In the Garden of Spite

by Camilla Bruce

  “It will heal in time.” She pulled her pipe out of the pocket of her apron, the little tin box she kept with it too, and set to stuff the pipe with tobacco. “Your womb, though, might not. There was a lot of blood.”

  “I know.”

  “Why would you even want to see him?”

  “I don’t hope for him anymore.”

  “Never should have, either . . . What were you thinking? Farmers’ sons don’t marry us, you know that. You never should have tried to force him—never should have messed with him at all.”

  “I was only thinking that—”

  “Well, it’s the thinking, Little Brynhild.” She knocked her own head lightly with her fist. “It’s that thinking that gets you into trouble. That teacher put ideas in you.”

  “He said I had a good head on my shoulders.” I could not help that my voice bristled a little with pride.

  “Well, what are you going to use it for? Have yourself killed? Beaten to death by some smug boy?” She lit her pipe; the sour smoke came wafting from the dark wood.

  “I want to go to America.”

  She gave me a look sharp enough to cut timber. “Bad enough I lost one daughter over there.”

  “She is doing fine. Nellie is happy as can be.” My voice grew thick with envy.

  “Nellie.” Mother snorted. “As if her Christian name wasn’t good enough for her.”

  “They can’t say Brynhild properly. She wrote that in the letter.”

  “Stupid girls.” She stretched out her legs on the grass before her as she sucked on her pipe. “They always want something more than they have . . . Well, go to America or China for all I care, but don’t go back to that boy. You have to seek service elsewhere.”

  “I won’t go back to him”—he would not even want me to—“but I will stay on.”

  She looked at me then, through the pipe smoke, and shook her head with confusion. “But why, Little Brynhild? Why?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “And I bet they are poor.”

  “He won’t lay a hand on me again.” I lifted my chin and fixed her with my gaze.

  “No?” She squinted back at me. “How do you know? Have you cooked up some fine plan in that clever head of yours?”

  “It was just a lump of flesh.” The words came unbidden, tumbled out of me, lay there between us like so much gristle.

  “No.” Her hair bun bobbed when she shook her head. “Don’t even try to fool yourself. It was a child, not some lump.”

  “Nothing worse than a piglet. I cut pig’s meat all the time—”

  “It was not just a lump of flesh.” Her pipe waved in the air.

  “Yes, it was: a lump that no one wanted me to have, so now I’m better off anyway.”

  She sighed. “Things are certainly easier.”

  “Just flesh . . .” My brow was wet with perspiration; I had to wipe it with the hem of my apron. Mother looked away.

  “I tried to get your clothes clean again.” She touched the bundle of wet fabrics with the tip of her shoe. “I think the skirt is better, but the blouse with the lace is gone.”

  “Some stains won’t wash away.” I meant for it to be a comfort, but instead she started to cry. I did not know what to do with that, so I just sat there beside her while her shoulders shook and she wiped tears with the back of her hand.

  “Promise me you will work somewhere else,” she said when her tears had all dried up. “They won’t let you forget about this, Little Brynhild. They will always find ways to remind you . . . That night will stick to you always.”

  “Oh, I’ll go.” I picked up the pot and the rag from the ground, resumed that eager scrubbing. “But I won’t go just yet.”

  5.

  Anders had a shot of liquor every night before he went to bed. The last thing I did at the end of each day was to leave it for him on the narrow stairs so he could take it with him to his room. Before, he had wanted the whole bottle, but his father had put an end to that by the time I returned to work, so now he just got that one dram to see him to sleep at night. It was I who poured that drink for him from a bottle stored in the kitchen.

  It was such a little thing—entrusting him to the maid. Let her make sure it was only that one drop, not enough to make him useless the next day. Maids also helped with other small things, like keeping the kitchen free from rodents when the lazy cats failed to do their jobs.

  They never expected me to hold a grudge.

  I waited for months to be certain they had forgotten. Waited, until the trees shed their leaves and the cattle came home and the men ceased calling to me whenever I crossed the yard, asking me if I wanted to take a stroll to the lake or hike up my skirts for some pebbles and a fist. If it was true that I bled like a pig. I waited, until Anders forgot to look away and clench his jaw when I entered the room. Until his gaze slid off me as if I were not even there.

  Then I waited some more.

  They thought it was the flu when he got sick. He brushed it off; it was nothing. He still had his liquor every night.

  Then came the pain and the vomit. The house filled with bellows from his room. His mother took care of him herself: brought down pails of bile, brought up cold water and a cloth. Sometimes she had to rest, though, and I was to help him then, dry him off and give him water—which was fortunate for me, since he was no longer having that dram at night. I sat by his bed as he slept, pale and sweating, shivering from time to time. His hands did not bother me anymore; they had lost their power. I was paying him back, a grain for each hit.

  Soon nobody but me would remember what happened by the lake.

  * * *

  —

  The farm took on a gloominess over the next few days, while Anders lay there shivering. The doctor came and went again. I held my breath while he was with Anders, but he suspected nothing. I could not believe how gullible they were, how sure that no one could touch them. They did not think it possible that someone would dare to raise a fist against them. Prideful. Stupid.

