The Many Reflections of Miss Jane Deming

by J. Anderson Coats

  “One last—but very important—thing.” Mr. W points to a little wooden building beyond the clearing about a stone’s throw into the forest. “The privy.”

  I do not want to venture into the woods. Not unless I’m playing in Inez and Madge’s hideout with my friends. But when he says privy, I suddenly have to go, even though I didn’t a moment before. So I pick my way through moss and damp, loamy ground and rocks. It’s facing away from the cabin, so I go around to the front and—

  “There’s no door!” I blurt. There’s a bench, at least, with a hole cut in it standing over a hole in the floor.

  I will simply have to hold it in forever.

  Sturdy constitution. Sturdy constitution.

  I hike up my skirts and pull down my drawers, but I can’t bring myself to sit all the way down on the bench. Our lodgings in Lowell had a frightful privy, but at least there was no moss growing on it.

  When I crunch back to the clearing, Mr. W is bright red. “It was just me here for so long. I figured the birds and deer wouldn’t mind.” He’s trying to joke, to make this moment less completely awful. “I’ll make a door. Today. First thing. Right after I get back from the landing.”

  Mrs. D will squawk like a wrung-neck chicken when she sees this. This will be the thing that will make her put her foot down and insist that Mr. W move us back to Seattle right away, that she cannot handle the wilderness one moment longer.

  “Jane?” Mr. W shuffles. “Things got a little hectic back on the landing. Here. This is for you. If you still want it.”

  He tucks a smooth wooden thing into my hand, then hurries toward the lake path before I can even thank him.

  The carved fish fits in my palm and has stiff fins and a gash of a smile. I drop it into my dress pocket for safekeeping. Then I pull out my little book, turn to the very last page, and write a reflection upon the foregoing: If you are promised a fish and you expect a fish and then get a fish, it’s a lot more than a fish.

  17

  BY EVENING, THE CABIN IS squared away, as the deckhands on the Continental would say. The dry goods are all in their crocks, the room is aired, the floor is swept, the beds all made, the dishes washed near the well and left to dry on the draining board, and every last thing we brought or bought has come up from the lake and found a home somewhere in the cabin.

  Jer barely makes it through supper before falling asleep on the floor near the hearth. Mrs. D tucks him into the bottom bunk, and I put Hoss and Other Hoss next to his pillow.

  I perch on the bench next to the fire with my knitting. If we ever have occasion to go to Seattle, I want something to sell to Mr. Pinkham. I don’t want to be without coins in my pocket ever again.

  Mrs. D excuses herself and goes outside. Even though the privy has a door now, I’d bet a year’s worth of sock money she comes back raging.

  “I’ve got something of yours.” Mr. W pulls a folded-over wad of paper from inside his coat. “Mr. Condon at the hotel gave it to me.”

  I know exactly what it is, and I don’t want it. I don’t even want to look at it, much less hold it. I want nothing more to do with Mr. Mercer’s ridiculous stream of falsehoods ever again.

  But Mr. W looks so hopeful, like Jer when he’s brought you a mud pie he wants you to taste. Mr. Condon must have figured I lost it. I did write my name ever-so-carefully on the inside cover once upon a better time.

  “I dried the pages and everything,” Mr. W adds proudly.

  I make myself smile and take the stupid pamphlet. “Much obliged. That was kind of you. Both of you.”

  The cover is mud-stained, but someone carefully wiped off the worst of it. The pages dried all stiff and ripply, but none of them are unreadable. More’s the pity. I flip through it a few times till Mr. W sits back, looking happy. Then I tuck it in my carpetbag and collect my knitting again.

  Mrs. D comes back from the privy without a word. She smiles as she checks on Jer, then picks up her own knitting while Mr. W whittles.

  We really are here for good.

  When it starts to get dark, Mrs. D says, “Bedtime, Jane.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I put away my knitting and go to the trunk where all our clothes are. I rummage for my nightdress.

  Then I freeze.

  In the farmhouse, I had my own room. With a door. In our lodgings in Lowell, it was just Mrs. D and Jer and me, and even though Jer is a boy, he’s a baby more than anything, and I never worried about changing in front of him.

  I grip my nightdress with both hands.

