth graders, we were expected to learn parts of the long poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about Evangeline and Gabriel. I had memorized the beginning—“This is the forest primeval…” In seventh grade we had read The Courtship of Miles Standish, and I knew the story of Miles and Priscilla and John Alden so clearly I suggested to my friends—Esther Leinonen, and Elsie Hauala—that we pretend the scene where John and Priscilla finally come together—with me playing Priscilla, of course.

  At the ending of “Evangeline” when she holds Gabriel’s head in her lap as he draws his last breath after following her and looking for her all those years, I have to confess tears ran down my cheeks. And I wasn’t alone. Even Eino and Keino and Veiko Rahikainen stayed still during that scene. There was no horsing around that afternoon.

  Our teacher, Miss Tierney, read the poem aloud to us—reading a section a day—while we sat with bated breath to hear what new travail had overcome Gabriel’s search for his love. She read well, with her voice adapting to the parts, so it was as if she were acting it out for us. How I loved her for that!

  And I loved her even more for bringing me books from the library in Buhl to read at home. My favorite was Beverly of Graustark, and I waited anxiously for the newest book by Zane Grey, whose westerns even Ronny read and enjoyed.

  All in all, school was the world to me. It was my world—separate from, although a part of, the regular world where I continued to wash the separator after milking, clean the barn and spread hay for the two cows Mother managed to keep, churn the cream into butter and help Mother shape the butter into beautiful rounds with a flower atop each one. No wonder people who frequented the Cook Coop Creamery loved Mother’s butter. Not only was it always sweet and fresh, but it looked beautiful!

  I was also responsible for keeping myself clean and my good clothes separate from my barn clothes. We went back to having saunas every Wednesday and Saturday nights, and often the Lofgrens or the Kivimakis would join us even though they had their own saunas, mainly to sit and drink coffee and eat Mother’s delicious pulla—braided cardamom sweet bread. No one else’s was quite as delicious as hers. She always told me in private the secret was the eggs—one for every cup of sugar—and the butter—one full handful for every egg. W
hen I tried to copy her recipe, I had trouble with adding the flour. She said I had to add it bit by bit, kneading each bit into the mass. If I added too much, she warned, the pulla would be dry.

  Her pulla was never dry, and her rieska—our daily flat bread—was also better than any made by any one else Korvan Kylla, the small area in which our home was located. She added mashed potatoes to that mix and again eggs and butter. She always pricked it to keep it from rising too much and cut each round into eight pieces perfectly.

  Mother was also a master of handwork. Although we didn’t have a “living room” per se, she had crocheted and quilted coverlets for our beds so the bedroom always looked beautiful once the beds were made, which we had to do every morning as soon as we got out of them and even before we headed for the outhouse. “You never know when company’s coming,” she always warned us, “And we don’t want them to arrive at a slovenly home.”

  Our house was anything but slovenly: the big black wood stove was cleaned and blacked every Friday when we also washed the glass of every kerosene lamp, every window, and carefully scrubbed the floors—both in the bedroom and the kitchen. The bedroom floor was wood, which had never been varnished, so we always wound up with a sliver or two. But the kitchen floor had been covered with linoleum, which was a joy to wash and wax because once we finished, it actually shone. On Mondays we washed our barn clothes and our school clothes, hung them out to dry quickly so we could put them back on before the school bell rang. Then we washed our bottom sheets and pillow cases, the dish towels Mother insisted we change every day, and the towels we had used for sauna. We’d move the top sheet to the bottom, tucking it in carefully and pulling it so tightly Mother could bounce a penny onto the middle. We put on a clean ironed sheet on top and fresh pillowcases for our down pillows—the ones Mother had made out of the feathers of birds Father had shot in the fall.

  That fall, it was up to Ronny to shoot enough partridge and sharptail for Mother to put up in jars, canned and ready to use once winter came. We loved the taste of them when they were fresh. Mother dipped the pieces in flour, fried them in bacon fat she had collected, and baked them in the oven until they were crisp and brown. Yum! She sometimes made a sauce out of cranberries we’d picked the previous summer. That made them even more delicious.

  And it was up to Ronny to kill a deer so we’d have canned venison during the long winter.

  “I hate to shoot them,” he complained, as he took Father’s rifle down from its spot above the kitchen door. “They’re so beautiful. Once a wounded doe looked up at me with her brown eyes, and I felt awful.”

  “But we need the meat,” Mother insisted, and she was right, of course, so Ronny trekked out into the woods right after the first frost. When he came back, he looked triumphant! “I got one! A big buck,” he announced, obviously happy he had not had to shoot a doe.

  That night we feasted on venison—the fresh heart and liver that Ronny had gathered when he gutted the deer. But before he and Mother began to cut it up, they used the hoist to lift the front quarter up high enough for them to begin pulling off the hide. Mother saved every speck of the hide to make moccasins and mittens and once even a vest for Ronny and a small one for Eino. (But that had been when Father was himself and had shot three deer so there had been a plethora of hides.)

  Once the hide was off, they began cutting up the meat—the ribs, the roasts, the steaks, and the chops. Mother had the jars ready and hot in the canning pail so she was able to cut the meat off into chunks and can it almost immediately. She took time to cut off the tallow, which very few of our neighbors did. She said the tallow was what made venison taste bad. We’d had venison dinners at the Lofgrens where there was so much tallow the meat actually stuck to the top of our mouths.