  Gurine whispered that the doctor thought it was stomach cancer. Sad, she said, for such a young man.

  “But not a good man,” I reminded her, lying in the darkness in our shared bed, listening to the wind outside and the lowing from the barn.

  “No, not a good man but a young man, with years to repent and become a little better than he is.”

  “That one will never become anything but what he is.”

  “No, I think he won’t, seeing that he won’t last another day.”

  “I wish I could say I was sorry for that.”

  “No.” Her hand patted mine in the dark. “If anyone is allowed not to grieve, it’s you.”

  When he did die the next day, it was as if I could breathe again, ever since that night. I walked through that house, through the sounds of his mother weeping; brimming with a delight so strong, I could barely contain it. I helped prepare for the wake and funeral, baked and fried, cooked meals for a hundred people. I saw them file in and respectfully shake the farmer’s hand, dressed in their Sunday best. The farmer’s wife was like a ghost beside him, her haughty face furrowed with grief. I could not help but smile. It was such a small thing, entrusting it to the maid.

  Mother came to the kitchen to find me. She and Father had been inside to taste what the big farm had to offer on such a day. Father waited for her in the yard; I could see him through the window. Mother wore her black headscarf and I could smell fermented trout and strong liquor on her breath. Nothing was spared when the farmer buried his heir. Gurine was out with the other maids, carrying silken sour cream porridge and slices of roast for the funeral guests, so we were all alone. Mother sucked her finger and dipped it in a sugar bowl.

  “Have your tears all dried up now, Little Brynhild?” She licked the sugar from her finger.

  “I don’t know if I had any t
o begin with.”

  “It’s all very sad, him dying like that. Cancer in the stomach.” She shook her head. “I wonder where that came from. Might have been something he ate.” She did not look at me at all, but her eyes kept wandering around the room, to the boiling water on the stove, the sliced meat, the ham and the lefse laid out on the table. Her hand, quick as a rat, got hold of a lefse with sugar and stuffed the whole thing into her maw.

  “I don’t think you can get stomach cancer from eating.” I found a piece of cloth in a drawer under the tabletop and placed some pieces of roast and a few sausages and cured meats on it, wrapped it up, and tied it off. I placed the package in Mother’s waiting hand. No one would notice on a day like this.

  “You never know.” Mother shrugged, and the package disappeared under her shawl.

  “He got what he deserved, that is what I know.” I cleaned my hands on a rag.

  “Yes.” Mother was still chewing. “Strange that, how the Lord sees fit to punish sometimes, and other times not.”

  “Don’t let the priest hear you talk like that.” I gave her a dark look.

  Mother laughed, but there was no joy in it. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we, on reckoning day, if your sins are tallied or not.”

  “Yes.” Mother gave me a thin smile. “Won’t we just see, Little Brynhild?”

  My father called from out in the yard. “Berit!” he bellowed. “Berit!” He was tired of waiting for her. People passed by him, somber-looking as befitting the day, but he did not heed them at all. He held his cap in his hands, stomped his foot, and kicked up dust from the ground. Angry, always angry.

  “You better go before he makes a fool of himself.” I passed my mother a final treat, a piece of mutton to chew on.

  “Did you see him after he was dead?” she asked before popping it into her mouth.

  I nodded. “When he was laid out on the dining room table.”

  “Good. That ought to give you some peace, then.”

  I shrugged. “It’s of no concern to me if he is alive or dead.”

  Mother spat gristle into her palm. “Better dead is what I say.”

  “Never let the priest—”

  “Oh shut your mouth. He was bad, that man. He’ll go to hell for what he did.” She licked the grease from her lips. I could smell the liquor on her breath from across the table. It made her tongue a slippery thing.

  After she left, I watched her make her way across the yard to Father. He had lit his pipe while waiting and used his free hand to smack her head when she arrived; it bobbed on her shoulders from the impact. The farmhands smoking by the barn sniggered. I hoped my parents would leave before they started arguing for real. My mother could hold her ground well enough and delivered blows like a man twice her size. Sometimes it got ugly.

  I went back to the work at hand, carving and cutting. Anders was in the ground; his eyes, which had seen me so broken, were gone. Soon worms and beetles would eat them all up, and there would be no witness to my shame.

  God will not always punish; my mother was right about that. He might not even help those who strive to help themselves, but I could. For weeks after his death I barely slept; I lay awake beside Gurine at night staring into the darkness, riding that joy as a liquor. I kept imagining his sallow face twisted up in death throes; I touched my aching jaw with my fingers, remembering his blows. I chuckled to myself sometimes—could barely suppress the sounds, and bit into the pillow to contain them. Other times I had to rise, go to the window, and look out on the yard, because I worried that Gurine would wake up from the bed shaking, as peals of silent laughter coursed through me.

  It was strong and pure, that joy; it made me feel powerful and happy. I had never felt anything as strong and pure as that. As if I could do anything. As if there were no limit.

  I had paid him back.

