Gifts of the Spirit

by Patricia Eilola

  I had thanked her profusely. I knew she really didn’t have the power to give away a school book and was taking a big chance by giving one to me, and so I appreciated it even more. In went, too, my Hundred and One Famous Poems, and the latest Zane Grey novels—Wagon Train and Wilderness Trek. I had read them both, but if by chance the Lappalas didn’t have a library, they were better than nothing. Little did I know!

  At any rate, I said my goodbyes, with some relief, to the barn, the sauna, the house, the bed I shared with Aini, the kitchen stove, and with gratitude to the separator. The ones to Mother, Ronny, Aini, and Eino almost made me burst into tears. I said goodbye to each of them before we left for the hall for the final time, and, I have to confess, it was very difficult to say that word to Mother and to little Eino especially. I held on to Mother as if letting her go would mean never seeing her again, a thought that led to an unavoidable sob. I kissed and hugged Ronny and Aini with some composure but broke down again as I picked up Eino and held him close for the last time. He had become infinitely precious to me—especially during the terrors of the flu when I was so afraid that I would lose him—that a goodbye seemed impossible. “I’ll see you soon,” I promised him instead, praying that would be true and the Lappalas would not make me forget my own family.

  And so, finally, after the following Sunday’s sermon, I joined Reverend Lappala, who insisted that I begin to call her “Milma,” on the seat of the buckboard she had driven from Virginia. Instead of driving back to Virginia, however, she turned left at the hall on the road that would eventually be called No. 25, toward Cook. I must have looked surprised because she explained quickly, “One of the members of the Virginia church community has a cabin on a river between Alango and Cook, and he has lent it to us—including Grandmother and the children—to use for the summer. It’s larger than most cabins with several bedrooms and many amenities one doesn’t expect to find out in the country, and so we have made it our ‘summer house,’ and call it ‘Metsola.’ The Rice River runs near it. We’re going there now.”

  “And one day soon I shall be driving an auto when I come here instead of this horse and buggy!” she exclaimed. “Risto—Reverend Lappala—doesn’t like the fact that I’m dependent upon the wishes of the horses—although so far they’ve proved very amenable to my every command—and would prefer that I have a more reliable method of transportation.”

  Oh, my, was all I could think of. A place by a river. Many amenities (whatever that means). A grandmother and children. Milma and Risto. A car! What kind of life am I entering? I wondered.

  It proved to be as marvelous as any life could possibly have been—especially for me.

  Milma looked down at me with a worried look. “I hope you won’t be lonely for your family,” she said. “We will keep you very busy, but I shall try very hard to arrange periodic visits—times for you to go home.”

  Little did she know that—in spite of my love for Mother, Aini, Ronny, and Eino—I couldn’t wait for this adventure to begin, and I felt very little loneli­ness—just excitement and desire. “I know I’ll miss then, especially Mother and Eino, but I know I’ll be helping them get better with one less mouth to feed, and I shall be sure to send home any payment I earn from you.”

  That was another sticking point. I wasn’t sure whether they were intending to pay me or not. I hoped they’d give me something—even a little bit of money—although I’d basically be working for my room and board.

  “Yes,” Milma said firmly, “we won’t expect you to work for nothing. We thought perhaps we could begin at a dollar a week and, if you work out as well as I think you will, we will increase that wage accordingly.”

  I could imagine Mother smiling. We had been struggling since Father had… changed.

  “I want to do my very best,” I said, not really responding to her suggestion, “and I want to fulfill all of your expectations.” There. I had voiced my deepest desire. And I had used English words to describe it instead of the Finnish Milma had used with me since we left the church.

  “Good,” she said, reaching over to pat me on the knee. “Something tells me you’re going to do just fine—in fact, better than fine.”

  Her confidence made me feel better, and I leaned back to watch the trees and the occasional field as we headed north and east. Wherever we were going, it’d be better than what I’d left behind, I thought, and immediately was ashamed at the thought.

  But shame or not, I vowed to take advantage of this opportunity to broaden my world, and I would not have any regrets. They were left behind with my family. I was heading for a new life and a chance to become more knowledgeable, better educated, acquainted with that other world Father had tried so hard to enter and failed so miserably.

  I would not fail, I promised myself. I shall live up to all of the Lappala’s and my own expectations!

  I would learn!

  “Will you be willing to speak Finnish with my mother?” Milma asked.

  “Of course,” I answered without hesitation. “My mother speaks only Finnish as you well know, and although I’ve learned English in school, Finnish is still my ‘first language.’”

  “That’s good,” she said. “My mother will be absolutely delighted to have someone to talk to. We try to speak English at home so that the children will grow up knowing the language. But my mother’s having a difficult time with it. She came here from Finland just a few months ago to live with us and help us with the house and the children. I know she’ll enjoy getting to know you.”

  “And I to know her… and the children.” I already knew their names: young Risto, Daniel, and Tellervo.

  “Yes, well…” Milma turned forward again and whisked the reins over the horses’ backs, urging them on. “We shall see about that.”

  I wondered but was afraid to ask. I found out soon enough.

