Laura Ingalls Is Ruining My Life

by Shelley Tougas

  “It’s like every Laura book, right? Pa gets lost in a blizzard, and they worry he’s dead, but he lives.”

  Rose shook her head. “No. It’s way worse. The winter in De Smet is one of the worst in history. The whole town almost starved and froze to death. There were hardly any trees to burn for fuel. When they ran out of coal, Laura and Pa spent every single day twisting hay into sticks for their fire, and Ma, Mary, Carrie, and Grace had nothing to do but sit around the stove and shiver.”

  “They should’ve helped twist hay sticks,” I said.

  Freddy would’ve laughed again. Not Rose. “Ma was busy grinding wheat seeds in her tiny coffee grinder. Then she’d make plain loaves of bread, and that’s all they had to eat. Soon even that was down to nothing.”

  “Plain bread can’t be worse than her turnip-and-jack-rabbit stew.”

  Rose didn’t get any of my jokes. “The guy who eventually married Laura risked his life to find wheat for the town. Finally spring came and the trains arrived with supplies. So many pioneers would’ve died without trains bringing stuff from the East. Trains were lifesavers.”

  I flopped onto my bed. “Tell that to Chinese workers. Tell that to the buffalo.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The railroad company hired workers from China and barely paid them and had them do all the dangerous work, like blowing up tunnels. Lots of them died. When the trains were up and running, men would sit in train cars with their guns and shoot buffalo for fun. They didn’t even eat the meat. The buffalo just rotted and pretty soon buffalo became almost extinct.”

  “Aren’t you full of sunshine and butterflies!”

  “Mrs. Newman is making me read articles about pioneers and settling the West.”

  Rose took the lotion from the nightstand and spread it all over her arms. “It’s so dry. I can’t stop itching. Want some?”

  “Sure.” She handed me the bottle, and when our fingers touched, a shock of static electricity zapped us. I said, “No offense to Laura, but we’re not winter people. Even Kentucky was too cold for Mom. She’s a people person, and there aren’t enough people here.”

  “Laura’s here, and she needs Laura right now. And in the summer, Walnut Grove has a big festival for Laura. People come from all over the country. The best part is this outdoor musical. There’s a spot outside of town where people sit on the hillside and watch a play about the Ingallses and the history of the town. I’m going to try out. I want to win the part of Laura.”

  I could see Rose, dressed in a calico dress and bonnet, churning butter at her audition. No director could refuse her.

  “You really like it here, don’t you?” I asked. “Better than Church Row?”

  “I miss spaghetti-dinner night and the funeral-lunch ladies. But here we hang out a lot more. You and me. That’s cool.”

  Rose was a decent sister when she wasn’t acting like Miss Perfect, but she was no Freddy. “You and me,” I said. “That’s very cool.”

  No reason to hurt her feelings, right?

  * * *

  Mrs. Newman collected our math sheets and sent everyone to the lunchroom, except for Julia and Freddy. She asked them to stay for a moment. Then she told me to get my sandwich and wait in the hall. From the tone of her voice, I could tell they were in trouble. Freddy had never been in trouble at school.

  Ever since Julia had hypnotized Freddy with her hair-tossing, he’d been going to football games, hanging out with the pack after school, telling jokes in the lunchroom, and even sleeping over at Spiked Hair Boy’s house. And now there was trouble at school.

  Thanks for nothing, Julia Ramos.

  I rushed to my locker, grabbed my lunch, and went back to the classroom. I leaned against the door and strained to hear them talking. I couldn’t make out Julia’s words, but Mrs. Newman never had a problem being heard.

  “It’s disruptive and rude. You can visit in the lunchroom or outside. You can talk before and after school. I won’t tolerate this note passing. This is the second time I’ve had to confront you. It better be the last.”

  Mrs. Newman should leave teaching and go to the police academy. Even I hadn’t noticed the note passing, and I noticed everything.

  “Sorry,” Freddy mumbled.

  I backed up a few feet and stood by the drinking fountain until Freddy and Julia walked toward the lunchroom. Then I sat next to Mrs. Newman’s desk with my lunch and the articles she’d given me.

