by Anna Solomon
7. “Eggs will keep almost any length of time in limewater properly prepared. One pint of coarse salt, and one pint of unslacked lime, to a pailful of water. If there be too much lime, it will eat the shells from the eggs; and if there be a single egg cracked, it will spoil the whole. They should be covered with limewater and kept in a cold place. The yolk becomes slightly red; but I have seen eggs, thus kept, perfectly sweet and fresh at the end of three years.”
8. “Keep a coarse broom for the cellar stairs, woodshed, yard, &c. No good housekeeper allows her carpet broom to be used for such things.”
9. “Let those who love to be invalids drink strong green tea, eat pickles, preserves, and rich pastry. As far as possible, eat and sleep at regular hours.”
You may be left with questions, mamele. I recall from our whitewash lesson that you are shy to admit your ignorance, but one must never, ever, be afraid to ask questions. Please consider me a fountain of knowledge wishing to shower you with experience. Particularly when your wee one arrives.
Regards to your boys,
Ruth
Minna’s response was brief, her excuse for its brevity a lie:
I have only this small square of brown paper on which to write, for I was careless and squandered the wrappings from my wedding gifts, which just goes to show how truly lacking I am in any instinct for housekeeping.
And because her excuse took up half the square of paper, she only had to fill a tiny space with her note:
Not expecting—yet—any wee one. Thank you for the housekeeping tips, I will try my best to apply them to my “unique” situation, though I am, as you say, quite ignorant. Regards to your big family, Minna
WHAT Minna did not tell Ruth:
She was grateful for Ruth’s instructions. She’d been grateful for almost all her advice—even her suggestion that Minna try to love Max. She was sorry that she couldn’t bring herself to say this.
And there would be, she was fairly certain, no wee one. Minna still hadn’t bled, even once, nor did she feel any different. A bit heavier, perhaps, but that was likely the food the boys brought back. There were walnuts and cherries and apples and beets and turnips and yams; there was yeast, and a cornmeal fine as flour. She baked bread every morning, served a full meal at midday, made the evening soup thick.
She did not tell Ruth this either, for Minna understood her own indulgence; it was clear from the way her heart leaped as she chose yet another yam, and from the way Samuel watched her hands as they chopped and mashed and kneaded. He did not approve, but wouldn’t say so. Since his return, they’d had no formal greeting, no “how-dee-do,” as Jacob called it, just a slide again into weather and time and meals and tools. She hadn’t asked the questions that kept riding through her mind: Had they slept in a house? In tents? Had there been a woman to cook for them, and if so, what had she looked like? Nor did Samuel ask after the work Minna had done or not done. But one day she overheard him, in the yard, saying to Jacob: “A cellar? You believe they were intending a cellar with that hole? They had weeks, and accomplished nothing! And my magazines—what was she doing with them that they’re torn apart and stuck to the sod?”
“Papering the walls?” Jacob suggested. “As far as I can tell.”
“But why?”
“Why not?”
“She did it to anger me.”
“Why would she do that?”
Minna peeked around the house now—but she was too late to catch whatever silent response Samuel gave, whatever shrug or shift in stance.
“Minna!” called Jacob gaily.
She smiled, mouth closed, and waved a hand. “Hello, Jacob.”
“We were just talking about you.”
“Really.”
“Really!”
Samuel looked at her, but she refused to meet his eye. “You know,” she said to Jacob. “If he’d asked me himself, I would have told him.”
“I’ll let him know that.”
“Please do.”
