Hester Takes Charge

by Byler, Linda;

  Quite clearly, something had gone awry. Maybe it was a rebellion against a harsh parent or simplemindedness, marrying a girl who didn’t know any better or who had given birth to such an overwhelming number of children in so short a space of time that she had given up and gradually, without noticing, had succumbed to hopelessness.

  CHAPTER 16

  HESTER DID GET DINNER ON THE TABLE, BUT NOT WITHOUT snapping at the insolent Rachel, telling her to give the infant to her mother, then sending her to the garden for beans, scattering the other children with orders to help their sister.

  There was no bread or cheese, so Hester stirred up a panful of biscuits. By raking the coals, she unearthed a few red embers, so she could set the biscuits to bake after bits of kindling flared into a fire.

  She found a cloth, spread it on the soiled table, and covered it with dishes, including using some tumblers that were half-clean. Since there was no meat to be found, she boiled a pot of cornmeal, then took Rachel’s beans, which she handed over disdainfully, and set them to boil as well. She used only salt to flavor them since she was unable to find even a bit of salt pork or bacon.

  Amos was fetched, and the children scrambled to their assigned places. Five boys appeared from the barn, in varying stages of adolescence, pimply-faced, sullen, and as thin as rails. They watched Hester with small, narrowed eyes, like trapped ferrets.

  At the sight of the enormous pan of biscuits, the vast pot of cornmeal mush, plenty of milk, and enough green beans to go around, their eyes glittered with hunger and something close to happiness. They smiled tight smiles, jostled one another, poked stick-thin elbows into prominent ribs, and whispered, “S, gukt vie blenty.”

  There was plenty, and they ate ravenously like starving wolves. Amos grinned, smacked his lips, and ladled large portions out for the children. Hester took a plateful to his wife, inquiring now about her name, which was Salina. She seemed to be embarrassed to pronounce her own name, blushing pink and blinking her eyes rapidly. Hester felt a stab of pity in spite of the nauseating stench surrounding her, which made it impossible for her to eat. She tucked a cold biscuit into the pocket of her skirt, knowing she would need her strength later.

  That whole day remained a blur of motion as she barked orders and pushed the angry Rachel and her sister Sallie to the dry sink with orders to wash and to keep washing until every dish was clean.

  Behind her back, they stuck out their tongues, giggling, but they set to work while Hester emptied pots, swept, scrubbed, and built a roaring fire in the yard. Then she scrubbed and washed and boiled clothes and bedsheets and towels some more until it was time to prepare yet another huge meal.

  She threw open the door and the windows, preferring flies to the smell that seemed to cling to the walls of the house, to live in the floors, and to dangle from the ceiling like cobwebs.

  Rachel grudgingly offered that there were potatoes and salt pork down cellar, and some turnips and carrots if Hester wanted them, but she refused to go down the ladder to get them.

  “There’s a black snake down there. I know it,” she said forcefully.

  Hester growled, “Well, then, I guess we won’t eat.”

  “I’m going to tell Mam how you talk to us.”

  With that, she did, followed by the whining voice of Salina asking Hester to go down cellar, that Rachel was very afraid of snakes.

  Hester grabbed a reed basket, backed down the ladder into total darkness, and groped her way to the potato bin. She reached into sprouts and decayed matter, the nauseous mushiness of spoiling turnips, spiderwebs, and finally, the greasy barrel of salted pork. She guessed if there were snakes down here, they’d likely slither away with all the banging and scraping she was doing, partly because she was so angry and partly to do just that, scare the snakes.

  She was greeted at the top of the stairs by Rachel’s triumphant eyes alive with mockery, knowing full well she could get away with anything she chose, fortified by her mother’s sympathy. Twelve-year-old Sallie, it seemed, had a whole other relationship with her mother. Salina snapped at her from the bedroom for the slightest misdemeanor.

  Hester lowered her head, refusing to acknowledge Rachel’s superiority, and set to scraping carrots, peeling potatoes and turnips, adding more beans to the mix, and then setting the immense pot over the fire, sweat trickling into her eyes as she turned to making more biscuits. While they baked, she fried thin slices of salt pork and then made a milk gravy, thick and smooth and filling.

