by Natalie Dean
In the guest room, Bonnie had persuaded her younger sister to lay down on the bed so that she could try to rest. The long journey, and her sister’s emotional state, would exhaust her if she didn’t soon get some sleep. She remembered from her own journey west that the trip was an exhausting one and she, unlike Kasia, had been eager to go.
“Bonnie, what am I going to do?” Kasia asked. Her thick brown hair was a dark banner on the pillowcase. Bonnie had persuaded her sister to take off the hideous dress and get under the covers. Once she did so, Bonnie could see for herself the evidence.
Kasia saw her sister’s gaze and burst into tears again. “Mama made me wear that dress. She made me wear big clothes so that no one would know. Big, ugly clothes. I hate them!”
“Shhh, shhhh,” Bonnie said soothingly. “You aren’t going to wear them here.” She knew that it wasn’t the wardrobe that was the matter, but it was easier to bewail clothing than to alter circumstances. “I have plenty of clothes that you can wear. You didn’t bring much with you.”
“I wasn’t prepared, like you were when you left. It was Mama who said that I would go in Elzbieta’s place. She didn’t want me to shame the family by having my baby at home; she said I had to go. Elzbieta cried; Bonnie, she hates me now. She wouldn’t even speak to me when I left. It’s not my fault, Bonnie, I didn’t want to come! I didn’t want to leave! Mama made me!”
Bonnie patted her sister’s arm. “It sounds as though it was a rough departure, but that will mend in time. For now, we have to concentrate on what to do now that you’re in Texas.” Poor Elzbieta, she thought, hoping to make a new start in life, only to have her chances usurped by a younger sister whose transgression must be concealed.
“What do you mean?” Kasia demanded, her large blue eyes spilling tears. “I’m going to have a baby and I’m not married. I am damned forever, Mama says, and so is my baby, if I don’t marry. That Texas man isn’t going to marry me, you know that. Why would he? I’m not pure.”
Bonnie didn’t know what to say. Some things were seen differently in Texas, and some weren’t. A woman could come to Texas and have a dubious reputation, but in a region that needed women, she wasn’t necessarily branded for her past. But a man like Will Henry was unlikely to accede to a marriage with a woman who had belonged to someone else. Would he want to claim another man’s child? Probably not. He would never be unkind to anyone, but that didn’t mean he was going to marry Kasia.
“I miss Hayes!” Kasia said as the sobs began again. “I should be with him right now, not here, Bonnie.”
It was not, to Bonnie, a surprise that the millionaire industrialist family did not want their son to be with the daughter of a Polish miner, but she doubted that this was the time to make that point. Kasia thought that she and the boy were in love and that was enough, but Kasia was naïve.
“Kasia,” she said in a firm tone, “we have to fix what’s wrong. You may want to be with this young man, and he may want to be with you—"
“He does! He told me so!”
“But he is not here, and his family will not allow him to be with you. You said they’ve sent him off to Europe. “
“He didn’t want to go,” Kasia exclaimed tearfully. “He told me that he didn’t want to go.”
“But he did go. He made his choice, Kasia. He chose his family. Now you have to choose as well. You must think of your baby.”
“I am thinking of my baby! Hayes is my baby’s father, Bonnie. I should be with him.”
“Kasia . . .” How could she utter the truth without hurting Kasia’s childlike faith in a boy who, however sincerely he may have thought he loved her, was not brave enough to cast aside his wealth and his position in Pittsburgh society to marry her? The illegitimate child of a rich man could easily be forgotten or ignored as a typical misstep in a young man’s life, particularly if he were as wealthy as the Gardners, a family that was perched atop the city’s social ladder. It was the girl who would bear the child and the shame. Mama, with a ruthless regard for her family’s reputation, had contrived a solution which did not take into account the feelings of Kasia or Elzbieta, and certainly not the feelings of Will Henry, a man she didn’t know. In the Pittsburgh mining community, the families preserved their honor zealously. They had so little, and their honor meant everything. Bonnie understood their stance better now than she had when she lived on Polish Hill. Honor mattered in Texas, too, but families came to terms with the lapses in protocol that were not uncommon. She knew that Kasia had a better opportunity for her future in Texas than she’d have had if she’d remained in Pittsburgh. But her sister was unlikely to regard this view with acceptance.