  “Knowing your mother, I have no doubt you already know the basics of how to keep a house clean.”

  “Oh, yes,” I responded readily. “It was my job to scrub the floor after Mother finished the baking, and she saw every crumb—every speck! I also cleaned the separator (I crossed my fingers, hoping that the Lappala household didn’t have one) and washed the windows and the chimneys of the kerosene lamps, blacked the stove, changed the beds and washed and ironed our clothes and sheets and pillowcases and tablecloth and napkins,” I added for good measure, thinking that the fact that we used them would enhance my potential.

  “And how about cooking and baking?” she asked.

  “Well…” I hesitated, “Mother does most of the cooking and baking. But I’m excited to learn to make whatever you wish me to.” I could have fudged a bit with that answer but I found I couldn’t lie. “Honesty is the best policy,” Miss Tierney had told us many times, and I had believed her with all my heart.

  Our arrival at Metsola was greeted with shouts and laughter as the children and the grandmother spilled out of the “cabin”—which was, in my eyes, a huge house. Risto, of course, had been at the Virginia church, preaching that day. He joined us later in the evening.

  “I want you to meet each other,” Milma said as she climbed down from the seat, almost pulling me after her. “Children, this is Maria. She’s going to help Grandmother to take care of you.”

  The children looked at me in bewilderment. “Take care of us?” questioned Risto, the oldest. “We’re old enough to take care of ourselves!”

  “Well, yes…” Milma hesitated, “that remains to be seen.”

  “Maria,” she said, turning to me, “I want you to meet my mother—Mrs. Tikkanen (who grasped my hand and said in Finnish to call her “Grandmother” as the children did) and our children—Risto (who stepped forward with an angry look), Tellervo (whose face was red with fury), and little Daniel (whose arms were already up, waiting to be picked up by whoever was nearest). I did so, holding him out and looking into his eyes. “
We shall become great friends,” I said.

  Daniel giggled when I tickled him, and he seemed pleased with me. The other two stood back as if in unison, agreeing to disagree.

  “Well…” Milma began again, “here we are at Metsola. I shall ask Risto,” she inclined her head at her older son, “to bring your bag in and Tellervo to bring you into the kitchen.”

  Thus ordered, they complied, but with obvious disapproval. I would have my hands full with them, I realized, almost thankful for the Rahikainen boys, who had enured me to problem children.

  As we walked through the house, I noticed the living room had a huge stone fireplace, a wall of bookcases (richness!), a sofa, a loveseat, and two comfortable chairs arranged around a large braided rug and facing the fireplace. French doors (I found out later what they were called) opened onto a veranda, which seemed from a glance to be well-used with a porch swing, cushioned wicker furniture, containers of summery flowers (I recognized marigolds, but not the bright red ones I was later to find out were geraniums), magazines, and books strewn around, and cushions on the floor for extra seating.

  I wondered if they were bothered by the same mosquitoes that haunted us every time we went outside. Sometimes they were so bad Mother had made a net to go over our heads, down to our shoulders, and we rarely went outside without long sleeves and long pants. With a river so nearby, I thought, the mosquitoes must be awful.

  But the doorway was open and lacked a screen so perhaps they knew some secret that our family had yet to learn.

  Their living room was by far the loveliest room I had ever seen. The horsehair sofa was not brown or navy or black but a light beige—almost yellow— with flowers, as were the cushioned chairs. I was later to learn that they were called chinz upholstery covers bought by the Lappalas to soften and lighten the darkness of the room. The rug had been woven of light colors, too—I saw light blue, pink, yellow, light shades of brown—all intermixed. The window curtains, which were large, hung to the floor. They, too, were a light floral pattern. Altogether, it was so beautiful I felt overwhelmed. How would I ever fit into this beauty?

  I looked forward to seeing the kitchen.

  But the first thing I had seen as we entered the side door, which was evidently a casual entry, unlike the more formal front door, were shoes piled in a heap and outdoor clothes thrown across benches and, a few, hanging on hooks. The rag rug on the floor needed sweeping or shaking outside. I looked at it and thought this would be my first job. When I entered, I took off my shoes, added them to the pile, and hung my coat on a rung.

  Then the three of us went insidde, neither child saying a word. They marched me toward the kitchen. I caught the welcome smell of coffee and pulla.

  The buxom woman who had asked me to call her Grandmother was already seated at the table with a cup of coffee in front of her. “So you are to be my helper,” she said in Finnish, with a welcoming gesture. “I hope you’ll be happy here.”

  Getting up, she poured me a cup of coffee, indicated a chair where I was to sit, brushed Risto and Tellervo away out the door, and sat down herself opposite me. She cut both of us a piece of pulla that smelled wonderfully of fresh cardamom. “Please join me in a cup of coffee and some pulla,” she said with a smile.

  But before I could sit down, Milma appeared at the door. “I want to show you around,” she said. The first room past the kitchen was the dining room, which held a large claw-footed table set with eight chairs and a credenza (as I later learned to call it) filled with dishes that looked very expensive, even better than the cups Mrs. Johnson, our neighbor, had used.