  With that meal, she won the heart of each thin and hungry boy around the table, their empty stomachs a way of life. Now filled and sated, they were comfortable, their moods and energy given a boost they didn’t know was possible. Shyly, with eyes averted, thumbs hooked in trouser pockets, and shoulders squared for courage, they said, “Sell vowa so goot. Denke.”

  Hester blinked the wetness from her eyes, smiled, and said, “Gyan schöena.” They were so welcome. It was a joy to fill those stomachs.

  A low moan from the pallet alerted Hester to Fannie’s needs. She had had no time before this to check on her. Rachel had fed her. And between them, Amos and Rachel had helped her to the outdoor toilet, Fannie’s face a mask of pain and suffering.

  Hester went to Fannie’s pallet, sank to her knees, and asked what was wrong.

  “It hurts.”

  “Has the doctor been here?”

  “No.”

  “Where does it hurt, Fannie?”

  “Low in my back.”

  “Can you roll on your side?”

  “I believe I can.”

  Despite Rachel’s disapproval, Hester helped her, easing her gently as Fannie took a deep breath, then began crying softly. Quickly, before Rachel went to her mother with tales of more martyrdom, Hester opened the back of the soiled nightgown. Feeling along the painfully thin spine, she found a bulge of grossly swollen vertebrae and peered closely at the discoloration, the blue fading to red, the sickening yellow and green.

  Hester’s soft hands explored lightly and tenderly. When she felt the heat and inflammation, she knew what to do. Nettles and plantain leaves, cooked with wood ashes and white wine, would act as a liniment.

  She stopped, straightened, and focused her mind as Fannie’s soft crying continued. She would not give in. She had vowed, making a silent pact with herself, that she would no longer practice using medicinal herbs. Instead, she put a pillow against Fannie’s back to ease her suffering, filled the wooden tubs with warm water, and proceeded to wash the children’s heads with loads of shaved lye soap. Amid plenty of rebellious yells, threats, and grimaces, she sloshed and splashed, showing no mercy as she scrubbed, then parted clean hair to check for lice or fleas from those bilious-looking cats that slunk in and out like an evil vapor.

  When darkness fell, nature’s curtain of privacy, she built another fire, heated more water, and bathed every one of the little ones. She gave orders to the boys, who promptly informed her that they bathed in the creek every month or so, and the month wasn’t up yet. Whereupon she informed them they should be bathing every week, with a bit of hysteria injected into the word “week.” She sent them off with a chunk of soap and a bundle of clean clothes and told them not to come back till everyone was thoroughly washed and had clean clothes on, as well, Denke schöen.

  Rachel and Sallie staged a rebellion, which Hester quelled in a hurry. She was close to total exhaustion and her patience was in short supply. She longed to lie down anywhere, even on the bare floor, and close her eyes.

  Hester lowered her face into Rachel’s and gripped her shoulders, her eyes exuding the black fire of her outrage. She told her that she was an Indian, and if she wouldn’t do what Hester wanted, Hester was not afraid to call the schpence of her Indian heritage. Old ghosts of the past, she said.

  Hester’s shoulders shook with laughter as the girls disappeared, casting wide-eyed glances over their shoulders as they went. Maybe it was not the best form of discipline, but it worked on Rachel.

  Far into the night af
ter the children were in bed, lying on straw ticks without sheets, their bodies washed, their hair clean, Hester stayed up, retrieving clean laundry from every fence and bush available. She would wash the ticks tomorrow and ask Amos for clean straw. She would address the bedwetting as well.

  From her corner, Fannie cried softly, her cries turning to moans, then back to sighs. Her small, soft sobs wrapped themselves so tightly around Hester’s heart, she felt as if she could not go on living or breathing.

  Finally, when the washing was folded in neat stacks on the table, she heard Fannie pray in the only way she knew how.

  “Ich bin Klein,

  Mine heartz macht rein,

  Lest niemand drinn vonnen

  Aus Jesus alein.”