  “I see by the smile on your face that you overheard us.”

  I felt my face turn red. “No. Not at all. I’m smiling because I liked the article very much.”

  “You’re not a skilled liar, Charlotte.” At first I thought she was cracking a joke, but Mrs. Newman never joked, so I cleared my throat and said, “I was fascinated by the article about the Fence Cutting Wars.”

  Mrs. Newman’s brown curls looked extra tight. “Enlighten me.”

  “Well, barbed wire was a new invention in the 1800s. Those sharp points on the wires kept people and animals from going through the fence. So ranchers started fencing up big sections of land, but other people thought it should be open for travel and cattle grazing and all that. A drought made it even worse because the fences made it harder to get to water. People would cut the fences. Everybody was fighting over land and water.”

  “How does this relate to homesteading?” she asked.

  “People kept moving west to get free land, and nobody really thought much about things like who could put up fences and who could block the way to rivers and lakes. The government didn’t plan for conflict between farmers who wanted to plant crops and ranchers who wanted the land for the cattle.”

  “Excellent. All this reading ties nicely into your work at the museum.”

  I didn’t make the connection. “Was Pa Ingalls a fence cutter?”

  “No.” She laughed. It might have been the first time I’d seen all her teeth. “But the Ingallses were part of the era and the conflict over land.” She handed me an article. “I need to meet with Mr. Crenski for a few minutes. You can eat your lunch and read this.”

  The title of the article: “Prairie Madness.” I skimmed it quickly and saw the words pioneers, prairie, depression, and insanity. I stopped skimming and started reading.

  Homesteading laws brought a wave of pioneers eager to own land in the West and make their fortune. They left the relative comfort of the East and discovered they were unprepared for the harsh life and isolation.

  Settlers spread out, making it difficult to socialize. News of the outside world came sporadically. Visiting family back East was a near impossibility. Medical care was scarce, and sick children often died. Settlers worked from dawn to dusk and lived in a constant state of exhaustion. Sometimes they went hungry. They were unprepared for weather—heat and storms in the summer; blizzards in the winter. The howling prairie winds drove people mad. Violence, alcoholism, and suicide …

  I put the article into my desk because I had to go to the bathroom.

  A few steps down the hall I skidded to a stop.

  You know the moment when you learn about something totally general, something totally random, and then suddenly it’s not general or random at all? Suddenly it’s very real and very specific?

  At that moment, it came to me. Prairie Madness wasn’t a school lesson. It had a name and a face. Martha Lake. My mother.

  Okay, the howling prairie winds hadn’t exactly driven her to alcohol or violence or suicide. She’d been driven to sighing and napping and not washing her hair. Big difference.

  Still, I worried. She wasn’t herself.

  We moved all the time. Our world was always changing, but the one thing I could count on was Martha Lake being the same rainbow-finding, energy-connecting, peace-loving mother. Not now. She didn’t even leave the basement most days. She was acting like an early prairie pioneer—lonely, exhausted, sad.

  Prairie Madness sounded worse than fever ’n’ ague.

  Way worse.

  CHAPTER


  TEN

  Before I went to the museum, I walked home to get a snack. Mom was sitting in the recliner with her laptop and a thick quilt wrapped around her.

  I wanted to make her laugh, so I said, “Mom, do you have fever ’n’ ague?”

  “I’m cold because I turned off the space heaters. It’s so dry I got a bloody nose.”

  She didn’t get the joke at all, so I tried a different approach: supporting and interested daughter.

  “How’s the Mars book?”

  “It’s coming along. Aren’t you supposed to be at the museum?”

  “I’m on my way.” Mom didn’t know I’d been arm-twisted into volunteering. I’d made it sound like I was interested in community service and devoted to Laura.

  Rose popped out of our bedroom. “Can I come? Please?”

  “Take her,” Mom said. “You two should get out of this basement as much as possible.”

  Lately Rose wanted to do everything with me, and I was getting tired of her. But I could avoid talking to Julia if Rose came. I decided to test Mom for Prairie Madness. “I’ll take her if you come, too, Mom. You need to get out of the basement more than anyone. And you can surround yourself with Laura’s buttons and handkerchiefs.”