It was more than an hour before Bonnie emerged from the guest room, going directly into the kitchen where she knew the twins would be. Z handed her a cup of coffee. Bonnie would have preferred tea, but the gesture was kindly meant, and she smiled wearily at Z as she poured milk into the cup. Will Henry sat, unnaturally still, watching her with his eyes that were so like his brother’s and yet so different. Z’s blue-green eyes were a constantly changing sea reflecting his thoughts and moods. Will Henry’s gaze, usually so tranquil, now held no expression at all.
“She’s not Elzbieta,” Will Henry stated flatly, opening the discussion as Bonnie struggled to find the words.
Bonnie shook her head. “She’s my younger sister, Katarina.”
“You called her Kasha.”
“Kasia. It’s her nickname. It would be like Kathy or Katie in English.”
“Didn’t Elzbieta want to come?” Will Henry asked.
Bonnie bit her lip to keep from crying. She had maintained her composure for most of the time that she had been with Kasia, and she had been successful at first. Successful until the enormity of the dilemma had struck her and then the two had cried together. Finally, Kasia fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. How could Bonnie explain to the brothers what had happened? Bonnie understood why her mother had done what she had done, but it was wrong, and it was unfair to Will Henry and to Elzbieta as well. Now it was Bonnie who had reason to be ashamed of her family; not only Kasia for giving herself to a young man to whom she was not married, and one, moreover, who for all his sweet words, must have known that his family would never sanction the marriage of their son to a maid. Bonnie was also angry at her mother, that beleaguered, brave, and resolute woman who had always done what had to be done, regardless of how much pain was involved. Mama had raised a family on her own after her husband died and she had not done so by being soft. But Will Henry, the kindest and most understanding of men, deserved a better fate than this, as did her sister Elzbieta.
“Mama sent Kasia in her place,” Bonnie said.
“Why?”
Kasia had told Bonnie that Mama was of the opinion that, as the Texan, as she referred to Will Henry, had never met either daughter, it didn’t really matter which one went west to marry him. But it mattered very much to Wanda Yankovich which daughter stayed in Pittsburgh and which daughter left. The daughter who lived a blameless life must stay, even if it meant that her chances of marrying and having a family were cast aside. The daughter who brought dishonor to the household must go.
Mama hadn’t given Kasia a choice. No daughter who was pregnant and unmarried was going to live under her roof, shaming the family with her sinful secret. What would the priest say? What would the neighbors think? No one would want to marry into a family where a child had been born out of wedlock. No. Kasia would go and marry a man far away, where she could not bring dishonor to the rest of the family.
She had to tell them. Z was her husband, Will Henry like a real brother rather than just a brother-in-law. They were her family now; Pittsburgh was so far away, and she knew that she would never go back. The distance was formidable, for one thing, and for another, she was a Texan now. Her transplanted roots were now deep in Texas soil. This ranch was her home. Grandmother was family. Will Henry was family. Z was her husband. The baby would never go into a mine, never know the poverty that hel
d hard-working immigrants captive down in the ground.
She sometimes missed home, and missed her family. She missed the sound of the Polish language that seemed so evocative. She missed the foods, the traditions and she missed, although she would never admit it, the church and faith in which she had been raised. That was partly why she had been so excited to have Will Henry marrying her sister. It would bring her home and family to Texas, at least a part of it. Texas would have welcomed Elzbieta, who wanted to be there. But Kasia did not want to be here, and she could not return home to Pittsburgh.
Bonnie sipped her coffee. The men were still, waiting for her to speak, to say something that made sense. She realized how unusual it was for them to be inactive. Now they sat on their chairs, mirror images of each other, waiting for her to tell them what in the world was going on.
“Mama sent Kasia to Texas instead of Elzbieta because Kasia is going to have a baby.”