  A great and terrible conviction gripped Hester’s soul, and she could not stand against its righteousness. All that firmness she had built around herself would have to melt away. She would forget all this focus on self and think only of poor, suffering Fannie in the way that Jesus healed the suffering, knowing full well not everyone approved of what he did.

  She stopped, shaken to the core, with this new understanding. Well, she wasn’t Jesus, not even close, but if she could spare this suffering, she would.

  She didn’t feel very holy, when she told Rachel she’d send her Indian ghosts on her, that was sure.

  Quickly, her exhaustion forgotten, she took down the oil lantern, lifted the chimney, and lit it with an ember. Where were Amos’s matches? Likely filched away somewhere, handily brought out to light his odorous pipe. She heard his snores, and Salina’s soft ones, as she let herself out the door. No need to stir up another cauldron of protest or chunks of unbelief.

  The night was dark with only a sliver of white light from the moon. The stars blinked from their dark space, little pinpricks of soft, white, midsummer light. Crickets chirped an occasional goodnight tiredly. The more gutsy katydids filled in with their energetic tempo.

  The grass was already wet with dew. Hester’s bare feet felt washed by the coolness as her long strides took her to the fencerow at the end of the winding uphill lane. Her muscles ached, but in a good way. She would sleep well in spite of the dirt and the smell in the house.

  The flickering yellow light from the lantern cast a comforting arc around her, catching the winking dew on the tips of grasses. She had no problem finding nettles, as she knew she wouldn’t, but the broad-leafed plantain was harder to locate. She finally climbed an unsteady rail fence, hoping there were no bad-tempered cows or a bull to chase her off. She settled for a dry hilltop where the cows had eaten most of the grass. But they had left piles of dung in the almost bare pastureland, and thick grass grew around them, including the plantain, which bovines don’t eat.

  She grabbed two tough leaves, then beat a hasty retreat when she heard the lowing of a cow, answered by the high bleating of a calf. Sometimes a mother cow protecting her offspring was as bad as an ill-tempered bull, or worse.

  Almost running now, the lantern light bobbing up and down with her rapid footsteps, Hester hurried to the house, the pure clean smells of the summer’s night giving way to the scent of filthy living. As she entered the house, she knew she would never become accustomed to the wall of pungence that enveloped her.

  She boiled water, then added the plants, letting them steep like good tea. Lifting the lantern, she slid noiselessly backward into the cellar. She searched among the half-rotten vegetables for wine or vinegar, but found only dusty bottles of aged whiskey, which would have to do.

  She found an empty, small glass jar and returned to the kitchen, washing it quickly. Then she bottled the whiskey, the extract of the plantain leaves, and the nettles and shook the mixture vigorously. She liberally soaked a half-clean rag with the warm liquid. Then she spoke softly to Fannie, who was lying wide-eyed in the semidarkness, her hands crossed on her chest, silent tears sliding down the sides of her face and pooling into wet spots on her pillow.

  Gently, she lay Fannie on her side, then applied the cloth so softly Fannie hardly knew Hester had touched her. On top of the cloth she laid the wet plantain leaf, put another cloth on top, and then let her roll gently back, lying against the poultice. Fannie sighed and turned her head to the wall.

  Hester slept on the floor rather than sleep with the belligerent Rachel. She fell into a deep sleep without dreams, her head resting on her outstretched arm, the air warm and acrid around her.

  When she heard Amos call the boys to do the milking, she pulled herself up into a sitting position, her muscles sore and stiff.

  Why wasn’t Rachel expected to help milk? Spoiled child.

  Hester had been too taken up with last evening’s tasks to think of the morning meal. She suddenly knew her first job was to find some sort of food for breakfast. First, she bent over Fannie’s pallet, alarmed to find only a slight rise in the quilt and fearing she wasn’t there. So slight, so terribly thin, these children.

  She resolved to talk with Amos and Salina about finding more and better food for their growing offspring, and with special concern for the new babies which they added with such regularity. Well, if they didn’t cooperate, she would do what Bappie did—march right over to John Kauffman, the bishop, and alert the church to this family’s needs. If something was not done soon, the church would have to place these children in other, more capable homes. This was done at times, Hester knew well.