  “I’ll . . .” Mr. W is trying to look anywhere but at me, and stumbling toward the door. “I’ll, um, go check on the chickens.”

  Mrs. D sighs impatiently, and I shuck off my clothes and slip my nightdress over my head and hustle up the wooden ladder to my top bunk and get under the covers.

  Having a stepfather sounded all right while he was safely contained in Mrs. D’s ramblings. Now he’s flesh and blood. Now we’re living in his house, no matter how many times he says it’s ours.

  A weed-stuffed pallet doesn’t sound like it would be comfortable, but I’ve been walking for miles and kneeling in a canoe and hauling dry goods on my back uphill through tangly undergrowth. No wonder Jer was out like a candle so early.

  I’m half-asleep when I hear Mr. W’s voice.

  “. . . string up a curtain. First thing tomorrow. It’s not much, but it’s something.”

  “Is she complaining already?” Mrs. D sounds weary and mildly put out.

  “What? No. It’s proper she have some privacy.” Mr. W’s voice goes teasing. “Besides, I don’t want to be out checking on the chickens when it’s December and cold enough to freeze the lake solid.”

  I face the wall and pull out my little book. The fading fire doesn’t reach the top bunk too well, but I can see enough to start a chapter about Cabins.

  There is only one door, I write. It is not where you want it to be.

  The next morning Mrs. D makes breakfast and beams when Mr. W eats three helpings and falls over himself telling her how good the porridge is. It is pretty good porridge—there’s even a stir of molasses in it—but you’d think she invented porridge, the way he carries on.

  “Clearing a stump today,” he says as he gets up from the table. “Anything you need before I go?”

  Mr. W is looking at Mrs. D all sappy-faced, which I have to admit is kind of sweet. It’s hard to imagine Papa looking at her that way.

  She shakes her head and kisses his beardy cheek. Mr. W gets halfway to the door, then backtracks so he can pat Jer’s shoulder, then mine. It’s clumsy, like most things Mr. W does, but he could have just kept walking.

  As I’m washing the breakfast dishes out by the well, Mrs. D builds a fire in the clearing.

  Drat. That means laundry. That means heaving sopping dresses and linens out of boiling water and into rinse water. Water that’s got to be hauled bucket by bucket from the well. That means twisting each garment till most of the water’s wrung out. Lifting each heavy thing again to peg it to the line. Lye crumbling my skin, working its way into cuts.

  Just like Lowell.

  “Jane! You’re woolgathering again.” Mrs. D aims her stirring paddle at me. “Hurry and finish those dishes, then start filling up the washtub.”

  “Shouldn’t I watch Jer?” I call. “Hot water? Fire? Lye?”

  “All during that horrid voyage, you kept fretting that he couldn’t wander and do what he liked,” Mrs. D replies. “Now he can. You should be happy.”

  Everything was going to be different. Mrs. D would have her hearth and her husband. Jer would have his mama. Somehow, Washington Territory would make us a family by the sheer force of its wonder.

  By the end of today my hands will be red and stinging from hot water and lye, and I will have split at least one nail low enough to leave it raw and aching. My friends are a lake and a skid road away, playing whist or woods fort and forgetting all about me. There can’t be a school on the Eastside, not when there’s barely any people,
broad-minded or otherwise.

  I thought nothing could be worse than Lowell, but I was wrong. Living on the Eastside is going to be worse by tenscore, because I’ll have something to compare it to. All those weeks helping Milly and Maude move through the primer into the first reader and quizzing the boys on world capitals—now I’m back to hauling this and stirring that and scrubbing that other thing, when barely a month ago I was giggling with Flora and Nell before we whispered our good-byes and pretended we would write.

  The Occidental might have cost six dollars a week, but that money paid for more than bed and board.

  It paid for time. It paid for someone else to carry the water and scrub the floor and change the bed linens and mind the wapatos while they’re boiling.

  Wapatos are like potatoes, I write in a new chapter called Food, Found and Other Wise. I try to use only words I know I can spell. They are smaller, the size of a rabbit’s paws, and you can boil or roast them. They grow where the lake is shallow, and you rake them out of the mud with—

  “Jane, honestly!” Mrs. D shakes her head, hands on hips. “There’s no time for such idleness! Do you think this house runs itself? Go dump this water and fill up the bucket again.”