  Not at our house. Mother trimmed every single piece she piled into the large quart jars she saved for canning meat before she used the wire piece that held the jars apart from each other to drop the jars into the boiling water.

  Right after Father’s funeral, Mother had gathered us together to go berry picking. “It’s too late for strawberries,” she bemoaned, “but we can get a lot of raspberries if everyone works together and puts everything you pick into the big water pail.”

  Giving each of us a smaller sauce-pan or bowl, we set out across the fields toward the place where we knew the raspberries grew. On the way we passed a patch of blueberry bushes, where Mother stationed us, warning us to pick clean—“without any leaves or bits of branch.” Eino and I were left there to gather as many as we could while she, Ronny, and Aini went ahead toward the raspberry patch. We were fortunate we had berry patches at the edges of the fields Father had so painstakingly cleared back when he was himself.

  “Someone will have to do the haying for us,” Mother said that night. She put out a call to the men in the area—Mr. Rahikainen, Mr. Kivimaki, Mr. Leinonen, Mr. Hauala, Mr. Kymberg, and Mr. Lofgren—to come to help cut the hay with their scythes. Mother, Aini, Ronny, and I were responsible for stacking the hay, which was then loaded onto wagons led by horses the neighbors were fortunate enough to own. At the barn, the door to the hay loft was opened, and a scoop made of pieces of metal was dropped down to the wagon. It gathered the hay together as Ronny manipulated it, using a couple of ropes, then lifted into the loft and dropped onto the upper floor of the barn.

  It was a tedious, back-breaking process, but absolutely necessary if our cows were to be able to live through the winter. Mother offered the hay on the farthest field to the men for their own use in partial payment for their help. But no amount of appreciation—voiced or unvoiced—could offer adequate thanks to the men who had gathered our hay.

  Of course, Mother fed them breakfast (eggs and rieska with cardamom biscuit to wash down with their coffee), dinner (venison stew with our leftover potatoes, carrots, and onions), and supper (a kind of repeat of dinner with the addition of a pie Mother somehow found time to make in spite of the work she was doing outside). Sometimes she’d send Aini into the house to get the meal ready for the men because she wasn’t as strong a worker as Mother was and could more easily be spared. But sometimes she went herself because Aini didn’t have her skill with pie crust—one of Mother’s more notable accom­plish­ments. She mixed flour and lard until they formed droplets the size of peas, then added just enough water to make a dough to line the bottom of her pie pan. Onto that she always sprinkled a little sugar (one of her secrets to having a good bottom crust), filled the pan with whatever she was using—blueberries were a favorite—mixed with cinnamon and sugar—and a top crust which she crimped on the edges so the filling wouldn’t come out. She never made slits in the top of the pie as most women did. Instead her top crust held a surprise—a blueberry on a stem with leaves, for example. The filling would bubble out around her creation, setting it apart from the rest of the crust so her pies looked as good as they tasted.

  And so we lived our days as fall slipped soundlessly into winter with a hefty snowstorm in November that left us stranded for a couple of weeks, grateful for the wood Ronny had hauled and split and piled, for the rope that led from the house to the barn so we wouldn’t get lost in the storm, for the warmth of the cows as we milked them, for the peace that reigned supreme every day in our small home, and for the cat who always appeared when we were milking, patiently waiting for one of us to direct a stream of milk in her direction.

  I always wanted an “inside” cat, but Mother adamantly refused until, finally, years later, when Lofgren’s pure white cat had a litter of tiny all-white kittens with big blue eyes, she rescinded her ruling, unable herself to keep from adoring those small bits of joy.

  It was Christmas almost before we knew it, and a whole new series of problems erupted because of the season.

  4: A Sad Christmas

  Christmas always occurred three times a year when I was young: first, at the school, where we put on a program for our parents; second, at the Hall, wher
e one of the men dressed up as Joulu Pukki (our version of Santa Claus) in a red outfit trimmed in white; and third, at home, where we always had a big dinner, often inviting neighbors to share it with us, and where, early in the morning, we always found a stocking at the end of our corners of the bed filled with some hard candy, a new pair of mittens, a new scarf, and some kind of a homemade toy.

  That year, the last of my childhood as I later recalled it, was very special because Mother concocted a doll out of one of Father’s stockings and some rags. She embroidered a face and knit some hair onto its head and made a dress and an apron for it out of scraps she had saved from the flour sacks she had used to make our school clothes. I adored it, named it “Cherie,” a name I had picked up in my reading that sounded anything but Finnish and, therefore, most appropriate, and proceeded to dress and undress it over and over. As the days went on, I tried to knit it a cape out of some of Mother’s home-spun yarn—that she’d dyed bright blue using onion skins and hot water.

  But before that great event—the magic of which was to make the rest of the season bearable—came the school program. We had carefully planned a tableau—a new idea our new young teacher had obviously heard about other schools doing. The Rahikainen boys were to be the wise men—each one wearing a crown made out of dark yellow construction paper with three robes the teacher had inveigled out of three of the fathers—notably Mr. Kauala, Mr. Hokkanen, and Mr. Lofgren—although I was amazed any of them owned such a garment. Ronny was pressed into service as Joseph, wearing some of his older clothes, which Mother contrived to look ragged; I was, of course, to be Mary. But there the problem lay.

  “Why does she get to be Mary?” Elsie Hauala asked, looking at me with loathing. “I’m older than she is. I should be Mary.”