  “I’m working.”

  The words tumbled out of me. “You don’t socialize. You work from dawn to dusk, hearing nothing but the howling prairie winds!”

  “You should get out, Mom. It’ll be fun,” Rose said.

  Mom sighed. “I am getting out. I promise. This weekend I’m going to a writing seminar in Minneapolis and staying at a hotel. Mia will keep an eye on you. I shouldn’t spend the money, but I desperately need a creative jump start.”

  “But connecting with Laura is free,” Rose said.

  I glared at Rose. “That’s awesome, Mom. Do you want me to put some lavender oil in the diffuser before we leave? It’ll be relaxing, and it’ll smell really nice.”

  She shook her head.

  No lavender oil? No connecting with Laura?

  Prairie Madness wasn’t history. It was alive and well in modern-day Walnut Grove.

  * * *

  Julia and Rose chatted while they cleaned display cases near the museum’s entrance. I wanted to avoid Julia, so I washed the cases on the other side of the room. Against the wall were rows of shelves displaying photos of actors from the Little House on the Prairie television show. Mom had watched the show when she was a kid, but I’d never seen it. I looked at the picture of actor Michael Landon, who played Pa Ingalls. He had a smooth face, dark hair that swooped along his jawline, and a smile from a toothpaste commercial.

  I walked to the next case and looked at the photo of the real Pa Ingalls. Old-fashioned photos are always weird, because they’re black-and-white and the people in them never smile. But Pa Ingalls was downright scary. His eyes were empty, like the eyes of a zombie, and his thick beard looked like a baby porcupine was squatting on his chin.

  Creepy, right?

  Julia scooted toward me. “Are you getting paid, too?”

  “I’m volunteering because it’s a nice thing to do.” No way would I tell her I was being punished for cheating, or that I’d pretended to cheat. Julia probably couldn’t keep a secret.

  Gloria and Teresa, another volunteer, studied the cases from every possible angle and used a flashlight to make sure every streak had been removed. Even Ma Ingalls wasn’t that fussy, and she swept dirt floors. While they checked our work, I inspected the artifacts on the walls and in the cases—some props from the television show but mostly items donated from people in southwestern Minnesota. Bonnets, button-up shoes, handmade suspenders, a man’s shaving kit, a hand mirror, quilts, baby gowns. I touched the old sewing machine and wondered how many shirts, pants, and dresses had been stitched by its needle.

  “You really should open in the winter,” Rose said.

  “Even if the weather wasn’t terrible, kids are in school. Families can’t visit,” Teresa said.

  “There’s so much to see.” Rose spun around. “Millions and millions of people will never see this amazing place and all these things”

  Gloria nodded. “It breaks my heart that we can’t share it with the whole world.”

  “If only there was a way to transport people here,” Teresa said.

  What century did these ladies live in? They probably still talked on telephones with cords.

  “There is a way,” I said. “As long as we’re taking photos of every item for the museum records, why don’t we put some of the pictures online? Imagine a museum scrapbook that anyone with a computer can see.”

  The room was so quiet I could hear the sleet tapping against the building. Finally Gloria said, “I’m not an Interneter. Is that even possible?”

  “Of course!” Rose said.

  “But how?”

  Julia looked like she was going to offer an idea, but I jumped in first. “The museum already has a website. We could create new pages for the scrapbook, then upload the photos and type in descriptions.” Gloria and Teresa looked at me like I’d just announced a cure for cancer. “Who does the website now?” I asked.

  “My daughter’s friend’s niece,” Gloria said. “How much would all this cost?”

  “Probably not much. Maybe nothing.”

  Teresa beamed. “That’s brilliant.”

  I shrugged like, hey, no big deal, but my heart swelled.

  Gloria bubbled with happiness. “See, your family landed in Walnut Grove for a reason. You belong here. It was meant to be.”

  “Destiny,” Rose said.

  “God’s plan,” Teresa said.

  I waited for Julia to make a nasty Nellie Oleson comment, but she smiled and said, “Good idea, Charlotte.” She must have had some scheme in the works and was just playing nice. Good thing I knew who she really was.