  Fannie opened her eyes. A new sensation dawned in her eyes, and they opened wider. A small, shadowed smile clung to the corners of her too-wide mouth, a slash in the pale, peaked face.

  “How do you feel, Fannie?” Hester whispered.

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Fannie shook her head. Then, “I’m so hungry.”

  Hester patted the thin shoulder. “I’ll hurry up with breakfast.”

  She found only ten eggs, hidden under pieces of unused lumber, wheels, and a broken wagon. She took a garden rake and swung it fiercely if one of the red-eyed chickens came close. She beat the eggs, added milk, salt, and plenty of flour and baking powder, making an egg kuchen of sorts. She stirred up more biscuits and put a big pitcher of milk on the table. That was breakfast. It had to be. There was nothing else, unless some new potatoes could be salvaged from that vast sea of solid weeds called a garden.

  As usual, Amos was jovial, his good spirits infectious, lighting the sleepy eyes of the little ones and making the boys smile shyly. Salina ate all her breakfast in bed, thanked Hester, and went back to cuddling the wee bundle, who had not been bathed at all. Hester planned to do that as soon as possible.

  She told Amos she needed the boys that day to clean the vegetable patch, or they would not have anything to put down cellar for winter. Amos nodded agreeably, saying he had to go to schtettle anyway.

  Hester said if he went to town, she had a list of things for him to buy. When he frowned, she told him in firm, clipped tones that if he was going to be too tight-fisted to see that his family was fed, then she was going to see the bishop, John Kauffman, and not the less decisive Rufus King.

  Amos blushed a furious red, put on his sweat-streaked hat, and let himself out the door, closing it none too gently behind him.

  Instantly, the boys spoke as one. “Would you? Are you going to? What would he say? Is someone coming to talk to Dat and Mam?”

  Questions pelted Hester like a hailstorm and were every bit as painful. Could it be true that these boys actually lived in deprivation, leading lives of hunger and repression? Hester came to believe it as the boys kept asking questions.

  Of course there was the matter of Fannie, too, told to lie on her pile of blankets in the corner, without sending for the doctor. The monstrosity of the situation was like a multi-layered disaster. You took off one layer, only to keep discovering other layers underneath.

  Hester said nothing. She wrote the shopping list, then ran to the barn and handed it to Amos. She reminded him that the house contained very little to eat, and if he wanted to avoi
d public shaming in the church, he would need to bring back everything on that note. Everything. Coffee would be nice, too. Oh, Amos said, that was far too expensive. Hester quickly told him then, that he needed to stop buying tobacco and matches, too.

  Afterward, Hester found she was shaking, although she felt empowered and alive in a good way. A mountain of work lay ahead of her, but adrenaline flowed through her veins, fueled by her newfound purpose in setting things right. She hadn’t once thought of Noah or his invitation to travel to Berks County. Not for at least two hours anyway.

  She set Rachel to churning butter, Sallie to washing dishes. She accompanied the boys to the vegetable patch and instructed them in the proper technique of pulling weeds and cultivating the soil with a hoe. They picked the overripe peas; they’d be all right cooked with sliced carrots in a cream sauce. Rachel and Sallie joined them later, setting to work at picking the green beans. They harvested the late radishes and the wilted lettuce. Nothing went to waste, not even the tops of the red beets.

  Hester left the children to their work and went to take care of Fannie. She was softly crying, but only because she had accidentally soiled the bed. Hester crooned to her, assured her it was all right and that she should have come sooner.

  When she changed the bed, boiled and washed the bedding, then bathed the thin body, the great angry bruise on the girl’s lower back felt like a vise around Hester’s heart. Fannie said she would like to try walking now.

  First, a fresh poultice needed to be applied and tied in place. Then Hester lifted her gently, her hands cupped beneath the bony hollows of the child’s underarms. Fannie grimaced, then gasped, but Hester held her steadily, smoothly lowering her weight onto her feet when she was ready.

  Fannie took two very small steps as she rested her hands on Hester’s extended forearms and leaned into the smiling encouragement on Hester’s face.