She turned, and went back into the house to cook dinner. If Samuel hadn’t called her “she,” she thought, she might have told him still. About the mikvah and the whitewashing and the general waywardness with which she and Max had behaved. Some part of her wanted to tell him, and force him to anger. But another part knew that he knew, so she went on ignoring the silent rebukes of his frugality. On Rosh Hashanah, when she opened a jar of honey, and he muttered, “That’s from Iowa,” his meaning was clear; she might have closed it up again and appeased him. But she was looking at how the word Iowa had left his mouth, open more than usual, so that she saw his top row of teeth and, behind them, the blood-pink roof of his mouth. “Iowa,” she said, “How interesting,” and spooned the honey out onto a thick slice of challah. Max called it a threat to his prayers and wouldn’t eat it until afterward, and Samuel tried only a bite, but Minna and Jacob finished the rest quickly, then cut another slice and finished that, too, and then they stood next to Samuel, fortified and a bit loopy, as Max led them through the service. It was as repetitive as Minna remembered shul to be, but worse because there were no songs and no one in front of you to look at or gossip about or feel pity for. They could have gone west to the colony, where “za great von Baron de von Vintovich,” as Jacob called him, would have sent a true rabbi and enough yarmulkes to cover every man’s head, where there might be a synagogue as tall as in Cincinnati, with a separate place for the women to sit, where everyone could start the year with a new pair of shoes. Shoes, not boots—Jacob was emphatic on this point. And who knew, he said, za Baron might even be there himself. They might kiss his feet, or dance around him, like Indians. Max said—or Samuel said and Max repeated—that he didn’t want to waste the time traveling, with the unfinished house and the short days and what have you. But Minna suspected the real reason Max didn’t want to go to the colony—apart from his fear that she and the boys would want to stay—was some idea he had that the journey back and forth might upset Minna’s chance of conceiving. Max had become more fixated on having a child now, as if to go into winter without Minna pregnant would be to admit that he’d never bring anything forth in this new world.
“Our child,” he said when he woke, and after he prayed, and in the middle of the night. “Our child,” he whispered, after he slid out of her, smoothed her nightgown, and—a new gesture—gave her stomach a pat. “Child of an angel.”
And what would Ruth say to that? What did Minna even have to say? Nothing—it was too charitable. It made her feel every edge of her body, every place skin met air, the pulses in her neck, her wrists, the receding pulse between her legs, how utterly unlike an angel she was. It made her feel the parts of her that didn’t know if they wanted a child at all—and those that wanted one, but not his. If she had Max’s child, she supposed, there would be a kind of relief in it. A purpose. A knot. She might think less of other lives. Then again, she might not. She might be driven, like her mother, to go live the other lives.
She whispered back, “Good night.”
But even a whisper gained force against the new wood frame, and floor. If the cave had absorbed noises, the house spat them back. When the second room was built, she and Max would sleep in there, but for now the beds lined one wall, foot to foot. She tried covering his mouth with her hand but then her palm collected his breath and Max just held her closer, as though her shushing excited him. She listened for the other bed, and sometimes she heard breaths, but sometimes she didn’t. She listened until her skull shook with the effort, then counted and tried to forget, or at least not to care, for the time it took to fall asleep.
But in the morning as she served breakfast, her face turned red, and her hands were clumsy, even though Jacob would be making jokes or playing spoons and Samuel rarely looked at her anymore anyway. He could go a whole day without meeting her eye, which meant that Minna barely had to try not to meet his. And yet she couldn’t help trying, and hard, so that she wound up looking at him all the time, everywhere but his eyes. His general irritation was clos
er to the surface now, you could see it in the way he never sat entirely still, a knee or fist always jouncing, the way his jaw went rocklike at the slightest provocation. The questions they hadn’t asked of each other were irretrievable now: on top of them had piled the question of the clouds, which were difficult to read suddenly, and of the cold, which you could feel in your fingernails. How long should they wait, how cold should it have to be, before they started burning coal? Minna’s old grass braids were fine for cooking, but not heating, and they would run out soon anyway. And would the shochet ever arrive with the meat? Minna and Samuel and Max turned over every possibility, every choice, they took up sides and angles, and sometimes it seemed to her they switched just to keep debating. And what to do about the chickens? More had stopped laying; they sat haughtily upon their nests. The eggs would keep in salt, Samuel suggested, but Max said he’d never heard of such a thing.