  I let Julia and Rose run ahead as we went home. The sleet had stopped, and the clouds had split apart and vanished. It felt good to walk in the cool air. I’d one-upped Julia with my idea, but I wasn’t thinking about being better than Julia. That didn’t even matter. I was thinking about Gloria saying we belonged in Walnut Grove. I’d never been part of anything bigger than my family. In Lexington we went to funerals, but that was just for the free lunch. I told myself that it was stupid to think about belonging here or anywhere. I reminded myself of Molly Smith and the letter that never came.

  But walking under the clear blue sky, their words of praise ringing in my ears, I felt good. I felt better than good, actually. I felt … what did Teresa say? Brilliant. I felt brilliant. I was a girl with a brilliant idea, and I’d actually said it out loud. Me. Charlotte Lake, invisible girl.

  Who knew?

  * * *

  My happiness flipped upside down when I got home. Mom had talked to Mia and come up with the worst possible plan. This Saturday while Mom was at her overnight writing conference, Freddy and Julia had permission to invite friends over to hang out in the basement. Mia and Miguel would be upstairs to supervise. Mom was convinced that if I just opened myself to the universe, anything was possible.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Anything,” she said. I was sorry I’d ever thought about blue skies and brilliance. Posting pictures on the Internet was one thing. Hanging out with Freddy and Julia was another.

  “Is it possible Miguel and Mia will let me go upstairs and watch a movie with them?”

  Mom put her hands on my face and looked into my eyes. “Charlotte, have fun with your friends. Enjoy your youth before you outgrow it.”

  I started to say, “They’re not my friends,” but Mom was already packing her computer, notebook, and pens into a canvas bag. My stomach clenched, and I knew it was a lost cause.

  It’d been weeks now, and the wolf pack hadn’t turned on Freddy. Once I’d seen a news story about this man who raised a wolf puppy, and the wolf acted like a loyal dog for years, and then one day, for no reason at all, it attacked the guy. A doctor had to amputate the man’s hand. S
chool was basically a big wolf den. The longer this fake-nice stuff went on, the more it would hurt Freddy when the wolf-friends bit him.

  And when Julia stopped tossing her hair and started saying mean things, Freddy would be crushed. How long would it take for Freddy to find out Julia wasn’t the girl he thought she was?

  On Saturday, the door opened and a tangle of legs careened down the steps. Julia, Spiked Hair Boy, Purple Glasses Girl, Boy Who Needs Braces, and Red Fred, who’d been waiting upstairs for everyone to arrive.

  I slipped into my bedroom before anyone saw me. I grabbed the handle to shut the door and was zapped by the static electricity. Then I realized I’d left my Hunger Games books on the table. Since I had nothing else to do, I decided to read the most recent article from Mrs. Newman. While the wolf pack talked and laughed outside my door, I read about the Dust Bowl, which is not an actual bowl of dust, but an area of the country covered in dust because all the healthy soil had been stripped away.

  When the government lured settlers west with offers of free land, they weren’t always honest about the type of land. So people ended up moving to desolate places that weren’t good for farming, like parts of Oklahoma and Texas. The government got people to grow wheat on soil that was best used for buffalo grazing. So those people farmed and farmed, and when a big drought hit, the buffalo grasses were gone—grasses that would’ve held the dirt in place. When the winds came in the 1930s, they churned dirt into storms that looked like black tidal waves sweeping across the land. People died from pneumonia because of dust in their lungs. Animals died. Crops died. Houses were practically buried in dirt. The sky refused to rain.

  And it happened during the Depression when Americans already didn’t have jobs or money or good food. They had dirt, an ocean of dirt. These weren’t just unintended consequences of homesteading; they were depressing unintended consequences. I wondered if Mrs. Newman ever did anything fun, or if she just sat at her computer and Googled “ways to make Charlotte feel bad.”

  A chorus of laughter came from the living room. Freddy’s laugh was the loudest. Then I heard Rose laugh and say, “No way!” Those kids were so fake-nice they were even including a younger kid in their fun. I stretched on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I was hungry and thirsty and bored. I was sick of reading about dust.