  The next time I write a reflection, I will sit in the privy.

  Over porridge one morning, before Mrs. D can list all the chores for the day, Mr. W asks, “Jane, how are you with a hatchet? You think you can help me with the woodpile?”

  “Charles.” Mrs. D sighs like she does when someone who isn’t Jer is being silly.

  “The garden needs a good weeding too,” he adds. “Would you rather take that on?”

  It’s close enough to What do you think? that I sit up straighter. Only there’s not much of a choice between an aching back and filthy hands or aching shoulders and splintery hands.

  “Honestly, Charles, you and your woodpile!” Mrs. D laughs, but when she sees he’s serious, she adds impatiently, “It’s a silly idea.”

  Of course she thinks me doing anything that isn’t housework is silly. She’s forgotten that keeping house isn’t all stitching quilts and whipping up cake batter.

  “Why?” Mr. W looks her right in the eye.

  Mrs. D flaps her lips a few times but nothing comes out.

  I try hard not to grin.

  “Because—because—because of Jer, that’s why!” Mrs. D furiously cuts a piece of toasted bread into fingers for Jer. “Because she has responsibilities, and I can’t be expected to—”

  “We want a fire all winter, right?” Mr. W doesn’t even raise his voice. “Then I need a helper. There’s lots more to living out here than keeping house. Besides, you do that so expertly, you’ll hardly miss Jane.”

  Mrs. D’s whole face changes. She kind of . . . preens. Then she turns to me and says, “The dishes are still your responsibility, miss. After that, you’re to help Mr. Wright with the chopping and whatnot. The moment you’re finished, I’ll want your help again. There’ll be no idleness in this house.”

  Invigilator of the woodpile. That will surely broaden my mind.

  “Wabbit!”

  Sure enough, there’s a rabbit near the open cabin door, nibbling the wilted lettuce Jer left there as bait. He leaps off his stool and starts toward it, but Mr. W catches him by the waist of his britches.

  “Hold on, son. You sit and finish your breakfast. Then you ask to be excused. Hear?” He plops Jer back on the stool in front of his toast and eggs.

  Jer gapes at me, stunned silent.

  I shrug. “You heard him. Eat up.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Mrs. D groans. “He’s just a little boy! Jer, off you go.”

  “No,” Mr. W says, and he doesn’t say it mean but he does say it firm enough that Mrs. D stops halfway to Jer’s stool. “This might be the frontier, but there’s no reason the boy can’t make his manners. Blazes, even the meanest bull cook in the most lawless mining camp north of the Fraser River insisted on please and thank you.”

  Mrs. D blinks rapidly. When that look comes on her face, I go right to yes, ma’am or no, ma’am, but this is Mr. W and he has a point she can’t rightly ignore.

  “If Jane is responsible for the dishes, Jer needs a chore or two as well,” Mr. W goes on. “He’s big enough to fill the woodbox. Don’t you think, Jer?”

  “He’ll get splinters!” Mrs. D cries. “And there are spiders in there, and he’s still little—”

  “I’m a big boy,” Jer says firmly.

  Mr. W points to a crate next to the hearth. “Every time you see the woodbox empty, Jer, go to the shed and bring in wood till it’s full. Carry a piece at a time if you need to, but that’s your job now. Do you understand?”

  Jer crams more eggs in his mouth. I nudge him and whisper, “It’s polite to answer when someone asks you a question.”

  “A’right.” Jer wads the rest of his toast into his mouth too. “Wabbit now?”

  “It’s May I be excused?” Mr. W gives Mrs. D a Look, and I squirm a little because I probably should have taught Jer to make his manners better than this. Heaven knows he wouldn’t have learned it anywhere else.

  “May I be skewsed?” Jer repeats.

  “Yes, Jer. Thank you, son.”

  Mr. W is still chewing his last mouthful when Mrs. D says, “The dishes, Jane,” like I might have forgotten in the last two minutes.

  It takes three trips to the well to bring the dishes, the draining board, the washrag, the brick of brown soap, and the bag of scouring sand. Mr. W watches me from where he’s watering the garden. Any moment now he’ll say how I’m not doing it properly or how his mother did it better. Any moment now he’ll have a nit to pick.