This was on a clear, cold day, which seemed to have given everyone a headache. Jacob was out gathering the last potatoes. Max was convinced they’d been sold bad chickens, and when Samuel reminded him that they’d bought the chickens from a Jew, Max said the Jew must have been sold bad chicks. When the shochet showed, he said, they should have him kill the birds for meat. If the shochet showed, said Samuel. If, if. And the chickens weren’t “bad,” he added. They were cold. They would start laying again, come spring.
Minna said yes, of course, they always start again. Poor chickens. She paused. She wasn’t certain if she meant poor for not laying, or poor for the fact that they would have to lay again. She explained Ruth’s limewater solution to the men and offered to put the eggs up to store that way.
Samuel spun toward her as if he’d forgotten that she was in the room, cutting an old shirt for rags. “There’s plenty of salt,” he said.
“But the lime—”
“We don’t have any lime.”
Minna shrugged. “Fine.”
“Where did you even get that idea?”
“Ruth. It’s fine. I’ll put them up in salt.”
“Fine.”
“Yes. There’s plenty of salt.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“Anything else, sir?” she asked.
He looked directly, sourly, at her.
“For instance,” Minna said. “We could build a new chicken coop against the house. See if keeping them warmer makes a difference.”
“Yes.” A mild sneer passed over Samuel’s face. “If we had a house.”
“What is this?” asked Max.
“It’s a room. Don’t fool yourself.”
“Such a pessimist!”
“Me? You would call me the pessimist?” Samuel turned to face his father. From the side you could see how his hair had begun to dominate his face. It grew in front of his ears, and puffed forward from his brow. Yet this overgrowth couldn’t be neglect, exactly, for every week, without fail, using the ladle’s bulbous reflection to guide him, he shaved his chin and lip. And what to make of that? Minna would have liked to ask Ruth, if Ruth and she were friends—if Samuel were not her stepson. She would describe it: how his chin and lip were clean, bearing the sharp, mirrored angles of his face; how she couldn’t help wondering if he did this for her; how he looked trapped—like a carefully composed portrait framed in fur.
“And what,” he asked Max, his wilderness shaking slightly,
“what would you call yourself—a realist?”
“Consider,” said Max, and gave his most aggressive shrug.
Samuel folded his arms, visibly working to calm himself. “I’m sorry. It’s only that I find it confusing. We pray to a God—we atone, just last month we fasted and atoned—then in the same breath we say we’ll do it all again.”
“Yes. What could be more realistic? One prepares for the worst.”
“And then it happens.”
“Not necessarily.”
“But what if we were to prepare for the best? What harm could it do?”
“Pride.”
“So you would suggest—is this right—I’m sorry.” Samuel smiled painfully. “You would suggest that instead of working, I should pray?”
Max narrowed his eyes, in the way of his son. Samuel’s voice rose. “Does praying ever work?” he asked. “Could it maybe be argued that prayer is just a fussy form of pessimism? Do you think it’s possible, if you’d prayed a little less, that your wife might not have left you?”
Max touched a hand to his beard. Samuel covered his mouth. They stared at each other, full of shame, and a sorrow Minna might once have tried to mend in some sideways, upside-down way.
Instead she said, “When you two decide? About the eggs? Salt. Butchery. Tell me what you’d like done. I’ll be at the shed.”
On the coldest days, milking kept her warm. She’d used to hate her own sweat, to dread its scent of vinegar and work, but now she looked forward to it breaking as to a bath. She pulled fast, the cow warm against her face, hot in her hands. Just beyond the shed wall, in the spot where they had grand plans to build a privy, the ground was streaked with urine. Nothing soaked in anymore; everything ran. This seemed to be the way of fall here: no startling color, just a general hardening that took the soil, the grass, the sand in the creek. Most of the cottonwood leaves didn’t even bother unhinging, they simply turned brown and crisp and knocked each other when the branches shook. The wind was a new thing yet again: it gained intention; it curved and dipped and homed in. You might be standing outside by the west wall of the house, watching the men pack sod and frame the second room and debate which project deserved more urgency, when a gust of wind at your back would flatten a strip of grass in front of you, then spin around and whip your eyes to tears, then bounce off the wall and head for the trees, all the while never touching the men.