Z slammed his hand down on the table. Will Henry did nothing at all. His eyes, suddenly darker, did not leave Bonnie’s face. It was hard to go on talking, knowing that her words were harming him and that he took refuge in impassive stoicism rather than reveal his pain.
“Kasia worked as a maid for one of the wealthy families in Pittsburgh. There are a lot of wealthy families in Pittsburgh; you might be surprised. Steel, coal . . . The Gardners aren’t quite in the same league as Frick and Carnegie, but they aren’t far below. Kasia and the Gardners’ youngest son . . . she says they fell in love. She believed with all her heart that they were going to be married. . . but when she told him that she was going to have a baby, and he said they would go ahead and marry now, his parents refused. They sent him to Europe and they sacked Kasia. She didn’t tell Mama at first, but then she couldn’t hide it anymore. That’s when Mama decided that Kasia would come here instead of Elzbieta.”
Chapter 7
Even as she spoke the words, she knew how horrible it sounded. The Texas twins were not innocents and they knew life in its raw state. They knew that their grandmother was a woman who was capable of doing whatever she had to do on behalf of her family’s wellbeing. But nothing in their lives had prepared them for an act that, seen through their eyes, was cold-blooded and cruel.
“The clothes she was wearing…” Will Henry said, speaking at last because the silence was too weighted with unspoken words. “I wondered why someone so young would be wearing clothes that didn’t suit her.” His comment was a way of dodging the wrenching truth of Bonnie’s sister’s secret. A young girl’s reckless folly in far-away Pittsburgh had traveled across the country, crossing rivers and states like a cursed geography lesson, to devastate him. These Gardners, these people he didn’t know, had failed to hold their son accountable to his obligations. He had fathered a child. It didn’t matter that he was rich, and Bonnie’s sister was poor. This was America and these Gardner folks should not be permitted to cast a girl aside because she was a servant. But they could. That was how it was in the East.
Bonnie nodded. “No one could tell that she was carrying a baby. Mama wanted her gone before the baby came. As far as Kasia knows, no one did know, but . . . our family lives in a small community. People notice things, people talk. They whisper and then the whispers grow louder. Kasia wasn’t aware of gossip but she stayed inside the house all the time after the Gardners sacked her from her job. She wouldn’t know what people were saying. Mama would know but she would never have admitted it and never acknowledged it, except to the priest, and maybe not even to him. I don’t know . . . perhaps in confession.” She knew that for the Protestant Kennesaws, the intricacies of the Roman Catholic faith were too impermeable to comprehend. Mama had required her family to be faithful, but perhaps she had allowed Kasia to conceal the truth in order to avoid the repercussions that would have ensued had the priest known that there was a fallen woman in his parish.
“Bonnie, I don’t know your kinfolk, but how could your mother send a girl that young, that scared, and that desperate across the country by herself?” Z demanded, his face flushed with anger. He was well aware that an unmarried woman who was going to have a baby wasn’t something to be proud of. But to send a girl in that state off by herself, to travel so far . . . tough as she was, he couldn’t imagine Grandmother doing such a thing.
Bonnie started to speak, then fell silent again. How to explain Mama to these Texans who lived by a different code? They held women to a higher standard than men were expected to meet, just as people did back East, but it was different. The rules were newer, the customs raw, women were scarce and men, when it came down to it, had to decide whether they would rather be sanctimonious or lonely. Mama felt that sin was sin and virtue was virtue; the church told her what was right and wrong and Kasia had done wrong. She had to be punished. It was how things were. Life was hard for immigrants in an industrial city where there were plenty more workers to do the job if someone was injured, killed, or went on strike. The church was their comfort and reassurance that as long as they obeyed, they would endure. But the church could be rigid; its role was not to tolerate sin but to chastise it. Mama would not endure the shame that would have ensued had Kasia stayed in Pittsburgh. And Bonnie knew, as Mama would have known, that no one in the community would have taken Kasia in marriage. They were women who had fallen into sin. They were the ones that mothers warned their daughters of. A girl who surrendered her virtue would become one of those women. A bad woman.