  He doesn’t, though. Instead, he glances at Mrs. D sweeping the threshold stone and rolls his eyes, like she’s the one doing something wrong or silly.

  18

  A FEW DAYS LATER I’M finishing the breakfast dishes when Mr. W asks if I want to go with him to check the traps.

  “Like . . . with animals?” I ask.

  Mr. W nods. “Fur fetches a good price in town.”

  “Jane doesn’t know the first thing about traps. Besides, the floor wants a good scrubbing.” Mrs. D tries to give Mr. W a Look, but he smiles pleasantly like he doesn’t understand.

  My knees ache just thinking about being on them all day to wash the floor. Not to mention all the getting up and kneeling it takes to empty the bucket every arm’s length when the water gets murky. Also, how the well gets a little farther away with every trip.

  “If Jane goes with me, we can check more traps,” Mr. W tells her. “If we check all the traps today, we might have enough pelts to trade for that pretty calico you had your eye on.”

  Jenny and Evie are probably playing hopscotch in the dirt behind Bachelor’s Hall. Nell is likely in Mrs. Yesler’s parlor drinking tea and chatting about back East. Or she’s giggling devilishly with Ida as they dare each other to walk past the vicey buildings down on the sawdust.

  None of my friends will look at me the same if they know how I spend my days.

  Mrs. D purses her lips. She’s probably thinking about her own knees, but at length she says, “Yes, that’ll be for the best. I’ll pack you some dinner to take.”

  She busies herself with cold biscuits and smoked salmon like the decision’s been made, but Mr. W turns to me.

  “Jane? You want to go? No skin off my nose if you’d rather scrub floors, but I could use your help.”

  If my mind will be shrinkened either way, I might as well help Mr. W, who gave me a fish and asks what I think. At the very least I won’t have to listen to Mrs. D telling me how I’m scrubbing wrong.

  “All right.” I try to smile. “I’ll go.”

  Jer looks up. He’s halfway under his bed, trying to get Hoss, who skidded all the way to the wall. “I go too.”

  “Sorry, son,” Mr. W replies. “You’re too little.”

  “No, I’m big.”

  Mrs. D hands me our dinner wrapped in oilcloth. “Charles,
you should take Jer, too. Boys need to learn these things. You said as much yourself.”

  “He wouldn’t last the morning,” Mr. W says, pleasant but firm. “Both Jane and I will be hauling pelts, so neither of us will be able to carry a tired boy. There’ll be plenty of time for him to learn when he’s older.”

  Mrs. D must want her calico, because she doesn’t so much as huff. She doesn’t make Jer stay inside, though, so he follows us to the shed. Mr. W pulls out a rucksack stained with crusty, dried blood. My stomach lurches, but he’s handing it to me and not Jer and he needs my help and it’s not scrubbing floors and I can do this.

  “Me too.” Jer holds out his hands.

  “Sorry, son,” Mr. W says, ruffling his hair and gently nudging him back to the house. “You can’t come with us today. Go help your mama, all right?”

  Jer starts howling and sits down hard in the mud outside the shed. I sigh and start to kneel, but Mr. W gently takes my arm and steers me toward the path that takes us toward the privy.

  “Let him be upset,” Mr. W mutters as we walk. “Let his mother sort it.”

  “She’s hopeless!” I protest, and it’s out of my mouth before I realize how impertinent it is. So I rush on, “I mean, she’s got what she wants. She’s got everything she wants. Down to Jer by her side all day, every day. Only he’s always too something—too loud, too dirty, too weepy, too sticky. He’ll never be exactly what she wants.”

  Mr. W squints thoughtfully. “It’s a hard thing. Realizing that what you want more than anything doesn’t really exist. At least not how you pictured it in your head. You convince yourself it’s the only thing that’ll make you happy. Then you’re confronted with absolute proof you’ll never have it. Not because you didn’t earn it or aren’t willing to work for it. You’ll never have it, because it just isn’t there to be had. By anyone.”

  “So . . .” I duck under a low limb. “What do you do about it?”

  “Well, you could always go to the Fraser River and look for gold,” Mr. W says with half a smile.

  We come to the first trap, but it’s empty. Something’s eaten the bait, though, so Mr. W shows me how to hold down the trigger and replace the flake of smoked fish.