LAST winter, in Galina’s house, she had kept a stash of Galina’s spent, soggy tea leaves and brewed a pot late each night, to make herself warm enough to sleep. She would stand in the pantry and drink it quietly, careful not to slurp, wary both of Galina, who sometimes prowled, and of her own future, in which she hoped a certain refinement would be required of her. But one night she went to retrieve her pocket of leaves and caught Rebeka there, with Minna’s leaves poured out into her palm and her palm held up to her face, her eyes wide with make-believe. They grew wider when she saw Minna in the doorway. She lowered her head. “I’m telling a fortune,” she whispered. Minna stood, waiting, for what she didn’t know. Then she told the girl that fortune-telling was a sham, that she was stupid to believe it, and stupid to waste the leaves, and wrong not to let Minna’s things alone. The girl cried. Of course. She was always crying. She was so slight, so almost-cold all the time. Minna wished now that she had been kinder to her more often. It was as if she’d thought kindness a thing like water; as if she’d only had so much and didn’t want to spend it on the wrong things. (But how were you supposed to know what the right things were?) If she could go back, she thought, she would let the girl tell her fortune. She would kneel down next to her on that old splintery floor and say, “Please, mine, too.” And then maybe Rebeka would tell Minna that she would cross an ocean and be wed to an old man and love his son and find herself standing in the wind, alone. And then she would have known.
Winter
TWENTY
LIESL came a final time. She was sorry, but there was still much to do, she had to finish her own canning, and hang meat, and fill the feather beds and pillows, but not to worry, Otto would keep coming, he would show Samuel all he needed and see the house through. This was the most Liesl had ever said to Minna at one time, and Minna felt a rush of confusion, and regret, for Liesl’s words spilled out in a jumble and red splotches of excitement crept up her neck. Minna said, please, not to worry, she could finish leveling and tamping the cellar shelves herself.
Liesl smiled. She’d come holding a scroll, which she knelt down now to roll out. She walked on her knees to the spot where the sun hit the cellar floor, and gestured for Minna to join her.
“Here. Look.”
It was a map.
Minna lived, it appeared, in a near-perfect rectangle, broken only once in the lower-right corner where a big river jagged and curled and made the corner hang like a sack of stones. The Missoury, Liesl said, which split the rectangle in two: this eastern section sliced into a grid, the section to the west mostly open, with fewer squares, and no railroads yet. The mountains were here; Liesl pointed. Then, dragging her finger back to the right: Pierre, Mitchell, Sioux Falls. And this is our land. And this is your land. Liesl looked at her then, boldly. All this—she swept her hand across the map—is Dakota Territory. Soon they’ll split it here—finger to the middle—and make it a state. South Dakota. Yes? Minna nodded. And where is Ruth and Leo’s? Liesl pointed at a square to the north. What about Milwaukee? She pointed at a sack of flour. And Chicago? Another sack. What about NewYork? Liesl giggled. Over in the house, she said. Then she rolled the map back up and said, “See. So now you know.”
But in the days that followed, Minna wondered what she did know. She’d already known she was somewhere. Now she had more sense, she supposed, of where this somewhere was in relation to other people’s somewheres. But the grid was misleading—the lines looked like roads, but weren’t. And how would she travel, and what was she even thinking, and what did Liesl mean looking at her like that? Did she mean to say, There are other ways to live, you could be like me, I’ve known Otto since I was a girl, there are other ways to find a husband than through the mail? Did she expect Minna to show up at her door one day? Did she think her so flimsy that she would leave just because she knew the way?
Minna formed a new resolve to prefer her own house. She would embrace the improvements, and follow Ruth’s advice. She would make her own soap, and be reasonable with the food stores, and figure out how to make pearlash to sprinkle on the old beans. She would make but try not to eat preserves, and count the seven spoons twice a day. She would waste nothing, and work without complaint, and pray with more apparent feeling. Perhaps, if she washed her eyes each morning as Ruth’s book commanded, she would be happier with what she saw. She would look at Max and be glad he was her husband.