  Then we went upstairs past a closed doorway, which she said contained the master bedroom and past two other doors, which were also closed. “Those are the children’s rooms. One is Tellervo’s and the other is for the boys,” she said. “I hope you’ll be able to teach them how to keep them neat and orderly.” And up a second smaller stairway to the attic where my bedroom was. But a garret it certainly was not. The room, wallpapered with tiny flowers, held a single bed covered with a beautifully quilted spread, a six-drawer dresser with a mirror attached on top, another table which held a large bowl and an equally large pitcher, both of which matched the colors of the spread as did the doily they sat upon. A small doorway on the side led to a closet, where I was told to hang my dresses. (Little did she know that I only had four, counting the one I had on!)

  A dormer window was open, and a screen kept the bugs out. A shade had been pulled halfway down, and Priscilla curtains, like the ones I had seen advertised in the Sears catalog, draped gracefully on each side.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, “this is just beautiful.”

  “We hoped you’d like it,” Milma said, smiling. “Why don’t you unpack and then rejoin us in the kitchen? Oh,” she added, “except when there’s company here, please continue to call me Milma and my husband Risto.”

  “Just like your son’s name,” I said.

  “Yes, we named our firstborn after his father and Tellervo after my mother.”

  And so it began… so easily that it was as if I had always been a part of their family and lived in that lovely home.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I start work right away,” I said to Mrs. Lappala’s mother, changing my mind about the coffee. I proceeded into the side entry, picked up the rug by its corners, and opened the door to shake it out. Then I asked her for a clothes basket, which she said was outside in the summer kitchen. Finding one, I picked up all of the shoes and boots piled in a heap, swept the floor, asked for a pail and a scrub brush, scrubbed the floor, and when it was dry, put the rug back down, arranging the shoes and boots in a row according to size and making sure that everything that had been dumped onto the bench was hung up neatly.

  “My goodness,” Mrs. Lappala’s mother exclaimed, “that’s needed to be done for days, and the time just seems to get away from me. I truly need the help. My daughter and son-in-law are very busy with their church duties, and the children… well… they need to be taught neatness. Clearly, you’ll give them a good example.”

  Just then the children entered the side room I had cleaned. I told them they could call me “Maria” and that their mother had hired me to help with the house.

  “Perhaps you’ll line your dirty shoes alongside the clean ones, and next time, please wipe them off before you come in.” The rug was already messy and dirty again.

  They looked at me, looked at their grandmother, who nodded and told them in Finnish to mind their manners, and did as I had told them—but not without sneaking some angry looks behind my back. Then they raced upstairs, Tellervo to her room and the boys to theirs to wash their hands and faces and to change into clean clothes. By the time their mother and father came in from the porch where they had been sitting and sat down at the dining room table, he holding her chair for her and holding another chair for her mother and one for me, they came in, climbed into their chairs—the youngest, Daniel—onto a dictionary placed on one of the chairs, and reached out their hands to grab mine and their grandmother’s. Reverend Lappala said grace, thanking God for their good fortune to have me added to their household to help everyone and for all of us to be more mindful of the goodness God had heaped upon them. He spoke first in Finnish, then in English. When he finished, everyone else said, “Amen.” I added that, too, a little belatedly. We had not been in the habit of saying grace before our meals at home.

  I blushed and looked down at my hands, which were clean, thank goodness. I had helped to peel potatoes, and they had gotten very dirty.

  It seemed I was to learn my job as the days and evenings progressed because neither Milma nor the Grandmother told me what was going to be expected of me—except I was to be of help to the Grandmother and to teach the children neatness. I had some qualms about that. They were obviously not very enthusiastic about having me added to their home. I suspected that they, like Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Ca
bin had just been allowed to grow relatively unchecked.

  So as soon as everyone had finished eating, I got up, gathered the plates and the silverware, and brought them into the kitchen. The crystal glassware I took two at a time, just to make sure.

  “Why, thank you, Maria,” Milma said. “That is usually the children’s task.”

  I was happy for once I was doing something the children would appreciate.

  None of them so much as looked at me as they got up from the table, nor was there a word of appreciation.

  Once I had cleaned the table, I began to wash the dishes, carefully doing the crystal glasses first and scraping the uneaten food off of the children’s plates into a can obviously used for garbage. We’d had fried chicken for dinner, and I could have eaten twice as much. It was a temptation not to pick at the children’s leavings. Then I washed the plates and the silverware, rinsing each one in a second pan of boiling water before handing it to Grandmother, whose job, it seemed, was to wipe the dishes. She thanked me many times for taking over the task of washing them.

  Before beginning on the dishes, I had put the pans to soak. They had a gas stove, which I had never used before, but Grandmother had explained how it was used when I had put the potatoes on to boil. It certainly kept the kitchen a lot cooler than wood stove at home. And it was a lot easier to clean the pans because I could set the temperature of the dishpan below them on low before I started with the glassware. The bottom scum had partly boiled off by the time I was ready to do them, and I scraped them into the same garbage can, leaving the dishwater clean.