  * * *

  —

  I had the night off on Christmas Eve to make the steep walk up to Størsetgjerdet and spend it with Mother and Father. There was enough snow on the ground that I had to use snowshoes, following a track between tall pines and naked birches; I was not the first one who had walked up there that day. I figured it was my brothers. They usually came up to wish their parents a happy Christmas and gift them some coffee beans and sugar.

  Dusk was already bleeding into night when I arrived. Through the window, I could see a single candle burning on the table. Mother would be there but not sewing today. She would not work at all on Christmas Eve. A pale oval obscured the light: Olina was expecting me. It was not much of a life for her, stuck in that house with Mother and Father. Even I was a welcome respite, no matter that she did not like me much.

  She swung the door open as I arrived and ushered me inside. The fireplace was well stacked, with proper logs, no less. Father was no woodsman, so the fuel often ran out. Someone must have taken pity and gifted them a load. Peder perhaps. He often grew sentimental around Christmas and wanted to honor his father and mother. Never mind the time Father struck the axe in Peder’s calf rather than the log because he had annoyed him some way or the other. It was a nasty cut and bled badly—Peder lay in bed for days. He still had a scar to show for it, white and angry like melted tallow.

  Father was deep in the bottle before I arrived; he sat by the fire and did not even look up when I came inside. The set of his shoulders was tense, and that worried me. He was mulling over something then, growing angrier as he sat there sipping, smoking, and tending the fire with a stick. Mother had had something to drink too; I could tell from the rosy glow in her cheeks. Even Olina had added something to her coffee; I could smell it on her breath.

  I took off my shoes and left them to dry, hung my shawl on the line, and placed a painted wooden tin by the table. The snow melted like teardrops on the wool, dripped down on the floor. Soon the whole room would smell damp. I joined my mother and sister by the candle.

  “Did Peder and Ole stop by?”

  “For sure.” Olina motioned to the coffee grinder on the table. “They brought coffee and tobacco for us.”

  “How are things down at the farm this Christmas?” Mother asked. “I saw his parents at church. They both looked worse for wear.”

  I shrugged and poured myself coffee. “They have other sons. They are hardly the first couple to lose a child.” I did not like either one of them, and not only because of Anders. The farmer was a hard man who treated his cattle badly, and his wife was too haughty to clean. She did not have much when she married, yet she still saw fit to look down on us maids.

  “It’s different when the children are grown,” Mother said. “You know them better then; you are used to them. When they are small, you always expect something to happen. Grown children are the worst to lose.”

  “How do you know?” She had never lost a grown one.

  It was Mother’s time to shrug. “I had sisters. Brothers. It took a toll on my mother.” It was strange to see her just sitting there, leaning on her elbows. No mending in her fingers, no wool in her lap.

  “Wish we had lost some,” muttered Father. “Much good they do us. Nothing but trouble—”

  “Oh shut your mouth,” Mother snapped. “Let me have my Christmas Eve in peace.” She pushed the worn Bible toward me. Paper like silk; the most precious thing she owned. “Read something for us, Little Brynhild. It’s a holy night.”

  I opened the book and read from Luke. As I read about the cruel king and the birth of a savior, the snow started falling outside the window, making the night seem almost peaceful. I thought about the farm, where there had been butter, cheese, fish, sausages, and sour cream on the table that day. From the look of the empty pot, my family had eaten porridge with lard. I pushed the book away. What good could those words ever do? None of us could eat the gospel.

  “Read on,” Mother urged me.

  �
�It won’t do any good.”

  “You used to be so fond of the Bible and couldn’t get fast enough to church.”

  “I changed.”

  “Yes”—her gaze was upon me—“ever since that night.”

  “What night?”

  “You know which night. You changed since that. There’s no laughter left in you—”

  “It’s true.” Olina nodded, looking much like an old woman in that moment; hands folded, chin bobbing. Her hair, the same brown color as mine, was fastened at the nape of her neck with a knitting needle. “You never were much fun, Little Brynhild, but you weren’t always this angry.”

  “She is ashamed,” muttered Father. “She is ashamed for what happened, and she should be too.”

  Before I even knew what I did, the coffee grinder was no longer on the table but in my hand. I hurled it across the room but missed his stupid head by an inch or two. The precious machinery flew into the wall and gauged a deep wound in the wood. I stood by the table, heaving for breath while the red fog slowly subsided. “Watch your mouth, old man, or I’ll be coming for you next!”

  He looked at me with eyes like a snake. The pipe was still in his hand, but the stick he had tended the fire with had fallen to the floor. “Next, huh? Who did you come for first?”

  “Stop it!” Mother’s lips were thin, her nostrils flared. “I will not have any fighting at Christmas!”

  “She is not right, that girl.” He shook his head. “And that beating left her mad as a dog.” He eyed me warily while picking up his stick. “She’ll kill us in our sleep one night, mark my words.”

  “No madder than you, old fool.” Mother went to pick up the grinder. I wished that it had struck him. I wished that he were dead. “Sit back down, Little Brynhild.” Mother gave me a look. “Bad enough if you have ruined the grinder. Wherever will we get a new one?”

  I slowly sat back down on the chair. My jaw throbbed with pain. “It’s what he gets for talking like that.”