Bonnie didn’t answer her husband’s question.
“She’s only eighteen,” Bonnie said. “She doesn’t know what to do and she doesn’t have any place to go.”
“She’s your sister, so she’s family,” Z said. “She’ll stay here.”
Bonnie gave him a grateful look, but remained pragmatic. “What will Grandmother say?”
“She won’t like it and your sister is bound to get the rough side of Grandmother’s tongue. She’ll have to help out like everyone else. But Grandmother won’t turn your family away. She sets a powerful store by family. When is the baby . . . “
“Late December.”
“Same as ours?”
Bonnie nodded.
Will Henry stood up. “I agree with Z. She stays here. She’s your sister.”
“Thank you,” Bonnie said, knowing that if Will Henry had objected, Kasia could not have stayed at the ranch. It would have been too much to ask, and Grandmother would not have expected her grandson to be accommodating on that score.
“But I won’t marry her,” Will Henry said. “She’s another man’s woman and she’s not the wife I was promised. She can stay; like Z says, she’s your sister and like you say, she’s got nowhere to go. But she’s not going to be my wife and it’s not my baby that she’s carrying. She’s your sister and she’ll have my respect on that score. But I can’t pretend that I’m content that she’s here in Elzbieta’s place. Don’t expect me to be courting her. I’ll go about my business and I reckon she’ll go about hers. But I’ll see to it that our paths cross as seldom as possible.”
“Will Henry, I’m so sorry—"
“This isn’t for you to be sorry for,” he said, trying to smile. “You did what you could, and I know if it were up to you, Elzbieta would be here. But Kasia’s your sister; you owe her your support. She’s going to need it.”
He left without another word, tall and unyielding, his posture that of a man who would not succumb to yet another disappointment that life had sent his way.
Bonnie began to speak, but Z held up his hand to still her. “Let him be,” he said after the door closed behind his brother. “He’s cut apart by this and no words are going to put him back together again. At least not now. He’s got to deal with having his hopes gone, and he’s got to manage to go on while she’s living here. It would challenge any man. I don’t know if I could do it. No, truth to tell, I couldn’t do it. Will Henry will do it because he’s a finer man than I’ll ever be.”
“I think you’re a fine man, Zachary Taylor Kennesaw,” Bonnie said, her c
hin high, her eyes unblinking so that the tears would not fall.
He grinned at her. “Not as fine as my brother. I can’t say with certainty that there isn’t a child of mine somewhere in the West. Maybe even in Mesquite. I think if there were, the woman would have come to me. I’d claim the child if it were mine. You know I’m no saint. I’ve never pretended otherwise. If this had happened to me, I’d have taken it as my just desserts. But Will Henry . . . he’s different. He doesn’t believe in tomcatting around.”
“Before we married, Grandmother told me that you didn’t know how to act around ladies. That you only knew . . . .well, bad girls.”
“Grandmother said that?” he asked, bemused. “Was she trying to scare you off?”
“No. She didn’t want me to have any false illusions, I think, about what I was getting into.”
“Grandmother likes you. You’re as much family as me and Will Henry to her. If I ever broke my vows, I think she’d take a strap to me.”
Bonnie’s eyes glinted. “If you ever break your vows, Z Taylor Kennesaw, I’ll take more than a strap to you.”
Z laughed. “Sweetie, I reckon you would. I’m no coward, but I don’t fancy inviting that kind of danger into my life. Besides,” he said, his grin a lusty one that paid bawdy homage to the benefits of those vows that he had made, “I’m right content with the wife I have, and I don’t have any plans to wander off the range. It’s seeing how you changed me that made Will Henry believe in trying again, you know.”
Z had never before acknowledged in so frank a manner that Bonnie had changed him. He was an independent man who liked his freedom and Bonnie was smart enough to give it to him, as long as he kept his end of the bargain. Poker on a Saturday night once in a while didn’t disturb her, as long as he came home before his losses were too great and before he got any notions of returning to his bachelor days and ways with any of the girls in the saloon.